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).
Yes. That's pretty much the case. The joke is that due to corona virus restrictions, the US had to have its coup at home this year.
Sovereignty, such as it is, works best when pooled.
I remember being 15 years old.
I also know some people who did horrendous things at that age and in their teens, and I know some of them still. Stuff you'd fry for if they fried people to death here. They stopped doing horrendous things. Some even do good things.
LC may be more optimistic than I am in terms of rebuilding: some people are dangerous forever and cannot be rebuilt in ways which makes them safe for other humans. It would be interesting to watch footage of interviews with this person, if available. Preferably long, multi-hour interviews with a skilled interviewer (boring for some, not for me).
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.
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.
Recognising something as a state I think involves recognising them as having a de jure rather than merely de facto claim to at least some territory. As said, if we're going to palm off one of our citizens onto them, we need to grant them somewhere for our soon-to-be-ex-citizen to live. If we support Iraq and Syria in reclaiming their territory we're basically just palming off our ex-citizen onto one of them.
Anyway, granting IS a legitimate claim to territory would be coolly received by the other nations in the area, which would cause diplomatic awkwardness, of which there is a sufficient supply already.
In general we frown upon moving borders about. A state in international law is an organisation that represents the people within a particular set of borders (I believe subject to correction). Quasi-governmental organisations with no fixed set of borders such as the Habsburgs or the Plantagenets don't qualify as states and are generally destabilising. Wars are reduced in scope and number when everyone agrees where the borders ought to be. That military action still happens is true, but that doesn't mean it ought to be encouraged.
Anyway, what LambChopped and TurquoiseTastic said.
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.
I agree, she's ours. She cannot be rebuilt, healed, deradicalized. No chance. But she's still ours. To be watched. She can't be tagged and have to report to the police, for what offense? But she can be watched. For a hundred thousand a year. Or five. Along with a thousand others. Or ten.
Recognising something as a state I think involves recognising them as having a de jure rather than merely de facto claim to at least some territory.
As I've been arguing elsewhere, the right (as represented by the concept of de jure) to territory only extends as far as that rights can be successfully exercised. We maintain the polite fictions that borders are fixed, that Just War theory somehow governs our actions, and that a major power can't just come along and annexe whatever the hell it wants or change our government for one it prefers - but none of these are actually true.
So the argument that recognising IS as a state actor would somehow legitimise its claim to territory falls into that category. It's simply acknowledging the facts on the ground, about a minute before you order the bombers into the air. IS controlled territory by force of arms, it had a functioning civil service that levied taxes and issued permits, it had a (quasi-)judicial system. It was, for all intents and purposes, a state.
(If I was going to draw any parallel, the Confederate States seceded from the Union, and considered themselves a separate, self-governing territory. If the Union had failed to destroy the Confederacy, then a new border would had been drawn, whatever the Union's earlier claim of control might be. Would other nations have recognised the Confederate States as a new country? What do you think? If IS had held on to its territory, and consolidated it, then we wouldn't even be discussing the citizenship or otherwise of Begum.)
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.
I have to agree. IS were just a bunch of terrorists in illigal possession of some of Iraq and some of Syria. There were no citizens of IS
The Normans were just a bunch of terrorists in illegal possession of some of England and some of Wales.
Really, that's pretty much how every nation state started. If IS had held onto its territory by successfully defending it, there would be de facto citizens of IS, and we wouldn't be discussing this.
The Normans were just a bunch of terrorists in illegal possession of some of England and some of Wales.
Really, that's pretty much how every nation state started. If IS had held onto its territory by successfully defending it, there would be de facto citizens of IS, and we wouldn't be discussing this.
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.
I agree, she's ours. She cannot be rebuilt, healed, deradicalized. No chance. But she's still ours. To be watched. She can't be tagged and have to report to the police, for what offense? But she can be watched. For a hundred thousand a year. Or five. Along with a thousand others. Or ten.
No argument, the girl is “yours”. But how do YOU know she can’t be “ rebuilt, healed, deradicalized”?
The Normans were just a bunch of terrorists in illegal possession of some of England and some of Wales.
...and if they'd have lost, then William Duke of Normandy would have fled back to his lands in Normandy.
The Crusader states make perhaps a slightly better comparison for IS, although still not a perfect one. Perhaps the best comparator for IS is the losing side in a Civil War. Empress Matilda, perhaps?
