Military Policing Again

Porfirio Lobo Sosa is standing firm; he wants the Honduran armed forces to have police powers; never mind that it takes us back to Honduras before 1986. That was the year the Honduran Congress voted to separate the Police and military.

After a several hour meeting with the top brass of the National Police, Lobo Sosa told the press:

"I convened a meeting with the heads of the police to explain that my determination [to proceed] with the participation of the institution of the armed forces is firm and that there is no reason for there to be trouble between either institution."

Lobo Sosa also called on civil society to support his security actions, and in particular mentioned the debate begun in Congress Monday. Congress proposes to interpret Article 274 of the Honduran constitution as giving the military some policing powers, including the ability to stop, search, and detain individuals.

Lobo Sosa stated that the military supported his actions, and that they had asked for a legal basis to act as police. He said:

"They have told me that it is not possible that the Armed Forces, being able to aid our people, cannot do so; we ask that we be given the legal right [to help]."

Lobo Sosa acknowledged that the military does not have the right kinds of training to carry out the role he envisages for them, and so has requested that the UN provide accelerated police training for the soldiers.

While El Heraldo wrote that the new law would enable up to 180 days of military policing via presidential decree, Alfredo Saavedra, a Liberal Party Congress person, said they were looking at a year and a half (545 days) life for the decree.

Lobo Sosa told La Tribuna that the militarization of policing would last as long as necessary to clean up the National Police.

Under Honduran law, emergency decrees that do not restrict constitutional guarantees can be assigned any desired duration, so these extended time frames would actually be legal.

In fact, the current draft of the law is not the limited grant of policing powers described in the government's statements to the press.

The current draft of the new law, in full, reads as follows:

Article 1: To interpret the second and last paragraphs of Article 274 of the Constitution of the Republic, in the sense that the Armed Forces may carry out specific police functions when there is declared a state of emergency in public security, through a decree from the executive branch by the President of the Republic and the Cabinet, as an exceptional case and in conformity with the corresponding legal regulations

To interpret the second and last paragraphs of article 274 of the Constitution of the Republic in the sense that, with the proposition of restoring public order and achieving social peace and respecting the Constitution: In exceptional circumstances the armed forces may carry out police functions for a limited period, in situations of emergency that affect people and property; may participate permanently in the fight against drug trafficking; also cooperate in the fighting of terrorism, arms trafficking, and organized crime; at the request of the Secretary of State for Security they may carry out limited policing functions if the Executive Branch issues the corresponding decree of emergency, establishing in it the duration of the decree and any other scope.

Article 2: The Executive Branch decree which declares a Public Security State of Emergency should guarantee:
1) the unrestricted respect of human rights
2) the constitutional guarantees
3) the dignity of the person; and
4) due process.

In acts of internal security which the Armed Forces carries out, they should be accompanied by a Prosecutor from the Public Prosecutor's office, or make known to one immediately the knowledge of these actions, as established by the Ley Procesal Penal; preferably the different police operations should be carried out in different geographic areas of the national territory, jointly or separately with the National Police, such that both institutions can achieve better results in their activities. While carrying out police functions, the armed forces must frame their actions within the terms and scope of the emergency decree, guaranteeing to their members the same rights (Article 125 of the Ley Organica de la Policia Nacional de Hondurs) as held by members of the National Police, and imposing the same responsibilities and obligations (Article 106 of the Ley Organica de la Policia Nacional); the coordination of operations in emergency situations is the job of the Constitutional president of the Republic and the Secretaries of State for Security and Defense, along with their respective commands.

Article 3: This present decree will enter into effect on the day of its publication in the Official Newspaper La Gaceta.

This draft of the law, still subject to modification by Congress, does not specify a limited set of policing powers for the military. By not specifying a subset of powers, it grants all policing powers to the military. They may carry out any function a National Police officer may under existing police regulations.

Yesterday the law, promulgated by Head of Congress Juan Orlando Hernandez, passed in its first debate session. So Congress will skip the second debate and go right to final approval, perhaps as early as today. La Tribuna reported today that the emergency decree has a duration of 18 months written in now, but Congressional Vice President Marvin Ponce said that may change depending on what the Executive branch wants.

Quite a sweeping change, for such a short legal text.

