The Geographer: Conflict (Spring 2011)

The

Geographer Spring 2011

The newsletter of the

Royal Scottish Geographical Society

What Are We Fighting For? The geography of conflict “War does not determine who is right - only who is left.”

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

In This Edition...

• L etter from Tahrir Square •E xpert Views: Citizenship, Terrorism •E xpert View: ‘Bokhara’ Burnes in Afghanistan •C ountry in Focus: Paul Salopek on South Sudan •O pinions on Afghanistan: Rory Stewart, Ahmed Rashid •O ff the Beaten Track: John Pilkington in Iraq •R eader Offer: A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization plus other news, comments, books...

RSGS – Making Connections between People, Places & the Planet

The

Geographer

the geography of conflict

R

SGS – much more than just a talks programme.

I am honoured to be the CEO of an institution with such a heritage as the RSGS. I am flattered to follow in the footsteps of so many renowned geographers, and I feel a great responsibility to look after the Society as best I can.

I have a lot of ambition for the RSGS. I want the RSGS to run the best national talks programme in Scotland. I want to inspire generations of students and adults to want to know more about the world. I want the RSGS to build the highest quality collection it can. I want geography to be a compulsory subject in our schools. I want the RSGS to play a role in the key geographical issues of the day. I want everyone to wish they were ‘a geographer’.

I believe we have made great strides towards our goals, testament to the quality and hard work of the small team of staff and volunteers we are so fortunate to have behind us. However, whilst we have much to celebrate, we have much still to do.

Ironically, because we have rarely received government funding for core work, we have less to lose from proposed public spending cuts (although competition for other funds will be fiercer), but growing our core income streams remains critical to the survival of the RSGS. That means more members, more donations, more legacies, more volunteers and more talks income. To achieve this, we in turn need more public profile, more government engagement, more academics and teachers and individuals to believe in what we do.

We need more projects which promote geography in general, in schools, in universities, with employers. And we need everyone to care about the charity’s work and to recognise that we are much more than just a talks programme.

Please – I hope that you, our members and supporters who share our ambition and enthusiasm for geography, will get in touch – we can only achieve all this with your help.

Mike Robinson, Chief Executive RSGS, Lord John Murray House, 15-19 North Port, Perth, PH1 5LU tel: 01738 455050 email: enquiries@rsgs.org www.rsgs.org Charity registered in Scotland no SC015599 The views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of the RSGS. Cover image: © Jonathan Rashad Masthead picture: © John Pilkington

RSGS Medals & Awards 2010 Two of the RSGS’s medals for 2010 were presented by RSGS Vice-President David Hempleman-Adams at his well-attended talk after the AGM in Perth in January. The Bartholomew Globe was presented to Christopher Fleet, Senior Map Curator at the National Library of Scotland, in recognition of his contribution to making historical maps more widely available, through large-scale digitisation and geo-referencing projects.

The President’s Medal was presented to Dr Joanne Sharp, Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, in recognition of her contribution to research into and teaching of feminist, postcolonial, cultural and political geographies.

David also presented RSGS Fellowships to Professor Trevor Hoey, Head of Geography at Glasgow University; Dr Deborah Long, Conservation Manager at Plantlife Scotland and Chair of Scottish Environment Link; Bill Macfadyen of the RSGS Stirling Centre; Iain Rankin, Chair of the RSGS Aberdeen Centre; Professor Mike Thomas, Professor Emeritus at the University of Stirling; and Professor Charles Withers, Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Edinburgh.

Details of the other medallists for 2010 will be announced in the summer edition of The Geographer.

The World at Your Feet!

Thank you to all of you who have contributed so far to our funding appeal for the playground map project. We have now received over £8,000 towards the costs of materials and, we hope, a part-time education officer to help deliver the project. This remains a crucial scheme for the future of the RSGS: after the pilot scheme, it should ultimately allow us to reach into schools all over Scotland and reinforce our role as a leading educational charity.

Inspiring the next generation of geographers.

What in the world did you want to be when you grew up?

RSGS Appeal Envelope 12R.indd 1

31/1/11 15:56:42

We are grateful to CollinsBartholomew (www.collinsmaps.com) who donated the essential electronic file of the world map, and to the People’s Postcode Lottery and others who have donated money to the development of the pilot project.

It’s not too late to donate to this appeal – simply send a cheque to RSGS HQ, or donate on-line at www.rsgs.org.

New Vice-President We are delighted that renowned polar explorer, expedition leader and environmental speaker Pen Hadow has agreed to represent the RSGS as one of its Vice-Presidents. In accepting the Society’s invitation, Pen said “Scotland has been the home country to so many geographers, and as the natural world shows increasing signs of stress in response to our escalating population and per capita consumption, never has the urgency and importance of making connections between people, places and our planet been greater.”

RSGS – Making Connections between People, Places & the Planet

The

Geographer

1 Spring 2011

NEWS People • Places • Planet RSGS membership - a new tier We are delighted to introduce a new tier of membership – Patron member – for people who wish to support the Society at a higher level. As well as enhancing their support of our charitable activities, RSGS Patron members will receive all the current benefits of membership, plus a number of extra invitations and exclusive activities. We very much hope that some of you who care most about geography and the wider work of the Society, and who can afford to, will choose to

become Patron members. This is a crucial step in moving the Society onto a firmer financial footing, as for nine of the last ten years it has lost money and cannot survive if it continues to do so. If you are interested in becoming a Patron member, please contact fiona.parker@ rsgs.org or phone us on 01738 455050.

There will be some changes to RSGS’s standard membership subscription rates from 1st August 2011, as we continue

to move towards a simpler and more sustainable pricing structure. RSGS membership offers incredibly good value for money, with free access to any of around 100 talks each year, discounted entry to extra talks, and quarterly issues of each of The Geographer and the Scottish Geographical Journal. From this summer, we also hope to offer new opportunities for members to access and enjoy the collections in the redeveloped Fair Maid’s House.

Definitive Place-Names for Scotland It may be a surprise to learn that there is no definitive list of Scottish place-names. In 1967, the UN resolved that member countries should establish national place-name authorities, but the UK never acted on this resolution.

In the Scottish context, the RSGS was involved in making a case for place-name recording and standardisation in the 1890s, and rather more recently, leading to place-names being explicitly

included in the 2005 Geographical Information Strategy for Scotland.

A meeting in 2009 brought together a range of people interested in Scottish placenames – geographers, toponomists, linguists, historians, map-makers and policymakers representing academia, statutory bodies, and specialist organisations. The meeting identified several competing and partially incompatible place-name

lists in use, and highlighted the benefits of one consistent, freelyavailable, centrally-maintained database.

The Scottish Government has now commissioned a team based at the University of Edinburgh to create as definitive a list of place-names as is possible in the five months available for the work. Contact Bruce Gittings at bruce@geo.ed.ac. uk for further information.

Jim Carson OBE FRSGS

HRH The Prince of Wales presented Jim Carson with his well-earned OBE at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace in December – a wonderful occasion for Jim and his family to remember. And Jim didn’t miss the opportunity to tell the heir to the throne about the importance of geography and the work of the RSGS!

Volunteers Needed

We are still looking for volunteers to assist in either the office or the Fair Maid’s House, or both! If you can spare some time and are able to help, please do get in touch with Fiona at RSGS HQ.

UK children in poverty Research published in February

by Save the Children shows that 1.6 million children in the UK in 2008-09 were living in severe poverty. The charity says this is unacceptably high, and is concerned that rising prices, increasing unemployment, and cuts in welfare payments may force even more children into severe poverty in the coming months without urgent and concerted action.

area, with the proportion of children living in severe poverty ranging from 27% in Manchester and Tower Hamlets to less than 5% in Eilean Siar, Orkney and Shetland. Within the UK, Wales has the highest proportion (14%), followed by England (13%), then Scotland and Northern Ireland (9% each). Around one in five of the 90,000 children living in severe poverty in Scotland live in Glasgow City.

For the first time, the research is broken down into local authority

See www.savethechildren.org.uk for more information.

In February, in conjunction with the RSGS and Perth & Kinross Council Education Department, Miranda Krestovnikoff, best known from BBC series Coast and as resident wildlife expert on The One Show, gave S4–S6 geography pupils from local schools a behindthe-scenes talk about her television work, and about the conservation and environmental activism that she undertakes when the cameras aren’t rolling.

NEWS People • Places • Planet The New Zealand Earthquakes These are just some of the stories that we have received.

I was in the city centre when the quake struck; by the time I got onto the street (about 15 seconds) there was complete devastation. What looked like smoke was the dust and debris of collapsed buildings rising into the air.

There is something disturbing about helicopters flying over the city with monsoon buckets because the water system has ruptured and several buildings were on fire.

The sight of Air Force planes flying sorties above us is not what you would imagine in little old New Zealand.

The earth hasn’t stopped moving since yesterday’s earthquake, and they are vicious aftershocks. Like the earthquake yesterday, they are all very shallow and close to the surface of the earth and the noise is sickening. We have lost so many people in our community, not one of us will be untouched by the loss of life.

It is hard to describe the past week. The September earthquake was so violent. At 12.51pm last week, the earthquake was utterly demonic. The ground acceleration was 2.2 times the force of gravity. Thankfully this is a country with stringent building codes, but still not enough to save lives. Too many lost for such a small city.

The response and support have been amazing. Some people truly are super-human souls. There is so much kindness, and people are going to extraordinary lengths to help each other.

Thank you for all your love, prayers and messages.

They are a well-spring of energy and encouragement and affirmation of life in a way you can’t imagine. It does make a difference. Never doubt that.

Dynasty of Engineers The world’s oldest continuously operational rock lighthouse, on the Bell Rock off the coast of Arbroath, celebrates its bicentenary this year.

Dynasty of Engineers: The Stevensons and the Bell Rock, by Professor Roland Paxton, celebrates the achievements of five generations of the Stevenson family of engineers, sheds new light on the construction of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, includes a chronology of over 200 lighthouses, complemented by numerous colour photographs, and offers a fascinating insight into Robert Louis Stevenson’s experience as a reluctant engineer.

According to the British Geological Survey, the thousands of aftershocks that followed the magnitude 7.1 Mw earthquake to the west of Christchurch in September 2010 line up along a 100 km fault zone that runs from west to east and extends into the city itself.

Before September, there was little indication that this fault system existed. The 6.3 Mw earthquake that struck in February 2011 was less powerful than the original quake, but the shock was only half as deep, was much closer to the main population centre, and struck in the middle of the day, causing enormous damage and scores of deaths.

Many subsequent aftershocks have been reported, the largest at 5.5 Mw.

Scotland’s Marine Atlas Scotland’s Marine Atlas is the first full-colour atlas of Scotland’s seas. It supports the new marine planning framework that is being created following the introduction of the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010, and aims to inform people about marine issues in general. It includes in-depth information about different aspects of the marine environment, an overall assessment of the current condition of Scotland’s seas, and consideration of future priorities.

See www.scotland.gov.uk/marineatlas for more information.

Growing a green economy A United Nations Environment Programme report, released in February, recommends investing 2% of global GDP every year between now and

2050 in environmental projects – sustainable agriculture, lowcarbon energy, and natural resources such as fisheries, drinking water and forests – to

spur economic growth. The report precedes a UN conference on sustainable development, to be held in Rio de Janeiro in May 2012.

The

Geographer

2-3 Spring 2011

NEWS People • Places • Planet Japan In one sudden event, northern Japan moved 2.8 metres closer to North America, and the seafloor rose by several metres. The offshore Japanese earthquake was exceptional in size (magnitude 9.0), the fourth largest in the world since 1900, and the largest in Japan since measurements began 130 years ago. Such is the preparedness of modern Japan that relatively few people were killed and limited damage was caused directly by the earthquake, with advanced building technology, a sophisticated early-warning system, an educated population and evacuation plans. The much smaller 1923 Great Kanto earthquake flattened Tokyo and killed 142,000 people.

It was the tsunami that caused the destruction, not the actual earthquake. The uplift of the seafloor formed the tsunami, resulting in a wall of water, between 3 and 10 metres in height, crashing into more than 600 kilometres of coastline. As we have seen, there is little that can be done to protect low-lying areas from such an onslaught, and the unfolding events have been tragic in the extreme, made all the more appalling by the unremitting live footage. As we go to press, more than 9,400 people are confirmed dead, and more than 14,700 are missing, while the world holds its breath to see what happens in the wake of severe damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

RSGS Man on NTS Board RSGS Edinburgh Committee member Keith Griffiths has been elected to the new 15-person Board of Trustees of The National Trust for Scotland, after an election in which over 41,000 NTS members voted.

Keith said “I’m very grateful to all those who voted for me. I consider myself privileged to be entrusted by the membership with the task of helping to steward and develop NTS. I’m looking forward to working with the other Trustees and NTS’s staff, volunteers and members, and hope that we can all work together to ensure a sound and vibrant future for NTS which benefits wider society. My commitment to RSGS remains unchanged, so I’ll continue to stand outside the Appleton Tower in the wind and rain on Thursday nights as required.”

Half of the world’s countries have offered aid, but the Japanese government is among the best prepared in the world and has so far only made very specific requests for help, such as seeking expert search and rescue teams. There has been no request yet for humanitarian assistance from the international community. UK charities are consequently in an awkward position – despite a great desire to help, until Japan asks, they are limited in what they can do.