It's simply acknowledging the facts on the ground, about a minute before you order the bombers into the air.
ISTM that if, after recognising IS as a state, you carry on to do exactly what you would do if you didn't recognise it as a state - i.e., attack it with the aim of obliterating it - then 'recognise as a state' is a pretty meaningless concept.
(If I was going to draw any parallel, the Confederate States seceded from the Union, and considered themselves a separate, self-governing territory. If the Union had failed to destroy the Confederacy, then a new border would had been drawn, whatever the Union's earlier claim of control might be. Would other nations have recognised the Confederate States as a new country? What do you think? If IS had held on to its territory, and consolidated it, then we wouldn't even be discussing the citizenship or otherwise of Begum.)
I'd support a concept of 'squatters' rights' for states - that is, if something manages to act like a state for a reasonable number of years, and shows no sign of being dislodged, then it should be recognised as a state, regardless of how it came into being. So I would recognise Transdnistria, Somaliland, North Cyprus, and probably a few others.
I don't think IS ever met that threshold. It managed to turn every single player in the Middle East against it, including the US, so it was never going to last more than a few years, even if the UK remained totally uninvolved. (Which means that, realistically, treating Shamima Begum as an IS citizen would always leave her stateless in the long run.) In some ways it is/was as much a doomsday cult as a state - it even called its propaganda sheet Dabiq, which is the Islamic equivalent of Armageddon.
The Normans were just a bunch of terrorists in illegal possession of some of England and some of Wales.
...and if they'd have lost, then William Duke of Normandy would have fled back to his lands in Normandy.
The Crusader states make perhaps a slightly better comparison for IS, although still not a perfect one. Perhaps the best comparator for IS is the losing side in a Civil War. Empress Matilda, perhaps?
The Confederacy lasted just a bit longer than IS but they were properly organised
It's simply acknowledging the facts on the ground, about a minute before you order the bombers into the air.
ISTM that if, after recognising IS as a state, you carry on to do exactly what you would do if you didn't recognise it as a state - i.e., attack it with the aim of obliterating it - then 'recognise as a state' is a pretty meaningless concept.
(If I was going to draw any parallel, the Confederate States seceded from the Union, and considered themselves a separate, self-governing territory. If the Union had failed to destroy the Confederacy, then a new border would had been drawn, whatever the Union's earlier claim of control might be. Would other nations have recognised the Confederate States as a new country? What do you think? If IS had held on to its territory, and consolidated it, then we wouldn't even be discussing the citizenship or otherwise of Begum.)
I'd support a concept of 'squatters' rights' for states - that is, if something manages to act like a state for a reasonable number of years, and shows no sign of being dislodged, then it should be recognised as a state, regardless of how it came into being. So I would recognise Transdnistria, Somaliland, North Cyprus, and probably a few others.
I don't think IS ever met that threshold. It managed to turn every single player in the Middle East against it, including the US, so it was never going to last more than a few years, even if the UK remained totally uninvolved. (Which means that, realistically, treating Shamima Begum as an IS citizen would always leave her stateless in the long run.) In some ways it is/was as much a doomsday cult as a state - it even called its propaganda sheet Dabiq, which is the Islamic equivalent of Armageddon.
These are all cogent arguments, and it's not a hill I'd choose to die on. But I'd prefer that hill than the one the UK government is currently occupying, which isn't even bothering to hide its flagrant breach of international law. My position does have at least the benefit of being a reasonable-sized fig leaf.
But she's still ours. To be watched. She can't be tagged and have to report to the police, for what offense?
High Treason.
ISIS was certainly an enemy of the Crown, and she certainly adhered to them, and apparently continues to do so.
She can be imprisoned for life for this offence.
So could all those who have returned but I don't see any prosecutions.
So... lots of others have returned... and have not been charged... so why do we regard Begum as being so peculiarly dangerous that she cannot possibly be allowed to return?
But she's still ours. To be watched. She can't be tagged and have to report to the police, for what offense?
High Treason.
ISIS was certainly an enemy of the Crown, and she certainly adhered to them, and apparently continues to do so.
She can be imprisoned for life for this offence.
So could all those who have returned but I don't see any prosecutions.
So... lots of others have returned... and have not been charged... so why do we regard Begum as being so peculiarly dangerous that she cannot possibly be allowed to return?