UPDATE Nov. 30, 2011 10:15 AM: The law was passed late yesterday on its final vote in Congress and will become law once its published.

Honduras has a Police Problem

And, contrary to English-language media-- including the usually more critical BBC-- it is not taking effective steps to solve it.

If you read the Washington Post, you will be told that 176 cops were arrested "for alleged connections to kidnappings, extortion plots and drug trafficking". Quoting the highest level Honduran source, President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, the Post said

the mass arrest is part of a nationwide crackdown on corrupt police.

A spokesman for the National police, Silvio Inestroza, went further, claiming these officers had "links with drug gangs".

Drug violence is the one narrative about Honduras that US media seem to understand, so it is no surprise that Honduran authorities repeat it, and while disappointing, not even surprising that the US media parrot it back.

But in this instance, that is not in fact what is going on. To understand what is really happening, you need to ask, "Why 176 officers, and not others? Why those 176 police officers?"

As CNN International correctly notes, the 176 are the complement assigned to one police outpost in Tegucigalpa. So, not quite so sweeping a "nationwide crackdown" of the Honduran police force-- which totals around 11,000 members.

CNN's lead paragraph falls into the trap, describing the action as part of a "a campaign to cleanse its national police."

Buried far down in their story is the fact that this station is where four police officers worked who are suspected in the murder of two university students, including the son of university rector Julieta Castellanos.

The Washington Post managed to blur that one-to-one correspondence entirely, writing only that

The detentions late Wednesday came three days after the president fired six high-ranking officers following the release by police of four policemen who allegedly killed the son of a university chancellor.

The "detentions" not only came three days after-- the detained were the colleagues who worked with the suspected killers, and who let them walk out.

Castellanos, of course, was a member of the official "Truth Commission" on which the US State Department placed much of its hopes for national reconciliation, despite Honduran skepticism. So the murder of her son is international news.

Castellanos herself used the opportunity to point out that her son's murder is part of a pattern of police complicity in violence that extends beyond the children of the socially- and politically- prominent.

This is a pattern that English-language media have not covered particularly well. And the present stories are simply additional examples of what goes wrong in the reporting process.

CNN International presents the story exactly as the Honduran authorities would like. It takes the specific, and quite limited, investigations of 176 officers at one post as evidence of a commitment to cleaning up the police force, calling it "the latest of a series of steps" taken for that purpose.

CNN described the removal of police command officers as if the impetus for this originated from within, saying "Days after the incident, the national police shook up its top ranks". But the removal of officers came from outside the police force, as a product of political calculation in the Lobo Sosa government.

CNN writes approvingly that the Honduran Congress

rewrote the country's policing laws, stripping the national police of its internal affairs department, and handing over such investigations to a new, independent force.

This claim advances the argument that there are just a few "rotten apples" in the Honduran police, and adding more, separate, police units will somehow solve what in fact is a problem rooted of abuse of power, in impunity.

If you read these stories, you would think the police killing of the two university students was an anomaly, a product of police involvement in drug trafficking.

But Honduran reports suggest the killing was an arbitrary and unconstrained abuse of power: having wounded one of the students, the officers decided not to bring them in for medical attention, which would have triggered an investigation of the circumstances of the original shooting.

It is up to Fox News Latino to give a more credible account, in a story covering the protest following the police bungling of the case. It opens with quotes from Julieta Castellanos:

"There has been a process of tampering with evidence, there has been a process of obstructing the investigation. The police have engaged in double-talk."

"they intimidate the prosecutors, the investigators and the medical examiners."

Unlike the other English media, this story goes on to report fully on the skepticism about government actions. On the changes in officers, they note

critics said the move amounted to no more than "rotations" of officers between posts.

Most astonishing are the final few paragraphs of this story, unparalleled in other US media:

Lobo, who was elected in November 2009 in a process marred by violence, media censorship and low turnout, has so far failed on his promise to improve public safety.

Few murders are ever solved and Honduran authorities routinely ascribe violent acts to "score-settling" within and among the country's youth gangs and criminal outfits.

At the same time, many of the killings since Zelaya's ouster appear to be politically motivated, as victims are often associated with the resistance movement that sprang up in the wake of the coup.

The deposed head of state returned to Honduras five months ago under a pact brokered by regional leaders, but violence against his supporters and other activists continues.

