A young girl and her brother in rural Bihar. Thousands of people are trafficked every year from Bihar, which is one of the most impoverished and corrupt states in India.

New Delhi- I am currently back in Delhi and in the process of writing the story on human trafficking I researched in Bihar. It was a week of sad stories in small villages, but working on this story has motivated me to continue working on it as a long term project as funding and assignments allow. An idea for how I want to present the project is forming and as soon as I finish writing this article I will be drafting proposals to continue this work in India and other countries.

Women in rural Bihar. Every year thousands of people are trafficked from Bihar, which is one of the most impoverished and corrupt states in India

Simu, 19, was trafficked from West Bengal to Delhi and forced to work as a domestic servant until becoming pregnant by her trafficker who abandoned her at a hospital. Pictured here with her daughter, she currently works at a daycare center for children. image copyright Justin Vela July 2009.

New Delhi-Not having left Delhi since returning to India late last June, Indians are constantly recommending places to visit. Manali. Mumbai. Kolkata. Leh. Srinagar. Goa. No one mentions Bihar. When I tell them that I am going there tomorrow, to one of the most impoverished and corrupt states in India, they suggest visiting Gaya, the place where Siddhartha Gautama “achieved enlightenment” while famously sitting beneath a still standing tree. Others simply make a face.

Rural Bihar may not be among the hundreds of popular tourist destinations present in this beautiful and ancient country, but the state does have it’s high points. Or perhaps had them.

Bihar is from where the Mauryan Empire, India’s first great empire, conquered much of what is now India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. After destroying the local governments left in place by the withdrawing armies of Alexander the Great and violently expanding north, the empire, which existed from 321 to 185 BC, ushered in a period of relative peace and stability. There was internal and external trade. Agriculture and economic activities expanded. The emperors Chandragupta and Ashoka promoted Jainism and Buddhism respectively. Buddhism especially was given importance, perhaps because Ashoka chose to dedicate himself to the religion after orchestrating a particular bloody battle, and the religion spread into China and across the rest of Asia.

Bihar has been continuously inhabited for 3,000 years, but now has the lowest GDP in India and a 2005 report declared it the country’s most corrupt state. I go there to work on a story on human trafficking, which is rampant in India.

According to a report prepared by the state government along with NGOs, most children smuggled from the state end up as bonded labourers, domestic workers and employees at roadside restaurants or small textile units.

Most young girls are either forced to marry men from Punjab and Haryana or work in brothels.

So far this year 128 traffickers have been arrested in Bihar. In once recent raid that captured 28 traffickers, 91 women and 99 children were freed.

The Kosi flood last year exacerbated the already impoverished conditions in Bihar and there has been a rise in trafficking this past year as parents with too many mouths to feed sell their children in order to survive.

A boy from Bihar recently rescued from being forced to work in a Delhi factory shows his wounds after being beaten by a trafficker. image copyright Justin Vela July 2009

In Serbia, Kosovo, Ukraine, and China, human trafficking is something I keep coming across, but see compartivley few news reports on. While beginning to work on this story in Delhi I found most NGOs to be grossly irresponsible and more eager to promote their own organization than talk about people actually being trafficked. One NGO manager and I began yelling at each other after he wanted me to sign a legal document saying that his organization would receive a large amount of promotion in whatever article I did. Other NGOs agree to meetings and speak about the work that they are doing, but then do not come through with actually showing what they do. There is also a focus by most NGOs and government organizations on rescuing the trafficked people and receiving immediate media attention, but there is comparatively little effort made in preventing people from getting trafficked in the first place and rehabilitating them afterward to ensure they do not get trafficked again.

While the article and corresponding photographs will tell the story of different people that have been trafficked and then rescued in India, the focus will be on describing the existing conditions that allow trafficking to be possible and why the government sponsored rehabilitation packages rarely (at best) reach people that have been trafficked. The conditions that allow people to be trafficked will also not be explained so simply as by only describing the mass poverty that exists in rural villages. Poverty may be one of the main reasons that people are trafficked, but there is also a cultural acceptance of a certain degree of child labor and the fact that many of the traffickers are actually from the same rural villages the traffic people from. They build trust among people and make them believe they are going to make better lives when in fact they are prostituted or forced to work in abject conditions.

This article and set of pictures will be the first in what I hope will continue as a long term project on human trafficking. Bolivia, Kosovo Uzbekistan, and Cambodia are other countries I hope to visit for this story.

Bihari children rescued after being trafficked to work in a Delhi factory wait to be returned home at a rehabilitation center. image copyright Justin Vela July 2009

“The future of Ukraine will develop in two direction; in terms of its relations with Russia, and in terms of its relations with Europe and the rest of the world. If these relationships unfold propitiously, Ukraine’s chances are excellent. For it is a country of fertile soil and precious natural resources, blessed with a warm, hospitable climate. And it is a large nation of more than fifty million-strong, resilient, and ambitious.”

-Ryszard Kapuscinski, Imperium

A Russian flag flies in the Ukrainian port city of Sevastopol

This is an unedited version of an article that appears this month in The Caravan magazine

A Vital Borderland

In Sevastopol I sip sugary tea and listen to babushka Tamara.

The old woman rents me the empty room off her kitchen for six dollars a night and says, “No problems. There are no problems.” She pushes over a plate of cheese and crackers and points to the drooling old dog that rarely moves from a cushion in the corner, but manages a belated yap whenever someone comes to the door. “The dog is information and control,” she says. “I am security.”

As much as I love the breakfasts that she presents every morning when I enter the kitchen, babushka Tamara is paranoid. On TV she has seen the collapse of one American and European bank after the other. “There is a crisis,” she says. The TV has also convinced her that the Chinese are going to buy up the world’s markets as part of a new imperial plan. That, she says, will be even worse than the banks collapsing. She pulls at the edges of her eyes and says, “Meow, meow…”

Despite the global economic crisis, Tamara tells me that Russia is still strong. This makes her proud. “Russia is stable,” she says. Every month she receives pension money from the Russian government. It is the only money that she has. “Medvedev and Putin are good for that,” she says.

