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… read about the violence of borders on Ayiti.

Haiti is the second free republic in the Americas and the first to fully emancipate itself from enslavement and colonial rule. Thanks to colonial domination patterns, it is also one of two nations on the island of Hispaniola (Ayiti in the Taino language). As its collapsed government appears to show no signs of reforming, Haitians on the island are subject to violence, state-directed and at the hands of their neighbors in the Dominican Republic. Writes Saudi Garcia [[link removed]], “Recent events highlight a peak in anti-Black and anti-Haitian violence, the result of the ever-mutating punishment of Haiti for its revolution of 1804.” That violence takes the form of a law, decree 668-22, which allows the Dominican government to deport anyone deemed a foreigner from government-held land, including extensive plantations along the border of the countries. The violence also comes from an armed paramilitary, the Antigua Orden Dominicana. “The ‘Antigua Orden’ that this organization advocates, much like the vision of the ‘Make America Great’ crowd, is a violent and anti-Black social order,” Garcia explains. While paramilitaries advocate for a reactionary restoration of a false past, activists and others in the Dominican Republic are embracing their Black heritage instead, acknowledging the island's history and lineages as far more permeable than borders painted with blood.

Unsparing detail

Pairing his life story with an exceptionally talented ghostwriter, Prince Harry’s autobiography Spare includes his reflection on what it is like to kill as a soldier in war. In an excerpt that leaked online [[link removed]], Harry put a number to his kills in Afghanistan: 25 people, all of whom he believed to be Taliban. In the same excerpt, he weighs the cost of killing on his conscience and identifies the dehumanization of enemies that allowed him to kill.

Nearly a million people [[link removed]] have died in the post-9/11 era, and the majority of them are civilians, write Darcey Rakestraw and Elizabeth Beavers [[link removed]]. The disproportionate impact of these wars has been borne by Muslims and people of color. They point out that “nearly all of the 85 countries [[link removed]] in which US counterterrorism operations have occurred are in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. The dehumanization that Prince Harry describes stems in part from the systemic racism that undergirds militarism.”

As Rakestraw and Beavers outline, talking about the dehumanization of people in war should be just the start of Harry’s work. Many princes can point to foes killed and work done on behalf of comrades in arms. What is rarer is turning that critique from the flaws of a specific war to attacking the scourge of war itself.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Escalation Chatter

South Korea’s conservative government is looking to nuclearize the peninsula further. This is partly in response to the durable and inconvenient reality that North Korea, held forever in an armistice with the South, is undeniably a nuclear power. But it’s also an escalatory move by the South, which is seeking either US basing of nuclear warheads or developing its own arsenal.

"A nuclear-armed South Korea would entail many grave consequences. Combined with the Yoon administration’s belligerence, it makes an atomic inter-Korean conflict more likely,” writes S. Nathan Park [[link removed]].

Washington can play a role here, continuing to offer conventional defense assurance to South Korea while adjusting to the reality that, even though the North is a nuclear-armed state, the South need not develop nukes of its own to guarantee safety.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Random Rules: Part II

A rebel alliance can be self-explanatory, the purity of rebellion enough to cohere together a popular insurgent front. But, in the messiness of real life, the messiness of rebellion is a hobbling force, with ideological divisions keeping apart factions that should, by all appearances, be natural allies.

In “ Same Same but Different? Ideological Differentiation and Intra-jihadist Competition in the Syrian Civil War, [[link removed]]” Regine Schwab examines Ahrar al-Sham, one faction in the Syrian war, and what strategies it used to manage alliances among other rebel factions.

While violence is certainly one strategy rebel groups can employ against rival groups, it carries a high cost. For example, ammunition used against another rebel group can't be used to fight the government both groups seek to topple. After all, ammunition is a scarce resource. Moreover, killing fighters of another rebel faction also depletes strength.

“Differentiation also has consequences for other audiences such as local civilians, prospective recruits, and external supporters,” writes Schwab. “Local civilians suffer from rebel infighting as they might get into the crossline or be consciously targeted. Hence, they should prefer nonviolent ways of managing conflict. When groups take a large ideological distance from each other, it is easier for prospective local and foreign recruits to choose their preferred group. While nonstate external sponsors might prefer to support the most radical rebel outlet, state sponsors often choose a more moderate option.”

