By Bhaskar Roy*

The recent official visit (Dec. 11 – 13, 2015) of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to India and the 44-paragraph “Joint Statement on India and Japan Vision 2025” signed by Mr. Abe and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not only a watershed in India-Japan relations but also an affirmation of a new narrative that joins the Indian Ocean region with the Asia Pacific region at the hip.

Since the end of the cold war, the global powers that be, the western coalition, focussed on the development of the Asia Pacific region while excluding the Indian Ocean region. The Asia Pacific region was designated as the region of the 21st Century. There was rapid growth of the People’s Republic of China in view of its cheap labour and vast potential market and China was also promoted as a great wall against the Soviet Union. The miscalculation of this strategy is now unravelling. The preeminent position of the US in the region is now being challenged by China.

There was no dearth of efforts by some countries of this region and outside the region to keep India boxed in South Asia, and forming an array of countries in the Indian subcontinent to keep nibbling at India. Taking advantage of Pakistan’s visceral anti-Indianism, China not only provided Islamabad its military hardware backbone, but also made Pakistan a standalone nuclear weapons power. Pakistan’s first atomic bomb was tested in China’s Taklamakan nuclear weapons test site.

The US was very well aware of Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear programme, but decided to keep quiet. When China supplied Pakistan nuclear capable M-11 missile in 1991, the US had smoking gun evidence. But the President of the US refused to make a “determination”.

That India was in a nuclear neighbourhood was not considered by the powerful international players when India tested its nuclear weapons in May, 1998. India was then pilloried and put in the dog house. If Pakistan had not tested its own nuclear weapons the same month, India would have been in a worse situation. Even now, when Pakistan has officially admitted having deployed tactical nuclear weapons along its borders with India, there has hardly been a murmur among the nuclear weapons countries and their followers. It is well known that this deployment by Pakistan is to dissuade India from attacking terrorist targets in Pakistan in case of a major terrorist strike, like the Mumbai attack, which took place from Pakistan’s soil.

While some things remain the same, somethings are certainly changing. India is a country to reckon with, and geopolitical power distribution has been shifting. To put it briefly, there have been tectonic shifts, especially since 2012.

The Indian government’s endeavour is to accelerate the country’s development. Its growth rate is likely to be the highest this year. This joint statement issued with Mr. Abe envisions strengthening some of the weak areas, the major emphasis being on infrastructure. The Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train with Japanese assistance is an ambitious project. But it is a small and important platform for future modernization of the Indian railways. Development depends on transport and communications. True, China also bid for this but the Japanese won it fair and square. There was some heart burning in China as per reports in the Chinese official media, raising the possibility of India-Japan cooperation to corner China. They make no mention that the Chinese won the Indonesian high speed railway project beating the Japanese bid. China’s policy of grab-all goes against the policy of fair competition.

They have been progress in flagship projects like the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), reaffirmed the determination to expedite the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), the Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor (CBIC) among other projects, using ODA loans and other facility measures. There are other major projects on the anvil to help ‘make in India’ vision a real success. There are 1200 Japanese companies working in India, and the number is poised to increase.

India’s development agenda including ‘make in India’ need to be seen as the prime 21st century project. Of course, these were in existence from the time India became independent. With a weak India and a bipolar world, New Delhi followed a non-aligned position and executed an independent foreign policy. While these have not be discarded there has been some reengineering to suit the need global situation. Potential investors in India must understand that while Mr. Modi has not excluded any country, India is not up for strategic sale.

Mr. Modi has reached out to all, including China. Presence of Chinese companies in India is growing. Benefit of doubt has been given to Chinese information technology companies like Huawei Technologies and ZTE which have a questionable track record in other parts of the world. By this gesture ‘mutual trust’ has been emphasized by New Delhi. Reciprocation is naturally expected. And, countries which built excess industrial capacity chasing economic power, cannot expect a free way to unload this capacity in India at will.

India and Japan have arrived at a point of congruence of political, economic and strategic interests. The security and stability of the India-Pacific region has emerged as a high point because of the developments of the last few years. The South China Sea maritime lanes have been threatened, military skirmishes have taken place and islands are being created with military installations on them. Dislocation of shipping in this corridor would be economically disastrous for countries of the region, countries like Japan, South Korea and India among other countries. China claims the South China Sea in its entirety, based on highly questionable grounds. It has refused to go to the UN Conference on Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) to which it is a signatory, and even threatened the Philippines obliquely for having taken the issue to the UNCLOS.

China has been repeatedly assuring the international community that it will never obstruct international shipping in the South China Sea. On the other hand it has been pushing the US and the international community from 2008 to accept that the South China is its “core interest”. In China’s political, diplomatic and strategic lexicon “core interest” includes the Communist Party, Tibet and Xinjiang. It means, China is ready to use the military option to protect its core interests. This is a dangerous option since the South China Sea is claimed severally by five countries. This is gun powder keg and there is no visible guarantee that the situation will not change,

Policies change according to situation and history is dotted by such incidents. For example, Beijing had informed the world that the Ukranian aircraft carrier “Varyag” it acquired was for an entertainment platform. Now, the “Varyag” has been converted to ‘Liaoning’, China’s first aircraft carrier. Therefore, believing in Chinese semi-official word is landing oneself in jeopardy.

The India-Japan defence cooperation would benefit India and further strengthen bilateral strategic relationship. China would not be much concurred with tactical cooperation, though it would much rather see India remain militarily weak. After all, they feel responsible for their all-weather friend Pakistan. But they are highly apprehensive about strategic cooperation.

Japan agreeing to become a permanent member of the Malabar exercise in which the USA is a partner conjures a competitive picture in the Indo-Pacific region. The India-US-Japan Trilateral dialogue at the foreign minister level and appreciation by both prime ministers on the Japan-India Trilateral dialogue are seen in Beijing as the seeds of formation of a quadrangular entente cordiale to challenge China’s fast growing Chinese domination of Asia-Pacific region extending to the African coast.

China came out openly on these issues more clearly after Prime Minister Abe’s visit, when its ambassador to India Mr. Le Yucheng told a gathering in New Delhi “India should ensure that initiatives like the trilateral maritime arrangement or defence ties with other countries are conducive for peaceful and stable Asia-Pacific region. Giving this statement in New Delhi is a clear warning that India must desist from playing any role in the Asia-Pacific region, especially the South China Sea and the Sea of Japan. Ambassador Le reiterated China’s claim on the South China Sea and rejected any power questioning it.

China is equally frustrated with India’s “Act East” policy intended to build an overland connectivity with its East Asian neighbours with most of which it has historical friendly cultural connections. As India is growing in stature and its voice is being heard internationally, Beijing is feeling apprehensive that India may be nibbling into its immediate sphere of influence. These countries also welcome India. With Japan now willing to partner India’s Act East Policy, the move gains strength.

China must understand that India’s policy is not to prise the South East Asian Countries out of China’s relationship. None of these countries want to antagonise China, they remain highly invested in China, and it is not in India’s interest to provoke such an eventuality. India also values its own growing relationship with China. At the same time, the leadership in Beijing would be well advised to realise that their efforts to corral India in South Asia is a past effort. The future is cooperation.

Caution to India is unwarranted and unacceptable. China is known to use a hammer to kill a fly. And there is no fly here. They should not create a wasp here.

*The writer is a New Delhi based strategic analyst. He can be reached at e-mail grouchochart@yahoo.com

By Anakhanum Khidayatova

Saudi Arabia and Iran have been engaged in a Cold War via proxy, in its most recent manifestation, since the Arab Spring, in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and in other countries around the world through humanitarian aid and dawa (outreach), Theodore Karasik, the Middle East analyst and senior advisor to Risk Insurance Management in Dubai, told Trend Jan. 4.

“This Cold War entered a dangerous, highly confrontational phase in the past few days. The Kingdom, in mid December, prepared the steps for today, with Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announcing a Sunni Muslim Alliance. With the Saudi execution of the “terrorist extremist” Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who was the spiritual leader of Saudi Shiites in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province, the sectarian divide grew immediate into a deep chasm”- he said.

The expert also said that Saudi Arabia’s Sunni Muslim Alliance is now fully activated with the al-Nimr execution.

“The Kingdom is throwing down the gauntlet on Iran’s behavior and Riyadh seeks to expose the Islamic Republic’s perfidy in Arab lands. More importantly, Saudi Arabia, as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, is now seeing who will rush to Riyadh’s side under the mantra of Sunni Islam. Immediately, the GCC states– except Oman– came to the Kingdom’s side, as did Sudan and several other countries. The coming days, and perhaps weeks, will see whether all 30 plus members of the Sunni Military Alliance will declare a so-called bayat to the Saudi Kingdom as the face off continues with Iran” – he said.

The expert also said that Saudi Arabia is angry with Iran; so angry that Riyadh seeks to not only tear down the Islamic Republic’s ability to re-emerge on the global economic arena with the lifting of sanctions but also wants to guarantee that the February 2016 parliamentary elections swing 100 percent to the principalists and the IRGC. “From Riyadh’s thinking, Iran’s true colors need to be shown to the world. This aggressive Saudi policy is likely to affect the region for some time to come”- he said.

“Thus, in the Middle East, the Saudi action, in one stunning move, reset the geopolitical chessboard on a host of negotiations, especially the future of Syria, as well as set the possibility for higher oil prices if the Cold War becomes a Hot War. A Hot War, whether asymmetric or through enhanced proxy actions up to and including bombing campaigns or targeted assassinations, will boost the price of oil in order to help Saudi Arabia’s partners earn necessary income into their state coffers”- he said.

“But there is also a serious loss. Gone is any hope for coordination on fighting the Islamic State not only in the Levant but in other arenas. Iran is a necessary part of that fight but for Gulf Arabs, Tehran is seen as a bigger threat. That fact may be a strategic and tactical error that will give Daesh a free pass until the group is dealt with in an accurate kinetic and counter-narrative approach. Russia and Iran were on the right path while Saudi Arabia and others were supporting extremists and terrorists who bastardized their own Wahhabist creed. Thus, Saudi’s aggressive stance against Iran masks the radical disturbances within the Sunni ummah itself” – Karasik said.

Expert also said that Its clear that Russia may benefit the most from the sectarian eruption. The Kremlin is already offering to negotiate between the two sides. That approach by Moscow is all well and good.

“But there is a bigger question here: the future of the Saudi Kingdom. Unlike Iran, whose cohesion is, for the most part guaranteed, the Al-Saud’s Arabia is under great political and economic stress up to including internal dissent at various levels of Saudi society in various corners of the country (the south, the Hijaz, the Nejd, and the Eastern Province) up to intra-princely disputes that may now break into the open. Russia sees that Saudi Arabia is in trouble, and President Putin is known to have threaten the Kingdom during various high-level meetings with Saudi rulers.

Overall, patience will be a key here for Moscow, and given the Kremlin propensity to side more with Shiites because of their patient virtues, a Saudi over-extension of its Sunni alliance may backfire in a black hole that forces the Al-Saud from power and sees the Kingdom evaporate”- he said.

Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric led to violent protests at the Saudi embassy in Tehran, which led to a breakdown of relations between the two countries.

Saudi Arabia previously cut air traffic with Iran, and said that it intends to cut all commercial ties.

By Fadi Elhusseini*

Since the outbreak of the Syrian uprising, Russia has limited itself to its traditional role of providing arms as well as military and logistical experts to its Arab allies. As Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime weakened, the Russians intensified their military support dramatically. Recently, the Russian ‘Caesar’ opted to expand his role in Syria to include direct intervention against enemies of the regime. The move towards direct intervention constitutes a revolution in Russia’s role in the Middle East and portends a deeper shift in the region.

Russia has claimed that its intervention in Syria was intended to destroy IS after the US-led campaign proved to be an “abject failure”, according to an unnamed US military official speaking to CBS News. Well acquainted with terrorism, one might argue that Moscow is undertaking a pre-emptive war against Islamic extremist groups. But some have linked the intervention to the Ukrainian crisis as well as the desire for increased leverage in the Middle East and more power at the negotiating table.

Thus Russia’s stated intentions have been met with skepticism about the real motive behind the decision to intervene directly. One widespread opinion is that Russia wants to secure a military presence on warm- waters – the Mediterranean Sea. While this sounds plausible, Russia has been enjoying this presence for some time already. Warm-water ports are of great geopolitical and economic interest and they are the ports where the water does not freeze in wintertime. Those ports have long played an important role in Russian foreign policy. The Russian Empire fought a series of wars with the Ottoman Empire in a quest to establish a warm-water port. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I didn’t give Russia any further control. The Soviet Union enjoyed access to naval bases throughout the Mediterranean, yet its collapse brought an end to that access, except for the base in Tartus in Syria. Since 1971, Russian naval has had presence in Tartus and with Russia’s recent intervention, this port enjoyed unprecedented fame.

So what really lies behind the dramatic shift in Russian foreign policy?

In fact, Russia’s recent direct intervention in Syria gave a goodbye kiss to the conventional regional order that ruled the Middle East for ages. Traditionally and even at the peak of the Cold War, Russia’s (either the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation) role was limited to sending arms, military and logistical experts to its Arab allies. The current intervention constituted a revolution in Russia’s role and marked an extraordinary heavy military intervention.

The recent Russian intervention coincided with a number of important events. First is the Iranian nuclear deal which gives Iran a more prominent regional role, especially when considering the economic potentials this deal left Iran with. Second is the US gradual withdrawal from the region, which was symbolized in the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq, handing over Iraq’s destiny to the Iranians, cooling off efforts in the Palestinian- Israeli conflict that led to the emergence of other initiatives (e.g. the French, the New Zealand), and finally its decision to withdraw the defensive shield from Turkey (for technical reasons according to the US announcement). Giving up its historical allies in Egypt (Mubarak) and Tunisia (Ben Ali), in addition to leaving the Saudis and the Gulf to fight Iran’s influence in Yemen alone are other signs of US declining role in the Middle East.

A few years ago, the president of the US Council on Foreign Relations, Richard N. Haass, wrote that the era of the United States’ domination in the Middle East was coming to an end and that the region’s future would be characterized by reduced US influence. Many observers do not believe the US will voluntarily abandon its role in the region, but the actions of other nations, combined with the Russians’ plans in Syria, clearly point in this direction.

Under the slogan «fight against terrorism», China sent aircraft carrier “Liaoning-CV-16” to Tartus and sources revealed that Beijing is heading to reinforce its forces with “J-15 Flying Shark” jets and “Z-18F & Z-18J” helicopters equipped with anti-submarine, in coordination with Tehran and Baghdad. France and Britain followed suit; the latter announced that it would mobilize reinforcements and military capabilities to the Mediterranean and Paris said it would send “Charles de Gaulle” aircraft carrier to participate in operations against ISIS in addition to six Rafale Jets in the United Arab Emirates and six Mirage aircraft in Jordan.

For its part, the US, whose aircraft carriers have been absent from the region since 2007, ordered a mere 50 special operations troops to Syria in order to help coordinate ‘local’ ground forces in the north of the country. US President Barack Obama condemned Russia’s direct intervention strategy, saying it was “doomed to fail”. And yet in a press conference in August 2014, he acknowledged that the United States “does not have a strategy” in Syria.