As we talk it becomes clear that Tamara is intensely proud of everything that is Russian. Yet we are not in Russia. We are in Ukraine. In the Crimean port city of Sevastopol. Tamara however is one of Sevastopol’s majority Russian population and considers Crimea, officially the Autonomous Republic of Crimea,  to be part of Russia. “I am Russian,” she says. “Crimea is Russian.” She warns me of Sevastopol’s heavy anti-Americanism. Even her grandson and the workmen repairing her fence want Tamara to throw me out. But she repeats her mantra. “No problem,” she says. “Nyet problem. You are not in the military. Were you ever in the army? Only blacks are in the US army. They have to go for the money.”

She makes a motion like she is advancing with a bayonet. Then she tells me to learn Russian.

“A very big group of people in the world speak Russian,” she says.

Tamara is so right. I have come to Sevastopol to learn about the Russians living abroad and Moscow’s efforts to keep them close. After Russia’s August 2008 annexation of South Ossetia and Abkazia there were fears that Crimea might be next. Especially in Sevastopol, the population is nearly entirely Russian and when people refer to “their country” they are not referring to Ukraine, but rather to Russia.

Crimea had actually been part of Russia until 1954 when the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev presented the land as a gift to Ukraine on the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav, with which Tsarist Russia had agreed to protect Ukraine from a Cossack rebellion. The territory transfer however was a largely symbolic gesture as both Ukraine and Russia were then part of the Soviet Union.

Sevastopol also hosted Russia’s infamous Black Sea Fleet. Indeed, Sevastopol had been founded by Russia’s Catherine the Great in 1783 as the fleet’s base. From Sevastopol, a navy was a force all over the Black Sea, an important body of water that offered landlocked regions access to the Atlantic Ocean.

It was the presence of the Back Sea Fleet that caught the world’s attention. Walking down past the bus and train stations and up into downtown every morning I look out over the harbor and considered these boats, which sat anchored in the gently moving water.

I do not mean to be derisive, but the first thought that came to mind were the words, “fishing boats.”

The Black Sea Fleet is simply not threatening. Of course I am only seeing a few of the fleet’s frigates, landing ships, and a single submarine. The Moskva, a guided missile cruiser, had been sent to assist in the war against Georgia and had not yet returned.

All the same, the Black Sea Fleet, could hardly be considered a serious military threat to a major power. The fleet served as a Russian anchor in Ukraine however. A way to exert influence. And that influence is more than welcomed.

“This is a beautiful land to fight over,” Olya says.

We are walking around the harbor and talking about Sevastopol. Ukrainian and Russian sailors walk about. Ukraine also keeps ships here, but the military presence is predominantly Russia. Their sailors strut down the sidewalk in large groups wearing white uniforms and hats, looking for off base fun during their free days. No one takes objection to their rowdiness. Russian soldiers have been in Crimea for two hundred years. Hulking drunken sailors are a normal sight.

A nineteen year old international relations student, Olya tells me, “The first thing that has to be understood about this city is that it is a Russian city. Everything else about it must be described within that context. Sevastopol is the most Russian place outside of Russia.”

Of course, I reply. But despite its infamy the Black Sea Fleet certainly does not look very threatening. This bothers her. She takes me to look at the boats and points to the biggest frigate. “They are not fishing boats,” she says. “They are dangerous.”

I do not argue with Olya. She is a Russian and I have just suggested that a component of her country’s navy (she identifies her country as Russia, not Ukraine) is not as powerful as it is made out to be. Such transgressions do not get one far with Russians. Olya tells me that there are many people across the world that want to achieve the wealth and stability that have become prevalent in Russia. She says that she looks to Russia as something that Crimea could someday be like.

Hundreds of tourists came to the large cities in Crimea every year. The cities were expensive places, but the the countryside was impoverished. This made Crimea more similar to Russia than perhaps Olya knew. Russian media was widely watched in Crimea and broadcast images of the wealth that existed in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but Russia was also embroiled in the financial crisis and had suffered a stock market crash after its invasion of Georgia. A well employed Russian friend I had met in Belgrade, Taisia, had made plans to meet me in Sevastopol, but as the financial instability in Moscow increased she kept postponing buying tickets until I received this SMS, “No idea when I will come. No $ for you, food, and gas. The crisis.”

Despite not being the total reality, a financially sound and militarily strong image is crucial for Moscow to project in Ukraine. Last year, in the aftermath of the Georgia conflict, the US pushed hard for Ukraine to join NATO over loud Russian opposition. Such a move would have seriously damaged the already strained relationship between the West and Russia and at the last minute the West at least temporarily postponed their bid for Ukraine to join. While there is a thinking that the prospect of NATO membership serves to stabilize and reform candidate countries (in a Western direction), polls showed that fifty-eight percent of Ukrainians were against joining the alliance, something that frustrates the West.

After all Ukraine is a country of great strategic importance. Straddling the West and Russia, it acts as a transit point for the Russian energy to Europe. This energy, gas and oil, is necessary for Europe to function. It is also something that Russia needs to sell in order to survive. Along with this, Ukraine also serves as the dividing line between the two geographic and cultural entities of Europe and Russia. While the west of Ukraine is culturally and historically close to Poland and Germany, the east has a large Russian population and was the industrial heartland of the Soviet Union, an importance eastern Ukrainians remember.

The Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski writes in Imperium, “…one can say that there are two Ukraine’s: the western and the eastern. The western…is more “Ukrainian” than the eastern. Its inhabitants speak Ukrainian, feel themselves to be one hundred percent Ukrainian, and are proud of this…Things look different in the eastern Ukraine, which covers a territory larger than the western. Thirteen million native Russians live here and at least as many half Russians; here Russification [during the Soviet Union] was more intense and brutal…”

With such a mix of historic experience, Ukraine is a nation still trying to define what it is. It is critical to understand what a deep impact Russia had on Ukraine however. The first Russian state, Kievan Rus, initially originated in the area of Russia that is present day Novgorod, but Kyiv served as the first capital. Kievan Rus was largely a commercial state that did business in furs, swords, and slaves and traded as far as Baghdad. In the 1100’s however growth began shifting north away from Kyiv and, coupled with an invasion of Mongols in 1240, the entity that was Kievan Rus was destroyed.

Two and a half centuries later, the Mongols were forced out and Moscow was established as the capital of Russia, with modern day Ukraine considered part of its southern territory. It remained quietly as such, until the early 1880’s when Ukrainian nationalists began clamoring for autonomy.

