The Flag of the World

Antigua and Barbuda, much like Anguilla, my most recent country study, is essentially a small town in the midst of the Caribbean. Unlike Anguilla, though, Antigua and Barbuda is the sort of small town that’s run by a crooked town hall. Putting that in the middle of the Caribbean is a bit more problematic.

HISTORY: The islands of Antigua and Barbuda were first settled around 2400 BC by the Siboney or “stone-people,” who littered them with stone and shell tools for a couple thousand years before moving on. Then came the Arawaks, who in turn were chased out by the Caribs, who named the islands Waladli and Wa’omoni. They held the islands mainly for spite, apparently, never actually settling them. Columbus named Antigua from a distance after Santa Maria la Antigua, but no Europeans settled there until 1632, when a batch of Englishmen under Edward Warner set up shop, growing indigo and tobacco.

These crops were being grown on every island in the Caribbean, though, so they did not provide the cash hoped for. Things changed when, in 1674, Sir Christopher Codrington started a sugar plantation. Bringing the latest sugar technology from Barbados, Codrington was fabulously successful, and soon the whole island was following his lead, becoming one big sugar plantation. Sugar was–and still is today–an incredibly labor-intensive crop to harvest, so this led to a large influx of slaves. To feed everyone, Codrington leased the nearby island of Barbuda from the British Crown and grew food there, and the islands have been linked ever since.

By 1736, a slave rebellion broke out, led by a slave nicknamed “Prince Klaas.” (His real name, apparently, was Count, so it’s unclear why he didn’t just go by Count Klaas. But I digress.) As was tradition in the region, the rebellion was swiftly and brutally crushed, the participants tortured and/or burnt alive.

A dockyard was built in 1725, which came to be named Nelson’s Dockyard, after its most famous resident, Lord Nelson. Nelson was Senior Naval Officer of the Leeward Islands from 1784 to 1787, based out of Antigua. It did not suit either the island or the man. Nelson called it a “vile place” and a “dreadful hole,” while the Antiguans were generally ticked at him for enforcing the Navigation Acts, which prohibited trade with the upstart United States of America–then as now, a major trading partner. In fact, his unpopularity in Antigua nearly stymied his entire career, delaying his promotion for a while.

Beginning at the turn of the 19th century, the sugar trade began heading south. Then, in 1834, the slave trade was outlawed. This combination meant that the island stayed pretty well stagnant for the next hundred years or so, with the black majority of the population still dependent on the plantation owners and a flaccid agricultural market.

In the 20th century, things eventually started to pick up. World War II and the resultant military construction boom spurred economic growth (as did post-war tourism), and in 1939, a member of a British royal commission suggested the formation of a trade union movement. That movement, the Antigua Trades and Labor Union, soon became dominated by Vere Cornwall Bird. It spawned the Antigua Labor Party in 1946, and became the majority party in 1951. It retained that status for over 50 years, except for a 5 year hiccup in the 1970’s.

Bird, who became Prime Minister, essentially ran the islands for most of that time, handing over power to his son, Lester Bird, when he died in 1994. During that time, Antigua became a semi-independent Associated State of the United Kingdom (in 1967), and then achieved full-fledged independence, in 1981. The Birds, though, were as corrupt as they get, and their government was considered the most corrupt in the Caribbean, possibly the world. From serving as a tax haven, to drug smuggling, to embezzling, to arms smuggling, to vote fraud, to media control, to land-grabbing and even to domestic terrorism when they fell out of power from 1971-76, the Birds and their cronies did it all. Lester Bird, however, was apparently not as good as his father at keeping things in check, and the ALP was defeated in March by the United Progressive Party led by Baldwin Spencer and running on an anti-corruption platform.

TODAY: The new Spencer government has had its hands full trying to clean up the 50+ years of mess left behind by the Birds, who appear to really be done this time. The nation is buried under a mound of debt, is riddled with far more poverty than it ought to have, and the damage to their reputation is immense. They have hired a renowned forensic investigator to look at the old government’s documents, but more scandals keep cropping up. It’s going to be quite a task, but Baldwin Spencer sounds like someone who just might do it.

ANALYSIS: Like Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda is essentially a small town that happens to be an island. Unlike Anguilla, though, Antigua and Barbuda is the bad kind of small town—the kind run by crooks. We’re all familiar with this sort of small town, and it’s a clear example of what happens when the government becomes the most powerful entity in a community. The Bird regime in Antigua and Barbuda is an extreme version of things we see in many small towns, and things that are happening even in less isolated countries (say, New Jersey or France). Fortunately for small towns everywhere, including and Antigua and Barbuda, from time to time, men like Baldwin Spencer will appear on the scene and set things to rights for a while.

FLAG: The flag was designed by a high school art teacher when the country first gained limited independence in 1976. The sun demonstrates the dawning of a new era, the red (somehow) demonstrates the energy of the people, the blue represents hope, the black represents the African ancestry of most of the people, and the white apparently represents the sand.

FOOD: Pork chops with banana and bacon? That would almost make up for 50 years of corruption, don’t you think?

LINKS: Like most islands, Antigua and Barbuda have lots of travel guide histories: Lonely Planet, AntiguaNice and the department of tourism, for example. Unsurprisingly, these don’t deal much with the whole “corruption” thing (except for the predictably lefty LonelyPlanet, which is shocked, shocked that some of the corruption might have turned over a protected environmental area to Malaysian developers… though the rest of it doesn’t seem to bother them). Another history, by another amature historian, Joanne Christian, ends in 1854. Even the Secretary of State site glosses over it. But there is a very thorough article that covers all aspects of the Bird corruption, and makes for fascinating reading.

The University of Texas provides a good portal page, and the Antigua Elections site provides lots of information on the groundbreaking 2004 election.

Phew. It’s been far too long since I did one of these. I was largely stalled by the fact that the 8 months since I did one of these were pretty eventful, both politically and personally. That, and doing two tiny Caribbean islands one right after another is less interesting than it could be. Fortunately, I’ve got Argentina and Armenia before I head back to the Caribbean–Aruba, particularly. (As much as I enjoy these things, going to the Caribbean is more entertaining than writing about it.)

What happens when you gather 12,000 generally good-natured people together and tell them to be a country out in the middle of the Caribbean? I imagine that it would turn out something like Anguilla. With a population that wouldn’t even fill up the bottom level at Safeco Field, Anguilla is nonetheless required to behave something like a nation. They don’t appear to do too bad a job of it.

HISTORY: Anguilla has been inhabited since about 2000 or 1500 BC, when it was populated by a group of unknown people who made shell axes, conch drinking vessels, flint knives and other such items. By 300 AD, the island was populated by Arawaks who called it “Malliouhana.” Eventually, they were driven off the island by the Caribs, who then apparently left it empty for the British to settle in 1650. By then, the Spanish had renamed the island for its eel-like shape.

The Caribs drove the English off too, in 1656, but not for very long. Soon the English were back, along with their slaves, farming cotton, corn and tobacco on the less-than-fertile island. This had a positive side to it, as there was little competition for the island, and little tension or struggle.

The French did try to pick the island off a few times, though. In 1666 they wrested it away from the Brits, but gave it back the next year under the Treaty of Breda. Then, in 1744, in response to Anguilla’s capture of St. Martin, two French frigates and some smaller craft attacked the island, only to be repulsed in 15 minutes. (Two jokes come to mind here, one of them about the French typically being the repulsive ones, and another fairly lame and predictable one about the French getting beat in 15 minutes). Again in 1796, the French tried their hand at invasion, and were much more successful, raping and killing their way across the island until they had pressed the resistance nearly to the other side of it. But then the desperate Anguillans counterattacked and drove the French into the waiting arms of the twenty-six gun British frigate the Anguillans had sent to for help earlier in the day.

Things got pretty quiet after that, though things happened in both the 1820’s and 30’s. In 1824, Britain put Anguilla into a single union of St. Kitt’s, Nevis and Anguilla. The larger St. Kitts dominated the alliance, and pretty much ignored Anguillan wants and needs. In 1838, slavery was outlawed on the island, which resulted in many of the white Anguillans packing it up and leaving for Britain, handing their land over to their former slaves.

The next hundred years or so continued with little excitement. Then, in 1958, St Kitt’s-Nevis-Anguilla was stuck into the ill-fated Federation of the West Indies, which lasted until 1962 when everyone decided it was lame. Anguilla was again stuck with St. Kitt’s and Nevis, but this time decided to do something about it.

In 1967, Anguillans kicked out all the St. Kitt’s policemen, blocked the runway to keep them from coming back, and declared themselves independent. The British really didn’t know what to do, and so they sat a ship offshore for two years. Eventually, they sent in the Red Devil Paratroopers, who landed on the island to a happy, welcoming populace. The island was put back under British rule, as it wanted all along, and by 1980, was recognized as a separate British dependency.

TODAY: Today, Anguilla is doing fairly well. It’s a pretty bustling tourist destination, and is working on building itself up as a reputable offshore banking haven. Of course,it’s really just a small town, and so the big news these days is the new Ace hardware store, and that Uncle Ernie’s Beach Bar has a new coat of paint!

