Travels in the Riel World

There is a short but thoughtful article in The Atlantic about the current U.S. engagement with Afghanistan and the story contains some useful pieces of information about Afghan culture. Specifically, it speaks about the tremendous importance of tribes and clans in the nation’s social structure, while suggesting that the U.S. strategy is on the wrong track in that we’ve tried to rebuild the country from the top down rather than from the bottom up.

(T)he current military engagement is also beginning to look like the Soviets’ decade-long Afghan adventure, which ended ignominiously in 1989. That intervention, like the current one, was based on a strategy of administering and securing Afghanistan from urban centers such as Kabul and the provincial capitals. The Soviets held all the provincial capitals, just as we do, and sought to exert influence from there. The mujahideen stoked insurgency in the rural areas of the Pashtun south and east, just as the Taliban do now…

National government has never much mattered in Afghanistan. Only once in its troubled history has the country had something like the system of strong central government that’s mandated by the current constitution. That was under the “Iron Emir,” Abdur Rehman, in the late 19th century, and Rehman famously maintained control by building towers of skulls from the heads of all who opposed him, a tactic unavailable to the current president, Hamid Karzai.

Politically and strategically, the most important level of governance in Afghanistan is neither national nor regional nor provincial. Afghan identity is rooted in the woleswali: the districts within each province that are typically home to a single clan or tribe. Historically, unrest has always bubbled up from this stratum—whether against Alexander, the Victorian British, or the Soviet Union. Yet the woleswali are last, not first, in U.S. military and political strategy…

The Taliban are well aware that the center of gravity in Afghanistan is the rural Pashtun district and village, and that Afghan army and coalition forces are seldom seen there…The rural Pashtun south has its own systems of tribal governance and law, and its people don’t want Western styles of either. But nor are they predisposed to support the Taliban, which espouses an alien and intolerant form of Islam, and goes against the grain of traditional respect for elders and decision by consensus. Re-empowering the village coun­cils of elders and restoring their community leadership is the only way to re-create the traditional check against the powerful political network of rural mullahs.

On living in a multipolar world. I think Eugene Robinson nailed it in a recent op-ed column:

The lesson that’s being brought home this summer is that we live in a multipolar world. We knew that, but in our political rhetoric we prefer to ignore it. Now, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are going to be able to make it through their convention without acknowledging the world’s complications and interconnections.

Obama will probably talk more about engagement and the “international community,” while McCain is likely to sound more confrontational. I’m pretty sure, though, that neither will come clean about a central truth: Our future is being decided not just in Washington but in Beijing and Moscow — and in Riyadh, Islamabad, New Delhi, Dubai, Caracas, Abuja, Brasilia. . . .

We still have the wherewithal to lead. But we’re deluding ourselves if we believe we won’t have to adapt to the new reality.

Interesting story in the Christian Science Monitor about female leaders from 45 countries who met in India last week to mark International Women’s Day and to discuss a feminine style of leadership that they believe could help move the world beyond war.

She is one of several hundred prominent female leaders from 45 countries who have come to India this week to seek ways to raise women’s voices worldwide, hoping that their ideas – so often ignored – begin to move the world away from war.

It is a unique approach to International Women’s Day – and intentionally so, says Dena Merriam, who has organized “Making Way for the Feminine,” a five-day conference that began Thursday in Jaipur.

“This is not about empowering women,” says Ms. Merriam, who also co-chaired the United Nations’ Millennium World Peace Summit in 2000. “It is about how women can transform society to help us find new ways of addressing conflict.”

There are men here, too. The goal, participants say, is not to antagonize men. Yet each believes that women bring to the issue of conflict resolution a different perspective. Many liken it to that of a mother, stern but caring, and more open to finding alternatives to violence.

That perspective is sorely needed, they say, as the path of power and aggression has led only to more fighting and division. “The feminine gifts of compassion, empathy, and caring prepare women for the urgent role as leaders and reconcilers,” said the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, chairwoman of the Global Peace Initiative for Women, at the opening press conference.

Thoughts?

If you’re interested in the intersection of culture and geography with politics, and if you have any interest in the Middle East, then I highly recommend a story from the recent issue of The Atlantic. Titled “After Iraq,” the story written by Jeffrey Goldberg looks at how history, geography, culture and politics have combined to give us the current muddled and violent situation in the Middle East, and also considers how the map of the region could be redrawn in the future.

