VICTORY IS MINE!

     So, for a thousand years, with some pretty stunning reversals, the Turko-Hunno-Mongol steppe-people (Turkey, the Soviet Stans, Mongolia) and the Persians fought it out. 

     Yes, for about four hundred years, it seems as though the Mongols had the utmost power, after all, didn't the Chingis-Khanites reach past Iraq, wasn't Tamerlane ruling Persia, his capital their capital? 

     Certainly the Timurids (after Tamerlane) ruled Persia, but only after making Persian their language.  The same was true with the Mongols in China, who ruled, but could not impose the Mongolian language, or even rule with it, but spoke Chinese (a little more research required on that one, I'm sure of the rest).

     Say, about 1600, we want to say the major waves of war in this area came to an end.  Where was the final, sustainable boundary?  Here is Grousset describing it: "At the moment the empires were crystallizing, Persia was destined to remain to the Persians, as was ethnically fitting, and Turkestan to the Turks." (Grousset, 2005 9th printing, Rutgers U. Press, p. 468).  By "Turkestan" here Grousset is refering to the countries which are now Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kirghiz and Kazakhstans. 

     The large scale brutality of the millenia of Turco-Hunno-Mongol wars seems to pretty much outdo any other in the history of the world.  Memorably, Tamerlane was quite fond of huge pyramids of skulls, sometimes tens of thousands of heads from a city he had just taken.  But when the pushing and shoving came to an end, the line in the sand was the one demarcated by language.

Language & Peace: Post-Conflict Courts

     Ellen Emilie Stensrud of Norway writes in the latest issue of the Journal of Conflict Research (Vol 46(1), Jan 2009) on the Cambodian and Sierra Leonean Special Courts set up under the auspices of the United Nations to try people for the Pol Pot era and Civil War years, respectively.  The general conclusion of the article is that the Sierra Leonean trials were not doing much for the local judiciary, because most of the court were foreigners, while in Cambodia, most of the Judges were locals, and beholden to the new Government of Cambodia (which contains some people who were, at some points, members of the Khmer Rouge) and thus illegitimate.

     In private communication, Ms. Stensrud tells me that the Courts have been greatly hampered in Cambodia because all court proceedings are published in English, French and Khmer, a large cost and cause of delay, as qualified translators are rare.  Although Sierra Leone courts are mostly in English, there are many witnesses who do not speak English.

     Thanks to the Journal of Conflict Research and Ms. Stensrud!