ANALYSIS: I don’t have much to say about Anguilla. It’s really just a small town that happens to be an island, and like any small town, it’s hard to get a feel for what it’s really like just by reading about it on web pages. I’d like to read Under an English Heaven, which is supposed to be an entertaining account of the 1967 revolution, but who’s to say that would be any better?

What I do understand about Anguilla, I like. Independent, patriotic—both to Anguilla and Britain—and laid back. If you can only have three character qualities (and with 12,000 people, it’s tough to have more than that), those aren’t bad ones to pick.

FLAG: The flag is the standard Union-Jack-in-the-corner-coat-of-arms-on-the-right flag that most all British dependencies get. On the coat of arms, the orange dolphins represent endurance, unity and strength, the white background represents peace & tranquility, and the turquoise-blue base represents the sea, faith, youth, hope, and probably a few other things. But the coat of arms on the flag itself isn’t turquoise-blue, but just light blue, because the government couldn’t afford fancy turquoise-blue fabric, and so they went with plain light blue for the flag.

FOOD: These fish cakes sounds awfully tasty, if you’re into fish. Which I am.

LINKS: Like American Samoa, many of the histories available are on tourist sites: one on Lonely Planet, two on Yahoo, one on the official tourism site, and the best on Skyviews. Radio Anguilla has a quick and interesting history of itself, and there’s an excerpt from the book referenced above available as well. One of the best Anguilla sites on the web is Bob Green’s Anguilla News blog, which is just about the handiest thing ever if you’re from Anguilla, I imagine. This is another random Anguilla site with good links, and here’s the Library of Congress site. The Anguilla Guide is a comprehensive overview of the island, and the Government site isn’t too shabby either.

There. I think Anguilla wins the words-per-person contest, with one word for every twelve people or so. Next up is Antigua and Barbuda, so we won’t get a much larger country until we come to Argentina after that. Nuts, then I’ll have to figure out some economics. Ah, well. See you in Antigua!

If you’re a country, Africa is a lousy place to be. Angola’s history is evidence of that, what with the depopulation due to the slave trade, colonization and exploitation by a second-rate European power, and then internal tribal strife blown all out of proportion by being turned into an international-ideological battleground, tentative peace being shattered by one man’s ego. No, things have not gone well in Angola at all–until very, very recently, when the death of a single individual suddenly dumped a whole bucket of hope on a country that could turn out ok after all.

HISTORY: Angola, like most of Africa, has been inhabited since prehistoric times, specifically by Khoisan speaking groups now referred to as Bushmen. They were pushed out of the area by coming of the Bantu, the darker, more technologically advanced people from the north, in the first millenium AD. We don’t know a good deal more than this, as the eventual colonizers of Angola, the Portuguese, like the Spanish, didn’t put as much effort into historical research as did the other nations, such as the British.

So, our real knowledge of the area’s history really picks up in about 1482, when the first Portuguese came to the area. They found there the Kingdom of Kongo, or the Bakongo, which had come to power in during the 14th century, and swapped emissaries with them. The cordial nature of their first encounter led to the establishment of trade between the two kingdoms, Portugal them, offering weapons, technology and especially knowledge of Christianity, in exchange for ivory, minerals, and–eventually and especially–slaves. Many Kongolese became Christians in the early years, and in 1506 when Alfonso I became manikongo, or Kongan ruler, he was a devout Catholic, as alluded to by his Christian name.

Alfonso’s Christianity proved more genuine than most of the Portuguese missionaries, most of whom left by 1520, let alone than of the slave traders who stayed around. Portugal lost interest in the region, having been distracted by the shiny baubles of Asia and especially Brazil, and their African holdings became little more than a source of slaves for the latter. Were it not for the Dutch occupation of the area from 1641-48, the Portuguese might have entirely neglected to consolidate their colonial holdings.

Nonetheless, Kongo-Portugal relations remained amiable, and Portugal helped Alfonso’s successor, Alvaro I, to beat back an insurgency in from 1571-73. However, after the death of Alvaro II, things went south and in 1622 Portugal attacked the Kongo, and a state of war existed on and off until the final defeat of the unified Kongo Kingdom in 1665.

Things had gone south much quicker for the kingdom just to the south of the Kongo, the Ndongo kingdom, though they held out much longer. The Ndongo had been essentially at War, on and off, with Portugal since Portuguese encroachments in the 1560’s, and especially since the founding of Luanda, and the official start to what would become the colony of Angola in 1671. However, they were not finally defeated until 1671.

Even after defeating these two kingdoms, the entirety of Angola was not even remotely under Portuguese control, and wouldn’t be for some time. The kingdoms of Kasanje and Mataba lay further inland, and past them was the Lunda kingdom (which attacked the former two unsuccessfully in the 1760’s) and the Chokwe (which attacked and destroyed the Lunda in 1900). The Ovimbundu were a collection of peoples and Kingdoms that moved from the north and east of Angola to the southwest (the Benguela plateau) in the 16th and 17th centuries and became successful traders. The Portuguese were able to dominate them by the late 19th century. South of the Ovimbundu came the Kwanhama in the early 19th century, a well-armed and fierce kingdom that survived until the Portuguese invaded and destroyed it in 1915.

Things continued on like this for a while–slow Portuguese expansion driven by the slave trade–until 1836 when Portugal abolished slave trading. After that it became slightly quicker Portuguese expansion, completely seperate from the slave trade, which continued until Britain ended it by force in the middle of the 19th century.

That century marked a great deal of European expansion into Africa, and Portugual, despite technically being an old hand at the whole Africa business, found themselves lagging behing the rest of Europe, in large part because of how they had completely ignored Angola in favor of Brazil for so long. This set well behind the times, and by the end of the 19th century, when Africa had been pretty well entirely carved up by European powers, Portugal still had large swathes of “their” territory that were controlled by native kingdoms. This lag would have major consequences in the 20th century.

For example, the beginning of the 20th century heralded in Angola what most colonies had undergone a hundred years ago or so–namely, beginning to exploit it fairly heavily for its natural resources–namely, rubber, diamonds and a railroad to the Belgian Congo. Ok, so that last one isn’t exactly natural, but it was the most important. This is indicative of the state that Portugal was in, colonization-wise–when your colony’s largest employer is the railroad that hauls somebody else’s goods, you know that things could probably be better. Combine that with rubber demand dropping off after WWI, and you’ve got a pretty weak economy going into 1926.

Conveniently, 1926 marked a military coup that installed a one-party military dictatorship in Portugal, eventually headed by Antonio Salazar. His iron-fisted policies ruled both Portugal and Angola, where his combination of racist policies and bringing in white colonatos fueled the discontent heavily, until 1962.

In the 50’s, nationalist and independence movements predictably began to form. The MPLA drew mainly from urban areas and from the Mbundu people, was nominally Marxist-Leninist, and based out of Guinea, and later out of the Congo. The FNLA was nominally pro-Western, drew from the rural Bakango, and was based out of the Belgian Congo, now Zaire, formed from two different Bakango militant groups in 1962. In 1961, all of these groups had staged an ineffective but still bloody revolt that led to fierce reprisals from Portugal. Both groups maintained resistance against the government through the decade, but the MPLA was able to achieve supremacy by garnering the support of the USSR and Cuba.

In 1966, another party appeared on the scene, UNITA, a vaguely Maoist splinter group from the FNLA that garnered the support of the very populous Ovimbundo peoples. What it lacked in arms and education, it made up for in following and unity of leadership–under Jonas Savimbi. With these advantages, UNITA quickly passed up the fading FNLA to challenge the MPLA for supremacy.

The guerilla war continued for several years, until in 1974 the government in Portugal was deposed by a coup and the new government began working quickly towards giving Angola independence. Very quickly–on January 25, 1975 a transitional government composed of elements of all three rebel groups was sworn in. Days later, the fighting continued.

And continued, and continued, and continued, even though the MPLA, under Ant󮩯 Agostinho Neto, quickly gained control of what had been the transitional government, but no one was in full control of the country. Despite this, Portugal ceded independence to “the Angolan people” on November 11, 1975. In the war that followed, The MPLA continued receiving aid from the USSR and Cuba, while the FNLA received some aid from the US and UNITA from various African governments.

The MPLA quickly achieved dominance, forcing the fading FNLA into an alliance with UNITA until it was finished off in early 1976. The government of South Africa, an international pariah, also began supporting UNITA, as the MPLA was supporting Namibian leftist rebels fighting the South African occupation of that country. This lost UNITA a great deal of support elsewhere–including from the US, which later gave support again in the 1980’s.

The Neto regime started off as Marxist, but that didn’t survive long. Neto was too interested in getting foreign investment and actually running a country to go fully Communist, and his middle ground attracted critics from both sides. The less extreme wing won out, and in the late 1970’s purged a good many of the leftward elements after an attempted coup. It was still Marxist-Leninist in name and a more than a few policies, but it was more of a China-style despotism with communist trappings.