Media talks aside, Washington cannot have been taken by surprise when the Russians commenced their operations in Syria. Assuming that the Obama- Putin summit, which came hours before the Russian earliest move in Syria, did not tackle Russia’s intervention plans, there were many clues that prove US prior knowledge of Moscow’s decision.

In July 2015 Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani visited Moscow to coordinate the Russian military intervention and thus forging the new Iranian-Russian alliance in Syria. According to a Reuters report, Soleimani’s visit was preceded by high-level Russian-Iranian contact and meetings to coordinate military strategies. Two months later, Iraq, Russia, Iran and Syria agreed to set up an intelligence-sharing committee in Baghdad in order to harmonize efforts in fighting ISIS.

A senior US official confirmed on 18 September that more than 20 Condor transport plane flights had delivered tanks, weapons, other equipment, and marines to Russia’s new military hub near Latakia in western Syria, followed by 16 Russian Su-27 fighter aircraft, along with 12 close support aircraft, four large Hip troop-transport helicopters and four Hind helicopter gunships. Hence, it is clear that the US administration was at least aware of the Russian massive preparations and yet opted to keep its presence to the minimum. In this vein, it can be strategically said that this decision goes in line with the aforementioned US grand plan in the region and marks a calculated strategic gain when securing a small share in a Russian traditional sphere of influence: Syria.

The stated Russian motivation behind this involvement does not match for the facts on the ground. In other words, fighting ISIS, who does not have fighter jets or missile defense systems, does commensurate neither with the sophisticated air defenses that the Russians installed at the “Humaimam” base (such as SA15 and SA22 surface-to-air missiles) nor the Russian announcements that 40 naval “combat exercises” were due to start in the eastern Mediterranean, including rocket and artillery fire at sea and airborne targets. For that reason, some other experts found in Russia’s intervention as part of its new maritime strategy, that was published on 26 July 2015. The new maritime doctrine of the Russian Federation to 2020 is a comprehensive state policy for governing all of Russia’s maritime assets, military fleets, the civilian fleet, merchant marine, and naval infrastructure.

Russia therefore might be looking to kill as many birds as possible with one stone:

1- Moscow will first and foremost dictate its political will on any future solution in Syria and the inclusion of Iran and Russia in Vienna talks is just a case in point. Better, Secretary of State John Kerry now concedes that the longtime Russia’s ally Bashar Al-Assad might indeed be allowed to retain power for a period, Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel said that the West will have to engage with Assad if it is to have any chance of resolving the Syrian civil war and the British indicated a similar shift in policy.

2- Second, Russia has now guaranteed a bigger role in the formation of a new Syrian government, even if Assad is pushed out of power and any nascent regime would seriously consider Russia’s role and presence in the country; including military, investment and commercial interests (e.g. in 2011 Russia invested $19 billion in Syria).

3- Third, Russia is underway to expand its military presence; not only in Syria, but also in the region and the announced intelligence sharing agreement demonstrates this goal. For example, Russia offered a large array of military hardware to Iraq (such as military helicopters in 2013 and Su25s fighter aircraft) that the US has refused to sell.

4- Fourth, although it looks like Russia and Iran have a common goal in Syria, Russia’s blatant involvement ceased Iran’s monopoly over the Syrian file.

5- Fifth, Russia is making pre-emptive war against Islamic extremist groups from which Russia has long suffered. Russia can’t tolerate the return of Chechens or other fighters who joined ISIS and is concerned that the West may use those radicals against Russia in a similar scenario to the Afghani case.

6- Sixth, the Russian intervention came amidst confirmed military sources that the longtime Russian ally – the Syrian regime – is about to fall when it controlled only 18 percent of the country and its army exhausted 93 percent of the stock.

7- Seventh, the mounting leverage of Russia in the region will give Russia a bigger seat at the Ukrainian negotiations table.

8- Finally, Russia aims at the revival of its military industries market as it was able to promote itself as an international player that can be relied upon to contain Iran, to prevent the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons, to contribute actively in the fight against terrorism, and to sell technologies for peaceful energy in the Middle East. For example, the Russian Defense Ministry is working currently on major deals with Gulf Arab states in order to develop the Marine Corps, and air defense systems, techniques of unmanned aircrafts, armored vehicles and signal systems. Russia is now building two nuclear facilities in southern Iran and in February Russia agreed to build nuclear reactors in Egypt. Moscow is negotiating as well with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Jordan for deals to develop nuclear power, the largest deal was on 19 June 2015 when Moscow agreed to establish 16 nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia.

In short, Russia must now be taken seriously as a major player on the Middle East scene. The Russian recent intervention is Syria was not the first move in that direction and regional powers have reached the same conclusion even before. That said, it was not outlandish to see that Middle Eastern leaders visiting Moscow in no time.

*Fadi F. Elhusseini is a Palestinian diplomat and an associate research fellow (ESRC) at the Institute for Middle East Studies-Canada and a doctoral candidate at the University of Sunderland in Britain. His articles have appeared in scores of newspapers, magazines and websites.

A previous version of this article appeared originally at: http://www.eastonline.eu/en/eastwest-63/world-outlook-a-new-regional-order-arises.

By Tamari Ramishvili*

More than a million migrants and refugees escaped to Europe in 2015, creating divisions between the European Union member states over how to best deal with the crisis. The European Commission designed a quota system to distribute refugees among the member states, using criteria such as the size of the population, GDP, unemployment rates, and the number of asylum applications received in the past. The mandatory quota proposal has strained relations between western, eastern and central European member states because some countries have faced a disproportionate burden. While western European states such as Germany have accepted a large number of refugees, eastern European states are reluctant to share the burden.

The mandatory quota strategy continues to be met with much resistance in the Baltics. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania remain among the most vocal opponents of quotas for accepting refugees.

Estonia has agreed to accept up to 550 asylum seekers over the next two years as part of the EU effort. Estonian citizens have expressed concern over accepting a large number of refugees, given Estonia’s considerably smaller population of 1.3 million people, approximately 30 percent of whom are Russian speaking. Estonia witnessed several anti-immigrant rallies over the summer, followed by a 24-hour rally in October outside of the Riigikogu, Estonia’s parliament. The rally, organized by a number of Estonia’s right-wing parties, including the European National Front, the Conservative People’s Party, and the People’s Party of Unity, called for stricter EU border controls and a national referendum on whether Estonia should accept the EU quota of refugees. The Estonian government proposed that in light of the country’s relatively small population, instead of accepting the required number of refugees the EC suggested, they would accept people on a voluntary basis.

The mandatory quota proposal also sparked demonstrations in Latvia’s capital, Riga, where the divided communities of Latvians and ethnic Russians united in opposition to allowing more refugees to enter the country. Latvian political parties are divided on the issue. The nationalist-conservative National Alliance and the centrist Union of Greens and Farmers do not support the decision to admit additional refugees. On the other hand, the leading party of the coalition, the center-right Unity, warned that refusing to admit refugees could have negative consequences for Latvia’s economy and security in the future. The Latvian government has adopted a tentative action plan to admit up to 776 refugees, which would place them in a center until their status is determined. Only afterward would they be permitted to integrate into Latvian society. At the European Council meeting in Brussels on October 16, former Latvian Prime Minister Straujuma announced that Latvia supports strengthening the EU’s external border and the development of a repatriation policy for persons who are not judged to be refugees.

Lithuania has agreed to accept 1,105 refugees from the Middle East and Africa over the next two years. Lithuanian officials are open to discussing the acceptance of more refugees, but only on a voluntary basis. President Grybauskaite first spoke out against Brussels’ proposal for Lithuania to take in 780 people, calling the plan “unjust” and an “inappropriate way of solving the problem of refugees.” Initially, she announced that in taking the country’s population and GDP into consideration, Lithuania would be able to accept up to 250 people. In late November, the Lithuanian parliament passed legislation that defines regulations of refugee resettlement in the country. According to the regulation, the Government will make decisions on resettling refugees in Lithuania, and the Migration Department will be tasked with processing individual applications.

Not all political leaders in the Baltics are opposed to taking more refugees. Estonia’s President Toomas Ilves criticized the widespread anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe and praised German chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy. Nonetheless, Germany is accepting record numbers of migrants, while its European neighbors are fighting to keep them out. If the Baltic countries don’t do their fair share to help Germany address its refugee challenges, they run the risk that Germans and others in Europe will conclude that they are ‘free riders’—happy to enjoy the benefits of a united Europe, but unwilling to pay their share of the costs.

About the author:
*Tamari Ramishvili is a Research Associate with the Project on Democratic Transitions. She is currently working towards her MA in Public Policy at American University, with a concentration in International Development. She holds a dual BA from Rutgers University in Philosophy and Political Science, with a minor in National Security, CIA, and Counterintelligence. Ms. Ramishvili is a regular contributor to FPRI’s Baltic Bulletin and her areas of research focus include Russia, Black Sea and the Baltic regions.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

If they successfully invade Lake Erie, Asian carp could eventually account for about a third of the total weight of fish in the lake and could cause declines in most fish species — including prized sport and commercial fish such as walleye, according to a new computer modeling study.

However, most of the expected declines in Lake Erie will not be as extreme as some experts have predicted, according to the food-web study by the University of Notre Dame’s David Lodge and colleagues from other American and Canadian research institutions. A few fish species, including smallmouth bass, would likely increase.

The study is the first to use a food-web model to examine the likely impacts of bighead and silver carp in Lake Erie. These plankton-eating Asian carp are established in watersheds close to the Great Lakes, but not in the lakes themselves.

The invasive carp would likely affect Lake Erie’s food web in two main ways: They would likely compete with native fish by eating their food, and juvenile Asian carp would likely become food for fish-eating fish.

According to the study, walleye, rainbow trout, gizzard shad and emerald shiners could all decline, with declines in emerald shiner of up to 37 percent. Smallmouth bass stood to gain the most, with increases of up to 16 percent.

A paper summarizing the findings was published online in the journal Transactions of the American Fisheries Society on Dec. 30.

The model results suggest that Asian carp could eventually account for up to 34 percent of the total fish weight in the lake, said Hongyan Zhang, an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan’s Cooperative Institute for Limnology and Ecosystems Research, School of Natural Resources and Environment and co-author.

“Fortunately, the percentage would not be as high as it is today in the Illinois River, where Asian carp have caused large changes in the ecosystem and have affected human use of the river,” she said.

Previous predictions of Asian carp’s influences in the Great Lakes have ranged widely. Some experts say Asian carp could decimate Great Lakes fisheries and food webs, while others suggest the effects would likely be minor because much of the Great Lakes is not suitable habitat for Asian carp.

Results of the new study fall somewhere between the two extremes.

“This study goes beyond previous efforts in two significant ways. It focuses on the food webs and — where model input data were not available — it includes uncertainty estimates from experts,” said co-author Ed Rutherford, a fisheries biologist at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) in Ann Arbor, a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration facility.

To include uncertainty in model predictions, team members interviewed 11 leading experts on Asian carp biology and Great Lakes ecology and fisheries, then incorporated the experts’ estimates into the model. The experts were also asked to indicate the level of uncertainty associated with each statement they provided.

“We don’t know how these two Asian carp species are going to do in Lake Erie, so we have to incorporate that uncertainty into our model projections,” said co-author Doran Mason, a research ecologist at GLERL. “It’s like using computer models to predict a hurricane’s path and intensity and including the margin of error in the forecast.”

“Model results suggest the most likely intensity is severe — who wants a third of the fish biomass in Lake Erie to be Asian carp? — but that possible outcomes include both stronger and weaker impacts. It is also important to remember that our research provides scenarios for impact only on the food web and only in Lake Erie itself. Impacts like jumping fish hitting people are not included, nor are any impacts in tributaries of Lake Erie that might suffer impacts like those in the Illinois River,” said Lodge, founder and director of the University of Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative (ND-ECI), which tackles the interrelated problems of invasive species, land use and climate change, focusing on their synergistic impacts on water resources.

The team has shared its Lake Erie results with Great Lakes resource managers to help inform decisions related to Asian carp. Of the Great Lakes, Erie may be most vulnerable to Asian carp invasion due to its proximity to waters where Asian carp exist, the presence of adequate food and the availability of suitable spawning habitat.

The same research team is now working on modeling studies to predict the influence of Asian carp in lakes Michigan, Huron and Ontario, as well as a study of the regional economic impacts associated with Asian carp in Lake Erie.

Chinese Uighurs are adding a new dimension to the threat of terrorism in Southeast Asia. Battle-hardened, ideologically fortified and networking with Islamic State, the Uighur militants pose a new challenge to the region that can also complicate ties with China.

By Bilveer Singh*

A few days prior to Christmas in December 2015, Densus 88, Indonesia’s National Police counter-terrorism squad, arrested 11 militants who were planning to carry out bombing operations in Indonesia. Among them was an Uighur, arrested in Bekasi, in the outskirts of Jakarta. The Uighur was being trained to be a suicide bomber. Two of his compatriots escaped.

The trio is believed to have entered Indonesia in October through Batam, an Indonesian island south of Singapore, after transiting through Thailand and Malaysia. Earlier, another seven Uighurs entered Indonesia illegally with three of them believed to have joined Santoso’s militant group in Poso. Indonesian security officials are investigating the arrested Uighur’s link with the August 2015 Bangkok bombing by Uighurs that killed 27 people and injured 120. The arrest of the Uighur in Jakarta is part of a new development in the regional terrorist landscape with non-Southeast Asians, mainly through links with Islamic State, posing a serious security threat to the region.

The Uighur dynamics

Historically, Uighurs, originating from China’s Xinjiang province, have never factored in the Southeast Asian security landscape or in China-Southeast Asian relations. This is now changing. Turkish speaking, Uighurs are Sunni or Sufi Muslims, sharing kinship ties with people in Central Asia and Turkey. Since 1949, the Uighurs have accused the Chinese government of repression with the aim of marginalising the Uighurs in their homeland, through transmigration of Han Chinese who now constitute 40 percent of the population in Xinjiang. The Chinese government is accused of suppressing the Uighurs’ language, religion, culture, garb and even cuisines.

The Chinese government has accused the Uighurs of the triple sins of separatism, extremism and terrorism, especially since the 1990s. The Chinese government have accused the Uighurs of wanting to establish the Islamic state of East Turkestan. The East Turkistan Islamic Movement has been accused of undertaking a ‘jihad’ in China, by colluding with international terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda in the past and now, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or IS.

While in the past, the Uighurs have sought refuge in Malaysia and to some extent Thailand, increasingly, due to networking with ISIS Indonesia is becoming a destination of choice, mainly to partake in jihadi activities. The head of Indonesia’s counter-terrorism agency, Saud Usman, identified two key routes used by Uighurs to enter Indonesia. The first is from South China to Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia (Riau, Java and then Sulawesi). The second is from China to Hongkong, Manila, Davao and Sulawesi.

Uighurs as a security threat in Southeast Asia

There are five dimensions of security threats from the Uighurs to Southeast Asia today.

