Peaceful Societies

The peaceful Ladakhi culture will certainly survive the winter, but many inhabitants of Leh and vicinity are facing a very difficult time ahead due to the tragic mudslide of August 6th. Freak cloudbursts the night of August 5th caused a huge mudslide to devastate the city very early the following morning. The news media in India are carrying reports of fund raising efforts, personal stories of the tragedy, and problems with replacing houses before cold weather arrives.

Fund raising and charitable giving in India to benefit the victims appear to be developing quite well. Thirty five Indian photographers donated their works for a benefit sale, held the weekend of September 3 – 5 in New Delhi. Called “ SOS Ladakh,” the exhibition included photos of such things as colorful monks framed against backdrops of stunning Ladakhi natural scenery. In addition to breathtaking views, the photos depicted scenes of human suffering and difficult terrain.

The exhibition included numerous popular Indian photographers, and various media personalities attended. It raised Rs. 20 lakh (U.S.$43,000) for the relief efforts.

In addition to the displays of photos, the exhibition included souvenirs, accessories, and posters related to the tragedy. A “Help Ladakh” poster depicted on Flickr includes 9 separate photos, including several of buildings filled with and destroyed by the mudslides. The poignant picture in the upper left corner of the poster shows a room in a hospital labeled “Casualty Ward,” which is, itself, a casualty of the mudslide.

The Tribune of India reported on Friday that its relief drive has so far raised Rs 1.5 crore (U.S.$3.2 million) for relief. All of the money, according to the paper, is going to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund. The Editor-in-Chief of the Tribune concludes his editorial by expressing his gratitude to the readers of the paper for their magnanimity in helping the affected citizens of Leh.

But not all reports about the relief efforts are positive. A story on Saturday indicated that a prominent actor named Rahul Bose, who serves as ambassador for Oxfam India, traveled to Leh along with the director of the agency, Nisha Agarwal, and their comments were ominous. While Ms. Agarwal described the water and sanitation facilities that Oxfam is providing, delays seem to be holding up the construction of new houses to replace the several thousand homes that were heavily impacted or destroyed in the mudslide.

Ms. Agarwal commented that the government, which is responsible for building the new houses, has only a month or so of remaining good weather to erect more permanent facilities in order to protect the people who are still living in temporary tent communities.

Another report on Saturday was even more direct. Many of the victims of the mudslide now appear to be resigned to spending the winter in tents. The largest refugee complex, called the “Solar” camp, houses 230 families in 50 some tents about six km from Leh. The Times of India described the delay in building better housing for the victims as a serious problem. “Living in tents for month[s] while everyone gets their act together, is not a solution. They have to move into more sheltered and secure lodgings and soon.”

Apparently not a single house has yet been built, and the resignation of the tent dwellers seems inevitable. The government needs to bring 900 metric tons of steel, 1,400 metric tons of cement, and 604 tons of pipes, among other massive amounts of supplies, into Leh very rapidly in order to do the construction work. About 2,000 trucks will be needed to haul the supplies over the mountains, and the transportation situation is difficult due to the fact that only two highways lead to Ladakh. One of them, the Manali to Leh road, is closed at the moment, and the Srinagar to Leh highway is unable to carry the weight of large trucks.

Bureaucratic hassles also bedevil the construction efforts. The government has provided money for rebuilding, but it is being made available through the State Bank of India—in stages. However, nearly a third of the legitimate claimants lack accounts, which apparently hampers their access to the funds.

The press reports also include accounts of what people have been actually experiencing, and the losses they have suffered. Stanzin Dolkar, a 27 year old woman, lost three of her cousins in the tragedy, two of whom are still missing, and the body of the third was only found a few days ago. “It wouldn’t be easy to get over the tragedy,” she said. “I rushed to help my neighbours and even pulled three of them out from the collapsed houses. The water damaged my house as well, but the houses that were across the road were washed away.”

At the Solar camp, children are going back to school, but they find it difficult to concentrate due to the situation. Padma Chuskit watched from a neighbor’s house as her own home was swept up by the mudslide.