Routes across the map – cartography, travel and transport This one-day seminar, organised by the Scottish Maps Forum and to be held from 10.00am to 4.30pm on 7th Saturday 7th May 2011 in May the AK Bell Library in Perth, will look at recent research that has explored the value of maps in understanding the history of transport and communications, focusing on Scotland. It will also look specifically at particular people – surveyors and engineers – who have played a significant role in developing transport infrastructure and their maps. There will be papers on using Timothy Pont’s 16th century maps for understanding early routeways, military roads and maps in the 18th century, the history of the Bell Rock on charts, the surveyors, cartographers and civil engineers Alexander Nimmo and William Bald, and the impact of roads and railways on towns.

The cost is £20 (including morning coffee and lunch) or £15 (without lunch). Details and a booking form (to be returned by 15th April) are available from www.nls. uk/collections/maps/subject-info/forum, or contact the National Library of Scotland Maps Reading Room on 0131 623 3970 or maps@nls.uk.

Conflict Kitchen Conflict Kitchen, in Pittsburgh, is a takeaway restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries with which the United States of America is in conflict. The identity is changed every four months to highlight another country, with events, performances, and discussion about the culture, politics, and issues at stake with each country.

The restaurant’s second identity is Bolani Pazi, serving a savoury Afghan turnover. Developed in collaboration with members of the Afghan community, the bolani comes packaged in a custom-designed wrapper that includes interviews with Afghans in both Afghanistan and the United States, on subjects ranging from Afghan food and culture to the current geopolitical turmoil.

“With food as a mediator, it becomes easier for customers to consider the everyday life of people — they start to consider the people and culture behind conflicts.” said Dawn Weleski, co-founder of the project.

See www.conflictkitchen.org for more information.

NEWS People • Places • Planet The Brisbane Flood Shannon Dooland is based in Brisbane, and has ten years experience of water resource management, with a focus on flooding and drainage.

Shannon Dooland, Senior Water Resources Engineer, Sinclair Knight Merz

The city of Brisbane experienced a flood event in early 2011 that was the largest of its kind for over 35 years, and the third biggest in over 100 years. The Brisbane River rose almost five metres as it passed through Brisbane city, while in upstream Ipswich it rose to almost 20 metres above its usual level.

ongoing heavy rainfall in the Brisbane River catchment, an area of 12,000km2 (nearly twice the size of the River Tay catchment).

Within the catchment are several water storages and dams with flood-storage capacity, which were operated during the flood event to mitigate the effects downstream.

The flood that impacted Brisbane occurred at a time when many parts of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria were also in flood, while parts of Western Australia experienced bushfires.

For the duration of the flood, Brisbane city centre resembled a ghost town. Businesses in the central business district were closed for nearly a week, with the power shut down so as to reduce damage to electrical systems and to prevent electrocution. A number of suburbs were completely inundated with water, with boats and jet skis the principal mode of transport in the streets. Other areas

It resulted from

of the city and environs had no flooding at all, with life continuing as usual, creating an unusual contrast.

The community response to cleaning up after the floods was quite remarkable. I was helping out at a friend’s flooded house on the first morning after the flood, and was amazed when the first raft of volunteers offered their assistance at the muddied front door at 10.00am.

One month after the flood, much of the city had returned to normal, but the residential areas worst hit still include entire streets of empty houses, windows open in an attempt to dry the house so that reconstruction can begin.

Letter from Brisbane Adam Harper

title could be wn as the Sunshine State, but no Australia’s Queensland may be kno ered terrible suff s Brisbane and surrounding area further from the truth this year as ers, as the and ensl t was a slap in the face for Que floods in January. The freakish even 75% of lt, resu a As d in a similar flood in 1974. d, and the city had been submerge recor on ght s! drou time t hest eigh hars and the floods followed t Britain fits inside Queensl zone. Keep in mind that all of Grea ster disa ral natu a ared decl been the state has even so, the main road Brisbane, is on a mountain ridge; of epic proportions. Toowoomba, near was on stati deva f became deep canals, the nd, itsel grou bane the On nstream’. Main roads through Bris ‘dow es metr kilo vans and cars and lower level floors became a raging torrent sweeping erground car parks, elevator shafts up the streets chasing bait fish. Und g min swim ks t town version of shar of ghos a ts ting repor with homes were evacuated, crea ent rich water. Entire buildings and efflu and died little more than mud in r; with powe d fille lost were ; a quarter of a million people and 5,000 businesses were affected es hom 00 hs of at least 35 26,0 deat than the e ed Mor caus ice.

Ven fill. Tragically, the floods also e was taken from the city to land wast of es tonn ,000 126 , week one the people. ed to cars and buildings, or even s is not the physical damage caus flood the from ion rvat essed obse witn lar Perhaps the most spectacu ed at a time of hardship. I have in which the human spirit triumph way the is It ir. repa rs and -up hbou prejudice. Neig financial cost of the clean ds, all pushing aside any bias or s of strangers to a village of frien lder at a time of need, shou to lder Brisbane transform from a metropoli shou -filled homes. Strangers stood flood and s yard ding oun surr helped to shovel debris from worst hit areas to give their support. travelled great distances into the and tools their bed grab s flood. flood the while those unaffected by ’s volunteer register following the names were added to Queensland new 00 67,0 and led, revea was aks The true spirit of Brisbane have been filled with images of kay extend to wildlife. Our newspapers ion pass com that see to ing ved work relie prey and I was also extremely e have even been images of predators os, stranded on tiny islands. Ther rs on the back of a wate storm being used to rescue wild kangaro ugh thro ride a ing shows a green tree frog hitch ar icul part in One rs. wate g risin together to escape g. a mysterious and wonderful thin brown snake! The natural world is e fate. So it seems ; it saved Brisbane from a far wors e without Wivenhoe Dam’s protection wors lot a been have can really do is ld we wou all n, ing The flood , but as we have just been show re with our dams and technologies Natu er Moth ain cont to pt will. ys attem we can disasters occur; because they alwa s to come to the fore when natural hope that ‘human nature’ continue Adam

The

Geographer

4-5 Spring 2011

NEWS People • Places • Planet The Fair Maid’s House Project Mike Robinson, Chief Executive, RSGS The Fair Maid’s House work has now moved to sorting the interpretation and the detailed fit-out. Although held up briefly by the bad weather, the project is currently exactly on budget, although the budget is tight and perhaps unsurprisingly we would benefit from another £20-30,000.

We had hoped, for instance, to buy new map chests to replace some of the older degraded ones, and to acquire modern guidebooks, a stove for the fireplace and some sofas, but these may need to wait.

opportunity for members to access these collections like never before, whether it is diary notes or photos, old maps or visitor books, artefacts or atlases. Members and the public will be encouraged to use the centre to plan trips and meet likeminded travellers, adventurers and educationalists, and to learn more about all aspects of geography and the world around them. And schools are expected to become regular users, with a tailor-built

However, we have now got a truly beautiful building to act as a focal point for Scottish geography, and a space to celebrate the best of Scotland on the world stage and to house much of our collections. It will give the

education space.

There is so much to explore.

We cannot afford to overstretch our already fragile finances, so it is important we move forward in achievable steps. We cannot yet, for example, say exactly when the Fair Maid’s House will open, until we have a clear idea of the number of volunteers. We still have much to do, but once open this summer, the Fair Maid’s House completion will truly mark the beginning of a whole new chapter in the history of the RSGS. I hope you will visit and continue to help the Society in any way you can, and I look forward to welcoming you all.

Anyone can volunteer – no specialist knowledge is necessary. If you want to volunteer, please contact fiona.parker@rsgs.org or phone us on 01738 455050.

Scottish Government Liaison

Spanish speed limits

RSGS has continued to contribute to the various curricular groups on which it has representation, particularly the Curriculum Advisory Review Group and the Geography Excellence Group. Both government bodies are seen as vital strategic groups to steer the development of the subject in schools, and RSGS is determined to help stand up

In response to the recent oil price increases, and the problems across the Middle East, the Spanish Government has reduced speed limits from 120 km/h to 110 km/h.

This has received a mixed press, but echoes the response of many nations, including the UK and the US, to the fuel crisis in the 1970s. Cars are invariably more efficient at 50-55 mph than at 70-80 mph, and evidence suggests that drivers can save as much as 25% of their fuel costs by slowing down. If more widely adopted, lower speeds would reduce road deaths and minimise congestion during busier periods, as shorter braking distances and more uniform traffic speeds could effectively double road capacity.

for geography in all these forums, working with representatives from the SAGT and schools to encourage head teachers and government to understand the central role geography can play in introducing children to science and encouraging cross-subject learning. We also met with Roseanna Cunningham MSP, Minister for the Environment.

James Croll’s reputation grows After the article in The Geographer (Autumn 2010) and a handful of talks given by our Chief Executive, and the excellent BBC series Men of Rock, interest in James Croll and his contribution to science is growing. The Sunday Mail contacted RSGS for an article which was published in February, the local press and a local website have also featured him, and Perth Museum is hoping to present his story in an exhibition early next year. His is also one of many names proposed for inclusion somewhere within the Fair Maid’s House development. Maybe he will at last start to get the recognition he so firmly deserves.

Mr Duncan leaves a legacy In February, we were notified by the Charities Aid Foundation that Mr William Duncan, a former member of the Society, had left an unrestricted legacy of £20,000 to the RSGS. His generous and open support will help us considerably in our endeavour to revitalise the RSGS as a vibrant, effective and professional organisation, delivering an imaginative programme of education and public engagement activities, and providing increased public access to a superb archive of geographical resources. We are most grateful.

Spanish officials said the new speed limit and a host of other energy-saving measures are essential because Spain depends on imports for 75% of its energy, compared to the European Union average of 60%.

Combat Stress Combat Stress (www.combatstress.org.uk) is just one of many UK charities working to address the human cost of conflict. It specialises in the care of veterans’ mental health, delivering dedicated treatment and support, free of charge, to ex-service men and women with psychological conditions related to their service careers, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), phobias, depression and anxiety disorders. Since 2005, the charity has seen a 72% increase in demand for its services, and the current caseload is more than 4,500 individuals.

NEWS People • Places • Planet Close the Door

Commonwealth Games Legacy Dr Robert Rogerson, Convener of the RSGS Research & Scientific Advisory Committee, has been appointed as coordinator of academic research into the legacy of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014.

Working with a partnership between the City Council, its sports & culture agency Glasgow Life, and the three universities in the city, he will lead research on the long-term impact of hosting the sports event in the city. Topics will include aspects of the social, economic and cultural legacy, as well as the more obvious contributions to sports and physical activity.

Careers Talk at University of Edinburgh Bruce Gittings organised a careers talk in February, to help fourth year students focus on opportunities and to inspire them to look at their options. Speakers included Mike Robinson, Sarah Govan, Clare Richardson, Phil Taylor and Susan Bird. The session seemed to go well: as Bruce commented, “It’s not often spontaneous applause breaks out during a careers talk, so I think the students found it useful!” The talks complemented each other very well, and reflected different experiences and careers routes. Overall they gave a very broad feel for the types of jobs that exist, with the important points being appropriately re-emphasised.

Several students sent in feedback, including this response: “I would definitely, definitely recommend that you run it again next year. The general consensus from people I’ve been talking to about it over lunch time was that it was really inspiring.”

Edinburgh Centre on Climate Change The Edinburgh Centre on Climate Change (ECCC) is a new innovation and skills centre for climate and carbon management, hosted by the Universities of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh Napier. Its inaugural director, Dr Andy Kerr, with a core team of seven people, will support the development and delivery of professional skills training for the private and public sectors – around topics such as carbon finance, carbon management and accounting, sustainable energy systems, and urban design and planning. The team will also work with businesses and local authorities to enhance rates of technical, social and business innovation in Scotland to support the move to a low carbon economy, drawing on the excellent Scottish research base. See www.climatechangecentre.org.uk for more information.

Over winter, you may have noticed warm air hitting you as you passed shops.

Recent data from Cambridge University, commissioned by the Close the Door Campaign, shows that simply closing the door cut total in-store energy use by up to an average of 54%. Furthermore, warm ‘air curtains’ make matters worse, not only failing to seal warm air into the shop, but emitting 90kg of CO2 a week – the equivalent of a return Glasgow-London coach trip.

The Close the Door Campaign is business friendly, working with high street retailers to reduce carbon emissions and increase staff and customer comfort by simply closing the door when using heating or air conditioning. The campaign began in Cambridge with just eight shops. This has now risen to over 350 of all types and sizes, and the pattern is being replicated by local groups in many other places, with the first in Scotland in Inverness and Ross-shire, where the benefits of closing the door in winter are even greater than further south.

No one heats their home and leaves the doors and windows open, and the campaign hopes to spread this awareness into the shopping environment. Major retailers such as M&S, the John Lewis Partnership, Ryman, and Tesco have now weighed in behind the campaign. See www.closethedoor.org.uk to find out more.

The Source of the River Amazon According to the Geographical Society of Lima, various studies have now proven that the River Amazon (at about 7,000 km) is longer than the River Nile (at about 6,671 km).

And recent photographs taken from the satellite Kompsat-2 look to have provided the Polish-Italian explorer and journalist, Jacek Palkiewicz, with proof of his hypothesis about the source of the River Amazon.

For some 15 years, Palkiewicz has argued that the Amazon has its source in a small spring 5,170 m above sea-level in the Apacheta ravine on Quehuisha, a snow-capped mountain in the province of Arequipa, refuting the National Geographic magazine’s long-held thesis that the Amazon’s source is from Lake McIntyre on Mismi, another snowcapped mountain also in the province of Arequipa.

According to Palkiewicz, the satellite photographs add further proof to other criteria set out by contemporary science which help to determine the source of rivers: the volume of flow of water, the longitudinal profile of the river, water resources activity, the cross-section of flow or the morphology of the terrain. Palkiewicz said, “The Apacheta spring, which later becomes the River Apurimac then the Ucayali and finally the Amazon, meets all these criteria. National Geographic takes into account only the aspect of length.”