Few made any claim that Ukrainians are a unique people. They are a mix of Tatar, Russian, Polish, and Cossak. The idea of a Ukrainian nation however was formed when intellectuals began identifying the differences in their language and culture from Russian and Polish peoples and gained support from the peasants by talking about the need for land redistribution.

In 1862 Ukrainian nationalists upped their drive for an independent nation by founding the first hromada or Ukrainian intellectual organization which served to promote the idea of a Ukrainian nation. Though the Russian authorities initially viewed the Ukrainian nationalist movement as harmless, they eventually came to believe that the hromadas were linked to a Polish backed uprising and had them shut down. The Ukrainian language was banned except in literature and Ukrainian activists were exiled.

Just twenty years later, in the 1870s, the hromadas were allowed to resume their activities They succeeded in taking over a Russian newspaper and began publishing pro-Ukrainian articles. An Ukrainian dictionary was published, but the resurgence did not last long. This time, Tsar Alexander II was convinced that the Ukrainian nation was a plot designed by the Hapsburg Empire against Russia. Ukrainian activists were again exiled. The relaxing of laws and subsequent crack downs continued until 1917, when the chaos produced by the Russian Revolution allowed the Ukrainian state to come into existence.

An independent Ukraine did not last long however. Russia took Kyiv again in February 1919 and Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Ukrainians had come to be seen as a nationality separate from Russians, but it was not until the end of the Cold War that Ukraine would truly become independent.

This makes Ukraine one of the world’s youngest countries. Its experience with full democracy is not yet twenty years old however and it is being pulled in two directions. In one way towards Europe. In the other towards Russia.

There is loud music pumping from a newly installed fountain. An old woman in a yellow headscarf does a hip waving dance and then goes up to a ruddy couple on a bench and demands money from them. Drunks stumble around or are helped to stand upright. A man careens over a table and breaks glasses. Here, it acceptable to drink beer even at seven in the morning while waiting for the bus. Tourists and local wedding parties walk along the water taking pictures in the soft, clear light and take ferries across to the other side of the harbor. Boats sound their horns as they start up their engines.

Off setting these scenes taking place amid the old, square, and freshly painted white buildings of downtown Sevastopol is a group of Russian soldiers angrily pacing around the monument to Catherine the Great of Russia. One of the soldiers grasps a leather wrapped cudgel. There are extra pieces of leather attached to the cudgel’s ball head and he snaps them in the air as he paces.

During the night someone has hit the monument with blue and yellow paint, the colors of the Ukrainian flag. As local TV crews arrive and city workers hurry to set up ladders and scrub the monument clean, someone yells, “If they want a fight they’ll get it.”

Ukrainian nationalists are quickly blamed for the attack on the monument, which was a gift from Moscow to Sevastopol to mark the city’s 225th anniversary. As the only outsider in the crowd, members of the Russian Unity Organization surround me and claim that the vandalism was part of a plot to provoke Ukraine against Russia. They say that if Ukraine ever joins NATO, Sevastopol would declare itself independent of Ukraine.

“When Ukraine goes into NATO, Crimea goes out of Ukraine,” a man named Semyon says. “Fifteen years ago Sevastopol held a referendum on being part of Ukraine. Ninety-five percent of people voted against it. The people that live here consider Sevastopol totally to be part of Russia.”

The 1993 referendum the members of the Russian Unity Organization were talking about had attempted to rejoin Sevastopol with Russia. Mediation by the UN annulled the vote, but Sevastopol remained a ninety-five percent Russian city unhappy with its legal capital being Kyiv.

Before arriving I had read countless news reports asserting that Sevastopol could be the next “flash point” as Russia expanded its power and attempted to counter the influence of the West. As the members of the Russian Unity Organization make vindictive statements about the US and say Ukrainians shouldn’t be considered a true nationality, but rather “a movement that began to seek independence from Russia in 1917,” this sounds only too possible.

Yet for all the talk of NATO and Georgia and spheres of influence the subtleties of the story were being grossly underreported. This is something that frustrates me on nearly every journey I make. Media reports and official statements generally push a situation into two extreme camps, leaving the non-participants and bystanders, the so-called “normal” people, an unheard voice because of their lack of action. What always existed however and, what is cliche in journalism to talk about with colleagues, but not actually report on, is that when questioned those people brought an added dimension to the story that if inserted into the public dialogue would make the lives of the politicians and activists, as well as the journalists, far more difficult.

There is for instance, Misha.

Misha is there as the members of the Russian Unity Organization crowd around me. After they talk about succession and lash out at Ukraine however, they say that they are glad a foreigner came to find out what is “really happening” in Sevastopol and that they hope “Russia and Europe will someday form some kind of collective with a single government.”

This is the last thing I expect them to say. The Russian Unity Organization receives money from Moscow to promote Russian culture in Sevastopol. Every weekend I see them downtown with posters condemning Ukraine, Europe, and the US. As I speak with them a Sevastopol resident comes up and asks what he has to do in order to become a Russian citizen. Yet they do not find an idea of a “collective” between Europe and Russia unappealing.

As we walk away from the Catherine the Great monument, Misha says, “These are the people that have a good view for Sevastopol.”

Often it is the middle aged and elderly remembering the Soviet Union and days of stable employment, larger pensions, and a life devoid of the inflation that plagues many developing nations in Europe that look to Russia as an alternative to the West. While the current global financial crisis, which Western policies are blamed for, only encourages Russia’s current resurgence, the situation is not that simple.

It was easy for western reporters to get inflammatory statements from the older residents of Sevastopol. These elderly Russians grew up during the time of the Soviet Union and blame the West for it’s demise. The Guardian of London and New York Times both published articles quoting retired admirals and other elderly people saying that they want Russia to take control of Sevastopol, alluding to the use of military force. As I walk along the harbor I cannot convince myself that the people in their seventies and eighties are the ones to talk to in Sevastopol however. They support Moscow’s actions, but they are not the definers of what Sevastopol, Crimea, and the rest of Ukraine are becoming.

“Sevastopol right now is a beautiful place to go on vacation,” Misha says. He is a twenty-one year old language student in Sevastopol. “We have water and mountains. It would be very good to change it though so that it is not just a place for tourists and to make it a place for some kind of production and manufacturing. More like Kyiv or other cities in the West. I do not every want Sevastopol to be the same as one of those cities. Sevastopol is a Russian city. We can be a Russian city and produce like one of those places though.”