The farmers around Leh have found their fields filled with boulders, their soil washed away, their tools, equipment, and supplies lost. Many irrigation channels, vital to Ladakhi agriculture, were destroyed, though most farm animals, fortunately, survived. The Ladakhi people will rebuild, and doubtless will benefit from the assistance of many generous supporters—and even, at some point, from the government bureaucracy. The peaceful paradise, as many people romanticize Ladakh, will again become a tourist destination, some day.

Early September is a time of rapid change and growth for little children entering the scary world of kindergarten, older youngsters sauntering into high school, and young adults beginning their careers at colleges and universities. These challenges are especially hard for young people who have to leave small, native communities and move to large campuses, where languages and customs can be difficult, foreign, and intimidating. It’s known as culture shock.

The Inuit of the Canadian Arctic, according to a news story on Saturday, face these kinds of difficulties when they head south to urban Canada to attend institutions of higher learning. A reporter interviewed Melissa Ruston, an Inuit student from Kuuijuaq, who is completing her last semester at John Abbott College in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, part of metropolitan Montreal.

Ms. Ruston expressed enthusiasm for her courses, and she is preparing for graduate work ahead. She told the reporter how difficult it was to move from a small Inuit community of 2,000 people, where everyone knows each other, to a campus with three times as many people, where no one looks another in the eye. She described the difficulties of speaking in a different language, and life in a major city environment. She herself was well prepared for the transition, but others she knows had more difficulties and dropped out to return home.

Ruston herself does not drink, but she feels that the ready availability of alcohol is a distraction to many students from the aboriginal communities in the north, where, in her experience, alcohol is much more limited. A first year Inuit student at the college, Anna Kristensen, said she had academic problems at first, but she changed some courses and now she is doing much better. She was one of four high school graduates from the town of Kangiqsujuaq to come to John Abbott last month, and now she is the only one left. The transition has been hard for her, but she sounds determined to succeed.

Louise Legault, coordinator of the college’s Aboriginal Resource Centre, is responsible for helping ease the transition of aboriginal students into college life. She feels the campus is already quite multicultural, so the newcomers can blend in, or stand out, as much as they wish.

Nearly 50 years ago, Colin Turnbull’s wonderful book The Forest People described the fairly peaceful lives of the Mbuti people in the Ituri Forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Unfortunately, their living conditions have declined dramatically in recent years.

IRIN, a humanitarian news service from the United Nations, carried a story last week describing the grim situation in the Mbuti refugee camps in the eastern section of the country. It repeats, and amplifies, a similar report from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees last May.

Ituri Forest and Mbuti Refugee Camp One of the major problems for the Mbuti refugees outside Goma, at the eastern edge of the country, is that much of the land is covered with lava from a volcanic eruption in 2002 and is completely unsuitable for agriculture. Mupepa Muhindo, an Mbuti representative from the refugee camp Hewa Bora who was also quoted in the May report, told IRIN that it was not possible to cultivate the soil.

Muhindo and the other Mbuti fled from their ancestral homes in the Ituri forest in 2004 due to the interminable fighting, which targeted—and still focuses on—the slight, indigenous people often referred to as “Pygmies.” Their lives in the refugee camps are still fraught with discrimination and daily violence. One international expert described the Mbuti of the eastern Congo as one of the most severely impacted of all the world’s displaced peoples.

IRIN queried the UNHCR by email about the situation. The agency replied that it is advocating for the Mbuti, but they are receiving no material assistance from the government of North Kivu province—nothing to help them withstand the rains, nothing to provide them with arable land so they can start to cultivate food. Evidently around 300 Mbuti live at the Hewa Bora camp.

An elderly Mbuti woman, Hodi Nyiramajambere, told IRIN that she had been living in the Virunga National Park, famed for its rare mountain gorillas, but the government evicted her. “The nurses put us out,” she said, and she added that they “don’t give us medicine, because we have no money. Our children and babies are dying.” Their shelters do not have electricity or running water.

The IRIN story describes the way many Congolese people discriminate against the Mbuti. Mark Lattimer, from Minority Rights Group in London, said that officials and people in positions of authority routinely tell them to go away since they are Mbuti. “One of their biggest problems is that they have great difficulty accessing any kind of public or social service, partly because they don’t have the money,” he told IRIN. “They are routinely turned away. Officials or anyone in authority will simply say ‘you’re a Pygmy, go away.’”

