With just 13 square miles and 2,142 residents, Norfolk Island is not large. Lying 900 miles off Australia and 600 miles from New Zealand, it is also very remote. But Norfolk played a key role in the British colonization of the Austral realm. Extensive groves of tall, straight Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria heterophylla, now a common houseplant) carpeted the uninhabited island when James Cook happened upon it in 1774, as did thickets of New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax). The British Navy, concerned about the declining supply of masts from North America and hemp from Russia, took a deep interest in the island’s resources, contributing to the decision to found a settlement on the Australian mainland. Through the early 1800s, Norfolk maintained close contact with New South Wales; it too served as an early penal colony.

Although unpopulated when discovered by the British, Norfolk had been settled by Polynesians six to seven hundred years ago. It is not known what happened to the settlement – Norfolk was one of a number of Pacific islands that were only temporarily occupied by Polynesians. The Polynesians did leave their rat, however, along with an ecologically simplified island.

The human geography of Norfolk was transformed in 1856 with the arrival of 192 settlers from Pitcairn Island, a magnificently remote outpost east of French Polynesia. Pitcairn, a volcanic island slightly larger than Norfolk, had been settled in the late 1700s by the famous mutineers of the Bounty along with their Tahitian wives. It was not an idyll, with drunken violence decimating the men, but the population grew nonetheless. When the community threatened to outgrow Pitcairn, a contingent was relocated on Norfolk. Along with the settlers came their distinctive dialect, usually described as a blend of eighteenth-century English and Tahitian. Today the Norfolk language—Norfuk—has official status along with English on the island. Local officials fear that it is falling into disuse but are trying to encourage it. (To hear the language spoken, visit the Norfolk Language website.)

Norfolk is under the sovereign authority of Australia, but it is legally autonomous. The inhabitants have made money by doing the same thing that the legally autonomous islands attached to Britain (Man, Jersey, and Guernsey) have done: set themselves up as a tax haven. Norfolk’s government has further tried to leverage its autonomy into becoming an offshore banking center, but here it has found little success, as such moves have been resisted by the Australian government.

Norfolk controls its own immigration policy, demanding that Australians come with passports. It sometimes refuses permanent residency even to wealthy outsiders. According to the Wikipedia, Norfolk rejected singer Helen Reddy, despite her roots on the island. Norfolk’s anomalous geopolitical situation sometimes gets noticed in the North American news. In February 2010, The Vancouver Sun reported on its role in a complex legal battle over the estate of Eldon Foote, a Canadian-born entrepreneur and philanthropist, that pitted Foote’s widow and children against two charitable foundations. The heirs wanted to argue the case in a Canadian court, but the charities insisted “that Norfolk Island, a sun-drenched tax haven and self-governing territory of Australia, was the philanthropist's legal home.” An Alberta judge ruled that this was the case, thwarting Foote’s wife and children.

Geopolitically anomalous islands – including Norfolk – occupy significant positions in the global financial order, serving as refuges from standard legal systems. Island governments take advantage of such irregularities, as do wealthy individuals and corporations. Whether the global economy as a whole gains from such stratagems is a different question.

Isolated oceanic islands, with their small to non-existent populations and scant resources, are ignored in most discussion of global geography. Yet there are good reasons to pay them close attention. Remote islands form natural laboratories for research in biogeography, and their unique assemblages of flora and fauna are highly vulnerable to introduced species and other threats from the outer world. In regard to culture and geopolitics as well, isolated islands present us with significant curiosities and anomalies.

The largely submerged “continent” of Zealandia (see last week’s Geocurrents post) contains several islands of particular note. Today’s post will examine Lord Howe, and tomorrow’s will turn to Norfolk, two Australian islands celebrated for their beauty and unusual natural features.

Lord Howe Island, a 22 square mile gem sitting near the center of the Tasman Sea, was classified as a World Heritage Site in its entirety in 1982. Its waters contain some of the world’s southernmost coral reefs. Unknown to humankind before 1788, it held an array of endemic bird, insect, and plant species. The first visitors found the island’s wildlife completely -- and tragically -- unafraid of people. As one seaman reported, “When I was in the woods amongst the birds I cd. not help picturing to myself the Golden Age described by Ovid to see Fowls … walking totally fearless… so we had nothing more to do than to stand a minute or two & and knock down as many as we pleas’d wt. a short stick…” (quoted in Tim Flannery’s superb The Future Eaters, page 177). Within a few decades of discovery, the Lord Howe swamp hen, the white-throated pigeon, the red-crowned parakeet, and the Tasman booby had all been exterminated by human hunters. Several more bird species disappeared after the inadvertent introduction of the black rat in 1918. Similar rounds of extinction have occurred on other newly discovered islands, regardless of whether the first interlopers were European or Polynesian, but on Lord Howe Island the process is remarkably well documented.