In future, Parents would be able to say, " Don't go there. If you do, you will not be allowed back"
I think about 400 people have returned from Syria to UK, most of them assessed as low security risk. Presumably, Shamima is assessed differently, not sure why.
Yeah, well. I've had a fifteen-year-old. I've BEEN a fifteen-year-old girl. And I'm pretty sure that if I thought I was doing the right thing at that time, telling me that I would suffer for it wouldn't have changed my mind--strengthened it, maybe. Idealists do love martyrdom. Especially when they're young and dumb.
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.
What something would you have done?
And what knowledge did the UK government have that the child was born and its responsibility for it?
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.
What something would you have done?
And what knowledge did the UK government have that the child was born and its responsibility for it?
Journalists got to her interviewed her and saw the child, they could and should have been repatriated.
When Shamima Begum was pregnant with her third child, she applied urgently to return home to Britain because she feared for the baby's health since her two other children had died of malnutrition and disease. At that point the Home Office should have allowed her to come back to Britain on humanitarian grounds. She was instead stripped of citizenship although Home Secretary Sajid Javid stated that the revocation applied to Begum alone and that her child would be a British national. He then argued that to extract an infant from northern Syria would be incredibly difficult and dangerous even though aid workers and journalists were working in the camp and had had no difficulty reaching Shamima Begum many times.
If there had been a powerful groundswell of support for her or her unborn child, or concern for children in detention camps, I suspect the outcome might have been different. Although the evacuation of children from war zones is difficult, there are detailed case studies about the airlift of Vietnamese children to the United States, or the mass evacuation of 4 500 Nigerian children from Biafra to Gabon from a fame-stricken area during the Nigerian civil war and their successful repatriation home later.
A more controversial history of child evacuation is the notorious Child Emigration Scheme in which young British children were taken from impoverished urban centres in the UK and sent to farms in Canada Australia, New Zealand and British colonies in Africa. This was largely discontinued in the 1930s but went on in some places until the 1970s. Most children sent to the Rhodesias and South Africa lost their citizenship and were deceived into believing their parents had died.
In South Africa the saddest story though is to do with the 83 Nazi war orphans brought to South Africa by Hitler sympathisers and 'adopted' as late as 1957 by prominent right-wing Afrikaner families, including the Prime Minister DF Malan. The criteria was that the children would need to be of pure Aryan stock, Protestant, healthy and blond, so that they would infuse the white Afrikaner nation with purer blood. Siblings were separated and given to different families considered the elite of the Nationalist Party. The best known of these adopted children grew up as Lothar Neethling who led Dr Wouter Basson's biological and chemical warfare programme in the production and supply of poisons to assassinate anti-apartheid activists.
Race, class, religion, perceived nationality and public sympathy are always vectors.
Has that stopped any stubborn child you know of?
Fifteen. It's not a sensible age.
Ms Begum's parents did not have any case they could quote
If I remember correctly from the stuff I posted last time this was discussed, Shamima Begum's mother had died recently, before/as she was radicalised and her father was not living with her. She was living with a grandmother and much influenced by an uncle (whether a courtesy uncle I can't remember). She was identified as the girl most at danger of being radicalised as she was so vulnerable. She and her companions were investigated at school for being likely to be in contact with a friend who had already gone to join Daesh and the school wrote home to highlight concerns, none of which letters arrived at their destinations. But I know too many teenagers that check the post for school letters. She raised money for her journey by selling the jewellery she inherited from her mother.
She was described as a straight A student by the school, which cynically I interpret as meaning the school reckoned they could hot house her through GCSEs at grade A so, therefore, was under a lot of academic pressure that she wasn't coping with - she was expressing a desire to drop out of education. She and her companions left just before those GCSEs, in the midst of that hothousing.
She has never struck me as particularly bright and I am not sure what weight can be put on interviews given in a refugee camp surrounded by other Daesh, when survival might mean holding the party line.
I don't think leaving her in a camp for the last two years will have warmed her to Britain. I said last time we discussed this, doing so would further radicalise her. We had more chance of deradicalising her if we'd brought her back two years ago.
It's simply acknowledging the facts on the ground, about a minute before you order the bombers into the air.
ISTM that if, after recognising IS as a state, you carry on to do exactly what you would do if you didn't recognise it as a state - i.e., attack it with the aim of obliterating it - then 'recognise as a state' is a pretty meaningless concept.