So what actually happened in the recent events? Should we see any of it as even a tiny ray of light, set against this sobering-- and entirely accurate-- account by Fox News Latino?

The Honduran National Police released the four officers under investigation for the murder of the two university students, who promptly failed to turn up for further investigation. The Lobo Sosa government shuffled appointments of officials with oversight authority for the police, and used the opportunity-- again-- to use the Armed Forces in civilian policing, in violation of Honduran constitutional separation of the missions of these forces.

When outrage continued, the remaining police officers from the post where those responsible for this one crime were assigned were ordered to report to a different post, to be individually investigated. Detained for investigation, not arrested, as was reported in the English-language media. But arrested sounds so much more effective, doesn't it?

La Prensa Latina reports comments by the pro-coup Human Rights commissioner Ramón Custodio, and by Andrés Pavón of the Comité Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, who has often been opposed to Custodio since the 2009 coup, that demonstrate how widespread Honduran distrust of the police forces actually is.

Custodio said that

"the agents of the police have license to rob, kill, extort, and we cannot do anything, because the high command practices impunity, cover-ups and other crimes."

Pavón, in turn, said that

"there are so many extra-judicial deaths and by their characteristics it is known that the Police participate everyday in those horrendous crimes".

From both sides of the spectrum, it is clear to Hondurans that the problem of the police is a problem of impunity, and that it is not limited to one bad apple.

Or even 176 bad apples in a single barrel.

Police Suspected of Murdering University Students

The Police in Barrio Granja are now the chief suspects in the death of two students at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras early Saturday morning. The students were Alexander Vargas Castellanos and Carlos Pineda Rodriguez. Vargas Castellanos was the son of the rector of the University, Julieta Castellanos.

Crime scene technicians descended on the Police post in the Barrio Granja of Comayaguela and impounded three of the post's patrol vehicles and began collecting the records of who was patrolling Saturday morning when the two students were killed execution style.

The two students were killed in the early hours of Saturday morning after having been intercepted coming home after a birthday party for a friend. They were taken from their car and driven in another vehicle south of Tegucigalpa, where they were both killed.

Their vehicle was found later that day with four bullet holes from a 5.7 mm "mata policia (cop killer)" pistol. One shot, fired from behind the student's car, passed through both the back seat and driver's seat of the car, probably forcing them to stop. Such guns are illegal in Honduras, but were part of the ATF's Fast and Furious project which gave guns to criminals in Mexico, and were also part of the Operation Castaway where the ATF is alleged to have provided weapons to Honduran gangs.

Operation Castaway, run out of the Tampa Bay ATF office, was shut down in 2010, with the arrest of Hugh Crumpler III, Ramon Lopez, and others, but had been allowed to ship more than 1000 weapons (AK-47, AR-15, Fabrique Nacional Herstal 5.7mm "mata policia" pistols, and glock semi-automatic pistols) to the gangs in Honduras, among other destinations. Many of the weapons were later used in crimes in Central and South America and Puerto Rico.

Security Minister Pompeyo Bonilla confirmed to the press that the the material evidence points to renegade police as the suspects in the death of the two students. Police Commander Jose Luis Muñoz Licona, however said he would prefer to confirm the police were involved once they've arrested someone.

Suspicious Occupations For Foreigners

Operation Xatruch II confirms the presence of foreigners in the Bajo Aguan

So screamed the headline in yesterday's La Tribuna.

Our gentle readers will remember the repeated claims (here, and here) of the presence of foreigners training and leading the peasants in an insurgency against the large landowners of the Bajo Aguan, always citing "military intelligence" as the source of this gem. Despite numerous previous attempts to locate these "foreigners" on repeated militarization of the zone, none were ever located.

The headline promises that now they have, but what it delivers is something much more tame.

"We have some Colombian citizens, two Panamanians and one Nicaraguan,"

said an unnamed spokesperson for the Dirección Nacional de Investigación Criminal to a radio program. All were in the country on 90 day tourist visas.

He continued:

"The activities they're engaged in are suspicious because some are wandering around selling coffee and fruit drinks in the zone, and others are buying gold from those that pan for it in the rivers."

La Tribuna tells us these are "screening activities (actividades pantalla)" according to the National Police: "they aren't occupations that generate income" an unnamed police spokesperson told them.