The environmental future of Lord Howe Island seems promising. The human presence is strictly limited; only 347 people live on the island permanently, and visitors cannot exceed 400 at any time. A major restoration project is now underway. The endangered Lord Howe rail (or woodhen), currawong, and flax snail have seen significant recoveries. Several invasive species, including feral pigs, have been eliminated, and ecologists are discussing the possible reintroduction of several close relatives of the island’s extinct fauna. In February 2010, Australian authorities announced that they will drop 42 tons of rat poison by helicopter over the full expanse of the island in 2012, taking special precautions to protect the remaining native species. Once rats are eliminated, ecological restoration projects will have a much greater chance of success.

Prospects for environmental restoration were enhanced in 2001 with the discovery of a tiny surviving population of the noted Lord Howe stick insect, Dryococelus australis. Reaching up to 15 centimeters in length, these formerly common insects were called “tree lobsters” or even “walking sausages.” Dryococelus australis is remarkable not just for its size, but for its behavior as well. According to the Wikipedia, “The males and females form some kind of a bond. The males follow the females and their activities depend on what the female is doing. During the night the couple sleeps together with three of the male's legs wrapped around the female.”

Thought to have been exterminated by rat predation in the 1920s, the Lord Howe stick insect was rediscovered on Ball’s Pyramid, a nearby island. Ball’s Pyramid is itself a remarkable feature; measuring only 656 feet across, its summit sits 1844 feet above sea level (see photo above). Basically a barren rock, Ball’s Pyramid supports one small pocket of vegetation. On and under a single Melaleuca shrub, researchers discovered two dozen stick insects. A successful captive breeding program was soon underway. By 2008 the population had grown to 450, allowing 20 insects to be returned to Lord Howe Island.

The human residents of Lord Howe benefit directly from the island’s unique species. Other than tourism, the island has one major economic activity: the export of kentia palm (Howea forsteriana) seedlings. Noted for its three-meter long fronds, this Lord Howe endemic is considered an attractive ornamental species, and is now grown over much of the world.

This weekend's Google Earth adventure on Geocurrents will take us to a place colder than Svalbard or the Ross Ice Shelf, and dustier than the Namib, Nefud, or Taklaman Deserts.

With sweeping dune fields, seismic chasms, deep double impact craters, and a monolithic human face; Mars is a geographer, topographer, seismographer, hydrologist, and conspiracy theorist's delight.

Provided for you, below, is a smooth, short narrated flyover tour of the red planet. The tour highlights the planet's topographical features, including: the first man made object on mars, dune fields, polar ice caps, rover sites, canyons, dried riverbeds, and the captivating 'Cydonia' formation.

If you're already comfortable with Google Earth, download the video tour and waypoints here. Otherwise, instructions on accessing our Martian tour are provided below.



First, download and install a copy of Google Earth.

Once you've loaded the program, switch your Google Earth browser into Mars mode. You can do this by using the explore tab in the view bar, as shown below:


Next, download this file, which contains both the narrated guided tour, and our waypoints. To play the tour, double click the video reel in the sidebar. The tour is at its most awe inspiring when viewed in full screen mode with the sidebar disabled.

You may also explore the planet step by step by double clicking the waypoints to fly from feature to feature.

Make sure to stop and read the information linked to the featured landmarks. This information provided by NASA, Google, and the University of Arizona, will enhance your tour experience.

This tour marks giant leap for Geocurrents.info.

Happy flying!

Yesterday’s post referred to the French-controlled island of New Caledonia as a “nano-continent.” Owing in part to its continental origins, New Caledonia is classified as a biodiversity “hotspot” by Conservation International, noted for its large number of threatened endemic species. New Caledonia also occupies a unique position in terms of human geography. Its official status is that of a “sui generis collectivity” of France, sui generis being the Latin term for “of its own kind.”