1. Intensification of Chinese Government clashes with ethnic Uighurs:

Ethnically and religiously, the Uighurs are different from the majority Han Chinese and there have been rising discord between them. Xinjiang’s economic prosperity has led to an influx of Han Chinese who also command the key political, military, police and economic jobs in the region. The Uighurs believe they are discriminated against, leading to intense conflict in non-economic areas including China’s attempt to subdue Uighurs’ social and religious practices, including banning of fasting during Ramadhan.

China has launched large-scale crackdowns on what is dubbed as Uighur separatism and terrorism, such as in 2009 in Urumqi, the regional capital where some 200 Uighurs are believed to have been killed. Since then, the Uighurs have retaliated with knife attacks in Xinjiang and elsewhere, including Kunming and Beijing. Besides souring ties between China and Muslim majority states, many Uighurs have also headed for Malaysia and Indonesia as asylum destinations.

2. Intensification of Uighur ties and support for Islamic State:

Many Uighurs, reportedly over 1000 fighters, are believed to be in Syria and Iraq. While some are fighting with the pro-Al Qaeda Jabhat al-Nusra, most are with IS. Many of the Uighurs are supported and working closely with the Turkistan Islamic Party, which supports IS. Like the Southeast Asian jihadists organised under Katibah Nusantara, the Uighurs have also been involved in combat operations in Syria. The Uighur-IS nexus has led to radicalisation of the former, adopting extreme Salafist ideology, bent on takfirism and the establishment of the kilafah in support of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. This has meant that the threat of IS in Southeast Asia is conflated with the Uighurs.

3. Rising conflict with Southeast Asia over Uighur repatriation:

The third aspect of the Uighur-related issue is Beijing’s demand for Uighur refugees in the region to be repatriated. As China does not accept the non-refoulement aspect of the International Refugee Convention, many Southeast Asian governments have been pressured to accede to China’s demands. In 2009, Cambodia repatriated 20 Uighurs. In July 2015, Thailand repatriated 109 Uighurs. Malaysia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam have also done likewise. While China is able to use its soft power to exact compliance, it is also increasingly creating tensions as the repatriated Uighurs are believed to be severely punished for leaving the ‘motherland’.

4. Increasing Uighur support for Southeast Asian jihadi groups:

A new aspect of the Uighur threat is the willingness of the former to support and join forces with jihadi groups in Southeast Asia. This is primarily the result of the foreign fighters’ network that has been established in Syria and Iraq under the auspices of IS. One such case is the support the Uighurs have provided Abu Wardah @ Santoso, leader of the Mujahidin Indonesia Timur (MIT). Santoso has publicly agreed to accept 100 Uighurs as part of the MIT.

5. Direct involvement of Uighurs in attacks in Southeast Asia:

Uighur-related violence has also broken out in Southeast Asia, for instance the bombing of the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok in August 2015 that killed 27 tourists and wounded 120. Indonesian police has also charged four Uighurs for terrorism-related crimes.

Clearly, the rise of IS is changing the nature of the terrorism threat in Southeast Asia. While many more Southeast Asians have become fighters and supporters of IS compared to Al Qaeda in the past, the direct involvement of Chinese Uighurs in Southeast Asian terrorism adds an external dimension to the existing home-grown terrorist threat. It could also complicate ties with a rising China which may want to play a bigger counter-terrorism role in the region.

*Bilveer Singh is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Drug shortages affecting emergency care have skyrocketed in the United States in recent years, according to a new study that notes while the prevalence of such shortages fell from 2002 to 2007, the number of shortages sharply increased by 373% (from 26 to 123) from 2008 to 2014.

These medications are approved, but for various reasons manufacturers cannot meet demands or have stopped making the drugs.

“Many of those medications are for life-threatening conditions, and for some drugs no substitute is available,” said Dr. Jess Pines, senior author of the Academic Emergency Medicine study. “This means that in some cases, emergency department physicians may not have the medications they need to help people who are in serious need of them.”

Infectious Diseases Bring Millions of Elderly to Emergency Departments Each Year

In related news, investigators estimate that during 2012, there were more than 3.1 million emergency department visits for infectious diseases among elderly US adults.

This accounted for 13.5% of all emergency department visits of elderly adults, which was higher than visits for heart attacks and congestive heart failure combined. The rate of infectious disease–related emergency department visits was 7,231 per 100,000 elderly adults. The most common diagnoses were lower respiratory infections, urinary tract infections, and septicemia.

Of all infectious disease–related emergency department visits, 57.2% resulted in hospitalization. Overall, 4.0% of patients died during their emergency department visit or hospitalization.

“With the rapid growth of the elderly population in the U.S., infectious diseases continue to be an important social problem. Our findings call for strategies to reduce infectious disease–related morbidity and healthcare utilization as a national priority for research, health policy, and community action,” said Dr. Tadahiro Goto, lead author of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society study.

Survivors of the Holocaust are fewer and fewer in number. But even when they have departed or are too frail to provide a warning from history by talking in person about their experiences of Nazi persecution and death camps, they will be able to survive indefinitely in virtual form, providing testimony and responding to questions from future generations. This is thanks to an important technological development in which the University of Huddersfield’s Professor Minhua Ma has played a key role.

The project is named Interact and has resulted in the creation of mixed reality virtual Holocaust survivors. Projected in 3D, they will give their personal testimony and then be capable of realistically interacting with the audience by responding to a huge variety of questions, using technology named ECA (Embodied Conversational Agent).

It is all made possible by conducting 3D HD stereoscopic video recording sessions with survivors, including their responses to hundreds of the questions deemed most likely to be asked. A computer can instantly detect and analyse the spoken question, so that the virtual survivor provides the appropriate response. The technology known as “mixed reality” ensures high levels of realism.

Interact will become an important feature of the National Holocaust Centre and Museum in Nottinghamshire. Its partners in developing the system were the design consultancy Bright White, based in York, plus Professor Ma – a world-leading academic in the increasingly important and varied field of serious games – who provided research expertise in natural language processing and human computer interaction, which enables computers to “talk” to humans.

“The purpose is to provide audiences with the rich experience of a human interaction,” said Professor Ma. “And it means that in the future, when all the survivors have passed away, we can keep this experience and help future generations better understand the history.”

There are thought to 800 Holocaust survivors still living in the UK. Most of those with actual memories of the Nazis and their attempted extermination of the Jews are in their 90s. Although many are still able to give personal testimony – such as an annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture at the University of Huddersfield – it is regarded as increasingly urgent to ensure that memories are retained for posterity. Interact will do this in the most vivid way possible.

A broadly similar project has been in progress at the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California, but the system designed and developed by Professor Ma and the Interact partners means that survivors can be recorded at much less individual cost. So far, six have taken part week-long sessions at the Bright White studios, at which they begin by giving their personal testimonies and then provide their responses to questions from a pre-determined list.

The development of Interact has received funding from the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts, jointly funded by the innovation charity NESTA, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. There has also been financial support from the National Lottery via Arts Council England.

When farming spread throughout Europe some 8000 years ago, Anatolia functioned as a hub, spreading genes and the new ideas westward. An international study coordinated from Stockholm and based on DNA from Anatolian remains indicates the importance of the role Anatolia played, and also in attracting attention both from the east and the west.

Human material from the Anatolian site Kumtepe was used in the study. The material was heavily degraded, but yielded enough DNA for the doctorate student Ayca Omrak to address questions concerning the demography connected to the spread of farming. She conducted her work at the Archaeological Research Laboratory.

Kumtepe is the oldest permanent settlement in the Troas, the region in northwestern Anatolia — often called Asia Minor — and is where Troy was built.

“I have never worked with a more complicated material. But it was worth every hour in the laboratory. I could use the DNA from the Kumtepe material to trace the european farmers back to Anatolia. It is also fun to have worked with this material from the site Kumtepe, as this is the precursor to Troy”, said doctorate student Ayca Omrak, at the Archaeological Research Laboratory Stockholm University.

Jan Storå, associate professor in osteoarchaeology and coauthor to the study agreed with Ayca. The results confirms Anatolias importance to Europe’s cultural history. He also thinks that material from the area needs to be researched further.

“It is complicated to work with material from this region, it is hot and the DNA is degraded. But if we want to understand how the process that led from a hunter-gatherer society proceeded to a farming society, it is this material we need to exhaust,” said Jan Storå, associate professor in osteoarchaeology, Stockholm University.

Anders Götherstörm who heads the archaeogenetic research at the Archaeological Research Laboratory agreed that this study indicates further possibilities: “Our results stress the importance Anatolia has had on Europe’s prehistory. But to fully understand how the agricultural development proceeded we need to dive deeper down into material from the Levant. Jan is right about that.”

The archaeogenetic group in Stockholm is presently advancing its collaboration with colleagues in Anatolia and Iran.

By Joe Torres

Some have caught fire. Some have exploded. And in San Pablo Diocese in the Philippines, one got a priest suspended.

A hoverboard — not the levitating board used in the “Back to the Future” movies — is a two-wheeled scooter that is catching the attention of safety watchdogs around the world, as well as church leaders in San Pablo.

Father Albert San Jose of Biñan in Laguna province was suspended from parish duties after using one during Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

“He will be out of the parish and will spend some time to reflect on this past event,” read a statement issued by the San Pablo Diocese Dec. 29.

The priest “would like to apologize for what happened,” the statement said.

A video of San Jose on the hoverboard singing to his congregation before the final blessing of the Christmas Eve Mass went viral on social media on Christmas Day.

“That was wrong,” read the diocese’s statement, adding that the Eucharist is the church’s “highest form” of worship.

“It is not a personal celebration where one can capriciously introduce something to get the attention of the people,” the diocese said.

“The Eucharist demands utmost respect and reverence. It is the memorial of the Lord’s Sacrifice. It is the source and summit of Christian life.”

San Jose has acknowledged his actions were not right and promised it will not happen again, the diocese said.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines has not issued a statement whether it will ban priests from using hoverboards in the future.

Here in Kabul, last week, at the Afghan Peace Volunteer (APV) community home that hosts me, I watched Abdulhai and visiting activist Aaron Hughes work out ways to secure the greenhouse which they had partially assembled that morning. Warmed by the effort and with the sun beaming down on all of us, they sat on the garden ledge in their shirtsleeves although it is a quite cold winter here, talking about the greenhouse perched on an uneven garden plot before them.

I had watched Aaron, Abdulhai, Ron and Hakim maneuver the partly assembled greenhouse from a neighbor’s storage area, over a fence, and onto the garden plot.  Aaron is 6 ft. 5 inches tall. His strength and height helped the process considerably.

Aaron and I first met in 2005, shortly after he returned from deployment to Iraq with the Illinois National Guard. The U.S. military had assigned him to drive trucks from Kuwaiti supply depots to Forward Operating Bases across Iraq.  At the end of his deployment, convinced he couldn’t endure another stint with the military, after seeing how futile, dehumanizing and destructive the U.S. occupation of Iraq had been, he took an option to come home, and decided, beyond committing to work organizing with Iraq Veterans Against the War, to become an artist, to create beauty. At age 33, he feels plenty of energy both for artwork and antiwar organizing efforts.

Aaron came to Afghanistan to present a particular project, related to prisoners in Guantanamo, called “Tea,” and to join the Afghan Peace Volunteers in various efforts to teach and create art. His construction skills became a greatly needed bonus as the greenhouse took shape.

Every day has been filled with learning exchanges. Tea creates an occasion for community, for having conversations together. Aaron taught children at the Borderfree Center to make potato prints using halved potatoes and acrylic paint. Several teachers at the school have learned sketching and print making skills from him. And Aaron says he’s been learning, too.

Ali describes the plight of five “day laborers” the APVs have gotten to know. Their names are Mohammed Dawoud, Ali Reza, Jalaladeen, Mirajadeen, and Qurban. The men wait all day, at Pul-e-Surkh intersection, where a bridge spans a putrid, dried up riverbed, hoping for a single day’s work even if at days’ end they take home just two or three dollars. Many shiver outdoors for hours, unemployed and desperate.

Especially during winter months, when construction shuts down, work is scarce. If chosen to work for part or all of a day, a laborer has no choice but to settle for extremely low wages. Hundreds of other laborers would take the rate being offered, so there is no point in bargaining for more. Day laborers live in miserable homes, always at a loss for resources to feed their families. When hired for temporary work, it will likely involve hauling heavy materials all day, back straining labor which some project managers might not impose on animals, since the animals would be more expensive to replace.

The five have talked about their needs with APV members. Each dreams of acquiring a cart from which he could sell goods. Qurban would like to set up a tea serving cart and serve tea to laborers waiting for possible work. The equipment would give them a small measure of independence.  The APVs try to learn about micro-loans and possibilities for offering limited assistance.

Most afternoons during Aaron’s visit, a team of Afghan Peace Volunteers would return from visits to families living on nearby mountainsides, surveying for families most in need of help from “The Duvet Project,” the APV’s program hiring local seamstresses to make 3,000 heavy blankets for distribution, free of charge, to impoverished families, or assistance through the “Borderfree Center Street Kids’ School”, supplemental schooling for child street vendors with community support for their families making it possible for the children to attend schools in Kabul. The school’s name is inspired by a call for a border-free world issued by U.S. professor Noam Chomsky – throughout the world, working to build community with impoverished people seems necessary to keeping ourselves honest and dedicated in a struggle against war. Decades of war have brought the people of Kabul to the place where they are now. The APVs call for an Afghanistan undivided by ethnic hostilities and external intrusions, with hard work on their neighbors’ behalf. And they also simply want to help.

The young people exude health and vigor, warming themselves at a wood-burning stove after the long hikes up the slopes. Ali flopped down on a mat, one day, leaning back with legs crossed, and described a man he had met whose wife could not bear him a child, and so the man adopted a child left by parents at a mosque. The child, at age three, could not walk and there was no hope of obtaining whatever treatment might have been available in a rich country or one not at war. At age 18, living as a shut-in with his parents, the child can communicate with no-one but his adoptive father. Meanwhile no-one in the family can find work.

In another home, a woman doesn’t have work and her husband cannot walk. She was away from home when Ali stopped by – when asked, the children said she has work in the nearby mosque, but Ali believes the woman may be obtaining money by begging. Living on a mountainside, in primitive homes a long way from drinking water, lacking income and caring for loved ones unable to walk seems unbearably challenging.

As APVs learn the stories of families they visit, relationships grow. “I was out running early one morning,” said Abdulhai, “and I heard a woman begging. I couldn’t see her under her burqa, but I recognized her voice and stopped.” “Aren’t you Habib’s grandmother?” he had politely asked.  The Afghan Peace Volunteers have been encouraging Habib to not only be part of the Borderfree Center Street Kids School, but also to join five older street kids who will begin learning how to organize the duvet production and distribution.

The young volunteers find their lives touched and shaped by ongoing challenges in these stories, especially since some of the stories are similar to their own experiences growing up during Afghanistan’s civil war and often being without food and blankets in their own homes.

Hoor, for instance, faces challenges from teachers, friends and relatives, who question the generous choices he makes. Hoor has been earning small sums of money as a researcher for a project sponsored by a U.S. university. When he is paid, he first goes to a sprawling refugee camp where he has gotten to know one of the neediest families. He gives a portion of his earnings to this family, even though his own family depends very much on his income.