The Minority Rights Group visited the Mbuti in 2004 and documented the crimes committed against them in a hard hitting report that year. Lattimer said that the violence against the Mbuti is often attributed to superstitions about their supposed supernatural powers, and the beliefs that men’s problems can be cured by sleeping with Mbuti women. He dismisses these explanations—they are justifications for violence and rape. He argues that the real problem is that they are marginalized by the majority Congolese people, so they can be victimized with impunity. Lattimer suggests that a very important issue for the Mbuti is their lack of land.

Muhindo, the spokesman at Hewa Bora, says that another critical issue is their inability to pay school fees. Since children can’t study, they will have no future. “Because we don’t have any education, we can’t consider ourselves people like others,” he adds.

Michel Nganga Buruki Kisolobo, an Mbuti man, has moved into the city of Goma, the provincial capital, and has been able to support himself as an herbalist and as the operator of an information center for others struggling to adapt to city life. He told IRIN that it is difficult for Mbuti to get jobs, even though many want to find work. They face discrimination everywhere they turn. He also expresses concern that when his people move into the city, they will forget their Mbuti ways. “Our children must know about the animals living in the bush,” he believes.

Douglas Fry asks, rhetorically, if it is possible to learn anything from societies that do not go to war, and he answers that we could learn how to foster peace in the world. He is too keen an anthropologist to state, prescriptively, that this or that approach will prevent war. But the information he provides in a recent journal article about peace systems gives a lot of good insights about avoiding warfare.

Douglas Fry His basic argument is that other societies can provide useful mirrors so we can reflect on our own ways of doing things. This is particularly true of societies that do not fight wars with neighboring peoples. He calls them “peace systems.” He cites seven peace systems from the literature and carefully describes three.

He wants to find out how peaceful relationships among societies can be developed and warfare prevented. Is it possible for nations to nonviolently resolve their conflicts? He points out that several societies are now peaceful which were, in the past, known for their violence, facts which support his argument that most nation states could also become nonwarring.

Fry cites broadly-conceived anthropological studies that have shown that peaceful societies, and peace systems, exist here and there around the world. The very existence of these peace systems should undercut the argument about the essentiality of “man’s” basic killer instinct, “his” inevitable need to make wars on neighboring societies. On the contrary, war is not inevitable.

The author examines three peace systems in some detail. First, he looks at the harmonious social interrelationships among the Indian tribes living in the Upper Xingu River valley in Brazil. These societies do not speak the same languages, but they have cherished, for hundreds of years, the idea that they do not go to war with one another, though they do, at times, practice witchcraft violence.

The Xinguanos have a number of mechanisms that prevent wars from breaking out. One is that each tribe has developed its own skills, and trades its specialized goods to the others. The Waurá, for instance, are the only potters, a skill that the other tribes acknowledge and respect. The social relations of the Xinguanos are thus based, in part, on mutual appreciation for the craft-making skills of the others.

Furthermore, around 30 to 35 percent of the adults in each tribe are married to outsiders, a practice which helps maintain their peace system. The Xinguanos foster a ceremonial interdependence through dancing, singing, and wrestling together to build a common identity to the larger social system. Finally, they share values that oppose war. People gain no prestige from warfare—they do not valorize warrior figures. Peace, in these societies, is moral, while violence is amoral.

The second peace system that Fry describes is aboriginal Australia. He admits that the pre-European contact Aborigines experienced feuding, violence, and murders, but they rarely engaged in warfare. He defines warfare as “armed combat between political communities,” a definition proposed by an earlier researcher. Inter-group hostilities among the Aborigines were normally carried out through symbolic displays of aggression rather than warfare.

In the Western Desert, the Mardu people, for instance, had so few natural resources, it only made sense for them to stress overlapping territorial boundaries and the peaceful, open movements of peoples. That way, individual groups would survive local famines and droughts. The Mardu, not surprisingly, have no words for “warfare” or “feud” and they don’t go to war with their neighbors. Like the Xinguanos, the Aborigines share cultural, social, and kinship ties to help cement their peace system. Furthermore, their belief systems, based on their shared origins in the Dreamtime, help to prevent wars of territorial aggression.