European imperial holdings have often been divided into two categories: “settler colonies,” in which immigrants from Europe became the dominant population, and “colonies of occupation” in which small numbers of Europeans came, usually on a temporary basis, to rule and extract profits. The distinction is not entirely clear-cut, as some colonies that experienced large-scale European migration retained an indigenous majority (South Africa), whereas in others most settlers eventually left, often involuntarily (Algeria, Kenya, and Zimbabwe). New Caledonia, however, remains uniquely in the middle, partly a settler colony and partly an occupation colony. Today, the indigenous Kanaks comprise some 45 percent of its population (which totals 250,000), while people of European descent account for some 35 percent. Roughly 12 percent are migrants from French-ruled Polynesia, particularly Wallis and Futuna. Today, roughly 16,000 Wallisians reside in New Caledonia, whereas only 10,000 remain on the home island of ‘Uvea (or Wallis). Relations between the Wallisians and the indigenous population are generally tense, having boiled over into bloodshed in 2002.

The indigenous population of New Caledonia is itself ethnically diverse, divided into more than 30 linguistic groups. Conflicts with European and Polynesian migrants, however, have helped unite the indigenes into the singular Kanak ethnic group. (The term Kanak oddly stems from a Hawaiian word that was used by missionaries and traders through much of the Pacific.) Resisting French rule and racial regulations, and angered by continuing immigration, the Kanaks launched an insurgency in 1980s. Peace came with the Nouméa Accord, signed in 1998. This agreement gave increased autonomy to New Caledonia as a whole while institutionalizing power sharing between the Kanak community and non-indigenous population. The Nouméa Accord also promises a referendum on independence, to be held between 2014 and 2019. Currently, the process of devolution continues to unfold. On February 26, 2010, Radio New Zealand announced the arrival of the French education minister in New Caledonia to discuss transferring responsibility for secondary education from Paris to the local authorities. France has also recently allowed the New Caledonian census to include questions about ethnic identity, a forbidden topic in France itself.

Many people of European descent have lived in New Caledonia for generations, and hence view themselves as Caldoches, members of an ethnic group that is often compared with South Africa’s Afrikaners. Relatively conservative and worried about the empowerment of the Kanaks that may accompany independence, Caldoches generally vote for “loyalist” parties that want to maintain ties with France. As the map above shows, voting remains highly polarized, with the heavily indigenous districts in the north and east voting strongly for nationalist (pro-independence) candidates. A number of European and Polynesian leaders, however, have been striving to create a new political party, called “Future Together,” that would strive for multi-ethnic inclusion, but the process has not been easy.

New Caledonia is a prosperous land, benefitting from massive deposits of nickel (25 percent of the world’s total) and other mineral resources. Its per capita GDP is well over $15,000, a relatively high figure. The distribution of wealth, however, is highly unequal, concentrated in the European-dominated areas on the drier southwestern side of the main island. As the Google Earth images of Nouméa posted above show, the capital city is well appointed, allowing a segment of the population to live very well indeed. And as is true in other French overseas territories, the cost of living is extremely high, adding to the discontent of the indigenous population. Although New Caledonia has been relatively stable in recent years, troubles may reignite as the independence referendum approaches.

The main problem with the continental scheme of world division is its mixture of physical geographical criteria (continents are defined as landmasses more or less separated from each other by waterways) with human geographical criteria (Europe is separated from Asia not by the physical landscape but by historical and cultural features). Intellectual coherence calls for one basis of division or the other. When human features are favored, the continental architecture vanishes altogether as North Africa joins the quasi-continent of the “Middle East,” while Latin America links southern North America with South America. Continents are thus essentially regions of physical geography, and should be defined accordingly.

But the standard physical definition of continents remains problematic, as the “more or less” formulation allows conceptual slippage. In much of the world, North and South America are viewed as a single continent, since they are clearly connected by the Panamanian isthmus. But by the same criterion, Eurasia and Africa would also have to be regarded as a single continent, Afroeurasia. And if one takes a long historical perspective, the Americas and Afroeurasia together form a single super-landmass. They are not separated by deep water, and they have been periodically joined together over the past few hundred thousand years; when the world goes into a glacial period, sea levels drop and the vast plains of Beringia emerge to link the two lands. When Beringia appears, temperate and arctic animals migrate between the continents. As a result, the fauna of temperate North America and Eurasia are remarkably similar. Even during non-glacial periods the circum-polar region forms a zone of inter-continental linkage, as is clearly visible on the Dymaxion projection map above.

