WhirledView

India Splits Up Another State: A Lesson for Ukraine?

 Patricia Lee Sharpe

With its unsettled population facing East and West a la Dr. Doolittle’s pushmipullyu, how's one to predict what’s going to happen in Ukraine over the next few weeks? Will Ukranian and Russian speakers find a way to cooperate within existing borders? Will the country disintegrate? Will it descend into civil war? Will it find constitutional coherence by way of federalism? Will an emergent authoritarian type try to hold it together by force? Will Russia respect Ukraine’s sovereignty over all its territory, including the Crimea? Will the West accept a Georgia-style Russian intervention? Will Europe or Russia come up with the best financial bid (aka bribe) for Ukraine’s loyalty?

But Ukraine isn’t the only country in the world crosscut by sharp linguistic, religious, historic and/or cultural differences. Czechoslovakia—a rare case, admittedly—managed an amicable divorce into two independent countries. On the other end of the spectrum, when India became independent in 1947 and its founders built a federal system with 14 states, “expert” observers and “respected” analysts predicted the country would never hold together. 

Indeed, serious separatist threats did occur over the years. Yet the India-hands proved wrong. India did not fall apart, developing instead a repeatedly successful solution to its fissiparous (a favorite Indian word in the early days) tendencies. Result: India is about to acquire its 29th state.

After years of argument and agitation, Andhra Pradesh is being divided into land-locked Telangana and coastal, rice-growing Seemandra. They will share the greatly contested capital Hyderabad for at least ten years. And, by the way, Telegu-speaking Andhra Pradesh itself was once part of the hulking original state of Madras, whose Tamil-speaking remainder is now called Tamilnadu. And so on.

There’s even a precedent for capital-sharing in India. When politics in the original, post-partition state of Punjab (already divided between India and Pakistan, to Pakistan’s never-ending disgust) got so hot that a Sikh movement had turned terrorist in order to achieve a separate country, New Delhi sliced Punjab in two, a Sikh majority Punjab state and a largely Hindu Haryana. Chandigarh, the capital of the old single state, famous for having been designed by the French architect Le Corbusier, remains the capital of both new states.

Other examples of state-splitting to keep India whole? The British-run Bombay presidency became the Indian state of Bombay, but its two major linguistic groups were not happily wed. After much debate over the danger of setting a precedent for states based on linguistic identity, Delhi split Bombay into Gujarat, with a capital in Ahmedabad, and Maharashtra. The city of Bombay, now known as Mumbai, went to the latter. These days, no one argues that the decision was a mistake.

Plus—well, you get the point. It took many more political divorces to turn 14 into 29.

Given all the above, it is perhaps not surprising that India has always been ready to split Kashmir down the Line of Control. The West, more or less, would go to Pakistan. The East, roughly speaking, would go to India, which would give India a state with a whopping Muslim majority, especially after the ethnic cleansing that drove most of the Kashmiri pandits out of the Jammu area. Pakistan thinks a Muslim majority state in India would be an aberration, even though India has nearly as many (if not more) Muslims all told than Pakistan. Anyway why not a Muslim state? Punjab was bifurcated to make the Sikhs happy.

This half-a-loaf solution to the long festering dispute between India and Pakistan has never appealed to Pakistan, mostly because Islamabad has always believed it would win a referendum for total control (if the choice didn’t include an option for Kashmiri independence), whereas India would happily settle for the part it already controls, a part which, admittedly contains the plums: the fabled vale of Kashmir, the capital Shrinigar, Dal lake with its houseboats and flower market, the pilgrimage/resort sites in Pahalgam, the famous Shalimar gardens.

So, yes, Ukraine has a problem. Its two halves don’t get along very well, but the nation-building toolkit holds many ways of decentralizing and federalizing to make everyone happy without splitting up a country. The problem for Ukraine—aside from that pesky Russian naval base at Sevastapol—is that Vladimir Putin really wants an old-style Soviet satellite, not a cooperative neighbor on equally good terms with Europe. Even if Ukrainians themselves were able to find a federalist solution to their mutual lack of trust, Russia might still apply a bear hug powerful enough to stifle any reformulated polity.