On Aaron’s final day with us here in Kabul, he and the APVs were putting finishing touches on the greenhouse and getting ready to plant cucumber seeds. The Dari term for a greenhouse literally translates as “flower house.” Aaron will entrust to the APVs twenty plaster cast cups, decorated with flowers, each bearing the name of an Afghan citizen who lived in Guantanamo Prison. Each vessel is a testament to the withering effects of war and the crushing realities faced by detainees living under tortuous conditions. You could say the economy here is another such imprisoning consequence of war, of great-power ambitions, played out over many decades, in bloodshed and greed.

The path out of war seems to involve creating peace where we can, in earnest community with people whose basic needs aren’t met. As the APVs put it, it involves creating a green and equal world, acting conscientiously to abolish war.

Aaron helps build a “flower house” to shelter new seeds. He forges links with people who might otherwise be forgotten, and urges us to sit down with each other and talk. These are small seeds, and we shelter and nurture them in our hope to find future generations ready to abandon the violence of economic and environmental exploitation, –young people convinced that war is futile, whose empathy for neighbors in need steadies and energizes them.

By Sandip Kumar Mishra*

On December 28, 2015, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe extended an apology on the comfort women issue to victims in South Korea via Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. Japan also promised to officially provide US$ 8.3 million to South Korea to establish a welfare fund for the surviving victims. This agreement is being claimed by both the South Korean and Japanese governments as historic, and with the ability to bring their bilateral relations back on track. Japan-South Korea relations have been quite tenuous during the Shinzo Abe and Park Geun-hye administrations. Shinzo Abe has apparently been non-apologetic regarding Japan’s colonial past and been aggressive in regional politics, and the Park Geun-hye administration has been excessively sensitive on Japan’s stance on the comfort women issue. In the last few years, therefore, bilateral exchanges between the two countries, including economic, cultural and education exchanges, have suffered significantly. Park Geun-hye has avoided any meeting with Shinzo Abe bilaterally, and even on multilateral platforms, their few handshakes have been quite awkward. Many optimists believe that by reaching an agreement on the comfort women issue, both countries might be able to bring about a thaw in relations.

Shinzo Abe’s apology in this matter is considered important by the South Korean government as it might be interpreted as Japan’s acceptance of her wrongdoings during the colonial period. Furthermore, by providing the Japanese government’s money, Japan has officially acknowledged her responsibility to these victims. In return, South Korea has also promised that the matter is ‘conclusively’ resolved and she would not raise the issue on any international platform now on. There are also reports from Japan that South Korea has promised to remove a symbolic statue of a comfort woman located in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Thus, both parties have been projecting the agreement as a win-win development.

However, a close look at the process and content of the agreement raises doubts over the success of this agreement, and there has already been significant opposition in South Korea. When the two ministers of the Park Geun-hye administration visited a group of surviving victims to convey to them that the agreement had been signed, the ministers were confronted with hostile responses. Moreover, in the South Korean press and the Japanese press have interpreted the agreement quite differently, and only its convenient aspects have been emphasised. The Park Geun-hye administration has claimed that Japan has apologised to the comfort women and has promised official money for the welfare of these victims, and the Shinzo Abe government has emphasised the ‘conclusive’ end of the dispute and that the money provided by Japan cannot be called ‘compensation’. Japan claims that the issue of Japan’s legal responsibility for its colonial misdeeds were resolved during the normalisation treaty between Japan and South Korea in 1965.

In a way, it seems that Japan has not been sincere in its approach and rather than owning moral responsibility of her misdeeds, Shinzo Abe has been trying to win a diplomatic game. Without much investment, Japan is expecting the best possible results. If Shinzo Abe is really sincere, why is Japan against the use of the term ‘compensation’? Why did Shinzo Abe deliberately avoid making a direct and open apology to these victims? Why did his wife visit Yasukuni Shrine the very next day of the conclusion of the agreement? These questions raise many doubts. Basically, Japan’s aggressive approach under Shinzo Abe had led to worsening of its relations with China and South Korea, and he wanted to make the least possible compromises to revive at least its relations with South Korea. The agreement appears to be a result of this imperative and not any change of heart on the part of the Shinzo Abe government.

The Park Geun-hye administration also appears to be in a hurry to resolve the dispute and seems to be deliberately neglecting the real issues involved. This is not to do with whether Japan provides money to these victims, as many civil society groups in South Korea and abroad have already been taking care of this. It is about Japan owning her wrongdoings and apologising for it. Furthermore, any such apology must be based on a sense of guilt, compassion and sincerity. However, the current apology looks devoid of any of these traits and at best, looks half-hearted. In fact, South Korea has held various dimensions of her relations with Japan hostage to the issue of comfort women during Park Geun-hye’s tenure and this has proved to be the wrong strategy. Now, when worsening relations with Japan have started hurting it economically, South Korea wants to reach an agreement irrespective of its content.

Thus, in spite of the hype about the importance of the agreement between Japan and South Korea, it appears less likely to resolve the comfort women issue. Just by inserting the world ‘conclusive’ in an agreement, it cannot be made final. To make an agreement final, it must be ‘just’ and to the satisfaction of the victims. The agreement does not satisfy this condition and so, it does not appear to be the end of this dispute.

* Sandip Kumar Mishra
Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi & Visiting Fellow, IPCS

After a successful two day visit to Russia, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned to Afghanistan where he arrived at Kabul in the early morning of December 25. After a warm embrace by the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, both proceeded to inaugurate the building of Afghan Parliament (Dar ul Aman), built with Indian assistance. The construction of Afghan Parliament by world’s largest democracy is a great gesture that has set the path for Afghanistan towards the institutionalization of its democracy.

In his inaugural address to the Aghan Parliament, PM Modi spoke about the Indo-Aghan ties, which transcend the dimensions of time, space and distance, seeping into a shared consciousness. He pledged India’s commitment to provide all possible support for the cause of a strong and stable Afghanistan of future. Elucidating his intentions about friendly ties with Pakistan, he spoke about Pakistan as being a gateway between India and Afghanistan.

The PM’s departure from Kabul came with the surprise announcement of his landing at Lahore en route New Delhi. It was the first time in 11 years that an Indian Prime Minister was visiting Pakistan. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had visited Pakistan back in 2004. Breaking the official protocol, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made his way to the Lahore Airport to receive his Indian counterpart, from where he was escorted to Sharif’s hometown to attend his grand-daughter’s wedding ceremony. Coincidentally, December 25 also happens to be the birthday of PM Sharif, as well as Former PM Vajpayee — and from Pakistan, PM Modi directly headed to Former PM Vajpayee’s residence to convey birthday greetings. It was a clear signal towards a new era of Indian diplomacy with the use of innovative channels to reach out to fellow South Asian neighbors.

In fact, this unconventional move by PM Modi was termed as ‘innovative diplomacy’, being suggested as a more successful and closer form of engagement with Pakistan.

However, a few days after this positive mood began to gain ground; two incidents have left the Indian establishment in shock and threaten to derail the constructive engagement which had taken months to arrive at the bonhomie shown between these leaders on December 25.

The first was an attack on the Indian Airbase at Pathankot (situated 40 Kilometers from the Indo-Pak border) on January 2, in the Indian state of Punjab, which shares its western borders with Pakistan. This region consists of a National Highway connecting the Kashmir valley with the rest of the Indian state. Hence, its proximity to the International border makes it vulnerable. The airbase under attack too is a strategically important airbase which was witness to many attacks during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars. The nature of the attack clearly shows the geopolitical dimensions which the militants clearly exploited.

The second attack took place in Afghanistan on the night of January 3, when the Indian consulate at Mazar-e-Sharif was targeted by militants. However, this is not a new attack on Indian missions in Afghanistan as in past the embassy in Kabul was attacked twice in 2008 and 2009. In August 2013 Indian consulate in Jalalabad was targeted killing nine civilians and later in May 2014, armed militants attacked the Indian consulate in Herat.

What is new about these two attacks is the pace and intensity with which the attacks have been carried out following the PM Modi’s visit. These attacks state that it is high time that besides strengthening the security measures in India as well as her missions abroad, strong protest must be lodged with the Pakistani establishment to identify the actors involved in derailing the peace process.

It must not be forgotten that when India’s then PM Vajpayee visited Lahore in 1999 to reinvigorate ties, his return to India was greeted by the Indo-Pak war, following which an army coup in Pakistan overthrew Nawaz Sharif. 17 years down the road, these gruesome attacks have landed the Indian establishment into a déjà vu situation, reviving the dilemma of analyzing which institutions actually run Pakistan.

*Prateek Joshi is pursuing post-graduation work at South Asian University, New Delhi.

Today, ASEAN comprises of ten member countries (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam)2 having a population of more than 600 million with trade, investment and security cooperation across all major countries in the world. ASEAN is a major global hub of manufacturing and trade, as well as one of the fastest-growing consumer markets in the world.

In 2014, ASEAN countries had a combined GDP (at current prices) of $ 2.5 trillion with real GDP annual growth rate of 5.1 % over the period 2000-2013. Truly, in the past almost five decades ASEAN has seen several developments while reaching this stage with such a remarkable economic performance today.

The changing landscape of ASEAN

Stepping back a bit, we see that at the outset, ASEAN was primarily launched in 1967 as a political initiative that was meant to:

(a) End the disharmony within the anti-communist bloc in the region: This meant mainly bringing Indonesia into a political association with countries such as Malaysia and Singapore with which it had been in armed conflict between 1965 and 1966

(b) Strengthen the anti-communist bloc in facing the then Communist threat seen in the Vietnam war.

The geo-strategic focus shifted to concentrating on economic issues in the 1990s when the final conflict pitting the original members versus Vietnam in the Cambodian conflict – was resolved. The very nature of ASEAN changed with the entry of new members (Vietnam in 1995, Lao PDR and Myanmar in 1997 and Cambodia in 19993) and the focus began to shift away from purely geo-strategic towards closer economic integration.

On the same lines, there have been further developments in more recent times. For example, in 2008, the idea of ASEAN Community 2015 (AC15) took birth. By the end of 2015, the ASEAN Economic Community, envisioned as a single common market and production base is expected to become a reality. This will lead to the freer flow of goods, services, investment capital and skilled labour in the region. Tariffs and non-tariff barriers will be reduced which will have implications for intra-regional trade and investment. New opportunities for growth and prosperity are likely to emerge, but the challenge is to ensure that growth is inclusive and prosperity is shared.4 The ASEAN leaders have declared that the 2009-2015 Road Map consisting of the three Community Blueprints – Economic (AEC), Political-Security (APSC), Socio-Cultural (ASCC) shall form the basis of the overall ASEAN Community (AC15).5

Considering this changing landscape, the most critical question is, are the member nations ready to embrace this transformation as ASEAN makes commitments as part of the AC15 journey?

Since this article concerns discussions around Sino-Thai relations, Thailand being the ASEAN member nation, we will explore the above question taking only Thailand into consideration. Besides, Thailand, with a GDP of USD 387 billion and per capita GDP of USD 5, is one of the largest countries in ASEAN.

Is Thailand prepared for the change?

With the ambitious AC15 underway to realize its vision there are several opportunities that Thailand can deep-dive into.
First, Thailand can capitalize on the opportunity offered by AC15, such as requesting for special offers from the ASEAN Economic Community, laws on the Rule of origin, and the requirements of entering foreign countries for investment. This will lead to entrepreneurial benefit and help improve inter-country trade relations. Second, with Thailand’s surrounding countries like Myanmar and Cambodia having a different culture and ways of doing business, acting on AC15 can be a win-win for Thailand better understanding of its neighbours and bolster ASEAN’s growth. Third, being a part of an open community would necessitate the need to develop skilled labour. The opening up of free trade and investment from neighbouring countries with much lower labor cost will cause unskilled labor in Thailand to be at risk for becoming unemployed.

Therefore, it is clear that Thailand must look at AC15 as an opportunity to create a win-win scenario not only for its prosperity but also that of ASEAN as a whole.

Amidst the changing ASEAN dynamics, Thailand and Chinese ties have been recently strengthened. Do these ties indicate a renewed friendship between ASEAN member states or a divide being created? And, are these bilateral relations taking into consideration the multilateral nature of ASEAN? The next section attempts to understand more about the ties and the implications of those ties in the bigger picture.

SINO-THAI RELATIONS

As stated by Bangkok-based journalist Richard S. Ehrlich “There is perhaps nowhere in Southeast Asia where the growing influence of China – economically, militarily and diplomatically – is being felt more than in Thailand, long one of the United States’ most steadfast regional allies.”6

As the second largest economy of ASEAN, Thailand is an important country for China – both in terms of trade (China provides a market for 14% of all exports from Thailand and its share in Thai imports constitutes 18%) as well as in terms of its growing clout both internally and externally. Internally, as explained by several interviewees including Indian businessmen (Satish Sehgal, D.K. Bakshi, Mr. Bajaj) many major Thai businesses are owned by the Chinese (44% of all businesses are owned by Chinese, having taken on Chinese names and the latter have integrated seamlessly into the Thai society. In fact, China is also considering helping Thailand to construct a canal across the Kra Isthmus that would allow ships to bypass the Straits of Malacca, reducing China’s overdependence on this route (Refer to Annexure: Map 1). This infrastructure build-up and the acquisition of resources in these countries are drawing attention of strategic thinkers in Thailand.

Background

China and Thai relations go thirty years back in time. To be precise, 1975 was the year in which the two nations established democratic ties. During the cold war period, they formed military alignment against Vietnamese communists in Indochina. In the post-Cold War era, bilateral relations have remained healthy thanks to absence of territorial disputes, the firm connections between the Thai royal family and the Chinese leadership, and the well-integrated Chinese community in Thailand.7

In October 20038, the first trade agreement between China and an ASEAN country: Sino-Thai free trade agreement was signed. Since then, there have been many developments in the bilateral ties but more recently, the ties have fortified in several areas.

Areas of development in the bilateral relations

ASEAN’s second largest economy is strategically harnessing the fruitful ties with the world’s most populous country in several areas.

