I’d also add that the UKs attitude to those who left to fight for ISIS is wierd, compared to those who went to fight for the Peshmurga and other Islamic militias in the area. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43453292
Well at least one person has been arrested for trying to fight for the Kurds. (Link.)
But I don't think the difference in attitude is particularly weird. The threshold for treason has never been 'fighting for someone else', but 'fighting against your own country'. The Kurdish groups, unlike IS, are not fighting against the UK. Likewise the French Foreign Legion, or the International Brigade.
It would have been better for the UK government to have acknowledged IS as an actual state, that those fighting for it were citizens of that state, then declared war on it in the usually accepted fashion.
Admittedly, having the entire state apparatus of IS obliterated complicates matters, but the statehood of the combatants wouldn't be in doubt.
I think that would cause more problems than it solves - for example, what is the territory of this state? Mosul? Raqqa? And if so, if Iraq attempts to recapture Mosul, does that make Iraq the aggressor and IS simply acting in self-defence?
Like @Doublethink, I think we fundamentally need some international agreement on how we deal with non-state actors - the existing conventions assume that wars are fought between nation-states, which causes IS to fall into a legal black hole. But I don't think that hole can be filled by acting as though IS is something it isn't.
I’d also add that the UKs attitude to those who left to fight for ISIS is wierd, compared to those who went to fight for the Peshmurga and other Islamic militias in the area. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43453292
Well at least one person has been arrested for trying to fight for the Kurds. (Link.)
But I don't think the difference in attitude is particularly weird. The threshold for treason has never been 'fighting for someone else', but 'fighting against your own country'. The Kurdish groups, unlike IS, are not fighting against the UK. Likewise the French Foreign Legion, or the International Brigade.
The people fighting in Syria were fighting against the UK in what way exactly ?
I’d also add that the UKs attitude to those who left to fight for ISIS is wierd, compared to those who went to fight for the Peshmurga and other Islamic militias in the area. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43453292
Well at least one person has been arrested for trying to fight for the Kurds. (Link.)
But I don't think the difference in attitude is particularly weird. The threshold for treason has never been 'fighting for someone else', but 'fighting against your own country'. The Kurdish groups, unlike IS, are not fighting against the UK. Likewise the French Foreign Legion, or the International Brigade.
The people fighting in Syria were fighting against the UK in what way exactly ?
If I joined the Wehrmacht in 1939, it wouldn't make me any less of a traitor if my platoon was in fact sent to the Russian front - I'd be fighting for a group that was fighting the UK, even if I personally wasn't part of that specific fight.
I would remind you that we were a) not at war with ISIS b) in any danger of being invaded by them
They have attempted attacks on the UK, which meets my threshold of 'fighting against'.
I don't disagree with you about the legal black hole caused by the lack of a declaration of war. My point is that I don't see anything weird about treating IS differently from the Peshmerga.
I loathe everything ISIS/DAESH stands/stood for - but their abuse of human rights should not be copied by us. Otherwise, why bother opposing them in the first place.
We have not copied their beheadings crucifictions and people being burnt alive. ( Not recently anyway)
It would have been better for the UK government to have acknowledged IS as an actual state, that those fighting for it were citizens of that state, then declared war on it in the usually accepted fashion.
Admittedly, having the entire state apparatus of IS obliterated complicates matters, but the statehood of the combatants wouldn't be in doubt.
I think that would cause more problems than it solves - for example, what is the territory of this state? Mosul? Raqqa? And if so, if Iraq attempts to recapture Mosul, does that make Iraq the aggressor and IS simply acting in self-defence?
I think the key words to ponder here are 'is' in 'is the territory' and 'recapture'. The first assumes that a state's territory is somehow sacred and recorded for all time, while we know that lines of the map change frequently, and the second indicates that Iraq is the defender, attempting to recapture territory it once controlled.
We have few models for the complete abolition of a state. Tibet and Hong Kong come to mind as modern examples, but neither is analogous.
Like @Doublethink, I think we fundamentally need some international agreement on how we deal with non-state actors - the existing conventions assume that wars are fought between nation-states, which causes IS to fall into a legal black hole. But I don't think that hole can be filled by acting as though IS is something it isn't.
I agree we need to think about non-state actors, but it's kind of in the name "Islamic State". We can't pretend they didn't have aspirations to statehood simply because they sucked.
The Peshmurga are as to Turkey - our NATO ally - as IS are to us.
I think we are both confusing the Peshmerga - which is the legitimate army of the Kurdistan autonomous region in Iraq - with the YPJ/YPG groups in Syria, which Turkey regards as an extension of the PKK, and which is what people are joining.
As per both your link and my link, people are indeed being charged with terrorist offences for joining the YPJ/YPG, so legally they are being treated similarly. If you mean on a popular level - I.e., why people instinctively perceive IS fighters to be traitors but not Kurdish fighters, then that would be because people don't regard Turkey as 'us', regardless of the NATO alliance. I know legally an attack on one member is supposed to be an attack on all, but I don't think anyone has ever actually believed that.
It would have been better for the UK government to have acknowledged IS as an actual state, that those fighting for it were citizens of that state, then declared war on it in the usually accepted fashion.
Admittedly, having the entire state apparatus of IS obliterated complicates matters, but the statehood of the combatants wouldn't be in doubt.