The civil war with UNITA continued, evolving into a full-fledged, but undeclared border war with South Africa by the time Neto died in late 1979. The torch was passed to Jos項duardo dos Santos who continued and intensified the move towards the moderate. This continued and intensified through the 80’s, but so did the war with UNITA and South Africa, which refused to allow the issue to rest for fear that a leftist government would come to power right next door.

However, by the beginning of the 90’s, the fall of Communism (and the MPLA’s renunciation of its already half-hearted Marxism-Leninism) and apartheid (and the subsequent independence of Numibia) removed the two major outside factors encouraging continuing war. Peace talks began in 1991, and a treaty was signed in 1992, along with a new constitution and a vast array of reforms designed to make Angola a democracy. In September 1992, dos Santos and Savimbi faced off against each other in Angola’s first multi-party election.

Dos Santos won a plurality of the vote, but not quite enough to prevent a runoff between the two top candidates. The MPLA also won the majority of the parliament seats. Savimbi did not like this outcome, and declared the elections to be riddled with fraud and “stolen,” though the UN disagreed. Nevertheless, UNITA returned to war, though with none of its previous international support.

The war raged all through the 90’s, despite a peace agreement in 1994, a UN intervention, and multiple “grounds for optimism,” peace seemed very far away.

Then, in February 2002, Savimbi was killed in battle. Abruptly, UNITA had no reason to fight.

TODAY: The sudden shift in Angola can be tracked by the UN Mission observer: first, this one from February 2002 and the next one from April. On April 4, a peace treaty was signed between the government and UNITA. By November, the government declared “all outstanding issues resolved,” and UN sanctions on UNITA were lifted. Just like that. Well, not just like that. The problems aren’t all solved. Elections won’t be until 2005–after what happened in the last elections, dos Santos, who says he is not likely to run, is likely wary of such things, and not without cause. AIDS, kept out of the country for so long by the war, is now returning with the refugees, and will need to be countered. There appears to be a fair bit of tension between those who want to forget the civil war and everything related to it (which happens to be the entirety of the nation’s history) and those who don’t. There are still the standard African problems: poverty, disease, famine, corruption, missing 727’s and so on.

But there’s peace, and a very real chance that peace will last. And that’s as good a start as any.

ANALYSIS: What I have a hard time getting over is the “one bullet” aspect of this story. As in “all that fighting, all the killing, all those UN peace missions, all the lives lost and shattered on both sides, and it only took one bullet to end it all.” Well, it may have been more than one bullet–and it may not have been a bullet at all. But you get the idea. One bullet! Lives lost, and lost, and lost, and when one of those lives happens to be the ego that drives it all, it ends all the sudden? It’s amazing, when you think about it. And part of the reason I support assassination in some cases. Not that it will always be the silver bullet (erm… interesting figure of speech there), but sometimes, apparently, it can.

I’ve also learned that the Cold War took localized tribal and or rural vs. urban conflicts and blew them all out of proportion, propping them up for decades, some of them outlasting the Cold War itself. Some will tell you that this is America’s fault, some the USSR’s, and others will refuse to assign blame.

Orrin Judd would no doubt say that it’s more proof that the Cold War was a mistake, and that we should have taken down the USSR when we had the chance, before they got nukes. And while I question the feasibility of such a plan, and hindsight is obviously 20/20, how can we justify transporting our war into other parts of the world completely uninvolved with it, such as Angola and Vietnam? I don’t think that, given the situation, we had much of a choice at that point. But it would have been better to never have gotten to that point.

I heard someone today speak well of containment, and criticize George Bush for not seeking it. But can you tell the hundreds of thousands of dead Angolans killed in a local conflict that became a proxy war between the Cold War powers and wannabe Cold War powers that they were the price we paid to “contain” Communism? I am glad we are taking the war to the enemy this time. It’s better than letting it come to us, or meeting it somewhere in the middle again.

And, lastly, I’m reminded of the evil that really was slavery. Aside from depopulating Angola, providing it with the very worst of Europe as an example, and generally being evil, it also set it back generations compared to the rest of the world’s colonies. In 1885, when India saw the beginnings of Indian nationalism that eventually led to independence, Angola was barely a coherent collection of areas. And by the time the hurried nationalist movements did begin to form, in the 1950’s, India was a sovereign nation–and then Angola was dumped into that situation a scant 20 or so years later. It was like India being declared independent in 1905–it’s no surprise that thing went south so fast. I don’t know how it could have been avoided, but the root of it really was slavery.

Ironically, with the sudden peace, Angola may have catapulted ahead of much of that war-torn continent, which seems only fair, after lagging behind for so long. And I imagine that it might be genuinely exciting to be an Angolan today. The future, for the first time in years, actually looks like it could be something described as bright. There is the possibility of a better life ahead, and it’s a real one. The elections in 2005 will be a major hurdle, but if they can manage it, Angola could well have a very bright future. But they’ll have to work at it, hard. And there’s no getting around that.

FLAG: I think this may be the only flag in the world that has a machete on it. But I digress. The red stripe represents the blood shed during its long violent history, the black stripe represents Africa, and the yellow represents the nation’s wealth. The seal is a take-off on the hammer and sickle–a machete and a cog wheel, the former signifying the peasants and the latter the industrial workers. The star symbolizes “international solidarity and progress”

However, they may well get a new flag, as one has been recently proposed. The blue stripes represent solidarity, harmony and justice, the white stripes represent peace, harmony and unity, the red represents sacrifice, tenacity and heroism, while the sun, based on the ancestral Tchitundo-Hulu rocks paintings of the southwestern Namibe province, represents the cultural identity, heritage and wealth of Angola. There is, however, a great deal of resistance against this new flag, and opponents accuse it of ignoring and discounting history.

FOOD: If you like fish, and can find “2 glasses palm oil,” this sounds incredibly tasty. Nuts. Now I’m hungry. I think I should actually eat one of these before I post it, eventually.

LINKS: Each time I do this, I find more handy resources–such as World Statesman, an incredibly handy source for facts on every nation, including Angola. The usual suspects, including the Library of Congress and Infoplease have good histories, as does Angola’s US embassy and the United Methodist Church, The LOC history ends at 1988, Infoplease and the UMC in 2002 and the Embassy in 1995. The Embassy has a good site in general, as does the UK embassy. The BBC country profile gives a good rundown, and Africa Online, ReliefNet and AllAfrica all have good lists of news stories. MBendi is a site with business information on Africa, which looks to be a helpful place, and the Energy Information Administration has a similar page. The University of Pennsylvania, Stanford and Columbia all have good Angola resources from an Academic standpoint, The Africa Guide has them from a tourism standpoint.

Aside from the attention Instapundit paid to the 727 incident, Angola has not garnered much attention from the blogosphere–this is probably a sign that things are going generally well. But if you read Portuguese, this appears to be a blog from Angola, which would be really interesting if I read Portuguese.

Well, there’s Angola–definitely a country that bears watching. Coming next month (or so), Anguilla!

Andorra is one of the archetypal “small European countries,” the sort that novelists and screenwriters prefer to invent out of whole cloth rather than recreate (”I just discovered that I’m the long-lost son of the King of Maledonia!” and so on). This is understandable–there are only 77 thousand or so people in the entire country, and one of them is probably going to notice if you get something wrong. But the question that always arises, for myself, anyway, when it comes to these countries is, “how in the world did they manage to stay independent?” Well, now I know, if only in regards to Andorra. Andorra has remained independent since its founding in the 9th century by playing The Game, and playing it very, very well.

HISTORY: Many of the sources I found on Andorran history contradicted each other when it came to specifics, so the following is a mishmash of what seemed to make the most sense to me.

There have been people living in Andorra for years, as archaeologists have found various artifacts going back to the Neolithic age, between five and eight thousand years ago. Nothing that explains too much, though. The best theory is that the original inhabitants were Basque or related to the Basque, and that the name “Andorra” is of Basque derivation. Our first mention of Andorra comes in Polybius’ Histories where the Andosini are mentioned as one of the four tribes in the Pyrenees that Hannibal subdued before heading on towards Rome.

We next pick up Andorra in 839, when its six parishes are mentioned in the Church records, specifically the Acts Of Consecration of the Cathedral of Seu d’Urgell. Just before this time, Charlemagne had beaten back the moors from the area and in return for the help the Andorrans gave him, so the story goes, he granted them their independence under the local Bishop. They still have the document that did the deed, the Carta de Fundacio d’Andorra. If you are skeptical about this document’s legitimacy, welcome to the club–it includes everyone but the Andorran government, who don’t let the document out to play very often, just in case. But it supports their independence, so the Adorrans aren’t about to give it up.

After Charlemagne died, his son Louis the Pious reconquered the area and gave control of it to the Count of Urgell, in Spain. The Count and Bishop of Urgell played tug-of-war over the area for a while, until the Bishop appealed to the nearby Count of Foix for help in the 11th century, promising him a share in the region. This seems to have worked out fairly well for about two hundred years, after which the Count of Foix decided that he should control the whole place, and invaded in 1264.