Fry defines the European Union as a third peace system, an intriguing concept in that the other systems he mentions are all described in the ethnographic literature. But he makes a strong case for this assertion. The post-war leaders of Western Europe deliberately created a peace system after the devastation of two world wars. The “founding fathers of Europe,” as he calls them, viewed the new Europe as a system of states that would explicitly avoid war by suppressing the causes of warfare. These founding fathers promoted gradual economic integration in Western Europe as a way to build peace. They played down nationalism without necessarily eliminating it, and hoped to build integration in other areas of European life.

Fry concludes his review by suggesting four ways that the three different peace systems all help to prevent warfare and promote peaceful interrelationships. First, based on the three peace systems, he concludes that a sense of economic interdependence is an important factor in developing nonwarring relationships among states. Secondly, in all three peace systems, people have many interlinking relationships at the personal level, which helps them build a feeling of interconnectedness.

Thirdly, Fry describes the way each peace system features mechanisms for resolving disputes nonviolently. In the European Union, for instance, the European Commission takes a formal role in persuading member states to resolve disputes, and the European Court of Justice exists as a further level for defusing international issues. Finally, Fry argues that the values, beliefs, and attitudes among the peoples in the peace systems are extremely important for inhibiting the acceptance of war. The Upper Xingu tribes strongly oppose warfare and violence. The way the Aborigines link their societies in the Dreamtime helps mitigate against warfare. In Europe, the horrors of two world wars contribute to their “never again” beliefs.

Fry does not argue that there is one best way to build peace among peoples. But the existence of the three systems he describes does support his conclusion that building more international peace may not be as difficult as people frequently believe.

The reference list at the end of the article is comprehensive. The only problem with this otherwise excellent, enlightening, essay is that the new journal in which it was published, the Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, is, as yet, received by very few libraries. Readers intrigued by Fry’s scholarship may wish to try and persuade their nearest libraries to purchase subscriptions—and buy the back issues from the publisher so that Fry’s article in volume one will be on the shelves. Or, individuals can purchase their own personal subscriptions—or single articles. To judge by Fry’s work, the journal is certainly worth it.

Fry, Douglas P. 2009. “Anthropological Insights for Creating Nonwarring Social Systems.” Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research 1(2): 4-15

Most of the peaceful Nubian people were forced to abandon their homes in southern Egypt in the 1960s because the Aswan High Dam was nearly completed, and, until now, they have never been fairly compensated by the Egyptian government. Many were resettled into shoddy new communities north of the city of Aswan. With their villages and farms flooded in Old Nubia, they have struggled to retain their unique, nonviolent, culture. They have agitated ever since for new farming villages next to the Nile, so they could regain the inspiration from the river, the source of life and culture to them.

The government recently made a commitment to building new communities for them and, according to a news report last week, the reconstructed villages are 70 percent finished. The first Nubian-style dwellings, described as “congested domes,” have been erected at Wadi Qurqur, 25 km south of Aswan. Unfortunately, the news report is confusing—it indicates that the new dwellings will house 1000 families, but it then says they are being erected in eight villages with 250 homes each. Either the newspaper journalist has problems with simple math, or there is an error in translation from the Arabic.

Whatever the case, Mahmoud Meghawry, head of the urbanization authority in the Ministry of Housing, Utilities, and Urban Development, said the first objective of the project is to provide housing for the Nubians who left Egypt after the enforced evacuation of their homeland nearly 50 years ago. He indicated that the Governor of Aswan will be responsible for handling the logistics of allocating the new houses.

Ahmed al-Maghraby, the head of the ministry, said that his agency is constructing, in each village, telephone systems, schools, police stations, post offices, utilities, bakeries, markets, mosques, family centers, youth centers, and agricultural service centers. Roads, drainage systems, and drinking water systems are also under construction.

Mr. al-Maghraby expressed his admiration for the leaders of the Nubian community, people who have waited so long for this development. He said that a monument would be erected in the center of the communities that will read, “We are the people who waited till the state handled its priorities in times of war and peace.”

The long-delayed aspirations of the Nubians to return to the Nile finally achieved some recognition just a little over two years ago at a conference in Aswan, when government officials agreed to start constructing new villages near the Nile which it hoped would begin meeting the needs of the people. Whether the new communities will help the Nubians save their traditional peacefulness will be up to the people themselves.

The Pang Lhabsol, one of Sikkim’s foremost festivals, celebrates the eternal peace declared 800 years ago between the original Lepcha inhabitants and the Bhutias, Tibetan Buddhist peoples who were then invading the region.