I think that would cause more problems than it solves - for example, what is the territory of this state? Mosul? Raqqa? And if so, if Iraq attempts to recapture Mosul, does that make Iraq the aggressor and IS simply acting in self-defence?
I think the key words to ponder here are 'is' in 'is the territory' and 'recapture'. The first assumes that a state's territory is somehow sacred and recorded for all time, while we know that lines of the map change frequently,
Well, the 'sacredness' of a state's territory is implicit in the idea that a war should be fought for defensive purposes - the ones trying to change the shape of the borders by force are the Baddies.
the second indicates that Iraq is the defender, attempting to recapture territory it once controlled.
Not necessarily. You could talk about the British Empire trying to recapture Khartoum without implying that the British Empire was the defender.
I guess you could argue that IS are a state with zero legitimate territory - a sort of evil counterpart of the Knights of Malta. But would citizenship of a state with zero territory actually be citizenship in any meaningful sense?
In an ideal world, she would be properly de-radicalised and given a chance to save other young girls from making a similar disastrous action.
Just how would that be done?
As I said - in an ideal world.
I don't see how that's an answer - how would you de-radicalise her in an ideal world, or this rather less than ideal one? Waving a magic wand over her and getting her to say a half dozen Hail Marys is not really going to work.
Well, the 'sacredness' of a state's territory is implicit in the idea that a war should be fought for defensive purposes - the ones trying to change the shape of the borders by force are the Baddies.
How... quaint? Very few countries have a history of not being the baddies - and these days, they just have better PR.
I guess you could argue that IS are a state with zero legitimate territory - a sort of evil counterpart of the Knights of Malta. But would citizenship of a state with zero territory actually be citizenship in any meaningful sense?
IS *were* a state. That they now have no territory is a problem: the circle I'm trying to square is whether that makes it our problem. What should be done with former IS citizens, now that IS doesn't exist?
IS *were* a state. That they now have no territory is a problem: the circle I'm trying to square is whether that makes it our problem. What should be done with former IS citizens, now that IS doesn't exist?
Another example is the status of the Vatican between Italian unification an the Concordat giving it the territory of the Vatican City State.
I’d also add that the UKs attitude to those who left to fight for ISIS is wierd, compared to those who went to fight for the Peshmurga and other Islamic militias in the area. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43453292
Well at least one person has been arrested for trying to fight for the Kurds. (Link.)
But I don't think the difference in attitude is particularly weird. The threshold for treason has never been 'fighting for someone else', but 'fighting against your own country'. The Kurdish groups, unlike IS, are not fighting against the UK. Likewise the French Foreign Legion, or the International Brigade.
The people fighting in Syria were fighting against the UK in what way exactly ?
Did you miss the 35 Britons murdered here by ISIS inspired killers in 2017? And hundreds more throughout Western Europe? Stockholm? Berlin? Especially France? Brussels? Charlie Hebdo? Bataclan? Nice? The 33 UK & Irish citizens murdered by Daesh in Tunisia?
In an ideal world, she would be properly de-radicalised and given a chance to save other young girls from making a similar disastrous action.
Just how would that be done?
As I said - in an ideal world.
I don't see how that's an answer - how would you de-radicalise her in an ideal world, or this rather less than ideal one? Waving a magic wand over her and getting her to say a half dozen Hail Marys is not really going to work.
What part of the phrase "ideal world" is causing you problems?
I'm not saying deradicalisation is simple, or easy or even likely. But surely we must hold onto some hope that people can change. If we don't think change is possible, then there's little point in the Christian faith.
And none of us know whether Shamima Begum has already changed because of her experiences. It would be surprising if she hadn't, in some way, changed her views.
--There's an ex-terrorist in the UK, who we've discussed in the past. Don't remember his name. I think he was a recruiter. Anyway, he gave it up and IIRC is famous for working against radicalizing. Might he be able to advise and/or help?
--Asking this carefully: forgive my forgetting, but doesn't Britain have a back-story with Bangladesh? Might that be a factor, with either country or both?
Lack of diversity in the UK Supreme Court (and in the higher judiciary more generally) is an issue.
But the UK is still part of the Council of Europe (a different body from the EU) and subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights , and the UK remains a contracting state to the European Convention on Human Rights.
It is the rather different Court of Justice of the European Union (sometimes known as the European Court of Justice or ECJ) where the relationship has changed.
And the list linked to is not a reading list about the case. It is a list of decided cases of the Supreme Court.
Well, the 'sacredness' of a state's territory is implicit in the idea that a war should be fought for defensive purposes - the ones trying to change the shape of the borders by force are the Baddies.
How... quaint? Very few countries have a history of not being the baddies - and these days, they just have better PR.
Just War theory says that a war should be fought for defensive purposes. This implies that a state has some portion of territory that is legitimately 'theirs' - otherwise there is nothing to defend. My question is therefore what territory is legitimately ISIS territory for ISIS to defend.
If you think we should jettison Just War theory, then you may be right, but that creates more problems than simply a few terrorists of uncertain nationality.
If you're trying to start a Pond War, you might like to reflect on the fact that Canadian law also allows Canadian citizenship to be stripped from dual citizens who take up arms against Canada. Link.
It's not that I think it should be jettisoned. It's that I have a similar view on it as Gandhi had on western civilisation.
You were talking about what should be the case, not what is the case.
If we are just talking about what is in fact the case, then it is in fact the case that nobody has ever recognised IS as a state and nobody has ever recognised anyone as possessing IS citizenship, so Shamima Begum is not and never has been an IS citizen.
