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Conflicting Interests And Rising Tension In The South China Sea – Analysis

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By Yağmur Erşan

Rising tension in the South China Sea has recently come to constitute the most critical risk of conflict in Asia. Seeing that this contested maritime region is of both political and economic importance, it is not only China and the littoral states of the region that are now vested in the fate of the South China Sea, so is the US. While China claims “historical” sovereignty over nearly the entirety of the South China Sea, other countries oppose China’s territorial assertions in the context of international law. Due to their limited capacities when compared with those of China, littoral states such as the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia have found themselves drawn closer to the US in order to balance China. Pursuing an active policy towards the region, the US has frequently acted in opposition to China. As a result of the sovereignty race, growing nationalism and increasing mistrust have added to the rising tension in the region. Although a physical conflict has not yet been experienced, as the relevant actors size one another up, it can be definitively said that the waters are warming in the South China Sea.

The disagreement between China and the US

China, seeing its supremacy in the South China Sea as one of its most vital interests, is unyielding in its conservative foreign policy in the region. Besides claiming sovereignty rights in the region, Beijing does not hesitate to take unconventional policy measures to enforce its position. In this sense, China increases its military presence in the region on the one hand while strengthening its naval power on the other. Moreover, China’s position as a global power continues to rise in parallel with its assumption of an aggressive attitude in the South China Sea, thus stoking the concerns of both the region’s littoral states and the US. Furthered by the limited capacity of the region’s littoral states to stand up to China, all these developments have paved the way for the US to play a more critical role in the shaping of the region’s balances.

The US’s position in the region rests on five primary principles: peaceful resolution of disputes, continuation of peace and stability in the region, ensuring the freedom of navigation in international waters, adoption of the principle of neutrality in sovereignty disputes, and respecting international norms and principles. A major characteristic of the region disputes, the US and the region’s littoral states call for China to behave in accordance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). According to UNCLOS, littoral states enjoy full sovereignty over the seas and continental shelves expanding 12 nautical miles from their national shores, furthermore, they also enjoy certain economic rights to Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), which can be expanded to 200 nautical miles off their shores. However, the area claimed by China spans far beyond these borders. Indeed, China recently even tried to expand its territorial claims, and its corresponding nautical borders, by building artificial islands. This practice creates an unconventional picture in the implementation of international law of sea. Thus, within the framework of current legal norms, China’s claims have no legal provision.

From time to time, this policy pursued by China increases tensions between China and the US. Most recently, the US sent one of its guided-missile destroyers, the USS Lassen, to patrol within 12 nautical miles of the Spratly (Nansha) Islands on 27 October 2015, thus hoping to send a message to China. However, to counter the US’s maneuver, China immediately sent its warships to the region, further escalating tensions. Moreover, in the beginning of November 2015, US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter visited the USS Theodor Roosevelt, a US aircraft carrier located in the South China Sea, in a symbolic act which was interpreted as emphasizing the US’s balancing role in the region. Additionally, after this visit, Ash Carter stated in a speech in California that the policies followed by Russia and China threaten the balances of the international system. These comments are considered by some to be among the most severe statements issued by the US after the Cold War.

Following the employment of such rhetoric on the part of the US, China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Liu Weimin stated that the US is increasing its military presence in the region under the veil of freedom of navigation and subjecting the sovereignty and security of the countries in the region to unnecessary risk. Although China reiterates its dissatisfaction at every turn, the US continues to grant political, economic and most importantly military support to the other littoral countries of the region. However, such a policy contradicts one of the US’s major principles guiding its engagement in the region, namely, the adoption of neutrality in the relevant sovereignty disputes.

The relations between China and other littoral states

That the aggressive policies pursued by China in the region disturb all regional countries is indisputable. However, it is difficult to say that these countries have engaged in full cooperation and coordination in the face of China.

While Vietnam and the Philippines strictly oppose China’s efforts to establish de facto supremacy in the region, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar assume a more abstentious attitude as they do not wish to come into direct conflict with China. On the other end of the spectrum, Malaysia has recently grown relatively close to China. Therefore, the tension between China on the one hand and Vietnam and the Philippines on the other is the most visible. This dynamic can be seen in the Philippines’ unilateral initiation of arbitration against China and the case’s acceptance by the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration. Following this development, Beijing said “the decision of the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration is not binding for us”, therewith clearly displaying its position. The Philippines expects that the Court’s decision will be finalized in 2016 and that it will recognize the geographical bodies claimed by China as rocks and reefs, not islands. Such would be important because, according to UNCLOS, rocks and reefs, which are not suitable for residence and are void of economic operating systems, do not allow for the formation of EEZs in their maritime environs. Therefore, if the Court decides in such a manner, it would not be possible for China to claim rights to the extensive amount of maritime territory in the region that would be entailed by the establishment of EEZs, or at least China would be in a disadvantageous position from a judicial perspective and thus face legal and diplomatic limits in the international system. Aware of this fact, China carries out regular military exercises in the South China Sea to highlight its naval and aerial supremacy in the region.

The economic advantages of the region, along with their risks

The South China Sea is not only a site of political advantage, it also houses important economic potential. Extending from Singapore and the Malacca Strait in its south to the Taiwan Strait in its north, the South China Sea constitutes a region of crucial importance in terms of its potential energy reserves, its location at the center of various regional trade routes and its vast and diverse fish populations.

China’s claims to the South China Sea are predicated upon the ‘nine-dash line’ that was declared on a map published by the then Republic of China in 1947. However, today the vast maritime region encompassed by this demarcation also includes the established EEZs of the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia. Therefore, the fate of these resources within the territory claimed by China should actually be negotiated among all of the affected littoral states. However, China’s unilateral claims to the entirety of the region preclude the possibility of these states sharing the Sea’s energy reserves and fisheries.

Although it is thought that the region might host rich energy reserves, exploratory efforts have not been conducted transparently in contested regions due to the current tensions. This paves the way for the emergence of myriad scenarios with regard to the energy potential of the region. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that the region houses 11 billion barrels of oil and 5.4 trillion cubic meters (190tcf) of natural gas. However, according to the 2012 estimations of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the region is host to 125 billion barrels of oil and 14.2 trillion cubic meters (500tcf) of natural gas. The huge discrepancy between these estimations has clearly led to widespread speculation. While China shows that it aims to acquire dominance over the potential energy resources by drilling in the region, other littoral states such as Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have been producing oil and natural gas from the offshore reserves long before tensions erupted. Here, these resources are just as vital for a China, whose energy consumption is expected to rise in the near and distant future, as it is for the regional economies, which have invested for years in the technological infrastructure to develop these offshore reserves.

The South China Sea is also one of the most important trade routes in the world, and this is particularly true for the energy trade. Tankers coming from Africa and the Middle East pass through the Malacca Strait and pass over the South China Sea en route to the many major Asian energy importing countries such as China, Japan and South Korea. It can be argued that this is the most preferable route from the west as it is the shortest way to reach Asian countries. According to the EIA’s 2013 data, one third of the world’s oil trade and more than half of the LNG trade are carried out over the South China Sea. Moreover, the South China Sea is also crucial in terms of intra-regional trade. Therefore, considering the trajectory of economic growth rates and the energy demands of Asian countries, the strategic importance of the region is only expected to rise.

Importantly, ways of life in the South China Sea largely revolve around fishing. 10 percent of the world’s fish come from this region. Considering the scale of this billion dollars sector, fishery concerns in the region could come to pose certain problems in the near future when it comes to food security. As can easily be surmised, the most crucial problem in this sense stems from the region’s ambiguous maritime borders, as is made evident in China’s frequent disruptions of Vietnamese fishermen’s activities. Such a state of affairs can fall into further disarray if China comes to use its military instruments in the coming future in defense of its claims.

To sum up, China continues to manufacture artificial islands in the South China Sea while simultaneously exhibiting shows of strength with its recently developed military technology by way of frequent military exercises. Such behavior negatively affects its relations with both the US and other littoral countries of the South China Sea. Nonetheless, signals coming from the US clearly indicate that Washington does not intend to withdraw from the region. Indeed, with the increasing security demands voiced by regional countries due to their limited capacities to stand up to China, it seems that US’s military and economic presence in the region may increase in the near future.

* This article was first published in Analist monthly journal’s December issue in Turkish language.


Qatar Follows Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Recalls Ambassador To Iran

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Qatar recalled its ambassador to Iran on Wednesday, state news agency QNA said.

Qatar’s allies, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, cut their ties with Tehran following attacks on Saudi missions by Iranian protesters, angered by the execution of Shia political dissident Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

Al-Nimr was among 47 people executed for “terrorist activity” in Saudi Arabia on Saturday. He was a prominent Shia cleric and had studying in Iran for over a decade.

“The ministry summoned this morning Qatar’s ambassador to Tehran against the backdrop of attacks on the embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Tehran…,” the agency quoted Khalid Ibrahim Abdulrahman Al-Hamar, the director of the Asian Affairs Department, as saying.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Sudan have all removed their ambassadors from Iran. UAE has changed their diplomatic status, downgrading the current Iranian ambassador to a “charge d’affaires.”