The

Geographer

Off The Beaten Track

6-7 Spring 2011

A ‘Tourist’ in Iraq John Pilkington

We’re all familiar with the news from Iraq, but a part of the country that rarely hits the headlines is Kurdistan, the semi-independent region in the north. The Kurds here have been steadily forging closer relations with the West, and are now making a bid to become – of all things – a holiday destination.

Ibiza it certainly isn’t; but Kurdistan does boast some spectacular mountain scenery with deep, twisting gorges and waterfalls, and the capital Arbil is one of the longest continually inhabited cities on Earth.

Passing through en route from Syria to Iran, I squeezed myself into the back of an ageing Kurdish taxi, between turbaned men with daggers in one pocket and apricots and almonds in the other. We bounced along the mountain road and they fed me handfuls of the fruit and nuts.

I tried not to think about the daggers.

After an hour we pulled up at the house of the man on my left. Our host ushered us in, the driver included, to sit on his richly carpeted floor. A tray of tea was handed round, plates of food appeared from nowhere, and soon a stream of neighbours came in to meet the unexpected and startling British guest. Several of them reminded me, putting their hands to their hearts, how in 1991 our very own John Major helped set up the ‘safe haven’ which ended Saddam Hussein’s campaign of violence against the Kurds.

Sir John seemed to be almost a national hero here, alongside George W Bush and of course the legendary Kurdish freedom fighter Mustafa Barzani. Strange bedfellows indeed.

Under the Iraqi constitution, Kurdistan now has its own parliament, army and flag; and it has been steadily rebuilding its shattered towns and villages with the help of truly vast amounts of international investment. With bombings still a real danger in nearby Mosul and Kirkuk, you’d

be forgiven for thinking twice before booking your spring mini-break here. But against all the odds, Kurdistan has been almost completely free of violence recently – so much so that American troops based in the south often come up for the weekend. As Nimrud Youkhana, the Kurdish Minister of Tourism, has put it, “This part of Iraq is very different from the rest of the country. We have peace, security and a low crime rate. It’s actually safer here than in many parts of Europe.”

Two hours later I continued my taxi journey through the mountains. I was now on the so-called ‘Hamilton Road’, a strategic route into Iran that was commissioned by the British back in the 1920s. It snaked perilously through a sort of miniGrand Canyon, and was originally to have been part of an imperial trunk road to Asia.

Many Kurds speak excellent English. At the height of Saddam’s atrocities some were given asylum in Britain, and now a fair number of these are back in Kurdistan. In a town called Sulaymaniyah, I was walking through the bazaar when a man called out to me from a butcher’s shop. Was that a Yorkshire accent? It was, and it was saying “Come and have some tea!”

The voice belonged to Asad, recently returned from Leeds where he’d been working as a butcher’s assistant. He’d done well, saved money, and now ran his own shop supplying beef and lamb to Sulaymaniyah’s restaurants. “Do you miss Leeds?” I asked. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “But things are much better here now. I’m back with my family and I’m teaching the business to my little boy.”

But the little boy’s future may not be as secure as Asad would wish. Time and again I was shown maps of a ‘Greater Kurdistan’, extending from the Mediterranean almost to Baghdad, and including large chunks of Syria, Turkey, Iran and

Iraq. A student called Mohamed told me what these maps were all about. “It’s our age-old dream of a proper Kurdistan nation,” he said. “Don’t forget we’re 30 million people – that’s more than most European countries.

And we’re hardworking – like the Poles and the Germans put together. We want an independent Kurdish state, and if we play our cards right I think we’ll get one within 20 years.”

But in the meantime, is Kurdish tourism about to take off?

Well – not just yet I think. Getting around isn’t straightforward; there are still lots of army checkpoints; and unplanned stopovers like the one I had aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. This perhaps explains why I didn’t actually meet a single other foreigner in Kurdistan. Don’t tell anyone, but they’re missing a treat.

“It’s our ageold dream of a proper Kurdistan nation...

Don’t forget we’re 30 million people – that’s more than most European countries.”

Expert View: Citizenship

Statelessness - What happens when you don’t belong?

Professor Brad K Blitz, Kingston University

This article is a shortened version of the concluding chapter of Statelessness and Citizenship: A Comparative Study on the Benefits of Nationality by Brad K Blitz and Maureen Lynch, published in 2011

by Edward Elgar Publishing.

“When you don’t have documents you can’t do anything – anything.

Without papers you have no future, you are stuck, you are blocked. It’s like being in prison without knowing when you are going to go out.”

Unsuccessful asylum seeker in the United Kingdom

“They were shouting at us, ‘You’re not from here’. Some were speaking in al-Hasaniya, others in French or Peul. All the identity documents – mine and the children’s – were in the house, and they were all taken with the rest of our things.”

Affidavit of MGD, Mauritania, July 2004, on file with the Open Society Justice Initiative

Statelessness – a situation which arises when individuals cannot avail themselves of their right to a nationality – is both a cause and a consequence of violent conflict and political instability. As a recent publication from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) notes, “statelessness prevents people from fulfilling their potential and may have severe knock-on effects for social cohesion and stability; it may even lead to communal tension and displacement.”

Statelessness occurs as a result of state succession, through the denial and deprivation of citizenship, or during periods of prolonged displacement, when national ties are eroded through the passage of time.

It is sustained by the absence of the rule of law and by weak and undemocratic systems of governance, and may be further institutionalized in systemic discrimination – for example in gender inequality and in racist and ethnocentric policies which lock out women and minorities from the right to possess and pass on their

Stalin deported the entire ethnic Korean community in the Soviet Far East to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, accusing them of being Japanese sympathizers. This stateless ethnic Korean man moved from Uzbekistan to Ukraine, and has been living with this Ukrainian woman for a decade, but has not been able to register their union without valid documents. He has applied for citizenship, as without Uzbek citizenship and unrecognized in Ukraine, he is at risk of deportation. (2009).

nationality to their children.

Though the conditions which give rise to statelessness differ, those affected all share similar experiences of vulnerability.

Above all, stateless people everywhere lack protection. Even after statelessness ends, many remain socially and politically excluded, and the effects of their long-standing disenfranchisement may generate further instability.

Even though there are an estimated 12 million stateless people worldwide, there has been little research into the conditions which perpetuate their vulnerability and how it may be corrected. There are two main reasons why statelessness has not attracted much academic attention: first, unlike the Refugee Convention, few states have acceded to the 1954 and 1961 conventions regarding stateless people and, as a result, Côte d’Ivoire is the largest producer of cocoa in the world. Many people working statelessness on plantations have lived in Côte d’Ivoire for decades, yet the nationality of hundreds of thousands is in question and few have legal claim to the land.

has frequently fallen outside the interest of much international law and hence political inquiry; second, it is especially difficult to locate stateless persons, many having been rendered invisible by the states in which they live.

In spite of the prevalence of statelessness, some states have made a significant effort to amend exclusionary laws and correct discriminatory practices which have given rise to situations of statelessness.

Between 2008 and 2010, my colleagues and I decided to investigate the positive developments in eight of those countries – Bangladesh, Estonia, Kenya, Kuwait, Mauritania, Slovenia, Sri Lanka and Ukraine.

To this end we interviewed 120 formerly stateless people, to explore if and how citizenship has made a qualitative difference in their lives.

We concluded that the granting of citizenship offers some very real and important material and non-material benefits: we noted how the change in nationality status advanced the right to political representation, access to formal employment, and freedom of movement, and that regaining citizenship reduced the sense of

The

Geographer

isolation experienced by so many.

It was also clear that the granting of citizenship had actively empowered people.

We further identified six premises for future policy-relevant research on the prevention and reduction of statelessness.

1) Documentation is essential to the realization of human rights. Documentation may be in the form of passports, civil identification documents, birth certificates or even licences.

2) Demographics matter. In countries where there were many stateless people relative to the overall population, there was a clear political interest in regularizing the status of individuals who lacked citizenship. For example, in Kenya, the large Nubian community was perceived as a potentially captive political constituency. In Ukraine, the numbers of Crimean Tatars returning from Central Asia forced the government to acknowledge them and, in an attempt to prevent inter-ethnic tension and division, to grant them formal recognition.

and initiated the resolution of their plight.

5) Recognition and exoneration have important implications.

The fact that participants sought to be exonerated by the state and public, and achieve some recognition for the abuse they suffered at the hands of the state, is central to the pursuit of dignity and, as evidenced in Slovenia, Ukraine and Mauritania, was a major motivating factor in their struggle for citizenship.

6) Populations with a recognized ethno-national identity are more easily integrated.

A shared understanding of the historical relationship of the state concerned to the respective populations affected appears to determine the degree and manner in which they have been integrated following periods of statelessness.

Finally, the research also affirmed that the absence of citizenship has a human cost, and emphasised steps must be taken to avoid statelessness

8-9 Spring 2011

before it strikes – through birth registration for all children, gender equality in nationality laws and other types of reform.

“You are not entitled to work. There’s no health insurance. You can’t drive a car. Can’t go to the Employment Office. If the police ask questions, they have the right to expel you.

There are other things like buying and selling...

You are not entitled to go to university. Maybe you can but only as a foreigner. But you are not even a foreigner here. You are completely paralyzed.”

AT, Ptuj, Slovenia, June 2004

Photos by Greg Constantine, an American photojournalist currently based in southeast Asia. See www. nowherepeople.org or contact greg@ gregconstantine.com for more information.

3) The benefits of citizenship are not evenly distributed.

In different case studies, there have been varying degrees of improved access to the labour market. In several cases, the granting of documentation enabled young people to acquire a university education and then enter jobs in secure sectors, including the government and health service.

4) Setting the nationality agenda may move the reform process forward. Once stateless groups organized themselves, asserted their social identities and their claims to nationality, and, in some cases, attained the restoration of their social and economic privileges, they saw a marked change in their respective situations. In Kenya, Slovenia, Mauritania and Bangladesh, stateless persons themselves were key actors

Most Rohingya who flee from Burma to Bangladesh are denied refugee status and receive little protection and assistance. A woman sits on the side of the road with her grandchild at the old Tal Camp near Teknaf. (2006)

Opinions On: Middle East and North Africa

The Beginning of the End?

The Arab Uprisings and Our Civilizational Crisis Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in London. His latest book, A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It, is our reader offer (see back page for details).

This year has already witnessed two momentous events in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. The 20 to 30 year reign of two dictators, El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, came to an abrupt end in the wake of unprecedented and sustained mass protests. But the toppling of these leaders, both considered friendly to Western interests, was only a sign of things to come.

As I write, Colonel Gaddafi is struggling to sustain his 40 year rule over Libya, using air raids and tank shells to quell a civilianled rebellion. In Yemen, tens of thousands of people have flooded the capital city Sanaa, demanding the fall of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his government, only to be met with police rifle fire. Mass protests in Bahrain calling for democratic reforms have elicited a similar military response by cracking down on demonstrators.

In Algeria, repeated attempts by pro-democracy protestors to march in the capital have been put down by riot police.

Although signs of growing unrest in these countries have been visible for years, the act of selfimmolation by Tunisian street food vendor Mohamed Bouaziz on 17th December 2010 – to protest his arrest for not having a proper licence, thus cutting his already meagre income – unleashed a wave of rage across the region, eliciting major demonstrations in Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Djibouti, Iran, Iraq, and Oman. Lesser protest incidents have also occurred in Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan, Syria, and the Western Sahara. Even Saudi Arabia has been unable to emerge unscathed, with police opening fire on peaceful demonstrators in and outside Qatif city.

So what pushed these countries over the edge in 2011?

It is no coincidence that the wave of unrest coincided with record high global food prices in January, even higher than levels seen in 2007-08, with many of the protests erupting as spontaneous food riots. Christophe Pelletier, in his book Future Harvests: The Next Agricultural Revolution published only four months before the uprisings, warned that the Arab world was ‘number one’ on his list of regions at risk of instability due to converging food and economic crises. He observed that in most of the MENA countries, over half their populations are under 25, and in some that age is lower than 20. With chronic unemployment reaching levels between 25% and 50%, and afflicting young people in particular, he pointed out that the situation was already extremely pressurised. Food price inflation pushed the pressure to boiling point.

But the food crisis, in turn, has been driven by multiple converging crises. For most of the preceding decade, world grain consumption exceeded production, correlating with agricultural land productivity declining by almost half from 1990 to 2007 compared with 1950 to 1990. Climate change has already induced droughts in key food-basket regions, leading to declining crop yields over the last two decades, which could fall as much as 20-40% by mid-century.

This year, global food supply chains were again ‘stretched to the limit’, following poor harvests in Canada, Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere.

Global warming has particularly exacerbated water scarcity in the MENA region. From 1974 to 2004, the Arab world experienced rises in surface air temperature ranging from 0.2°C to 2°C. As

early as 2015, the average Arab will be forced to survive on less than 500m3 of water a year, a level defined as ‘severe scarcity’.

This would undermine agriculture, potentially leading crop yields to decline by 23-35%.

As industrial agriculture is heavily dependent on fossil fuels at all stages, including on-site machinery, fertilizer, pesticides, processing, packaging, transport and storage, food prices tally closely with rising fuel prices. Since 2005, world conventional oil production has remained on an undulating but gradually declining plateau, and a range of industry experts from the International Energy Agency to Shell to Exxon now admit that we are on the edge of peak production – meaning the end of the age of cheap oil, and hence higher fuel prices.