... Just War theory says that a war should be fought for defensive purposes. This implies that a state has some portion of territory that is legitimately 'theirs' - otherwise there is nothing to defend. My question is therefore what territory is legitimately ISIS territory for ISIS to defend.
If you think we should jettison Just War theory, then you may be right, but that creates more problems than simply a few terrorists of uncertain nationality.
Not quite. What is the basis for your claim that this implies that a 'state' must have a portion of territory that is 'legitimately theirs'? If an organisation claims to be a state, claims that it is entitled the territory and temporarily or permanently squats on some, are you saying that it does not exist for the purpose of deciding whether it can fight a 'Just War' or more pertinently perhaps anybody else can fight a 'Just War' against it. And if you are saying that, the logic of what you are saying would appear to be that that renders those who might normally appear to be its soldiers or citizens, outlaws entitled to protection of no law whatsoever?
And what renders a claim of an entity to be legitimate? If it's recognition, then what about states that are recognised by some people but not others?
It's not that I think it should be jettisoned. It's that I have a similar view on it as Gandhi had on western civilisation.
You were talking about what should be the case, not what is the case.
If we are just talking about what is in fact the case, then it is in fact the case that nobody has ever recognised IS as a state and nobody has ever recognised anyone as possessing IS citizenship, so Shamima Begum is not and never has been an IS citizen.
That chain of logic - I make a premise, you make a unrelated premise, I reject your premise because of different criteria, therefore you conclude that my premise falls - is faulty.
To recap. The UK government has unilaterally and potentially illegally revoked the citizenship of one of its citizens who allied themselves with (you argue) a non-state actor. My argument is that if the UK government had acknowledged IS as a state actor, then Begum's status (and all UK citizens who were allied to IS) as a UK citizen could have at that point been revoked without issue.
Your objection at this point is that Just War theory stops us from declaring war on IS. But Just War theory is not a legal instrument, and your introduction of it here is a non sequitur. We could reasonably have declared war on IS - after a proper debate in parliament authorising the use of UK military assets, rather than the ad hoc (and again, illegal) use of extra-judicial killing with no independent oversight - and Begum and her erstwhile IS compatriots wouldn't be the UK government's problem.
It's not that I think it should be jettisoned. It's that I have a similar view on it as Gandhi had on western civilisation.
You were talking about what should be the case, not what is the case.
If we are just talking about what is in fact the case, then it is in fact the case that nobody has ever recognised IS as a state and nobody has ever recognised anyone as possessing IS citizenship, so Shamima Begum is not and never has been an IS citizen.
That chain of logic - I make a premise, you make a unrelated premise, I reject your premise because of different criteria, therefore you conclude that my premise falls - is faulty.
To recap. The UK government has unilaterally and potentially illegally revoked the citizenship of one of its citizens who allied themselves with (you argue) a non-state actor. My argument is that if the UK government had acknowledged IS as a state actor, then Begum's status (and all UK citizens who were allied to IS) as a UK citizen could have at that point been revoked without issue.
Your objection at this point is that Just War theory stops us from declaring war on IS. But Just War theory is not a legal instrument, and your introduction of it here is a non sequitur. We could reasonably have declared war on IS - after a proper debate in parliament authorising the use of UK military assets, rather than the ad hoc (and again, illegal) use of extra-judicial killing with no independent oversight - and Begum and her erstwhile IS compatriots wouldn't be the UK government's problem.
OK, if you are purely talking about legality rather than morality, that might be why we are at cross-purposes.
Fundamentally, my objection is that recognising IS as a state would imply that there is some portion of territory that legitimately belongs to IS. There probably isn't an iron law anywhere that says that has to be the case, but the way we talk about nations and how they should interact with each other generally implies that it's the case. The alternatives would be that:
a.) There is no distinction between legitimate and actual possession - in which case Iraq committed an aggressive act when it took Mosul from IS;
b.) IS is/was a state with no legitimate territory, in which case I don't understand what citizenship of that state would mean.
Now you can argue that from a legal perspective, it is irrelevant whether Iraq committed an aggressive act or not, but I didn't think this thread was purely about legality.
The point isn't territory as such, but people, who need territory in which to live. Everybody needs to live somewhere, which is to say that they have the right to citizenship of some state that has territory they can live in.
The point isn't territory as such, but people, who need territory in which to live. Everybody needs to live somewhere, which is to say that they have the right to citizenship of some state that has territory they can live in.
Thank you, that seems a much simpler way of expressing what I'm trying to get across!
OK, if you are purely talking about legality rather than morality, that might be why we are at cross-purposes.
Fundamentally, my objection is that recognising IS as a state would imply that there is some portion of territory that legitimately belongs to IS. There probably isn't an iron law anywhere that says that has to be the case, but the way we talk about nations and how they should interact with each other generally implies that it's the case. The alternatives would be that:
a.) There is no distinction between legitimate and actual possession - in which case Iraq committed an aggressive act when it took Mosul from IS;
b.) IS is/was a state with no legitimate territory, in which case I don't understand what citizenship of that state would mean.
Now you can argue that from a legal perspective, it is irrelevant whether Iraq committed an aggressive act or not, but I didn't think this thread was purely about legality.
All cogent points.
