It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, July 12, 2022
Christian groups in Turkey may elect leaders after eight-year hiatus
Jul 12 2022
Turkey last month granted permisssion to Christian churches in the country to elect leaders and board members for the first time in eight years as part of a long-awaited regulation update for non-Muslim foundations, persecution.org reported on Monday.
The new regulation paves the for 167 community foundations, including 77 Greek foundations, 54 Armenian foundations, and 19 Jewish foundations, to select their own board and hold elections every five years, it said.
The Turkish government in 2013 suspended the board elections of minority foundations, and they have been unable to hold elections again since.
Turkey designates non-Muslims as minorities in line with the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, with the state maintaining a decisive role in the elections of non-Muslim foundations as compared to the board elections of other foundations in the country, such as mandatory approval by the General Directorate of Foundations.
Turkey’s most recent regulations went into effect on June 17, the site said, giving Christian ministries and churches back some of their ability to act and carry out the needs of the minority groups.
However, the regulations still pose restrictions, including the requirement that elections for new board members be held in the city where the foundation is located, enforcing the same protocols placed on electoral constituencies as in parliamentary elections.
Turkey is home to approximately 90,000 Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Christians , 25,000 Roman Catholics, and 12,000-16,000 Jews and other minority groups, including 25,000 Syrian Orthodox Christians, 15,000 Russian Orthodox Christians and 10,000 Baha’is, according to the 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom published by the U.S. Department of State.
Millions face severe hunger worldwide, Red Cross warns
Russia-Ukraine war contributes to sharp increase in fuel, fertilizer, food prices, says International Committee of the Red Cross
Peter Kenny |12.07.2022
FILE PHOTO ( Arif Hüdaverdi Yaman - Anadolu Agency )
GENEVA
The International Red Cross on Tuesday warned that millions of people are at risk of severe hunger in the coming months as extreme poverty, inequality, and food insecurity rose, particularly in parts of Africa and the Middle East.
"The conflict in Ukraine has contributed to a sharp increase in fuel, fertilizer, and food prices, squeezing household budgets and forcing families to make impossible choices every day," said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Despite repeated calls from humanitarian actors, there is still no large-scale solution to alleviate the pressure the war in Ukraine is creating on populations highly dependent on grain exports from Russia and Ukraine.
"We face an urgent and rapidly deteriorating global food security situation, especially in parts of Africa and the Middle East," said Robert Mardini, the ICRC director-general.
"Armed conflict, political instability, climate shocks and the secondary impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have weakened capacities to withstand and recover from shocks."
Mardini said the effects of the armed conflict in Ukraine have made an already critical situation even worse.
"The situation is urgent, and the window of time left to act is narrowing. Without concerted and collaborative efforts, (these) risks (are) becoming an irreversible humanitarian crisis with an unimaginable human cost," the Red Cross chief said.
Severe food insecurity
Patrick Youssef, ICRC's regional director for Africa, told journalists at a UN press conference that more than 340 million people on the continent, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, are in severe situations of food insecurity.
"In our own experiences at the ICRC, our teams on the ground are clearly saying that conflict and armed violence remains one of the main drivers of food insecurity," said Youssef.
The consequences are felt more in countries already facing humanitarian crises and torn apart by decades of warfare or instability – including Syria, Yemen, Mali, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Afghanistan.
The Red Cross said that the world could expect to see more images of underfed children in the coming weeks, as children are disproportionately affected by food crises.
"Cereal prices in Africa have surged because of the slump in exports from Ukraine, sharpening the impact of conflict and climate change," said the ICRC.
Russia and Ukraine constitute 25% of the world's production of wheat and grains, while around 85% of Africa's wheat supplies are imported.