Really? Screening activities? Have the National Police been to a market or city street, say in the heart of Tegucigalpa, the capital, lately? There they will find many many people engaged in making and selling drinks to the general population. They do seem to be able to make some sort of living by doing this. Are they too suspected foreigners in the heart of Honduras? Have the police checked?

Its hard to imagine that buying gold from artisanal miners is not an activity that could generate a profit.

Now the really suspicious thing is that they were in Honduras and working, on a tourist visa, which is illegal, but that didn't seem to bother the police one bit.

Funny how all the sources in this article are anonymous despite calling in to the radio and speaking with reporters in some official capacity. It's almost like it's a PR campaign, to make the operation look good when in fact, its been completely ineffective in stopping the violence, or in locating the putative arms caches alleged to exist in the region.

These suspicious drink vendors and gold buyers remain under investigation.

60% reduction in crime?

Oscar Alvarez, the Security Minister of Honduras, claims to have reduced crime by 60% over previous levels. He "recalled that statistic" El Heraldo reported, when asked about cleaning up the police in Honduras.

Meanwhile, in the same edition, El Heraldo notes that the area around the capital city, Tegucigalpa, is a dumping ground for bodies, 12 bodies so far this month there alone.

(The source of the "statistic" Alvarez cited is unclear. The US State Department cites data from 2009, when Honduras was widely described as having the highest level of murder in the world. Since the actual numbers of murders in a variety of categories have risen, perhaps Alvarez's "statistic" reflects a dramatic decline in some other form of "crime".)

But never mind. Alvarez is busy clearing out corrupt police:

"There have been 196 police officers arrested this year,"

he told the reporter.

That's 1.7 percent of the police force arrested this year.

"You have to note the positive actions of the police,"

Alvarez continued. He promised that in September we'd notice the change.

Alvarez is happy to blame others for any remaining crime in Honduras. He again criticized the Public Prosecutor's office for being soft on crime.

As usual, though, his definition of what constitutes troubling crime and that of other commentators is somewhat distinct.

For example, Alvarez told the El Heraldo reporter

"When minor children take to the streets and take over schools and a prosecutor says that they are acting within their rights, I think that something is not right."

Yes indeed. If all those pesky citizens exercising their rights to protest were just arrested, then clearly, the number of bodies being dumped around Tegucigalpa would drop dramatically.

We need to underline that ever since Oscar Alvarez was installed as security minister, and as a direct consequence of the coup d'etat, policing-- the governmental function of providing safety to citizens in their everyday lives-- and military functions have been blurred.

The armed forces are deployed to the Bajo Aguan, with the rationalization that the appalling number of murders there-- most of which the security forces Alvarez directs insist are individual and unrelated acts of common crime-- are at the same time the reflection of shadowy forces (foreign guerrillas arming peasants? drug traffickers? drug trafficking armed peasants?) that constitute national security threats.

There is a reason the Honduran Constitution enshrined a division between the police and military. What happens when Oscar Alvarez combines the two, and defines citizens as enemies, is the kind of lack of accountability that reminds observers of the worst of the 1980s.

It is worth noting that Alvarez gave his interview on returning to Honduras after signing a new agreement with US Homeland Security Head Janet Napolitano to provide airline passenger information (the APIS system) to US Homeland Security for each flight originating in Honduras.

Police Deny Responsibility for Death

The Deputy Director of the National Police, René Maradiaga Panchamé, a former unit leader in Battalion 3-16, says the police are investigating the death of Ilsa Ivania Velásquez during the teacher's protest, but he's sure they, the Police, aren't responsible.

"Everything is in the process of being investigated. There's an investigation. There's video, the investigators will use all these situations [sic]."

But he told reporters the Police are not involved in her death:

"the investigations are what will produce the final determination of these facts."

Lets see, the investigation has only just started, but even before the investigation gets rolling, Panchamé can tell us the Police aren't responsible for her death.

Does that give anyone confidence that there's a real investigation into her death? or are the results of the investigation being foretold to block any chance the Police could be found responsible?

I guess he's just echoing the official line, dictated by the executive branch, which issued a statement on her death that also claims the National Police are not responsible.