Using Nanoparticles To Combat Arteriosclerosis

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In industrialized countries, a high number of people suffer from arteriosclerosis – with fatal consequences: Deposits in the arteries lead to strokes and heart attacks. Researchers under the leadership of the University of Bonn have developed a method for guiding replacement cells to diseased vascular segments using nanoparticles. They demonstrated in mice that the fresh cells actually exert their curative effect in these segments. However, much research remains to be done prior to use in humans.

In arterial calcification (arteriosclerosis), pathological deposits form in the arteries and this leads to vascular stenosis. Strokes and heart attacks are a frequent outcome due to the resultant insufficient blood flow. Endothelial cells which line the blood vessels play an important role here.

“They produce nitric oxide and also regulate the expansion of the vessels and the blood pressure,” said junior professor Dr. Daniela Wenzel from the Institute of Physiology I of the University of Bonn. Damage to the endothelial cells is generally the insidious onset of arteriosclerosis.

A team of researchers working with Junior Prof. Wenzel, together with the Technische Universität München, the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Bonn Hospital and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt Berlin, developed a method with which damaged endothelial cells can regenerate and which they successfully tested in mice. The scientists transferred the gene for the enzyme eNOS into cultured cells with the aid of viruses. This enzyme stimulates nitic oxide production in the endothelium like a turboloader.

“The enzyme is an essential precondition for the full restoration of the original function of the endothelial cells,” said Dr. Sarah Vosen from Prof. Wenzel’s team.

A magnet delivers the nanoparticles to the desired site

Together with the gene, the scientists also introduced tiny nanoparticles, measuring a few hundred nanometers (one-millionth of a millimeter), with an iron core.

“The iron changes the properties of the endothelial cells: They become magnetic,” said Dr. Sarah Rieck from the Institute of Physiology I of the University of Bonn. The nanoparticles ensure that the endothelial cells equipped with the “turbo” gene can be delivered to the desired site in the blood vessel using a magnet where they exert their curative effect. Researchers at the Technische Universität München have developed a special ring-shaped magnet configuration for this which ensures that the replacement cells equipped with nanoparticles line the blood vessel evenly.

The researchers tested this combination method in mice whose carotid artery endothelial cells were injured. They injected the replacement cells into the artery and were able to position them at the correct site using the magnet. “After half an hour, the endothelial cells adhered so securely to the vascular wall that they could no longer be flushed away by the bloodstream,” said Prof. Wenzel. The scientists then removed the magnets and tested whether the fresh cells had fully regained their function. As desired, the new endothelial cells produced nitric oxide and thus expanded the vessel, as is usual in the case of healthy arteries. “The mouse woke up from the anesthesia and ate and drank normally,” reported the physiologist.

Transfer to humans requires additional research

Normally, doctors surgically remove vascular deposits from the carotid artery and in some cases place a vascular support (stent) to correct the bottleneck in the crucial blood supply.

“However, these areas frequently become blocked with deposits once again,”  said Prof. Wenzel. “In contrast, we are getting to the root of the problem and are restoring the original condition of healthy endothelial cells.” The researchers hope that what works in mice is also possible in humans, in principle.

However, there are still many challenges to overcome, Prof. Wenzel said, “There is still a considerable need for research.”

Is There A Bubble In The Art Market?

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Researchers at the University of Luxembourg are warning of an overheating art market, one of the fastest-growing investment sectors of the past decade, after applying a new bubble detection method analyzing millions of auction records.

Few sectors of the market have rebounded as robustly as art – particularly contemporary art, which has doubled in value since the beginning of the financial recovery following the 2008/09 financial market crisis. Pundits on the side-lines have commented that such market growth is unsustainable, warning there is a bubble in the making that is sure to burst, as seen in the early 1990s and in 2008/09. Headline-grabbing sales of post-war and contemporary works for over $100 million appear to support this argument. But is a bubble really forming?

Market bubbles are generally defined as a dramatic escalation in the volume of trading in assets at prices that exceed their fundamental value, followed by a sudden collapse. Rational expectations put the fundamental value of an asset as equal to its expected discounted cash flow. For most assets it is relatively easy to project this value – for example through dividends on stocks or rent on real estate. In the case of art, however, returns can rarely be correlated to costs of production.

To overcome this fundamental issue, Dr Roman Kräussl, Prof. Thorsten Lehnert and Dr Nicolas Martelin, all from the Luxembourg School of Finance at the University of Luxembourg, have used a new and direct statistical method of bubble detection. They analysed more than one million auction records from the past 36 years, examining six major art styles.

They were thereby able to identify two historical speculative bubbles and find an explosive movement in today’s “Impressionist and Modern”, “Post-War and Contemporary”, “American” and “Old Masters” fine art market segments. In their research, published in the Journal of Empirical Finance, they conclude that today’s art market shows sign of overheating, raising the potential of a severe correction in the foreseeable future.

What A ‘CERN’ For Agricultural Science Could Look Like

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The Large Hadron Collider, a.k.a. CERN, found success in a simple idea: Invest in a laboratory that no one institution could sustain on their own and then make it accessible for physicists around the world. Astronomers have done the same with telescopes, while neuroscientists are collaborating to build brain imaging observatories. Now, in Trends in Plant Science on January 5, agricultural researchers present their vision for how a similar idea could work for them.

Rather than a single laboratory, the authors want to open a network of research stations across Europe–from a field in Scotland to an outpost in Sicily. Not only would this provide investigators with easy access to a range of different soil properties, temperatures, and atmospheric conditions to study plant/crop growth, it would allow more expensive equipment (for example, open-field installations to create artificial levels of carbon dioxide) to be a shared resource.

“Present field research facilities are aimed at making regional agriculture prosperous,” said co-author Hartmut Stützel of Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany. “To us, it is obvious that the ‘challenges’ of the 21st century–productivity increase, climate change, and environmental sustainability–will require more advanced research infrastructures covering a wider range of environments.”

Stützel and colleagues, including Nicolas Brüggemann of Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany and Dirk Inzé of VIB and Ghent University in Belgium, are just at the beginning of the process of creating their network, dubbed ECOFE (European Consortium for Open Field Experimentation). The idea was born last February at a meeting of Science Europe and goes back to discussions within a German Research Foundation working group starting four years ago. Now, they are approaching European ministries to explore the possibilities for ECOFE’s creation.

In addition to finding financial and political investment, ECOFE’s success will hinge on whether scientists at the various institutional research stations will be able to sacrifice a bit of their autonomy to focus on targeted research projects, Stützel says. He likens the network to a car sharing service, in which researchers will be giving up the autonomy and control of their own laboratories to have access to facilities in different cities. If ECOFE catches on, thousands of scientists could be using the network to work together on a range of “big picture” agricultural problems.

“It will be a rather new paradigm for many traditional scientists, but I think the communities are ready to accept this challenge and understand that research in the 21st century requires these types of infrastructures,” Stützel said. “We must now try to make political decision makers aware that a speedy implementation of a network for open field experimentation is fundamental for future agricultural research.”

Humans Adding Less Nitrogen To Oceans Than Predicted

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Human activities are likely contributing far less nitrogen to the open ocean than many atmospheric models suggest, according to a new study. That’s generally good news, but it also nullifies a potential side benefit to additional nitrogen, said Meredith Hastings, associate professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown University and one of the study’s co-authors.

“People may not be polluting the ocean as much as we thought, which is a good thing,” said Hastings, who is also a fellow at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. “However, additional nitrogen could potentially stimulate the ocean’s ability to draw down carbon dioxide out the atmosphere, which might counteract carbon emissions to some extent. But if we’re not adding as much nitrogen, we’re not getting that potential side benefit in the carbon cycle.”

The research is published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Nitrogen is the most abundant gas in the atmosphere and a key ecological nutrient, supporting the growth of plants and providing a food source for microorganisms. But excess nitrogen in aquatic environments can cause overgrowth of algae and other aquatic plants, which can throw ecosystems out of balance. Large algal blooms, for example, can deplete waterways of oxygen, leading to mass fish kills and other problems.

But along with the problems, there’s a potential upside to excess nitrogen. An influx of nitrogen into the oceans could stimulate the growth of phytoplankton and other photosynthetic organisms. Photosynthesis consumes carbon dioxide, so an increase in biological activity could increase the oceans’ ability to draw down atmospheric CO2.

Humans pour tons of additional nitrogen into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels and biomass. Some of that nitrogen is carried by the wind and deposited in the oceans, but just how much of it reaches the vast open ocean far from coastlines isn’t clear. Some atmospheric models estimate that 80 percent of nitrogen deposition to the ocean can be traced to humans, which would represent a huge influx of new nitrogen.

“The models generally assume that the ocean is a passive receptor of nitrogen,” Hastings said. “We wanted to find out if that’s true or if the ocean itself might play a substantial role in emitting nitrogen. If the ocean is playing a role, then this nitrogen deposition isn’t all new nitrogen, from the ocean’s perspective. It’s recycled.”