Some key excerpts:

As America approaches the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the list of the war’s unintended consequences is without end … The list includes, notably, the likelihood that the Kurds will achieve their independence and that Iraq will go the way of Gaul and be divided into three parts—but it also includes much more than that.

Across the Middle East, and into south-central Asia, the intrinsically artificial qualities of several states have been brought into focus … it is not just Iraq and Afghanistan that appear to be incoherent amalgamations of disparate tribes and territories. The precariousness of such states as Lebanon and Pakistan, of course, predates the invasion of Iraq. But the wars against al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and especially Saddam Hussein have made the durability of the modern Middle East state system an open question in ways that it wasn’t a mere seven years ago…

Of course, the current turbulence in the Middle East is attributable also to factors beyond the miscalculations of both the hubristic, seat-of-the-pants Bush administration and the hubristic, seat-of-the-pants French and British empires. Among other things, there is the crisis within Islam, a religion whose doctrinal triumphalism—Muslims believe the Koran to be the final, authoritative word of God—is undermined daily by the global balance of power, with predictable and terrible consequences … and there is the related and continuing crisis of globalization, which drives people who have not yet received the message that the world is now flat to find solace and meaning in their fundamental ethnic and religious identities.

But since 9/11, America’s interventions in the region—and especially in Iraq—have exacerbated the tensions there, and have laid bare how artificial, and how tenuously constructed, the current map of the Middle East really is. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration sought not only to deprive the country of its putative weapons of mass destruction, but also to shake things up in Iraq’s chaotic neighborhood; toppling Saddam and planting the seeds of democracy in Iraq would, it was hoped, make possible the transformation of the region. The region is being transformed; that transformation is just turning out to be a different, and possibly far broader, one than imagined.

What might this regional transformation look like? Goldberg goes into great detail in the article, but for starters:

The most important first-order consequence of the Iraq invasion, envisioned by many of those I spoke to, is the possibility of a regional conflict between Sunnis and Shiites for theological and political supremacy in the Middle East…

There are likely second-order consequences, as well. Rampant Kurdish nationalism, unleashed by the invasion, may spill over into the Kurdish areas of Turkey and Iran…

Then there are third-order consequences: in the next 20 years, new states could emerge as old ones shrink, fracture, or disappear. Khuzestan, a mostly Arab province of majority-Persian Iran, could become independent. Lebanon, whose existence is perpetually inexplicable, could become partly absorbed by Syria, whose future is also uncertain…Kuwait is another state whose future looks unstable…Bahrain, a majority-Shiite country ruled by Sunnis, could well be annexed by Iran (which already claims it), and Yemen could expand its territory at Saudi Arabia’s expense.

The list goes on. It’s a dizzying but fascinating look at a troubled and important region of the world.

Did anyone see Newsweek’s recent “What’s Next” issue? It included a multi-story feature about the rise of China as a superpower and some of the ways in which the country is evolving.

From the cover story by Fareed Zakaria, here is a dramatic overview of just how fast China is growing these days:

Lawrence Summers has recently pointed out that during the Industrial Revolution the average European’s living standards rose about 50 percent over the course of his lifetime (then about 40 years). In Asia, principally China, he calculates, the average person’s living standards are set to rise by 10,000 percent in one lifetime! The scale and pace of growth in China has been staggering, utterly unprecedented in history—and it has produced equally staggering change. In two decades China has experienced the same degree of industrialization, urbanization and social transformation as Europe did in two centuries.

Recall what China looked like only 30 years ago. It was a devastated country, one of the world’s poorest, with a totalitarian state. It was just emerging from Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, which had destroyed universities, schools and factories, all to revitalize the revolution. Since then 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty in China—about 75 percent of the world’s total poverty reduction over the last century.

And here are two opposing views of whether a Chinese-U.S. conflict is inevitable in the coming decades:

Some scholars and policy intellectuals (and a few generals in the Pentagon) look at the rise of China and see the seeds of inevitable great-power conflict and perhaps even war. Look at history, they say. When a new power rises it inevitably disturbs the balance of power, unsettles the international order and seeks a place in the sun. This makes it bump up against the established great power of the day (that would be us). So, Sino-U.S. conflict is inevitable.

But some great powers have been like Nazi Germany and others like modern-day Germany and Japan…In another Foreign Affairs essay, Princeton’s John Ikenberry makes the crucially important point that the current world order is extremely conducive to China’s peaceful rise. That order, he argues, is integrated, rule-based, with wide and deep foundations—and there are massive economic benefits for China to work within this system. Meanwhile, nuclear weapons make it suicidal to risk a great-power war. “Today’s Western order, in short, is hard to overturn and easy to join,” writes Ikenberry.

