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Forced urbanization in China moves from practice to policy
by Rhodri C. Williams
No half-measures to be taken in China's peaceful rise, it seems. An astonishing New York Times piece recently reviewed the implications of a policy still not finally approved in Beijing but apparently in full swing in the provinces – according to which (wait for it) 250 million people will be forcibly urbanized over the next 12-15 years. That is more than the population of Indonesia, the fourth largest country in the world. If the policy succeeds, the world's most populous country will have gone from being 80% rural in the early 1980s to 70% urban two generations later.
The scope of the project is almost unfathomable (enjoy the NYT video, in which nighttime images of scores of the world's biggest cities are overflown before a 250 million headcount is racked up). As is the potential for rights violations, accretion of social ills and mayhem that could result. One observer is quoted as stating that this is program is neither less ambitious nor less risky than the disastrous Great Leap Forward in the 1960s. So why bother?
Posted in Commentary, Innovations in forced eviction
Tagged China, HRW, land-grabbing, minorities, Tibet, urbanization, villageization
If it's broke, destroy it? The partition debate arrives in Syria
Almost inevitably in appalling situations like the conflict in Syria, there comes a moment when inhibitions seem to drop among certain sectors of the commentariat and a note of petulant, provocative resignation enters the debate. They can't live together, goes the standard line, and they have well and truly proved it now. Why should liberals in the West be indulged in their Benetton fantasies? Why spend blood and treasure to preside over the shotgun remarriage of nations so fundamentally unable to tolerate each other's presence that they engage in fratricide?
The infuriating thing about such 'partitionist' arguments is not (only) the curiously visceral satisfaction some commentators seem to take in espousing a vision of humanity unable to accommodate difference by any other means than forced assimilation or strict separation. Nor is it the fact that such arguments tend to rely on speculation about what ordinary people actually want, often in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary. Nor the way that they play into the hands of unprincipled and frequently undemocratic elites and conflict entrepreneurs. It is the fact that they may in some cases be right but for all the wrong reasons.
My first brush with 'partitionist' lines of argument came in Bosnia where my initial receptivity to them was challenged not only intuitively (by my unreconstructed persistence in the belief that people can find ways to rub along together) but also structurally (by my job specifically seeking ways to support Bosnians in doing so). However, my best efforts notwithstanding, the partition bandwagon rolled along, perhaps in most raucous form when splitting Bosnia looked like a real option, yet gaily undeterred long after it was clear that partition was neither particularly feasible nor especially desirable.
Perhaps as a result, there was a certain satisfaction in having worked on something as seemingly pollyanna-ish as property restitution in post-conflict Bosnia and seen it succeed. Granted, not everyone returned, but the result was segregation based largely on individual and household choices, rather than partition based on a political sew-up. And, safe in an unprovable negative, I will propose that the brute fact of restitution – the resolution of 200,000 claims that intimately affected many of the families most victimized by the conflict – cannot but have had a calming influence that has helped keep Bosnia's notorious post-war ethnic politicking from spilling over into new bloodshed.
One can even argue that the pollyannas have been vindicated once again by the recent post-nationalist demonstrations in Bosnia. Perhaps the new generation we have all been going on about so long has now come of age. If this is the case, a new politics could result. Certainly not a politics that transcends nationalism (not even Sweden can manage that), but one that could at least reveal the hollowness at the core of the 'inevitability' discourses surrounding partition proposals in places like Bosnia.
Nevertheless, in 2004, the very year that I left Bosnia convinced that partitionism was en route to the dustbin of history, ethnic riots in Kosovo sent carefully orchestrated plans for national reconciliation there into a tailspin. A familiar call and response ensued, with aggrieved international observers eager to wash their hands of the mess and earnest liberal interventionists arguing that the preservation of a multiethnic society was not only possible but necessary.
At that point, my former Bosnia colleagues Marcus Cox and Gerald Knaus of the European Stability Initiative (ESI) were prompted to mount one of the most spirited defenses of 'post-partitionism' to date, contrasting the integrity of international efforts to hold places like Bosnia together with the cynicism of an earlier generation of peace agreements in which population transfers were as routine as border demarcations. But in 2004, one year into the US invasion of Iraq, the partition debate had barely begun. Two years later, the festering dispute between Arabs and Kurds over the region surrounding Kirkuk and the spiraling sectarian violence in Baghdad placed partition squarely on the international agenda.
Posted in Commentary
Tagged Arab Spring, bosnia, ESI, federalism, Iraq, kosovo, MENA, minorities, partition, self-determination, Syria
Global conflict-induced displacement at highest level since 1994
During any given spring in the past, the release of the global internal displacement figures by the IDMC followed by the overall displacement numbers from UNHCR came as a malign one-two punch. Even in the salad days of the mid-2000s, the ostensibly 'stabilized' figures of around 25 million conflict-induced internally displaced persons (IDPs) and around 12 million refugees involved huge numbers by any count, staggering in their relentless accretion of human misery and broken lives. And all the more so as consciousness dawned of the rising tide of disaster displacement (and a studious silence about the additional millions uprooted by development projects persisted).