The war ended in 1274, when they wrote up an agreement called the Pareage, which decreed that the Count and Bishop would share sovereignity over the country, which would be independent but pay a tribute to one of the Co-Princes, as were called, a year. Thus cleverly balanced between two powers, Andorra kept that position, more or less, until 1993.

There were a few changes along the way. In 1419, the Andorran people decided they wanted a parliament. They asked their co-rulers for it, and recieved it, setting up the “Council of the Land,” with four councilmembers from each of the six Parishes. When Henry of Foix became Henry IV of France, the co-princeness passed to the French king, and remained there until 1793 when the monarchy was overthrown, and Andorra cut loose. They did not like this, there being no counterbalance to Spain and Urgell, and so when Napolean took over, they quickly asked him to reassert control and Napoleon–never one to turn down an opportunity to assert control–readily complied.

Ever since, the head of the French state, be it king, President, or whatever Napoleon was calling himself that week, has been a co-prince of Andorra. In 1933, some Andorrans decided they were tired of this set-up, despite how independent it had kept them, and wanted to play a different game. Apparently this new game involved installing a Russian named king named Boris Skossyreff as king–it was his idea. The Bishop of Urgell sent in guards (five of them) who arrested them, the courts dismissed the Council of the Land who had appointed him, and the French sent in gendarmes to keep things quiet. They eventually got things back together and even set up universal manhood sufferage (women got in on the act in 1970).

Andorra was a major smuggling depot for French goods headed for Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and then for Spanish goods heading for france during World War II. This gave Andorra a taste for that sort of thing, and added another move to their game–duty free shopping. During the 20th century, Andorra became a major tax & duty-free haven, and electronics, alcohol and tobacco sell for far less than they do elsewhere in Europe. This helps their ski-based tourism industry immensely, which is good, as 80% of their economy is based on tourism.

1981, the Government of Andorra was set up, headed by the Sidinc, or president, appointed by the parliament, now called the General Council, adding an executive branch to the mix, and in 1993, the country brought in a constitution, which limited the co-Princes and paved the way for entry into the UN that year–with the ultimate goal of joining the European Union.

Don’t worry, I’ll get to that later.

TODAY: Andorra is a member of the EU customs union, and treated as an EU member for trade in manufactured goods–no tariffs, and as a non-EU member for for agricultural products (all of which must be imported, as only 2% of the land is arable. They have an agreement with the European Economic Community that has been in place since 1991, and currently, the EEC and Andorra are engaged in negotiations on a Cooperation Agreement that would cover more ground.

The main international story that Andorra is involved with at the moment involves tobacco. France keeps on adding tobacco taxes, which is making people more and more go to Andorra to buy their cigs–as of tommorow, the average price will go from EUR 3.90 to EUR 4.60, and then to EUR 5.40 next year. Last month, this led to the blockade of the Andorran border by 100 angry French tobbaconists. (The Dissident Frogman has more on how the French are handling this.)

The EEC and EU (is there much of a difference?) is pressuring Andorra to put laws in place that will limit “tobacco fraud,” though this looks to be a thinly veiled attempt to get Andorra to stop selling its stuff so cheap. Andorra is also blacklisted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development for being uncooperative in altering its tax haven-y nature, and I have seen nothing indicating movement towards complying with its demands.

ANALYSIS: If anyone in the Andorran government is reading this, may I suggest that you run not walk, away from mentions of joining the EU. Andorra has become what it is today through 800 years of playing a very clever game, and has become very successful by keeping its taxes low and government small. That is to say, it has thrived by being the exception to the European rule,. The EU is designed to blot out those exceptions.

Some would say argue the EU will be running Europe anyway, and countries like Andorra should at least grab a seat at the table where their future will be decided. But just getting that seat would fundamentally alter the very structures that have made Andorra so successful, so I don’t think that should happen–or will, any time soon.

Andorra really sounds like my kind of Europe–or it would be if there were more evangelicals, anyway. A center-right government, no leftist parties, a small, inobtrusive government, no income tax, a good dose of nationalism. Everything Europe should be. As long as they can keep darting around the big fish, and keep playing the game the way they’ve been playing it, Andorra will do just fine for quite a while.

FLAG: This is a new section, but I get so many hits from people looking for the explanation of various flags, that I’m going to start putting those into these reports. But I suggest this page if you are curious about “vexillology,” and this page if you read Spanish and are interested, particularly, in Andorra’s flag, and here if you want to buy it. Andorra’s colors are blue, yellow and red, a combination of the colors of France and Spain. Clever, eh? There are two different coats of arms, one for the French version, the other for the Spanish version. They are similar, and both have four quarters, two for each co-prince and one each for two other nearby areas. Clockwise from the upper left, they are Urgell, Foix, Bearn and Catalonia. The words along the bottom are “United strength is better.”

FOOD: This may not be a consistent catagory, but this recipe for Escudella de Pages, a traditional Catalonian meal, sounded mighty tasty.

LINKS: Andorra’s official webpage is a good place for information, as are a few other Andorra pages, which are all mainly tourist brochures. There are some good pages on history, some provided by travel pages, others by the State Department, but the most detailed is the history in the Catholic Encyclopedia–though the web version is from 1908. Here’s a very good history page, if you read Catalan, and here’s another very good one if you are interested in Andorra’s stamps. Last, if you want to move to Andorra (it’s pretty tempting), here’s an overview of what that’s like.

The population of American Samoa is 70,260, about two thirds the number of people in my hometown of Everett, Washington. (And yet they get a CIA World-Factbook page and all Everett gets is the largest building in the world and an aircraft carrier.) Meanwhile, the total area of the islands is 199 square kilometers, which, the CIA Wold Factbook tells me (in metric terms, of all things, the Europhillic commies!) is slightly larger than Washington D.C.–the population of which is 572,059, just about eight times the population of Samoa. All this to say that, American Samoa is small, but probably comfortable. And comfortable is a large part of the Samoan way of life, so that works out pretty nicely.

HISTORY: American Samoa includes the islands of Tutuila (the largest island) and nearby (and very small) Aunu’u, the Manu’a Islands of Ofu, Olosega and Ta’u, Rose Atoll to the east and Swains Island to the north. The island group of Samoa–now politically divided into Samoa and American Samoa–was settled by Samoans in about 1000 BC. No one is exactly sure where the Samoans came from–probably somewhere in southeast Asia. (If I were to guess, I’d say it was probably Indonesia, as that’s where most of their flora and fauna hail from, but that is, of course, a guess). We have no clue about most things in Samoan prehistory, which is sad because it’s probably fairly interesting.

In the later parts of prehistory, we know that the politics of western Samoa, now called simply Samoa, played a large part in the politics of Tutuila. Tutuila often fell under the juristiction of the western island of ‘Upolu, and the chiefs there sometimes forced Tutuilans to fight in their wars. The inhabitants of the Manu’a Islands recount being visited by leaders from western Samoa and Fiji, sometimes in a decidedly unfriendly manner.

“The first “official” European visit to the Islands was by Dutch Explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who stopped in, named them something or other, then sailed off. Next to visit was French Captain Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, and then Comte de La Pérouse, also French. As typically happens when more than one Frenchman visits a place, things went poorly. Some Samoans tried stealing stuff off of their ship, the sailors reacted, and people got killed–at least 12 explorers and 39 Samoans died in what is now called “Massacre Bay.”

Nonetheless, in the 1830’s, Christian missionaries came to the islands. The first was John Williams of the London Missionary society, an Englishman who was very successful there until he was invited over for dinner by some cannibalistic Samoans. Missionaries in general were very successful in Samoa, and cannibalism, eventually, was not. In large part this was due to the fact that the head Samoan deity Nafanua had some striking similarities with the God of the Bible, and had even foretold the coming of a new, superior religion. Today, 98% of Samoans are Christian.

In 1872, America gained exclusive rights to use the deep water port of Pago Pago, now the capital. The Germans and the British also had interests in the island, and disputes arose over who, exactly, would be in charge there. Eventually tensions reached something of a peak and seven warships of three nationalities ended up facing off in Apia Harbor (now in plain ole’ Samoa) in what Lonely Planet World Guide calls “something that resembled the first line of a bad joke–the British, the Americans and the Germans were in a Mexican standoff in Samoa.” But God, presumably, had the last laugh, as “the Great Apia Hurricane” hit the harbor. 147 men died, four ships hit reefs and sank, two were beached, and the only ship to survive was the HMS Calliope.

A decade later, in 1889, the three powers instituted the Tripartite Agreememnt, in which America took that which is now American samoa, the Germans took the easter islands, and the Brits sailed away in return for Germany giving up their claims on a few other Pacific islands. America formally annexed the islands in 1900, when the Department of the Navy took stuff over, building a Navy base and a coaling station. Things stayed this way through WWII, until 1951 when control was handed over to the department of the interior.

It was not long after this that Van Camp Seafood Co. and then Starkist Inc. opened tuna canneries on Pago Bay, which to this day provide about 4,500 jobs to the islands. Through most of this time, and before, the islands recieved little attention from the mainland. In 1962, however, Reader’s Digest published an article entitled “America’s Shame on the South Seas,” calling attention to the rather primitive conditions that the natives of the island lived in.