For their study, Hastings and her colleagues looked at the concentration and composition of organic nitrogen in samples of air and rainwater taken on Bermuda over the course of a year. Bermuda, about 600 miles off the eastern U.S. coast, offers scientists a natural test bed for studying the origin of atmospheric pollutants. The weather over the island is dominated by different air masses at different times of year. For much of the year, tropical air blowing northward from the open ocean dominates. But in the winter, a shift in atmospheric pressure pulls in air masses from the continental United States. Those continental air masses bring a host of industrial and agricultural pollutants with them.

“We have these distinct air masses coming in at different times,” Hastings said. “So we’re able to separate what’s coming from anthropogenic sources and what’s coming from marine sources.”

The study showed that rather than being correlated with the source of air masses, the concentration of aerosol nitrogen is much more tightly correlated to measures of biological activity in the surrounding ocean. As biological activity (measured by a metric called gross primary productivity) increases, so does the concentration of organic nitrogen found in air samples. The molecular makeup of those nitrogen aerosols is also consistent with a marine origin, the researchers found.

“These marine biological processes appear to be producing compounds that are reacting in the atmosphere to create this organic nitrogen,” Hastings said.

Organic nitrogen in rainwater samples appeared to contain somewhat more of a human signature, but was still dominated by marine sources, the study showed. Taken together, the results suggest that the ocean plays a much more substantial role in recycling organic nitrogen than was previously thought and that the role of human-derived sources is overestimated in atmospheric models.

This new finding completes a nitrogen puzzle that Hastings and her colleagues have been trying to piece together over the last few years. Organic nitrogen is not the only source of nitrogen deposition to the oceans. In previous work, Hastings and her team studied oceanic deposition of two inorganic nitrogen-based compounds: nitrate and ammonium. Those studies suggested that while a significant portion of nitrate can be traced to human sources, most ammonium deposited in the ocean is, like organic nitrogen, largely recycled from marine sources.

Combining results from this new work and their previous work on inorganic nitrogen sources, Hastings and her colleagues estimate that about 27 percent of total nitrogen deposition in the open ocean is derived from human sources — much less than the 80 percent suggested by atmospheric models. That has implications for the idea that nitrogen pollution might help to counteract carbon emissions.

“If we’re not putting as much new nitrogen into the open ocean, then we’re not stimulating carbon drawdown,” Hastings said. “So the impact on the carbon cycle is diminished.”

The findings also suggest that more work needs to be done to better represent nitrogen deposition in atmospheric models.

“The models are clearly not getting this right,” Hastings said. “We’re lacking some understanding here, and that’s really interesting to explore.”

Islamic State Threatens To Destroy Saudi Prisons Following Mass Executions

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The Islamic State threatened to destroy Saudi Arabian prisons holding jihadists after Riyadh’s execution of 47 people including 43 convicted al Qaeda militants, Reuters reports.

The militant group, which has claimed responsibility for attacks in the kingdom and stepped up operations in neighboring Yemen, singled out the al-Ha’ir and Tarfiya prisons where many al Qaeda and Islamic State supporters have been detained.

“The Islamic State always seeks to free prisoners, but we calculate that the ending of the issues of prisoners will not happen except with the eradication of the rule of tyrants, and then destroying their prisons and razing them to the ground,” it said in an article posted online on Tuesday.

An Islamic State supporter killed himself in a car bomb at a checkpoint outside Ha’ir prison near Riyadh in July.

While Islamic State and al Qaeda are rivals who have condemned each other on ideological grounds, they are both united in enmity towards Saudi Arabia, which has declared them terrorist groups and locked up thousands of their supporters. Riyadh’s mass execution on Saturday, December 30, included four Shi’ite Muslims, among them prominent cleric Nimr al-Nimr, a move that heightened sectarian tensions with Shi’ite power Iran. But analysts say it was mostly meant as a message to militant Sunnis.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings and shootings in Saudi Arabia since Nov. 2014 that have killed more than 50 people, most of them Shi’ites but also more than 15 members of the security forces.

A Racist And Islamophobic Message – OpEd

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If you were to run into Burt Prelutsky on the streets of Los Angeles or Chicago, you would see an affable looking elderly white male going about his business. A writer for several publications and more recently for a conservative website, the 75-year-old Prelutsky could fool you with his harmless looks. But he churns up some deadly points of view that he passes on to his followers.

Riding on the current wave of Islamophobia that is permeating the US, the right-wing Prelutsky seized the opportunity last month to attack Muslims worldwide with a vitriolic column on the WorldNetDaily. Perhaps bolstered by statements by presidential contenders, such as Trump and Carson, on the threat from Muslims, Prelutsky came up with his own outrageous and alarming notion on how to address the issue.

Insinuating that the violence committed by Muslims is not limited to isolated events, “whether it was Iran’s holding hostages for over 400 days; the attack on the USS Cole; 9/11; the massacre at Charlie Hebdo; the slaughter at the French deli; the burnings and beheadings in the Middle East; Benghazi; the blowing up of the Russian jet; the recent blood-letting in Paris that left 129 dead,” Prelutsky falsely claimed that “Islam was never peaceful. From the very beginning, those who refused to accept Shariah law and to bow down to Makkah were killed.”

He then writes: “My own politically incorrect suggestion is that we remove ISIS from the face of the earth, hopefully as a joint effort with every other nation it has threatened or attacked, and then we do the same to their holy city, not concerning ourselves in the least with collateral damage, letting the Muslims know once and for all that our God is far more powerful and, yes, vengeful than their own puny deity.

“It’s harsh, but they’ve been asking for it for over 1,400 years, and it’s time they got it. I, for one, am sick and tired of seeing the Islamic bullies demand our lunch money and, like a bunch of scrawny wimps afraid of our own shadow, we hand it over. What’s even more appalling, we then pretend we did it because we’re good guys who realized that they’re human beings just like us, and who just happen to be a little bit hungrier than we are.”

Prelutsky continues his Islamophobic rant: “The notion that we in the West can re-educate Muslims or show them a better way to live by our example is foolish in the extreme. It’s not just our movies or our music or the fact that we live in a post-ninth century world that they hate. It’s our art, our culture, our technology, our Judeo-Christian values, our tolerance, our treatment of women, even, for all I know, our love of dogs. The idea that we can civilize them is beyond ludicrous. It would be easier to domesticate snakes and raise them for their milk.”

People like Burt Prelutsky are very dangerous and their message reaches quite a few people. They preach what terrorists elsewhere do. But the laws on freedom of speech cover what they can falsely say to their followers. The danger of such messages is that they increase the divide between people of different faiths which does not bode well for all of humanity.

The Muslims of today in the US are carrying the emblem of the “N-word” of yesteryear on their foreheads. They are free to be targeted and pounced on, their dignity stripped and their faith reviled by bigots and racists pretending to be concerned Americans. And the situation may get worse as more and more right wingers join the vocal chorus. But thankfully there are many Americans who detest and reject outright the message that Prelutsky and his kind wish to promote.

This article appeared at Saudi Gazette.


Ethnicity, Tribalism, And Pluralism In Middle East And North Africa: Solutions To Conflict? – Analysis

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Scholars, policy pundits, policymakers, and journalists have identified any number of reasons for a crisis in the Middle East and North Africa that, starting with the 2011 popular revolts, has swept the region; toppled leaders in four countries – Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen; prompted Saudi-led military interventions in Bahrain and Yemen; ignited brutal insurgencies and wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya; and sparked the rise of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq, and the expansion of its territorial reach to the Gulf and Africa.

Identifying the root causes of the crisis that is shaking the roots of long-standing autocratic, un-democratic rule in the region, irrespective of whether regimes are monarchies or republics, is key to mapping out solutions, particularly ones that hold out hope for pluralism and respect for human, social, economic, cultural, and ethnic rights. Complicating the identification of root causes is the fact that analysts and policymakers were caught off guard by the challenges to autocracy and the Middle East and North Africa’s long-standing nation state order, as well as the emergence of simmering ethnic, tribal and sectarian politics as centrifugal forces.[i]

Turkish Scholar Sener Akturk argues moreover that, on the basis of case studies of Turkey, Algeria and Pakistan, Muslim-majority nations established with a secularist ideology have the potential for struggles over values including pluralism and human rights, between secularists, who are more prone towards universal principles and Islamists, and that these struggles are built at independence into their very nature. These states were “founded on the basis of an Islamic mobilization against non-Muslim opponents but having successfully defeated these non-Muslim opponents, their political elites chose a secular and monolingual nation-state model for these countries, which led to significant and recurrent challenges to the state in the form of Islamist and ethnic separatist movements. Secular nationalism faces a structural and path-dependent crisis of legitimacy in these countries because of what could be described as a historical or “genetic” disjuncture located at the very origins of these nation-states,” Akturk wrote.[ii]

Further troubling the waters is the rise of a public and private anti-terrorism industry[iii] that sees human rights as second to ensuring security and safety; has a vested interest in couching the problem in terms of law enforcement and counter-terrorism rather than notions of alienation, marginalization, socio-economic disenfranchisement, youth aspirations and rights; is abetted by autocratic Middle Eastern and North African regimes that define any form of dissent as terrorism;[iv] and is supported by a public opinion that buys into support of autocrats and some degree of curtailing of rights as a trade-off for security.