But with all that in our luggage, this year has been particularly bad. First came IDMC in April with the unwelcome news that conflict-related internal displacement (and by implication, the re-emergence of regional and internal armed conflicts) had been written off far too early. And now comes UNHCR pointing to 45.2 million deracinated lives at the end of 2012. Before you even count a further six months of rampant displacement in Syria, in other words, we see the worst overall conflict displacement numbers since 1994, the year the Rwanda genocide began and it seemed the Bosnia war would never end (and no one even had the energy to ask what was happening in the north and south Caucasus anymore).
Gird your loins humanitarians, it looks like we called it too early.
Tagged conflict, IDMC, IDPs, refugees, UNHCR
Bosnia helps itself to a slice of Spring
There has been a lot written about the current 'Baby-Lution' in Bosnia by people with far more current insight than me about what it is all about. For some good examples, see Igor Štiks in Open Democracy here, Florian Bieber here, or Eric Gordy here. And of course, if you want to take a bath in it, there is always the #JMBG hashtag in Twitter.
So at the risk of simply repeating what many others have stated earlier and more eloquently, what a breath of fresh air. What a relief to see before me a line that the old dinosaurs and their inat-politics could no longer cross without provoking an elemental thirst for ordinary politics and ordinary life. Real systemic change may still be a long way off, but a lot of Bosnians have now made a move from thought to action and that is both significant and irrevocable.
For me personally, the current images coming out of Sarajevo and Banja Luka represent a long overdue alignment between the Bosnia I know and the image it projects in the international media. And I find it deeply moving. So let me end by challenging anybody who ever worked and lived in Bosnia not to get a little misty-eyed watching this wonderful clip.
Tagged bosnia
A problem from hell for the 2010s
In listening to the Obama administration's latest contortions on the ever-shifting red-line in the face of ever-clearer evidence of the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime, it is hard not to be transported back in time to another Democratic administration facing another problem from hell twenty years ago.
In 1994, it was President Clinton facing a similarly impossible red line in Rwanda, unable to publicly recognize the brute reality of what was happening on the ground because of the legal responsibility it would entail to intervene. As described here by the Guardian in 2004, it would take a decade for the obvious to become a matter of public record:
President Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information to justify its inaction, according to classified documents made available for the first time. Senior officials privately used the word genocide within 16 days of the start of the killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the president had already decided not to intervene.
Meanwhile, as the assault on moderate Hutus and any Tutsis continued, officials in Washington, D.C. were reduced to the demeaning sophistry of discussing formulations rather than condemning mass-murder. For a sobering reminder, witness the agonies of State Department spokesperson Christine Shelly in April 1994:
In Rwanda, as in Syria, there were tremendous risks associated with intervention and little domestic political support for becoming bogged down in another sticky regional conflict. Indeed, in Syria, commentators are only beginning to awaken to the historical complexities that have shaped the region, providing a more accurate accounting of the difficulties that would face any intervention while at the same time feeding the risk of dismissive 'ancient ethnic hatreds' narratives of the type that arguably delayed a meaningful international response to the crises in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Tagged Lebanon, MENA, R2P, Rwanda, Syria, UN
What can indigenous peoples learn from the Åland Islands land acquisition regime?
This comment is cross-posted from the Åland Islands Peace Institute's blog with the generous permission of my colleagues there. The Peace Institute is an independent foundation that examines peace and conflict issues from the perspective of the Åland Islands' special legal status, as recently described in an edited volume on the utility of "the Åland example" in contemporary peace negotiations and peace-building. My below comment gives an overview of the issues I am currently researching with funding from the Åland Islands Cultural Foundation. For an earlier take on these issues, see a chapter I wrote for a 2009 study on "the foundations of the Åland autonomy" while still a guest researcher at the Peace Institute.
The autonomy regime enjoyed by the Åland Islands within Finland is an extraordinary political experiment that has withstood the test of time better than most of its kind. It has the authority of age, dating back to agreements brokered by the League of Nations during the interwar period. At the same time, the autonomy has not merely survived but thrived, having been progressively expanded in scope both during and after the Cold War. Perhaps most tellingly, Åland negotiated a path into the EU alongside Finland in 1994 that not only allowed it to retain the key features of its regime, but also endowed it with the confidence to negotiate hard for further arrangements seen as necessary to prevent its sub-national powers from being rolled over by the supra-national juggernaut in Brussels.
Having lived on Åland full time from 2004 to 2010 and made regular summer pilgrimages from Stockholm ever since, the place has made a deep impression on me and shaped my thinking about the rights and wrongs of minority protection. This is saying something as well, given that I was a skeptic on arrival. As an American raised on melting pot mythology and Brown vs. Board, my instinct was to believe that separate could neither be equal nor desirable. Moreover, having spent the previous five years as part of the international effort to stitch post-war Bosnia back together, I was painfully aware of the extent to which strategies based on entrenching group difference could feed conflict as easily as they could resolve it. But I was impressed from the start by two things about Åland.