According to legend, Thekong Tek, the chief priest of the Lepcha, and Khye Bhumsa, the ancestor of the Bhutia monarchs, assembled with their followers near present-day Gangtok, the capital of the Indian state of Sikkim, to declare a peace treaty and swear their blood brotherhood. They invoked, as witnesses, the powerful spirits of the valley and the god Kanchenjunga, the holy mountain located on Sikkim’s western border with Nepal. Kanchenjunga is the third highest peak in the world and the location where humanity had begun, according to their mythology. The festival was celebrated last week at Kabi Lung-chok, about 17 km from the city, the same spot where the signing originally took place.

Mingma Tshering Bhutia, a local elder, told one news service last week during the festival, “Kabi Lung-chok holds significance for the treaty of blood and brotherhood signed by Khye Bhumsa and Thekong Tek in the presence of the guardian deity. Today is special to offer prayers for unity, prosperity and lasting peace for the Sikkimese people.”

In addition to the festivities at Kabi Lung-chok, the people pray for unity and peace to Mt. Kanchenjunga in the Tsuklakhang chapel, on the royal palace grounds in Gangtok. Monks and holy men face the sacred mountain and chant their prayers to reaffirm the bonds of brotherhood and prosperity. A statue of unity marks the historic treaty.

The festival celebrates the mountain itself, the witness to the historic treaty, as well as peace and brotherhood. In fact, the festival name, Phang, means “witness.” The festival includes both serious and light-hearted motifs. Jesters perform their antics and monks do special dances.

The third Chogyal, or king, of the Bhutias, Chador Namgyal, introduced into Sikkim the concept of Kanchenjunga as a war deity, a belief which also entered the celebrations of the peace treaty. To this day, the contradictory themes—a warrior versus a peaceful deity watching over the people—are celebrated at the festivals. Performances of masked dances and warrior dances provide more drama than at many other Buddhist festivals held in Asia.

The supreme commander of Kanchenjunga, Yabdu, wears a black mask. He is accompanied by warriors who wear the battle costumes of traditional Sikkim. Mahakala, the protector of the faith—the dharma—enters to provide a dramatic contrast in the warrior dance. He orders Yabdu and Kanchenjunga to not only defend the faith but to bring prosperity and peace to Sikkim.

The treaty witnessed by the mountain deity 800 years ago initiated an era of peace between an aboriginal society and an invading, more warrior, people. The new era of mixed populations, multiple cultures, differing traditions, contrasting religious beliefs, and, sometimes, conflicting habits has lasted for eight centuries. The interest of Pang Lhabsol is that it continues to celebrate the unity, tolerance, and peaceful prosperity of the Lepcha and Bhutia people. Kanchenjunga, still looks down from the wisps of clouds and presumably approves of the peacefulness in his valleys below—and the festivals that reaffirm the need for peace to triumph over war.

While the Hutterites will divide a colony and establish another when the old one becomes too large, they do not often sell and move to an entirely new location. The Rocky View colony, only 45 minutes north of Calgary, near Crossfield, Alberta, had no choice.

Shadow Ranch Hutterite colony The colony owned about 1,000 hectares of land (2500 acres), which is not enough to allow sufficient agricultural production for a growing population. The Hutterites were unable to buy additional property since they were too close to the expanding metropolitan region. They searched for, and found, a 5,260 hectare (13,000 acres) tract in the prairie two hours south of Calgary, between Champion and Claresholm, two-thirds of the way to Lethbridge, Alberta.

Since the new location is farther from the mountains, their home is now called the “Shadow Ranch Colony.” Manager Ed Hofer explains that the view of the Rockies is no more, so they adopted the new name “because if you are here in the morning, or late in the afternoon, you will see a great shadow fall across the land. The shadow blends into the scenery. The sun is low and the light is beautiful.”

The 61 members of the colony moved last summer at this time to their new location. They’ve been working hard to construct their new home. Buildings for housing, the communal kitchen, a colony school, the church, a feed lot, and a dairy barn have already been built. And of course, they put in their crops in the spring. The men have planted over half the land to wheat, barley, peas, and the yellow canola fields that are such a landmark for visitors to the Alberta prairies in the summertime. They’ve also started chicken and diary operations.