Political prisoners in Erdoğan‘s Turkey
Accusations of terrorism. Arbitrary arrests. Detention. These traumatic experiences have been experienced by German citizens in Turkey time and again. How do these ordeals impact the lives of those affected
Meşale Tolu, Hozan Canê, Gönül Dilan Örs. Each of these three women are German citizens who spent many months in Turkish custody or under house arrest, cut off from life in Germany. Cases like theirs strained the already difficult German-Turkish relationship, especially in the years leading up to 2020. Were they human bargaining chips for the Turkish president, to be deployed in his battles with political opponents at home and abroad? The former German ambassador in Ankara, Martin Erdmann, maintained regular contact with some of the most prominent German political prisoners in Turkey: Deniz Yücel, Peter Steudtner and Meşale Tolu. Erdmann says no price was ever named for the Germans in Turkish custody. But they were regularly the subject of political conversations. In sometimes highly contradictory court proceedings, many of those held were gradually released. German journalist Meşale Tolu, who spent eight months in Turkish pre-trial detention for alleged terrorist propaganda and membership of a terrorist organization, finally returned to Germany in 2018. She firmly believes that her case "was politically motivated and was also decided politically." German-Kurdish singer Hozan Canê and her daughter, Cologne-based social scientist Gönül Dilan Örs, were also detained in Turkey for years; they too were accused of supporting terrorism. Gönül Dilan Örs and her mother have since returned to Germany and are trying to resume their old lives. But dozens of other Germans are still being held in Turkey. Detained in a country where judges pass political sentences - according to the will of the president, who wishes to crush opposition in any form. The film shows the effects of these legal proceedings on the lives of those affected. The people interviewed talk about their despair, hopelessness and suicidal thoughts. They describe their longing to return home, and the joy they felt when they were finally back in Germany.
Saudi Arabia does not own the Hajj. It belongs to all Muslims
The first post-pandemic Hajj saw a transformation of this key religious ritual into a weapon of a Saudi nationalist project
A Muslim worshipper prays during the farewell tawaf (circumambulation) in the holy Saudi city of Mecca marking the end of this year's Hajj on 11 July 2022 (AFP)
As the sacred Hajj season comes to a close for the world’s nearly two billion Muslims, and as the Islamic lunar year of 1443 comes to an end, it is time to take stock of the first post-pandemic international Hajj.
This year’s Hajj booking fiasco is yet another illustration of everything that’s wrong with the modern Saudi state and the international order that ensures its political and economic legitimacy.
Saudi Arabia is behaving as though it has a proprietary claim to Islam’s fifth pillar
The annual Hajj pilgrimage represents one of the Five Pillars of Islam that requires financially and physically capable Muslims to make the trip to Mecca once in a lifetime in remembrance of the sacrifices of the Prophet Abraham and his family.
But this year has seen dramatic changes to how Hajj services are made available to international pilgrims in a way that signals the Saudi state’s desire to gain global control over the annual Hajj process.
In doing so, Saudi Arabia is behaving as though it has a proprietary claim to Islam’s fifth pillar.
Weaponising the Hajj
This year, with scarcely four weeks to go before the Hajj, the Saudi Hajj ministry upended the traditional system of using overseas travel agencies which used to organise often carefully tailored Hajj packages with experienced tour guides. In the name of cracking down on fraud, the Saudi government has instituted a centralised system called "Motawif".
This government agency’s work has, in turn, been outsourced to an Indian-owned travel agency with little experience of organising the Hajj. However, as Middle East Eye has uncovered, it does boast links with the Indian prime minister whose ruling party, the BJP, is characterised by its fierce and often deadly hostility towards India’s Muslims.
One may speculate that the fingerprints of the ambitious Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) are visible on this year’s Hajj process.
Given the prince’s reputation for ruthlessly seeking complete control over all arms of the state, it would seem perfectly plausible that he would centralise control over the modern Saudi state’s most unique selling point and reorient the project for his personal gain.
But an ironic consequence of the modern Saudi state’s attempts to control the Hajj with an iron fist is that it is transforming this key religious ritual into a weapon of a Saudi nationalist project.
In the process, the Saudis are effectively claiming complete ownership of the Hajj, rather than recognising their custodial role with respect to the two Holy Mosques which belong to the global Muslim community (ummah) as a whole, and not to any newly established state.
It is worth remembering that Saudi Arabia did not even exist 100 years ago (it was established in 1932), whereas Islam and the Islamic ummah are ideas that can claim the allegiance of Muslims going back nearly 1,500 years.
The Saudis are thereby forcing the modern ideology of nationalism on a core pillar of the Islamic faith and claiming ownership of something that they have no right to, something which transcends the concerns of the Muslims of any single modern state. The need to reform
The Hajj does not belong to any state or individual, notwithstanding the behaviour of modern Saudi authorities. Rather, the Hajj is the joint responsibility of all the world’s Muslims, and it should be administered in a way that is in keeping with the wishes of a majority of them.
The modern Saudi state’s attempts to control the Hajj is transforming a key religious ritual into a weapon in a Saudi nationalist project
The Hajj should be conducted democratically through a consultation of Muslims around the globe.