Misha acknowledges that the Cold War and perception that the fall of the Soviet Union was orchestrated by the West made many Russians see anything from Europe as a threat. In Crimea the threat was felt more intensely because many in western Ukraine desired to join with the European Union and NATO, something that the Russians in the east deplored. Misha is confident that this will change as time passes however.

“My grandfather would never stand next to a European,” he says. “My mother would. For my generation, the people in their early twenties, it is no problem.”

Though he admits that many of his peers want to move from Sevastopol to Moscow, Misha says he wants to continue living here. “I want to stay,” he says. “I like it. It is the homeland.” Active in student life and various youth organizations, Misha is among the future of Sevastopol’s leaders. So proud of Russia that his email address begins with Crimbear, Misha none the less sees what there is to be learned from the West and wants to bring it to Sevastopol, even if that means Ukraine becoming closer to Europe, an entity his elders are suspicious of.

His view is echoed by the dozens of other young people I meet in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. They are first and foremost Russian, but see no contradiction in learning from the development of the West. Without the same kind of resentments as their parents and grandparents, the opportunity for cooperation and lessening of Ukraine’s internal tension will increase with the next generation.

This of course does not mean Ukraine will come fully into the fold of the West. Just the opposite. Ukraine will still culturally and ethnically contain two major demographic groups. Simply put, the people that look culturally and historically to Europe and the people that look culturally and historically to Russia. In a Sevastopol club, one of Misha’s friends, Igor, talks about Europe.

“I am angry at Europe because it is not letting Russians be ourselves. They don’t understand us,” he says. “The difference between Europe and us is that in Europe people are trying to live. In Russia we are trying to survive. We go through school, but that is not enough. We also have to learn to be clever. We are always fighting.”

Even if they want to learn from the West, Igor says there is also a resentment among young people towards what is seen as a condescending stance taken by the West towards Russians.

“The West does not seem to be able to accept that we have our own history and mentality,” Igor says. “They are so sure they are the best and expect us to be like them, but we are not.”

One night Igor and Misha take me to see Sevastopol’s massive statue of Lenin. They tell me to look at the statue from the left side. There is a black shadow cast by the faint street lights across Lenin’s upper chest, as if there is a black hole inside of him.

“He is like death,” Misha says. “But he is also a great man. He began an entire empire. There are two sides to him. We cannot remember him completely badly.”

“We are Russians,” Igor says. “We are ourselves.”

The enclaving of countries is a trend the 21st century will only see more of. It is a by product of the globalization has led so many of the world’s economies to be intertwined. As mass entities, Europe and Russia may be irrevocably tied to each other through, perhaps at the very least, the desire to buy and sell energy. Future scuffles for resources in Central Asia and alternative energy trading partners in Asia and Africa may eventually lower their dependence on each other, but for now there will not be a serious upsetting of relations between the two areas.

But at the same time there is the increasing homogenization or “enclaving” of communities based along cultural, ethnic, and religious lines within individual countries. Despite the large desire for cooperation in Ukraine that its future leaders will undoubtedly encourage, at more local levels there are large numbers of people who will want to remain with whatever they feel their true roots are and will join communities that espouse their particular set of beliefs.

Ukraine will need a strong leader to bridge these gaps between communities and also keep the western and eastern sides of the country from scuffling too much until a day of greater integration. That integration will only happen when Europe and Russia are further integrated and that, to be optimistic, will take some time.

Who that initial leader is will be decided in Ukraine’s 2010 presidential elections. Those elections will almost surely be centered around a squabble for power between Western and Russian backed candidates with the victor defining in which direction Ukraine will tip its carefully maintained balance.

Weeks later, when I arrive in Kyiv exhausted after traveling platzcar or third class across Ukraine from Sevastopol, Maryana looks around and says, “What are we going to do now? Have some kind of round table discussion?”

The twenty-five year old Ukrainian business journalist has been describing how Ukraine has come to be one of the countries hardest hit by the global financial crisis and the $16.5 billon IMF loan that hopes to keep the country afloat. I cannot take it any more however. Ukraine’s internal struggle encompasses some of the most pressing issues of the 21st first century, but it will require far more study and reflection than I currently have time for.

The country has convinced me of one thing: Instead of reporting the most sensational and loudest voices, journalists reporting on this rapidly developing and shifting world will need to concentrate much more on the grays and subtleties facing countries such as Ukraine in order to explain them correctly. Crimea will not be the next “flashpoint” in any struggle for influence between the West and Russia. Crimea is already Russian. Reclaiming it militarily would only harm Russia’s growing relationship with Europe. And culture and ethnicity jump borders and is perhaps even redefining 21st century maps.

Though only twenty-five Maryana has already lived in China, worked as a translator, and written extensively about Ukrainian financial affairs. When I say spasiba or thank you in Russian to a waiter she reprimands me.

“Say dyakuy. This is Ukraine.”

“In eastern Ukraine they say spasiba.”

“Of course,” she says. “They are Russian.”

Whatever the outcome of the January election, it will be important not tip Ukraine too far in either direction. It is a nation sitting on land that is important to both the West and to Russia and there are too many different desires within it to commit either way.

So, for now, Ukraine must remain as it is, a vital borderland.

Click this link for more photos of Sevastopol

Gay Pride in New Delhi

New Delhi-These are two photos from Delhi’s second annual gay pride parade that took place late last June. Following the parade India’s Supreme Court overturned a British law that had banned gay sex 150 years ago.

Gay activists and the NGO which fought eight-year-long legal battle for their rights on Thursday hailed the Delhi High Court verdict  legalising homosexuality as “progressive”. “Now it seems we are in 21st century as the rights of homosexuals have been recognised by the high court.

While gays in India still do not have equal rights in India this is a progressive step forward. After all India as a country is quickly modernizing and the country’s laws and outlook must be updated for the times. As it progresses it’s social code hopefully it will also look at environment issues such as the ones I am currently writing about in an article on Delhi’s Yamuna river which will appear in coming weeks in Caravan magazine.

Gay Pride in New Delhi

Andre, 24, plays a mouth harp amid the ruins of Chersonessus, the 2,500 year old Greek city outside of Sevastopol, Ukraine.