And yet, the bottom line is this: India has maintained its territorial integrity because, at base, that’s what nearly all Indians want. Can one say the same of Ukraine?  I don't see it, at the moment.

Amateur Ambassadors: Think Again

By Patricia H Kushlis

Update April 9, 2014 link to the letter itself: Senior Diplomats Call for Rejection of Ambassadorial  Nominees," DiploDenizen March 10, 2014.

Update February 27, 2014:  "Take Politics Out of Diplomacy," USA Today column by Thomas Pickering and Nicholas Kralev. 

Update February 26, 2014:  So Why Doesn't Some Senator (hint Senator McCain)  Put a Hold on the Nominations of Tsunis and Bell?  And why did these nominations clear Senate Foreign Relations?

It’s rare that I agree with John McCain, but his recent grilling of George Tsunis, the administration’s inept nominee for Ambassador to Norway, was right on target.  Face it, Tsunis’ testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was downright painful.  This farce will not soon be forgotten because, if nothing else, his testimony will live forever on YouTube - easily obtained through Google, Yahoo or some other search engine not to mention featured on the February 17, 2014  PBS Newshour special “What Does It Take to be an American Ambassador?” 

 

Meanwhile, “The Washington Post” has been having a field day. Here's just one example.  And another (Kamen column Feb. 26) But where’s the venerable “New York Times?”  This has become the story of the week. Or at least one of them.  Hello there, New York.   Are you still there? Did I miss something?

The Senate has yet to act on Tsunis’ nomination. Several equally unqualified nominees including Noah Mamet for Argentina (someone who has yet to set foot in the country) and Hungary (soap opera producer Colleen Bradley Bell whose ignorance of Hungary and US interests there also shine proudly on video) sit in Senate limbo. Let them stay there.  Or better yet the Obama administration should withdraw the nominations of this troika of misfits or the Senate should reject them outright.  The Senate does have the prerogative to “just say no.”  

This includes Senators on both sides of the political divide.  Or, perhaps would some Senator please put a hold on these and any other equally questionable Ambassadorial nominations coming down the pike for – let’s say about the next three years?

Then the administration should be far more careful in naming future replacements.   Maybe once AFSA posts its ambassadorial qualifications list it can be used as a gauge - if the organization comes up with a one that is more than in Diplopundit's words "underwhelming."

The good news:  a bipartisan team of Menendez (D-NJ) and Rubio (R-FL) challenged Mamet’s qualifications for the Argentina job.  Looks like these Senators’ work is cut out for them in the days and months ahead.

The crucial but unsung DCM

But here’s another piece of good news of which most Americans are unaware:  the US government has a system in which career Deputy Chiefs of Mission (DCMs) run our embassies when no US Ambassador is in country and often when they are.  This actually, happens pretty frequently – at least it did in my experience – and for lengthy periods of time.  DCMs are professional Foreign Service Officers assigned to oversee an embassy’s internal workings as well as fill in for absent Ambassadors in dealings with the government and people of the country in which the embassy is located. 

DCMs must also “manage up” in cases of political appointees especially when said appointee is actually in the country.  This is why it is often the toughest job in the Foreign Service.  Best occupied by a former consular officer with strong social work credentials.  E.g. someone highly experienced in managing difficult people used to getting their own way.  

Political Generals long gone:  why not political Ambassadors?           

After the Spanish-American War, the US military was turned into a professional service – from the very highest ranking officer to the lowliest private.  The purchasing of generalships particularly during the Civil War produced some of the worst debacles imaginable and the spoils system for the US military was confined to the ash heap of history before World War I.

But the spoils system has lingered on – indeed flourished - on the civilian side of the federal government despite the introduction of the 1924 Rogers Act which supposedly brought professionalism to diplomacy.   The far more recent Foreign Service Act of 1980 states in part (emphasis added): “Positions as chief of mission should normally be accorded to career members of the Service, though circumstance will warrant appointments from time to time of qualified individuals who are not career members of the Service.”  The usual ratio has been 70% career versus 30% spoils (aka political) but the Obama administration has gone well over the top in rewarding campaign funders especially since his reelection in 2012.  This is closer to the Reagan administration's use of the ambassadorial spoils system than any other president in recent memory.