President Kennedy, in true 60’s Democrat fashion, responded by throwing a lot of money at the problem. Today, this is termed bad by most people for being “cultural imperialism,” as if roads, schools, hospitals and televisions were purely cultural phenomena. I term it as bad because it created something of a welfare state that American Samoa has yet to fully reform.

Until 1977, the islands were governed by an appointed governor. Since then, the governor has been elected by universal suffrage, as has the house of representatives. The members of Senate are selected by the traditional councils of the various islands.

TODAY: Some of the biggest news to hit American Samoa recently includes the coming of the islands’ first Pizza Hut, local crime, the financial struggles of the of the hospital in Pago Pago and corruption in various levels of the very large public sector (40% of the population is apparently on the government payroll). The Democratic non-voting congressman is none too happy about the one-way expansion of trade rights to various South American countries in exchange for cooperation in the war on drugs. He’s concerned that allowing tuna from other nations duty-free will lead to losses for American Samoa’s main export. Its other major export, however, is doing quite well: football players.

Democrats appear to be the controlling party in American Samoan politics–unsurprising, considering the nature of the economy there. It will be interesting to see whether the tension between this liberal economic philosophy and the social conservatism and patriotism of the islanders will ever lead to gains by the Republican party there.

ANALYSIS: A small island nation, especially when somewhat a part of the United States, is a lot like a small town. This has both good points and bad ones. The bad ones include the corruption that appears to permeate the government there. This is very often a problem in small towns, and the free wads of cash the US Government hands out can’t help matters any.

All this stems from the modernisation project of the 1960’s. It’s no wonder that it’s caused problems. I can’t think of a worse time in US history for it to carry out a modernisation project than the 1960’s, except maybe the 1970’s. Or the 30’s. Or any time when the power of the state was seen as an inescapably benevolent entity. (It’s not.)

On the other hand, some sort of modernisation project was certainly needed. Most online sources for American Samoa are from travel guides, which unsurprisingly tow the standard leftist line about cultural imperialism and blah blah blah. I say unsurprising because the leftist take on these sorts of things is nearly indistinguishable from that of a tourist who expects to see natives in grass huts and grass shirts with grass medicine and grass roads, though they certainly would never want to live there themselves. American Samoa is decidedly more comfortable with roads, television and modern medicine than it was without.

On the other hand, all the modernisation process managed to do, thanks to the socialist-lite nature of it, was bring it to a progess plateau and leave it there. It would take a lot of work for it to change this, which is apparently beginning, but real change would be decidedly uncomfortable–and I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon. It’s hard to get to worked up about this, though, when there are only 65,000 people involved. But if this latent socialism is leading to more crime, which it may be, then perhaps its more urgent than I think.

But for all the pessimism I’ve brought up, American Samoa is still decidedly American, and proud to be so. And that simple truth carries a hope and a confidence that, whatever its problems, American Samoa will remain a wonderful, comfortable, place.

LINKS: No country report this time, but this is the first, and possibly only, country to be featured here with its own US Representative. As I mentioned, most of the information available about American Samoa is from travel sites such as Lonely Planet , Yahoo Travel and Frommer’s. Lonely Planet’s history section is the most thorough, but also the most blatantly slanted towards wealthy New England liberals. To keep up to date on Samoan news, Samoa News is the best bet, and the other Samoa’s Samoan Observer has some American Samoa news as well. One of my favorite sites I found was that of the American Samoa Historic Preservation Office, which has a synopsis of the area’s history slightly more archaeological, and generally better, than any of the travel sites’. The government site is fairly useful, especially the historical calendar, though I wish it were arranged by year rather than by day. SamoaNet has some great resources, especially a lot of photos. The national park in Samoa has a good page, and if you’re interested in the ecology of the islands, they have a great book online about it. Here’s a decidedly annoying, but possibly useful page, and lots of other stuff can be found in Google’s directory.

Well, there’s American Samoa for you. A lot of stuff on such a little place. I think this just emphasizes how decidedly incomplete anything I do on larger countries is. But the goal of each of these synopses is not to be an expert on any of these places, but to be able to converse intelligently about them–which I will hopefully soon be able to do about Andorra–also very small.

Algeria, through most of its history, has been a repository for the worst governments and governing philosophies on the planet. This penchant for being ruled by the bloodthirsty, the tyrannical, the inept or the French makes any hopes for a stable, peaceful?let alone democratic?future remarkably dim, though not entirely nonexistent. Unlike Albania and Afghanistan, Algeria hasn?t even begun looking down the long hard road towards that sort of thing, but that?s not to say it can?t, someday.

HISTORY: Being in Africa, Algeria has been populated for longer than most of the rest of the world. There is evidence of people living there as far back as 200,000 BC, and cave paintings depict a fairly vibrant Neolithic culture living here around 6000 BC, when the climate of the Sahara was very different, and filled with lots of tasty large herbivores that made for good eatin? and easy huntin?. Eventually the various peoples who lived in the area formed the people now known as the Berbers, who have spent most of the rest of their time on earth being oppressed or marginalized by one group or another.

The first of these groups was the Carthaginians, originally Phoenician sailors who set up shop on the shores of the Mediterranean around 800 BC. They gained power rapidly, eventually becoming the mightiest in the area, in large part thanks to their largely Berber-conscript army. But after losing the first Punic War to upstart Rome, and failing to pay those conscripts, many Berbers rebelled and gained a large amount of independence. In modern-day Algeria, then called Numidia, two main kingdoms emerged. These kingdoms had their peak when united under Masinissa, who teamed up with Rome (and especially with Scipio Africanus) to batter Carthage some more.

A while after Masinissa?s death in 148 BC, Rome took over the whole of North Africa, which became the ?granary of the empire.? Christianity came to the region in the second century, and it eventually produced St Augustine of Hippo, the greatest Christian writer of the first millennium, after the authors of the Bible itself. He was the main critics of the Donatists, predominately North African heretics who held that a sacrament was invalid if it came from a priest who had caved to the persecution under Diocletian.

Augustine lived at the tail end of Roman dominance over the region, dying in 430 during the siege of Hippo by the Vandals, the unkindliest sort of Arian barbarians, led by King Gaiseric. They persecuted orthodox Christians terribly (I wrote a term paper on the subject, so I could go on about it at length?but I won?t) until they themselves were booted out of the region in 533 by Justinian.

The Byzantines, however, did not run the area very well either, and before long they were being replaced by the Arabs. The encroachment began in 642, and by 711, the Umayyad Caliphate had converted a great many Berbers to Islam and conquered the whole of North Africa. This led to a long and very confusing period of time being ruled and fought over by various Islamic caliphates and related sects. The eastern part tended to come under the control of dynasties centered in Tunisia, such as the Aghlabids and the Zayanids, while the west fell under the sway of Morocco-based powers such as the Almoravids and the Almohads. The Fatimid dynasty, based out of Algeria, began their rise to power in the 10th century.

Come the 15th century, the Europeans struck back at what looked, from the outside, like a Muslim monolith that had been pressing it from both sides. They forced them out of Spain in 1492, and then in the early 16th century began taking cities on the Algerian coast. All this happened as the better crafted European ships began taking control of Mediterranean waters from the Arabs. This led to an explosion of piracy among the coastal Muslims, which in turn led to Ottoman control over the region, as Algerians appealed to pirates (including Khair ad Din, better known as Barbarossa) for help against the Spanish, and they in turn received help from the Ottomans, who wrested control of the region from Spain by the mid 16th century.

Piracy continued, and European states tended to content themselves with paying the tribute demanded by the various pirating states of North Africa. Once the United States was independent of England, however, they had to pay their own way?this took 20% of the American revenues in 1800. During this time Europe was distracted by a fellow named Napoleon, but once peace was made in 1815, much of Europe turned its attention to the pirates. America did as well, Commodore Stephen Decatur heading out with a mosquito fleet of 10 ships that captured several corsairs and took the harbor at Algiers, leaving after forcing the dey there to agree to a favorable treaty. This treaty was quickly repudiated, but the next year an English and Dutch fleet pounded the city into submission, forcing them to agree to the first treaty and to cease enslaving Christians.

Soon after, the French entered the scene, and things truly started to go badly. In 1827 France was in between bloody revolutions, and king Charles X was antsy to do something that would make him popular, so as not to lose his head. When the dey of Algiers struck the French Consul with a flywhisk during mundane financial negotiations, the opportunity presented itself. After the dey refused for three years to apologize, France invaded in 1830, raping, pillaging and desecrating their way through the city in a three-week campaign. Despite his best efforts, this did not make Charles any more popular, and he was deposed quickly afterwards by Louis Philippe.