The difference is that if you recognise the state then you declare war on them, one nation (in alliance with others, in this case at least) against another. If you don't recognise them as a state then you are supporting the state that you do recognise as having territorial claim in a police action. On the ground, a police action and a war can look incredibly similar in practical outworking.
But she's still ours. To be watched. She can't be tagged and have to report to the police, for what offense?
High Treason.
ISIS was certainly an enemy of the Crown, and she certainly adhered to them, and apparently continues to do so.
She can be imprisoned for life for this offence.
So could all those who have returned but I don't see any prosecutions.
So... lots of others have returned... and have not been charged... so why do we regard Begum as being so peculiarly dangerous that she cannot possibly be allowed to return?
In future, Parents would be able to say, " Don't go there. If you do, you will not be allowed back"
But you just told me that loads of other, possibly more dangerous, people have been allowed back! So that warning would not even be true!
When Shamima Begum was pregnant with her third child, she applied urgently to return home to Britain because she feared for the baby's health since her two other children had died of malnutrition and disease. At that point the Home Office should have allowed her to come back to Britain on humanitarian grounds. She was instead stripped of citizenship although Home Secretary Sajid Javid stated that the revocation applied to Begum alone and that her child would be a British national. He then argued that to extract an infant from northern Syria would be incredibly difficult and dangerous even though aid workers and journalists were working in the camp and had had no difficulty reaching Shamima Begum many times.
If there had been a powerful groundswell of support for her or her unborn child, or concern for children in detention camps, I suspect the outcome might have been different. Although the evacuation of children from war zones is difficult, there are detailed case studies about the airlift of Vietnamese children to the United States, or the mass evacuation of 4 500 Nigerian children from Biafra to Gabon from a fame-stricken area during the Nigerian civil war and their successful repatriation home later.
A more controversial history of child evacuation is the notorious Child Emigration Scheme in which young British children were taken from impoverished urban centres in the UK and sent to farms in Canada Australia, New Zealand and British colonies in Africa. This was largely discontinued in the 1930s but went on in some places until the 1970s. Most children sent to the Rhodesias and South Africa lost their citizenship and were deceived into believing their parents had died.
In South Africa the saddest story though is to do with the 83 Nazi war orphans brought to South Africa by Hitler sympathisers and 'adopted' as late as 1957 by prominent right-wing Afrikaner families, including the Prime Minister DF Malan. The criteria was that the children would need to be of pure Aryan stock, Protestant, healthy and blond, so that they would infuse the white Afrikaner nation with purer blood. Siblings were separated and given to different families considered the elite of the Nationalist Party. The best known of these adopted children grew up as Lothar Neethling who led Dr Wouter Basson's biological and chemical warfare programme in the production and supply of poisons to assassinate anti-apartheid activists.
Race, class, religion, perceived nationality and public sympathy are always vectors.
20,000 indigenous children were taken from their families in Canada and adopted by white people. It's called the Sixties Scoop. It went on from the 1950s to 1980s. It was racist in multiple ways. Only this year (2021) has Social Service's Child Protection Service in my province ceased to do "birth alerts". Someone is pregnant and they target the child for apprehension. This can commence at prenatal medical appts or they swoop in and take the child immediately after birth. The policy targetted young single mothers, mostly indigenous, who were frequently known as child protection cases themselves. The only way to regain their baby was family court, with reduction of legal aid lawyer funding, meeting the lawyer just before court was normative.
Injustice abounds. It's structural. I do wonder how many MPs and other politicians have taken training in structural racism and sexism. Judges and lawyers, social workers, teachers, physicians, others.
But she's still ours. To be watched. She can't be tagged and have to report to the police, for what offense?
High Treason.
ISIS was certainly an enemy of the Crown, and she certainly adhered to them, and apparently continues to do so.
She can be imprisoned for life for this offence.
So could all those who have returned but I don't see any prosecutions.
So... lots of others have returned... and have not been charged... so why do we regard Begum as being so peculiarly dangerous that she cannot possibly be allowed to return?
In future, Parents would be able to say, " Don't go there. If you do, you will not be allowed back"
But you just told me that loads of other, possibly more dangerous, people have been allowed back! So that warning would not even be true!
I think about 400 people have returned from Syria to UK, most of them assessed as low security risk. Presumably, Shamima is assessed differently, not sure why.