No one is a citizen of Yugoslavia, or the Hapsburg Empire, or Kurdistan, for that matter. Countries simply disappear off the map, and the corollary is that they can just as easily appear. A nation can only claim that their territory belongs to it as long as they're able to defend it - this is pragmatic rather than idealistic, but the land looks pretty much the same either side of a border, and history proves me right. (You seem to set a great store in whether an act was aggressive or defensive. I don't. That Iraq was an aggressor when (re)taking Mosul is a pinhead on which the angels dance.)
IS was a state. It had territory it could defend - which is the only legitimacy it needed. That IS has been obliterated and no longer has territory means that it's up to the winners in the conflict to decide what to do with these now stateless former citizens.
But the whole thread comes from the argument whether or not the UK government acted illegally in stripping Begum of her citizenship, leaving her stateless. My argument is that they could have revoked her citizenship legitimately at an earlier stage by recognising IS as a state actor. That we then go on to fight a war of aggression against IS is different issue, and leaves us with different responsibilities.
But the whole thread comes from the argument whether or not the UK government acted illegally in stripping Begum of her citizenship, leaving her stateless. My argument is that they could have revoked her citizenship legitimately at an earlier stage by recognising IS as a state actor. That we then go on to fight a war of aggression against IS is different issue, and leaves us with different responsibilities.
I'm not sure the revocation of citizenship and the war of aggression are completely separable. If the UK had decided it had no quarrel with IS, then there would be less justification for stripping her of her citizenship. Once the UK had decided that IS needed to be eliminated, trying to make her an IS citizen would entail telling her on the one hand that she was free to live in a patch of Syria/Iraq if she wanted while simultaneously trying to ensure that that same patch was reduced to zero.
I’d also add that the UKs attitude to those who left to fight for ISIS is wierd, compared to those who went to fight for the Peshmurga and other Islamic militias in the area. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43453292
ISIS is/was an enemy. They were explicitly engaged in military action against the UK and her interests.
The Kurdish militias, by contrast, are not enemies of the UK. They're not really allies either, and their position with respect to Turkey, which is nominally a UK ally, is a bit awkward, but they are at least my enemy's enemy.
IS was a state. It had territory it could defend - which is the only legitimacy it needed. That IS has been obliterated and no longer has territory means that it's up to the winners in the conflict to decide what to do with these now stateless former citizens.
You cite plenty of examples of states that have dissolved, and in general, their former citizens become citizens of whatever successor state owns the area in which they live. The same goes for citizens of countries which join with other countries, and become citizens of the combined entity. There are, of course, a number of exceptions, where groups of people are made stateless by such actions.
I don't think IS is in quite the same situation - as a state actor, it was a short-lived and unsuccessful insurrectionist movement. I'd describe its relationship to Iraq and Syria as more like an occupying army and less like a state. In the post-war period, Germany was occupied by the various Allied armies, but it was never part of Britain, or France, or the US, or the USSR.
(And like @Ricardus, I'm not sure that your suggestion of treating IS as a state solves the problem of Ms Begum. You're right, I think, that if the UK had recognized IS as a state, then it could also recognize Ms Begum's intent to abandon the UK for IS, and revoke her UK citizenship in favour of IS, but that would still leave her stateless now.)
Her decisions - made under whatever influences were brought to bear on her - have ruined her life. She'll have to live with that, wherever she ends up living her life. She doesn't strike me as being someone who invites the sympathy. I find I have compassion for her situation, but not actually for her personally. My unfiltered reaction to what I've seen of her in interviews etc, so far has been 'you've made your bed, so now you've got to lie in it'. I'm not proud of feeling like that. However, it is also important no-one else is made to suffer because of her decisions. And important, too, that no-one else is made to suffer unnecessarily because of decisions about her. The UK government has to be careful that they don't out-Herod Herod in their desire to placate populists. It's great fuel for the recruiters and groomers.
Yes, there was a time when kids of 8 or 12 were hung or transported for life for stealing or even for other crimes, petty or serious. Not really a good look for a so-called civilized society. I guess it is possible that unusually in her case she was a psychologically fully developed adult-thinking child at age 15 and knew absolutely, without manipulation or clever grooming from others, what she was up to. But if she was an averagely dolt-headed teenager I would put it this way. No 15 year old girl wants to think of herself as anything but a grown-up, desirable woman with total self-agency. Such a girl - made vulnerable by her own stupidity, gullibility and a selfish, even conceited desire for purpose and importance - is easy prey. Of course, she thought she was doing something heroic and adult when she left Britain to champion Isis.
I don't know what it says about British society either. Social media and tabloid press like to go hysterical over the names and faces of 'foreign' groomers of nice mainly white British girls for sexual purposes. But grooming ethnic-minority/British girls for other kinds of exploitative purposes is the girls' own look-out, it seems. I can envisage the populist reaction to a white Tracy Smith from Essex being the same, perhaps. But it's naivity to think that a very damaging part of the reaction to this story isn't driven by pure racism.
Just as an aside here, I couldn't help but think of Lord Haw Haw - William Joyce's - case, throughout all this. American born to an Irish father and Anglo-Irish mother, who became a German citizen. Nevertheless, executed for 'treason' on the basis of the falsely acquired British passport he carried (falsely, because he had never been a British citizen).
My argument is that they could have revoked her citizenship legitimately at an earlier stage by recognising IS as a state actor.
This may be true; however, I would question whether the benefit of washing the UK's hands of a person born and raised in the country outweigh the considerable reasons not to recognise IS.