Yet if this president believes what he said in his most recent State of the Union address - that  “America must move off a permanent war footing. . . . in a world of complex threats," and that "our security and leadership depends on all elements of our power – including strong and principled diplomacy"  then it also behooves him to ensure that this country has the best qualified diplomats his administration can find.  It can’t be all that hard. White House please give it a try.       

From the WV archives:

A Primer for First Time Political Ambassadors.

Hamid Karzai Unleashed: Why the Anti-Americanism?

 By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been training his verbal artillery at the U.S. for the last couple of years. Barrage after barrage of bitter recrimination. He’s nearing the end of his second term as President of Afghanistan. Unless he has a coup in mind, a notion no one seems to be entertaining, come April he won’t have to be dealing with contemptuous American officials scolding him for non-cooperation in public anymore. And so, increasingly, he’s letting it be known that the negative feelings are mutual.

Dan Roberts of The Guardian thinks that a constitutionally term-limited Karzai is mostly concerned with defining his “legacy,” making sure that he’ll be seen as an Afghan patriot, not an American puppet, when this phase of Afghan history is written for the ages. Roberts may be on to something here.

On the other hand, Karzai may be using his anti-Americanism in a calculated way, shading his bio-data to give him an advantage as he seeks a post-presidential role in Afghan politics. This is the theory of Peter Tomsen at Politico, who believes that the wily Karzai is “maneuvering for future relevance, drawing on his period in office and on his tribal status as leader of the important Pashtun Popalzai tribe in southern Afghanistan.” Thus, Karzai may “hope to be seen as an elder tribal leader and international statesman deserving respect and deference by the winning candidate [in the upcoming presidential election], and by Afghan political, tribal, ethnic and religious leaders generally—including the Taliban,” who may gain in strength after NATO and the US withdraw.

Meanwhile, not only have American officials, civilian and military, complained that Karzai is volatile, unpredictable, a poor manager and a corrupt politician, the U.S. President himself has weighed in, describing him as an “unreliable and ineffective partner.” All of which is fairly amusing because, if I recall rightly, Hamid Karzai was snatched from international obscurity and promoted for the presidency by.....the Americans!

So what has the allegedly obnoxiously uncooperative Karzai been saying?

Accused of being ungrateful for American sacrifices in Afghanistan, some 2000 troops killed over the past ten years, Karzai has observed that the Americans didn’t insert themselves into Afghanistan to help Afghans but rather to protect themselves against international terrorism. Even so, Karzai conceded in an interview with NBC, Afghans are indeed “grateful” for having been freed of Taliban rule in 2001. However, he added, U.N. data shows that 3000 Afghans were killed during the first six months of 2012 alone. What’s more, instead of rampaging through Afghan villages, smashing into Afghan homes and frightening Afghan women, those American troops should have taken the battle to the mountainous areas of Pakistan “where the roots of terrorism exist.” Speaking to CNN, Karzai noted that Afghanistan itself lacks the modern equipment needed to carry the war to Pakistan. “I asked the U.S. government to equip our air force with weapons, intelligence and transport planes—and we still haven’t received a response....If they show no interest in this, we will decide whether to purchase from Russia, China, India or any other country.” This may or may not be a bluff, but Karzai is stoutly resisting American pressure to sign a security agreement before the upcoming elections in April. Given his theory that the Americans are in Afghanistan for their own good, Karzai's probably calculating that they'll find a reason not to walk away, and so he’ll keep their military support and burnish his reputation as a bold nationalist at the same time.

Having recently been reminded of President Obama's “unreliable and ineffective partner” charge, the nadir perhaps of years of U.S. carping and criticism,  Karzai did not respond with submissive contrition.  He explained it away.  The Americans are upset, he said,  “because where they want us to go along, we don’t go along. They want us to keep silent when civilians are killed. We will not, we can not.” And as for Americans trying to pressure him into signing the security agreement, Karzai let it be known that "classic colonial exploitation" won't work with him. “They can’t push us up against the wall....Afghans will not submit. They have already fought colonial masters. They don’t accept it.”  