Philippe did not particularly want Algeria, but neither did he want to sully “national prestige,” and the latter desire won out, of course. Algeria was made a colony and ruled badly for the next 130 years. About 109,000 Europeans, known as colons, poured into Algeria, eager to snap up all the cheap land and power that was suddenly available, and proceeded to make an utter nuisance of themselves for as long as they were there. Their policies were so ineffective that by the 1870’s, even Algerian leaders who had been sympathetic towards them and drawn to western values and culture had become their enemies. The colons, 2 million of them by 1892, ruled the area, made the most money, paid the least taxes and only communicated with the 4 million native Algerians by way of Arab yes-men, avoiding talk with the well educated younger Algerians who were beginning to foment Algerian nationalism.

Many of these évolués formed the Young Algerians, a group which pushed for reform from 1892 onward, and was somewhat (but not very successful). Many reforms were undergone after the first World War as a reward to Muslims who had fought for France. In 1926, calls for independence began, coming from essentially two different standpoints?one looking to France for guidance, exemplified by Ferhat Abbas and Messali Hadj, and another specifically decrying that standpoint, exemplified by Ben Badis. The colons, however, were hearing none of it, even when French socialists such as Léon Blum and Maurice Viollette began getting involved. The failure of their work swung many Algerians?including Abbas?towards a more Islamic, less French-friendly status

Then came World War II. Algeria came under Vichy control until being liberated by the Allies in Operation Torch in 1942. The colons had been rather friendly with the Vichy regime, and didn?t take kindly to the rolling back of Vichy laws once De Gaulle?s Free French government set up shop in Algeria. As the war neared an end, Algerians such as Abbas began pushing hard for no mere reforms, but full independence, and colons resisted mightily. This tension snapped on V-E day, when Algerian demonstrations exploded into violence against colons, and the government responded with even more right back. Things calmed down for a few years and simmered until 1954, when the recently formed National Liberation Front (FLN), a group that drew many aspects of the nationalist movement together, launched a series of attacks on government and military targets that dipped the country into revolution lite. Not until the massacre of civilians at Phillipeville in 1955 was the country truly plunged into a true and bloody revolution.

With Algerian rebels on one side and incredibly recalcitrant French colons on the other, all French peace efforts failed miserably, and each side in the war behaved terribly. Not until a military coup in France in 1958 that put De Gaulle in power did things even begin to look up. De Gaulle began moving slowly towards some sort of Algerian self-determination?but this resulted in the formation of the Secret Army Organization (OAS), a colon terrorist group. Both OAS and FLN worked against De Gaulle?s efforts for peace. Nonetheless, in July of 1962, Algeria was declared independent after a near unanimous referendum, and peace came to Algeria, or something to that effect.

After a bit of upheaval and infighting, Ahmed Ben Bella came to power as the first President of Algeria, which he envisioned as a socialist republic. In 1965, he was forced out by a bloodless coup and replaced by Defense Minister Houari Boumedienne?also a socialist. Things didn?t appear to go too badly under him?but under his successor, Chadli Bendjedid, who took power in 1978, things started to go more poorly, as socialism began to crumble and Islamic fundamentalism began to emerge as a force. These two problems together led to massive electoral gains by the fundamentalist party the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which FLN, the ruling party, responded to by invalidating the elections. FIS responded with violence, and so Algeria came into its own civil war.

This war went on until 1999 when Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected president, and the FIS renounced its armed struggle. Sporadic fighting continues, but the worst appears to be over.

CURRENTLY: Sporadic fighting is still fighting, and still kills people. This map shows where recent fighting has been, much of it instigated by the rebels of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA).

Also in the news, and related, have been the 32 European tourists kidnapped by one or more of the many Islamic extremist groups such as the GIA. 17 of the hostages were freed last month, and there were reports that the other 15 were freed recently, but those turned out to be untrue, and they are still captive. Instapundit was following this story for a while, but appears to have stopped recently

This may be in part because Algeria has been rocked by chaos of another kind quite recently, as a magnitude 6.8 earthquake killed over 2,000 people on May 21. One would think that this might take the country?s mind off of its other problems, but instead it has served to highlight them.

ANALYSIS: Algeria has been hit with some of the worst governments and movements in the history of governments and movements?Vandals, pirates, French colonialism, French-style socialism, Islamic extremism, terrorism and standard despotism, the list is pretty harsh. And there is no reason right now to think that the Algerian people have any desire to move into any sort of responsible governmental system. They certainly aren?t content with the way things are currently, but considering that their recent history has been a battle between the two most effective responsibility-shifting devices known to man (socialism and Islamic extremism), true democracy seems a long, long way away, if even on the map.

If the much hoped-for domino effect of Arab democracy does indeed occur, Algeria will almost certainly be one of the last to fall?again, if it falls at all. There has been enough western influence in Algeria for the nation to consider itself somehow different than other, more backwards Arab states, to have already taken what it wants from Western life, but the problem is that the only part of the West that Algeria has had any real influence from is France. And France, quite frankly, doesn?t count. Learning about French behavior in Algeria has made me lose even more respect for France than its behavior surrounding Iraq, something I thought impossible.

But Algeria can?t simply blame France and be done with it. What it needs to do is nearly impossible?reject the two paradigms that have been battling over it for so long and move towards a paradigm that has never been a part of its history?that of individual liberty and responsibility, of democracy and secular, limited government. I am skeptical as to whether a Muslim nation can manage that massive of a switch?Algeria, I?d say, has farther to go than either Iraq or Afghanistan, which I am more optimistic about. Unlike Algeria, they have each undergone widespread totalitarian oppression, something which, I hope and pray, makes them more receptive to the idea of freedom. Algeria has not, and so is not. But unless freedom becomes a guiding principle there, Algeria will continue to be a magnet for the truly terrible aspects of this world.

LINKS: Again, the Library of Congress has a wonderful country study on Algeria, though it could use some updating. Infoplease has a good overview of its history as well, as does this page. For current events, the Algeria Interface is hard to beat, and allafrica.com has a good Algeria page as well. Algeria.com is a handy site, and the Discussions section provides some unique perspectives, even if they tend to focus on Morocco and Iraq more than Algeria.

Sorry this one has been so long in coming–not only was May overly busy, but I knew pretty much nothing about Algeria after Byzantium, and so had a very weak starting point. And it’s looking like I may be heading out to the Internet-less realm of summer camp this summer, which means that the next one may be even longer in coming. Though the next two are American Samoa and Andorra, so they may go a good deal quicker. We can hope, anyway–which is just about all we can do for Algeria, coincidentally.

Albania is among the unluckiest countries in Europe, and while things appear to be on the rebound for the tiny, bedraggled nation, I would hardly want to be foolishly optimistic. They are, however at a point not disimilar to where I described Afghanistan as being–that is to say, somewhere in the midst of the long, unending crawl towards true freedom. It’s got a lot of detours and backtracks, but I think they’ll both make it, one day.

HISTORY: Albanians are pretty well convinced that they came from the ancient Illyrians, and they’re most likely right. Being descended from the Illyrians seems like a pretty good gig. They showed up in Albania around 2000 BC and their first known king, Hyllus (the Star) died in 1225 B.C, were good at metalworking and at fighting each other and others. The Illyrians were pretty dominant over the area by the fourth century BC, under Bardhylus (White Star) which is when attacks from Alexander the Great’s father, Phillip of Macedon, started attacking it, which sent the region into a decline that, really, it hasn’t recovered from. A couple hundred years later, after being conquered and recovering from Alexander himself, Illyrian queen Teuta provoked Rome into attacking. In 165 BC, they had knocked off the last Illyrian king, Gentius, and by AD 9, the Romans had wrested control of the area from the various Illyrian tribes, and began the long tradition of splitting up the area of Albania into little bits. This continues, to an extent, to this very day.

Life wasn’t too bad under Roman rule, though, as the Romans built aquaducts and cultural centers like Appollonia in Illyria, and the Illyrians provided some of the best soldiers–and eventually, Emperors, including Diocletian, Constantine and Justinian–that the empire had. During this time, Illyria also had the distinction of having Christianity brought by the Apostle Paul himself, and a bishopric was established there in AD 58.

When the Empire split in 395, Illyria went with the East politically, but the West religiously, switching over to religious Byzantium in 732, and eventually splitting north/south between Catholics and Orthodox when the churches officially split. The 5th century was a rip-roaring good time of barbarian invasions of the Roman empire, and Illyria was no exception. Most of the area got assimilated by the invaders–first the Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Huns, and then, and most emphatically, the Slavs. Albania, however, remained more or less distinct, though hardly unaffected.

From that point until the present, the history of Albania has been one of social and cultural independence combined with relatively constant political dependance on a more powerful nation. The march began with Byzantium, then the Bulgars, then Norman crusaders, Angevins, Serbs, Venetians, and eventually the Turks, who conquered the region in 1430. However! They were beaten back by the Albanians. The resistance was led by their national hero Skanderberg, a tribe leader who had originally submitted to the Turks and converted to Islam, but later converted to Catholicism and turned on them after tricking a Turkish pasha into giving him his family fortress back. He held off the Ottomans for 25 years until his death in 1468–his family flag is Albania’s national flag to this day, and he served as a focal point for Albanian nationalism from the day he converted to Catholicism to today.