Analysts and policymakers have identified a range of causes for the breakdown of the traditional order in the Middle East and North Africa, ranging from a desire for greater freedom and social justice[v] to the fragility of post-colonial regional states as a result of autocratic failure to engage in nation rather than regime building that gave rise to ethnic, tribal and sectarian strife,[vi] to inherent flaws in colonial border arrangements at the time of the demise of the Ottoman Empire such as the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Treaty of Sevres.[vii] All of those notions contain kernels of truth but they have contributed to it becoming common place to pay lip service to the need to tackle root causes of the crisis in the Middle East, and that can mean almost anything. Many also merely embrace notions that are crucial to creating an environment conducive to respect of pluralism and human rights.

Putting One’s Money Where One’s Mouth Is

Yet, translating the need to tackle root causes into policy is proving difficult, primarily because it is based on a truth that has far-reaching consequences for every member of the international community no matter how close or far they are from IS’s current borders. It involves governments putting their money where their mouth is and changing long-standing, ingrained policies at home that marginalize, exclude, stereotype and stigmatize significant segments of society; emphasize security at the expense of freedoms that encourage healthy debate; and in more autocratic states that are abetted by the West, reduce citizens to obedient subjects through harsh repression and adaptations of religious belief to suit the interests of rulers.

The result is a vicious circle: government policies often clash with the state or regime’s professed values. As a result, dividing lines sharpen as already marginalized, disenfranchised or discriminated segments of society see the contradiction between policies and values as hypocritical and re-confirmation of the basis of their discontent. Western nations, for example, in the fall of 2015, deferred to Saudi Arabia’s objections to an investigation by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) into human rights violations by all sides during the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen in which thousands of civilians were killed.[viii] Media reports documented, a day prior to the Western cave-in, a British pledge to support Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s foremost violators of basic human rights and purveyors of sectarianism, in the Council.[ix] The kingdom, at the same time, objected to references to gay rights in the United Nations’ newly formulated Sustainable Development Goals.[x]

Creating a policy framework that is conducive to an environment in the Middle East and North Africa that would favour pluralism and respect of human rights and counter the appeal of jihadism and emerging sectarian-based nationalism is not simply a question of encouraging and supporting voices in the region, first and foremost those of youth, or of revisiting assumptions of Western foreign policies and definitions of national security. It involves fostering inclusive national identities that are capable of accommodating ethnic, sectarian and tribal sub-identities as legitimate and fully accepted sub-identities in Middle Eastern and North African, as well as Western countries, and changing domestic policies in the West towards minorities, refugees and migrants.

Tribalism Meets Modernity

Tribal and sectarian identities and loyalty have been reinforced in Middle Eastern and North African nations as the fragility of nation states becomes increasingly evident and the future of nation states like Syria and Iraq in their post-colonial forms becomes ever more uncertain. Those identities are strengthened by youth bulges that see little prospect for social and economic opportunity and participation in politics against a backdrop of rising education levels. As a result, national identity is often an amorphous concept that positions the tribe with its traditional support mechanisms as a more responsive social and political entity. This trend is furthered by youth’s greater access to information through the Internet. Educated and Internet-savvy youth are conscious of vast income differences in their country and the failure of governments to provide public goods and services. Mounting frustrations drive calls for an end to corruption and greater rights.

The persistence of tribalism is evident in hiring policies in various Middle Eastern and North African countries that officially adhere to non-discriminatory policies but take into account tribal affiliation. It also emerges in low tribal inter-marriage rates and official government emphasis on the concept of tribal values that focus on maintaining peace, enforcing order, protecting the weak, honouring authority, ensuring an equitable hearing and enforcing justice. Cultural events promoted by governments reinforce the trend towards tribalism.[xi] Saudi TV’s popular poetry contest, Shaer al-Milyon, The Million’s Poet, features exclusively tribal contenders whose participation raises their tribes’ profile.[xii] Camel races and beauty contests serve a similar purpose. The emphasis on tribal values and culture is part of a larger focus on heritage intended to cement weak national identities.

Renewed emphasis on tribalism has forced tribes to redefine themselves in a 21st century world in which the issues they confront are no longer access to land and water but social and economic development as well as political stability. It involves striking a balance between being part of a national state and accommodating regional differences that often emulate tribal lines. Ironically, one of the most powerful national symbols that transcends tribal and other affiliations often is the national soccer team. “We all support the national team irrespective of who we are,” said a young Saudi.[xiii]

“Young people are finding living conditions harsh and they are asking, where has the money gone? The younger generation has started to use social media and it is they that will cause human rights problems, as they want to be part of government decision-making. It is the young people who are going back to the tribes because they cannot see anything to be proud about in central government. The older generation is content with the government but they are richer than their children will ever be and have benefited more from the country’s development of the last 40 years,” said a young Saudi.[xiv] “People are suddenly doing their family trees and looking for their origins. Their family lineages are being revived and they have family diwaniyyat (gatherings) every week with all the family who can come. This is happening right across Saudi Arabia, not just in the Hejaz. Tribalism is back now,” added another Saudi.[xv]

To accommodate the trend and ensure that it strengthens rather than weakens national identity and promotes greater identification with the state, youth across the Middle East and North Africa are agitating, to various degrees, for more inclusive governance, by introducing free and fair elections, elevating the fight against corruption, and adopting more equitable social and economic policies.[xvi] This is particularly true in the Gulf states and countries like Syria and Iraq, whose future national borders are in question as a result of civil war that stems from the fragility of a state formed on the colonial legacy of minority rule. The same issues minus tribalism are prevalent in countries like Egypt, a country with a millennial history and a strong sense of national identity.

Northern Iraq exemplifies the significant setbacks the Middle East and North Africa has suffered as a result of sectarian policies by states and non-state actor and the scars of war. A Yazidi mechanic shop owner, who in 2014 survived the slaughter and mass deportation of members of his sect, Ibrahim Hajj returned in mid-2015 to his abandoned village of Sinouni. His return was to be short-lived. Unwilling to contemplate the return of his Arab neighbours on whom his business depended, Hajj was opting to again become a refugee.

“If they (the Arabs) try to come back, and we don’t have weapons to kill them, we will tear them apart with our teeth and nails. I haven’t made a single cent since I came back — with them gone, I have no customers. I have to go back to the refugee camps,” he said.[xvii]

The picture repeats itself in Sunni Muslim towns like Rabea that are populated by tribes that supported the Kurds in their fight against IS. Authorities in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq have yet to connect the town to the power grid. Deep-seated distrust between Arabs and Kurds has replaced once close communal ties. A former Sunni Muslim policeman was rebuffed when he went to check on a Yazidi co-worker. “All of you Muslims are Isis,” the policeman was told.[xviii]

Increased sectarianism and tribalism have significant consequences for stability, national security, pluralism and respect for human rights, particularly in countries whose armed forces are organized along tribal or ethno-religious lines. The potential risk involved is evident in the embattled militaries of Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and built into the dual structures of countries like Saudi Arabia that has a regular armed force tasked with protecting the kingdom’s territorial integrity and a tribal-based national guard that builds on tribes like the Al-Qahtani, Al-Utaibi and the Anizah, for the protection of the regime.[xix] Middle Eastern and North African governments prefer to divert or prevent mushrooming anti-government dissent by encouraging tribal, ethnic or sectarian friction. One Saudi argued that the strategy would fail in the kingdom “because the army and the national guard are tribal. People say there will be no more tribal fighting but it is understood there was fighting near Al-Ha’il earlier in 2014 and trouble in Jouf and Tabuk.”[xx]

Closely related to the issue of tribalism as well as rights, are differing concepts of justice. Rather than notions of justice or in Arabic, ‘adl ‘adāla’, that involve equality, inclusion, non-discrimination and fairness, Middle Eastern and North African tribal societies often employ concepts of ‘adāt wa taqālīd, or tribal customs and traditions to mediate issues of justice and injustice. ‘Adat wa taqalid involves traditions of customary rather than civil or Islamic law. One major difference is that justice in the Western sense of the word involves only parties to a dispute or conflict while tribal tradition can include parties’ communities who may not have a direct material stake.[xxi]

In the case of the international community’s effort to defeat IS, inclusiveness means, for example, that victory has to be secured as much in Raqqa and Mosul, IS’s Syrian and Iraqi capitals, as in the dismal banlieues, run-down, primarily minority-populated, suburbs of French cities that furnish the group with its largest contingent of European foreign fighters;[xxii] the popular neighbourhoods in Tunisia that account for the single largest group of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq;[xxiii] Riyadh, seat of a government whose citizens account for the second largest number of foreign fighters and whose well-funded, decades-long effort to propagate a puritan, intolerant, interpretation of Islam has been a far more important feeding ground for jihadist thinking than the writings of militant Islamist thinkers like Sayyid Qutb;[xxiv] and in Western capitals with Washington in the lead who view retrograde, repressive regimes like those of Saudi Arabia and Egypt as part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Broadening the Debate

Focussing on root causes that are at the core of both the crisis and deteriorating, if not total disrespect of, human rights, means broadening scholarly and policy debate to concentrate not only on what amounts to applying Band-Aids that fail to halt the festering of open wounds but also to question assumptions made by the various schools of thought on how to solve the problem. The facts on the ground have already convincingly contradicted the notion that Western support of autocracy and military intervention primarily through air campaigns despite paying lip service to ideals of democracy and human rights could counter common enemies like IS. It has so far to produced only limited results. Respect for human rights has, in many Middle Eastern and North African nations, significantly deteriorated since the 2011 popular revolts and IS standing its ground a year into a US-led air campaign, a Russian bombing operation that began in the fall of 2015, and ground campaigns by the Iraqi government and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.[xxv] The group continues to advocate a regime that celebrates its rejection of pluralism and human rights and metes out relatively transparent yet brutal justice, and it poses a fundamental threat to the existence of post-colonial nation states as the world knew them, first and foremost Syria and Iraq, but ultimately also others like Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Libya.