Sudan “tops” the list, followed by a disintegrating Iraq and long-troubled Somalia. These are the world’s weakest countries, according to the annual Failed States Index compiled by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace. According to a Washington Post article about the index:

Sudan, largely because of the humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur, is the world’s most unstable country, the group concluded. As many as 450,000 Sudanese have died, and an additional 2 million to 3 million have been displaced.

“There were only marginal differences between Iraq and Sudan, and Iraq is worse then Somalia, which is already a failed state,” Baker said…

The organization reported that Africa is the continent with the most significant slide. Eight of the 10 most unstable countries are in Africa, the report concludes.

The other two are Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where the Bush administration has made enormous military and financial commitments since 2001. Their experiences show that billions of dollars in development and security aid may be futile unless accompanied by a functioning government and plans for peacekeeping and economic development.

Foreign Policy magazine, meanwhile, explains why it believes the rest of the world should care about the fate of these failing nations:

It is an accepted axiom of the modern age that distance no longer matters. Sectarian carnage can sway stock markets on the other side of the planet. Anarchic cities that host open-air arms bazaars imperil the security of the world’s superpower. A hermit leader’s erratic behavior not only makes life miserable for the impoverished millions he rules but also upends the world’s nuclear nonproliferation regime.

The threats of weak states, in other words, ripple far beyond their borders and endanger the development and security of nations that are their political and economic opposites.

Google has launched an initiative through its popular Google Earth program to call attention to the tragedy of the Darfur region of Sudan. According to this San Francisco Chronicle article:

In an effort to raise awareness about atrocities in Sudan, Google Inc. has updated its online satellite mapping service with images of burned villages, refugee camps and wounded children.

The project, done in partnership with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, offers users of Google Earth a bird’s eye view of the aftermath of four years of fighting between the East African nation’s Arab-dominated government and the largely black residents of the Darfur region. The United Nations has said that more than 200,000 people, many of them Darfur civilians, have died and 2.5 million have been displaced in the conflict.

Elliot Schrage, Google’s vice president of global communications and public affairs, said the new high-resolution images are intended to encourage individuals to act against what he — along with U.S. officials and many human rights groups — describe as genocide.

If you don’t have the free Google Earth software, you can get it here.

As chaos continues to plague many nations in the Middle East, it’s not a surprise that regional powers such as Saudia Arabia and Iran are making a play for greater influence. What is intriguing, though, is that some of the smaller Arab Gulf states are also trying to take on a more prominent role in the region.

The Christian Science Monitor, for example, recently reported on efforts by Qatar to forge a more active role in foreign affairs.

A desert of 4,500 flat square miles jutting into the Persian Gulf and controlling the third-largest gas reserve in the world, Qatar seems to be involved in everything lately. It has presided over OPEC (three times), is bidding for the Olympics, and bankrolls Al Jazeera, the controversial satellite TV channel.

Controversy seems to be the order of the day here. Qatar is the only Gulf country to maintain any sort of official relations with the Jewish state, allowing a “trade representation office” to remain open in Doha since 1996 … But this relative openness to Israel does not stop Qatar from funding the militant group Hamas …

In the case of Iraq, Qatar has been supportive of both Sunnis and Shiites and is close to many other players in the Iraq field. All of which has potential, argues Mr. Rikai, to help broker positive change. “The Qataris can be a bridge for all of us. We all respect them. So, why not? ”

In January, Qatar, in cooperation with Georgetown’s School of Diplomacy, hosted a regional model UN. There was discussion of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and an emergency session on the Lebanon crisis. And here, unlike many other model UN programs in the region, Israeli students were invited and Israel was represented amongst the nations in the debates.

And, on a completely different but equally interesting note, Abu Dhabi (one of the United Arab Emirates) is striving to become a new cultural center, both for the Middle East and the world.  According to an article in the New York Times:

Over the next decade or so it aims to become one of the great cultural centers of the Middle East: the heir, in its way, to cosmopolitan cities of old like Beirut, Cairo and Baghdad.