It doesn't really explain why Shamima is treated differently. I vaguely remember that she said she supported terror attacks such as Manchester. The argument about not being white, seems contradicted by Jack Letts, also was stripped of citizenship, (Jihadi Jack), who was white. However, Letts was not a child, and had dual citizenship (Canadian/UK).
Bottom line, surely, is that being anti-Shamima is popular.
The argument about not being white, seems contradicted by Jack Letts, also was stripped of citizenship, (Jihadi Jack), who was white.
Being brown and being Muslim are often conflated, because most Muslims in the UK are also brown. But I think it's mostly a "Muslims are terrorists" thing rather than a "brown people are lesser people" thing.
Jack Letts, also was stripped of citizenship, (Jihadi Jack), who was white. However, Letts was not a child, and had dual citizenship (Canadian/UK).
Presumably the UK government jumped in quick to strip him of citizenship before the Canadians got there and left him in the UK lap ... if both nations had acted simultaneously would that have also felt him stateless?
Letts had dual citizenship, but as far as I know he's got no real contact with Canada and it's not somewhere he could realistically call home, so it's not fundamentally different from taking citizenship from someone with no other citizenship. Added to which, he was in the UK when he was radicalised so the only nations that he could realistically be the problem of are Syria (where any crimes would have taken place) and the UK (the only home he'd known before joining Da'esh). That's actually no different from Shamima Begum, as far as I can see, except that Letts is accused of more serious crimes (actively fighting for Da'esh) than Begum (who supported Da'esh but as far as anyone knows never held a gun or fired it at anyone). If Syria was a functioning state with a proper legal system then there's an argument for them (and all others who supported Da'esh within Syria) being tried in Syria for the crimes committed there (likewise in Iraq for crimes there). There are two other options - one, they're returned to the UK to stand trial here, or two there's an international court established to try them (then if found guilty there's the question of where they serve their sentence - I'd say probably the UK, as that's where they'll live when released) - naturally the same would be for people from other nations, stand trial in their own nation or international court with sentence in own nation.
I think the danger for such people is that the Kurds will get fed up with holding them, Syria will take over and put them on trial, possibly resulting in jail or death sentences.
But she's still ours. To be watched. She can't be tagged and have to report to the police, for what offense?
High Treason.
ISIS was certainly an enemy of the Crown, and she certainly adhered to them, and apparently continues to do so.
She can be imprisoned for life for this offence.
So could all those who have returned but I don't see any prosecutions.
So... lots of others have returned... and have not been charged... so why do we regard Begum as being so peculiarly dangerous that she cannot possibly be allowed to return?
In future, Parents would be able to say, " Don't go there. If you do, you will not be allowed back"
But you just told me that loads of other, possibly more dangerous, people have been allowed back! So that warning would not even be true!
Comments
Yes. That's pretty much the case. The joke is that due to corona virus restrictions, the US had to have its coup at home this year.
Sovereignty, such as it is, works best when pooled.
I also know some people who did horrendous things at that age and in their teens, and I know some of them still. Stuff you'd fry for if they fried people to death here. They stopped doing horrendous things. Some even do good things.
LC may be more optimistic than I am in terms of rebuilding: some people are dangerous forever and cannot be rebuilt in ways which makes them safe for other humans. It would be interesting to watch footage of interviews with this person, if available. Preferably long, multi-hour interviews with a skilled interviewer (boring for some, not for me).
What something would you have done?
Anyway, granting IS a legitimate claim to territory would be coolly received by the other nations in the area, which would cause diplomatic awkwardness, of which there is a sufficient supply already.
In general we frown upon moving borders about. A state in international law is an organisation that represents the people within a particular set of borders (I believe subject to correction). Quasi-governmental organisations with no fixed set of borders such as the Habsburgs or the Plantagenets don't qualify as states and are generally destabilising. Wars are reduced in scope and number when everyone agrees where the borders ought to be. That military action still happens is true, but that doesn't mean it ought to be encouraged.
Anyway, what LambChopped and TurquoiseTastic said.
I agree, she's ours. She cannot be rebuilt, healed, deradicalized. No chance. But she's still ours. To be watched. She can't be tagged and have to report to the police, for what offense? But she can be watched. For a hundred thousand a year. Or five. Along with a thousand others. Or ten.