Yet, even a convincing defeat of IS would not solve the problem or promote notions of pluralism and respect of human rights. Al Qaeda was degraded, to use the language of the Obama administration. In the process, it weakened a jihadist force that, despite having no appreciation for concepts of pluralism and human rights, increasingly advocated a gradual approach to the establishment of its harsh interpretation of Islamic law in a bid to ensure public support.[xxvi] Instead of reducing the threat of political violence, the largely military effort to defeat Al Qaeda produced ever more virulent forms of jihadism as embodied by IS. It may be hard to imagine anything more brutal than IS, but it is a fair assumption that defeating IS without tackling root causes would only lead to something that is even more violent and more vicious.

Nonetheless, defining repressive, autocratic rule and IS as the greatest threat to regional stability and security and the furthering of more liberal notions is problematic. In the case of IS, that definition elevates jihadism – the violent establishment of pan-Islamic rule based on narrow interpretations of Islamic law and scripture — to the status of a root cause rather than a symptom and expression of a greater and more complex problem. It is an approach that focuses on the immediate nature of the threat and ways to neutralize it rather than on what sparked it. It also neglects the fact that the ideological debate in the Muslim world is to a large extent dominated by schools of thought that do not advocate more open, liberal and pluralistic interpretations of Islam.

That is where one real challenge lies. It is a challenge first and foremost to Muslims, but also to an international community that would give more liberal Muslim voices significant credibility if it put its money where its mouth is. Support for self-serving regimes and their religious supporters, as in the case of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, reduces the international community’s choices to one between bad and worse, rather than to a palate of policy options that take a stab at rooting out the problem and its underlying causes.

To be sure, change and progress towards the embrace of pluralism and universal human rights will have to originate from within Middle Eastern and North African nations. Saudi and UAE efforts to target political Islam as such that have also resonated in the West, were articulated by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair argued against “a deep desire to separate the political ideology represented by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood from the actions of extremists including acts of terrorism.” He acknowledged that it was “laudable” to distinguish “between those who violate the law and those we simply disagree with” but warned that “if we’re not careful, they also blind us to the fact that the ideology itself is nonetheless dangerous and corrosive; and cannot and should not be treated as a conventional political debate between two opposing views of how society should be governed.”[xxvii]

On that basis, it is hard to see why Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia’s puritan interpretation of Islam that is the well-spring of much of contemporary jihadist thinking, does not top the list of ideologies that are “dangerous and corrosive.” Saudi Arabia, like the Islamic State, was born in a jihadist struggle that married Islamist warriors led by an 18th century jurist Mohammed Abdul Wahab, with the proto-kingdom’s ruling Al Saud clan.

The failure of the 2011 popular revolts and the autocratic counterrevolution that they provoked, the rise of IS, increased repression and the region’s deterioration of respect for basic freedoms constitutes a wake-up call for many in the Middle East and North Africa. It has fuelled a long-overdue debate among Arabs and Muslims about the kind of world they want to live in.

In an essay entitled ‘The Barbarians Within Our Gates,’ prominent Washington-based journalist Hisham Melhelm wrote: “The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism — the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition — than at any time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago… The promise of political empowerment, the return of politics, the restoration of human dignity heralded by the season of Arab uprisings in their early heydays — all has given way to civil wars, ethnic, sectarian and regional divisions and the reassertion of absolutism, both in its military and atavistic forms…. The jihadists of the Islamic State, in other words, did not emerge from nowhere. They climbed out of a rotting, empty hulk — what was left of a broken-down civilization.” [xxviii]

For his part, Turki al-Hamad, a liberal Saudi intellectual, questioned how Saudi religious leaders could confront the Islamic State’s extremist ideology given that they promote similar thinking at home and abroad. Al-Hamad argued that the Saudi clergy was incapable of confronting the extremism of groups like the Islamic State “not because of laxness or procrastination, but because they share the same ideology.”[xxix]

Neither Melhelm nor al-Hamad are Islamists. Yet, they reflect widespread soul-searching among Islamists and non-Islamists across the Arab world. Theirs is a debate that predates the rise of the Islamic State but has been pushed centre stage by jihadists, autocrats and misguided Western politicians alike. It is a debate that is at the core of tackling the root causes on which jihadist groups feed, and which in turn has become a primary alibi for autocrats to discount pluralism and greater freedoms. It is, however, also a debate that threatens to be squashed by a policy that focuses on military rather than political solutions and promotes status quo regimes whose autocracy chokes off opportunities for the venting of widespread discontent and anger, leaving violence and extremism as one of the few, if not the only, option to force change.

As a result, the Obama administration’s alignment with the Middle East’s counter-revolutionary forces and targeting of groups other than IS, risks identifying the US with efforts by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt to target political Islam as such. The three Arab nations have cracked down on non-violent groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. The UAE particularly has since called for an expansion of the campaign against the Islamic State to include all non-violent expressions of political Islam. The US alignment prevents it from adopting a policy that would seek to contain IS militarily while focusing on removing the grievances on which the group feeds. It is a policy that is destined, at best, to provide a Band-Aid for a festering wound.

Medium-term Rather than Short-term

Moreover, in a globalized world, events in the Middle East and North Africa, and among minority populations elsewhere with roots in the region, often mutually reinforce one another. By the same token, there are no quick solutions or short cuts. The key is the articulation of policies that over the medium term can help generate an environment more conducive to more liberal change rather than the continuous opting for knee-jerk reactions to events and facts on the ground as was evident in Tunisia’s response to a June 2015 attack on a tourist resort,[xxx] Kuwait’s reaction to the bombing of a Shiite mosque at about the same time,[xxxi] and France’s answer to an almost simultaneous assault on its territory by a lone wolf.[xxxii]

Tunisia deployed 1,000 armed policemen to tourist sites even as tourists left the country en masse, and closed 80 mosques suspected of hosting radical clerics; a move that was likely to push militants further underground.[xxxiii] Kuwait, which displayed a remarkable degree of inclusivity with Sunnis and Shias joining hands in their condemnation of the bombing of a Shiite mosque that left 27 people dead and more than 200 others wounded, looked at adoption of a stringent anti-terrorism law[xxxiv] while France is passing legislation that would authorise sweeping surveillance.[xxxv] None of these measures address the sense of hopelessness and willingness to rebel that potentially pervades predominantly young Muslim minorities in Europe, and is reinforced by increased prejudice sparked by violence and brutality perpetrated by Muslim extremists. That hopelessness is matched by despair and existential fears among youth, minorities, and alienated sects in the Middle East and North Africa.

As a result, Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC, the 2011 Arab revolts, the rise of IS and lone wolf attacks like the assault in January 2015 on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris as well as attacks in Paris, Ankara, Beirut, Tunisia and Kuwait, have served to undermine efforts at greater inclusiveness and assurance of equal rights and opportunity – such as Europe’s pursuit of multiculturalism – and sparked violent counterrevolutionary efforts by Arab autocrats. The result has been, in the Middle East and North Africa, fractured states and increased repression that seemingly place pluralism and respect of human rights in the realm of wishful thinking. Autocratic and Western responses to jihadist attacks and propaganda play into the militants’ hands by fuelling a sense of rejection among disenfranchised and marginalized youth as well as ethnic and religious minorities. All of that is fed by growing intolerance, suspicion of the other, stereotyping, and a feeling of not being welcome among minority groups, and it is strengthened by sectarian policies adopted by Middle Eastern and North African governments.

Ironically, US President George W. Bush’s administration concluded, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, that Al Qaeda was as much a product of US support for autocratic Arab regimes as it was the result of politically bankrupt Arab leaders. The acknowledgement amounted to an admission of failure of a US policy designed to maintain stability in a key geostrategic and volatile part of the world and led to Bush’s ill-fated initiative to promote democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.[xxxvi]

The argument in favour of pluralism and respect for human rights, as opposed to prioritization of security and criminalization of dissent as part of the survival strategy of Middle Eastern and North African regimes, was evident in responses to a video clip produced in 2014 by supporters of storied Moroccan soccer club Raja Club Athletic. At face value, the clip left little doubt about the fans’ support of IS.[xxxvii] The clip shows fans of a club, that prides itself on its nationalist credentials dating back to opposition to colonial French rule and its reputation as the team of ordinary Moroccans, chanting: “Daesh, Daesh,” the Arabic acronym for IS, and “God is Great, let’s go on jihad.”