But as food and fuel prices have thus rocketed, rampant neoliberal financialization in the wake of the 2008 global recession continues to encourage investors to speculate on commodities, pushing prices higher. In turn, higher oil prices, which are rising still further due to the instability now sweeping across the MENA region, threaten to undermine economic recovery.

The unrest is symptomatic of a global political economy which is now unravelling as it overshoots the limits of the natural systems in which it is embedded. While local regimes might seemingly be able to accommodate or quell this unrest, forcibly or otherwise, it cannot be contained in the long-term.

The upshot is clear: the world has entered a new era – one of hope and danger. The more we try to keep the lid on, the greater the probability we will unleash terrible violence. It is critical, then, that both Western and Arab leaders, and civil society, look within to address the deep-rooted changes we will need to make to mitigate and adapt to these converging crises. Failure to do so will only aggravate instability – but if we try and succeed, our efforts could pave the way for far more democratic, equitable and sustainable societies.

The

Geographer

10-11 Spring 2011

re Nora Hussein

Letter from Tahir Squa

ion – I God what a civilised nat edom!

YES!!! Wooooooooow! Fre it’s a brand f, couldn’t believe mysel – once – Our Nothing is like its breeze new era, brand new Egypt let go of er nev l wil you it, l fee you Egypt! s morning it … I went very early thi the support rir God bless you all for all to Tah walking from where I live ’t wait to and all the care and I can s walk, Square, about 25 minute Allah. see you all again In shaa … and it was more like a dream EGYPT my eyes Love you all, and Love MY now it’s true, in front of till the end feel it in Proud to be EGYPTIAN I can see it, smell it and like gs of the world :) the air getting into my lun m. edo fre of l ful s wa ath every bre pictures exhale behind the love of taking Every time you inhale and hahah!) (ha ks tan a whisper on the top of the you hear something like I see it en wh ile tone but it makes me sm that says in a very gentle and then anyway … “freedom, you are free” that y wa the I do believe very much now I found myself smiling all a very , y iod od per ryb this is a very critical to Tahrir. A great fact, eve l rea the ing hard stage, and that’s is smiling back at you say see to d morning challenge. It’s amazing “sabahak horreya” (“goo the best do to T YP ing EG try in is ne everyo freedom”).

It’s another beautiful day nt ideas when I and come up with differe ebration (it even sounds different I decided that today is cel ctors ry single about better life; how do I had my say it now – like I feel eve and cleaning day too so red inju the all big at a with gathered to tre – letter). Today we started disposable gloves with me er oth w ho ; des and without any money l of 200 gathering for all the gui actually a whole box ful rk wo of lot a r Egypt, people started to do clean the program directors all ove pairs plus other things to at wh all over the to bring back Egypt and y friendly to send love and peace streets … people were ver us we are ids am pyr the of was destroyed; and for whole world from in front and helpful … I found the is safe … cleaning, rebuilding. cated area and to say that Egypt square full of young edu nge will and the same We believe that the cha God knows for how long, men and women doing ng ially, millions in happen if we start changi it’s affecting us all financ thing … and then it was uld sho ne ryo eve as t ful and tha , l uti bea ourselves but I feel happy and I fee Tahrir but it’s clean and ing to n when at? It was start fixing or at least try things will get better soo new now … And then wh as a him in ng wro is … now oy this fix whatever it comes to the tourism time to celebrate and enj l see wil I t tha nk thi been MADE person. I didn’t that the whole world has great moment. WE HAVE ody ryb eve , ing eks and finally this but it is happen watching us for three we HISTORY … EGYPTIANS ter bet a h what we are. is trying to change for they were impressed wit people know who exactly ut our e hav y the now person. We care more abo t few days we have achieved, I was standing for the las ver l y much see this country because we fee ians and the curiosity to come and rist Ch h wit d han in d en from han ng) that it is ours, or it was tak ttered country (correct me if am wro ma t tha like g hin not ts, atheis e should be us and now it’s back. get was and maybe Tahrir Squar and our only focus and tar in ed lud much and I I guess I am talking too one of the places to be inc ite, poor, our Egypt – black and wh (it’s coffee, probably need to sleep the tour …

– there rich, educated, ignorant that I with what can I say). I just felt e we The streets are still loaded was no difference, becaus ughts tho e som d re got use wanted to sha d! What a tanks everywhere – we were all Egyptians. Oh Go ple go and ideas :) on and on to them now and even peo feeling – I can go on and and rs die sol . the h ugh wit be eno Bless you all now and chat forever and it will never take pictures on to s kid ir the get ls gir and Nora We were sleeping boys but fun). I the top of the tank (crazy gle sin no and er oth h next to eac ret don’t know what’s the sec ed. sexual harassment happen

Although there is great hope for freedom to flourish in the new Egypt, tourism was one of the casualties of the unrest, and this in a country where one in seven jobs and 12% of GDP rely on tourism. Young Egyptians, hopeful that tourism will now bounce back, have launched an ‘Egypt is Safe’ campaign, to persuade visitors to return to the country.

The message from Nora, a tour guide in Cairo, is clear: you can play a critical role in helping the new Egypt by visiting again. This is her letter.

On the Map Country in Focus: South Sudan

The world’s newest country?

Paul Salopek

It took fifty miserable years of intermittent civil war. And cost an unfathomable two million civilian lives. But at long last, in January, Africa’s largest country shucked its lunatic colonial borders, cracked open, and by peaceful referendum gave birth to the world’s 193rd nation, South Sudan: a landlocked hinterland the size of France with some eight million people, a rather larger number of lyre-horned cattle and, by optimistic estimates, barely 100 kilometres of sealed road. Its war-battered populace is rightfully overjoyed.

They’re going to need lots of help – and luck.

This was by no means an assured outcome.

In truth, the stiffer challenges for South Sudan are internal.

of GOSS – Government of Southern Sudan – as a ‘Government of SelfService’.

Despite the oil, and other untapped resources such as gold and iron, poverty in the newborn state remains dire. The United Nations still feeds more than one million of the south’s population. And it is possible to drive hundreds of kilometres through the wardesolated landscape – usually on two ruts of orange dust through the elephant grass – without spotting a glint of window glass, much less a modern clinic or flush toilet.

Still, virtually anything is better than what has passed before.

There are no more improvised ‘to whom it may concern’ bombs kicked randomly from the cargo bays of northern government planes. No more brutal, anachronistic slaving raids by Arab militias on horseback. Nearly 99% of the south’s people voted democratically for independence; one ecstatic woman was reported to have walked to the polls in her wedding gown. I like to think of that. As I still think of all those rebel boys I heard slipping away on that predawn attack. I imagine the survivors have limped back home, to make their country work.

11° N

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The neophyte government, overwhelmingly dominated by the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, isn’t much known for either tolerance or transparency.

Fairly or not, it is closely associated with the majority Dinka ethnic group in a sprawling region inhabited by 200 other African ethnicities.

Muglad Its armed clashes with rival southern militias can be bloody.

In February, less than three weeks after the historic secession vote, one renegade general slaughtered scores of villagers in a local ABC 2005: Total Area power grab. Corruption below 10°35'N 25,293 km² / 9,765 mi² 2 among the south’s ABC 2005: Area leadership, meanwhile, below 10°22'30''N (18,559 km² / 7,166 mi²) is legendary. In the Darfur years since a 2005 peace accord, little of the south’s billions 1 in shared oil revenue have dribbled down to ordinary people. Salva Abyei Area (Tribunal Boundary) Kiir, the likely first (10,460 km² / 4,039 mi²) president, who fancies a black Stetson given to Bahr el Ghazal him by George W Bush, has promised to erase the cynical rendering

Kol Lang/Abu Likri

10° 50' N

Kordofan

10° 40' N

El Angareib

10°35' North

Tebeldiya

Dhony Dhuol

10° 30' N

Turda/Thur

ABC Northern Boundary10°22'30'' North

Wun Deng Awak/ Umm Sakina

10° 20' N

Ruba

Nyama

Awol Baiet/ Zerafat

10° 10' N

Meiram

10°10' North Thuba

Maper Amaal/ Debab

Pariang Kech/Diffra

Rumthil/Antilla

Thigei (approx.)

10° N

r ab

( al s

o re f e r

red to a s Ki r,

Ragaba

Kol Aruth/ Grinti

Gur f,

Chon

um

Majok Alor (approx.)

y an )

m

Ra

B ro

B

el A a hr

gab

a ez Zarga

ga Ra

Mabek

P

ie

9° 50' N

Langar/Goleh

Alal

Dak Pandang/Bedheni

Kol Adet Achueng Todac Riet

Koladet Maker Abyior

9° 40' N

Noong/Na’am

Tajalei

Dokura Gol-Gol Wunchuei

Amuk (approx.)

ABYEI

Lou

Duop

Mitrok

Kol-Makuuei

Agany Achueng

9° 30' N

Mabok Rum Ameer Mithiang Diil Morol

Akur Agok

Mabek

9° 20' N

9° 10' N

28° 50' E

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An estimated six billion barrels of crude lie pooled tantalizingly beneath southern territory. Until recently, the Khartoum government had dug itself in around this bonanza, turning every drilling pad into a mini-Fort Apache, complete with detachments of soldiers and a berm in lieu of palisades. I won’t soon forget the sound of hundreds of ragtag insurgents with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army – now South Sudan’s official armed forces – breaking camp on the predawn savannah to invest an oil road. Leather sandals tamped down the tiny cooking fires. There was a faint clink of metal. A few anxious whispers in the dark. It could have been an army of Gauls setting off to attack Legionnaires, as timeless as it was.

The referendum on secession came after six years of shaky peace. General Omar al-Bashir, the north’s dictator, apparently agreed to the break-up in return for US promises to ease his country off America’s terrorism watch list, with its attendant economic sanctions.

He also has overreached with the brutal war in Darfur. Sceptics still worry that Khartoum will meddle subversively in the affairs of its weak southern neighbour. But the fact that the south owns most of the oil, while the north controls the only pipeline to the Red Sea, assures at least some measure of cooperation between the two former enemies for the time being.

Southern dreams of a new export pipeline, perhaps through Uganda or Kenya, are likely just that.

27° 20' E

Sudan has always been two distinct nations, of course, and the relationship between its Arab Muslim north and its black nonMuslim south was poisoned early by the slave trade. Yet for those of us who reported on Sudan’s long civil conflict in the early 2000s, the possibility of a partition appeared to fade with each new oil well uncapped in the rebel south.

Which is why the prospect of South Sudan’s first independence day, now scheduled for 9th July, seems all the more remarkable.

27°50' East

Paul Salopek is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning writer, who has reported for the Chicago Tribune and for National Geographic.

The

Geographer

12-13 Spring 2011

Nomads, Oil and Culture: A Challenge for International Law Alastair Macdonald MBE

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Government of Sudan (GoS) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) in 2005 gave the people of South Sudan “the right to self-determination ... through a referendum to determine their future status”. This referendum, in January 2011, saw an overwhelming majority vote for independence.

Both sides accepted that South Sudan comprises those states designated as part of the South under British colonial administration, and the CPA definition of the boundary went back to the moment of independence in 1956. The one exception was the ‘Abyei Area’ (see map), considered to have special status as a bridge between North and South Sudan. It is an area of value to nomadic herders from both sides. In the dry season, the Arab Misseriya come south from Kordofan into Bahr el Ghazal province, while the Dinka there move further south. Then, with the coming of the rains and an increase in tsetse fly, the Misseriya take their vulnerable cattle back north, and the Dinka follow behind them into Kordofan.

The Abyei Area was to be defined 29° 30' E

29° 20' E

29° 10' E

29° E

Comparative Map of the Abyei Area

11° N Award Area

Boundary

Prov i n c i a l B o u n d a r y, 1 9 5 6 River

Lake Keilak

Ragaba 10° 50' N

Keilak

Sourced from GoS Memorial Figure 17 and SPLM/A Memorial Map Atlas, Map 62.

Background drainage pattern sourced from Map 62 Abyei Area Ngok Dinka Presence in 1905 from 1:250,000 Series Maps, Community Mapping Data (within Study Area), and Ngok Dinka Witness Evidence prepared by International Mapping.

Highlighted towns derived from SPLM/A Memorial Map Atlas, Map 7 Highlighted rivers and adjoining provinces derived from GoS Memorial Figure 17

n

0

10° 40' N

50

kilometres Datum WGS-84

Scale 1:750,000

This map has been compiled from various supplied data sources of varying scales and accuracy. While every care has been taken to ensure accuracy Terralink have relied on the base data and information provided for all features.

Nyadak Ayuang (approx.)

10° 30' N

30° E

29° 50' E

29° 40' E

Lake Abiad

10° 20' N

29°32'15'' East

Michoor (approx.)

10° 30' N

cartography by terralink. copyright © 2009 terralink international limited

Niang (approx.)

3 29°00' East

10° 10' N

Mardhok (approx.)

Heglig/Miding

Ajaj/Agag

10° N

Pakur (approx.)

aib l Sh ae ab

Pariang

Pawol/Fauwel 9° 50' N

kjur/Dembaloya Baar

Ra

ga

4

ba

ez

Za

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rga

(al s

o re

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d

re

to gol) as N

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az Gh

hr

el

Ara

Ba hr el

Upper Nile Ba

al

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Rub-koni

b ( al so

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as K ir, G

Bentiu

u r f,

9° 10' N

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)

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nya n

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C ho

by an Abyei Boundary Commission (ABC), which was “to define and demarcate the area of the nine Ngok Dinka kingdoms transferred to Kordofan in 1905”. This area would then have a separate referendum to choose whether to retain its special administrative status in the north, or to become part of Bahr el Ghazal in the south.