A strict physical definition would thus hold continents to be landmasses enduringly separated from other landmasses by relatively deep waterways. If one employs this scheme of division, a very different map of the world emerges, one dominated by a mega-continent that we might call Amerafroeurasia, or simply “The World Continent.” This landmass is divided into the macro-continents of the Americas and Afroeurasia, which in turn are split into the “continentoids” of North America, South America, Eurasia, and Africa (the term “continentoid” indicates that these lands are not actually separated by water). A third order division of the world continent separates associated large islands and island groups, most of which are joined with the landmass during glacial periods.

Clearly separated from Amerafroeurasia are the meso-continents of Australia (including New Guinea) and Antarctica, which have not been connected to other lands for millions of years. As a result of such separation, Australia has a highly distinctive fauna. By the same token, Madagascar and New Zealand may be considered micro-continents. Focusing in still more closely, one may even distinguish nano-continents, such as New Caledonia. A nano-continent is distinguished from a mere oceanic island (such as Hawaii) by the fact that it is composed of continental crust that long ago hived off from a larger landmass. Alternatively, both New Caledonia and New Zealand can be regarded as fragments of the largely submerged meso-continent of Zealandia (see map above).

Basic geographical education in the United States remains, in a word, pathetic. As students are required to learn virtually nothing about the world, we should not be surprised that few young Americans have any idea where Iraq or Afghanistan are located. And the one locational lesson in global geography that young students are required to master, that of the “seven continents,” is, in a word, nonsense. The absurdity of the continental framework is readily apparent in a lesson plan found on the My Schoolhouse website, a prominent educational resource. The page begins by informing students that, “the seven continents are North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica.” But the map placed immediately below this assertion (see above) portrays Central America, the Middle East, and Greenland exactly as they do North America, Africa, and the other supposed continents. True irrationality comes with a question listed below the map: “What continent appears to be part of Asia?” But “Europe” and “Asia,” along with “Middle East,” appear on this map merely as labels attached to different areas of a single landmass. As such, students could just as easily deduce that “Asia appears to be part of Europe.”

Nonsense about the supposed continents extends well beyond elementary education. My favorite absurdity comes with the mountaineering quest to bag the “seven summits,” defined as the highest peaks on each of the world’s continents. The list includes some formidable peaks – but it also takes in Australia’s Mount Kosciuszko, a gentle rise that one could surmount on a bicycle, if only authorities would allow it. To be sure, Reinhold Messner proposed dropping Kosciuszko in favor of New Guinea’s Puncak Jaya, which is indeed a difficult climb. By any reasonable standard, Messner was absolutely correct: New Guinea is part of the same piece of continental crust as Australia (see map), and is thus by continental criteria as much part of Australia as Japan is part of Asia. But despite Messner’s fame – and demands of reason – Kosciuszko remains standard.

So what is the actual continental architecture of the world? That issue will be addressed in tomorrow’s post.

The main focus of insurgency in the Philippines has long been the Muslim southwest. But as discussed in last Friday’s post, the Maoist New People’s Army (NPA) remains active in remote areas throughout the archipelago. One of the NPA’s main zones of operation is the Cordillera of Northern Luzon, a rugged area divided into several provinces. Like Mindanao, the Cordillera long lay beyond the effective control of the Spanish colonial government. Until the 1880s, the culturally diverse peoples of the region (see map), collectively known as Igorots, retained tribal independence. They also kept their indigenous faith based on ancestor worship. Although Christianity spread widely in the 1900s, many Igorots remain proudly “Pagano” to this day.

The armed forces of the U.S. colonial government subdued even the most militant Igorot groups, such as the head-hunting Bontocs, relatively quickly during the first few years of the twentieth century. They did so through a combination of threats, reprisals, and rewards, with the crucial ingredient of treating indigenous culture with some respect. Surprising though it may seem, American administrators often favored tribal highlanders over Christian lowlanders, viewing the latter as having been corrupted by decadent Spanish culture and institutions while the highlanders remained hard-working, manly, and ready for American tutelage. Schools were established in many parts of the Cordillera, and to this day one can venture into some very remote districts and find elderly people fluent in English.

Tensions between the Cordilleran peoples and the Philippine government grew in the 1960s and intensified under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos (1972-1986). Dam-building, mining, and forestry projects in the highlands threatened ancestral land-rights, turning many Igorots against the government and inducing quite a few to join the New People’s Army. In the 1980s, a new military force emerged to complicate the struggle, the Cordilleran Peoples’ Liberation Army (CPLA). Founded by a former Catholic priest, Conrado Balweg, the CPLA based its cause on indigenous rights rather than the class struggle preached by the NPA cadres. It too engaged the Philippine state in armed conflict. In 1987, I interviewed Father Balweg (as he was still called by his followers), a process that involved multiple transfers between vehicles and a brief period under blindfold before meeting him under the watchful eyes of his armed guards. He assured me that he wanted only peace, but that peace was only possible if indigenous land rights could be guaranteed.