I don't know what it says about British society either. Social media and tabloid press like to go hysterical over the names and faces of 'foreign' groomers of nice mainly white British girls for sexual purposes. But grooming ethnic-minority/British girls for other kinds of exploitative purposes is the girls' own look-out, it seems. I can envisage the populist reaction to a white Tracy Smith from Essex being the same, perhaps. But it's naivity to think that a very damaging part of the reaction to this story isn't driven by pure racism.
You can guarantee that had the white girls victimised by "Asian grooming gangs [sic]" got pregnant having been coerced into drunken sex with their white boyfriends the reaction from the far right press would have been far less sympathetic.
My argument is that they could have revoked her citizenship legitimately at an earlier stage by recognising IS as a state actor.
This may be true; however, I would question whether the benefit of washing the UK's hands of a person born and raised in the country outweigh the considerable reasons not to recognise IS.
No one has yet tried to even outline what they believe those 'considerable reasons' to be. Given that states engage in military action against other states all the time, with or without a formal declaration of war, recognising IS as a state/proto-state would never stop us, or anyone else, from fighting it.
My argument is that they could have revoked her citizenship legitimately at an earlier stage by recognising IS as a state actor.
This may be true; however, I would question whether the benefit of washing the UK's hands of a person born and raised in the country outweigh the considerable reasons not to recognise IS.
No one has yet tried to even outline what they believe those 'considerable reasons' to be. Given that states engage in military action against other states all the time, with or without a formal declaration of war, recognising IS as a state/proto-state would never stop us, or anyone else, from fighting it.
My problem with it is the reverse! The morality of "washing our hands" of Begum would not be improved one whit by recognising IS as a state. Even pragmatically, IS isn't a state now, so the problem of what to do with her would remain! There is no upside to recognising IS as a state that I can see.
My argument is that they could have revoked her citizenship legitimately at an earlier stage by recognising IS as a state actor.
This may be true; however, I would question whether the benefit of washing the UK's hands of a person born and raised in the country outweigh the considerable reasons not to recognise IS.
No one has yet tried to even outline what they believe those 'considerable reasons' to be. Given that states engage in military action against other states all the time, with or without a formal declaration of war, recognising IS as a state/proto-state would never stop us, or anyone else, from fighting it.
I think it's a case of only being able to recognise one legitimate government of a piece of territory at a time. You can't recognise IS without saying that Iraq and Syria are not the shape and size that they claim to be, and the west needed the co-operation of both for its war aims. There's also simple politics. If there are competing claims to territory then you recognise the one that is politically useful to you, and the default is that prior claims are preferred because it suits existing states for that you be the case. Hence lots of countries recognising the Venezuelan opposition leader as the "legitimate" president, and the Northern Alliance as the "legitimate" government of Afghanistan even when it controlled only 10% of the territory. Meanwhile Biafra got crushed because there was no benefit to helping them.
I don't know what it says about British society either. Social media and tabloid press like to go hysterical over the names and faces of 'foreign' groomers of nice mainly white British girls for sexual purposes. But grooming ethnic-minority/British girls for other kinds of exploitative purposes is the girls' own look-out, it seems. I can envisage the populist reaction to a white Tracy Smith from Essex being the same, perhaps. But it's naivity to think that a very damaging part of the reaction to this story isn't driven by pure racism.
You can guarantee that had the white girls victimised by "Asian grooming gangs [sic]" got pregnant having been coerced into drunken sex with their white boyfriends the reaction from the far right press would have been far less sympathetic.
Similarly they are only sympathetic insofar as they are faceless victims standing in for the prejudices of their readers. The instant it comes to actually funding child services properly - for instance - it'll be 'dreadful teens living life of luxury on the state' and so on.
I think it's a case of only being able to recognise one legitimate government of a piece of territory at a time. You can't recognise IS without saying that Iraq and Syria are not the shape and size that they claim to be, and the west needed the co-operation of both for its war aims.
I think if you'd pressed both the Syrian and Iraqi governments, they would have acknowledged that they no longer controlled that territory. Our co-operation for their war aims would simply be helping them retake that territory, and I don't think either of them would have let their high-minded ideals on the nature and constitution of a nation state get in the way of western military intervention.
My argument is that they could have revoked her citizenship legitimately at an earlier stage by recognising IS as a state actor.
This may be true; however, I would question whether the benefit of washing the UK's hands of a person born and raised in the country outweigh the considerable reasons not to recognise IS.
No one has yet tried to even outline what they believe those 'considerable reasons' to be. Given that states engage in military action against other states all the time, with or without a formal declaration of war, recognising IS as a state/proto-state would never stop us, or anyone else, from fighting it.
I guess the question - for me as much as anyone else - is what we mean by 'recognise as a state', outwith the issue of Shamima Begum's nationality. If we are literally just interested in pragmatic facts on the ground, then ISTM statehood - being an almost entirely theoretical concept - doesn't enter into the equation.
I think it's a case of only being able to recognise one legitimate government of a piece of territory at a time. You can't recognise IS without saying that Iraq and Syria are not the shape and size that they claim to be, and the west needed the co-operation of both for its war aims.
I think if you'd pressed both the Syrian and Iraqi governments, they would have acknowledged that they no longer controlled that territory. Our co-operation for their war aims would simply be helping them retake that territory, and I don't think either of them would have let their high-minded ideals on the nature and constitution of a nation state get in the way of western military intervention.