The ABC delivered its judgment in July 2005. Unable to define the boundaries of “the area of the nine Ngok Dinka kingdoms”, it sought instead to define the extent of the Dinka’s presence. On this basis, it defined the Abyei Area as some 18,559 km² of land (light blue shading) stretching 85 km north of Abyei and containing two significant oil installations. It introduced the further complication of a strip 25 km wide along each side of the northern boundary (dark blue stripes), to be shared between the Dinka and the Misseriya, and added a rider that traditional migrations must continue to be allowed whatever the outcome of the referenda.

The ABC had five experts as independent members, but none could be said to be experienced in international law or geography, and the decision was controversial.

The GoS refused to accept it and, after lengthy discussions, the parties agreed to refer the case to a specially-constituted arbitral tribunal. The tribunal was asked to decide if the ABC had exceeded its mandate in making its award and, if so, to redefine the boundary.

A tight six-month limit was set for written pleadings followed by hearings at the Peace Palace in The Hague in April 2009. The tribunal decided that the Sudan people should be able to see what went on in the hearings, and so the proceedings were transmitted live on the Permanent Court of Arbitration website – a first for an arbitration of this nature.

Khartoum argued that the ABC had exceeded its mandate, and that the Abyei Area should have been defined on the basis of where the Ngok Dinka were settled in 1905, namely south of the Bahr el Arab river. This would have left Abyei town, a strong Dinka town, in the North. The SPLM/A disagreed,

arguing that the tribunal should not overturn the ABC’s decision.

Recent Western media coverage might suggest that this was a very tense and hostile case, with the GoS playing the role of bully boy.

In fact, the opposite was true. For instance, separate coffee facilities were provided as far apart as possible in the entrance hall, but both sides preferred to mix and take their coffee together. After I made my speech as an expert witness, one of the senior members of the SPLM/A team congratulated me, shook my hand and insisted that we had our photograph taken together. At the end of the oral hearings, the President of the tribunal complimented both sides on the harmonious nature of the proceedings.

The tribunal delivered its judgment in July 2009. It concluded that the ABC had not exceeded its mandate overall, but that it had done so in respect of the north, east and west boundaries individually. It moved each of these boundaries inwards (red outline), resulting in the area awarded by the ABC being reduced by 43%, with the richest oilproducing areas left outside, in the North. Abyei town remained part of the area with the right to move into the South if it chooses. Neither side was entirely happy with the outcome, but it was accepted.

However, that is not the end of the story. A serious dispute arose in late 2010 on nomads’ right to vote in the Abyei referendum, now postponed indefinitely while talks try to resolve this sensitive issue which could decide the result.

One could conclude that modern attitudes to sovereignty and borders simply cannot deal with nomadic migrations, and neither can the precedents of international law.

Alastair Macdonald was a UK government surveyor, working for 15 years in Africa and Southeast Asia, and latterly for the Ordnance Survey. He has advised the governments of Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, the Palestinian Authority and Libya on boundary matters, and was awarded an MBE for services to mapping and the resolution of boundary disputes in Africa.

Expert View: Early C19th Afghanistan

Geography, Espionage and Empire:

Alexander ‘Bokhara’ Burnes and Early 19th Century Afghanistan Professor Charles W J Withers, University of Edinburgh

Alexander Burnes’ portrait as it appeared in the frontispiece to his Travels into Bokhara (1834). Writing to his publisher John Murray in December 1834, Burnes asked that “I would like however if you could make some alteration in my visage in the ‘Costume of Bokhara’ for it is said to be so rich and cunning that I shall be handed down to posterity as a real Tartar!!”.

Murray declined, and used the image again in Burnes’ Cabool.

Afghanistan, its politics and geography, its current state and future, is much in the news today.

And so it has been in the past.

Indeed, current depictions of a country and a people divided by the effects of war are for Britain but the latest expression of a longer-run ‘Afghanistan Question’ realised in conflict: the First Anglo-Afghan War between 1839 and 1842, the Second from 1880 to 1882, and the Third between May and August 1919.

But Afghanistan has long been of geographical and political interest precisely because it was, to Europeans anyway, not ‘on the map’. The Russians and the Persians fought over Afghanistan in 1805 and 1806. Like the British and the Russians, the French cast covetous colonial eyes on the country before 1815. From the 1820s, Russian mapping in the Pamirs signalled the opening moves of the ‘Great Game’, that conflict of imperial interest between Britain and Russia. For English geographer James Rennell writing in 1800, Afghanistan and its neighbouring regions was “in effect, the great theatre of ancient history in Asia, as well as of European commerce, and communication, in modern times”. Rennell’s knowledge was book-learned.

A key figure in promoting geographical knowledge of Afghanistan from first-hand experience was the Scottish geographer-explorer – and diplomat-spy – Alexander Burnes (1805-1841).

Alexander Burnes (who claimed descent from the poet Robert Burns) was born in Montrose in May 1805. By 1821, Burnes was soldiering in India. From 1831, by then fluent in Hindustani

and Persian, he was engaged in affairs of state. Ostensibly, the purpose of Burnes’ first mission was deferential and diplomatic – he was charged with delivering horses, a gift from King William IV to Ranjit Singh. In reality, Burnes was being military and geographic, undertaking map work and a survey of the River Indus. The Indus was of great strategic importance: knowing how far the river was navigable and where it went was key to extending Britain’s commercial interests.

Between 1832 and 1833, Burnes travelled across Afghanistan, to Bukhara in modern-day Uzbekistan (then ‘Bokhara’) before returning to Bombay and thence to London. He published on his travels in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society and spoke to that body, and to the Geographical Society of Bombay, on the geography of the north-west frontier of India as well as on the Indus. In 1834, ‘Bokhara Burnes’ received the Society’s Gold Medal for his Afghanistan work.

Burnes brought his work together in Travels into Bokhara; being the Account of a Journey from India to Cabool, Tartary, and Persia; also, Narrative of a Voyage on the Indus, from the Sea to Lahore, published in three volumes in 1834 by John Murray. Like many European travellers of the day, Burnes went in disguise, adopting the persona of ‘Sikunder Alaverdi’, an Armenian watchmaker from Lucknow.

Burnes’ Travels is replete with accounts of disguise as he and his companions adapted to local but vital cultural differences. On one occasion, he nearly forgot to change into proper boots upon being presented to a local tribal chieftain. “My face had long been burned into an Asiatic hue” he wrote “and from it I feared no detection”, but longer boots were necessary so “as to hide my provokingly white ankles”.

Although in print he altered the chronology and geography of his travels in order to give greater

weight to the Bokhara work and less to the Indus material, his Travels into Bokhara was hugely successful, selling 900 copies in a day.

Burnes was back in India in 1835 and, between 1836 and 1838, again in Afghanistan undertaking geography under the cover of a diplomatic position in Kabul.

He was knighted in 1838. But by then, the political situation in Afghanistan had worsened and, in November 1841, Burnes was killed at home by a mob: the Anglo-Afghan Wars were by then long underway. His Cabool; being a Personal Narrative of a Journey to, and Residence in that City in the Years 1836, 7 and 8 was posthumously published in 1842.

In his books and papers, Alexander Burnes provided new geographical information about a ‘great theatre’ of ancient history and Eurasian commerce.

Afghanistan mattered greatly then to Britain and British interests, but not as a region of conflict.

“Burnes was being military and geographic, undertaking map work and a survey of the River Indus. The Indus was of great strategic importance: knowing how far the river was navigable and where it went was key to extending Britain’s commercial interests.”

Expert View: Rebuilding Afghanistan

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14-15 Spring 2011

Institutional Strengthening of the Afghanistan Geological Survey A project undertaken by the British Geological Survey Bob McIntosh, British Geological Survey, Edinburgh The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, to give it its official name, is a relatively recent nation state, gaining full independence only after the end of the Third AngloAfghan war on 19th August 1919.

It is of course steeped in antiquity.

Located at the crossroads of Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, it has long been a place of changing dynasties and empires and passing military invasions, including those of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan. More recently, since the late 1970s, it has been in a state of almost continuous warfare, culminating in the 2001 invasion led by the United States, resulting in the removal of the Taliban government.

Afghanistan straddles another type of crossroads. It is in part of the area where, over long geological time, the great Indian continental plate has gradually drifted northwards and collided with the Asian plate, causing the Indian plate to be ‘subducted’ beneath the Asian plate. This makes for great geological activity. A mountainbuilding period formed the Hindu Kush and Himalayas and, under intense pressures and temperatures deep in the earth, conditions were ideal for the creation of mineral deposits. The result: Afghanistan has a wealth of energy and mineral resources – coal, gas, oil, metallic minerals and precious metals, and precious and semi-precious gemstones – including the famous lapis lazuli, mined since the Neolithic Period and exported along the great Asian trade routes to the Ancient Egyptian civilizations.

Unfortunately, during the last 20 years of war the Afghanistan Geological Survey (AGS) was severely weakened, and in the more recent civil war the building complex was wrecked as it was a strong point on the front line of fighting between the Mujahedeen and the Taliban. While many staff survived the fighting and saved, at great personal risk, many of the very important maps, documents and samples, the AGS was barely functioning. After 2001, the new Afghanistan Government and the World Bank began to formulate a mining sector strategy and policy.

The rehabilitation and restructuring of the AGS was an immediate aim – to create a modern geological survey with a reskilled and retrained staff, with programmes of geological mapping and resource assessment using modern

concepts and methods. The British Geological Survey was invited to undertake this capacity-building project which, with UK Department for International Development funding, started in August 2004 and was very successfully completed in January 2008.

In a blackened windowless shell of a building, pockmarked with bullet and shell holes, the work began.

Windows, electrical wiring, water and sewage disposal were installed, and the rooms were redecorated and equipped with basic furniture.

A generator was installed for electricity, a computer network and internet were set up, vehicles were purchased and the project was away!

Notable project achievements include: • i ntensive English language and computer training, both highly popular with the AGS staff; •c ollation, assessment and reinterpretation of existing information relating to mineral deposits, including the provision of a major information pack for the international tender exercise for the world’s second largest unexploited mine, the Aynak Copper Deposit; •c reation of GIS and databases of mineral deposits and of documents held in the AGS archive, in English, Russian and Dari; •c ompilation of information on the full range of Afghanistan mineral resources – promotional work included major conferences and open-file mineral dossiers; •s pecialist geological training courses, work experience and field work; •a set of laboratories established from scratch, covering everything from industrial minerals and rock thin sections to geochemistry and gemmology; •a library, archive and museum and website – the museum, one of only a few in Afghanistan, is highly regarded and is used as a venue for major governmental functions.

On a personal level, the BGS team were all volunteers. A house was rented in Kabul and, because conditions were difficult and the work was intensive (working six days a week to match local work patterns), most staff rotated on five to six week visits to maintain a continuous presence. This pattern also allowed us to bring in a wide

range of experts to run specialized courses. Security was always an overriding factor in any activity or travel.

Over time, we visited most parts of Kabul. Particular favourites were the 5th century Bala Hissar Fort and ancient city walls; the Babur Gardens developed around 1528AD by the first Mughal Emperor; ‘TV Hill’, with tremendous views across the city; and of course the gem, carpet and other handicraft shops, and the well-stocked bookshop of Mr Shah, of Bookseller of Kabul fame. A surprising find was the ‘British Cemetery,’ initially for soldiers who fell in the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880), but since then for expatriates of all nationalities. All together, Kabul was an extremely interesting and dynamic place in which to live and work.

See www.bgs.ac.uk/afghanminerals for more information of the project.

The Afghanistan Geological Survey building in Kabul.

The Industrial Minerals Team working in a newly renovated laboratory.

Images © Bob McIntosh

“In a blackened windowless shell of a building, pockmarked with bullet and shell holes, the work began...”

Opinion: The Afghanistan Conflict

The Way Out of Afghanistan Ahmed Rashid

“Karzai’s view of the world has undergone a dramatic change, and he is bitterly critical of the West and everything it has failed to do in the past nine years.“

None of the attempts at rebuilding the Afghan state over the past nine years have really worked. What assurance is there that they will work by 2014? The dates and debates in the White House tell only half the story.

Afghanistan is going through a series of domestic crises, which will determine whether there will be a functioning state by 2014 or not.

The most immediate issue has been the parliamentary elections in late 2010. After the rigged presidential elections in 2009, which Karzai won after immense controversy and international embarrassment, the UN and NATO were reluctant to hold parliamentary elections so soon.

However, Karzai insisted, hoping that his preferred candidates would win a majority in the 249seat lower house of parliament, which would prepare the way for it to endorse Karzai’s peace talks with the Taliban.

Again, rigging took place on a huge scale – except this time it was done by individual candidates, not by the government.

Karzai’s handpicked Independent Election Commission (IEC), which oversaw the poll, stunned everyone by acting remarkably independently.

It invalidated 1.33 million votes for fraud, nearly a quarter of the 5.74 million cast, and in mid-November disqualified 24 candidates who had been declared unofficial winners, including a cousin of the President. The IEC asserted itself but left behind an intractable problem.

Turnout among the Pashtuns of southern and eastern Afghanistan, who make up some 40% of the population, was very low. The Taliban, who are largely

Pashtuns, had threatened the Pashtun voters, telling them to boycott the polls. As a result, the Pashtuns lost 10-20% of their seats to ethnic minorities, especially the Tajiks and Hazaras.

All 11 seats in the important province of Ghazni, which has a mixed Pashtun-Hazara population, were won by Hazaras, a result that infuriated both the Pashtuns and Karzai. The results were challenged by the attorney general, who ordered the arrest of several IEC officials, and there were demonstrations in Kabul for the failure to announce the results.