As I've been arguing elsewhere, the right (as represented by the concept of de jure) to territory only extends as far as that rights can be successfully exercised. We maintain the polite fictions that borders are fixed, that Just War theory somehow governs our actions, and that a major power can't just come along and annexe whatever the hell it wants or change our government for one it prefers - but none of these are actually true.
So the argument that recognising IS as a state actor would somehow legitimise its claim to territory falls into that category. It's simply acknowledging the facts on the ground, about a minute before you order the bombers into the air. IS controlled territory by force of arms, it had a functioning civil service that levied taxes and issued permits, it had a (quasi-)judicial system. It was, for all intents and purposes, a state.
(If I was going to draw any parallel, the Confederate States seceded from the Union, and considered themselves a separate, self-governing territory. If the Union had failed to destroy the Confederacy, then a new border would had been drawn, whatever the Union's earlier claim of control might be. Would other nations have recognised the Confederate States as a new country? What do you think? If IS had held on to its territory, and consolidated it, then we wouldn't even be discussing the citizenship or otherwise of Begum.)
I have to agree. IS were just a bunch of terrorists in illigal possession of some of Iraq and some of Syria. There were no citizens of IS
Really, that's pretty much how every nation state started. If IS had held onto its territory by successfully defending it, there would be de facto citizens of IS, and we wouldn't be discussing this.
High Treason.
ISIS was certainly an enemy of the Crown, and she certainly adhered to them, and apparently continues to do so.
She can be imprisoned for life for this offence.
But they didn't, there aren't, and we are!
No argument, the girl is “yours”. But how do YOU know she can’t be “ rebuilt, healed, deradicalized”?
...and if they'd have lost, then William Duke of Normandy would have fled back to his lands in Normandy.
The Crusader states make perhaps a slightly better comparison for IS, although still not a perfect one. Perhaps the best comparator for IS is the losing side in a Civil War. Empress Matilda, perhaps?
ISTM that if, after recognising IS as a state, you carry on to do exactly what you would do if you didn't recognise it as a state - i.e., attack it with the aim of obliterating it - then 'recognise as a state' is a pretty meaningless concept.
I'd support a concept of 'squatters' rights' for states - that is, if something manages to act like a state for a reasonable number of years, and shows no sign of being dislodged, then it should be recognised as a state, regardless of how it came into being. So I would recognise Transdnistria, Somaliland, North Cyprus, and probably a few others.
I don't think IS ever met that threshold. It managed to turn every single player in the Middle East against it, including the US, so it was never going to last more than a few years, even if the UK remained totally uninvolved. (Which means that, realistically, treating Shamima Begum as an IS citizen would always leave her stateless in the long run.) In some ways it is/was as much a doomsday cult as a state - it even called its propaganda sheet Dabiq, which is the Islamic equivalent of Armageddon.
The Confederacy lasted just a bit longer than IS but they were properly organised
These are all cogent arguments, and it's not a hill I'd choose to die on. But I'd prefer that hill than the one the UK government is currently occupying, which isn't even bothering to hide its flagrant breach of international law. My position does have at least the benefit of being a reasonable-sized fig leaf.
Chapter and verse please, what is the charge? What law would she be breaking by adhering to ISIS if she were in the UK?
So... lots of others have returned... and have not been charged... so why do we regard Begum as being so peculiarly dangerous that she cannot possibly be allowed to return?
...maybe *action* has been taken in secret?
Fifteen. It's not a sensible age.
It's ok to let someone back in the country if they haven't been the cause of a fit of hysterics.
And what knowledge did the UK government have that the child was born and its responsibility for it?
Journalists got to her interviewed her and saw the child, they could and should have been repatriated.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47276572 The boy died about a month later.
If there had been a powerful groundswell of support for her or her unborn child, or concern for children in detention camps, I suspect the outcome might have been different. Although the evacuation of children from war zones is difficult, there are detailed case studies about the airlift of Vietnamese children to the United States, or the mass evacuation of 4 500 Nigerian children from Biafra to Gabon from a fame-stricken area during the Nigerian civil war and their successful repatriation home later.
A more controversial history of child evacuation is the notorious Child Emigration Scheme in which young British children were taken from impoverished urban centres in the UK and sent to farms in Canada Australia, New Zealand and British colonies in Africa. This was largely discontinued in the 1930s but went on in some places until the 1970s. Most children sent to the Rhodesias and South Africa lost their citizenship and were deceived into believing their parents had died.