Elected representatives of Muslims from all the world’s countries should have the means to convey the wishes of their Muslim populations to the rest of the ummah. In this sense, the Hajj is yet another reason why Muslims should seek to bring about representative and consultative forms of government.
The current pathologies of authoritarianism in the Muslim world - even in some purported democracies - illustrate the depths of reform that are necessary to allow Muslim states to be properly representative of their Muslim populations' interests.
It’s unlikely that anything about the Hajj will change in the near term. Saudi Arabia is a recognised unit in the current international order built on the principle of the sovereign nation-state. This is regardless of whether a state has a representative government or is an absolutist autocracy like Saudi Arabia.
Indeed, the world’s dependence on hydrocarbons ensures that states like Saudi Arabia will continue to be enriched and strengthened by the current global order.
Thousands of Muslim pilgrims make their way across the valley of Mina, near Mecca in western Saudi Arabia, to perform the "stoning of the devil" ritual on 9 July 2022 (AFP)
With MBS likely to be the next king, it seems the only option available to people concerned about the Saudi state’s monopolisation of and profiteering from the Hajj is to articulate discontent and put forward imaginative alternatives to the current status quo. 'Reimagining the Hajj'
This, of course, has already been suggested by the leading scholar of the Hajj, Robert Bianchi, who for years has been advocating a reimagining of the Hajj. In that spirit, I would propose reintroducing the once tried, but subsequently abandoned, placing of the management of the Hajj in the hands of an international coalition of Muslim states. Hajj: How a new Saudi-run travel agency failed western 'guests of God' Seán McLoughlinRead More »
As Bianchi notes, this was once a role played by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in partnership with Saudi Arabia in whose lands the Holy Sites happen to be located.
Crucially such an organisation must have mechanisms that limit the pressure brought to bear on it by powerful states like Saudi Arabia. For example, a country like Saudi Arabia should not be able to outvote a country with eight times its population like Indonesia.
In principle, the Hajj should not be left to the whims of an autocratic state. Nor, indeed, should it be left in the hands of any single democracy. Rather, the Hajj should be conducted with reference to Muslims from all parts of the globe.
The Saudi Hajj ministry should not really exist except as a conduit for expressing the global Muslim ummah’s wishes for how the Hajj should be conducted. Saudi Arabia does not own the Hajj, they enjoy the extraordinary privilege of serving God’s guests visiting Mecca from all four corners of the globe.
Instead of a single ministry in the kingdom calling all the shots on how to conduct the Hajj, the process of Hajj ought to be globally consultative.
Such a project would start creating lateral institutional relations between large Muslim populations around the world in a way that could aspire to eventually rival the hegemony that the nation-state has on the modern Muslim imagination. But it would also give the global Muslim community a greater say in the conducting of one of their faith’s most important annual rituals. Communal unity
These ideas may not seem realistic aspirations to many observers. But that does not matter if enough people can begin to share such an aspiration.
Muslims can find within the idea of the Hajj a path to a global sense of communal unity
The Hajj is a spectacular annual expression of millions of Muslims of their commitment to the ultimate manifestation of unity and unicity: God.
Muslims can find within the idea of the Hajj a path to a global sense of communal unity. That ummatic unity is ultimately about thinking beyond our increasingly obsolete notions of nationalism and the nation-state.
The question is whether or not Muslims can be imaginative enough to see beyond these modern colonial constructs. Only if we collectively imagine a different world is it possible for us to bring it about.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Usaama al-Azami is Departmental Lecturer in Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford. He holds a PhD in modern Islamic political thought from Princeton University and is a seminary-trained Islamic theologian.
Torture in the UAE 'widespread and often unpunished', survivors and experts tell UN
Survivors recounted mental and physical abuse at the hands of Emirati security forces before the UN's Committee Against Torture considers the UAE's implementation of an anti-torture convention at a session this
Dr. Matthew Hedges (left) and Ali Issa Ahmad have both survived torture at the hands of the Emirati security forces [Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/AFP via Getty-archive]
Survivors of torture at the hands of UAE security forces gave gut-wrenching and chilling personal accounts at a press conference in Geneva on Monday, ahead of the latest session for the UN Committee Against Torture.
The press conference, held online and at the Geneva Press Club, followed a report jointly authored by MENA Rights Group and the Emirates Detainees Advocacy Center (EDAC), published late last month and submitted to the UN committee, which found that "torture is widespread in the country and often goes unpunished".