After the fall of the Marcos regime in 1986, the new Aquino government began negotiating with the Cordilleran Peoples’ Liberation Army. The deal that was eventually reached was similar to that made with the Moro National Liberation Front. A Cordilleran Autonomous Region was to be created, joining the several highland provinces. Once the initial agreement was made, the CPLA essentially ended its armed struggle, even through the agreed-upon autonomous region was never actually created. The left wing of the Cordilleran people’s movement rejected the proposal as too accommodating, the various ethnic groups of the mountains quarreled over its political arrangements, and as a result inadequate support was gathered in two plebiscites. The only structural change was the emergence of a non-autonomous Cordilleran Administrative Region (see map above). But as the aggressive land-taking policies of the Marcos administration were generally abandoned, local animosity toward the government declined in most areas.

As the CPLA made peace with the Philippine government, it increasingly found itself fighting against its erstwhile comrades in the NPA. It is widely believed that the NPA assassinated Conrado Balweg in 1999. After Balweg’s death, the Cordilleran Peoples’ Liberation Army underwent several splits. As Bulatlat News reported in 2002, the NPA hotly denied rumors that it had entered a truce with the CPLA, labeling it a terrorist group that had engaged in "a long series of crimes against the revolution and the people.” The CPLA increasingly allied itself with the government, yet remained independent. In 1999, it shocked the Philippine government by sending fully armed troops into Baguio City, the former American hill-station (and second-home base for the national elite), after cowing a contingent of the Philippine National Police. A thoroughly embarrassed national government tried to force the CPLA to fold its command structure into that of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, but to no avail.

War continues to be waged in the Cordillera. On February 7, 2010, the Philippine Star reported that fourteen soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines had been killed in the region as the government intensified its operations against “remnants of communist elements.” The NPA also continues to battle the still-independent CPLA. In a recent letter to the editor of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a spokesperson for the allied Cordillera Peoples’ Democratic Front accused the CPLA of being “in the same sinking boat as the infamous Ampatuan private army … equipped and coddled by the military and the Arroyo regime… [The] purported new and reformed CPLA… must be immediately disarmed, disbanded and punished…” One must wonder who the author thinks should disband this army. The same Philippine military that his side is fighting against?

Indigenous militias often make common cause with leftist insurgents, but their aims generally remain distinct. While Communist forces usually seek to take over states, indigenous forces typically want to separate from them. In a word, the two groups foresee fundamentally different political maps.

Last Friday’s post on the Maguindanao Massacre in the southern Philippines linked the event to a combination of Philippine electoral politics and privatized military forces. Deeper roots are found in centuries-old imperial conflicts and religious rivalries. Islam was spreading northward through the Philippines when the Spaniards arrived in the late 1500s. Although the Spanish colonial regime successfully introduced Christianity to the northern and central islands, Islam remained entrenched in the southwest. Despite Spanish claims to the entire archipelago, the Muslim sultanates of Mindanao and the Sulu islands resisted colonial power. Spain maintained strongholds, such as Zamboanga on the southwestern tip of Mindanao, but never effectively ruled most of the region. As can be seen on the map above, Islam and animism dominated the southern Philippines in 1890, with Christianity largely limited to the northern and eastern coastal zones of Mindanao.

When the United States gained control over the Philippines at the beginning of the 20^th century, it too had great difficulties subduing the south. But by 1913, Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago were effectively under American rule. This set the stage for the southward migration of Christian Filipinos. With Philippine independence in 1946, the migration stream intensified. As the second map above shows, the dominant language across most of Mindanao is now Cebuano, originally from the island of Cebu in the central archipelago. As Christians moved into formerly Muslim or animist areas, ethnic tensions heightened. Entrenched poverty in the Muslim-majority areas contributed to anti-government sentiments. By the late 1960s, the southwestern Philippines was again in open rebellion, now under the leadership of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).