The clip appeared to reaffirm IS’s widespread emotional appeal to youth across the Middle East and North Africa rather than a willingness on the fans’ part to actually become a foreign fighter in Syria or Iraq. To them, IS symbolized successful resistance for many who were disillusioned by the failure of popular revolts; the intransigence of autocratic regimes that fail to live up to their people’s aspirations; the lack of prospects for economic advancement and political change; and the West’s refusal to empower rebel groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as well as its perceived strengthening of Assad with its military campaign against IS, the foremost opposition to a regime that matches the jihadists in brutality.

The fans attempted to explain their pro-IS video by noting on the group’s Facebook page with its 111,000 followers: “We are terrorists… Our goal is to bomb other clubs. We do not want land or oil, we want titles” below a mock picture of Islamic State fighters with the inscription, “Raja’s Volunteer Championship.” The supporters asserted elsewhere on their Facebook page that “we will not start to argue and beg people to believe that this is a sarcastic action and a joke.” Some supporters dismissed the video as a public relations stunt. They insisted that they were demanding reform not radical change. To emphasize the point, the supporters posted two days after the appearance of the video, an image of Osama Bin Laden with the words: “Rest in Pieces Motherf*****r.”[xxxviii]

The pro-pluralism and human rights argument as a way of solving conflict is also evident in the case of prominent Moroccan dissident rapper Mouad Belghouat, better known as Al Haqed, who was arrested, in 2014 on charges of having scalped game tickets, as he was entering a stadium to watch a soccer match. Al Haqed’s music, like the chanting of pro-Islamic State slogans, reflected growing popular discontent and an increased willingness to challenge the government whom many see as having backed down on its promises for true political and economic reform.

The arrest occurred a day after he had mocked King Mohammed VI on Facebook because he passed a performing group of musicians on his way to Friday prayers. “In Islam, this would be highly disrespectful given the spiritual solemnity of Jumuah prayer, and an even bigger mistake to be made by the ‘Commander of the Faithful’ who claims part of the legitimacy of his rule from his religious status,” wrote Moroccan blogger Zineb Belmkaddem[xxxix].

“Hope for a more democratic Morocco is fading, as the makhzen (the ruling group around the king) went back to relying on its old ways, reassured by the ‘success’ of its systematic crackdown that is responsible for disorganizing groups of protestors through repression and propaganda. Slowly dismantling the February 20th protest movement over the past years, the regime seems to have learned nothing and has chosen to walk backwards to its dysfunctional comfort zone,” Belmkaddem added, referring to Morocco’s 2011 anti-government protests.

Speaking to The New York Times earlier in 2015, activist Moroccan Maouanne Morabit warned that “a major part of the political class refused to discuss in public real issues concerning the ills of our society, namely the role of the monarchy, respect for human rights, the distribution of wealth, and the separation of powers… The kingdom discredited the left, trade unions, civil society and now the Islamists. It will soon face a direct confrontation with the people, and it will no longer have any safety valves.”[xl]

By contrast to most reactions to political violence and expression of pro-jihadist sentiment, Norway’s response to right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik’s traumatic attacks in 2011 that killed 77 people stands as a model for how societies can and should uphold concepts of pluralism and human rights. Norway refrained from declaring war on terror, treated Breivik as a common criminal and refused to compromise on its democratic values. In doing so, Norway offered a successful example of refusing to stigmatise any one group in society by adopting inclusiveness rather than profiling and upholding the very values that autocrats and jihadists challenge.

Conclusion

The result of exclusively security-focussed approaches, coupled with the exploitation of economic opportunity by autocratic Middle Eastern and North African regimes and Western governments, is an increasingly insecure region in which the creation of pluralistic societies that honour human rights seems ever more distant. Said an Egyptian Islamist militant, whose non-violent anti-government activism is as much aimed at opposing the regime of general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al Sisi as it is designed to persuade increasingly frustrated youth that there are alternatives to nihilistic violence: “The strategy of brutality, repression and restricting freedom has failed to impose subservience. It hasn’t produced solutions. Governments need to give people space. They need to prove that they are capable of addressing the problems of a youth that has lost hope. We have nothing to lose if they don’t.”[xli] The Egyptian’s inclinations pointed towards peaceful protest in favour of a more liberal society, albeit bound by Islamic morality codes; his options, however, left him little choice but to drift towards jihadism.

Creating the kind of options that would give the Egyptian militant real choices is easier said than done and unlikely to produce immediate results. It would, among others, have to involve:

  • Recognition that the Middle East and North Africa are in the throes of a brutal process of change that is likely to play out over years. Attempting to halt the process is futile; nurturing it with policies that encourage non-violent, non-sectarian change – even if it means a redrawing of the region’s map and regime change – will ultimately far better serve the reestablishment of regional peace and security and the creation of an environment conducive to pluralism and respect of human rights;
  • Tying political, military and economic support to governments in the Middle East and North Africa to progress towards support of human rights and greater equality for minorities through the adoption of inclusive, non-sectarian, and non-repressive policies;
  • A halt to the global propagation of intolerant ideologies by some Middle Eastern governments and state-sponsored groups such as Saudi Arabia’s interpretation of Wahhabism that contrasts starkly with that of Qatar, the world’s only other Wahhabi state;
  • Abolition of sectarianism in state rhetoric;
  • Recognition of minority rights;
  • Reform of brutal police and security forces that are widely feared and despised;
  • Granting of greater freedoms to ensure the existence of release valves for pent-up anger and frustration and the unfettered voicing of grievances;
  • A crackdown on corruption;
  • Reform of education systems that produce a mismatch between market demand and graduates’ skills.

Source:
This article was published by Middle East Institute – NUS as Insight 135

Notes:
[i] F. Gregory Gause III, “Why Middle East Studies Missed the Arab Spring, The Myth of Authoritarian Stability,“ Foreign Affairs, July/Augist 2011, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/issues/2011/90/4

[ii] Sener Akturk, “Religion and Nationalism: Contradictions of Islamic Origins and Secular Nation-Building in Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan,” Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 96:3, p. 778-806

[iii] John Mueller, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them, (New York: Free Press, 2009) / Glenn Greenwald, “The sham “terrorism expert” industry,” Salon, August 16, 2012, http://www.salon.com/2012/08/15/the_sham_terrorism_expert_industry/ Paul Harris, “How private firms have cashed in on the climate of fear since 9/11,” The Guardian, September 5, 2011, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/05/private-firms-fear-9-11

[iv] Sharri Markson, “UK deal to back Saudi Arabia for UN Human Rights Council exposed,” The Australian, September 29, 2015, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/uk-deal-to-back-saudi-arabia-for-un-human-rights-council-exposed/story-e6frg6n6-1227547936664 / Glen Carey, “A Marriage on the Rocks? Saudis Look Beyond U.S. After Iran Deal,” Bloomberg, July 30, 2015, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-29/a-marriage-on-the-rocks-saudis-look-beyond-u-s-after-iran-deal / Steven A. Cook, ´ The U.S.-Egypt Strategic Dialogue: Drift Along the Nile,” From the Potomac to the Euphrates, Council of Foreign Relations, July 29, 2015, http://blogs.cfr.org/cook/2015/07/29/the-u-s-egypt-strategic-dialogue-drift-along-the-nile/

[v] Sheri Berman, “The Promise of the Arab Spring,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2013, https://www.foreignaffairs.org/articles/libya/2012-12-03/promise-arab-spring

[vi] Center for International and Regional Studies, “Fragile Politics, Weak States in the Greater Middle East (Doha: Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Doha, 2014) / Bassam Tibi, The Simultaneity of the Unsimultaneous: Old Tribes and Imposed Nation-State in the Modern Middle East,” in Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, edited by Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner, 127-151, Berkley: University of California Press, 1990

[vii] Nick Danforth, “Forget Sykes-Picot. It’s the Treaty of Sèvres That Explains the Modern Middle East,” Foreign Policy, August 10, 2015, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/10/sykes-picot-treaty-of-sevres-modern-turkey-middle-east-borders-turkey/

[viii] Nick Cumming-Bruce, “Saudi Objections Halt U.N. Inquiry of Yemen War,” The New York Times, September 30, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/world/middleeast/western-nations-drop-push-for-un-inquiry-into-yemen-conflict.html?ref=middleeast&_r=0

[ix] Markson, “UK Deal to Back Saudi Arabia”

[x] Associated Press, “Saudi Arabia Protests Inclusion Of Gay Rights In UN Development Agenda,” September 27, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/saudi-arabia-protests-inclusion-of-gay-rights-in-un-development-agenda_560841bbe4b0af3706dcaafe

[xi] Shelagh Weir, A Tribal Order: Politics and Law in the Mountains of Yemen, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 80-83

[xii] http://www.livehd.ae/shaer.html

[xiii] Interview with the author March 21, 2013

[xiv] Caroline Montagu. 2015. Civil Society in Saudi Arabia: The Power and Challenges of Association, Chatham House, March, http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/field/field_document/20150331SaudiCivil.pdf

[xv] Ibid. Montagu

[xvi] Multiple interviews by the author in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Iran, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Palestine, and Tunisia in the years 2008-2015

[xvii] Erika Solomon, “Arabs pay the price after Kurds drive Isis out,” Financial Times, September 30, 2015, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c0732b04-65b9-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html

[xviii] Solomon, “Arabs pay the price”

[xix] James M. Dorsey. 2014. Introduction in Jean-Francois Daguzan and Stephane Valter (eds), Armees et Societe, Le Printemps Arabes Entre revolution et Reaction, Paris: Editions ESKA, p. 13-31 / Interview by the author with tribal leaders in 2001 and 2002

[xx] Ibid. Montagu

[xxi] Amr Abdalla, “Principles of Islamic Interpersonal Conflict Intervention”, Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 15 (Fall 2001), p. 151‑184.