I guess they haven't gotten used to actually investigating crime in Honduras. After all, as the US State Department notes,

Honduran law enforcement authorities' ability to prevent, respond to, and investigate criminal incidents and prosecute criminals remains limited, further strained by the necessity of policing the increased number of demonstrations since the June 28, 2009 coup.

Maybe the National Police should just stick to brutalizing demonstrators. At least they've demonstrated they know how to do that.

Koban: Japanese Community Policing

The Vice Minister of Security, Armando Calidonio, announced the formal addition of the Japanese model of community policing, called Koban, as part of the National Police training and continuing education. As part of the announcement, the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) turned over a manual on Koban, elaborated from the experiences of the military police of Sao Paulo implementation, La Tribuna reported. The JICA funded program is scheduled to run through the end of 2011.

So what is Koban? Literally it means "police box". The Honduran press is taking it slightly out of context as standing for the whole model of Japanese community policing, when its only one part of it. Japanese community policing consists of police boxes (koban) and residential police boxes (chuzaisho). The Japanese National Police published a good description of the system in English here, and its from this description that the rest of this article is sourced.

With koban, the idea is in urban areas to have a small number of police officers in every neighborhood, 24/7, working shifts that include standing watch at a small, neighborhood station, walking street patrols, and going door to door talking to people. The Japanese National Police hold that this is advantageous in preventing crime, a big concern in Honduras today.

Koban are urban police boxes, deployed at the neighborhood level, with from 1 to 10 police officers who work 8 hour shifts at the police box. Residential police boxes are deployed in rural areas where a single police officer lives with his family. These officers work a single shift, but are on-call to residents at all other times.

In Japan, the basic duties of a police officer posted to a koban include standing watch, which consists of either sitting in the police box or standing outside it, and field duties of going on patrol, which includes questioning people, and performing door to door visits with houses and businesses to inform the community. Typically an officer will do both kinds of duties on a single watch. These duties are interrupted by having to deal with accidents and crimes.

It's difficult to see how this community policing model can be applied in Honduras, since several factors the Japanese police identify as essential for its success aren't true in the Honduran case.

One such essential is that there already be good security conditions. Koban, according to the Japanese National Police, only work in areas that are already safe. They are particularly vulnerable to terror attacks and vandalism. This would seem to leave out large parts of Honduras, where narco-terrorism is already an admitted problem.

Another essential is that there need to be quality officers with a good relationship with community residents. Since the model involves police coming into direct contact with residents on a daily basis, it is the behavior of the local police that comes to tinge the perception of all police by the community. Officers posted to community policing come under direct supervision of their superiors less often and thus need quality training to work independently. Without the emphasis on the quality and honesty of the recruits, this would be a foucauldian recipe for social disaster, a panopticon placing everyone under surveillance.

This is where I think the system might have promise in application to Honduras. By improving the quality of police recruits, training them well, eliminating those who are corrupt, or cannot maintain good community relations, Honduras will have a police force that is more well respected both at home and abroad, one that can contribute to a greater community sense of security.

That's the real goal of Koban.

Strange Coincidences

On Saturday, the Special Anti-Kidnapping Unit (GEAS in Spanish, Grupo Especial AntiSecuestro) of the National Police announced they had rescued a kidnapped cousin of Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

Mario Filberto Moya Lobo was kidnapped October 16, 2010 near Catacamas, Olancho. According to El Heraldo, Moya Lobo was being held on a hacienda in the mountains of La Zarzaloza, Ocotillal, in the Municipio of Patuca, Olancho. After being freed, he was returned by the police to Catacamas.

Also involved in the operation were elements of the Colombian Special Anti-Kidnapping unit of the Army, the Gaula, who are in Honduras to train its National Police. The Gaula groups specialize in breaking up criminal groups. El Heraldo reported that they have helped free 11 Hondurans kidnapped so far. The National Police spokesperson went to great lengths to explain that their role was only advisory, that this was a domestic operation.

According to La Tribuna, no one was captured during the rescue, but the Anti-Kidnapping Police were left there to "comb the countryside" to find those responsible.

Thursday morning, six bodies (seven in some reports) turned up in one small aldea in Olancho.

All six bodies were found in Ocotillal, Municipio of Patuca, Olancho, where the operation that freed Moya Lobo was carried out.