First, Åland really did do a good job governing itself. Sure, there were things to complain about, but people got on with it and government delivered. Given that Åland was both tiny compared with other administrative units in the Nordic countries and relatively rich, the archipelago seemed like a textbook case for the subsidiarity-based efficiency arguments for decentralizing power. Second, Ålanders were incredibly interested in their own autonomy. Most outsiders I talk to have a hard time believing 27,000 people manage to support two daily newspapers that between them hardly have time for stories from beyond Kobba Klintar. The identity-based arguments for autonomy clearly applied as well – in other words, Åland has autonomy because Ålanders wouldn't settle for less.
For reasons not entirely clear to myself, I have long been drawn to questions about land and property. I wrote a masters thesis in Geography long ago on the effect of East German housing policies after unification, and went on to work in Bosnia on the restitution of homes for families that had been forced to flee during the war. As a consultant, I also focused on property issues in post-conflict countries such as Cambodia, Colombia, Cyprus, Liberia and Turkey. Some of my most recent work included an analysis of property conflicts in contemporary Libya. However, even if my early consultancy career was focused on post-conflict countries, my life was being lived in one of Europe's flagship autonomies. When I had the good fortune to be offered a guest-researcher position at the Åland Islands Peace Institute, I quickly began to realize how important land and property issues could also be in terms of protection and conflict prevention for minorities and indigenous peoples.
Tagged autonomy, Åland, Finland, indigenous groups, land rights, minorities, self-determination


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Now, scientific advances—a majority of them arising from foundational biological research—are offering us new perspectives and new strategies for dealing with diseases. Opposite from an all-out bombardment, these strategies employ targeted, customized and very effective treatments. Yet an even more dramatic difference is emerging from the older world of medicine, which was largely to react to a specific disease once it is clinically apparent: to attack the very roots of the disease. I call it "precision interception" and it's opening an entirely new view on human healthcare. It is now possible to contemplate this as a reality, because the processes giving rise to serious and prolonged diseases such as cancers, diabetes and even neurological diseases are becoming better understood. We are now able to see how we can target a specific mechanism of a disease even before it takes hold, thus derailing its potency. Further aided by incredible genetic technologies and access to big data, we can tailor therapies to interface with a patient's unique genetic makeup. We are even beginning to predict what the disease will do next. Truly, we are entering an astounding era for human health and longevity.
Salk science helped lay the groundwork for this new perspective years ago. In 1979, Tony Hunter began studying the Rous sarcoma virus, the first virus known to cause cancers. A surprising result from one experiment in his lab led to a seminal discovery: adding or subtracting phosphate molecules to the proteins, on an amino acid called tyrosine, could regulate cell activity. Controlling this process, Hunter realized, could prevent the sort of unregulated cell growth that often drives cancers. Fast forward a few decades to a remarkable outcome: the development of Gleevec, a groundbreaking drug that has turned chronic myelogenous leukemia from a fatal disease into a chronic, manageable disease. Gleevec led the way for a whole class of such targeted anticancer therapies. Tony's discovery, just one in an illustrious career that has expanded our biological knowledge, has earned him worldwide recognition. And this past February, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences selected him to receive the prestigious Sjöberg Prize for Cancer Research.
By understanding the specific biology of a disease, we can point the way toward targeted—and thus more effective—treatments. Each human is unique, however. And unique genetic profiles comprised of elaborate molecular pathways and idiosyncratic mutations add layer upon layer of complexity to designing successful therapies. That means that a drug that works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another. So scientists are turning to big data to fine-tune their insights.
Here at Salk, Ed Stites studies the complex behaviors of the molecular pathways and signaling networks implicated in cancers through the dual lenses of mathematical and computational models. The big data he produces not only reveals new understanding of how these networks promote cancer but also predicts how the specific cancers will respond to treatment. With this information in hand, doctors can more knowledgeably prescribe the most appropriate drugs for their patients. They can also better identify patients at high risk for certain cancers and suggest early intervention, while continuing to monitor those at a lower risk. Heading off diseases before they become intractable is a hallmark of precision interception.
In yet another twist on how to manage disease, Janelle Ayres is proposing that we shift from our combative strategy of trying to kill all harmful bacteria toward focusing on mitigating the damage they do to our bodies. In other words: learn to tolerate the enemy. Many invading harmful bacteria instruct our bodies to unwittingly unleash collateral damage, ranging from muscle wasting to multiple organ failure. But in precise studies with mice infected with harmful bacteria, Janelle discovered that helpful microbes leave their home in the gut and instruct the animals' muscles to prevent wasting, thus mitigating damage. Her lab is now exploring ways to harness these beneficial microbes, trillions of which live inside our own bodies.
At Salk, we continue apace to invest in basic, foundational science combined with state-of-the-art technology and big data analysis. I am convinced that this is the path to invaluable impacts on people's lives. I foresee that the next decade or so will bring significant changes in the way we treat diseases, with added emphasis on intercepting and even preventing them. It's a new perspective yet still perfectly aligned with Salk's mission: Where cures begin.


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