New Delhi-Memory, they say, is the writer’s most crucial tool.

That and a sturdy notebook.

I’ve just spent the past day reworking and adding to an article I wrote on Ukraine several months ago. The original article was fairly academic in nature. This article, done for Delhi’s Caravan magazine, is more of a travel story.

Revisiting the story made me want to return to this “borderland” country, as I call it in the story. It also has me interested in a subject that will only become more and more necessary to learn about in the 21st century. That is the idea of cultures forming enclaves and communities that transcend normal regional boundaries.

In the next few weeks I will be drafting story proposals for around the January 2010 Ukrainian presidential election. This election will serve as yet another sparring match between Russia and the West. With a little luck I’ll be there to cover it. It will give me a chance to look more closely at culture and ethnicity and how they are reshaping the map.

See my photos by clicking here.

Sevastopol – Images by Justin Vela

all text and images copyright Justin Vela

On Both Sides of A Short Border

A survivor of the July 2006 Israeli bombing of Qana inside her home with her recently born child.

As much hope people across the world have in the new US president Barack Hussein Obama, there is just as much acknowledgment that the odds are stacked considerably against him. In his now famous Middle East speech made in Cairo last June, Obama promised a new start to relations with the Islamic world. Colonialism, cultural differences, and the spread of globalization are only part of why the Islamic world harbors anger towards the US government however. Their unfaltering if occasionally, at best, admonishing support of Israel constitutes a much stronger part.

While so much of Obama’s Middle East speech that had to due with Israel centered around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, there was less reference to another great Middle Eastern conflict, that between Lebanon and Israel.
Some would argue that in many ways the Lebanese-Israeli conflict could be seen as an extension of the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. It was Lebanon that the Palestinian Liberation Organization fled to after being expelled from Jordan in 1970. There they continued to launch attacks on Israel and caused Lebanon to be invaded in 1978 and 1982. Lebanon was also one of the five Arab countries that sent troops to try and stop the foundation of Israel in 1948 and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, cites solidarity with the Palestinians to justify many of their cross-border attacks.

The conflict has grown into a thing of its own however and though irrevocably tied to the situation of the Palestinians, the personal grievances and contention on both sides demand it be seen that way. The last time I was in Beirut, Talah said to me, “ You are an American? I will kill you then, alright?”

He was looking through my passport while sitting and smoking hookah on the terrace of his guesthouse in East Beirut. His mischievous grin let me know that he wasn’t quite serious: the playful dark humor of the Lebanese could sometimes be hard to distinguish from an actual threat. They had the tendency of saying something slightly rough and then to burst out laughing at the absurdity of the thought.

Talah handed back my passport and offered to let me rent my choice of his three cars. After I declined he talked about the July 2006 war, which began after Hezbollah’s now famous kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers which caused Israel to invade southern Lebanon and bomb Beirut. Most of the bombs fell on the city’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah and its main supporters were concentrated. All the same, Talah said he heard every bomb that landed on his city.

“I know the US gave those bombs to Israel,” he said.

“Is that why you said you’ll kill me?” I asked.

“I was kidding,” he said. “Look, I do not support Hezbollah. But this is Lebanon.”

This is Lebanon.

Indeed.

While not all the Lebanese supported Hezbollah, the militia was part of the official political opposition, a position they maintained after June 2009 elections re-instated pro-western political parties. In the past few years however Hezbollah had proven itself to be the strongest military force in Lebanon and not long after his appointment the new Prime Minister Saad Hariri met Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nassrallah to attempt and find some mutual understanding. While the US State Department listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, inside of Lebanon Hezbollah was considered, essentially, to be an official Lebanese political party and saw themselves as the only force capable of protecting the country from the aggressions of Israel.

Undoubtedly, Hezbollah were the people to meet in Lebanon. Bussing to Beirut’s southern suburbs and walking around until detained would have been simple enough, but I wanted to interact with them outside the city and to meet with someone other than some tight lipped official. Such meetings were not easy to arrange. Luckily, I had found the right person to help.

“I painted this,” Mercedes said.

After a maid had showed me into her Hamra apartment Mercedes held up a painted porcelain cup and looked for a reaction.

On the cup was the face of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

“I want to give it to him as a present,” she said.

She was a wealthy Christian supporter of Hezbollah. Looking me directly in the eye, she said their fighters were the “most spiritual” people that she had ever met and claimed to support their every action.
No political movement could survive without people like Mercedes. Wealthy benefactors that provided money and representation to the rest of the world. Mercedes however was about the last person I pictured as a Hezbollah supporter. She was dressed in a red silk robe, a cigarette between her fingers and an i-phone on the table in front of her. Antiques and paintings spread throughout the room displayed her wealth. She was serious however and perched on the edge of the plush sofa, she explained her motivations.

“Things changed for me after Bush declared war on Iraq,” she said. “I felt that the American people were my enemies after that. I’ve always known where the bombs and bullets that kill Lebanese come from, but I never felt that the American people were directly responsible for that. But they were directly responsible for Bush.”

Her friend Ali was sitting next to her. “We’ve been to America,” he said. “Americans do not read newspapers. They flip through the headlines. They do not understand the world.”

“I think it is the education,” Mercedes said. “As children they are not educated about the rest of the world.”

They went back and forth like this for awhile. Trying to decide what it was with America that allowed it to so easily shed the blood of Arab people. It seemed to be a conversation they had often.

Mercedes nodded at Ali. “He lost his mother in the July 2006 war.”

“How?” I asked.

“I lived in the south,” Ali said. “The Israelis bombed my house. They completely destroyed it. My mother didn’t die in the explosion. She had a bad heart and the shock of the explosion affected her and she died a few days later.”

He was looking directly at me, speaking very calmly, but his eyes and the flat tone of his voiced displayed the anger that he carried.

“Can the Arab countries ever make peace with Israel?” I asked.

“How can you make peace with someone who stole your house, killed your parents and children and raped who knows what?” Mercedes said.

She paused for a moment to control her anger. Finally, she said, “So come back tomorrow. We’ll go to the south and I’ll show you the village I am rebuilding. And maybe I’ll introduce you to someone from Hezbollah.”