In South Africa the saddest story though is to do with the 83 Nazi war orphans brought to South Africa by Hitler sympathisers and 'adopted' as late as 1957 by prominent right-wing Afrikaner families, including the Prime Minister DF Malan. The criteria was that the children would need to be of pure Aryan stock, Protestant, healthy and blond, so that they would infuse the white Afrikaner nation with purer blood. Siblings were separated and given to different families considered the elite of the Nationalist Party. The best known of these adopted children grew up as Lothar Neethling who led Dr Wouter Basson's biological and chemical warfare programme in the production and supply of poisons to assassinate anti-apartheid activists.
Race, class, religion, perceived nationality and public sympathy are always vectors.
If I remember correctly from the stuff I posted last time this was discussed, Shamima Begum's mother had died recently, before/as she was radicalised and her father was not living with her. She was living with a grandmother and much influenced by an uncle (whether a courtesy uncle I can't remember). She was identified as the girl most at danger of being radicalised as she was so vulnerable. She and her companions were investigated at school for being likely to be in contact with a friend who had already gone to join Daesh and the school wrote home to highlight concerns, none of which letters arrived at their destinations. But I know too many teenagers that check the post for school letters. She raised money for her journey by selling the jewellery she inherited from her mother.
She was described as a straight A student by the school, which cynically I interpret as meaning the school reckoned they could hot house her through GCSEs at grade A so, therefore, was under a lot of academic pressure that she wasn't coping with - she was expressing a desire to drop out of education. She and her companions left just before those GCSEs, in the midst of that hothousing.
She has never struck me as particularly bright and I am not sure what weight can be put on interviews given in a refugee camp surrounded by other Daesh, when survival might mean holding the party line.
I don't think leaving her in a camp for the last two years will have warmed her to Britain. I said last time we discussed this, doing so would further radicalise her. We had more chance of deradicalising her if we'd brought her back two years ago.
But you just told me that loads of other, possibly more dangerous, people have been allowed back! So that warning would not even be true!
20,000 indigenous children were taken from their families in Canada and adopted by white people. It's called the Sixties Scoop. It went on from the 1950s to 1980s. It was racist in multiple ways. Only this year (2021) has Social Service's Child Protection Service in my province ceased to do "birth alerts". Someone is pregnant and they target the child for apprehension. This can commence at prenatal medical appts or they swoop in and take the child immediately after birth. The policy targetted young single mothers, mostly indigenous, who were frequently known as child protection cases themselves. The only way to regain their baby was family court, with reduction of legal aid lawyer funding, meeting the lawyer just before court was normative.
Injustice abounds. It's structural. I do wonder how many MPs and other politicians have taken training in structural racism and sexism. Judges and lawyers, social workers, teachers, physicians, others.
Profile. Symbol. Discretion. Etc.
Bottom line, surely, is that being anti-Shamima is popular.
Being brown and being Muslim are often conflated, because most Muslims in the UK are also brown. But I think it's mostly a "Muslims are terrorists" thing rather than a "brown people are lesser people" thing.
Letts had dual citizenship, but as far as I know he's got no real contact with Canada and it's not somewhere he could realistically call home, so it's not fundamentally different from taking citizenship from someone with no other citizenship. Added to which, he was in the UK when he was radicalised so the only nations that he could realistically be the problem of are Syria (where any crimes would have taken place) and the UK (the only home he'd known before joining Da'esh). That's actually no different from Shamima Begum, as far as I can see, except that Letts is accused of more serious crimes (actively fighting for Da'esh) than Begum (who supported Da'esh but as far as anyone knows never held a gun or fired it at anyone). If Syria was a functioning state with a proper legal system then there's an argument for them (and all others who supported Da'esh within Syria) being tried in Syria for the crimes committed there (likewise in Iraq for crimes there). There are two other options - one, they're returned to the UK to stand trial here, or two there's an international court established to try them (then if found guilty there's the question of where they serve their sentence - I'd say probably the UK, as that's where they'll live when released) - naturally the same would be for people from other nations, stand trial in their own nation or international court with sentence in own nation.
IOW, what makes Shamima Begum's case different from those others?
The Media
Please could you explain further?
Certainly. She is an high profile case and has been ever since she left the country.