Criticized for releasing from prison long-held, never formally-charged Taliban prisoners considered to be congenital terrorists by the U.S., Karzai went on the offensive. "Afghanistan is a sovereign country,” he told attendees at a conference in Turkey. “If the Afghan judicial authorities decide to release a prisoner, it is of no concern to the U.S. I hope that the US will stop harassing Afghanistan’s procedures and I hope the US will now begin to respect Afghan sovereignty.”  

Nor is Karzai taking recurrent U.S. accusations that he runs a government studded with corrupt officials lying down. He has another version:  “I’ve come to believe (that)...corruption comes from the United States through contracts,” he told NBC,   adding that “the perception of corruption is deliberate to render the Afghan government exploitable, to weaken it.” In fact, Karzai is not alone in fingering the U.S. contracting process. U.S. Government studies have faulted U.S. agencies for not keeping tabs on contractors with sticky fingers and a tendency to get things done by greasing palms, even to the point of paying Taliban-associated figures big bucks to guarantee the safety of U.S. convoys from Taliban attack!  Tens of millions of dollars have mysteriously diappeared, it seems, a not unusual story, unfortunately.

All in all, when it comes to Karzai's strenuous public criticism of U.S. Afghan policy and those who carry it out,  what he has to say can usually be reduced to a plea for recognizing sovereigny and showing respect. Respect for the country. Respect for its people.  Those American boots on the ground are stomping on Afghan dignity and American officials are shaming Afghanistan with incessant public criticism.

So Ahmed Karzai, feeling his country insulted, feeling himself insulted, is an angry man who is no longer willing to suffer in silence,  which will make the remaining pre-election weeks extremely awkward for Americans officials who are praying for more congenial counterparts in a post-Karzai Afghan dispensation. U.S. Senator Karl Levin is already celebrating. He has been quoted as saying, “Whoever the next Afghan president is, he is likely to be more reliable than President Karzai and his signature [on the security agreement] is likely to instill more confidence than would Karzai’s signature.”

Oh dear, Mr. Levin! Think again.  Once upon a time Hamid Karzai was America’s anointed Afghan savior aka puppet in the making. What makes you so sure that a future president of the extremely independent tribesmen (and women)  who make up the country known as Afghanistan will be any more subservient to outside interests than the current one?

On the contrary, like Karzai, the new president will certainly be an ardent nationalist. Like Karzai, he’ll surely have a prickly sense of honor. He will also take no more kindly to American dictation than Karzai has.

The question is this: Can the U.S. shake off its ethnocentricity and learn from counter-productive past arrogance?  This time around, will the American side evince (in public, at least) a little more respect for the dignity of the people, to say nothing of their legendary commitment to self-rule, even if (privately) many Amnericans consider Afghanistan a benighted hopeless mess?  In fact, what secular Afghans would really like is less fiddling with Afghan society and politics and more effort as a buffer between themselves and a Taliban-supporting Pakistan.  This puts the U.S. in a tricky position, but handling tricky positions is what diplomacy is all about.

What’s Really Bugging Angela Merkel?

 By Patricia Lee Sharpe

You’ve got to wonder what sensitive subjects German Chancellor Angela Merkel was foolishly discussing on her cell phone before Edward Snowden’s revelations confirmed what any seasoned national leader takes for granted: countries spy on allies as well as enemies.

This doesn’t mean that countries like the tit-for-tat when they in turn become targets of surveillance. Nor does it mean that “friendly” spies aren’t prosecuted when they’re caught. The U.S.-Israel nexus has been as tight as country-to-country relations get, yet even Israel’s spies aren’t tolerated when they’re uncovered: the U.S. tossed one in jail for a good long time. So, whether Angela was exchanging birthday greetings or discussing trade policy on an unencrypted phone, she was careless. Or was she merely exhibiting the I'm-exempt-from-the-normal-rules arrogance that often afflicts extremely successful politicians?

Yes, it’s inconvenient when you can’t have a private chat even with friends and family, but that’s the pain and price of reaching the top of the pyramid. Your life changes.

Anyhow, given the fact that Merkel threw a hissy fit over the very notion that friends might spy on friends, as in Americans on Germans, her so-what reaction last week to evidence that U.S. officials’ phone conversations might also be also fodder for snoops was very interesting.