Going south from Beirut the next morning, dressed in camouflage pants and large sunglasses, Mercedes instructed her driver to turn off the highway and go through a small canyon. The surrounding rocks were grayish tan. The trees were short and dry. As we got out of the car at the entrance to a small village a young boy, maybe eleven or twelve stood up from where he was sitting and spoke into a walkie-talkie and stared at us. A group of old women further up the hill called out to Mercedes. While they talked I looked over the dry hills and square, stone houses.

The village laid deep in Hezbollah territory. The walls of some of the homes had murals depicting Hezbollah fighters guarding farmers as they worked in the fields. Yellow Hezbollah flags and pictures of Hassan Nassrallah and fighters killed while fighting Israel hung from poles.

Eventually, two men in their early forties walked up. Mercedes introduced them as members of the local municipality. They walked with us around the village until one of the men turned to Mercedes and in Arabic offered her something. She refused. He insisted and she tried to refuse again, but the man was adamant.

“Justin, are you hungry?” she said. “These men would like to take us to lunch.”

The men were ‘checking me out.’ Until they were sure that they had something to fear however they would remain pleasant, though they were not giving us the option of saying no to lunch.

At a small empty restaurant the table was quickly filled with crepes stuffed with tomatoes, oregano, and cheese. There was yogurt, fresh onions, cucumbers, olives, and scrambled eggs. The two men sat on either side of me and talked to Mercedes. Finally, she pointed to the man sitting to my left and said, “This man is from Hezbollah.”

“Oh,” I said. “Hello. I’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Finish eating first. We can talk afterwards,” he said.

This wasn’t the member of Hezbollah Mercedes planned to introduce me to. This Hezbollah man had seen me walking around the village and was making sure I wasn’t a spy. He scooped food onto my plate. No one else was eating. Sitting very close to me, he watched me chew as if judging me by how much I enjoyed the food. Every time I finished what was on my plate he served more until I had eaten everything on the table.

Finally, he poured me tea and assented to questions.

“Who is Hezbollah?” I asked.

“Hezbollah is all the people of my house,” he said. “They are defending their lands, the farmers, and the houses. They are not terrorists. They are the party that defends Lebanon when the government can’t anymore. The government is not qualified. The government can’t defend Lebanon. Hezbollah is everyone. It only exists for defense. If someone is attacking you, you attack back. If someone came and stole your land you would get it back.”

He paused, “Have you seen the photo of a woman holding onto a tree with Israeli military coming up behind her? That is what it is like in the Middle East.”

“Can you ever have peace with Israel?”

“We could have peace with the Jewish people,” he said. “Not with the Zionists. Zionism is something different. They’ve made themselves look Jewish, but they aren’t really Jewish.”

Even more than the US, the Lebanese and Arabs in general see Israel as the primary problem in the Middle East. Its very existence they feel is the root of multiple conflicts and the general destabilization of the region. When Israel was founded in May 1948 Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq, with Saudi Arabian and Yemenite contingents, invaded with the intention of destroying the new state as quickly as possible. The Israelis responded by making conscription mandatory for every man and women in the country and equipping them with weapons received from the Soviet Union. There were on average 10,300 immigrants arriving in Israel each month, all of which were eager to do their part in defending the Jewish homeland. The Arab states saw Israel as a country unnaturally created by Western countries and were concerned about the destabilizing effects of massive amounts of Palestinian refugees, but were ultimately defeated. The newly formed Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were able to field more troops than the Arab countries, many of which had experience in combat from WWII. By July 1949 the war had resulted in an Israeli victory.

After such a beginning and the continued hostilities, hopes for Israel ever truly being accepting by Arab countries is at best slim. Theories hold that if is Syria was convinced to declare peace and Israel gave back the Shebaa farms, a nine kilometer stretch of land captured by Israel in 1967 that Hezbollah claims belongs to Lebanon, and stopped building settlements in the West Bank there might be some hope for peace, but Israel’s aggressiveness make those prospects difficult to conceive.

After leaving the Hezbollah man at the restaurant, we drove to Qana, a village ten kilometers from the Israeli border. One of the worst tragedies of the July 2006 war occurred in Qana. At one in the morning on 30 July 2006 two bombs were dropped by the Israeli air-force on a house where an extended family was living. Twenty-eight civilians were killed, half of them children.
Mercedes took me to meet one of the few survivors of the attack. She sat in the living room of her new home dressed in a black burkha with photos of the family members who had been killed across the walls. “I didn’t feel anything when the bombing happened. There was an incredible noise. My mouth was filled with dirt and rocks,” she said.

I asked if she supported Hezbollah even after the war and deaths of her family members.

“Of course,” she said. “If this happened to you, you would go with the devil himself to get back at them.”

Our final stop of the day was in Sidon, where the Hezbollah man Mercedes had arranged for me to meet sneered, “You can find these answers yourself, but don’t use Google. Read books. Google is one hundred percent biased Jewish.”

We were sitting in a small candy shop along the water in Sidon, a city just south of Beirut. Mercedes had assented to introducing me to a member of Hezbollah, but the man did not like my questions. I was asking the standard journalistic questions on motivations and goals, but history was what he wanted to talk about.

“They divided the country [Greater Syria] so that Israel could exist,” he said.

The Hezbollah man was speaking about what he saw as the root of the Lebanese-Israeli conflict. After the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in WWI the Middle East was divided by the Western powers. England held a mandate over Palestine, Trans-Jordan, and Iraq while France took Greater Syria, an entity that included Lebanon as a district called Mt. Lebanon.

No matter how the Hezbollah man saw it, that France looked to the creation of Israel, something that would not happen until 1948, as the reason for dividing Great Syria was unlikely. They added Tyre, Sidon, Tripoli, and Beirut to the Mt. Lebanon district and declared Lebanon a country in 1920 more out of a desire to divide and rule than any higher conspiracy oriented ambitions for a Jewish state.

“The worst thing possible for Lebanon is the existence of Israel at it’s border,” the Hezbollah man said. “The French gave Lebanon parts of the north and south for resources. Those parts were Syria. We are the same family.”

Israel was an odd devil. I arrived there eight weeks later after traveling through Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. Upon crossing the border from Aqaba suddenly women again wore tank tops. The roads were smooth and nearly devoid of trash. The houses were large, often two stories and surrounded by trees. Families in shorts and baseball caps walked the sidewalks. As Obama said in his Middle East speech, “…America’s strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historic ties…” Upon entering Israel it was a return to the West. In many ways I actually had to remind myself that I was in the Middle East and not some American style suburb.