First, Sino-Thai military links are among some of the most developed in the region — second only to Myanmar, China’s quasi ally.7 Xu Qiliang, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China, travelled to Thailand for the second time in a span of six months. His visit included meetings with Thai defense minister Prawit Wongsuwan and Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha. According to defense ministry spokesman Maj Gen. Kongcheep Tantrawanit, during Xu’s meeting with Prawit, Xu proposed the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the two countries’ defense ministries to increase military cooperation. Some measures discussed include expanding joint military exercises and training, enhancing defense industry cooperation and greater Chinese assistance in helping Thailand set up an ASEAN center for military medicine.9

Historically, Thailand has been one of Washington’s staunchest military allies in Southeast Asia and could have expected to see that relationship blossom under US President Barack Obama’s “pivot” to Asia. But the May 2014 coup, the second in the past ten years, and the Junta’s subsequent rights crackdown has strained those ties. Thailand has ever since forged closer ties with China. “The Junta is obviously much more comfortable with China because they speak the same language and commit the same practices: authoritarianism,” said Puangthong Pawakapan, a Thai politics expert at Chulalongkorn University.10 There could be serious damage to Thailand’s democratization as China is constantly supporting and possibly influencing the Thai military regime. China has just injected another dose of confidence among the Thai military leaders to hold on to their rule despite international pressure.7 More recently, in the light of the Sino-Thai joint military exercise, senior Thai government officials have also said that Thailand has not turned 180 degrees toward China, despite a chill in ties between Bangkok and Washington following the 2014 coup.11

Second, China and Thailand have forged even closer ties with the recent exchange of visits of key policymakers. Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during his visit to Bangkok in May 2015, praised Thailand for playing a “significant” role in promoting relations between China and ASEAN. The two countries agreed to increase bilateral trade to US$100 billion by 2015. Last year, two-way trade stood at nearly US$70 billion, as a result of the successful Sino-Thai free trade agreement signed in 2003, when Thailand became the first ASEAN country to conclude a free-trade deal with China.12

Third, the USA led Trans Pacific Partnership does not yet include Thailand and five other ASEAN member countries. It includes at present, just four ASEAN member states: Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. Thailand and other ASEAN members are unwilling yet to join the TPP talks because of the requirements for regulatory convergence in areas such as intellectual property rights (IPR), state-owned enterprises, and competition, besides other strict requirements.13 The absence of Thailand and other member states of ASEAN does pose a threat to the internal economic integration of ASEAN. In contrast, ASEAN is at the center of the China- led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

Fourth, most Thai Cabinet ministers and powerful businesses in Thailand have invested heavily in in China. Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand (CP), one of Southeast Asia’s largest companies, has been doing business in China since 1949.7
Several critics however, question whether China really represents any solution to Thailand at this critical juncture of its political crisis.7 It is clear however that this bilateral relation has specific consequences (both positive and negative) and opportunities which accrue to Thailand. However, looking at the importance that Thailand plays as one of the stronger economies of the ASEAN region, surely, Sino-Thai relation dynamics have implications for the entire ASEAN region as well.

What’s in store for ASEAN?

Considering strengthening Sino-Thai ties, there are several expected consequences for ASEAN. The consequences could be both positive and negative.

First, positive growth is expected across the ASEAN region as a result of growth Sino-Thai relations. Kraisin Vongsurakrai, secretary-general of the Thailand-China Business Council and vice chairman of the Board of Trade of Thailand, has emphasized on how ASEAN will continue to grow with these relations as China plays many roles in the region’s economic activities including export-import, investment and tourism. For instance, in June 2015, China and Laos signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen their cooperation in human-resource development.14 And, in November 2015, the two countries agreed to build a 40-billion Yuan ($6.28 billion), 418-kilometer railway from Kunming, the capital of southwestern China’s Yunnan province, to the Laotian capital of Vientiane. According to Chinese media sources, China will be responsible for 70% of the investment while Laos will be responsible for the rest.15

On the flip side however, there strong views by several critics that ASEAN is becoming a theatre of super-power rivalry and several countries have been competing for influence in ASEAN. As a result, ASEAN member countries are not speaking in one voice at ASEAN Summit meetings, including the one at Pnom Penh in November 2012. As stated by Kaplan, China maintains the ability to exploit divisions within ASEAN (Kaplan 2014). China’s aggressive partnership with some countries of ASEAN – especially Laos and Cambodia and its bilateral rather than multilateral engagement approach with ASEAN member countries – is creating a divide within ASEAN.16 In fact, all the three pillars of ASEAN (ASEAN Political-Security, ASEAN Economic and ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community) are being compromised. The economic pillar is compromised when preferential treatment for trade between China and only certain countries (such as Laos, Cambodia, Thailand) is given.

In addition, ASEAN countries do not have a united stand on key issues such as the South China Sea (SCS) dispute – as a result of which the political-security pillar is compromised. In September 2015, Ambassador Nina Hachigian, US Ambassador to ASEAN at the 4th Maritime Institute of Malaysia South China Sea Conference emphasized on the dual nature of the SCS dispute. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the area interact with the unstable political situation in the SCS to create a vicious cycle. Claimants want to assert sovereignty over islands because of the marine resources in the surrounding waters, but more than one country claims the islands, which makes the issue even more complex. In addition to this, the lack of multilateral binding agreement on fishing regulations in the SCS has led to the lack of also a united stand on the issue among ASEAN countries in turn affecting the political-security pillar.17 Indeed, even world leaders have emphasized, since a while now, on the need for moving in an organized manner with regards to the issue. For instance, in August 2011, while addressing ASEAN members at the 44th ASEAN anniversary, H.E. Dr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, President of the Republic of Indonesia gave the clarion call to move toward agreeing on a legally binding Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, since this was and is still, of immense significance to help resolve the dispute.18

The conflicts that arise as a result of compromise on the economic and political-security pillar lead to reduced degree of freedom among ASEAN nations which negatively affect the socio-cultural pillar as well.

Second, and more specific, the slow progress towards ASEAN Economic Community has been a cause of concern. ASEAN-6 (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand) were largely economically stronger than the CLMV countries (Cambodia, Laos PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam) and they have had different perceptions of the benefits and costs from integration. Although post AFTA, the common effective preferential tariff rates between the ASEAN-6 have fallen to virtually zero and less than 5% is subject to tariffs above 10%, the non-tariff barriers are substantial. Integration has, thus, failed to fully yield the expected economic benefits, thus leaving members apprehensive of moves toward deeper integration. Besides, there is a lack of strong leadership in the region.19 In addition, the majority of interregional trade is generated by only one country – Singapore (followed by Malaysia). The EU –Singapore trade is a case in point. While bilateral trade in goods and services between the EU and ASEAN reached over €235 billion in 2012, EU-Singapore trade alone comprised for almost a third (€80 billion).20 Besides, ASEAN countries themselves have very stringent conditions on movement of skilled persons as well as competing interests and alliances, as a result of which the movement towards building the ASEAN Community is slow.21

Third, the relations between the riparian states along the Mekong River are expected to have a consequential effect on other ASEAN nations. The Mekong river flows southwards through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. As a result of four big dams constructed by China, the flow of water is under China’s control. According to Prof. Likhit Dhiravegin22, “The news of four more dams to be built is worrisome for the downstream riparian states. Most regrettably China does not join the Mekong River Commission (save being a dialogue partner together with Myanmar) despite the fact that the Mekong River flows through China, downwards to the four riparian states.” He added that China also desires to deploy patrol ships in the Mekong River. Ecological issues with river banks getting eroded and the number of the giant cat fish declining have also surfaced. Despite such concerns having been articulated at international forums, Thailand’s neighbours in the North and the Junta government itself is not willing to annoy China. This viewpoint shows that Thailand itself may be keen to further fortify the partnership with China even though there may be negative consequences of such developments.

WAY FORWARD

In April 2015, Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Abdul at the ASEAN Business Awards Malaysia function stated that according to OECD’s prediction, overall annual growth should stand at 5.6% over the next four years. If current trends continue, ASEAN will become the world’s fourth largest economy by 2050. He said it would be the seventh-largest in the world now if ASEAN were seen as one economy, with its combined gross domestic product in 2014 at US$2.5 trillion and US$2.4 trillion in 2013.23 ASEAN also has a huge advantage of demographic dividend. With the world’s third largest labour force, 60% of ASEAN’s population is below the age of 35. This will provide the region the opportunity for accelerated GDP growth. Complimenting ASEAN’s demographic dividend is urbanization, which will usher a larger share of the population to more productive sectors. Currently ASEAN’s urban share makes up about 36% of its 622 million population.24 This share is expected to increase to 45% by 2030 allowing ASEAN to continue enjoying urbanization gains beyond 2030. 25

In November 2015, Charles H. Rivkin at the ASEAN Economic Community at the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club stated that ASEAN Member States represent one of the fastest growing regions on the planet and a major source of the world’s rapidly growing middle class.26 The steps ASEAN nations take as the way forward will be governed by the results on AC15, intra-ASEAN dynamics between countries and bilateral relations between ASEAN member nations and other countries across the globe.

As the ASEAN Chair moves to Laos this year, keeping ASEAN united with mutual trust and confidence and agreeing on a joint communiqué especially on the SCS will not be achieved easily.

Thailand’s proximity to China, as discussed above, will pose a challenge to ASEAN’s security pillar, given the latter’s core interests in the South China Sea clashing with several ASEAN members. Regional integration in ASEAN mandates a unique role of Thailand, especially, within ASEAN as it has a large volume of trade, second only to Singapore. Thailand’s importance for ASEAN is well –known to China too, which ensures that the Thai polity is kept engaged, both through economic and security initiatives. The 2015 promised elections in Thailand was not a date to be kept.

About the author:
*Dr. Reena Marwah, Associate Professor, Jesus and Mary College, Delhi University and formerly, Senior Academic Consultant Indian Council for Social Science Research Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India.

Annexure:

Isthmus of Kra and the Strait of Malacca

References:
ADB & ILO, (2014), “ASEAN Community 2015: Managing Integration for Better Job & Shared Proserity”, Asian Development Bank & International Labour Organization, Thailand, accessed on 5 December 2015, URL: http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/42818/asean-community-2015-managing-integration.pdf

ASEAN, (2014), “ASEAN Member States”, accessed on 3 December, 2015 URL: http://www.asean.org/asean/asean-member-states

ASEAN, (2014), “About ASEAN”, accessed on 3 December, 2015 URL: http://www.asean.org/asean/about-asean/overview

ASEAN Economic Community at a Glance, accessed on 12 December, 2015, URL: http://www.asean.org/images/2015/November/ASEAN-Economic-Community-at-a-Glance-2015/Leaflet%20and%20Poster%20-%20AEC%20at%20a%20Glance.pdf

Asia Sentinel, (2011), “China Comes to Thailand”, Asia Sentinel, accessed on 10 March 2015, URL: http://www.asiasentinel.com/econ-business/china-comes-to-thailand/

Chachavalpongpun, P., (2015), “Thailand and China build ties of convenience”, The Japan Times, accessed on 5 December 2015, URL: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/08/13/commentary/world-commentary/thailand-china-build-ties-convenience/#.VmRP7tIrLIX

Chachavalpongpun, P., (2015), “Cosy Sino-Thai relations affecting Asean unity”, South China Morning Post, accessed on 6 December, 2015, URL: http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1242092/cosy-sino-thai-relations-affecting-asean-unity

Choy, T., et. al., (2015) “ASEAN Poised for Accelerated Economic growth” KPMG ASEAN, accessed on 5 December, 2015, URL: https://www.kpmg.com/SG/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/ASEAN-Poised-for-Accelerated-Economic-Growth.pdf

‘’Countries and regions’’, European Commission, accessed on 16 February 2015, URL: http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-regions/countries/singapore/

DFAT & Austrade, (2015), “Why ASEAN and Why Now? Summary”, accessed on 6 December, 2015, URL: https://dfat.gov.au/about-us/publications/Documents/why-asean-and-why-now-summary.pdf

Hachigian, N., “Remarks at the 4th Maritime Institute of Malaysia South China Sea Conference” on 8th September 2015, accessed on 11 December 2015, URL: http://asean.usmission.gov/remarks09212015.html

Karaman, B., (2015), “ASEAN Set To Be Fourth Largest Economy By 2050”, Thailand Business News, accessed on 5 December, 2015, URL: http://www.thailand-business-news.com/asean/50671-asean-set-to-be-fourth-largest-economy-by-2050.html

Kuchiki & Tsuji, (2008), “The Formation of Industrial Clusters in Asia and Regional Integration – Midterm Report accessed on 05 December 2015, URL: http://www.ide.go.jp/English/Publish/Download/Report/2008/pdf/2008_0111_ch3.pdf

Letchumanan, R., (2015), “What is ASEAN Community 2015 All About?” The Diplomat, accessed on 3 December, URL: http://thediplomat.com/2015/02/what-is-asean-community-2015-all-about/

Menon, Jayant (2014), ‘’ Moving too slowly towards an ASEAN Economic Community’’, EAST ASIAFORUM, Accessed on 16 February 2015, URL: http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/10/14/moving-too-slowly-towards-an-asean-economic-community/

Parameswaran, P., (2015), “China, Thailand Eye Deeper Defense Ties”, The Diplomat, accessed on 5 December, 2015, URL: http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/china-thailand-eye-deeper-defense-ties/

Parameswaran, P., (2015), “China, Laos to Build $6 Billion Railway by 2020”, The Diplomat, accesed on 6 December, 2015, URL: http://thediplomat.com/2015/11/china-laos-to-build-6-billion-railway-by-2020/

Reuters, “China, Thailand joint air force exercise highlights warming ties”, 24 November, 2015, accede on 11 December 2015, URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-thailand-military-idUSKBN0TD0B120151124

Rivkin, C., “Remarks at the ASEAN Economic Community in Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club” on 4th November 2015, accessed on 11 December 2015, URL: http://asean.usmission.gov/remarks11042015.html

Srimalee, S., and Sratruangkrai, P., (2015), “China’s influence over Thailand and Asean to keep growing, experts say”, The Nation, accessed on 6 December, 2015, URL: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/business/Chinas-influence-over-Thailand-and-Asean-to-keep-g-30263302.html

Taylor, J., (2015), “Under Junta Rule, Thailand pivots to China”, Yahoo News, accessed on 3 December, 2015, URL: http://news.yahoo.com/under-junta-rule-thailand-pivots-towards-china-054631732.html
Yudhoyono, S. B., “Lecture by H.E. Dr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, President of the Republic of Indonesia, on the Occasion of the 44th Anniversary of ASEAN” on 8th August 2011, accessed on 11 December 2015, URL: http://www.asean.org/news/item/lecture-by-he-dr-susilo-bambang-yudhoyono-president-of-the-republic-of-indonesia-on-the-occasion-of-the-44th-anniversary-of-asean