Yes, Syria and Iraq had lost control of territory that they (and the rest of the international community) recognised as theirs. From their position, this was at best a civil war, more likely they would express it as a criminal organisation having taken over the territory. If a mafia gang takes a section of Chicago and declares themselves to be in charge such that the Chicago police can't enter without being shot at does that make that bit of Chicago a new nation state just because the US and Chicago governments no longer have control there?
Depends if the mafia can defend their territory or not. If the government can't function in that part of town - can't collect taxes, can't offer services, can't enforce their law - then I don't know what else you'd call it. De facto, it's a different country, with different laws and customs.
Not that the mafia would be able to defend their territory. The government has a military, and they have tanks and aircraft. If it ever got to the point where they wanted to exert control badly enough, they could.
It's looking like I have a much more pragmatic (and lower) threshold for what is and isn't an autonomous state.
Not that the mafia would be able to defend their territory. The government has a military, and they have tanks and aircraft. If it ever got to the point where they wanted to exert control badly enough, they could.
By that definition virtually no state can be considered independent because if the US wanted to they could exert control over it (albeit by turning large sections of it into glass and cinders).
I'm wondering if we couldn't look at it this way: Somebody's got to do something about her (moral responsibility), and the people with the greatest resources right now are the country she was born in. Which sort of sucks for the UK, but if anybody is going to undertake the project of ... rebuilding her? healing her? de-radicalizing her? it's only going to happen if there's money and people and law and so forth to make it happen. It's definitely not happening if she's left in a camp somewhere. And while a lot of people would be fine with that, I think we have a moral responsibility as human beings to clean up messes we have connections with. Even and especially unattractive messes.
Also, and I want to emphasise this, her last child - who died in the refugee camp - was born a British citizen and *we did nothing* to protect that child.
Comments
Well at least one person has been arrested for trying to fight for the Kurds. (Link.)
But I don't think the difference in attitude is particularly weird. The threshold for treason has never been 'fighting for someone else', but 'fighting against your own country'. The Kurdish groups, unlike IS, are not fighting against the UK. Likewise the French Foreign Legion, or the International Brigade.
I think that would cause more problems than it solves - for example, what is the territory of this state? Mosul? Raqqa? And if so, if Iraq attempts to recapture Mosul, does that make Iraq the aggressor and IS simply acting in self-defence?
Like @Doublethink, I think we fundamentally need some international agreement on how we deal with non-state actors - the existing conventions assume that wars are fought between nation-states, which causes IS to fall into a legal black hole. But I don't think that hole can be filled by acting as though IS is something it isn't.
The people fighting in Syria were fighting against the UK in what way exactly ?
If I joined the Wehrmacht in 1939, it wouldn't make me any less of a traitor if my platoon was in fact sent to the Russian front - I'd be fighting for a group that was fighting the UK, even if I personally wasn't part of that specific fight.
They have attempted attacks on the UK, which meets my threshold of 'fighting against'.
I don't disagree with you about the legal black hole caused by the lack of a declaration of war. My point is that I don't see anything weird about treating IS differently from the Peshmerga.
I think the key words to ponder here are 'is' in 'is the territory' and 'recapture'. The first assumes that a state's territory is somehow sacred and recorded for all time, while we know that lines of the map change frequently, and the second indicates that Iraq is the defender, attempting to recapture territory it once controlled.
We have few models for the complete abolition of a state. Tibet and Hong Kong come to mind as modern examples, but neither is analogous.
I agree we need to think about non-state actors, but it's kind of in the name "Islamic State". We can't pretend they didn't have aspirations to statehood simply because they sucked.
I think we are both confusing the Peshmerga - which is the legitimate army of the Kurdistan autonomous region in Iraq - with the YPJ/YPG groups in Syria, which Turkey regards as an extension of the PKK, and which is what people are joining.
As per both your link and my link, people are indeed being charged with terrorist offences for joining the YPJ/YPG, so legally they are being treated similarly. If you mean on a popular level - I.e., why people instinctively perceive IS fighters to be traitors but not Kurdish fighters, then that would be because people don't regard Turkey as 'us', regardless of the NATO alliance. I know legally an attack on one member is supposed to be an attack on all, but I don't think anyone has ever actually believed that.
Well, the 'sacredness' of a state's territory is implicit in the idea that a war should be fought for defensive purposes - the ones trying to change the shape of the borders by force are the Baddies.
Not necessarily. You could talk about the British Empire trying to recapture Khartoum without implying that the British Empire was the defender.
I guess you could argue that IS are a state with zero legitimate territory - a sort of evil counterpart of the Knights of Malta. But would citizenship of a state with zero territory actually be citizenship in any meaningful sense?
I don't see how that's an answer - how would you de-radicalise her in an ideal world, or this rather less than ideal one? Waving a magic wand over her and getting her to say a half dozen Hail Marys is not really going to work.
How... quaint? Very few countries have a history of not being the baddies - and these days, they just have better PR.
IS *were* a state. That they now have no territory is a problem: the circle I'm trying to square is whether that makes it our problem. What should be done with former IS citizens, now that IS doesn't exist?
Another example is the status of the Vatican between Italian unification an the Concordat giving it the territory of the Vatican City State.