Karzai is trapped. If he accepts the election results, as he eventually must, he faces a parliament dominated by non-Pashtuns and his political opponents, which could scuttle his talks with the Taliban. Yet if he declares the elections null and void on account of the rigging, and orders them redone, he could face open defiance from the ethnic minorities.

The non-Pashtuns mistrust Karzai’s talks with the Taliban, suspicious that any KarzaiTaliban deal will only strengthen Pashtun hegemony in the country and further reduce minority rights.

Meanwhile the Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, and Turcomen minorities have achieved advantages that cause immense resentment among the Pashtuns. For the first time, the Tajiks and Hazaras dominate the upper officer class in the army and police, even though US training and recruitment includes a strict parity between all ethnic groups.

The minorities who dominate the north and west have opened up roads and trade networks, imported electricity and gas supplies, and created other profitable links with their neighbours – Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.

Afghanistan’s drug trade has also enriched local elites, improving lives for ordinary people, providing independent sources of wealth for local warlords and

elites that are not dependent on Kabul, and giving them political power. Meanwhile the Pashtuns in the south are stuck with the power of their neighbour Pakistan, which supports the Taliban and has done little toward improving their lives.

Making the Transition The key question for General Petraeus is not how many Taliban he kills, but whether the bare bones of an Afghan state – army, police, bureaucracy – which have been neglected so badly in the past nine years, can be set up by 2014. The attrition rate from the Afghan army is still a staggering 24% per year. Some 86% of soldiers are illiterate, and drug use is still an endemic problem.

The Afghan police are even worse.

Moreover, can Afghan leaders, including the President, win the trust of a people who have put up with insecurity, gross corruption, and poor governance for many years?

Karzai’s on-again, off-again fights with Petraeus about the tactics of the US military surge are essentially about his own role, his own sovereignty, his own image in Afghanistan – in all respects he feels he is losing power. He wants the war to somehow go away.

Petraeus wants to conclude it, which means more violence in the months ahead.

Karzai’s view of the world has undergone a dramatic change, and he is bitterly critical of the West and everything it has failed to do in the past nine years. He no longer supports the ‘war on terror’ as defined by Washington, and he sees Petraeus’s surge as unhelpful because it relies too much on body counts of dead Taliban, often killed by US drones with civilian casualties that are resented deeply, and on nighttime raids by US special forces.

The alternative, says Karzai, is to seek help from nearby countries like Pakistan and Iran, which he thinks could help him talk to the Taliban and end the war.

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The Neighbours Many Afghans would disagree with Karzai. Neighbouring states like Pakistan and Iran have a long and bloody record of monumental interference in Afghanistan, propping up proxy Afghan warlords and fighting over the spoils. Afghanistan will not become peaceful unless the neighbours are brought into an agreement not to interfere there, that could be monitored by the international community. Obama made a promise to do just that when he was inaugurated, but little has been accomplished.

The major problem is Pakistan.

All three major Taliban factions have been based in Pakistan for nine years, receiving official and unofficial support, sanctuary, funding, and recruits; yet three successive US administrations have been unable to stop the Pakistan military from continuing that support.

Petraeus has been aggressive and made it clear to Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kiyani that its support for the Taliban must end. But the US has no comprehensive strategy that either offers the Pakistani military some of what it wants or changes its assumptions that it must dominate Afghanistan.

The army fears growing Indian influence in Afghanistan – an issue that nobody has addressed.

It wants to use talks with the Taliban as a card in the endgame, so that maximum concessions can be extracted from the US, India, and Afghanistan in exchange for Pakistan obtaining concessions from the Taliban.

Iran too has learned to raise the stakes. Shia Iran has no love for the Sunni fundamentalists who make up the Taliban, but Tehran has stepped up its support and sanctuary for the Taliban groups operating in western Afghanistan.

Like Pakistan, Iran sees them as a useful hedge for the endgame, when the US and NATO will have to bring it in to discuss non-interference in Afghanistan.

Iran has joined with India and Russia to ensure that Pakistan is unsuccessful in dominating Afghanistan.

So the region is already sharply divided. On one side stands Pakistan, virtually alone with some support from China, but none from the Arab-Muslim world that used to support the Taliban.

Opposing Pakistan are Iran, Russia, India, and the Central Asian states, which are extremely suspicious of Pakistan and the Taliban, but lack a strategy to deal with them. They want the US to stay longer in Afghanistan, but are also suspicious of an indefinite US presence.

The Taliban Want to Talk What of the Taliban? In separate interviews, four former Taliban officials, now living in Kabul, told me that the Taliban leaders want to open a political office in a third country that is not Afghanistan or Pakistan, so that they can start talks with the Kabul regime, the US, and NATO. All four occupied high office in the 1990s when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, and cannot be identified for security reasons. With Afghanistan under US occupation and Pakistan’s Interservices Intelligence (ISI) trying to manipulate them, they needed space, freedom, and an address of their own.

The US administration is divided about the need for talks now or later. Scepticism is greater after the CIA and Britain’s MI6 were duped by a fake Taliban negotiator who twice held talks with Karzai, but turned out to be a Pakistani shopkeeper who was paid $65,000 each time he came to Kabul.

Western officials believe the ISI was behind the scam.

Moreover, at the moment neither Karzai nor the Taliban have a clear agenda for talks. They do not even have a clear notion of how to get to actual negotiations – but both sides realize that such a venture would have to include confidence-building measures to create trust on all sides.

The Taliban leaders said that their first political aim would not be to lay down terms for powersharing with Karzai, but to reach an agreement on a definition of what the future Afghan state would look like – would it be a democratic state or a shariah state? The most sensible among the Taliban also realise that, since they could not run the country in the 1990s, they will not be able to do so in the future.

Rather than trying to grab power and then face isolation by the international community and the denial of funds and aid, they see the logic of a powersharing formula with Karzai that would retain Western aid and international legitimacy. Their main concern right now seems to be how to break free from Pakistan, something the US can help them do only when it is ready to support peace talks.

16-17 Spring 2011

Ahmed Rashid (see www.ahmedrashid. com) is a Pakistani journalist based in Lahore, and writing regularly for many European and American daily newspapers and websites. He is an expert on Central Asia, on jihad and Muslim extremist movements, on the Taliban and Al Qaeda, on insurgency, and on the impact of US policy in this region, on which he has reported for 25 years. For his latest book, Descent into Chaos, he met and interviewed many of the key players in Central Asia.

Opinion: The Afghanistan Conflict

Intervention in Afghanistan Rory Stewart MP, RSGS Livingstone Medallist

“Many of our mistakes arise from lack of knowledge.

Not ignorance of economic or development or counterinsurgency theory. But ignorance of the specific human and physical geography of Afghanistan itself...”

Upper two images © Bob McIntosh Lower two images © iStock.com

Afghanistan and Iraq reduce to the absurd many of the claims made for intervention in the early 21st century. The West’s extravagant and futile investments over a decade, its repeated attempts to perform the impossible, its refusal to acknowledge its limits, are shameful and revealing: they demonstrate exactly and repeatedly what international ambitions could not achieve, and what internationals should not try to achieve again.

The international community has been in Afghanistan for nine and a half years, more than twice the length of the First World War. There are 150,000 foreign troops on the ground from 49 countries. Over $120 billion is being spent a year (more each year than the Afghan government, on 2010 figures, could collect in revenue in a century and a half). The foremost advocates of the war – the US President, the Secretary of State and the Defence Secretary – have announced in their major press conferences that this investment has so far resulted in progress which was “fragile and reversible”.

The descriptions of our failures are increasingly rich and detailed.

Even by the time McChrystal wrote his assessment in 2009, research and analysis had produced a magisterial account of the corruption of the Afghan judiciary and police, the incompetence and inefficiency of the West, the appeal of the Taliban, and the difficulties of operating in tribal and poppygrowing areas; had demonstrated that there could be no victory without a dramatic change in an Afghan government (whose personnel had been in place for eight years); and had implied that the West lacked political will and would be unlikely to commit the necessary resources for counterinsurgency. Meanwhile, 2011 forces us to remember that Afghanistan is not the only problem we face in the world: that in terms of terrorism, Pakistan is more important; and in terms of regional stability, Egypt – and even Libya – are

more important. But we have few resources or options, because we have over-committed over a decade to a place where we are making little progress.

How did we find ourselves in this mess? It was not, as many critics of the Iraq war assumed, that we had the ‘B’ team in place; that we had failed to work or invest; or that we were simply driven by narrow financial motives – by oil, or secret agendas. The supporters of the grand interventions in Afghanistan, and even those in Iraq, were wrong, but they were not simply foolish, ignorant, naïve, careless, idle, dishonourable or closed-minded.

The international community tried hard in Afghanistan. Indeed, it was the central foreign policy priority of 65 countries. The international community was spending ten times Afghanistan’s annual gross domestic product every year, trying to solve it.

And it wasn’t just a question of 150,000 troops, a decade of work and $120 billion of annual expenditure: the commanders who inherited these situations, forged new strategies and predicted a decisive year were impressive people – highly intelligent, wellinformed, experienced, idealistic and dedicated.

Understanding their, and our, predicament and failure requires enormous patience. We need not just to know that we have failed. We need to understand the blunt and circular truth that Afghanistan is Afghanistan and the international community is the international community – and neither is likely to change fundamentally in the

next few years. We have to force the reality of Afghan rural life up against sleek international theories and expose the flimsiness of our rhetoric. We need to dig beneath grand aspirations like ‘governance’ or ‘the Rule of Law’.

We need to gaze at tribal elders in Hazarajat, witness raids in Ghor, and poke beneath the statistics of police training in Helmand. But most of all, we need to study the interveners themselves. We need to understand ourselves.

This is why the traditions of the RSGS are so important. Many of our mistakes arise from lack of knowledge. Not ignorance of economic or development or counter-insurgency theory.

But ignorance of the specific human and physical geography of Afghanistan itself, and ignorance of an even older idea of geography. We lack the kind of understanding that used to come from long experience on the ground, from extensive, and often hazardous, travel. This knowledge, deeply embedded in the traditions of the RSGS but now sadly too often lacking in our international institutions, would allow us to see more clearly and more rapidly not only what we cannot do in Afghanistan but also, more positively, what we can do in the future for ourselves, for other peoples and other nations.

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Expert View: Terrorism

18-19 Spring 2011

Terrorism has no borders Professor Louise Richardson FRSE, Principal and Vice-Chancellor, University of St Andrews The emerging patterns of conflict in the 21st century appear to suggest that set piece global wars between alliances of states have been displaced by asymmetric inter-state wars, violent intra-state conflicts, and trans-nationalist terrorist violence. With weapons of greater and greater lethality falling into the hands of smaller and smaller groups, the human cost of the new face of international conflict is only likely to escalate, while the task of countering them is likely to become more difficult.

The ongoing war in Afghanistan, which had pitted some of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world against one of the poorest and least organized, has lasted a decade.

In Afghanistan, as elsewhere, overwhelming military force has not translated into political victory.

Indeed, one of the hallmarks of counter-terrorism has been the alltoo-gradual realization that military force is too blunt an instrument to be exclusively relied upon to defeat terrorism, unless governments are willing to operate without constraint, as some – as in Sri Lanka and Chechnya – have been seen to do.

Democracies, some with greater alacrity than others, have appreciated the essentially political nature of the threat, and the imperative to keep it in perspective.

Time and again, terrorists manage to exercise far more influence than an objective assessment of their capabilities would warrant.

Conventional interpretations and calculations of power, therefore, have been called into question by realities on the ground.

Terrorism is a tactic that has been deployed by many different

groups, in many parts of the world, in pursuit of many different objectives.

Like other tactics, its use is likely to continue as long as it proves efficacious in achieving its objectives. Terrorists have long elevated the practices seen as the excesses of warfare, killing non-combatants, to deliberate strategy.

The emergence of weak and failing states, such as Sudan, Afghanistan and more recently Somalia, permits organized sub-state groups, often non-nationals, to operate with impunity, to train, to experiment, and indeed to create a base of operations for attacks overseas. Whereas in the past failed states were left to wallow in isolation, poverty and anarchy, today their potential use as a military camp means that they are perceived as a threat to other, often remote, states.

The technological developments that have accompanied and facilitated globalization have also managed to turn national dissident movements into transnational terrorists. The internet is used today to recruit and educate new members, to fundraise for the cause and to publicize achievements, to carry out operations, to mobilize supporters, and to generate virtual communities of support for activists and true believers wherever they are to be found. Geographic boundaries, therefore, have become more porous than ever.

National and religious boundaries have rarely coincided, and transnational ideologies, whether religious or secular, have served as powerful legitimizations of violence, wherever it occurs.

Chinese armed anti-terrorism police in preparations for the Olympics in Beijing in 2008.

Thousands of people demonstrated in Madrid in February 2006, against the government’s anti-terrorism policies and to demand that there be no negotiation with ETA.

As to what will happen after Afghanistan, if past experience is anything to go by, and it usually is, highly trained militants will, where ideological ties are tight, transfer to another theatre of conflict to continue the battle. Where ideology has been displaced by financial or personal incentives, militant groups tend to disintegrate into criminal gangs. Only in the rarest and most successful of settlements are militants integrated into the postwar security services.

Cartoon: © deepbluehorizon. blogspot.com

“...one of the hallmarks of counter-terrorism has been the all-too-gradual realization that military force is too blunt an instrument to be exclusively relied upon to defeat terrorism...”

Opinion: Flooding

Dam, defend, deter... or do we run away?