At its session in Geneva taking place from 12-29 July, the UN Committee Against Torture, a body of ten independent experts monitoring the implementation of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT), will consider four countries – Botswana, Nicaragua, Palestine and the UAE.
Consideration of the UAE is to take place this Wednesday and Thursday.
Several other human rights organisations, including the Gulf Centre for Human Rights, submitted reports to the UN committee for consideration before the upcoming session that accuse the UAE security forces of committing widespread torture and allowing it to go unchecked.
According to the report, among the biggest culprits is the state security apparatus (SSA), which arrests and holds people incommunicado for up to several months at a time in secret facilities – conduct that "constitutes an act of torture".
"While in incommunicado detention, detainees are also further subjected to different forms of torture or ill-treatment, frequently with the aim of extracting coerced confessions," the NGOs said.
Though the UAE ratified UNCAT in 2012, Emirati law does not criminalise torture in a manner entirely consistent with the Convention, the report found.
Penalties to punish the use of torture are not harsh enough, the report said, and Emirati law does not explicitly say that torture is not acceptable in any circumstance whatsoever, as required by UNCAT.
Outside of the country, UAE forces and their allies operate a network of detention facilities in Yemen where gross human rights violations have been committed, the human rights groups said.
Monday's press conference featured a mix of both in-person and virtual speakers, among them two Britons detained by the security forces.
Ali Issa Ahmad, a British and Sudanese national, was arrested while visiting the UAE to watch football matches during the Asian Cup tournament in January 2019.
While wearing a Qatar football shirt, he was physically assaulted by security forces.
"One of the guys took a pocket knife, he started cutting at the flag [on the shirt], into my chest and into my body. He was shouting and screaming, saying 'this flag, you can't raise it here'," he said.
While in detention, he wasn't allowed to eat, drink, sleep, or contact family.
"I was on holiday, I went to Dubai to have a nice time. Unfortunately, it was a very tough time and I was very lucky to have survived, to tell you my story."
Dr. Matthew Hedges was conducting PhD research in the UAE when detained in 2018. Accused of spying, he was held in prolonged solitary confinement for nearly seven months.
Hedges said security officers threatened to transfer him to an overseas military base in Yemen, and that he was forced to take stimulants and depressants for interrogations that lasted as long as 17 hours at a time.
Both Ahmed and Hedges will speak to the UN committee during this week's session.
"It's important for us to be here, to be giving evidence to the UN... to help illustrate the systemic nature of these systems of abuses within the UAE. This is not just something that is a random occurrence and is a mistake. No, this is something that is part of the DNA of that structure designed to keep power concentrated," Hedges said.
"Hopefully, this can be taken by the committee against torture to acknowledge... that these abuses are state-mandated. They are not just legitimised, they are enforced by the state.
"Hopefully, a sanction of some degree will come in the appropriate manner."
Jenan al-Marzooqi, an Emirati human rights defender, recounted the plight of her father, prisoner of conscience Abd al-Salam Darwish, who has been subjected to torture during his ongoing detention and a flawed trial.
"The judge never investigated my father and other detainees' testimonies regarding their enforced disappearance, the torture they endured, and all other violations of human rights they've experienced," she said in video testimony. RELATED
It is unknown how many people have been subjected to torture in the UAE, with people afraid to speak out about what they suffered as they fear reprisals, the panellists said.
"It's really hard to tell because there are only so many cases that become public... unfortunately we can only talk about the cases we document, that's probably only a small percentage of the total number," Julia Zomignani Barboza, legal consultant for MENA Rights Group said.
The international community appears to have turned a blind eye to the UAE's use of torture. The country won membership on the UN Human Rights Council for the third time late last year, and shares strong relations with its western allies.
General Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi – who, as the Gulf state's inspector general, has been responsible for investigating complaints against Emirati police and security forces – was elected president of Interpol in November last year, despite outcry from victims of torture in the UAE.
While western countries have vowed to ostracise Saudi Arabia – though some have backtracked on this – the UAE has escaped such scrutiny, torture survivor Hedges said.
"The UAE has still been able to quite expertly demonstrate and show that it is on the same side as many countries in different areas. It legitimises its operations in Yemen and other states through counter-terrorism operations. It funds sports teams, and it shows it's part of a greater wider community," he said.
"If its engagements in negative activity continues to be part of predominant headlines, this is something which they don't like, and they end up having to slowly retract their position," he said.