Did you miss the 35 Britons murdered here by ISIS inspired killers in 2017? And hundreds more throughout Western Europe? Stockholm? Berlin? Especially France? Brussels? Charlie Hebdo? Bataclan? Nice? The 33 UK & Irish citizens murdered by Daesh in Tunisia?
Nice that they did their decision after the UK is totally out of any Euro Court of Human Rights jurisdiction. https://www.supremecourt.uk/about/the-supreme-court-and-europe.html
Reading list abt this case: https://www.supremecourt.uk/decided-cases/index.html
What part of the phrase "ideal world" is causing you problems?
I'm not saying deradicalisation is simple, or easy or even likely. But surely we must hold onto some hope that people can change. If we don't think change is possible, then there's little point in the Christian faith.
And none of us know whether Shamima Begum has already changed because of her experiences. It would be surprising if she hadn't, in some way, changed her views.
--There's an ex-terrorist in the UK, who we've discussed in the past. Don't remember his name. I think he was a recruiter. Anyway, he gave it up and IIRC is famous for working against radicalizing. Might he be able to advise and/or help?
--Asking this carefully: forgive my forgetting, but doesn't Britain have a back-story with Bangladesh? Might that be a factor, with either country or both?
That phrase causes me no problem. What I'm seeking is how in such a world, or our present one, you'd de-radicalise anyone.
But the UK is still part of the Council of Europe (a different body from the EU) and subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights , and the UK remains a contracting state to the European Convention on Human Rights.
It is the rather different Court of Justice of the European Union (sometimes known as the European Court of Justice or ECJ) where the relationship has changed.
And the list linked to is not a reading list about the case. It is a list of decided cases of the Supreme Court.
Pretty sure you've misunderstood this. The UK is still a member of the Council of Europe, and the ECHR is still enshrined in UK law.
Just War theory says that a war should be fought for defensive purposes. This implies that a state has some portion of territory that is legitimately 'theirs' - otherwise there is nothing to defend. My question is therefore what territory is legitimately ISIS territory for ISIS to defend.
If you think we should jettison Just War theory, then you may be right, but that creates more problems than simply a few terrorists of uncertain nationality.
If you're trying to start a Pond War, you might like to reflect on the fact that Canadian law also allows Canadian citizenship to be stripped from dual citizens who take up arms against Canada. Link.
Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Kosovo. Ukraine. Yemen.
It's not that I think it should be jettisoned. It's that I have a similar view on it as Gandhi had on western civilisation.
You were talking about what should be the case, not what is the case.
If we are just talking about what is in fact the case, then it is in fact the case that nobody has ever recognised IS as a state and nobody has ever recognised anyone as possessing IS citizenship, so Shamima Begum is not and never has been an IS citizen.
And what renders a claim of an entity to be legitimate? If it's recognition, then what about states that are recognised by some people but not others?
That chain of logic - I make a premise, you make a unrelated premise, I reject your premise because of different criteria, therefore you conclude that my premise falls - is faulty.
To recap. The UK government has unilaterally and potentially illegally revoked the citizenship of one of its citizens who allied themselves with (you argue) a non-state actor. My argument is that if the UK government had acknowledged IS as a state actor, then Begum's status (and all UK citizens who were allied to IS) as a UK citizen could have at that point been revoked without issue.
Your objection at this point is that Just War theory stops us from declaring war on IS. But Just War theory is not a legal instrument, and your introduction of it here is a non sequitur. We could reasonably have declared war on IS - after a proper debate in parliament authorising the use of UK military assets, rather than the ad hoc (and again, illegal) use of extra-judicial killing with no independent oversight - and Begum and her erstwhile IS compatriots wouldn't be the UK government's problem.
OK, if you are purely talking about legality rather than morality, that might be why we are at cross-purposes.
Fundamentally, my objection is that recognising IS as a state would imply that there is some portion of territory that legitimately belongs to IS. There probably isn't an iron law anywhere that says that has to be the case, but the way we talk about nations and how they should interact with each other generally implies that it's the case. The alternatives would be that:
a.) There is no distinction between legitimate and actual possession - in which case Iraq committed an aggressive act when it took Mosul from IS;
b.) IS is/was a state with no legitimate territory, in which case I don't understand what citizenship of that state would mean.
Now you can argue that from a legal perspective, it is irrelevant whether Iraq committed an aggressive act or not, but I didn't think this thread was purely about legality.
Thank you, that seems a much simpler way of expressing what I'm trying to get across!
All cogent points.
No one is a citizen of Yugoslavia, or the Hapsburg Empire, or Kurdistan, for that matter. Countries simply disappear off the map, and the corollary is that they can just as easily appear. A nation can only claim that their territory belongs to it as long as they're able to defend it - this is pragmatic rather than idealistic, but the land looks pretty much the same either side of a border, and history proves me right. (You seem to set a great store in whether an act was aggressive or defensive. I don't. That Iraq was an aggressor when (re)taking Mosul is a pinhead on which the angels dance.)
IS was a state. It had territory it could defend - which is the only legitimacy it needed. That IS has been obliterated and no longer has territory means that it's up to the winners in the conflict to decide what to do with these now stateless former citizens.
But the whole thread comes from the argument whether or not the UK government acted illegally in stripping Begum of her citizenship, leaving her stateless. My argument is that they could have revoked her citizenship legitimately at an earlier stage by recognising IS as a state actor. That we then go on to fight a war of aggression against IS is different issue, and leaves us with different responsibilities.