[xxii] Richard Barrett, Foreign Fighters in Syria, The Soufan Group, June 2014, http://soufangroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/TSG-Foreign-Fighters-in-Syria.pdf

[xxiii] Barett, “Foreign Fighters in Syria

[xxiv] “Thomas Friedman, “Our Radical Islamic BFF, Saudi Arabia,” The New York Times, September 2, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/opinion/thomas-friedman-our-radical-islamic-bff-saudi-arabia.html

[xxv] David Kilcullen, “We’re Losing the War Against ISIS in Iraq,” The National Interest, September 15, 2015, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/we%E2%80%99re-losing-the-war-against-isis-iraq-13848

[xxvi] William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), p. 47-73

[xxvii] Tony Blair, “Why the Middle East Matters,” The Office of Tony Blair, April 23, 2014, Why the Middle East Matters

[xxviii] Hisham Melhem, “The Barbarians Within Our Gates,” Politico Magazine, September 18, 2014, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/the-barbarians-within-our-gates-111116

[xxix] Al Arabiya, “Saudi Author Turki Al-Hamad: Islam Needs a Luther, a Calvin; Ideology of Most Clerics Is ISIS-Like,” July 13, 2015, http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/5038.htm

[xxx] Jessica Elgot, “Deadly attack on Tunisia tourist hotel in Sousse resort,” The Guardian, June 26, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/26/tunisia-tourist-hotel-reportedly-attacked

[xxxi] Al Jazeera, “Kuwait holds mass funeral for mosque attack victims,” June 28, 2015, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/kuwait-hold-mass-funeral-mosque-attack-victims-150627090813135.html

[xxxii] Matthew Weaver and Haroon Siddique, “France attack: terror inquiry launched and suspect arrested – as it happened,” The Guardian, June 27, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/jun/26/suspected-terror-attack-at-french-factory-live-updates

[xxxiii] Erika Solomon, “Tunisia’s poor neighbourhoods serve as supply line for jihadis,” Financial Times, June 29, 2015, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/675350b6-1e57-11e5-ab0f-6bb9974f25d0.html / Youssef Cherif, “The 3000: Why are Thousands of Tunisians Flocking to Daesh?,” LSE Middle East Centre Blog, September 3, 2015, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2015/09/03/the-3000-why-are-thousands-of-tunisians-flocking-to-daesh/

[xxxiv] Middle East Eye, “Kuwait mulls new ‘anti-terror’ laws after mosque bombing,” June 28, 2015, http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/kuwait-mulls-new-anti-terror-laws-after-mosque-bombing-1694868882

[xxxv] Amar Toor, “France’s sweeping surveillance law goes into effect,” The Verge, July 24, 2015, http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/24/9030851/france-surveillance-law-charlie-hebdo-constitutional-court

[xxxvi] Richard N. Haas, “Towards Greater Democracy in the Muslim World,” Council of Foreign Relations, December 4, 2002, http://www.cfr.org/religion/towards-greater-democracy-muslim-world/p5283

[xxxvii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9YJwdu5Wb0

[xxxviii] James M. Dorsey, “Soccer fan support for the Islamic State: Protest or a new generation of jihadists?,” The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, October 4, 2014, http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.sg/2014/10/soccer-fan-support-for-islamic-state.html

[xxxix] Zineb Belmkaddem, Moroccan Rapper El Haqed – L7a9ed- Arrested again by Moroccan Authorities, زينب بلمقدم، بلوك 1، زنقة الحرية، حي الافتراضي ZINEB BELMKADDEM, May 19, 2014, http://belmkaddem.blogspot.com/2014/05/moroccan-rapper-el-haqed-l7a9ed.html

[xl] Aida Alami, Morocco ’s King Slow to Deliver on Pro-Democracy Vows, The New York Times, June 12, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/world/africa/moroccos-king-slow-to-deliver-on-pro-democracy-vows.html

[xli] Interview with the author, March 2015

Oil Giants Punish Venezuela Through Dutch Treaty

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By Frank Mulder

Venezuela doesn’t want investment treaties anymore if they give investors the right to drag the country before a commercial court. “The system has been set up to break down the nation-state.”

All is not going well for Venezuela. While the country is torn apart by poor governance, poverty and polarisation, it is attacked from the outside by oil firms claiming tens of billions of dollars.

The method these firms use is called ISDS, or Investor-State Dispute Settlement. This is a mechanism by which investors can sue a state by means of arbitration, which is a kind of privatized court. Many lawyers stress the advantage that plaintiffs don’t have to go before a local judge whom they feel they cannot trust. You can choose a judge for yourself, the opponent does the same, and the two of those choose a chairman. They are called arbitrators. The case is heard at a renowned institute, like the World Bank. How could it be more fair?

Biased

But Bernard Mommer, former vice-minister for oil in the time of Hugo Chavez, now the main witness in different claims against Venezuela, has to laugh a bit. “I won’t say that Caracas is a neutral venue. But don’t be so foolish to say that Washington is neutral. The whole arbitration system is biased in favour of investors.”

After Argentina, no country has been sued as much as Venezuela: until 2014 at least 37 cases have been filed against this Latin American state. However, the fine they can expect now exceeds all of the others. ConocoPhillips, a Texas-based oil company, claims 31 billion dollars and seems to be on the winning side. According to critics, that case represents everything that’s wrong with the ISDS system.

Oil dispute

The dispute about oil began in 2006. Under the activist leadership of Chavez, Venezuela decided to nationalise the oil sector. Also, higher taxes were announced. Mommer was responsible for the negotiations with international oil firms about compensation. Most of the 41 companies in the country agreed with the buyout. Two didn’t. Those were the Texas-based companies ConocoPhillips and Mobil (now ExxonMobil).

“When we started with the expropriation, they went for arbitration,” says Mommer. “I didn’t even know that this was possible. For arbitration two parties need to consent, don’t they? How could they sue a state?” But Mommer discovered that Venezuela signed Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) in 1991, among others with the Netherlands. Those treaties give all investors from the given country an offer to arbitration if they feel treated unfairly by the host state.

Dutch sandwich

ConocoPhillips and Mobil quickly moved their Venezuelan holdings to the Netherlands in 2006. That gave them the opportunity to claim, as Dutch investors, that the unexpected policy change violated their BIT rights. Together, they demanded 42 billion dollars.

“This is called the Dutch sandwich”, says George Kahale III, a top lawyer from New York, who defends Venezuela in different cases. “You put a Dutch holding in the middle of your company chain and you can call yourself Dutch.”

Companies are not allowed to do this if the dispute already started. ExxonMobil and Conoco said that their move was made independently of the dispute. However, a remarkable message has been found among the Wikileaks cables. In these a representative of Conoco told someone from the American embassy that they “already” moved to the Netherlands to “safeguard their arbitration rights.”

Unlawful

The cases are still dragging on. ExxonMobil has had no luck. The three arbitrators have judged that the expropriation was lawful. ExxonMobil gets compensation, but not much more than what they were offered earlier, around one billion dollars.

But the Conoco case evolved differently. Two of the three arbitrators found the expropriation unlawful. This means that Venezuela has to compensate the firm, not on the basis of the low oil price in 2006, but on the basis of the much higher price at the time of the claim. This will amount to tens of billions of dollars.

This is insane, says Kahale. “The fact is that four out of six arbitrators found that the expropriation was perfectly lawful. And yet Venezuela can expect a mega award.”

Unfair

Talking about fairness: among the Wikileaks cables another juicy anecdote has been found. In a cable from 2008, the Conoco representative tells the American ambassador that the negotiations are going well and that Venezuela is being reasonable. This is in contradiction to what Conoco was claiming in public. Yet the arbitrators – at least, two of the three – now say that they can’t change their conclusion anymore and now have to proceed to the next phase, about the damages.

“In other words”, says Mommer, “the investor can lie. We can’t sue them anyway. They alone can sue us. This shows why Western countries have invented this system. It has been set up to break down the nation-state.”

Disaster

ISDS is structurally flawed, says Kahale. “Who are the judges? They are investment lawyers. Their commercial background shines through in their decisions. Every judge of course always brings his own views to his job. But in arbitration these people are deciding no longer private commercial disputes, but megacases of international significance, with sometimes vital importance for individual states, involving billions of dollars, with very little training in international law.”