A reporter from the Calgary Herald, Kim Gray, spoke with Leah Hofer, a cousin to the colony manager, who admitted that she had recently visited the former property over a hundred kilometers away. A nostalgia trip. “I wanted to see what it felt like. I mean, you lived there. And now you’re just gone from there. You have a ‘home’ feeling, but it’s not your home any more,” she said.

She gave the journalist a tour of the new vegetable and fruit gardens. “Nothing in life is as good as fresh vegetables,” she said, a sentiment that would be echoed by most country dwellers worldwide. Leah expressed confidence that the soil under their new colony is good, judging by how well their gardens are growing this summer. Her five year old daughter Darlene appeared to agree, as she dove into a patch of peas, picked some, and stashed them into her apron.

“I totally don’t worry about nothing no more,” Leah commented. “You’re settled. You take one day at a time and you enjoy.” George Webber, a noted Alberta photographer from Calgary, accompanied Kim Gray in the visit to the new colony. Webber gained a lot of local publicity after he chronicled the life of another Alberta colony, the Little Bow, and then recorded its forced move due to the construction of a dam. His book, A World Within: An Intimate Portrait of the Little Bow Hutterite Colony, is popular in Alberta.

The destruction of the peaceful G/wi society is supposedly the fault of a British NGO, Survival International (SI), rather than the government of Botswana, which was only trying to help them when it forcibly removed them from their homes, argues one scholar. Botswana’s government may have acted in a heavy-handed manner, she writes, but SI is primarily responsible for their suffering. Jacqueline Solway, a professor of anthropology at Trent University in Canada, made a not-entirely convincing argument last year to that effect in an article that she published in the prominent journal Africa.

The author argues that when the government removed the San people, including the G/wi, from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), it was part of a comprehensive plan to resettle many of their minority peoples into new settlements, where it could provide better infrastructures for them, such as boreholes, roads, schools, and agricultural services. Solway herself has done field work for three decades in San communities that border on the CKGR. She knows many San people and she describes how anxious they were before they were resettled—and their satisfaction with their new, better, homes afterwards.

She admits that the situation for the San living inside the CKGR was different from the groups she knows, and the issue was handled badly by the government. Because it became highly politicized, she argues, “the government behaved in an authoritarian manner….[The resettlements] were not voluntary; in some instances they entailed force and they were more disruptive as people were resettled with others with whom they had no history of co-residence (p.330).”

While Solway acknowledges these failings, she argues that the government was justified in most of its actions. In contrast, SI and its collaborating organizations within the country “have done their best to compromise Botswana’s hitherto impeccable human rights record and to threaten Botswana’s economy…(p.324).” The basic problem, she believes, is that SI is working to undermine what the government is doing, rather than working with the government to solve the problem. SI therefore is causing the problem, not the government.

She weaves a lot of useful history and cultural information into a hard-hitting polemic. She describes a group called Reteng, a responsible NGO in Botswana. A grassroots organization of local NGOs that champions minority peoples, it manages to accomplish a lot by acting within the structures of their national society. It successfully appeals to the democratic instincts and traditions of the country to promote cultural diversity in a state where the Tswana people form an overwhelming majority. Reteng works with, and at times against, the government, but it always operates within existing frameworks. Generally, SI does not, she maintains.

The author describes the background to the San controversy. In 1961, the British colonial government established the CKGR as a place to protect wildlife and their natural habitats, as well as a reserve to protect the hunting and gathering people who also lived there. She describes the benevolent assistance the Botswana government provides to the residents, which is designed to assist them in finding alternatives to subsistence activities that, increasingly, appear to the administrators to be harmful to wildlife. Government services, they feel, can be provided more effectively at concentrated settlements outside the CKGR. Resettlement is more convenient for the government.

In 1997, the government constructed two villages for the San people outside the reserve. Solway uses the positive term “villages”; SI, and apparently many of the San people living in them, call them “resettlement camps”—or worse. Most residents were relocated, and, in 2002, the government forcibly moved almost all of the remaining people out of their homes. It also destroyed their sources of water. Opposition by the people themselves, aided and abetted by SI operating on the international scene, hardened the stance of the government.