"It's involvement with the abuses that were proven in court by the ruler of Dubai, by the hacking that the UAE has directed, this has really set them back internationally and their reputation."
Speakers said torture would continue to be rampant in the UAE until the international community applied pressure on the country's rulers.
ABORTION BANS ARE A TOOL OF POLITICAL REPRESSION
“Keep Abortion Legal” sign at a protest in Washington, DC. Photo courtesy of Gayatri Malhotra.
The decision delegates the policy to subnational and private actors, allowing them to be repressors rather than the federal government itself. Criminalizing abortion is a tactic of discriminatory political repression, one that highlights the cooperation between different actors to control women’s lives.
Abortion bans do little to prevent them from occurring. Instead, restricting abortion makes critical contraception and healthcare services more difficult for women—especially poor women—to obtain, or inaccessible altogether, in a country that already underperforms on women’s health relative to other high-income countries.
Abortion bans are considered discrimination under international human rights law. They directly violate numerous rights of women and girls, including the right to life; the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; the right to benefit from scientific progress and its realization; the right to decide freely and responsibly on the number, spacing and timing of children; and the right to be free from torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment.
Why would a country that values human rights and equality allow such obvious discrimination and harm? The answer is simple: because some Americans—men and women, authorities and civilians, people at the national and local levels—benefit directly from control over the social and economic prospects of women and girls.
CRIMINALIZING ABORTION IS A TACTIC OF POLITICAL REPRESSION
Repression—when governments use violence or other coercive tactics to raise the costs of challenging political power—can take many forms. Often it looks like police using violence against protestors, laws restricting freedom of assembly, or barriers to voting. Repression also takes more subtle forms like discouraging ethnic groups from forming organizations or providing low-quality education to one group compared to another. These more nuanced forms of repression make it difficult for minoritized people to band together and use creative tactics to change their lack of power in society and politics.
Political decisions such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade fall into this second, more subtle category of repression. In making it more difficult to obtain an abortion, many women will endure greater and more lasting trauma from rape, financial burdens for which they have few resources and higher barriers to economic, social, and political advancement. Outlawing abortion will affect women’s ability to obtain higher education and therefore economic advancement. Without control over when and with whom to have a child, women lack control over their economic, social, and political experiences.
Those in favor of restrictive and discriminatory policies benefit from the ability to maintain sexual control, economic control, and power over household outcomes. Men benefit from more freedom, more money, and more power than women, and the authorities whom the dominant group elects to power benefit from their support.
CRIMINALIZING ABORTION IS ALSO A TACTIC OF SOCIETAL REPRESSION
In new research, we argue that government actors benefit from and allow private actors to repress women and other minority groups as part of a repressive strategy to collude with members of a dominant social group in order to control and disenfranchise a minoritized group.
In a process we label societal repression, members of a dominant societal group derive social, economic, and political benefits from their position in the social hierarchy (or caste). The dominant social group is dominant because of the power they hold over other groups, not necessarily because they are a majority. Men maintain that position and its economic and social benefits by, first, enforcing the hierarchy against the marginalized group in private spheres, like arranging marriages, restricting girls’ access to education, and committing domestic violence at home, or refusing to hire or fund women in local economies. Second, the dominant group collaborates with government authorities to create policies that allow the violating behaviors to occur without punishment. For their part, government actors remain in political power with the support of the dominant group.
In other words, both government authorities and the dominant group benefit from societal repression, largely because it happens in spaces where governments cannot reach and the public cannot see. Men benefit in social and economic spheres when abortion rights are restricted, and those men vote for leaders who will restrict them. Of course, many women also support abortion bans, and their agreement with the dominant group gives them some access to its power. Indeed, opponents of abortion access often don’t think of their position as being one of strategic repression, instead focusing on questions of morality, but it still has the effect of restructuring who has more power and who has less. Governments disenfranchise and discourage women from participating in society and challenging them politically, continuing male dominance.
IT COULD GET WORSE
In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas goes as far as to suggest that the court should, in future cases, also reconsider Griswold (protecting privacy rights related to the use of contraceptives), Lawrence (protecting consensual same-sex sexual activity), and Obergefell (protecting same-sex marriage). In doing so, he connects the logic of the Dobbs decision to other US legal decisions that protect personal and social rights for women and LGBTIA+ persons. If these rollbacks occur, these minoritized groups will lose the gains they have made in the social hierarchy of the United States, with benefits once again accruing to the dominant social group and the government it supports.
