Link Banana

I have to admit that half of my affinity for this Europe.view column is that I just love that word. It’s like so many fights held in so many places all over the world. But the column’s also got a few very valuable points about relations between the Kremlin on the West that are worth hearing.

One solution is to use points made by Russian leaders themselves. Guess who said this: “Russia is a country of legal nihilism at the level…that no European country can boast of…Corruption in the official structures has a huge scale”. That sounds as though it came from some opposition politician such as Garry Kasparov—the sort of marginal (or marginalised) figure that Russians often say gains far too much western attention. But the speaker was Dmitri Medvedev, successor-designate to Vladimir Putin.

Another is for outsiders to show a bit more self-criticism. It is worth noting early on in the discussion some outrageous flaws in American (or British, or German, or French) foreign policy, as well as recent scandals involving corruption and abuse of power.

The most powerful western asset during the last cold war was not bigger nukes or higher living standards, but self-criticism. However bad western governments may be, they risk trouble eventually—from the media, the courts or the voters. That is not something that one can say with much confidence about Russia now.

David Brooks’s column in yesterday’s New York Times tackles the hard-to-discern problem of what really motivates voters. Though the piece raises nearly as man questions as answers, it’s well worth reading.

In reality, we voters — all of us — make emotional, intuitive decisions about who we prefer, and then come up with post-hoc rationalizations to explain the choices that were already made beneath conscious awareness. “People often act without knowing why they do what they do,” Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner, noted in an e-mail message to me this week. “The fashion of political writing this year is to suggest that people choose their candidate by their stand on the issues, but this strikes me as highly implausible.”

The Economist takes an admirable look at the complex issues that underpin the struggle for the coexistence of Islam and open democracy, finding the difficulty of dissent at home to be its biggest obstacle.

Vali Nasr, a professor at America’s Tufts University, terms “Muslim Democracy” a newish and potentially decisive force in the non-Arab parts of the Muslim world. In his view, the recent experience of Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia all points to a single truth: wherever they are given the chance, Muslim Democratic parties (which are responsive to public opinion and thrive in an open political contest) can prevail over harder-line and more violent varieties of political Islam. […]

There are, in short, many interesting things to say about Islam and democracy. The pity is that they are mostly being said in the West, not in Islam’s heartland.

Relatedly, this week’s edition of the newspaper (to use their term) also has interesting looks at the “soft Islam” of Indonesia and the general malaise across the Arab world.

Correspondent Diaries are one of the best features of the The Economist’s website, and this weeks was especially interesting to me. The magazine’s South-East Asia correspondent spent some time in the Isaan region of Thailand before the recent election, and gives a very interesting picture of what many Bangkok residents think is the country’s most backward region.

Until the early 19th century Isaan was a sort of buffer zone between the kingdoms of Siam (Thailand’s old name) and Laos. After Siam annexed the region, in 1827, it suffered various uprisings against the Bangkok bureaucracy’s domination and centralisation. It continued to be a hotbed of radicalism until the 1960s and 1970s, when it was one of the battlegrounds for the Thai state’s fight against a communist insurgency.

Now, unlike in Thailand’s strife-torn southern provinces (where the locals are mostly Muslim and ethnically Malay), there is little talk of Isaan separatism. Isaan’s people are proud of their traditions but they are also loyal Thais, as demonstrated by the ever-present portraits of King Bhumibol in shops, homes and public places.

Though I posted about this last night, The Economist’s coverage is more thorough, troubling and heartening than the NYTimes story. The frightening bit:

The reaction to the swearing-in was immediate. Nairobi’s slums exploded in rage. The poor killed each other. The rest of the city was eerily empty, but for burning tyres. Across the country there was a swelling up of tribal violence, sometimes Kikuyu against Mr Odinga’s Luo tribe, more often Luo and other tribes against Kikuyu. Hundreds have been killed so far and 80,000 displaced. Gang rapes and mutilations are widespread. Police have orders to shoot to kill. There has been rampant looting in Kisumu, riots in Mombasa and pitched battles in Eldoret. Thousands of Kikuyu have taken refuge in Eldoret’s Catholic cathedral from roving gangs. Kikuyu hiding in another church outside Eldoret were burned alive by a mob. There will be reprisals. Some non-Kikuyus are already slipping away from Central Province.

And the hopeful bit:

The instincts of the hardliners will be to use the security services to reverse the freedoms of Mr Kibaki’s first term; anything to avoid power slipping into Mr Odinga’s hands. It is not clear that Kenya will stand for it. The government pressured mobile phone operators to suspend text messages for “security reasons”, without success. Kenya’s media is still keen to report rather than incite. The army’s strong apolitical tradition, with staff officers drawn from several tribes, looks to be holding.

They also offer the possibility that the outcome of the election could be revisited, as “A chastened Samuel Kivuitu, head of the electoral commission, now says he is not sure that Mr Kibaki won the election. The Americans and the British have been twisting arms.”

Musharref’s regime has decided to delay the parlimentary election, which were to take place this week, until February 18. Since the death of Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif’s decision not to run, the ascent of Benazir’s son and husband to control of the PPP (Pakistan’s largest party), and the continued low-level violence they claim to have seen a situation too dangerous to hold elections in. Now Sharif and other other parties say they will participate despite their dissatisfaction with the delay (they feel it will moderate now boiling anger at the ruling party).

In Kenya’s recent election, the incumbent Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, was victorious over the favored and hoped-for Raila Odinga. Odinga’s an ethnic Luo (like Barack Obama’s father) and after the probably-rigged election was awarded to Kibaki, riot police were immediately dispatched for fear of non-Kikuyu riots. Since then, many have died, and this New York Times report swings for the fences with a doozie of a line — which I can only hope will prove overstated — 

“We’ve had tribal fighting before, but never like this,” said Abdalla Bujra, a retired Kenyan professor who runs a democracy-building organization.

As for the people burned alive in the church, Mr. Bujra echoed what many Kenyans were thinking: “It reminds me of Rwanda.”