That was not too difficult. Dozens of young soldiers walked the streets with rifles. Some were patrolling or guarding buildings. Most however were either hanging around in groups or traveling home for weekend leave. Many carried the rifles slung low across their backs, in a way similar to how rock stars slung guitars around themselves. The security guards at malls and even some random people walking around were also armed.

All the guns added a slight “Wild West” feel to Israel that mixed strangely with the sense of modernity. Yet Israelis were an embattled people; the populations of the surrounding countries wanted to see them destroyed, disappeared from the region. Israelis were not willing to go however. The guns, which have come to be so ingrained in their culture, ensured their very survival.

Israel was specific about who they used their guns to protect however. In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in order to drive out the PLO. After it’s leadership fled to Tunisia, Israeli soldiers remained in West Beirut and that September allowed Christian militias that they had armed and trained to enter the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugees camps and slaughter approximately 2,000 men, women, and children in a two day rampage that at times was only one hundred meters from Israeli lines.

Video footage and interviews conducted by journalists proved that the Israeli soldiers were aware of what was happening inside the camps and had refused to take action to stop it. Theories hold that the Israeli government had occupied Lebanon with the hope of destroying the PLO once and for all and installing a Christian led government which would sign a peace treaty and not allow Lebanon to be used as a launching pad to attack Israel.

This failed and Israel retreated from Beirut (they would remain in southern Lebanon until 2000) under severe international condemnation. If Sabra and Chatila proved anything, beyond human’s ability for brutality, it was that Israel would not blink from inflecting untold suffering on their enemies if they found it within their own interests, despite citing the horrors of the Holocaust as one of the main justifications for a Jewish state.

It was at about the same time as the Sabra and Chatila massacres that Hezbollah came into existence. Many of the initial members were young men in their twenties and early thirties. Iran and Syria sponsored the organization’s founding, with Iran taking the leading role as it continues to do today. The group’s 1985 manifesto declared a desire, along with forcing the Israeli army out of Lebanon, to bring the Lebanese Christian militias who carried out the massacre to justice. Though Hezbollah has now expanded itself from solely being a religious fighting force to operating schools, hospitals, and agricultural services, its primary commitment continues to be resisting Israel militarily.

In Shorashim, a village in northern Galilee not far from the Lebanese border, Steve Judah and his nephew Dov pulled branches from their backyard out onto the road. When I inquired about the yard maintenance Steve said, “We’re actually making a bomb shelter.”

By law every house in Israel must be equipped with a bomb shelter. Rockets are routinely fired at Israeli communities by Palestinians in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. And there were other fears as well. “My wife Sophie is convinced we are going to be targeted by a nuclear missile from Iran,” Steve said. “A bomb shelter won’t do much against a nuke of course, but its good to have anyway.”

During the July 2006 war, Hezbollah rained thousands of rockets into northern Israel from places such as Qana where I had been only a few weeks before. Many of the rockets fell around Shorashim, one landing a mere one hundred meters from the Judah’s home. Standing in the kitchen, Steve pointed. “You see that beam across the ceiling? That’s the strongest beam in the house. We get under that when the siren starts and put our backs against the wall and wait. About fifteen minutes later the rockets start hitting. When they hit they make big booms and everything shakes.”

Though their children were all born in Israel, Steve and his wife Sophie were originally from Chicago, USA. When I asked why they moved to Israel Steve laughed. “You mean what was I running from back in the States? The truth is that I dragged Sophie here. Out of the Americans that move back usually there is a dragger and draggee. She’s been angry at me ever since.”

Steve’s statement about moving “back” implied his belief in the Jewish people’s long standing presence in the land that today composes Israel. No one disputes this claim, but the Jews were not the only people present. Earlier in the day I had visited a small Arab-Israeli village down the road from Shorashim called Sha’ab. Speaking about Sha’ab, Steve said it actually had been a Jewish village until a Muslim invasion from Saudi Arabia in the 7th century. “Mohammed preached expansionism and forced conversion,” Steve said. “His initial followers were Beduin, very tough warlike people and Islam spread fast. They made it all the way into Europe, to Spain.”

Islam had arrived in the area with invasions from Saudi Arabia in the 7th century. What Steve did not discuss was that Arabs had been in the region before those invasions. Though Islam as a religion had not yet been founded, overpopulation in the Arabian Peninsula from the third millennium BC had caused migration west. DNA studies conducted in 2000 also found that Palestinians and Jews descended from populations who had lived in the region since prehistoric times. These people were largely Jewish and Christian at the time of the Muslim invasions and many were converted to the new religion and took on Arab culture.

As religion has nothing to do with the right to land, the Palestinians had just as much claim as the Jews to land in the region. What they lacked was the massive support that Israel has. Though sympathized with throughout the world, the Palestinians often suffered from being seen as the more “uncivilized” aggressors. They threw rocks and sent suicide bombers while Israel attacked them with uniformed soldiers and tanks. The militant Palestinian organization Hamas also stood alongside Hezbollah as one of Israel’s main, Iranian backed, opponents.

Living in northern Israel it was Hezbollah that the Judah family were most concerned with.

“Hassan Nassrallah,” Sophie said the name of Hezbollah’s leader slowly. “They’re just getting back into their bunkers stronger than ever.”

“Do you think there will be more conflict with Hezbollah?” I asked.

“Its like act one of a play,” Steve said. “You have the rifle on the mantel. You know its there and by the end of the play it will have to have been used. Hezbollah has their weapons and they are only getting more powerful. So its only a matter of time before something happens again.”

Steve said this all calmly. It was a fact of life in northern Israel. But he was staying. Hezbollah and their rockets and bunkers or any other threat, there was nothing that could convince him and his family to leave Israel. It was Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. Steve’s son Alex passed me a Yamuka with the Chicago Cubs logo stenciled across the top. The conversation ranged from politics to religion to types of cabbages and where to buy the best avocados. “We’re having Mexican food tonight,” Sophie said.