Though we often think of repression as direct—like security agents using violence against minorities—women’s rights are violated and controlled most often in the private and social spheres. Government authorities benefit from it and avoid responsibility for it by delegating the discrimination to private actors, as Turkey does with femicide, Pakistan does with girls’ education, and Iceland does with domestic abuse. Women’s rights are violated, and the government keeps its hands officially clean.
Because repression through abortion bans is indirect, putting pressure on the government to change its policies and practices will probably be less effective for improving women’s rights than it is with other, more direct types of repression. With abortion rights now determined sub-nationally, advocates for women’s rights must simultaneously address the front-line repressors—members of the dominant cohort—and the state authorities that make the policies. It’s a two-front battle, but one that affects and marginalizes half the US and global population.That’s a battle worth fighting.
Emily Hencken Ritter is a permanent contributor at PVG, as well as an associate professor at Vanderbilt University. Jennifer N. Barnes is a political science PhD student at Vanderbilt University.
Ukraine is run by Nazis. NATO is arming Ukraine as a proxy to invade Russia. America has been funding biolabs in Ukraine to create viruses that can infect Russia. In the past few months, Russian state media has been putting out lies and conspiracy theories like these in order to justify Russia’s war on Ukraine. In fact, for years the Kremlin has promoted conspiracy theories that depict Russia as a victim of various geopolitical machinations. The audience for these narratives is primarily domestic—even autocracies prefer to have popular support—but the Kremlin has also sought to disseminate its messages abroad through various media channels. How effective has this effort been?
My recent article in International Studies Quarterly points to barriers in the spread of conspiracy theories through the media but highlights the importance of geopolitical affinities among states as a basis for shared beliefs. I surveyed 1,000 people each in Georgia and Kazakhstan in 2017 and found that people who consume news from Russia are not more conspiratorial overall. However, when it comes to the conspiracy theories the Kremlin has pushed most aggressively, respondents in pro-Russian Kazakhstan, and especially ethnic Russians who live there, are most likely to endorse them.
Russia in the Putin era has sought to convince the world that it has been cruelly mistreated by the West since the Soviet collapse. Its narrative is often conspiratorial, involving malevolent and grandiose plots by actors including the US, NATO, the CIA, and George Soros, to weaken, throttle, or dismember Russia. The Kremlin has worked to ensure that Russians believe that the West is plotting against them, and has targeted audiences abroad, especially in countries with Russian-speaking populations.
Despite their differences—Kazakhstan is generally aligned with Russia on geopolitical matters and has a large population of ethnic Russians whom the Kremlin targets to foster pro-Russian sentiment, while Georgia is largely pro-West and generally resistant to Russian soft power—respondents from both countries were inclined to believe a wide variety of conspiracy theories. These include conspiracies about malevolent cabals that secretly control world events, and that the government perpetrates acts of terrorism on its own soil. Georgians were more conspiratorial overall, but Kazakhstanis were more likely to endorse three pro-Russian geopolitical claims: America supports fascists in Ukraine, the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by the American government, and the US employs non-governmental organizations to overthrow governments in the former Soviet Union.
Surprisingly, however, the Russian media is not the main influence on people’s beliefs. Instead, two factors mattered. First, Russian Kazakhstanis were more likely to believe Russia’s geopolitical conspiracy theories (about NGOs and fascists) than non-Russian Kazakhstanis. I argue that this is because they maintain informal cultural and family ties to citizens in Russia and are more exposed to official Russian narratives, leading them to sympathize with Russia’s foreign policy goals.
A second important finding relates to people’s orientation toward the state. Past research has established how alienation, cynicism, and distrust are associated with conspiracy belief. In the context of the post-Soviet region, I found that people who do not trust their government, consider it nondemocratic, believe politics in their country is faring poorly, and (in Kazakhstan) report having paid a bribe, were more likely to believe both generic and geopolitical conspiracy theories.
What do these findings imply for Russia’s “information war”? Belief in conspiracy theories is widespread in the region, so people are potentially susceptible to claims that build on their suspicious worldviews. Yet, despite the Kremlin’s prolific use of conspiracism in the media, the attitudes of Georgians and Kazakhstanis cannot be attributed to Russian propaganda. Their openness to conspiracy theories instead appears to stem from their quotidian experiences with corruption, malfeasance, and abuse by those in power.