However, “there is little reason to believe that the Bushmen were moved as a consequence” of the possible discovery of diamonds in the CKGR, Solway argues ingenuously (p.328). After all, a diamond mine would take just a small amount of area, a few square km at most, a trivial parcel compared to the vast area, 52,000 square km., of the entire CKGR. Besides, she mentions that the Botswana constitution allows the government to take land for the public good, as long as the affected residents are fairly compensated. The San people have been paid for the loss of their land, she argues.

She ignores the fact that the former president of Botswana, Festus Mogae, as much as admitted that the whole controversy over the expulsion of the San people was over diamonds. At a conference in Mumbai in May 2005, Mogae angrily denounced SI for meddling in Botswana’s affairs, defended his decision to expel the San people, and told reporters that Botswana would explore for diamonds all over the country. “We will develop diamonds for the good of all Botswanans,” he stated emphatically.

The government began to harass, and even torture, Bushmen who persisted in flouting the laws and their administration by Botswana officials. “The people who were abused reported that wildlife officials tied one man to a tree upside down and beat him, beat another man in the groin, poured gasoline into the rectum of a third, and forced others to run in front of a land cruiser,” this news service reported in July 2005.

Solway argues that this kind of abuse does not compare to the holocausts in other African countries over so-called blood diamonds. She ridicules SI for making the comparison, which, she says, “is not only absurd, but makes a mockery of events such as the 1994 Rwanda genocide (p. 336).” She has a much greater tolerance for torture than many people. The government’s harassment, and “alleged torture (p. 337)” of the San in the CKGR, plus its other abuses of the people, she says, can all be laid at the feet of the SI campaign to undermine the authority of the legitimate national government.

Solway makes many important arguments, and presents a lot of useful information about the controversy that can hardly be summarized or analyzed in a brief review. But whenever she discusses SI, she undermines her credibility with polemical statements that ignore contradictory facts.

Solway, Jacqueline. 2009. “Human Rights and NGO ‘Wrongs’: Conflict Diamonds, Culture Wars and the ‘Bushmen Question.’ Africa 79(3): 321-346

News stories in recent months about the potentially harmful effects of tourism on the peaceful Ladakhi culture may no longer be very relevant since a mudslide caused tremendous destruction in parts of Leh. The news two weeks ago about flooding and landslides in northern Pakistan and nearby regions of China overshadowed similar events in Ladakh. Reports of events in the capital of the district were confusing at first.

An Asia Times story last week summarized the story effectively. Early in the morning of August 5, just after midnight, an intense cloudburst, a virtual unknown in this high desert region, caused flash floods and monster mud slides to wash down on the city. A wave of mud 20 meters high and several kilometers wide carried away the village of Choglamsar, and roared on down into Leh. Still a couple meters high, the mud washed down the streets of the capital, destroying many of the shops that have catered to thousands of tourists every year for decades.

Hundreds of foreign tourists were stranded, though they were soon evacuated by the Indian military with its helicopters. Both highways into Ladakh from India were cut by the landslides. About 185 people were killed in the tragedy.

According to Vandana Shiva, a renowned physicist and environmental scientist at the New Delhi Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology, the freakish rains and landslides are caused by global pollution and climate changes. There is no mystery as to what is happening or why.

The Asia Times indicates that about two decades of tourist infrastructure are now buried in mud. According to an AFP story, officials estimate that 70 percent of the tourist structures in Leh have been destroyed, and it will take two to three years to rebuild. But each incoming flight brings more trekkers, eager to head up into the mountains.

Conversations at the local, Central Pennsylvania, Amish farm stand can sometimes be quite revealing—at least to “English” visitors who listen carefully to what the proprietors are saying. A comment last week about a growing family led to the observation by a customer that a recent study from the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College had provided details about the rapidly growing Amish population.

There are now nearly 250,000 Amish people, with new church districts forming in states such as South Dakota, Nebraska, and Colorado where traditional farming is not as easy as it is in Pennsylvania. The visitor did not mention that the new study had prompted a revision to the map of Amish church districts on the Amish page of his Peaceful Societies website. The proprietor would not have access to a computer—she adds up the costs of vegetables with her pencil—so it was better to just listen to her.

Her reply was, as usual, quietly revealing. She was already aware that the Amish had expanded into South Dakota and Nebraska. She had read dispatches from both of those states in Die Botschaft. She was too polite to say so, but she clearly didn’t need access to fancy, academic studies—she already knew about population trends because she carefully reads the news.