There are (at least) four issues that might have agitated dear Angela vis-à-vis the pretty good evidence that the Russians had not only recorded, but had also leaked the contents of a phone conversation between a high level U.S. State Department official and an ambassador. They are: (1) I’m shocked shocked that the Russians are spying on U.S. diplomatic communications, which means they’re probably spying on all of us. (2) I’m shocked shocked that the Russians have made public the results of their clandestine surveillance; (3) I’m shocked shocked that American diplomats have been denigrating, behind our backs, the European approach to the situation in Ukraine. (4) I’m shocked shocked that American diplomats swear like troopers when they think a conversation is private.

Did she excoriate the Russians for spying? Nope. No diatribes directed at a conniving Putin. Did she criticize the Russians for broadcasting the results of said spying? No. After all, what was leaked was a very useful bit of information for the Europeans, too. Spasiba, Volya.

Yet Merkel went ballistic about the very notion that American diplomats might criticize the European Union in a private conversation. Behind our backs! How shameful! As if everything any European politician says, confidentially, about Americans high or low is superlatively complimentary.

And this, finally, is what really got to Merkel: the language. To wit: the use of the f-word.

Now we know that Angela Merkel is the daughter of a clergyman. The language in her childhood home may have been very decorous, but she’s risen to the top in the rough world of politics. Is it possible that German politicians never ever use the German equivalent of “fucking idiot,” for example? Not even when they’re furious? Not even when they’re balked by a powerful opponent? Not even when they think some move is stupid beyond belief? Not even when it’s absolutely essential to let off steam, and cussing beats punching?

My German is rudimentary, but I’ve never met a language without a colorful collection of words and idioms that beginning students have no access to. Usually those vocabularies are traceable to the barnyard and the bedroom. Like “shit” and “fuck” and much much worse.

So what’s really bugging Angela Merkel? Why is she disproportionately angered by real politik when practiced by Americans with extensive, sometimes graphic vocabularies? Contradictory behavior often masks inner conflict or indecision. Sometimes it’s a sign of authentic feelings or thoughts piercing through a mask. That may be what’s happening with the German Chancellor. But regarding what?

In short, it may be that the important question isn’t who’s bugging Angela, but what’s bugging her. I’ll let the Europe specialists wrestle with that one.

Notes on the Olympics: Russia’s Caged Doves

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

It’s the traditional gesture, a feel good image with which to conclude an opening ceremony for the Olympic Games. We’ve seen it so many times: the dove of peace, tossed to the winds, flying free and out of sight. Peace and freedom. Goals all the more valuable for not being easy to attain.

And so, at the 22nd games in Sochi, Russia, after a dreary three hours of clever theater machinery used to ponderous, pretentious, discombobulated and at times historically dubious effect, it was time (at last) to close the business by releasing the dove of peace.

The vehicle was a ballet, its choreography crudely based on the dance form for which Russia is justly famous, and (inadvertently, I have to believe) this finale gave us (at last) a perfect illustration of today’s Russia. I wonder if this revelation was apparent, at the time or later, to Russian President Vladimir Putin who was, of course, in attendance. As for me, I can only wonder at how clever but blind choreographers can be.

Let me describe the costumes. Think of pale blue lampshades made entirely of fine long fringe-like strands. Fitting over the head, hanging down to the dancers’ knees, the apparatus was held in place by the dancers’ unseen arms. When the dancers twirled, the fringes flew out into daisy-like discs. Quite lovely actually. When the motion stopped, the fringes fell back, loosely, limply, almost completely concealing the forms of the dancers. And so, after some space-filling choreography, which is to say, after every few moments of exhilarating freedom, the doves were re- caged.

So sad. Too much like real life. But I kept my hopes up as the dance went on. Surely, I thought, as the dancers began to twirl again, these doves will escape. They will all go free.

Soon, indeed, the prima ballerina showed the way to liberation. Spinning, cage flying out and open, she allowed the lampshade apparatus to fall to her shoulders. Her beautiful face emerged, and the cage—how wonderful!—had turned into wings. She was free. She was liberated. I felt so happy for her and expected, in a moment, all the other doves to emerge. I’d see all their beautiful faces and they, too, would fly off on pale blue wings.