When disseminating propaganda, the Kremlin is best able to reach those who are already sympathetic to its foreign policy. This is consistent with abundant research showing that people tend to believe conspiracy theories that accord with their preexisting views and identities, via motivatedreasoning, just as with other political beliefs.
Contrary to the heightened concern about the allure of Russian propaganda on television and social media, Russia faces challenges in delivering its messages to audiences in its own geopolitical backyard. People are subject to diverse and often competing communications from domestic media and personal encounters. A state’s actions can also work at cross-purposes with its messaging. For example, people who have seen images of civilians executed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine are likely to resist narratives in which Russia casts itself as a victim. Thus, “sharp power”—the use of informational tools by authoritarian states to gain leverage over unsuspecting publics abroad—may be less a threat than is generally assumed. Russia’s struggles to shape opinions in its “near abroad” mirror the poor performance of states with fewer linkages and tarnished reputations in the regions where they seek to exert influence, a lesson the US has learned in the Middle East and Latin America.
Even within Russia, it is unclear how much citizens accept the government’s rationale for the war, or simply censor themselves out of fear. The fact that Russians, like many Georgians and Kazakhstanis, have grounds to distrust their politicians implies that they may ingest domestic propaganda with a healthy dose of cynicism. Governments have the means to inundate their audiences with their preferred messages, but they ultimately cannot dictate what people choose to believe.
Scott Radnitz is an Associate Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of Revealing Schemes: The Politics of Conspiracy in Russia and the Post-Soviet Region (Oxford, 2021).
The conjecture that being single drives young men to commit political violence is compelling. It has been presented in academic articles and the popular press. It’s been discussed in classified diplomatic cables, unclassified strategic planning documents, and reports to Congress.
The idea is intuitive—and, one might note, heteronormative. Young men face a choice between kissing and killing. The realities of life as a terrorist or a guerilla mean that they cannot do both. For a young man with a wife, the choice is obvious: he would rather stay home with his bride than abandon her to go and become a rebel or a terrorist. Young men without wives do not face the same quandary; they have no partners to leave behind. In fact, they may benefit more from participating in political violence than married men, in so far as doing so increases their economic and social capital, thereby increasing their chances of finding a mate.
Observational studies of individual terrorists and guerillas support this theory. They are almost always single. This applies whether we are talking about Palestinian suicide bombers today or Chinese rebels 172 years ago.
The implications are substantial. Across Asia, from India to China, there are approximately 1.10 young men for every young woman, thereby dooming millions of men to go through life alone without the possibility of finding a heterosexual partner. If being single caused young men to commit political violence, then Asia should be a powder keg ready to explode with terrorism and civil war. Men in the Muslim world tend to marry much later in life. Could this provide an explanation for the higher levels of political violence in Islamic countries? And if being single causes young men to engage in civil war and terrorism, might this provide a novel solution to the problem of political violence: finding these young men wives.
Yet does having a surfeit of single young men increase the level of political violence in a country? My paper Make Love, Not War investigates just that. We already know that an increase in the proportion of young men in a country increases the probability of civil war and terrorism, but does the marital status of these young men make any difference? To test this, I ask if an additional single young man causes a greater increase in the probability of civil war and terrorism than an additional married young man.
The results are surprising: there is no statistical difference between an additional single young man and an additional married young man. The results hold regardless of whether I consider civil war or terrorism.
This has substantial implications for international relations. It means that the abundance of bachelors in Asia will not turn the continent into a powder keg. It means that the higher levels of terrorism and civil war in predominately Muslim countries cannot be explained by marriage rates. And it means that political violence cannot be prevented by finding single young men wives (an untenable solution regardless, since it treats women as objects to placate the desires of violent men).
It also cries out for an explanation. How can it be that almost all terrorists and guerillas are single while having more single young men has the same effect on the probability of political violence as having more married young men does?
If participating in political violence caused young men to be single, this would explain why almost all terrorists and guerillas are single. This could be because women are reluctant to date a man who is on the run from the authorities and risking his life fighting them. Meanwhile, men who are considering going off to fight might choose to remain single to prevent their potential wives from going through the pain of being abandoned and widowed.
Moreover, since terrorists and guerillas make up only a tiny fraction of a country’s population, their marital status is unlikely to affect national-level statistics. This would explain the lack of a country-level relationship and resolve the paradox of observing an individual-level relationship between marital status and participation in political violence but not finding a country-level association. And it would mean that “Make Love, Not War” is not an effective slogan.