Notes:
1. DFAT & Austrade, (2015), “Why ASEAN and Why Now? Summary”, Australia. https://dfat.gov.au/about-us/publications/Documents/why-asean-and-why-now-summary.pdf (accessed on 6 December, 2015)
2. http://www.asean.org/asean/asean-member-states (Accessed on 3 December, 2015)
3. http://www.asean.org/asean/about-asean/overview (accessed on 3 December 2015)
4. ADB & ILO, (2014), “ASEAN Community 2015: Managing Integration for Better Job & Shared Prosperity”, Asian Development Bank & International Labour Organization, Thailand. http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/42818/asean-community-2015-managing-integration.pdf (accessed on 5 December 2015)
5. http://thediplomat.com/2015/02/what-is-asean-community-2015-all-about/ (accessed on 3 December 2015)
6. http://www.asiasentinel.com/econ-business/china-comes-to-thailand/; accessed on 10 March, 2015
7. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/08/13/commentary/world-commentary/thailand-china-build-ties-convenience/#.VlyEntIrLIV (accessed on 5 December 2015)
8. Kuchiki & Tsuji, (2008), “The Formation of Industrial Clusters in Asia and Regional Integration – Midterm Report http://www.ide.go.jp/English/Publish/Download/Report/2008/pdf/2008_0111_ch3.pdf (accessed on 5 December 2015)
9. http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/china-thailand-eye-deeper-defense-ties/ (accessed on 5 December, 2015)
10. http://news.yahoo.com/under-junta-rule-thailand-pivots-towards-china-054631732.html (accessed on 3 December, 2015)
11. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-thailand-military-idUSKBN0TD0B120151124 (accesed on 11 December, 2015)
12. http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1242092/cosy-sino-thai-relations-affecting-asean-unity (accessed on 6 December, 2015)
13. Jingyang Chen; http://asiafoundation.org/in-asia/2015/09/09/tpp-and-rcep-boon-or-bane-for-asean/; accessed on December 28, 2015
14. http://www.nationmultimedia.com/business/Chinas-influence-over-Thailand-and-Asean-to-keep-g-30263302.html (accessed on 6 December, 2015)
15. http://thediplomat.com/2015/11/china-laos-to-build-6-billion-railway-by-2020/ (accessed on 6 December, 2015)
16. Thanyathip Sripana; Personal interview by Reena Marwah. Thailand, July 25, 2014
17. Hachigian, N., “Remarks at the 4th Maritime Institute of Malaysia South China Sea Conference” on 8 September 2015, accessed on 11 December 2015, URL: http://asean.usmission.gov/remarks09212015.html
18. Yudhoyono, S. B., “Lecture by H.E. Dr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, President of the Republic of Indonesia, on the Occasion of the 44th Anniversary of ASEAN” on 8th August 2011, accessed on 11 December 2015, URL: http://www.asean.org/news/item/lecture-by-he-dr-susilo-bambang-yudhoyono-president-of-the-republic-of-indonesia-on-the-occasion-of-the-44th-anniversary-of-asean
19. Menon, Jayant (2014), ‘’ Moving too slowly towards an ASEAN Economic Community’’, EAST ASIAFORUM, Accessed on 16 February 2015, URL: http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/10/14/moving-too-slowly-towards-an-asean-economic-community/
20. “Countries and regions”, European Commission, Accessed on 16 February 2015, URL: http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-regions/countries/singapore/
21. Wisarn : Personal interview by Reena Marwah, Thailand, July 23, 2014
22. Dhiravegin, Likhit; Personal interview by Reena Marwah. Thailand, January 23, 2014.
23. http://www.thailand-business-news.com/asean/50671-asean-set-to-be-fourth-largest-economy-by-2050.html (Accessed on 5 December 2015)
24. ASEAN Economic Community at a Glance, accessed on 12 December, 2015, URL: http://www.asean.org/images/2015/November/ASEAN-Economic-Community-at-a-Glance-2015/Leaflet%20and%20Poster%20-%20AEC%20at%20a%20Glance.pdf
25. Choy, T., et. al., (2015) “ASEAN Poised for Accelerated Economic growth” KPMG ASEAN https://www.kpmg.com/SG/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/ASEAN-Poised-for-Accelerated-Economic-Growth.pdf (accessed on 5 December, 2015)
26. Assistant Secretary Charles H. Rivkin’s Remarks on ASEAN Economic Community at Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club, 4th November, URL: http://asean.usmission.gov/remarks11042015.html (accessed on 11 December 2015)

Saudi Arabia and Iran, highlighting the domestic drivers of mounting tension that threatens to deepen and complicate sectarian and multiple other regional conflicts, have taken their fierce tit-for-tat battle from the realm of traditional diplomacy to the world of public diplomacy.

Following a dizzying sequence of events, including the Saudi execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr together with 46 others, the storming of the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the breaking off by the kingdom of diplomatic and commercial relations with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iran have expanded their fight to the soccer pitch.

Several Saudi clubs, including Al-Ahli FC, Al-Hilal FC, Al-Ittihad FC and Al-Nasr FC, issued statements on their websites in the wake of the ransacking of the embassy demanding that they play Asian championship matches against Iranian squads scheduled for February in neutral venues.

The clubs were expected to ask the Saudi Arabian Football Federation to officially request the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) to move the games away from Iran.

Soccer pitches have long been flashpoints in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran on which not only tensions between the two countries but also domestic issues related to their strained relations manifest themselves.

Pitches have also served as barometers and early warning signs of mounting tensions between the kingdom and the Islamic republic, which by its very nature challenges the ruling Al Saud family because it constitutes an alternative form of Islamic government that despite being a theocracy also recognizes some degree of popular sovereignty.

Iranian officials saw Saudi Arabia’s hand last April in clashes between soccer fans and security forces in the Iranian city of Ahvaz, home to Iran’s Arab minority and the capital of oil-rich but impoverished Khuzestan province. Ethnic Arabs have long complained that the government has failed to reinvest profits to raise the region’s standards of living.

The Iranian assertions were fuelled by Arab pundits who called for the liberation of the five million Arabs in Khuzestan. Some pundits described the Iranian province as Arabistan.

The Saudi soccer clubs’ demand for moving matches away from Iranian venues in effect amounts to support for the government’s escalating confrontation with the Islamic republic. That comes hardly as a surprise with two of the four Saudi clubs that put forward the demand being headed by members of the kingdom’s ruling family.

Prince Faisal Bin Turki Bin Nasser, a son-in-law of the late Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud presides over Al-Nasr while Al-Hilal is managed by Prince Nawaf Bin Sa’ad. The presidents of Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli have close ties to the ruling family.

Mehdi Taj, the head of Iran’s Premier League, said in response to the clubs’ statements that it would file a complaint with the AFC on the grounds that the kingdom was mixing sports and politics.

“Articles 3 and 4 of AFC assert that political issues should not be extended to football; this is not for the first time that Saudis take pretexts of this sort on their unethical pursuits… The best response is to play strong football on the field and to defeat Saudis on their own ground,” Mr. Taj said suggesting that in contrast to the Saudis Iranian teams were willing to play matches in the kingdom.

Mr. Taj’s willingness despite the crisis was matched by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubair’s statement that Saudi Arabia would continue to accept Iranian pilgrims to Mecca even though the kingdom was severing diplomatic and commercial ties and banning all flights and travel to the Islamic republic.

The Saudi extension of its conflict with Iran to the soccer pitch, Mr. Taj’s comments notwithstanding, demonstrated that soccer and politics are inextricably intertwined. Mr. Taj’s argument was effectively countered last month when the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the country’s broadcast authority, banned an appearance by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif on a popular soccer television program.

In fact, the ban like this weekend’s assault on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the kingdom’s consular office in the eastern city of Mashhad as well as the execution of Mr. Al-Nimr were all reflections of domestic power struggles and jockeying for position in both Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Conservative Iranian websites called this weekend for protests at the Saudi embassy in Tehran in a bid to embarrass reformist President Hassan Rouhani in advance of next month’s elections for parliament and the Assembly of Experts that elects Iran’s spiritual leaders. “God willing very soon we will have a picture like this next to the White House. We will hit Haifa with missiles,” said one protester who posted a picture of the ransacked embassy on Telegram, a social media website.

Moreover, efforts to control soccer by hardliners with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in the lead underline the importance of the pitch as a battleground in the struggle for Iran’s future in the wake of the nuclear agreement with the international community and the expected lifting of stringent United Nations sanctions that Western nations hope will boost Mr. Rouhani in the elections.

Similarly, many analysts believe the timing of the execution of Mr. Al-Nimr and the others was designed to whip up nationalist fervour at a time that the kingdom faces multiple problems. These include a protracted war in Yemen; Iranian nuclear success and its participation in Syrian peace talks; Saudi Arabia’s stalled efforts to forge a Sunni military alliance that would target the Islamic State and potentially Iran; and forced economic belt tightening as a result of reduced oil revenues that threatens to undermine the social contract that underwrites the Al Saud’s rule.

Whatever the case may be, the executions, including that of Mr. Al-Nimr, were intended to demonstrate that the Al Sauds will not brook any dissent. It was certainly the message the kingdom, which accuses Iran of instigating unrest in Arab countries, wanted to send to Tehran. It is a message Saudi soccer clubs appear more than willing to support.

By Michael Lelyveld

After years of falsifying economic figures, officials in China’s industrial northeast provinces are admitting to the practice to make the case that deep declines are not as bad as they seem now.

In a Dec. 11 report, the official Xinhua news agency cited rampant fabrication of economic data in the northeast provinces of Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Jilin in past years, with some counties claiming gross domestic product (GDP) higher than that of Hong Kong.

Reports of economic data ranging from GDP to investment and household income were all routinely inflated, according to the officials.

The official English-language China Daily quoted Guan Yingmin, head of investment and planning at Heilongjiang’s Committee of Industry and Information Technology, saying that local investment figures were pumped up by at least 20 percent, an overstatement of nearly 100 billion yuan (U.S. $15.3 billion).

Reports of data fraud in China are nothing new.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has pursued a series of crackdowns on local falsification for over a decade, while the central government has warned ambitious officials that GDP growth will no longer be the sole criterion for advancing their careers.

Past cases

Past cases of provincial data inflation have fed suspicion of national GDP figures, particularly in the boom years when the NBS reported double-digit growth.

In 2012, the NBS launched a direct reporting system for 700,000 enterprises to avoid local pressures for exaggerating production. In late 2014, the agency announced it would no longer rely on provincial and municipal GDP estimates at all.

The latest fraud revelations follow inspections by ruling Chinese Communist Party graft investigators as part of China’s continuing anti-corruption campaign, according to Xinhua.

Local fakery has caused damage to the central government and the party, it said.

“The wave of falsifying data in some parts of northeastern provinces was particularly strong, which not only misguided planning and the decisions of the central and local governments, but also evolved into a corruptive push to jeopardize the party and political conduct and harm government credibility,” said Xinhua.

But there were also suggestions that the findings might be used to support arguments about the current state of China’s economy, which has been particularly weak in rust-belt provinces.

“If the past data had not been inflated, the current growth figures would not show such a precipitous fall,” one regional official told Xinhua.

Lagging behind

Economic performance in the northeast region has lagged far behind national averages as heavy industry feels the brunt of the slowdown and pressure to reduce production overcapacity.

In the first three quarters of 2015, national GDP rose at a 6.9-percent rate, while growing by 6.3 percent in Jilin, 5.5 percent in Heilongjiang, and just 2.7 percent in Liaoning, according to the NBS.

The poor results have been a particular focus for Premier Li Keqiang, who blasted provincial officials for allowing infrastructure projects to languish during his visit to the region last April.

Li accused the officials of “dereliction of duty” and “intentional neglect” after seeing construction equipment standing idle by the side of the road, state media reported at the time.

Now, local officials appear to be defending themselves, arguing that last year’s GDP growth rates would have been higher if they hadn’t been overstated in the past.

“If the old data is exaggerated, then the new data is working off of a smaller base and they can say that growth is faster now. That’s one possibility,” said Derek Scissors, an Asia economist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

In the absence of retroactive revisions, the entire series of numbers should be considered unreliable, said Scissors.

Other implications

But there may be more significant implications of the new fraud confessions.

One is that they may be cited as evidence for the accuracy of national GDP figures, which have been widely suspected of understating the pace of the slowdown.

If past economic exaggerations have magnified the drop-off in industrialized provinces, the same may be true for China as a whole. The NBS is scheduled to release results for the fourth quarter and 2015 later this month.

Conversely, the falsification report may be preparing the ground for even weaker provincial results to come.

The region is expected to face increased pressure from the government’s push to close down surplus production capacity, which has contributed to corporate debt, energy waste, pollution, and producer price drops.

If the central government makes good on its threat, many northeast factories will be forced out of business, leading to even lower local GDP.

“In eliminating overcapacity, China will create conditions for bankruptcy procedures based on market rules and speed of liquidation cases,” Xinhua said in another report following the government’s annual Central Economic Work Conference last month.

Premier Li is likely to be particularly concerned with the poor economic results in Liaoning, where he served as party secretary in 2004-2007. The province has recorded the lowest GDP growth rates of all the 31 provincial-level governments so far.

Liaoning’s official GDP growth dipped as low as 1.9 percent in last year’s first quarter, raising the possibility that real growth turned negative.

Attempt to embarrass

Another possible interpretation of the fraud reports is that they may be meant to embarrass Li politically, said Scissors.

While Liaoning’s economy is said to be lagging now, data inflation, now classified as corrupt, was apparently taking place during Li’s tenure, right under the provincial party leader’s nose.

But there may also be a more positive implication of the report if it means that the NBS is preparing to clear the decks and report negative economic growth in the rust-belt provinces for the first time.

While provincial officials are arguing that their current growth rates would look better but for past exaggerations, the real story is that future numbers are likely to look worse.

Scissors said the region may already be in recession.

“There’s a real possibility here that they’re going to be willing to report outright contraction,” he said. “It fits with what’s reality and it may offer them some public relations points. This could be step one.”

One of the provinces will have to break the political ice by reporting negative growth, he said, but the result could be greater credibility for China’s national GDP figures.

“You can absolutely turn this into something positive by saying, ‘Now, you should believe our other growth numbers,'” said Scissors. “That would give more confidence that the areas of the economy they say are doing well are actually doing well.”

Economic forecasters exist to make astrologers look good, but I’ll hazard a guess. I expect the U.S. economy to sputter in 2016. That’s because the economy faces a deep structural problem: not enough demand for all the goods and services it’s capable of producing.

American consumers account for almost 70 percent of economic activity, but they won’t have enough purchasing power in 2016 to keep the economy going on more than two cylinders. Blame widening inequality.

Consider: The median wage is 4 percent below what it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation. The median wage of young people, even those with college degrees, is also dropping, adjusted for inflation. That means a continued slowdown in the rate of family formation—more young people living at home and deferring marriage and children – and less demand for goods and services.

At the same time, the labor participation rate—the percentage of Americans of working age who have jobs—remains near a 40-year low.

The giant boomer generation won’t and can’t take up the slack. Boomers haven’t saved nearly enough for retirement, so they’re being forced to cut back expenditures.

Exports won’t make up for this deficiency in demand. To the contrary, Europe remains in or close to recession, China’s growth is slowing dramatically, Japan is still on its back, and most developing countries are in the doldrums.

Business investment won’t save the day, either. Without enough customers, businesses won’t step up investment. Add in uncertainties about the future—including who will become president, the makeup of the next Congress, the Middle East, and even the possibilities of domestic terrorism—and I wouldn’t be surprised if business investment declined in 2016.

I’d feel more optimistic if I thought government was ready to spring into action to stimulate demand, but the opposite is true. The Federal Reserve has started to raise interest rates—spooked by an inflationary ghost that shows no sign of appearing. And Congress, notwithstanding its end-of-year tax-cutting binge, is still in the thralls of austerity economics.

Chances are, therefore, the next president will inherit an economy teetering on the edge of recession.

(I wrote this for Politico Magazine, out today)

By Daniel Sukman*

“I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that” – Hal, 2001: A Space Odyssey

War is fundamentally a human endeavor. It is a clash of wills involving political leaders, soldiers, and civilian populations of opposing states and non-state actors. Within this human endeavour, the U.S. has always sought a technological advantage, since technological advantages have assisted the U.S. in overcoming numerical advantages held by adversaries. Maintaining the technological advantage is paramount as the U.S. moves into a period of fiscal restraint and significantly reduced force size.

Today, the world is approaching a robotics revolution in military affairs that may be on par with the introduction of gunpowder, levée en masse, and the advent of nuclear weapons.¹ Unmanned and autonomous systems have the potential to fundamentally change the American way of war. This could change how policy makers posture and apply land forces to achieve strategic ends. Unmanned and autonomous systems may even change the roles and the missions of the Army itself. In order to capitalize on this, there is an overwhelming need to build more detail on top of existing guidance to allow the Services to develop new capabilities with both understanding and confidence.