What can Scotland learn from the US response to flooding?

Bill Wood FRSGS

“In Scotland, structures for the Clyde in and downstream of Glasgow, proposed by Professor Alan Ervine, may have no guarantee of long term success....”

Dr Cook’s excellent commentary on ‘The Flood Problem’ in The Geographer of Autumn 2010 pointed out that the UK and Pakistan could learn from each other’s experiences. It may be instructive to make some comparisons of American flood control policy with the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009 (FRM(S)).

In 1917, the US Army Corps of Engineers was given the task of flood prevention measures for a single event on the Sacramento River. Other ad hoc tasks followed, until Congress passed the 1936 and 1938 National Flood Control Acts, giving the Corps of Engineers the job nationally. William S Becker, in Come Rain, Come Shine, sees this as beginning the ‘structural era’, the first of three eras in national flood policy. Dams, levees, channels and other engineering work would solve flooding problems.

American policy began to change with the 1968 National Environmental Policy Act, which gave environmentalists and others the legal right to challenge and stop structures being built.

In Scotland, structures for the Clyde in and downstream of Glasgow, proposed by Professor Alan Ervine, may have no guarantee of long term success; wetter winters and more floods suggest current calculations for a 100 year flood event will need frequent revision. FRM(S) has many references to structural solutions, but stipulates environmental problems and effects must be carefully researched, mainly by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) and

local authorities. Unlike the US, Scottish communities will not have to contribute directly to the cost of structural works.

1968 saw further evolution of US policy with the National Flood Insurance Act, amended several times since, up to April 2010. The 1968 acts were when the ‘regulatory era’ began to displace the ‘structural era’. The Insurance Information Institute of New York said in 2005, “The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created in response to the rising cost of taxpayer-funded disaster relief for flood victims and the increasing amount of damage caused by floods. The NFIP combines the concepts of insurance protection and hazard mitigation by making federally-backed flood insurance available for residential and commercial properties in communities that agree to adopt and enforce floodplain management ordinances to reduce future flood damage.”

The ‘carrot’ was subsidised insurance; the two ‘sticks’ were floodplain zoning with maps of the floodway and the flood fringe, and that uninsured properties had no access to any grants or loans (including mortgages) using federal funds.

In 2008, the Scottish Government and the Association of British Insurers (ABI) issued a joint statement on the provision of flood insurance. Insurers were to continue providing flood insurance, and the Government would seek to identify flood risk areas and take measures to reduce them, including by preparing maps of flood risk areas and flooding probability, by preventing inappropriate

development in flood risk areas, and by raising awareness of the risks and promoting access to flood insurance for low income households.

Now, Scotland’s legislation charges SEPA with preparing maps of flood hazard and flood risk, and assessing probability and likely consequences of floods. These are to be publicly available and will surely influence insurers and others but, unlike the US, there are no ‘carrots’ or ‘sticks’ to induce property owners in flood risk areas to have flood insurance. In fact, FRM(S) does not once mention insurance.

However, Scottish Planning Policy (SPP), published by the Scottish Government in February 2010, does place ultimate responsibility for avoiding or managing flood risk with land and property owners. But an article in The Herald in December 2009 suggested that insurance will not be readily available to them once the agreement between the Scottish Government and the ABI expires in 2013.

Regulation did not halt structural solutions in the USA, but they were reduced in the 1960s and 70s, when costs of structural solutions increased for local communities, as the Federal Government’s contribution dropped from as much as 81% down to 21%, and maintenance costs soared. Also, in 1977, President Carter drew up a hitlist of wasteful projects. Later he announced a new national water policy to make projects cost effective and environmentally sound. Opposition was furious in Congress, where water projects played a significant role in the ‘pork barrel bargaining’ involved

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in American politics. Congress approved projects; those Carter considered wasteful, he vetoed.

Enter the ‘non-structural era’.

Major water project starts fell from 30 or 40 each year in the mid 1960s, to about half a dozen a year by the 1980s. Many communities on floodplains were adopting non-structural measures: floodplain zoning to benefit from the NFIP, floodproofing, flood forecasting and other options. Similar measures are being implemented in Scotland.

Inappropriate building on flood risk areas is discouraged in FRM(S) and SPP. Applicants must provide an assessment of flood risk for certain developments, and local authorities have to prepare flood management plans. So building on flood plains is being discouraged, though the ‘carrot and stick’ approach of US federal policy is not being used.

The three-era analysis of US flood control policy was advanced

by Becker in his 1985 case study of the experience of Soldiers Grove, a small community on the Kickapoo River in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin. Founded in 1864, its first recorded flood was in 1907. Frequent floods followed, with a disaster in 1935. Low-level flooding was chronic, with several disasters, including the once-in-100-year flood of 1951. Kickapoo riverside communities had petitioned Congress for a flood control project in 1936, and Congress

ordered a study. The Corps response was slow and eventually far too expensive for a small community so, in 1975, the residents of Soldiers Grove came up with an unusual proposal: to evacuate the floodway and rebuild ten homes and the entire business district on higher ground. Twelve homes on the flood fringe would be floodproofed.

Grants and funding were expedited after, yes, another once-in-100-year flood in 1978! The project began in 1979 and finished in 1984.

This last sentence glosses over the immense amount of determination, persuasion, persistence and intensive effort in the face of bureaucracy needed to get agreement, permission and funding to make the move.

Soldiers Grove was one of the first communities to try this approach – relocation – an example to the nation, not just for flitting but also as the first ‘solar town’ in the USA; all newbuild properties had to use solar power for at least 50% of their heating. Residents were glad of their flitting when, in 2008, a third once-in-100-year flood arrived!

If not the first to flit from a floodplain, Becker sees Soldiers Grove as a pioneer in heralding the fourth era in federal flood control policy, that of ‘relocation’. Places elsewhere in the USA have relocated from

floodplains. Soldiers Grove’s nearest neighbour downstream, Gays Mills, is now getting the process underway. But another possibility is evacuation.

This involves the purchase of floodplain land and buildings, usually by a government agency, to clear a floodplain. Unlike relocation, there is no effort to help owners and businesses to resettle as a community, though advice for businesses and residents is usually provided.

Prairie du Chien, in the same county as Soldiers Grove, evacuated its Fourth Ward along the Mississippi decades ago. Since then, evacuation has become a popular form of flood control with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and state floodplain managers: remove the people – problem solved. It is less popular with floodplain residents, who suffer from floodplain amnesia (fears fade with time), and worry they cannot afford to buy a comparable house with the price offered for their old, comfortable, familiar, floodplain home.

Relocation and evacuation policies seem sensible possibilities for Scotland to consider. A one-off high cost could pay for itself in saved future expenditure as quickly as many other long-term projects.

One example that comes to mind for possible relocation is Whitesands in central Dumfries, which must have Scotland’s highest score for flood mentions in the media.

20-21 Spring 2011

“Relocation and evacuation policies seem sensible possibilities for Scotland...”

Education

Outdoor Learning in Arctic Norway Joyce Gilbert, P1-2 Teacher, Arngask Primary School, Perth & Kinross Joyce was one of 15 delegates from Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Scottish Continuing International Professional Development group who were in Norway in December 2010 to investigate some innovative educational practices, with the aim of then applying aspects of what they had learned, and sharing knowledge with other educational practitioners, to improve practice in Scottish schools and early years settings.

Playing, and learning, by the river.

Getting ready for the daily ride on the farm’s pony.

Young shepherds following the sheep out to the grazing areas.

Opposite - Planting in the spring season, to provide food for the autumn and winter.

Ice-fishing © Joyce Gilbert

Photos © Anita and Jostein Hunstad

Above the Arctic Circle in December, it is dark for much of the day and the temperature rarely rises above zero degrees.

However, at 8am the sound of voices, and bright flashes from reflective clothing, tell us that the first children are arriving at the Medas Farm Kindergarten near Fauske. The ground is covered in sheet ice but, unless there is significant wind chill, these pupils, unlike most Scottish children, will be outside for a large part of the time.

Medas is owned and run by Jostein Hunstan and his wife Anita, who originally farmed in the area but found that it was hard to make a living. Now we watch as a very purposeful group of 4-6 year olds make their way down to the barn where a variety of animals are waiting to be fed. It is the same routine each day but there is always something new to learn. The children say good morning to the chickens, sheep, cows and ponies, and organise the distribution of food.

By being given responsibility to care for the animals and plants,

the children are immersed in the natural cycles of the farm throughout the year. In the summer they also take regular trips to forage for wild berries and mushrooms, while in winter they learn to ice-fish and to hunt ptarmigan. The latter involves dispatching any injured ptarmigan before plucking, gutting, cooking and eventually eating them.

However, the knowledge and skills being learnt through these experiences are not just about developing physical self-sufficiency. Through first-hand experiences, the children are encouraged to learn about, care for and respect the environment. As a result, unlike many Scottish youngsters, these Norwegian pupils already know where their food comes from and are developing a sense of belonging, empathy for others, and a close personal connection to the natural world.

Jostein takes us to visit the hytte in the adjacent forest – a very basic shelter with a wood burning stove and a covered fire pit area.

This provides opportunities for the children to cook and to keep warm without having to be taken indoors.

There are no fences but we are

assured that children quickly learn the boundaries and know how far they can venture. Reflective clothing means that the children are easy to spot, even in the depths of winter when it is dark for most of the day in this part of Norway.

Perhaps the most striking contrast to Scotland is the fact that around 50% of the staff at Medas are men of all ages, who are attracted to the job because of the very practical outdoor element. Watching the interactions between the male staff and the young children, I am left in no doubt that the gender balance alone profoundly alters the way that learning is approached.

There appears to be very little direction and explanation from adults. Instead, Norwegian staff appear to adopt a quiet, strong, non-invasive adult presence, which allows the children to direct their own play, use their imagination, create fantasies and take risks without actually being in danger.

On closer inspection, there is also something deeper and more subtle happening, which seems to be about sharing and learning across the generations. This was to be a recurring theme at all the centres we visited, and I was left feeling that if we want to foster independence, creativity and resilience in Scottish children, as practitioners we need to capture the essence of this very special real world learning.

SAGT - 40 this year!

Many RSGS members are currently members of the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers. Some have now moved out of the profession, but could still enjoy celebrating 40 years of the SAGT! The Annual Conference on Saturday 29th October will be preceded on Friday 28th October by a dinner in the Oran Mor, Glasgow, with SAGT Honorary President Professor Iain Stewart.

See SAGT’s website for details, or contact Erica Caldwell on sagt04@gmail.com 28-29th October to register interest, for more information or just to catch up.

The

Geographer Geography and Science Professor Charles W J Withers has authored a monograph, Geography and Science in Britain 1831-1939: A Study of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which provides the first full-length treatment of geography as a ‘civic science’ in modern Britain, and its place as a science within the Association.

Measuring snow density As part of the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 Validation and Calibration efforts, Santiago de la Peña is making radar observations and taking measurements of snow and surface properties along a 600km traverse across the central Greenland Ice Sheet. This will allow volume changes measured

by CryoSat-2 to be converted into accurate mass change estimates of ice. The traverse will extend from the snow percolation zone on the Greenland Ice Cap to the dry snow zone, in order to measure snow density variations, to confirm the physical basis of measurements made by SIRAL, Cryosat-2’s radar altimeter, and to estimate errors.

SpaceBook The School of GeoSciences and School of Informatics are part of a Swedish-Spanish-UK consortium that has secured funding to develop technology that enables navigation and exploration of cities.

SpaceBook will combine viewshed modelling of the city and locational information of the pedestrian to predict features of interest in the field of view. A critical component is that all interaction is dialogue based, leaving the pedestrian ‘eyes free’ and ‘hands free’. Consortium partners offer expertise in linguistics and dialogue interaction, while GeoSciences provides skills in location-aware mobile technologies, 3D urban modelling and viewshed analysis, spatial databases, and wayfinding methodologies. Contact william.mackaness@ed.ac.uk for further details.

The Open University in Scotland Inhuman Nature: Sociable Life on a Dynamic Planet Recent powerful events such as tsunamis and hurricanes, wildfires and floods, remind us just how volatile Earth can be.

While attentive to the current environmental predicament, Nigel

University of St Andrews

Clough Medal RSGS Research & Scientific Advisory Committee member Professor Colin Ballantyne (right) has been awarded the Clough Medal, given annually by the Edinburgh Geological Society to an earth scientist who has made a sustained and original contribution to understanding of the geology of Scotland. This is only the second time in its 86-year history that the Clough Medal has been awarded to a physical geographer. The citation noted Prof Ballantyne’s wide range of published research in geomorphology and Quaternary science, and his contribution to our understanding of the glacial history of the Scottish Highlands, the Hebrides and Ireland. He is currently writing a book, Periglacial Geomorphology.

University of Stirling Lumbini, Nepal Researchers from the Geoarchaeology and Palaeoenvironments group, in collaboration with Durham University’s archaeology department, have begun a three year project co-ordinated

by UNESCO to strengthen the conservation, management and interpretation of Lumbini, the

Birthplace of the Lord Buddha World Heritage Property. Located within the flat alluvial central Nepalise Terai plain, the site is less than 100m above sea level, with a sub-tropical monsoonal climate. Field work began with Professor Ian Simpson and Krista Gilliland undertaking geoarchaeological investigations in the Maya Devi Temple and in an early village settlement mound. These confirmed the presence of early natural and cultural horizons in the sacred area, giving opportunities for new environmental reconstructions that explore the relationships between alluvial sedimentation, site occupation and the emergence of the natal landscape of the Buddha.

Contact i.a simpson@stir.ac.uk for more information.