Peace initiatives between the Philippine government and the MNLF began in the late 1970s. For years, both sides offered limited concessions, but a settlement remained elusive. In 1981, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) split from the MNLF, objecting to its compromising approach. Peace between the government and the MNLF finally came in 1986, with the establishment of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM; see map above). The more intransigent MILF rejected the deal as offering too little territory and inadequate autonomy. As can be seen on the map, key areas in the historically Islamic southwestern Philippines are excluded from the region, including the city of Cotabato, ARMM’s ostensible capital. But effective local autonomy is still strong enough that the central government has to work with armed local allies, thereby empowering such clans as the Ampatuans (see last Friday’s post).

Relations between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have showed some recent signs of improvement. Talks about having talks are now underway. As the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported on February 19, 2010, the MILF is willing to negotiate as long as any agreements made with the current administration remain binding on future Philippine governments. It also demands more extensive powers for the autonomous regional government, calling for the creation of a “sub-state within the Philippine state.” If this were to happen, the Philippines would become a federal country, which in turn would probably require an amendment to its constitution.

Even if a comprehensive deal can to be reached with the MILF, the insurgency in the southern Philippines will probably not end. The most violent and radical Islamist group in the region is Abu Sayyaf, an al-Qaeda-linked organization that shows no indication of wanting to make a deal. Although recent reports emphasize the military losses that it has recently suffered, Abu Sayyaf retains the capacity for violence. On February 27, 2010, its militants attacked the village of Tubigan on the island of Basilan, killing 11 people. As the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported, “The attack on Tubigan came barely nine hours after authorities rescued the two Chinese nationals that [the] group had abducted in November, along with a local. The local, Marquez Singson, had been beheaded.”

GeoCurrents is proud to present our eighth installment in the Geocurrentcasts series, an in depth illustrated lecture profiling the history and geography of current global events.

This week's episode takes us to Central Africa, providing a comprehensive look at the history, linguistic diversity, and geography of the region, using the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a focal point. This comprehensive lecture captures the terrors and tragedies of King Leopold, Rwanda and the Sudan; polarizing figures like Mobutu and Lumumba; the historical meaning of the Rumble in the Jungle; plus everything you've ever wanted to know about Chad.

Click here to watch or download this presentation.

One could argue that Hezbollah, for all its strength, is an illegitimate wielder of violence, making Lebanon a legitimate if beleaguered state. Elsewhere in the world, however, plenty of more ambiguous cases can be found. Some states allow the proliferation of private armies, granting paramilitary groups a form of legitimacy—and in so doing undermining their own. If a country takes the further step of relying on such autonomous purveyors of violence to uphold its own order over large stretches of its supposed territory, then it can no longer be classified as a fully modern state, at least by Weber’s definition. Instead, it should be regarded as something more akin to a feudal entity, one in which effective sovereignty is diffuse and parcelized, ceded by a theoretically sovereign power to largely independent, localized forces.

Such quasi-feudal states are more widespread than is commonly realized. Consider the Philippines, the world’s twelfth most populous country. By certain criteria, the Philippines is relatively stable; according to the Failed States Index, more than fifty other countries are at greater risk of systematic collapse. Yet private armies operating with impunity have long been a staple feature of Philippine political life. As MindaNews reported on February 5, 2010, fifty-two private militias operate on the island of Mindanao alone. The power and audacity of Philippine armed retinues came to global attention after the Maguindanao Massacre of November 2009. Fighters associated with the powerful Ampatuan clan attacked a convoy of a rival clan that was heading to register one of its members as a candidate for an up-coming gubernatorial election; fifty-one people were slaughtered, including as many as 32 journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists describes the incident as the largest single attack on news-reporters in world history.

The November massacre was so outrageous that the Philippine government had to react, arresting key members of the Ampatuan clan, conducting raids (one of which netted 330,000 rounds of M-16 ammunition), and declaring martial law in the region – in effect, denying the legitimacy of the private army that had perpetuated the bloodbath. But up to that point, the Ampatuans had been key allies of the government, and had in fact helped engineer the presidential election of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2004 by ensuring her virtually all of the vote in their home district. Elsewhere in the Philippines, private armies continue to operate with impunity, periodically serving state ends by battling Islamists insurgents in the south and the forces of the Maoist New Peoples’ Army through the rest of Philippine archipelago.

States are by definition territorial entities that are supposed to exercise control over the all areas within their internationally sanctified borders. In the Philippines, as in many other countries, such a condition remains more a dream than a reality. As the map above shows, most parts of the archipelago remain vulnerable to insurgent forces, which retain effective control over many remote areas. Philippine territoriality in the south is also complicated by the existence of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, a topic that will be addressed in next Monday’s posting.