Many Amish people read their local, daily newspapers. They feel it is important to keep in touch with events that might affect them, and to be at least aware of what is going on in the world. But they also like to keep up with Amish news, the doings in the local church districts in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and the other places where Amish people have settled. Two major weekly newspapers serve that need.

The oldest, and largest, is The Budget, the subject, coincidentally, of an NPR “All Things Considered” story on Friday evening last week. The Budget started in 1890 as a news source for the Amish settlement of north central Ohio, and while it has expanded its coverage to Amish and Mennonite communities worldwide, it still focuses particularly on the Amish of that state.

Subscribers are especially interested in the coverage provided by its “scribes,” contributors from Amish communities everywhere. Visits by relatives from out of state, musings about the weather, stories of births and deaths, accidents on the farm—the kinds of articles that used to be, and in some cases still are, published in small town and rural newspapers around the world. People want to learn what other ordinary folk, not media celebrities, are doing. Small town stuff. In the absence of Facebook, the Amish thrive on it.

The NPR story cites an Amish woman, Mrs. Eli J. Miller in Fredericksburg, Ohio, who wrote in The Budget recently to express her concern about a bird that had perched on her husband’s head while they rested on chairs out on their porch. The bird was pulling out strands of Mr. Miller’s hair, which he found sort of good, but she was concerned that they shouldn’t sit outside so much. The bird might pull out all of his remaining hair. Country humor.

The report says The Budget has 19,000 paid subscribers, who are charged $42 per year to keep up with that sort of news from Amish everywhere. The non-Amish publisher, Keith Rathbun, recently invited its 800 scribes to the home office in Sugarcreek, Ohio, to witness the process of putting their contributions into print. Some of the Amish and Mennonite contributors spoke to the NPR reporter about the sorts of stories they submit to The Budget—a man falls out of a tree and hurts himself—and why that kind of news is significant.

The reporter summarizes the feelings of the readership, 80 percent of whom are Old Order Amish. “For them, the paper is irreplaceable and hyper-local in the days before that became a buzzword in the newspaper industry.” Mr. Rathbun is aware that young Amish are increasingly tied into the world through their cell phones, and he suspects that at some point he might have to make their content available on the Internet. But for the moment, he is committed to publishing the international edition only in paper format, out of respect for his Old Order clientele.

John Hostetler clears up the connection between The Budget and Die Botschaft. He points out that Die Botschaft was started in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1974 as a reaction to some of the stories in The Budget that had been written by people who had left the Amish fold. As Hostetler delicately puts it, a committee of deacons helps to keep Die Botschaft free from the irresponsible thoughts of those who have forsaken the faith of their fathers.

A Los Angeles Times article in 2006 provides a lot of additional details. The LA Times reporter visited Die Botschaft immediately after the tragedy at Nickel Mines, to see how the prominent Lancaster County Amish newspaper would handle the story. Elam Lapp, the editor of the paper, assured the reporter that the upcoming issue of Die Botschaft would not have any news about the shooting. Instead it would carry its usual complement of stories about the corn harvest, an accident with a pitchfork, tame foxes, newborns, and appendectomies.

The following edition, on October 16, might mention the tragedy, but would leave out the gory details. The policy of the newspaper forbids coverage of war, murders, religion, or love. “We might mention that it happened,” said Mr. Lapp, an Old Order Amishman, who edits the paper from his farmhouse. The LA Times article indicated that the paper had, as of 2006, 11,000 subscribers who paid $32 per year, so it was obviously not too much smaller than its much older competitor. It has 600 unpaid scribes who contribute the news stories.

The reporter was obviously impressed with Mr. Lapp, who was deeply affected by the horrifying news of the Nickel Mines tragedy. He said he had quickly deleted a voice mail message to his business phone from his brother, who had personally seen the carnage inside the schoolroom. “I really didn’t want anyone to hear it,” he told the reporter. All the while he spoke with the LA Times, his five year old daughter sat next to him and kept interrupting. He patiently answered her every question, then returned to the reporter.

All of this to explain why the owner of the Amish vegetable stand in Central Pennsylvania subscribes to Die Botschaft to learn about new church districts in South Dakota.

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