It was as if we were in a middle class household in the United States. Yet we were eating dinner not far from the Lebanese border in a home that got rocketed by militants bent on an entire country’s destruction. I had been on both sides of this short border and what I could see was that the positioning of Lebanon and Israel had created a death trap that would take more effort, diplomacy, and negotiations to change than had ever existed before in history. Not just a conflict centered around geopolitical power and resources, the Lebanese-Israeli conflict, as well as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, was centered around people’s very homes and their ability to live in them safely.

Dov talked about the Israelis who immigrated abroad to escape the conflict. He was twenty-two, a soldier in the IDF, and said he would always stay in Israel.

“I’m with you,” his cousin Lyla said.

They touched knuckles.

This Israeli steadfastness is mirrored across the border in Lebanon. Had they taken power in the June election, the Hezbollah led opposition had promised to build a “culture of resistance” to both the US and Israeli within Lebanon. Though they were politically defeated it is unlikely they will stop these efforts. Indeed, they might even find some support from the new government. After his meeting with Nasrallah, Lebanese PM Hariri expressed an interest in building a relationship with Hezbollah, a crucial factor in stabilizing Lebanon.

One of the main questions asked after Hezbollah’s defeat is if Obama’s speech, which came only days before, had any influence on the election. This is unlikely. Hezbollah won the votes it had been expected to. It was largely the Christian segments of the opposition, led by General Michel Aoun, that failed to deliver votes. Further, the coalition headed by PM Hariri contains Phalange parties and is not just support by Western powers, but also by Saudi Arabia. These forces hardly embody the moderation and cooperation that Obama called for.

As with so much in the Middle East, and particularly in Lebanon, which has made chaos and upheaval its defining characteristics, the Lebanese election was largely about something else. In this case, the election was also a proxy contest for influence and control between the US and Iran, the two most powerful forces in the Middle East. Though the pro-West coalition won, it is foolish to expect that Iran will stop the flow of financial and military assistance it sends to Hezbollah.

Ahmadinejad’s continuation of power means that Iran will continue to support Hezbollah in much the same way as the US supports Israel, perpetuating a cycle of violence that has become so deadly in the Middle East. Iran, with its strong armed forces, large population, and hold on a tenth of the world’s oil is the most powerful country in the Middle East. Perhaps surprisingly, it has actually benefitted from the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan which removed hostile regimes from it’s doorstep. Their replacement with a heavy US presence has encouraged Iran to continue its cultivation of relationships with Syria and other Shiite allies throughout the region.

As Iran’s power grows, it is being seen with increasing wariness not just from Israel, but also from other Arab countries. Sunni Muslims such as those in power in Saudi Arabia see a threat in the possible conversion of their populations as an effect of the growing Shiite power. The schism between Sunnis and Shiites is insurmountable. It is a dispute over who is the rightful heir of Mohammed: Sunnis believe one of his lieutenant’s, Abu-Bakr, was chosen to succeed the prophet while Shiites believe it was his cousin and son in-law, Ali. The short lived civil war in Iraq, which could easily explode again, was a small taste of the conflict possible between Sunnis and Shiites. Perhaps ironically however, it is this internal dispute that may bring some movement to the entrenched Palestinian-Israeli conflict. As the threat of conflict grows there is the potential for Sunni Muslim countries to unite with Israel in alliance against Iran. This has the potential effect of neutralizing the Palestinians, who are Sunni, against Israel.

If it happens, such a conflict would be as massive and bloody as anything the Middle East has ever seen. If it actually happens, however, is for the future to decide.

An Israeli flag hangs from an electrical tower near the village of Shorashim, Israel.

Video here.

In the video Misra condemns the Western model, but acknowledges there is no other strong model that exists and that the Western world is acknowledging some of the mistakes that have been made and that developing countries are looking to it to take the lead with a new model.

Video here.

Mr. Misra is against the building of the 2010 Commonwealth Games Village in its present location in the Yamuna River floodplain, which he believes to be illegal under Delhi law despite the fact that the construction is proceeding at quick pace.

In this video which I have posted on YouTube he explains why.

This is is the first video to be featured on this blog. Soon they will be embedded directly into the blog, but out of a desire to get this up quickly and continue writing I’m simply linking to it. This is six minutes of a half hour interview that I will probably post a few other bits of. The article this interview will contribute to will run in The Caravan magazine in the next few weeks.

Mr. Misra and the organization he represents have taken their fight against the Commonwealth Games Village being built in the floodplain to the Indian Supreme Court. They are currently awaiting a verdict due in October on whether or not the village being built to house participants will be torn down after the games or sold to private owners.

Click here to see the video

Tibetan monks in Kathmandu, Nepal clash with police in demonstrations marking the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising.

New Delhi-A 25 year old worker in Shenzhen, China named Sun Danyong has committed suicide by jumping from a 12 story building last week after being accused of stealing an i-phone.

BBC article here.

The Taiwanese company he worked for, Foxconn, has faced accusitions in the past of mistreating its employees and Danyong’s suicide comes after he was allegedly beaten, had his home searched, and was locked in a room.

Apple is investigating the case, but this is an example of foreign companies needing to have greater oversight over the firms they contract with that operate inside China. The great attraction of doing business in China is the cheap costs of labor for mass produced products. Chinese worker are not treated well. When I was in Dongguan, the factory city near to Shenzhen where products for many Western companies are made, I saw first hand the bare conditions that many of the workers, who are often from rural areas of China, live in. Many of the factories were closing down due to the global economic crisis and the workers, many of whom were young and trying to spend some years making money along China’s wealthy east coast before returning to their villages, were massing outside the few still operating factories trying to get hired.

Whether Danyong stole an i-phone or not isn’t the issue. US and European companies have long ignored the conditions and operating methods of their contractors abroad. In this era of greater transparency and communication, Danyong’s friends told a Chinese newspaper about his alleged abuse by the company, something that would not have been allowed inside China a decade ago, foreign companies need to be more aware of who they are dealing with. Of course few people are going to refrain from buying this next generation of i-phone’s because of Danyong’s death, but the people who read the story will think about it. That is something that Apple will have on its mind. China is a quickly developing country. Pressure from the companies it does business with can definitely have an impact as the country attempts to improve their human rights. Something that hopefully will happen quickly as China’s spread of influence across Asia and Africa is only growing.

A couple in front of the "Window of the World" amusement park in Shenzhen, China.