Annexations

Few western leaders failed to pronounce on the importance of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the rule of law as Russia moved to annex the Crimea on March 18th. Issues of sovereignty had to be addressed through constitutional means and international law, Obama told his nato allies in Brussels, so that big states could not simply bully the small. Cameron was adamant that countries could not flout international rules without incurring consequences, and vowed to stand up to aggression. Merkel deplored the fact that the principle of ‘might makes right’ was taking precedence over the strength of law. The G7 leaders recalled, in chorus, that international law prohibits the acquisition of another state’s territory through the use of force. When Schröder mused that, as Chancellor, he had joined the rest of nato in bombing a sovereign country, Yugoslavia, without any un Security Council backing, he was scolded—‘shameful’—by his successor; the European Parliament’s Greens tried to pass a resolution banning him from speaking on the matter.footnote¹

So much for the proclamations. What is the historical record?

Western Sahara: an area of 100,000 square miles, home to the Sahrawi people, annexed by Morocco in 1975. The Sahrawis’ struggle for independence had already won the promise of a referendum on self-rule from Madrid during the final stages of the Franco dictatorship. In October 1975 the International Court of Justice knocked down the claim of Morocco’s ruler, King Hassan, to the territory, ruling that the Sahrawis had a right to self-determination. Hassan’s response was a propagandistic ‘Green March’ into the Spanish Sahara, backed by a military assault on the Sahrawis’ guerrilla organization, the Polisario Front. Ignoring the icj’s judgement, the Ford Administration and the un helped to broker an agreement between Spain, Morocco and Mauritania, excluding Sahrawi representatives; Juan Carlos, Spain’s acting head of state, ceded the territory to these two powers in November 1975.footnote² Hassan’s occupation forces bombed population centres, strafed refugee columns and seized the phosphate mines, imposing a police dictatorship that is still in place today. Far from facing diplomatic or economic isolation, Rabat was visited by Israeli leaders in 1977 and hosted meetings for the Carter Administration to set the scene for Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem in 1979. That year, Hassan was rewarded with large-scale military aid from the us, France and Saudi Arabia which turned the tide against the Polisario guerrillas, who had been regaining ground. Hassan seeded the desert with landmines and built a militarized wall of sand, a thousand miles long, to keep the Sahrawis off their land. When he had finished, the un offered to negotiate a ceasefire, winning the Polisarios’ agreement in 1991 by once again promising a referendum, which Rabat has stymied ever since by querying voter lists. Hassan, meanwhile, was showered with honours at Buckingham Palace and the Élysée, and given a lavish reception by the Clintons at the White House.

East Timor: seized by Indonesia in 1975. This former Portuguese colony, half an island in the far south of the archipelago, saw a brief moment of independence after the fall of the Lisbon dictatorship, offering a model of self-determination that was in stark contrast to the reign of terror Suharto had imposed across Indonesia since 1965. The us, his major international backer, knew of the invasion plan and did nothing to stop it. On the contrary: Ford and Kissinger were in Jakarta on a state visit the day before the invasion of East Timor; according to a declassified State Department telegram, they advised Suharto, ‘It’s important that whatever you do succeeds quickly’. The use of us-supplied weaponry could be a problem, but Washington would hope to ‘construe’ the attack as self-defence. The 35,000-strong Indonesian invasion force embarked on a series of killing sprees and mass executions, on the model of the massacre of communists ten years before.footnote³ Tens of thousands of Timorese were herded into resettlement camps; Amnesty would estimate that around 200,000 people, a third of the population, died from disease, starvation, or as a result of military action in the years that followed. Indonesia benefited from some $250m in us military aid between 1974 and 79. When Fretilin guerrillas were still holding out against Jakarta’s rule, two years after annexation, Carter sent a dozen counter-insurgency aircraft to help finish them off. Suharto was fêted on every visit to Washington, by presidents from Reagan to Clinton. In both East Timor and Western Sahara, as Ford’s Ambassador to the un famously noted, ‘the us wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about’; the State Department wanted the un to be ‘utterly ineffective’ in these cases, and he made sure it was.footnote⁴

Palestine: 2,324 square miles seized; East Jerusalem and an additional 27 square miles around it annexed.footnote⁵ Israel’s 1948–49 land grab had already expanded its territory from 1,554 square miles under the Yishuv in 1937 to over 8,000 square miles in 1949—30 per cent more than the un Partition Plan’s allocation of 5,500 square miles, already tilted in the settlers’ favour; some 700,000 Palestinians saw their lands expropriated and were blocked from return. The response was not sanctions, but international recognition and admission to the un, followed by Western help in obtaining nuclear weapons. When Israel annexed East Jerusalem and its environs in 1967 and seized control of the West Bank and Gaza, including the central mountain aquifer, Washington once again made sure the un would do nothing: at the last count, the us has wielded its Security Council veto 42 times to shield Israeli actions from opprobrium, while blocking Palestinian efforts even to join anodyne international agencies. Micro-annexations, by means of West Bank settlements now housing 350,000 citizens—subject not to Palestinian Authority but to Israeli law—and the Separation Wall, have proceeded unabated under cover of us-sponsored peace talks. Israel remains the world’s largest recipient of us military aid and eu research funds.

Cyprus: 1,295 square miles annexed by Turkey in 1974. The Turkish invasion—tanks, jets, warships, artillery—left 4,000 dead, expelled 180,000 Greek Cypriots from their homes, and set up a puppet state, still garrisoned by 35,000 troops. Britain, controlling a large military base on the island, with assorted treaty obligations, did nothing to halt it. A short-lived Congressional arms embargo on Ankara was lifted by Carter. Turkey has since been granted lavish us military aid, special favours from the imf and sustained support from Washington and Brussels for its eu membership bid. When Cyprus itself was due to enter the eu, the us and uk sought to legitimate the Turkish land-grab by wringing consent to it with a un-sponsored plan, which would have ratified Ankara’s ethnic cleansing and kept the Turkish troops in place. In a referendum, the ‘Annan Plan’ was rejected by a solid majority of Cypriots. Military occupation by a foreign power persists to this day, inside the eu itself, without a word from Brussels.

Few tenets have been more cherished by the ‘international community’ since the end of the Cold War than the notion that rights should trump state sovereignty; typically omitted from the list is the right of national self-determination. It was this principle that was trampled on by the invading power in Western Sahara, East Timor, Palestine and Cyprus—met, in each instance, by sustained popular resistance: armed, in the Sahara and Timor; both unarmed and armed, in Palestine; and plebiscitary in Cyprus, with the rejection of the Annan diktat at the ballot box. In each case, aggression with much loss of life was rewarded with lavish aid and the warmest friendship by the West.