Every press account agrees they were some of those involved in the kidnapping of Moya Lobo. CODEH, the non-governmental human rights organization headed by Andres Pavon, has indicated the National Police are responsible for the deaths of these individuals. The National Police deny responsibility, explicitly stating they detained no one, and report they've opened a special investigation.

Its not the first time the Special Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the National Police has been embroiled in controversy. On November 1 a member of the unit, stationed in La Ceiba, was captured while kidnapping a San Pedro Sula businessman in San Pedro Sula.

The same officer's police-issued gun had been found in a car belonging to kidnappers "a few years ago", but "nothing came of it."

To hear the National Police tell it, it was just a coincidence that the Anti-Kidnapping Unit was combing the area where the six or seven bodies turned up, all on a single hacienda in the aldea of Ocotillal, Patuca, Olancho.

A coincidence that strains credulity, don't you think?

Professionalizing the Honduran Police: Advice from Germany

An article in La Tribuna today reports that Cristian Luth, the Director for Central America of the the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, says that the Foundation will advise the National Police in Honduras "to guarantee the professional development of their employees":

"The Friedrich Naumann Foundation, at the request of [Director of the National Police] Jose Luis Muñoz Licona, will work with the National Police to first perform a structural analysis, and then an analysis over the work of this important institution in conjunction with two German Police colonels. The result of this analysis will serve as a guide to this institution, and the Honduran government, to guarantee the high professional level of the Honduran Police."

Then-President Carlos Roberto Reina of the Liberal Party reportedly used the Foundation in 1996 and 1997 to advise on the separation of the National Police force from the Armed Forces by coordinating a dialogue between civilian and military representatives on the need of a democracy for independent institutions.

Luth said, "this also was the theme of the last year when we supported President Roberto Micheletti."

What is the Naumann Foundation, and what expertise does it have in reorganizing police forces in Latin America?

It describes itself as "a foundation for liberal politics," based on the ideas of German protestant theologian Friedrich Naumann, who believed that a functioning democracy needs politically informed and educated citizens. The Naumann Foundation intends to promote civic education, political dialogues, and political counseling. It is affiliated with the German Free Democratic Party (FDP), a Liberal party that is a minor partner with the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, emphasizing neoliberal economic policies like privatization, deregulation, "reducing bureaucracy", and "reform of collective bargaining". In other words: Republicans.

The values the Friedrich Naumann Foundation espouses are interesting. One goal is that all citizens may freely live in an open society. It supports free markets, and access for all to education, labor, information, markets, and small government.

Curiously, the Foundation emphasizes that it is interested more in the equal application of rules to all rather than justice, because "just results do not exist."

The Friedrich Naumann Foundation has worked with the Liberal Party of Honduras (PLH in Spanish) for some time. Rosalinda Sabillón, the Foundation program director in Honduras bragged shortly before the coup that the Naumann Foundation had a "39 member caucus" in the Honduran Congress.

The Foundation offers seminars and training courses to Liberal Party members, and provides them with access to campaign advisors from the German FDP. President Zelaya had an FDP campaign advisor on his campaign, Peter Schroeder. Schroeder had worked as communications director for the FDP prior to forming his private company to manage political campaigns. The foundation also trained Mary Elizabeth Flores Flake, who Porfirio Lobo Sosa just appointed as ambassador to the UN, former candidate for president Elvin Santos, former Zelaya adviser Yani Rosenthal, Central Bank director under the de facto government Gabriela Nuñez, and the head of the de facto regime, Roberto Micheletti Bain, who in 2008 held meetings with FDP Vice President Werner Hoyer about intensifying the Foundation's activities in Honduras with an eye to the 2008 internal PLH elections.

Via its Central American director Cristian Luth, the Foundation promulgates the idea that Roberto Micheletti Bain "defended the constitution of Honduras against titanic forces", and that Manuel Zelaya was going to introduce "twenty-first century socialism" in Honduras. This was a position it took after Zelaya, formerly a protege, led Honduras in joining the ALBA alliance.

Today, the Naumann Foundation is promoting Elvin Santos as the best hope for re-uniting the Liberal Party, since he continues the ideas of Roberto Micheletti. The foundation regularly place their press releases in El Heraldo and La Tribuna as news stories. Their agenda for Honduras is clear, and adds to the evidence that last year's coup d'Etat, far from being entirely an internal struggle, was supported by global conservative economic, political, religious, and social forces.