I'm not sure the revocation of citizenship and the war of aggression are completely separable. If the UK had decided it had no quarrel with IS, then there would be less justification for stripping her of her citizenship. Once the UK had decided that IS needed to be eliminated, trying to make her an IS citizen would entail telling her on the one hand that she was free to live in a patch of Syria/Iraq if she wanted while simultaneously trying to ensure that that same patch was reduced to zero.
ISIS is/was an enemy. They were explicitly engaged in military action against the UK and her interests.
The Kurdish militias, by contrast, are not enemies of the UK. They're not really allies either, and their position with respect to Turkey, which is nominally a UK ally, is a bit awkward, but they are at least my enemy's enemy.
You cite plenty of examples of states that have dissolved, and in general, their former citizens become citizens of whatever successor state owns the area in which they live. The same goes for citizens of countries which join with other countries, and become citizens of the combined entity. There are, of course, a number of exceptions, where groups of people are made stateless by such actions.
I don't think IS is in quite the same situation - as a state actor, it was a short-lived and unsuccessful insurrectionist movement. I'd describe its relationship to Iraq and Syria as more like an occupying army and less like a state. In the post-war period, Germany was occupied by the various Allied armies, but it was never part of Britain, or France, or the US, or the USSR.
(And like @Ricardus, I'm not sure that your suggestion of treating IS as a state solves the problem of Ms Begum. You're right, I think, that if the UK had recognized IS as a state, then it could also recognize Ms Begum's intent to abandon the UK for IS, and revoke her UK citizenship in favour of IS, but that would still leave her stateless now.)
Yes, there was a time when kids of 8 or 12 were hung or transported for life for stealing or even for other crimes, petty or serious. Not really a good look for a so-called civilized society. I guess it is possible that unusually in her case she was a psychologically fully developed adult-thinking child at age 15 and knew absolutely, without manipulation or clever grooming from others, what she was up to. But if she was an averagely dolt-headed teenager I would put it this way. No 15 year old girl wants to think of herself as anything but a grown-up, desirable woman with total self-agency. Such a girl - made vulnerable by her own stupidity, gullibility and a selfish, even conceited desire for purpose and importance - is easy prey. Of course, she thought she was doing something heroic and adult when she left Britain to champion Isis.
Comment on grooming at the time of Shemima Begum's little adventure.
I don't know what it says about British society either. Social media and tabloid press like to go hysterical over the names and faces of 'foreign' groomers of nice mainly white British girls for sexual purposes. But grooming ethnic-minority/British girls for other kinds of exploitative purposes is the girls' own look-out, it seems. I can envisage the populist reaction to a white Tracy Smith from Essex being the same, perhaps. But it's naivity to think that a very damaging part of the reaction to this story isn't driven by pure racism.
Just as an aside here, I couldn't help but think of Lord Haw Haw - William Joyce's - case, throughout all this. American born to an Irish father and Anglo-Irish mother, who became a German citizen. Nevertheless, executed for 'treason' on the basis of the falsely acquired British passport he carried (falsely, because he had never been a British citizen).
You can guarantee that had the white girls victimised by "Asian grooming gangs [sic]" got pregnant having been coerced into drunken sex with their white boyfriends the reaction from the far right press would have been far less sympathetic.
No one has yet tried to even outline what they believe those 'considerable reasons' to be. Given that states engage in military action against other states all the time, with or without a formal declaration of war, recognising IS as a state/proto-state would never stop us, or anyone else, from fighting it.
My problem with it is the reverse! The morality of "washing our hands" of Begum would not be improved one whit by recognising IS as a state. Even pragmatically, IS isn't a state now, so the problem of what to do with her would remain! There is no upside to recognising IS as a state that I can see.
I think it's a case of only being able to recognise one legitimate government of a piece of territory at a time. You can't recognise IS without saying that Iraq and Syria are not the shape and size that they claim to be, and the west needed the co-operation of both for its war aims. There's also simple politics. If there are competing claims to territory then you recognise the one that is politically useful to you, and the default is that prior claims are preferred because it suits existing states for that you be the case. Hence lots of countries recognising the Venezuelan opposition leader as the "legitimate" president, and the Northern Alliance as the "legitimate" government of Afghanistan even when it controlled only 10% of the territory. Meanwhile Biafra got crushed because there was no benefit to helping them.
Similarly they are only sympathetic insofar as they are faceless victims standing in for the prejudices of their readers. The instant it comes to actually funding child services properly - for instance - it'll be 'dreadful teens living life of luxury on the state' and so on.
I think if you'd pressed both the Syrian and Iraqi governments, they would have acknowledged that they no longer controlled that territory. Our co-operation for their war aims would simply be helping them retake that territory, and I don't think either of them would have let their high-minded ideals on the nature and constitution of a nation state get in the way of western military intervention.
I guess the question - for me as much as anyone else - is what we mean by 'recognise as a state', outwith the issue of Shamima Begum's nationality. If we are literally just interested in pragmatic facts on the ground, then ISTM statehood - being an almost entirely theoretical concept - doesn't enter into the equation.
Not that the mafia would be able to defend their territory. The government has a military, and they have tanks and aircraft. If it ever got to the point where they wanted to exert control badly enough, they could.
It's looking like I have a much more pragmatic (and lower) threshold for what is and isn't an autonomous state.
By that definition virtually no state can be considered independent because if the US wanted to they could exert control over it (albeit by turning large sections of it into glass and cinders).