University of Strathclyde Becoming British Citizens?

In conjunction with the Scottish Refugee Council, Dr Emma Stewart has completed a study exploring the experiences and opinions of refugees living in Scotland towards the UK citizenship process.

Drawing on in-depth interviews and statistical data, the research identifies four key reasons why individuals decided to become British citizens (or not): a search for safety and security, to develop a sense of belonging to the UK, securing legal rights in the UK, and instrumental reasons. The project explored the difficulties that refugees have faced in progressing towards citizenship, and examined the relationship between citizenship, integration and sense of belonging. In a context where the UK Government has promoted the integration of refugees, the research also reveals that costs and the application process act as barriers. See www. scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk for the full report.

22-23 Spring 2011

University News

University of Edinburgh

Clark locates the issue of humaninduced change in the broader context of dwelling on a planet which the natural sciences are discovering is more turbulent and unpredictable than most of us had imagined. Recognising that human lives are inherently vulnerable, Inhuman Nature suggests that there is a vast reservoir of experience – inscribed in communities, bodies, landscapes, stories and objects – to do with making it through the variability of earth processes. As well as conversing with the earth and life sciences, the book taps into some recent themes in social theory and philosophy, about the agency of more-than-human things, and about care, responsiveness and hospitality.

The RSGS’s academic journal is available from Taylor & Francis in hard copy or on-line at www.tandf.co.uk/ journals/RSGJ

Making Connections

‘Haste Ye Back’: Studying Abroad in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland Amanda Fickey, University of Kentucky

Amanda (second from right) with her fellow students visiting the township of Auchindrain. © Rebecca Martin

As a doctoral candidate in geography, I am constantly envious of the experiences of my peers and professors who travel to far-off places. Although I had the option of choosing any geographic region for dissertation research, I decided to do my work ‘at home’ in Appalachia. But I never ruled out the possibility of conducting research abroad. Fortunately, the Department of Community Leadership and Development at the University of Kentucky offered an experiential learning course: Scotland – A Learning Journey, during the spring 2010 semester. I was ecstatic, and enrolled in the course which would offer an opportunity to travel to Scotland after course completion in the month of May. May seemed to come around very quickly. We arrived in Glasgow:

seven students and three faculty members. The students had been divided into three teams, each examining a different topic: Team 1 – agricultural production on the Isle of Bute; Team 2 – cultural industries on the Isle of Gigha; and Team 3 – possibilities for community development on the Isle of Jura. From Glasgow we travelled to Inveraray, where we met community leaders from the isles and representatives from Highlands & Islands Enterprise which had worked closely with the University of Kentucky to determine ‘host communities’.

I enjoyed my time working on Bute immensely! The town of Rothesay was filled with butchers, bakers, and a small bookshop. I quickly grew to adore the town and the people. After two weeks

of interviews, my team noted that significant progress had been made on Bute with regard to local agricultural production – particularly by Bute Produce, a local social enterprise which had established a market garden and a green box scheme. In addition, my team was thrilled to find children in a local academy producing their own agricultural goods in the school’s community garden!

All of us from the University of Kentucky remain grateful for the opportunity to learn from these Scottish communities. When I boarded the ferry to leave Bute, there was a very large sign that stated “Haste Ye Back”. We all hope to visit Scotland again very soon.

What Geography Means To Me

A

t an early age I was hooked on maps. Maps were graphic, exciting and gave me a passionate curiosity about places. When I was six, I inherited an enormous old atlas – The Times Survey Atlas of the World, 1922 – prepared at the Edinburgh Geographical Institute under the direction of John George Bartholomew.

The gift of this atlas undoubtedly pointed me to a career in geography and maps, though as a child living in Staffordshire I never dreamed that the Bartholomew connection would ripen, that I would know members of the family well, working with Margaret Wilkes them towards the gift of their superb early atlas collection and RSGS Board securing the acquisition of the and Convener firm’s magnificent archive for a of Collections & Information Committee Scottish national institution.

An insight into the life of a working geographer

I read geography at A-level and university, followed by post-graduate research in settlement studies. To me, geography became the means to understanding the complexities of the world, demonstrating a breadth other subjects lacked.

My first job, Map Curator & Librarian in the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, let me remain in mainstream geography, but was without challenge. I moved to the new post of Research Assistant there, involved in myriad research projects, all powerfully illustrating the diversity that is geography. Projects included looking at the north/south divide in living conditions in England; perinatal mortality distribution in Sheffield; the migration to Europe of geographical information acquired from American Indians in the 18th and 19th centuries and its incorporation there in the mapping of the Great Plains; the changing pattern of markets and fairs in England and Wales; and

soil particle analysis in the Peak District. The variety was exciting, but the job was insecure.

So I changed tack, migrating north to the National Library of Scotland, taking responsibility for all aspects of its map collection.

This required a different mindset.

I was afloat in an environment where books and manuscripts took precedence, and where geography as a subject seemed without a proper place or due regard. But for 25 years I had the responsibility and privilege of building Scotland’s national map collection to become one of the world’s largest and reflecting the many-faceted Scottish diaspora; of ensuring its recording, preservation and display, publicising its facilities, making connections all over the world as well as promoting maps widely.

My geographical training was not wasted; I still have my 1922 Bartholomew atlas and I remain a totally committed geographer.

Expert View: Middle East and North Africa

The

Geographer

24-25 Spring 2011

The Western Sahara: A Frozen Conflict in the Desert Dr Sue Onslow, Co-Head, Africa International Affairs Programme, LSE IDEAS, London School of Economics

In October 2010, violence flared in the Gadaym Izik refugee camp outside the dusty town of Laâyoune, the administrative capital of Laâyoune-Boujdour-Sakia El Hamra province. Housing approximately 12,000-15,000 refugees, this unrest prompted a brief flurry of headlines in the international press. Driven by many of the same socio-economic grievances shared elsewhere in Northern Africa and the Middle East – social exclusion, high youth unemployment, poor housing and access to education – protestors demanded economic and political rights. In the ensuing disturbances, the Moroccan authorities announced 10 policemen were killed and 212 injured, whilst the Polisario Front claimed 11 civilian deaths and over 700 casualties.

A very considerable part of the impulse for this flare of violence came from the broader longrunning dispute in Western Sahara, itself a direct legacy of Spanish decolonisation from this underdeveloped region. Following the death of General Franco and democratization in Spain in 1975, the former colony of Spanish Sahara under the leadership of the Polisario Front (the political organisation of the Sahrawi population) declared itself independent and secured support from the UN. However, the rival claimant of this region was the Kingdom of Morocco to the north.

The then King Hassan II declared the area to be an integral part of Morocco, and Moroccan forces and unarmed civilians occupied the area. This swiftly developed into an international stand-off in the United Nations – and neighbouring Algeria and Libya backed the independence movement with training and financial support, while the United States, driven by its Cold War geo-strategic concerns, backed Morocco’s claim. There ensued a long-running guerrilla war between Rabat and the Polisario Front.

The UN-brokered peace accords of 1991 confined the Sahrawi independence movement to a narrow strip in the south and east bordering Mauritania and Algeria.

Since then, the international war of words has continued, with claim and counter-claim of international law and arguments over the implementation of voter registration

and a referendum, with periodic instances of violence. The landborder between Morocco and Algeria remains closed, drastically impeding regional trade and development, as well as travel.

This 35-year old internationalised dispute shows no immediate sign of resolution. Morocco remains determinedly outside the African Union because of the issue. Western Sahara is a potent rallying point within Morocco and a touch-stone of national identity.

Moroccan supporters of greater democratization at home find no contradiction in their demands for the inviolability of union with Western Sahara and their own demands for greater political and civil rights. Rabat is prepared to consider devolution and autonomy short of legal independence – much as Serbia was prepared to grant these concessions to Kosovo postMilosevic. Persuasive arguments of the economic unviability of any new Western Sahara independent state are put forward. Claims of possible regional destabilisation because of forced migration, terrorism and organised crime, are also made.

On the other side, from its bases within the squalid refugee camps in Tindouf province in western Algeria, and its offices in Western Europe and the US, the Polisario Front persists in its campaign for complete independence.

Periodic international mediation efforts have failed lamentably.

The current UN special envoy Christopher Ross continues his attempts to knock heads together, Algeria continues to declare itself an important stakeholder, while Mauritania keeps an interested watching brief. Meanwhile, the October violence produced a heated debate within the Spanish media, on the enduring role of Spain as the former colonial power which had reneged on its responsibilities and which should re-engage in the issue.

What has prevented settlement of this long-running low-level conflict? Explanations vary.

Moroccan nationalism is one proffered explanation, with differing understandings of acceptable processes of democratization, and engrained suspicion between the Moroccan government, the Sahrawi

community and Algeria on issues of the organisation of a referendum, voter registration and the associated disputed timings of elections.

How far the issue is an equally potent one within Algerian domestic politics is disputed.

Fundamentally, there are certainly different claimed histories between each community, conferring exclusive and competing senses of entitlement.

Natural resources also feature: the region contains important deposits of phosphate (phosphate mining is the largest export earner for the Moroccan state) and there are also important international fishing rights along the lengthy Western Moroccan coast line. While the dynamics of domestic politics within both Morocco and Algeria play a part, arguably the greatest goad to continued conflict is the region’s under-development, itself the product of limited investment, lack of infrastructure and poor employment possibilities.

Other explanations look to the dynamics of international politics, and point to the geo-politics of France and the US who continue to focus on their national security concerns, rather than collaborating to promote compromise.

At the moment, one thing is certain: the current surge of revolutionary change within the North African region and Middle East will stimulate the intensity of the Western Sahara conflict – precisely because of the dynamic between the Western Sahara issue, the prestige of domestic governments and the geo-political interests of key members of the international community. These socio-economic transformatory changes therefore threaten to intensify the issues of decolonisation, nationalism and development underpinning this publicly-neglected conflict, further raising the stakes for everyone concerned.

“...the impulse for this flare of violence came from the broader longrunning dispute in Western Sahara, itself a direct legacy of Spanish decolonisation...”

Book Club

Reports from Beyond

Statelessness and Citizenship

A Journey Through Life to Remote Places

A Comparative Study on the Benefits of Nationality

Patrick Richardson

Brad Blitz and Maureen Lynch

This book gives a short glimpse into the author’s colourful and adventurous life and beautifully describes his unusual journeys to remote and fascinating cultures.

His reports, illustrated with 14 handsome maps and 150 high quality colour photographs, are varied in character. Some are very dramatic: he falls through the ice in Lake Baikal in Siberia, is attacked by a pack of dogs in Vanuatu in the Pacific, and is trapped on top of a derailed train in the Congolese jungle. Others are more descriptive and lyrical: he travels up the Amazon River, climbs sacred Mount Emei in western China, and sails down the Niger River to Timbuktu in Mali. He paints captivating pictures of the landscapes, the people and the civilisations he encounters, and at the same time places them in their cultural and historical context. The reader is lured into a sensory – but always realistic – world of foreign sights, sounds and smells. His journeys reflect his desire, both in his life and his travels, to take risks, explore his limits, and go ‘beyond’.

The existence of stateless populations challenges some central tenets of international law and contemporary human rights discourses, yet only a very small number of states have made measurable progress in helping individuals acquire or regain citizenship. This fascinating study examines positive developments in eight countries, and pinpoints the benefits of citizenship now enjoyed by formerly stateless persons. The benefits of citizenship over statelessness are identified at both community and individual level, and include the fundamental right to enjoy a nationality, to obtain identification documents, to be represented politically, to access the formal labour market and to move about freely.

And How to Save It

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed It often seems that different crises are competing to devastate civilization. Most accounts of our contemporary global crises, such as climate change, financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism, or food shortages, focus on one area or another, to the exclusion of others. Dr Ahmed argues that the unwillingness of experts to look outside their own fields explains why there is so much disagreement and misunderstanding about particular crises. He attempts to investigate these crises, not as isolated events, but as trends and processes that belong to a single ailing global system. We are dealing, not with a ‘clash of civilizations’, but rather with a fundamental crisis of civilization itself. The book provides a stark warning of the consequences of failing to take a broad view of the problems facing the world, and shows how catastrophe can be avoided.

Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Threat to Global Security Ahmed Rashid This book shows that the real crisis zone for the ‘war on terror’ now lies in central Asia. Veteran reporter Ahmed Rashid has unparalleled access to the region and knows its leading players, from presidents to warlords. Here he documents how closely Pakistan’s US-backed regime is linked with extremists; how broken promises in Afghanistan have led to a resurgent Taliban fed by drugs money; and how the largest landmass in the world is now a breeding ground for terrorism. In this story of squandered opportunities, misguided alliances and double-dealing, Rashid pinpoints with chilling accuracy where the true threat to our global security comes from.

Travelling Light Tove Jansson A professor arrives in a beautiful Spanish village only to find that her host has left and she must cope with fractious neighbours alone; a holiday on a Finnish island is thrown into disarray by an oddly intrusive child; an artist returns from abroad to discover that her past has been eerily usurped.

Written in Swedish in 1987 and now published in English for the first time, these short stories take us into new Tove Jansson territory. With the deceptively light prose that is her hallmark, she reveals to us the precariousness of a journey – the unease we feel at being placed outside of our milieu, the restlessness and shadows that intrude upon a summer.

Reader Offer - save 30%

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Readers of The Geographer can purchase A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization for £14 (30% off the RRP £19.99), with FREE p&p in the UK. To order, visit www.plutobooks.com and enter the code PLURSG in the promotions section, or go straight to the appropriate page at bit.ly/plursg

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A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization

Descent into Chaos