In Syria, ideological differentiation proved a valuable strategy for Ahrar al-Sham, especially as ISIS occupied a radical extreme of the spectrum. For people looking to combat the Assad government but not driven to the same hardline rules and beliefs as ISIS, Ahrar al-Sham was a path into the fight.

In parsing out how groups occupy ideological space, Schwab sets out two axes: a territorial perspective and a social-political outlook. Territory ranged from national or those seeking to limit the war to smaller geographic confines, and transnational, like ISIS’s vision of Syria and Iraq as both under one rule.

On the pragmatic end of the social scale, Schwab writes, “groups prefer integration with society and see fitna (civil strife) as detrimental to their cause. Hence, they are willing to work with actors that do not share their creed.” This is in contrast to purist groups, which took an expansive definition of “takfir,” or declaring other Muslims infidels.

Ahrar al-Sham was able, especially in 2013-2014, to differentiate itself from ISIS by emphasizing its nationalist credentials and broader ideological umbrella. However, this was not a particularly moderate vision, as al-Sham regularly proclaimed Afghanistan’s Taliban as the model for its desired program. Yet, those same moves left it vulnerable against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which after the fall of ISIS, was able to supplant Ahrar al-Sham as the main rebel force in the country.

“By analyzing the puzzling case of Ahrar al-Sham that emerged both as a winner and a loser of intra-jihadist competition in Syria, the paper finds that ideological differentiation is used when military constraints or ideological similarity preclude the initiation of violence against rivals,” concludes Schwab.

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Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman visited [[link removed]] programs in Ghana that demystify autism in the country. While Ghana’s government set out a vision of inclusive education in 2016, implementation lags, leaving parents to turn to special needs learning centers that can cost $3,000 annually, though some offer subsidies. “Mary Amoah Kufour, whose 20-year-old daughter has autism, is determined to change the narrative for children with special needs and their caregivers,” wrote Dini-Osman. In 2016, Kufour founded Klicks Africa Foundation [[link removed]], a center for early intervention and support for children under the age of 5 as well as young adults on the autism spectrum. Her work, and others, is making space for autistic children to grow into autistic adults.

Katie Toth thrifted [[link removed]] through a pop-up market in a cinema foyer in Prague, where Feminist Anti-War Resistance, a Russian activist group, was raising money for a solidarity kitchen in Ukraine. The work, done beyond the borders of Russia, allows the Russian-speaking community to coordinate efforts and help people stop the war by not participating in it. Market organizer Varvara “feels feminism is the ideal vehicle for discussing how authoritarianism and war are connected; it’s already discussing interconnections between things like race and gender roles.” Siberian communities like Varvara’s see more conscription than Russia’s western cities; that, too, is disproportionate harm from war.

Marco Werman interviewed [[link removed]] Fawzia Koofi, a former member of Afghanistan’s pre-Taliban parliament, about the assassination of her colleague, Mursal Nabizada, who, on Jan. 15, 2023, was shot along with her bodyguard in her home in Kabul. Koofi spoke from London, beyond the reach of the violence in the country but hardly unaffected. She explains that every Afghan woman who contacts her feels like they are dying in slow motion. “Because if you live, and you're not recorded as a human being, you're literally dying in slow motion,” Koofi told Werman. For her, the banning of women from universities and working with nongovernmental organizations marked the end of the notion of the “modern Taliban” as distinct from its 2001 predecessor.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

Even $100 million of jet fighter [[link removed]] can use a lift sometimes.

Got obscure steppe knowledge [[link removed]]? Shout it, every day, even if you get a little horse [[link removed]].

If you play Mongolian history in reverse, it’s the story of a mild democracy enduring a hostile neighborhood only to, centuries early, redefine what conquest means [[link removed]].

Haven’t seen an axis of deception [[link removed]] this transparent since David Frum was writing speeches for President George W. Bush.

The hack was the color of geocities, tuned to a personal web page [[link removed]].

Speaking of uwu, before there were emoticons, emoticons were there [[link removed]].

When traveling with a Carl Gustaf recoilless anti-tank rifle [[link removed]], please always make sure that airport security is properly informed first.

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Critical State is written by Kelsey D. Atherton with Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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