This latter-day Xanadu … would boast four museums, a performing arts center and 19 art pavilions designed by celebrated architects like Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Jean Nouvel. The development could include leading cultural lights of the West, from the Guggenheim to the Louvre to Yale University. …

With once-proud cities like Beirut and Baghdad ripped apart by political conflict bordering on civil war, Abu Dhabi offers the hope of a major realignment, a chance to plant the seeds for a fertile new cultural model in the Middle East. It’s easy to be skeptical. But judging by the designs released so far, the buildings promise to be more than aesthetic experiments, outlining a vision of cross-cultural pollination.

It’s anyone’s guess as to whether all of this might someday change the political or cultural calculus in the region, but it’s an interesting development in any case, since some of these Gulf states have less of the historical baggage that plagues the region’s traditional powers.

There was an excellent article last week in Time Magazine about the rise of China, not only as an economic power but also as a political one.

You may know all about the world coming to China–about the hordes of foreign businesspeople setting up factories and boutiques and showrooms in places like Shanghai and Shenzhen. But you probably know less about how China is going out into the world. Through its foreign investments and appetite for raw materials, the world’s most populous country has already transformed economies from Angola to Australia. Now China is turning that commercial might into real political muscle, striding onto the global stage and acting like a nation that very much intends to become the world’s next great power.

Some examples of how China is beginning to flex its diplomatic muscle:

President Hu Jintao … has been a vigorous ambassador for China: the pattern was set in 2004, when Hu spent two weeks in South America–more time than George W. Bush had spent on the continent in four years–and pledged billions of dollars in investments in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Cuba.

While Wen Jiabao, China’s Premier, was visiting 15 countries last year, Hu spent time in the U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya. In a three-week period toward the end of 2006, he played host to leaders from 48 African countries in Beijing, went to Vietnam for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, slipped over to Laos for a day and then popped off for a six-day tour of India and Pakistan.

However, the news is not all good for China’s leaders:

China is still a poor country … whose leaders face so many problems that it is reasonable to wonder how they ever sleep. The country’s urban labor market recently exceeded by 20% the number of new jobs created. Its pension system is nonexistent. China is an environmental dystopia, its cities’ air foul beyond imagination and its clean water scarce. Corruption is endemic and growing. Protests and riots by rural workers are measured in the tens of thousands each year.

The article is worthwhile reading if you want to understand more about what is going on today in China.  Also noteworthy is that Time has decided to commit regular space in its magazine and on its website to coverage of the country.  In addition to the articles that will be produced, they have debuted a new China blog.

During the summer, I had a post about the differences between Sunnis and Shiites within Islam.  Unfortunately, it seems that at least some members of Congress aren’t as curious about the world as are readers of this blog.

The incoming chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes, was recently unable to tell a reporter whether Al Qaeda was a Sunni or Shiite organization (it’s Sunni) and he knew little about Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group that just fought a war with Israel and is threatening a takeover of Lebanon’s government. 

Now, for many people that would not be surprising and it would hardly be an indictment of their intelligence.  But this, after all, is someone who is being paid by taxpayers to serve on the Intelligence Committee.  He is responsible for helping to oversee U.S. policies that involve the Middle East - a region that is dominated by differences between Sunnis and Shiites!

Not that he’s alone among his peers in what he doesn’t know.  As USA Today noted:

Reyes, a member of the intelligence panel for almost six years, isn’t the only U.S. official ignorant of the basics. Earlier interviews by the same CQ reporter revealed that the chief of the FBI’s national security branch and two Republicans on the intelligence committee were also confused about the difference between the Sunnis and the Shiites.

There’s a “gotcha” quality to these questions, but this is, after all, basic information … Someone who doesn’t understand those distinctions simply can’t do the job well.

And the Sacramento Bee had this to say:

… Reyes was incapable of answering basic questions about the major players in the Middle East. In fairness, Stein noted that two key Republicans on the Intelligence Committee, interviewed last summer, knew even less than Reyes. And Trent Lott, R-Miss., in September said of Sunnis and Shiites, “They all look the same to me.” …

It is bad enough that President Bush and top administration officials show little understanding of the Middle East. It is positively depressing that the members of Congress responsible for overseeing our policies are equally, perhaps even more, ignorant.

The NY Times picked up on the issue, as well, and offered a review of the differences between Islam’s two main sects.  For those who are interested, there are also in-depth wikipedia entries on both Sunnis and Shiites.  Perhaps we should send copies to some members of the government.