But no. When the music stopped and the twirling was over, the cages fell shut and all I could see were feet. In the end, only the prima ballerina was free to hold her head high, look us proudly in the eye and receive our applause.

Isn’t that a little like Russia today? Putin soars. Everyone else cowers.

Potemkin’s Village: Alive and Well in Sochi

By Patricia H Kushlis

I must admit I quite enjoyed the Russian propaganda show that opened the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics Friday night.  Russians have been extraordinarily adept at story-telling for seemingly forever and staging extravaganzas –first religious then secular - for centuries.  This recent three hour long display was no exception.  And it was heartening to see the Russian government pay special tribute to a number of its world famous artists, writers, cinematographers and musicians - dead and alive – several of whose works had been banned or hidden in warehouses, closets, drawers or transported abroad for safe keeping during the Soviet period: Chagall, Malevich, and Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” and the Ballet Russe as a few for instances.  This is a step forward. (photos of Opening Ceremony are from media photo page from the official Sochi Olympics website)

But what happened to Mikhail Bulgakov – or was that cute little eleven year old girl guide who flew high above the crowd floating from era to era in record time really, perhaps, his Margarita in disguise? What about Alexander Solzhenitsyn? Better left off the program because his description of the Soviet Union penal system did not sugar-coat the image? Or other dissident writers, painters, cinematographers; the true Russian chroniclers and dreamers.  Yes, alright, the film-maker Sergei Eisenstein was honored – but face it, his works were some of the biggest propaganda displays the Soviet Union ever produced.

And one must never be allowed to forget the importance of Peter the Great’s 17^th century secret venture West to steal ship-building technology or to pay special tribute to his founding a city on a swamp (built by unmentioned Finnish conscript laborers who were the original inhabitants) complete with a photo of the oversized bronze horseman statue of Peter in a park near the Neva embankment. (photo of the bronze horseman by PH Kushlis, 1990) 

But the Potemkin Village notion was officially absent – except, of course, for the opening ceremony itself which it most closely resembled.

The Russian orthodox religion had a place in the Sochi Opening, too but was subtly done.  Kievan Rus was downplayed (likely to the relief of the Ukrainian team).  Communism? Or the “70 years to Nowhere” experiment, was only shown in cleaned up and polished constructivist terms and figures.  Yes, tribute - as usual - was paid to the over 20 million Soviet deaths in World War II but this time almost in a perfunctory fashion – or maybe that was just the impression from the television footage I saw on NBC.

But the young, spiffily dressed white suited young ladies with dark briefcases slung over their shoulders prancing off to work in the latest fashion supposedly there to represent the latter days of the Soviet period was, well, over the top. (Sorry, no photos of them appeared on the Sochi website).

Letting Terrorists Wander Off

By Brady Kiesling, Guest Contributor

Brady Kiesling served two tours as political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Athens before resigning in 2003 over USG policy. He is the author of “Diplomacy Lessons” (2006), and “Greek Urban Warriors,” his booklength study of Greek political violence, should be out later this year.

People in the USA who follow Greek political violence may wonder how Christodoulos Xiros, a man sentenced to six life terms as a member of a deadly terrorist group, “Revolutionary Organization 17 November” (17N), was allowed out of prison on furlough, not once but seven times.

How could the Greek state not have expected that he would at some point disappear? And then, of course, after he did disappear in early January 2014, Xiros made it worse by releasing a videotaped call for the public to rise up and overthrow the Greek state that had been so generous with him.

Actually, there is sort of an answer to that question, but it’s a long, odd one that may make readers uneasy. First there is a major societal difference: Greek politicians have a different set of incentives from U.S. politicians.

American voters tend to divide the world into good people, resembling themselves, and criminals, who are quite different. U.S. politicians (including elected judges, elected district attorneys, and/or elected sheriffs in many jurisdictions) are rewarded with large checks and motivated voters when they devote taxpayer dollars to locking up as many young black and Hispanic males as possible for as long as possible. Influential groups in this process include the owners of private for-profit prisons, the prison guards union (in California), and the National Rifle Association, which by espousing the need to lock up criminals before they misuse their constitutional right to concealed handguns obfuscates the fact that its true purpose is to sustain a hugely profitable arms race between police and drug dealers.