It is clear that robotics and autonomous systems will have a place in society, and will play an increased role on the battlefield of the future. The question remains, what role will lethal autonomous systems play in the future? This article will examine the history, domestic and international policy trends, and the ethics of lethal autonomous systems on the battlefield of the future.

History of Autonomous Weapons Systems

Department of Defense Directive 3000.09 defines autonomous weapon systems as “…a weapon system that once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator. This includes human supervised autonomous weapons systems that are designed to allow human operators to override operation of the weapon system, but can select and engage targets without further human input after activation.”

The U.S. military does and has employed various semi-autonomous lethal systems in conflicts. Land and sea mines present one example of lethal autonomous systems. The worldwide community-at-large has made attempts to limit and even eliminate the use of these weapons, as evidenced by the Mine Ban Treaty of 1997, and the Convention on Cluster Munitions of 2008.

The U.S. employs semi-autonomous systems as components of air and missile defence systems. It is generally accepted that the speed of jet bombers and ballistic missiles limits the decision space of humans, who must decide whether to employ a Patriot missile in defence. The U.S. has had much success in the employment of these systems; however, it has not been without deadly mistakes, such as the shooting down of an Iranian commercial airliner in 1988 by an Aegis Air Defense system, or the shooting down of a British Tornado aircraft in the opening stage of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

Examples of other systems that employ a varying degree of autonomy include the US Phalanx system for Navy surface ships, the U.S. Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar (C-RAM) system, and the Israeli Harpy, which detects, attacks, and destroys adversary radar emitters.

With the success of unmanned aerial systems, and the demand for unmanned ground vehicles in the recent conflicts in Iraq, Libya, and the current conflict in Afghanistan, the U.S. Department of Defense will most likely continue research and development funding to improve these systems, as well as to build new ones. The counter point to this success, however, is that much of the ‘success’ of unmanned ground systems (UGS) came in one of the most benign ADA/Counter-air operational environment the U.S. has seen since the Civil War. In a world where conflict with a ‘near peer’ competitor may be likely, will UGS be as successful and useful as in Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom? If not, are the costs of near-and- mid-term science and technology worth the payback in such a world of technological parity?

Current U.S. Policy and Trends

Currently, neither the United States nor any other nations employ fully autonomous lethal robots. However, strategic science and technology trends do seem to indicate that in 2025 and beyond, with the rapid advancement of technology, lethal autonomous robots and other systems will be available for use by the U.S. military.

U.S. policy trends on lethal autonomous systems date back to when President Gerald Ford signed Executive Order 11905, which outlawed assassinations in 1976. President Jimmy Carter enhanced this order a year later with Executive Order 12036. These two orders banned political assassinations, both directly and indirectly. Four years later, on 4 December 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12333, which stated, “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the U.S. Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.”² On 3 November 2003, with the advent of the Global War on Terrorism, a Predator unmanned aircraft launched a Hellfire missile that killed Abu Ali al-Harithi in Yemen, turning the aforementioned executive orders ‘on their heads.’³

With the publication of Department of Defense Directive 3000.09 in November 2012, the U.S. became the first nation to adopt an official public policy on autonomous systems. This policy placed a ten-year moratorium on the development of lethal autonomous systems, allowing only for the development of non-lethal autonomous systems.⁴ The importance of this directive is that it recognizes the dangers to civilians on the battlefield, and requires a ‘human in the loop’ for the use of lethal force. This directive, however, is for a limited period, and it can be waived by senior DoD officials.

DoDD 3000.09 also addresses lethal autonomous systems used against non-human targets, such as aircraft and incoming ballistic missiles. Specifically, it states:

Human-supervised autonomous weapon systems may be used to select and engage targets, with the exception of selecting humans as targets, for local defense to intercept attempted time-critical or saturation attacks for: Static defense of manned installations and onboard defense of manned platforms.

Although current U.S. policy does not allow for the development of lethal autonomous systems without a ‘human in the loop,’ there are a number of ways autonomous robotics can be employed on the battlefield. Unmanned autonomous systems can maintain line-of-sight communications in contested electromagnetic environments. Autonomous ISR, jamming, decoys, communications relay, and sustainment resupply are just a few of the many missions that autonomous systems can perform, freeing other human capabilities to concentrate upon lethality. These are some of many advantages applicable to these systems.⁵

International Policy Trends

International policy trends indicate that nations may prohibit the use of autonomous lethal weapons systems and robotics on the battlefield in the future. Currently, international protocols incur an obligation not to use weapons that have indiscriminate effects. Although U.S. unmanned systems and potential autonomous weapons systems are precise, they do not possess the ability to determine the second and third order effects of killing another human being.

In 1997, with the adoption of the Ottawa Treaty, the international community banned the use of land mines, one of the original forms of unmanned lethal systems. The United States has not signed the Mine Ban Treaty of 1997 due to the need, in conjunction with South Korea, to use mines to defend the inter-Korean border. However, the United States will fall out of international norms if we choose not to sign such treaties, especially if the signatories to the Law of Land Warfare decide to outlaw armed autonomous systems.

In 2010, the United Nations and the international community entered into force the Convention on Cluster Munitions. This treaty, similar to the Ottawa Treaty, prohibits the use and stockpiling of cluster munitions.⁶

If the international community bans weapons systems, be they mines, chemical, or biological weapons, the ban or restriction comes in six distinct parts. First, in the acquisition, retention, or stockpiling of these weapons, second, in basic or applied research and development, third, in testing, fourth, in their deployment, fifth in their transfer, and sixth, in the use of such weapons.⁷

The Laws of Land Warfare, written over a century ago, will still apply in the use of autonomous lethal systems now, and in all likelihood, in the future. The Hague Convention (IV) requires any combatant “to be commanded by a person.” The Martens Clause, a binding rule of International Humanitarian Law, specifically demands the application of “the principle of humanity” in armed conflict. Without humans, there is no humanity.⁸

Recent examples of International policy trends can be attested to with the recent launch of the “Campaign to Stop Killer Robots”⁹ formed by a coalition of non-governmental organizations, to include Human Rights Watch. The Secretary General of the United Nations called for international action to address the concerns over fully autonomous weapons or ‘killer robots.’ The remarks were the latest in a string of statements that United Nations (UN) officials have made on the topic during 2013 at the Human Rights Council, the Convention on Conventional Weapons, and elsewhere.¹⁰

In March 2013, during a debate in the British Parliament House of Lords, Lord Astor of Hever (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Defence; Conservative) stated: “Fully autonomous systems rely on a certain level of artificial intelligence for making high-level decisions from a very complex environmental input, the result of which might not be fully predictable at a very detailed level. However, let us be absolutely clear that the operation of weapons systems will always be under human control.”¹¹ Article 36, a United Kingdom-based NGO, has praised this pledge, but still calls for further international agreements and treaties to strengthen commitment not to develop fully autonomous weapons and systems that could undertake attacks without meaningful human control.¹²

The group Article 36, derives its name from Article 36 of the 1977 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, which provides the framework for the legal review of new weapons. Specifically, it states: “In the study, development, acquisition or adoption of a new weapon, means or method of warfare,” a party is “…under an obligation to determine whether its employment would, in some or all circumstances, be prohibited,” either by Protocol I, or by “any other rule of international law applicable” to such party.¹³

Although some international organizations have called for a moratorium on the development of lethal autonomous systems, some other nations have continued with development. In 2006, the government of South Korea began installment of the Techwin SGR-A1 Sentry robots along the DMZ with North Korea. These systems are capable of fully autonomous tracking and targeting, although human approval is still required before firing.¹⁴

International policy trends are not the only risk or area of ‘blowback’ the United States may receive in the development of autonomous lethal systems. Our own doctrine and leadership is at risk when they take the human out of the loop.

Autonomous Weapons Systems Change the Operational Environment

Unmanned technologies will continue to improve, and the number of allies, partners and adversaries who possess these systems will continue to rise. Our competitors continue to catch up to the U.S. in unmanned technology. Enemy unmanned systems will complicate air, ground, and maritime operations by adding new low-altitude, ground, and amphibious threats to the force that the United States must be able to counter.¹⁵

Adversaries of the United States and our allies and partners will continue to acquire and develop sophisticated weapons systems, including precision guided munitions, ballistic missiles, stealth, and unmanned aerial systems. Advanced competitors, such as China, Russia, and Iran, as well as non-state actors such as Hezbollah, could possess sophisticated guided weapons, battle network technologies, and land-based reconnaissance strike capabilities.¹⁶

Although the United States maintains clear advantages over our adversaries today, one cannot accept these advantages as being permanent. Other states and non-state adversaries of the U.S. and our allies are likely to obtain lethal autonomous systems in the future. Some of these adversaries are less likely to follow international protocol on the use of lethal autonomous systems.

Unmanned and autonomous weapons systems add physical distance between U.S. soldiers and the battlefield. They remove humans from the kinetic action that occurs in warfare. These systems allow the U.S. military to strike our enemies from a greater distance. However, the use of unmanned and autonomous robots can remove the element of mutual respect between combatants on the battlefield which has persisted over time. Without the mutual respect, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to conduct dialogue with our adversaries. Without dialogue, there is no method to achieve our end state, which, in turn, can lead to persistent conflict.

The largest, and arguably the most dangerous aspect of a changing operational environment will be the impact upon the homeland. Today, service members operate unmanned systems, such as Predator drones out of secure facilities safely inside the borders of the United States. Individuals making the decision to use lethal force are not physically present when using that lethal force. Operating lethal systems from the homeland on a daily basis opens the possibilities of lethal conflict within the borders of the U.S., the directly- opposite desired effect of the last thirteen years of conflict.

America’s adversaries have learned that the most effective way of attacking the U.S. strategic centre of gravity (support of the American people), has been through attrition warfare. The more soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines that appear on television, or ‘come home in a body bag,’ the lower support for action overseas becomes. Drone warfare, and the introduction of unmanned autonomous systems on the battlefield, be they supply trucks or tanks, will remove the danger to American service members on the battlefield. Adversaries will look for asymmetric ways to attack American service members, and probably the most effective way to do it will be in the United States.

America’s adversaries, although they will continue to look for devastating terrorist-type attacks as we saw on 9/11, or even at the Boston Marathon, will look for ‘legitimate targets’ outside air bases in Nevada from where drones are being operated. They will also probably seek to target headquarters of relevant contracting companies. The attacks will not occur on the bases, but rather, when targets of opportunity present themselves. A drone operator stopping at the local 7-11 after shift is but one example. Arguably, one can view lethal UAS operators as legitimate targets, whether they are in a combat zone, or stopping at the local convenience store for milk on their way home from work.¹⁷

The targeting of individuals away from the battlefield is not new to warfare. In fact, it has been demonstrated in the past few years with the assassinations of nuclear scientists in Iran. There is no reason to think that our enemies would not adopt these types of tactics to target individuals in the homeland. This will be different from what we have seen from Al Qaida, in that states that the U.S. engages in hostilities with will look to conduct these asymmetric attacks. They will not be limited to non-state actors.

In most cases, while the UAS pilot and weapons systems operator are not in the area of the target, there is usually someone on the ground confirming the target and giving the command to ‘shoot.’ This is especially true for ‘high value’ human targets. However, attacking the operators of the UAS, no matter where they are located, either via cyber or kinetic means, is a ‘game changer’ in the operational environment, and must be appreciated by the DoD enterprise. It may be possible to cripple the UAS fleet with one or two control centres being taken ‘off-line’ via cyber or kinetic attack in the homeland.

Ethical Considerations

Soldiers, marines, and fighter pilots on the battlefield must often make instantaneous decisions with respect to the use lethal force. They consider not just whether the person seen through the scope is an enemy, but what taking his/her life will mean for the local populace, the tribal leaders in the area, the effects upon the individuals family, and if taking that individual’s life will create more enemies in the future. It is difficult, if not impossible, to think that robots will consider all these factors, or at least, have the capability to sort the relevant factors from the irrelevant.

Making the decision to go to war and kill other human beings easier is a significant risk in the decision to pursue lethal autonomous systems. When U.S. service members are immune to the dangers of combat, and there is no friendly human cost to war, the implication is that there is less of a debate on the decision. The seeming ease of use of drones to kill Taliban in Pakistan and nations within the Horn of Africa, all of which are sovereign nations, was made without much debate, due to the lack of physical risk that U.S. service members face when these operations are conducted. Historical evidence backs this up, as seen with the decision in 1998 to launch Tomahawk missiles towards Sudan and Afghanistan. This may change, however, if and when drone and other autonomous systems proliferate to other nations and non-state actors that may respond in kind to U.S. attacks.

In addition to easing the decision to go to war, lethal autonomous systems lack the human feelings of empathy and common sense. Soldiers working at an entry control point, or standing guard in a tower, can look at the face of a human approaching, or see a family of women and children in the back seat of a car, and make decisions with respect to whether to use lethal force, based upon the aforementioned common sense and empathy. A robotic system does not have this capability.¹⁸ Robots and other autonomous systems can be compared somewhat to ‘benign psychopaths,’ lacking a frame of reference to understand or make moral or ethical decisions, based upon consequences.

The concept of ethical and legal responsibility continually rears its head in the discussion of lethal autonomous systems. In addition to developing procedures for immediate responsibility when autonomous systems injure, maim, or kill the wrong person, or destroy the wrong facility, the Department of Defense will have to develop mechanisms to preclude humanitarian organizations from suing industry. Failure to consider these second and third order effects could produce a situation similar to ‘Union Carbide and napalm’ during the Vietnam era.

To ensure that the United States lives up to ethical concerns in the development of lethal autonomous systems, it should develop and publish emerging laws and ethics in parallel with each system. This means integrating legal and ethical frameworks into science and technology organizations.

‘Error free war’ will always be a myth. Keeping a ‘human in the loop’ is not a panacea to all the ethical risks of lethal autonomous systems. In fact, human judgment can prove to be less reliable than technical indicators in the heat of battle. For instance, during the 1994 friendly fire shoot down of two U.S. Army Blackhawks in the no-fly zone over northern Iraq, the U.S. Air Force F-15s involved made a close visual pass of the targets before engaging them.¹⁹ Pilot error (and human error aboard the AWACS monitoring the situation) contributed to their misidentification as Iraqi military helicopters. Similarly, in 1988, the USS Vincennes engaged an Iranian airliner that it mistakenly believed was conducting an attack on the ship. The warship’s computers accurately indicated that the aircraft was ascending. In this case, human error led the crew to believe it was descending in an attack profile, and, in order to defend the ship, they shot down the aircraft.²⁰ Finally, the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during Operation Allied Force involved precision weaponry, satellite photos, and an efficient planning process, the human error of misidentifying the embassy as something else led to the loss of innocent civilians on the battlefield.

Considering all the ethical considerations, it is important to look at what the risks are in regards to the development of lethal autonomous systems.