There has been a lot of media coverage of late about U.S. foreign policy and the different camps of international strategists.  Traditionally, the country’s foreign policy thinkers have been divided into two main groups, those of the idealists and the realists.  Now, two scholars, one a conservative and the other a liberal, have written a new book proposing a policy of what they call ”ethical realism.”  The two were interviewed today on NPR.

In a new book, two scholars say America’s strategy in emerging democracies and elsewhere is flawed because it’s based on idealism and moral imperatives.

“That doesn’t mean that we don’t see the United States as a force for good in the world,” says John Hulsman, co-author with Anatol Lieven of Ethical Realism. “That doesn’t mean we don’t see the United States as anything less than the first among equals for the foreseeable future. It does mean it’s imperative you work with allies. And it’s important to have humility at the basis of what you do because that leads to prudence and that leads to a foreign policy that’s sustainable in the long run.” …

Lieven says that the combination of tough resistance, like that used to contain Soviet expansionism, and “categorical rejection of preventive war” is needed today — “a tough strategy against al-Qaida, but with great restraint in the direct use of American force.”

If you want to check out their book, you can find it here.

If you’re reading this blog, then you evidently have an interest in the world. There are countless websites out there which track and discuss global issues and it’s always interesting to wander around the internet for a while and discover new sites.  Here are a few you might want to check out:

FP Passport - Foreign Policy magazine (which is not written for academics, but for the average person with an interest in the world), maintains a daily blog about world issues.

PostGlobal - The Washington Post online has an ongoing discussion about topics of global interest.  It is moderated by Fareed Zakaria and David Ignatius.

Managing Globalization - The International Herald Tribune also has a blog that focuses on globalization and related issues.

Those sites could keep you reading for a while.  Do you have any other favorite sites that cover global topics?

Today is, of course, the five-year anniversary of 9-11.  To mark the date, the Christian Science Monitor ran an interesting story - contemplating how the world has changed in the past five years.

In many ways, not a great deal is different.  After all, globalization ”continues unabated,” Middle East conflicts dominated the headlines even before 2001, and the balance of power remains much the same.  What has changed, however, is our view of the world and our approach to it.  In that respect, notes the article, the events of 9-11 ”have helped move the metaphorical tectonic plates of the globe” and may have created ”a new general organizing principle for international affairs.”

The cold war was about the Western and communist blocs, and their values, conflicts, and internal cracks. The current period is about the US and the Islamic world - their mutual suspicions and occasional cooperation, and the wedge Al Qaeda has tried to drive between them.

“Five years in, it is now clear that the 9/11 attacks created a new dynamic for global politics, and thus American foreign policy, centering around the changed relationship between a state and a religion,” argues Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington.

Another change is the very presence of American troops in more Muslim countries and the consequences that has wrought:

… it is the presence of large numbers of US troops which has helped spur anti-Americanism in the (Middle East). Those troops may have given disaffected Muslims, unhappy with the shortcomings of their own economic and political structures, something else on which to focus their ire.

Much of the hostility that some Islamists bear toward the US “is driven by one of the most powerful of human emotions, a sense of indignity and humiliation,” says Lawrence Harrison, an adjunct lecturer in international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. “That’s a quite new foreign- policy problem.”

Along with this, of course, has been somewhat of a rise in anti-Americanism in general, or at least a decline in trust of the U.S. government:

Trust in the US has also eroded substantially since 9/11, according to Daalder, among friends as well as adversaries. International cooperation on a wide range of problems, from counter-proliferation to global warming, is thus “increasingly absent,” he claims.

The article, I thought, was an interesting to way to mark this five-year anniversary.  Not many would have predicted exactly these scenarios five years ago, when the entire globe seemed to rise up in support of the U.S. in the aftermath of that tragic day.  How, I wonder, will we see our world five years from now?

I’ve seen a number of Africa-related articles in the news the past few days.  A sampling of topics includes…

Politics is transcending country at the moment in Kenya, where U.S. Senator Barack Obama is receiving a hero’s welcome.  The LA Times examines Obama’s Kenyan experience.  Obama was born in the U.S. and has an American mother, but his father grew up in Kenya as a goat-herder who later became an economist, and his grandmother still lives in the family’s ancestral Kenyan village.  As Reuters reports:

A carnival atmosphere prevailed as residents banged drums, sang songs and waved flags reading “Obama we love you.”  Weaving through the excited masses, vendors sold red popsicles to ward off the Equatorial heat, while others hawked T-shirts and calendars saying “Welcome home Senator Obama”.