After Skanderberg’s death, the Ottomans did prevail, and ruled Albania–more or less, as the region, especially the mountainous areas, was always a pain to fully control–right up to the beginning of the 20th century. Though most Albanians did (eventually) convert to Islam, in name at least, the national and ethnic ties almost always prevailed over religious ones, much to the chagrin of the Ottomans.

Speaking of ethnic ties, Albania is divided into two different tribal groups, the Ghegs and the Tosks. The Ghegs live in the north, in the rugged areas north of the Shkumbin river, and tend to be more isolated than the southern Tosks. The Tosks have been more likely to be more assimilated by whatever power is in control of Albania at the time–which means they tend to be more powerful. The Gegs, on the other hand, are more tribal, traditional and primitive than their southern brethren, some still following the 14th Century tribal Code of Lek (with even more ancient roots).

Much like in the Roman empire, Albanians had a knack for coming to power in the Ottoman one–over two dozen Ottoman Grand Viziers being of Albanian origin. This did not prevent the Ottoman Empire from becoming the Sick Man of Europe in the 19th century, which prompted the people of the Balkans to begin making moves towards their own independence. The Albanian League was founded in 1878, with that goal in mind. Things didn’t quite work out for a while. Though Albanians fought a war against the TUrks from 1910-12, which they won, more or less, and to prevent their neighbors (Serbs, Montenegrins and Greeks) from taking it apart, they declared independence, and, with the support of the European Great Powers–who also plopped a German prince on the throne. His reign was swiftly torn apart from all sides, just in time for WWI.

The war had the unfortunate and common effect of tearing Albania into little pieces–pieces that were put back together thanks only to the intervention of the USA. Though independent, it was still tusseled over by the Serbs (Now via Yugoslavia), Italians and Greeks. They were kept at bay for a while by America, during which time the Albanians formed enough of a political system to see a man come to power who in 1928 declared himself “King Zog.” Yes, “King Zog.”

Zog was generally autocratic, disliked, and tended to be dominated by Italy, though not always. He certainly was dominated by Italy in 1939, when Mussolini (not to be outdone by Hitler’s annexation of Austria) invaded Albania. An Albanian resistance of both Communists and Nationalists fought the Italians until 1943, when Germany took over for the Italians, at which point they fought each other and the Germans. The communists, organized and backed by Yugoslavia’s Tito, won, leading eventually to a 40 year rule by Enver Hoxha once the war was over.

Hoxha was an odd duck, a sort of mirror universe version of Ceacesceau who died at a much more convenient time (1985) and place (off camera). He continued the Albanian tradition of social independence with political domination by various nations. Albania was under Yugoslavian dominance for a while, until Tito pressed for full control. Soon afterwards, Stalin and Tito parted ways, and Hoxha suddenly bent his knee to the USSR insteadbecame an ardent Stalinist. No, seriously, he did, copying Stalin’s brutal ways and ditching the Soviet Union for China once it repudiated Stalinism, and ditching China for independence once it strayed from strict Maoism.

It was under his successor, Ramiz Alia, that Albania, the last bastion of Stalinism, fell to democracy. It has been a bumpy ride since then. Albania has always been one of the poorest countries in Europe, and typically the poorest. Though Hoxha brought it up to speed a bit, Communism has never been conducive to real modernization (and Marx would have shuddered at the thought of such a backwards nation diving straight into Communism from a tribal state). It continued to be true through the 1990’s–as did many of the tribal aspects.

One of the wierder aspects of recent Albanian history is the single handed social, political and economic mauling the nation was given by, of all things, pyramid schemes–indicative of a nation that hasn’t quite figured out capitalism completely. In 1997, the Socialist party took power, and has not relinquished it yet. The trouble in Kosovo both resulted in an influx of refugees and a deep love for America, for relieving the problem.

CURRENTLY: Albania is still Europe’s poorest country, stuck with a corrupt government, an often tribal mentality, and widespread organized crime, but it is making strides towards success. Albanian terrorists, however, both inside Albania and outside of it continue to cause problems.

Organized crime is probably the main problem in Albania right now–it’t a sad proof of man’s fallen nature that criminals are consistently quicker at organizing themselves than democracies. Smuggling of children, women, drugs and other commodities. The government claims to be making strides against it, but it’s difficult to tell for sure.
Albania is also one of America’s number one fans, mostly due to America’s intervention in Kosovo. While most of Europe is latching onto the Euro, Albania is holding tight to the dollar as its currency of choice, and Albania was one of the first nations to declare its unqualified support for America in Iraq, militarily and otherwise, and their troops have recently headed to the region, and Albanian companies have been invited to take part in the reconstruction project.

ANALYSIS: Like I said, Albania’s in the middle of a long crawl towards freedom–but the path isn’t very well marked out, and it’s easy to start going in self-destructive circles. It wouldn’t surprise me if, in thirty years, Albania looks very much like it does today. On the other hand, it wouldn’t surprise me if, in thirty years, Albania is one of the more successful nations in all of Europe. It’s the only European nation with a replacement birthrate, and more committed to America than Britain is. That may not all be roses and ice cream, though.

While the accusations of some, mainly on the left, that the Eastern European participation in the Pro-America “Gang of Eight” and “Vilnius Ten” (of which Albania was a part) was nothing more than a case of “once a puppet nation, always a puppet nation” were vile, despicable and reprehensible, they have something of a ring of truth when it comes to Albania, for unique reasons. As I said before, Albania has a history, going back to the Byzantine Empire, of being politically dominated by different foreign powers, often in a fairly short space of time, while maintaining a surprising cultural independence. In the 20th century, Albania was under the influence of the Ottoman Empire, Italy, Germany (for a couple years), Yugoslavia, Russia, China and, to a much more limited extent, the USA.

But then again, that’s not such a bad idea–after all, they’re finally backing the right horse. And beyond that, the difference this time around is that “they” means the people of Albania, not the ruling elite. For the first time, the Albanian people have chose their “Big Brother” nation, to an extent unheard of in their history, and to an extent unheard of even in surrounding Americo-phillic Eastern European nations. So, there’s a definite bright side there. Plus, though Albania is predominantly Muslim, they seem unlikely to be influenced by radical Islamicists–despite Al Quaeda types popping up in Kosovo–due to their fierce loyalty to Albania and Albanians, whatever their religion. Heck, they’re a mainly Muslim nation whose national hero is a Catholic who killed Turks–not exactly fertile ground for jihad.

These good points shouldn’t be overstated, though. America’s competition for influence is, of course the European Union, which is also one of the few forces for reform in the nation. I don’t trust the EU any farther than I can throw it, however, and suspect that it’s a double edged sword that threatens to turn Albania into Europe’s version of the Reconstruction-era South, without the legitimate excuse of, you know, slavery or a war. Yet, the American style of doing things tends to be more conducive to organized crime, and so I worry that the good-hearted reformers in Albania will eventually flee into the waiting arms (that is to say, gaping maw) of the EU. I may be overemphasizing that danger, though, as I hope any Franco-German plans for EU domination and subjugation are gone with the hot, sandy winds of Iraqi Freedom.

So, Albania is at something of a crossroads too–though it’s more like a vast plain in which every step is a crossroads–the road has been overgrown from lack of traffic, and there are too many well-worn paths that would be more tempting if they weren’t made by lemmings tumbling off of cliffs. I hope they’ll make it, though–and think they will, though it may be a very long trip, and the end certainly won’t be perfect (it likely won’t even be the end).

LINKS: The Russian and Eastern European Network Information Center at the University of Texas has a great page of Albania links with more than I could provide here. Transitions Online is a good source for Albanian, and other Balkan news, and the Rule of Law Through Technology page has good resources, including a great summation of Albanian history, as does Infoplease, unsurprisingly. One of the coolest web resources is the Library of Congress’ Country Study on Albania, which is a veritable gold mine, albeit eleven years old.

Well, two down. This one’s a good deal longer than the one before, probably because there is a good deal more known about Albania pre-1800 than there is about Afghanistan. I’m really starting to enjoy this stuff, even if it takes obscenely long to get one of these put together. When else do you get to learn about a man named “King Zog?” I’d also like to suggest the book Albania: A Modern History by Miranda Vickers, a book I probably won’t actually finish, but that gives a remarkably thorough story of the hard-luck Albanian people.

Next up: Algeria!

I find it ironic that the first nation to be profiled in this new series, in part designed to teach myself–and you, dear reader–about nations Americans know little about, is Afghanistan. In one sense, this makes it easier, because I already know a fair amount about the current situation. On the other hand, there’s so much out there at the moment that it can be difficult to filter out what is important and what is not. But Afghanistan is a shining example of how an otherwise obscure nation can suddenly take the center of the world stage, and one of the reasons we should be aware of all of them, and so it is very appropriate to begin with it.

I’m going to be splitting these up into four sections, all of them rather limited–history, current events, analysis and links. If there’s something else I should cover, or something I miss even within these sections, please let me know.