Ethical Questions

• Can the decision of life or death be left to a machine?
• Can autonomous systems evaluate proportionality?
• Can autonomous systems anticipate second or third order effects?
• Who is accountable or responsible when autonomous systems make the wrong decision?
• Can a legal system of accountability be devised to cover the use of autonomous systems?
• Does the use of autonomous systems increase the likelihood of a decision to use military force to resolve international affairs?
• Will the unavailability of a human military target increase the likelihood of attacks on civilians?
• Would the use of autonomous systems encourage retaliations, reprisals and terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland?

Risk to Leader Development

The use of autonomous and semi-autonomous systems presents a challenge to the development of leaders throughout our nation’s military. ADRP 6.0: Mission Command defines Mission Command as “…the exercise of authority and direction by the commander using mission orders to enable disciplined initiative within the commander’s intent to empower agile and adaptive leaders in the conduct of unified land operations.”²¹ Moreover, according to Marine Corps doctrine, overcoming or reducing the impacts of fog, friction, and chance on the battlefield require trust in subordinates.²²

Lethal autonomous systems risk losing experienced judgment in unified land operations, contradicting the concept of mission command. Over the past thirteen years of conflict, commanders have given junior officers and NCOs a level of trust and autonomy never experienced before in the U.S. military. What these junior leaders have learned over the past decade will influence them as they grow into senior leaders. In a world of autonomous and semi-autonomous systems, the need for lower- level operators who make life-and-death decisions shrinks. Removing a level of operators who live in the world of tactics may remove a cohort which needs that experience when they become operational and strategic leaders.²³ We cannot create twenty-seven-year-old captains with the “experience, maturity and wisdom” of forty-five-year-old colonels, if those captains have never made the decisions or experienced the combat that forms combat maturity and wisdom.

The DoD Unmanned Systems Roadmap is very direct in the challenge posed by the continued automation of warfare and its impacts to leadership development:

“The automating of actual operation/fighting of platforms will decrease the need for people to crew them, while the personnel needed to simply maintain the vehicles are likely to increase. This has the potential to radically alter the ‘tooth to tail’ ratio in combat forces to heavily favor support personnel vice combat personnel. At the same time, the need for middle-to-senior combatant leaders and decision makers will not change, since they will know the tactics and strategy necessary to operate and direct the autonomous systems. The challenge will be developing middle to senior combatant leaders needed in an environment allowing fewer junior leaders.”²⁴

If the United States is to adopt a wide range of lethal autonomous systems, the Army and the Joint Force will have to make deep, long-lasting changes across Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership, and Education factors (DOTMLPF), and incorporate these systems throughout military culture. From the time that new soldiers enter initial training, they must be prepared to accept that autonomous and unmanned systems will be a part of their arsenal. The autonomous systems may be medical devices designed to assist in lifesaving on the battlefield, or lethal systems designed to kill an adversary that the human cannot sense on the battlefield. Whether lethal or lifesaving, autonomous systems will define the battlefield of the future. Despite the many risks we face in continuing the pursuit of lethal autonomous systems, there are a number of distinct advantages to the use of such systems.

Advantages of Lethal Autonomous Systems

There are clear advantages to the continued pursuit of lethal autonomous and unmanned systems. The ability to project power and lethality increases with the use of unmanned and autonomous systems. From a personnel management standpoint, unmanned and autonomous systems do not carry the same psychological baggage as humans. Robots do not return from deployments and suffer from PTSD. Severely damaged robots can be scrapped, rather than requiring care from the Veterans Administration. Unmanned and autonomous systems increase the range at which U.S. forces can operate, while at the same time the endurance of systems in use increases as well. Unmanned ISR systems can remain on station while pilots change out after eight hours of operational time. Lethal autonomous robots and other systems have clear, distinct advantages in the future of warfare. However, the United States must take ethical considerations into account as policies develop and acquisitions strategy moves forward.

In complex war, the objective is not just to win but to do so while minimizing our losses and minimizing collateral damage, in addition to other goals. Lethal autonomous systems allow us to achieve a reduction, or in the extreme, an elimination of losses, but at what cost? Autonomous systems may prove to be more adept at distinguishing between combatant and non-combatants on the battlefield, thereby enabling better and more precise targeting. Human decision making may be in error due to fear, anger, or fatigue, which narrows the differences with autonomous systems. However, as adept as they may become, robots and autonomous systems will still lack the capability to discern, decide, and understand beyond the engagement at hand.

The use of lethal autonomous systems in battlefield environments, in which there are few if any civilians, further reduces the risk and highlights the advantages of such systems. Autonomous systems to counter adversary submarines or anti-missile systems are examples of wherein the risk to civilians is slight-to-none. As stated earlier in this article, war is fundamentally a human endeavour. Commanders often have to make hard decisions involving life and death in war in achieving objectives. Lethal autonomous unmanned systems provide them with another series of options in situations where they must select from among the lesser of evils.

Conclusion

Countries around the world are continuing to invest in robotics and autonomous systems for a variety of reasons. In Japan, the use of autonomous robotics in the medical field has assisted with caring for an increasingly elderly population. In fact, 30 percent of all commercial robots in the world exist in Japan.²⁵ These robots are strictly non-lethal in nature and designed to assist the population as a whole, not just the Japanese military. By contrast, the United States has invested in both non-lethal and lethal autonomous systems.

If America’s use of drones over the past thirteen years of conflict is any indication, this may become an irreversible trend. The international community, through the use of legal challenges, human rights conventions, and international treaties, will continue to restrict the development and use of lethal autonomous systems on the battlefield.

It will be prudent to continue investment in non-lethal autonomous systems, such as ISR, mine clearing, and CBRN reconnaissance. In addition to saving lives and lowering the risk to service members on the battlefield, having these types of systems unmanned will open positions where a human interface is paramount, such as with respect to civil affairs.

To presume that no one will eventually arm autonomous robots simply because the United States chooses not to do so is naïve, as is the belief that any international convention to prohibit their creation/use will have any binding effect upon those nations that routinely ignore or subvert such treaties. Unfortunately, even without autonomous lethal U.S. systems, non-U.S. made/controlled lethal autonomous robots will likely be a condition of the battlefield under which U.S. troops will operate. The U.S. military should anticipate that other cultures and threats will have no problem crossing this threshold, and we should plan how to counter them now- not later.

This article represents the author’s views and not necessarily the views of the U.S. Army or Department of Defense.

About the author:
*Major Daniel Sukman, U.S. Army, is an Army Strategist. He holds a B.A. from Norwich University and an M.A. from Webster University. During his career, Major Sukman served with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and United States European Command. His combat experience includes three tours in Iraq.

Source:
This article was published in the Canadian Military Journal Vol. 16, No 1.

Notes:

1. Peter Singer, Wired For War ~ The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21^st Century. (London: Penguin Group, 2009), pp. 179, 203.
2. “Executive Orders,” at Archives.gov.
3. Shane M. Riza, Killing Without Heart, Limits on Robotic Warfare in an Age of Persistent Conflict. (Washington: Potomac Books, 2013), p. 37.
4. U.S. Department of Defense Directive 3000.09 “Autonomy in Weapon Systems” 21 November 2012.
5. Ibid.
6. “Where global solutions are shaped for you | Disarmament | Signatories and Ratifying States,” at Unog.ch.
7. Bonnie Docherty, “The Time is Now: A Historical Argument for a cluster Munitions Convention,” in Harvard Human Rights Law Journal 20, 2007, p. 53.
8. Christof Heyns, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions,” Human Rights Council, 9 April 2013.
9. For more information on the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, see stopkillerrobots.org.
10. Report of the Secretary-General on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. 22 November 2013.
11. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldhansrd/text/130326-0001.htm#st_14.
12. “Killer Robots: UK Government Policy on Fully Autonomous Weapons,” Article 36, April 2013.
13. Kenneth Anderson and Matthew Waxman. “A National Security and Law Essay Law and Ethics for Autonomous Weapon Systems Why a Ban Won’t Work and How the Laws of War Can,” Stanford University, 2013.
14. Ty McCormick. “Lethal Autonomy,” in Foreign Policy Magazine, January/February 2014, p. 18.
15. DoD Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap 2013-2038.
16. Robert O. Work and Shawn Brimley, 20YY Preparing for War in the Robotic Age. Center for New American Security, January 2014.
17. If today a member of the Taliban were to ambush a drone operator on a Nevada highway, could he make a case in court that he is a legitimate actor on the battlefield and should be considered a POW with all the rights and protections that come with that status?
18. Consider that your average two-year-old can tell the difference between a red apple and a red ball instantaneously, a computer or robotic system cannot now, nor will in the foreseeable future, be able to accomplish this very simple task.
19. Aircraft Accident Investigation Board Report, U.S. Army UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopters 87- 26000 and 88-26060, vol. 1 (Executive Summary) 3 (May 27, 1994), available at http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/973-1.pdf.
20. Formal Investigation into the Circumstances Surrounding the Downing of Iran Air Flight 655 on 3 July 1988, 19 August 1988, at pp. 37, 42–45, available at http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a203577.pdf. The report concluded that “[s]tress, task fixation, and unconscious distortion of data may have played a major role in this incident.” Ibid. at p. 45. It also noted “scenario fulfillment,” that is, the distortion of “dataflow in an unconscious attempt to make available evidence fit a preconceived scenario.”
21. ARDP 6-0 Mission Command May 2012 (1-1).
22. MCWP 6-11. Leading Marines. 27 November 2002.
23. Shane M. Riza. Killing Without Heart, Limits on Robotic Warfare in an Age of Persistent Conflict. Potomac Books, Washington D.C. 2013 (p 104).
24. DOD Unmanned Systems Roadmap, p. 39.
25. Michio Kaku. The Physics of the Future, How Science will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100. (New York: Random House Publishing, 2011).

By Fatemeh Safavi*

Many stories have been told during recent days about the rise of Islamic State (Daesh) in the northern neighbors of Iran, including in Central Asian republics — as if Daesh, and its supporters, have started an extensive plan to spread insecurity along the northern borders of the Islamic Republic ,as well as in security environment of Russia. Russia’s military involvement in Syria crisis during recent months has also securitized the situation in Caucasus and Central Asia.

The current conditions in West Asia and the general focus on countries like Syria and Iraq have prevented due attention from being paid to the situation in a region, whose cultural, religious and political conditions should be studied in the light of the impact that extremist groups in the Islamic world can potentially have on this region. Familiarity with theoretical foundations as well as fighting methods and policies of Islamic movements, as one of the important actors in the political arena of Central Asia and Caucasus regions, which are both considered as part of the Islamic world, is among noteworthy issues.

Major questions that are currently raised by experts include: Have developments in Syria and Iraq had any security impact on Central Asia and Caucasus and how possible impacts of these developments can be analyzed? And will Russia’s military intervention in Syria prompt Takfiri forces to take the war theater to Central Asia and Caucasus and other spheres of Russia’s traditional influence?

Just in the same way that a move by the former Soviet Union in the past decades led to certain currents that engaged and affected the entire world, this time around, the performance of Russia has had a powerful effect on developments in the world and the region. Therefore, Russia joining the progressive parts of the global anti-terrorism front in Syria has led to heated debates about the necessity of taking more active measures in Central Asia and Caucasus, which are close to Russia’s borders and unlike the Middle East, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, have not gotten out of Russia’s sphere of influence.

They say that a major reason for Russia’s presence in Syria was to protect the security of Central Asia and post-Soviet Union republics. At present, a large number of the citizens of these republics are fighting for terrorist and extremist groups in Syria and Iraq and against governments in both countries. Although different analyses have been so far offered by political circles about this course of events, there is no doubt that Russia’s military presence in Syria is the result of a security necessity felt by the entire region.

After the beginning of the crisis in Syria and the role played by Salafist Islamist figures from Central Asia and Caucasus in committing unprecedented violence, and also due to high influence of such elements in terrorist organizations such as al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or Daesh), concerns raised about possible spread of religious extremism into these regions. As a result, intelligence organizations in Central Asia and Caucasus countries expressed concern in their latest meeting about a phenomenon they described as the “exodus and transfer of Talibanism to territories in Caucasus and Central Asia.” From this viewpoint, Moscow is well aware of the possibility that such Takfiri groups may try to strike blows to its interests in those regions that are considered Russia’s backyard after the beginning of Moscow’s military intervention in Syria. Therefore, in coordination with intelligence services of countries in Central Asia and Caucasus, Russia has embarked on large-scale arrests and routing of all groups that are potentially capable of cooperating with Daesh. In other words, as a result of the securitization of the region, the ruling governments have created difficult conditions for their people.

Following the start of Russia’s military operations in Syria and bombardment of the positions of the Takfiri terrorists, which are considered a serious threat to Moscow and member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), there were hopes that the above risk would be somehow reduced. However, despite what experts thought earlier, after Russia’s intervention in Syria began, countries in Central Asia have practically found themselves at war with Takfiri terrorists.

At present, various groups made up of the nationals of Central Asian and Caucasus countries are coming together under the same flag. One of the serious groups, which is considered as an offshoot of Daesh in Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, is Jaish al-Khorasan, whose main goal is infiltrate into Central Asian countries. In view of the branching that took place among the Taliban following the death of its leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and official announcement by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) about swearing allegiance to Daesh, Daesh is sure to strengthen its positions in Afghanistan in the near future and will gain more influence in that country. It must be noted that “Usman Ghazi,” the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, who swore allegiance to Daesh last summer and vowed his fealty to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of this terrorist group, has been quoted as saying that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is no more a movement, but a state. Ghazi has also said on behalf of all his fighters and followers that ‘from now on, we are a branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in “Khorasan” region’. Allegiance of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to Daesh is, in fact, the latest example of swearing fealty by various groups in the Middle East region, North Africa and Caucasus to Daesh terrorist group; a group, whose reach now extends from Nigeria and Libya to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and even Uzbekistan.

In a possible scenario, semi-autonomous groups and networks and units will take steps to get activated under suitable conditions and will declare jihad after being recognized by leaders of foreign groups. They will plan terrorist operations and assassination of political figures. The difficulty of political and military conditions in Iraq and Syria require that part of forces recruited from Central Asian countries go back to that region or go to Afghanistan. Infiltration of that country by Takfiri forces will certainly sow unrest in northern provinces of Afghanistan. On the other hand, blocking the transit route of terrorists to Syria via Turkey may cause some Central Asian Takfiri groups to stay in their own countries and focus their activities there.

The issue of the nationals of these countries playing role in regional and transregional developments following measures taken by Daesh terror group has raised more concerns among the ruling elites in the region. They are afraid that this issue will lead to conditions in future under which these people would go back to their own countries and set up their own organization and conduct terrorist activities with the goal of destabilizing these countries and speed up the current trend in favor of their own goals and interests.

* Fatemeh Safavi
Central Asia Analyst

Saudi Arabia is continuing to sever ties with Iran, now making moves against tourism and trade.

Saudi Arabia announced Monday evening that all flights to Iran will be cut, and Saudi citizens are banned from travelling to Iran for any reason. Commercial relations are also ending, with businesses pulling out of Iran, according to Reuters.

After Saudi authorities executed prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday, Iranians protested by burning the Saudi embassy and consulate in Iran.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Sudan have all severed diplomatic ties with Iran in the wake of the violence.

At this time, Saudi Arabia will still allow Iranian pilgrims to enter the country for Hajj.

Original article