Greek politicians, however, are uneasily aware that they themselves and all their voters are criminals. Greek law is vast, draconian, and self-contradictory, because it is designed to protect everyone from everything while collecting an impossibly large share of GDP in taxes and making certain very specific things very briefly legal for very specific people. With mild exaggeration, every important action in a Greek person’s life is at least slightly illegal; a bribe, illegal to receive and illegal to pay, will temporarily legalize that action while criminalizing everyone involved in it.

Greek prisons are a product of this gentle, somber philosophy.

Though the courts are clogged and dysfunctional, at some point ordinary Greek citizens go to jail, and then, after a certain amount of time, they must emerge from it. There are no private prisons, no death sentences (in Greece or anywhere in the civilized world Europe), and no real life sentences. You can be sentenced, as one 17N member was, to 21 life sentences plus 2109 years, but the maximum you will serve is 25 years, possibly as few as 17 with good behavior.

Note that the Greek state has a strong incentive to let people out early, because existing prisons are hugely overcrowded, there is no money to build more (you can’t float a bond issue when everyone knows you are bankrupt), and even if there were money, any local group can and will use the Greek court system to block prison construction in its backyard for a decade or more.

In the boom years of the Greek welfare state, the Greek penal system hired sociologists and psychologists who read the latest scientific studies in Europe, most of which suggested that re-arrest rates dropped when families were kept intact through regular contact. The possibility of periodic furloughs also turned out to be a powerful incentive for good behavior in prison. A mixed committee of prosecutors, social workers, and prison staff evaluates the behavior of each prisoner and grants furloughs once a certain percentage of the sentence has been served, unless the committee detects (and justifies in writing) that there is a risk of flight or resumed criminality.

This generous penal system evolved to reconcile Greeks to their problematic legal/judicial system during a more prosperous, less violent time (though even now, the Greek murder rate is a third of ours – 1.5 per 100,000 to 4.7).

A system in need of adjustment?

One can make plausible arguments that the system needs urgent adjustment, since the majority of prisoners are now foreigners, many of whom lack social and family structures to justify the risk of letting them out on furloughs. A handful of disastrous furlough decisions have been made, with vicious armed robbers released to commit new and heinous crimes.

[Whether any corruption was involved I have no idea. There is a lovely case from 1986 where an international drug dealer, sentenced to 19 years, was mistakenly released after 19 months. The prosecutor who accused the judicial panel of bribery was herself convicted of slander, while those responsible for the “mistake” walked free. In 1992, 17N contemplated an attack on another clique of judges accused of taking such bribes, and its rival revolutionaries from ELA actually bombed the Thessaloniki courthouse on March 31, 1992 for the same reason, a protest designed to show that revolutionary justice was superior to the Greek state’s.]

Most furlough decisions, however, work out perfectly well. Remember too that Greek law did not, before 2004, dare to define a category of “terrorists” distinct from the rest of humankind. This was a prudent hesitation, if you consider Menachem Begin, Nelson Mandela or even Kostas Simitis, an estimable Greek prime minister (1996-2004), who had to flee Greece in 1969 after a feeble bomb attack against an Esso Pappas filling station and other U.S.-linked targets.

Compared with their fellow inmates, all thirteen 17N convicts were model prisoners, non-violent, intelligent, diligent in their prison chores, and self-controlled (with two exceptions: in 2009, an internal feud led to Christodoulos’s biting on the leg the man police said was 17N’s leader; in 2011, it was again Christodoulos who set fire to his mattress to win transfer out of the special 17N wing and into the main prison).

All but three of these 17N detainees were permitted furloughs, and all of them scrupulously observed the terms until now. Of these ten, seven have since been released after serving 3/5 of their sentences. They have integrated productively and so far harmlessly back into society.

But what about the 23 people 17N murdered: four Americans, two Turks, one UK citizen, and 16 Greeks? Blood calls out for blood. Yes, but Greek law, like U.S. law pre-9/11, allots punishment based on the degree of participation in specific criminal acts. Most people believe that cold-blooded killers should stay in jail, and Christodoulos Xiros was convicted of direct involvement in 10 killings between 1985 and 1992, based largely on a confession he himself signed.