HISTORY: The BBC came out with a profile on Afghanistan last year, calling it a “cultural crossroads.” The thing about crossroads is that, though people go through them, no one really wants to stay there–much like North Dakota. Afghanistan has historically been very similar. This is not a bad thing all the way around, however. This tends to mean that the people who go through (Darius the Persian, conquering, Alexander the Great on his own conquering binge, Buddhists going down the Silk Road, and conquering, the Muslims, conquering, the Mongols, obviously conquering, and the Persians again), they tend to leave lots of interesting things behind, and no one comes around to destroy them or replace them for a while. For example, the Kunduz Hoard, the Begram treasure, the Bactrian gold, various minarets from the 11th and 12th centuries, the ancient Minar-e Chakri Bhuddist pillar, and the massive, impressive Bamiyan Buddhas. The latter two were destroyed during the Taliban’s rule. While collecting these remarkable relics (most of which are destroyed or looted now, I’m afraid), Afghanistan has alternated between periods of independence (sometimes with some conquering of its own), and being conquered by whoever happened to be trying to get to the other side at the time.

The first Europeans to conquer Afghanistan after Alexander were the British in 1839–their preferred method of conquering being setting up a friendly face in the throne and leaving behind “advisors,” as in Egypt. Most Afghans didn’t take too kindly to this, and the rest of the century was marked by various insurrections and battles between the two. Eventually, Russia started making them both nervous, and so the 1907 Anglo-Russian agreement gave Afghanistan its independence, more or less. After WWI, which it did not take part in, Afghanistan invaded India, and in return gained its full independence. From then until the 1970’s, things were fairly stable outside of the bloody years from 1929-1933 in which four different men ruled the nation.

Things started going badly in 1970’s with a horrible drought, then a military coup in 1973. This was followed by a Marxist coup in 1978. The next year, a less-orthodox Marxist coup took place, and the Soviet Union responded to the instability by invading. Again, the Afghans did not take kindly to this, and so ensued the Afghanistan war from 1979-89, which pitted US-Saudi Arabia-Pakistan-And Others backed Islamic mujahadin fighters against the USSR and the USSR backed government. This ended in 1989 the same time that lots of other Soviet things were beginning to end, leading to a long period of dominance by various warlords. Eventually, backed by “foreign sponsors” the fundamentalist Taliban rose to the top of the warlord heap. By 2000 they controlled 85-90% of the country. Then, in 2001… well, we all know what happened in 2001.

After the Taliban were routed, Afhgan leaders signed the Bonn Agreement , setting up Hamid Karzai as Chairman of the Afghan Interim Authority, and making plans for the Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) that selected him as the President of the Transitional Islamic Republic of Afghanistgan. In that same vote in June of 2002, they also mandated that there be a constitution by the end of 2003 and elections by 2004.

CURRENTLY: There is much going on in Afghanistan right now, and the country is at a crucial point. The warlords appear to, not unexpectedly, expect a return to the pre-Taliban days of warlordism–not something desired by most of the country, nor by the government. American military is still there, fighting the remnants of the Taliban–who executed a Red Cross worker recently–and their supporters, whom critics claim are restructuring. General Franks was there today, reminding the troops that they are not forgotten, and asserting that the mop up work there is just that–mop up work, and that the Taliban is not regrouping in any real sense, and that things are getting better, rather than worse. This is in response to many critics of the way things have gone in Afghanistan, some even claiming that it was a military failure. This has generally been the province of the far left and other reflexively anti-American voices, but criticism of the governments policies came yesterday from a less expected source. Jack Kemp, former congressman, vice-presidential candidate and now co-director of Empower America, Mahmood Karzai, businessman, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and founder of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce, and Hamed Wardak, vice president of the chamber, in an article for the Washington post, criticized the administration’s overly friendly manner with the warlords who are enjoying the early ’90s feeling in the Afghan air, and urged that it “aggressively align itself with Karzai” as he works to disarm the warlords, and warning that continued appeasement will alienate Afghan citizens and lead to resentment of America there.

Connected to the warlords, Afghanistan is once again the world’s main source for opium, an industry controlled by “domestic warlords and international crime syndicates,” despite Karzai’s ban on opium-poppy production. Also connected, but in a more positive way, is the rebuilding of the Afghan army is underway, and Karzai has made it a priority. Also good news is that, as part of the Afghan push to catch up with the rest of the world in technology, 11 men and 6 women have just graduated from Kabul University’s Networking Academy, jointly launched by the United Nations Development Program and America’s Cisco Systems.

ANALYSIS: Those who are talking loudly about the “failure” in Afghanistan are talking loudly about it in a manner that seems far too pleased with themselves, and the people doing it are the very people who would be expected to say that it was a failure, regardless of what happened. No, things aren’t perfect in Afghanistan–it’s only been just over a year since the liberation, which is, in the grand scheme of things, not a very long time at all. Things can hardly expect to be perfected overnight. In addition, those who are criticizing the US most strongly can’t seem to decide whether they are doing too much or too little–just as they are doing regarding Iraq. It seems that no stick is too good to beat the US with. Whether or not the Taliban is regrouping or not is a small matter–they will certainly not be able to support large scale terrorist activities again, not for a long, long time, even if left completely alone. They are now just another group of mercenaries under a warlord. People also make a big deal out of the fact that we haven’t found Bin Laden or Mullah Omar. To that I say, with all seriousness and professionalism, whoop-dee freaking doo. I happen to think they’re dead. But if not, they no longer have their playground, and they can’t step into the daylight. Even if they’re alive, they will never, ever be able to operate at full capacity. Bin Laden may be able to cheerlead via audiotape, but that’s about it.

But that has to do with America–for Afghanistan, the Taliban and all the other warlord factions are definite problems, and I can’t help but agree with Karzai, Wardak and Kemp. The US needs to support democracy in Afghanistan as well as Iraq, and right now Karzai is working for it, and the warlords certainly aren’t. Now, I think the Administration realizes that an early 1990’s version of Afghanistan is the second worst version, because it leads to a late 1990’s version. But they need to act more quickly, cut the bonds with the warlords, and “unambiguously” throw their weight behind Karzai. Something also needs to be done about the poppy problem–not only is it a major source of funds for destabilizing factors, it is also a living for many Afghans, and something needs to replace it. I’m not sure what that is, but I would personally suggest that a partnership between Afghanistan and biotech companies, similar to the one in Africa.

But I think things are going as well as they can be expected. There hasn’t been real stability for 30 years–even Iraq has had stability. This is going to make everything very difficult. But good things are beginning to happen. The question is, will the Afghan people have the patience for it?

LINKS: Aside from the links above, more Afghanistan information can be found at Afghan Daily for news of interest in Afghanistan, and Eurasianet.org has a very good Afghanistan page with all sorts of links and features. The Afghan Government page, though it’s impossible to tell if it’s official or not, has good resources as well. And lastly, this personal page has a more throrough listing of links than I have found anywhere, or could possibly put together myself. Everything from the Kabul chess club to the Voice of Afghanistan radio station. It’s really impressive. UPDATE: I forgot this Infoplease.com site, with a good overview of Afghan history. UPDATE 2: Afghans for Civil Society looks like an amazing organization seeking to build democracy in Afghanistan.

So, that’s my mini-research paper on Afghanistan. One down, lots more to go–I have no idea how many. It’s a long way to Zimbabwe, but I think I’ll make it. Hopefully by the time I do, Mugabe will be gone… but that’s a different post entirely.

The title of this blog could well be the title for a remarkably liberal new world order type. I, if you have read much of anything I have written here, am not that at all. The title comes from G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. In the chapter whose name I have obsconded with, Chesterton lays out that he is neither an pessimist–which was obvious to anyone who has read anything he has written–nor an optimist–though he may seem so. But, he wrote, his “acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty.” And he then goes on to write what I have quoted over to the left, and more.

“The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more. All optimistic thoughts about England and all pessimistic thoughts about her are alike reasons for the English patriot. Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike arguments for the cosmic patriot.”

And this is very much how I see the world. This is my world, just as America is my country, my brother is my brother, my father is my father and my mother is my mother. I did not choose any of these, yet I love each of them deeply because of their connection to me, and yet my love for them is not a passive acceptance of all that they are and do, but a deep desire to see them be better and greater than they are.

And so, in the case of Iraq, I love Iraq because it’s the only Iraq I’ve got–and I love Trinidad and Tobago because it’s the only Trinidad and Tobago I’ve got. I want to see them each grow to be better and greater than they are today. “Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her,” he also says.

But to truly love these places, these people, these nations, I really ought to know about them. Which brings me to my purpose here–this blog’s main purpose has been stated as discussing the things going on in the world that people should be paying more attention to. The fact that everyone is paying attention to the war in Iraq does not discount the fact that everyone should really be paying more attention to it. However, it does mean that many of us have not been paying very much attention to the rest of the world. And so, today, I plan to start an ongoing Flag of the World series on the nations of the world, in alphabetical order. I hope to start tonight with the first in the list, Afghanistan.

UPDATE: I should mention here that the flags I will use are, mostly, courtesy of ITA’s
Flags of All Countries and used with permission.