Born in Hawaii to a white American mother and a Kenyan father, the 45-year-old is revered by many Kenyans the way the Irish idolized former U.S. President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s — as a native who succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Another politician who is popular in Africa is former President Bill Clinton.  The NY Times has an extensive article on Clinton’s post-presidency obsession with Africa, particularly the efforts of his foundation to provide support in battling AIDS.

Meanwhile, airline business to Africa is growing considerably, with an annual 14 percent increase in passenger traffic between the U.S. and African nations, according to this MSNBC report.

And, in another sign of the continent’s emergence, this story notes that African languages are becoming more common on wikipedia. For an example, here is the Swahili version of the online encyclopedia.

Montenegro has now been officially admitted as the 192nd member state in the United Nations.  This follows Montenegro’s vote in a May referendum to sever its ties with Serbia and become an independent country.

More news on the burgeoning movements for autonomy or independence among unique cultural regions.  Voters in Catalonia approved a referendum that gives considerable autonomy to their region of northeastern Spain.

The provisions, which give the Catalan government more tax powers and greater authority over judicial and immigration matters, will go into effect within days. New laws also make Catalan the “preferential” language over Castilian Spanish, give local officials more control of ports, trains and highways, and return a higher percentage of federal funds to Catalonia, one of Spain’s richest regions.

It is expected that more of Spain’s 17 regions will seek similar autonomy in the future. Supporters believe that decentralization is important and that distinct cultures should gain greater local control over their affairs.  Detractors, on the other hand, fear the eventual demise of the Spanish state.  In this scenario, some believe that the various regions would choose independence, similar to what has happened in the former Yugoslavia.

For more perspective on these movements for autonomy and independence around the world, you can check out my previous posts on the subject, here and here.

What is a country?  That’s a more difficult question than it first appears, as we saw in the wake of Montenegro’s recent vote in favor of becoming an independent state.  Now, the Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article about “The Coming of the Micro-States.”

Experts fear that many “frozen conflicts” around the world … could reignite as ethnic minorities demand the same right to self-determination that many former Yugoslav territories have been offered by the international community. … The United Nations Charter mentions both the right of “self-determination” of peoples and the “territorial integrity” of states as bedrock principles of the world order. But these principles come into conflict when a separatist minority threatens to rupture an existing country.

O.K., so Montenegro wants to be independent.  So does Kosovo, an Albanian-speaking province of Serbia.  Apparently, so does Transdniestria, a Russian-speaking region of Moldova.  And maybe Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian territory in Azerbaijan.  The Monitor covers these situations in today’s story.  Left unsaid is that, if these small provinces are worthy of independence, then what about the Catalonia and Basque regions of Spain, or the Canadian province of Quebec, to name just two examples?  Or, more explosively, the territory of Kurdistan that now spreads across Turkey, Iraq and Iran?

Then there is the unique case of Somaliland.  This former British territory in northeastern Africa became independent in 1960, but soon merged with the neighboring territory that had been governed by Italy.  The two lands became Somalia.  Frustrated by the anarchy in Somalia, the territory of Somaliland re-declared its independence in 1991.  It has maintained autonomy since then but has still not been recognized as a state by either the United Nations or the African Union.

What is a country?  A difficult question.  One thing is sure, though - there could soon be a lot more members of the international community.

Montenegro, the tiny Balkan country that has long been connected to Serbia, voted yesterday to become an independent country.

Montenegro will thus become the 193rd member of the international community (or maybe the 192nd or 194th, depending on who is counting). There are 191 members of the United Nations.  However, the U.S. State Department and many other U.N. members recognize 192 countries.  This includes Vatican City, which is considered an independent state but does not belong to the U.N.  Then there is Taiwan, which does not meet most international requirements for country status but is recognized by 25 nations.

Now, if you really want to get confused, the Travelers’ Century Club maintains a list of 315 countries, although more than one-third of them are not actually independent states but rather cultural regions that are considered “geographically, politically or ethnologically” distinct.  (Think Tibet, or Scotland, or Montenegro prior to Sunday’s vote.)

Montenegro is the fifth former republic of Yugoslavia to choose independence, joining Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia.  Only Serbia remains of the six Yugoslav republics, and there are indications that the region of Kosovo may also want to become independent.  Montenegro has dreams of joining the European Union but, as this article points out, there are hurdles ahead.  The country is small, with a population of about 650,000, and has no strong economic foundation outside of a tourism industry centered on