Too many, conflicts of interest arise. “You will never see a supreme court judge acting as a counsel in another case. But many arbitrators also act as a counsel. It’s very hard to preside over the legality of something one day, and advocate the same issue the other day. It is natural that I’m holding back in one or the other, depending on which case is more important to me. There are very few checks and balances. Too many mistakes are made.”

Venezuela is fed up with ISDS claims. Soon after the claims were filed, they pulled the plug, not only from the ICSID convention (which acknowledges the World Bank as arbitration court) but also from a number of BITs. The Dutch BIT was the first to be terminated a few years ago. Unfortunately for Venezuela, this treaty contains a clause giving investors the right to arbitration until 2023.

Don’t challenge us

Arbitration can be an elegant method for solving a dispute. But is has developed into an instrument for multinational companies to pressure states.

“These oil firms were offered a brilliant compensation,” says Juan Carlos Boue, a Venezuelan researcher at the Oxford Institute of Energy. “But when the oil price rose, they decided to leave the country with as much money as possible.” For ExxonMobil, a giant with a revenue of 400 billion dollars, twice as big as the GDP of Venezuela, there is more at stake. “They have unlimited resources. They want to let the world know what happens if you challenge them.”

And the arbitrators? “Some of them are on the boards of multinational companies. They just don’t want the countries to get away with it. They have an extreme dislike towards countries like Venezuela.”

ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips refrained from any comment.

This article is part of a research by De Groene Amsterdammer, Oneworld and Inter Press Service, supported by the European Journalism Centre (made possible by the Gates Foundation). See www.aboutisds.org.

Burma: Christians Wary Of Peace In Ethnic Areas

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By John Zaw

Christian politicians in ethnic areas of Myanmar are concerned that sporadic fighting there will undermine the peace process in the country where insurgents have waged war for decades.

Fresh fighting between the military and ethnic armies in Rakhine and Shan states has displaced hundreds of people who fled their homes and took shelter in monasteries, according to local media reports.

Tu Ja, a Catholic politician from Kachin State Democracy Party, said it’s difficult to know why the fighting is still ongoing even as the country is in a transition from a military-backed government to a new civilian one.

“Fighting must end or it will not bring good results for the peace process. All stakeholders need to implement the national cease-fire agreement,” Tu Ja told ucanews.com Jan. 6.

His party won a seat in the national parliament and three in the state legislative assembly during the Nov. 8 elections that was seen as the country’s freest and fairest in a quarter-century.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy swept the polls against the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party that took power in 2010 following five decades of military rule.

“The first priority of the new government will be building the peace process,” Suu Kyi said in a speech during the 68th Independence Day anniversary celebrations held at National League for Democracy headquarters in Yangon Jan. 4.

Myanmar has grappled with wars between the military and ethnic armies fighting for greater autonomy since its independence from British colonial rule in 1948. Christians heavily populate many of Myanmar’s ethnic-based states.

The outgoing government had inked a peace deal with eight ethnic armed groups past October but seven groups such as the Kachin Independence Army and the Wa State Army boycotted it.

A peace conference is scheduled for Jan. 12, led by the current government with participation from about 700 representatives from the military, government, political parties and armed groups expected to join.

Pe Than, a member of parliament from Myaebon constituency in Rakhine State told ucanews.com on Jan 6 that it is a positive sign that the new government wishes to prioritize peace building.

However, he remains skeptical on whether the government can influence the military to end fighting and bringing peace. “I think it is a tough battle for the new government to negotiate with the powerful military,” said Pe Than a member of the Arakan National Party.

Barack Obama: Firearms Industry’s Best Friend – OpEd

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For several years now, President Obama has been threatening to crack down on gun sales and gun ownership, and the result has been… more guns. As this article notes, the firearms industry is booming (pardon my phraseology), largely because of the president’s anti-gun rhetoric. Surely a man as perceptive as President Obama can see that despite his rhetoric, his actions are responsible for putting more guns in the hands of more people.

Meanwhile, what the president is actually proposing would not limit the availability of guns to the people he says shouldn’t have them. And, it won’t make our communities safer, despite his claims. He wants to broaden background checks, better track illegal firearms trafficking, and improve reporting on guns stolen in transit from manufacturers and dealers, but what are the problems here? The shooters at Newtown, Aurora, Roanoke, Charleston, and San Bernardino all used firearms legally bought after background checks.

His statement notes, “The National Firearms Act imposes restrictions on sales of some of the most dangerous weapons, such as machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. But because of outdated regulations, individuals have been able to avoid the background check requirement by applying to acquire these firearms and other items through trusts, corporations, and other legal entities.” The reason people buy machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, and silencers through corporations is that it is illegal for individuals to buy them. Individuals have to set up a trust or corporation to own those weapons, according to federal law. A sensible way to make the change the president suggests is to allow individuals to buy those firearms just like they buy rifles and handguns today, and they would be subject to the same background checks. I am pretty sure this is not the policy the president has in mind.

But again, is this a problem? I can’t remember hearing about any cases in my lifetime in which any of these weapons have been used in criminal activity. The president is going after something that isn’t a problem, and in so doing is fueling the demand for the things he says he wants to control.

I understand the rhetoric about common sense gun laws, but I don’t see any common sense in what the president is proposing. His proposals won’t do anything to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys, and to the degree that he and his Progressive colleagues would like to limit gun ownership more generally, what he’s actually doing is producing results opposite of what he says he intends.

President Obama must know this. Am I being cynical to view his statements on gun control as political propaganda designed to build support rather than policy recommendations designed to produce results?

This article appeared at The Beacon.

Preliminary Assessment Of Indonesia’s Simultaneous Direct Elections 2015 – Analysis

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By Diego Fossati, Deasy Simandjuntak, and Ulla Fionna*

Since 2005, Indonesians have elected mayors, district heads and governors directly. While some see these elections as a cornerstone of the processes of democratization and regional autonomy, others have suggested that they have failed to increase transparency and strengthen accountability. Despite their deficiencies, however, local direct elections, known in Indonesian as pilkada, are strongly supported by Indonesian voters, who appear to prefer them to indirect elections through local legislative councils.1

On December 9, 2015, local direct elections were scheduled for the first time simultaneously in 269 regions, comprising 224 districts, 36 cities and 9 provinces. To be sure, the outcome of these elections is unlikely to have substantial implications for national policy-making. On one hand, preliminary results indicate that incumbents were able to secure re-election in most regions.2 On the other hand, the link between national and local politics remains weak, as local electoral competitions are shaped almost exclusively by local political dynamics. However, observing this wave of pilkada is a valuable opportunity to assess the status of Indonesian democracy, as these elections serve as indicators of how political parties function, of the capacity of government institutions to enforce the rule of law during the campaign, and of how voting behaviour shapes electoral outcomes. Furthermore, pilkada elections provide new evidence on various issues that have long been known to challenge Indonesian democracy, such as corruption, political financing, candidate quality, vote- buying, and public participation.

This paper analyses pilkada elections in three Indonesian regions, namely North Sulawesi, East Java and North Sumatra. East Java is a politically and economically dynamic region, while North Sumatra is an important site due to its ethnic and religious diversity. North Sulawesi was in turn chosen for its high levels of political fragmentation, competitiveness and participation. Manado, in particular, is an important economic centre in Eastern Indonesia, and one of the few major cities in the archipelago with a predominantly Christian population in a Muslim-majority Indonesia. For each location, we analyze fieldwork data collected in the two weeks prior to Election Day. We focus on a range of issues pertaining to three main areas of electoral politics: the role of candidates and political parties, the dynamics of campaign management and communication, and voting behaviour. We conclude by discussing commonalities and differences across the three field sites, as well as utilizing these elections to reflect on the current state of Indonesia’s democracy.

MANADO: A BATTLE BETWEEN TWO INCUMBENTS

A total of eight pilkada were scheduled in the province of North Sulawesi for December 9, including four districts, three cities and the provincial governor’s race. Among these, mayoral elections in Manado, a Christian-majority municipality of about 400,000, caught national prominence for a controversy surrounding former mayor and ex-convict Jimmy Rimba Rogi.3 While this dispute led to the last-minute postponement of the elections, an episode that aptly illustrates persisting tensions in some Indonesian regions between national regulations and local-level preferences, the electoral campaign in Manado offers valuable insights into the relations between local elites and political parties. Initially, parties appear to be at the margins of politics. In candidate selection, partisanship is neglected in favour of other factors, most importantly the electability of the candidate and his ability to contribute financially to the campaign. While incumbent Vicky Lumentut, a highly- educated career bureaucrat, is a stalwart and provincial head of the Demokrat Party, both his challengers switched parties shortly before the elections. Harley Mangindaan, vice- mayor and son of former minister and North Sulawesi governor Evert Ernest, joined Gerindra after losing the battle for Demokrat Party endorsement to the incumbent mayor. Hanny Joost Pajouw, formerly a Golkar cadre with experience in the private sector, joined PDI-P after it became clear that his party would endorse Rogi for mayor. Candidates are also driving coalition-building among parties, as coalitions are functional to each candidate’s election bid.

In other respects, however, political parties play a key role in local politics. First, they remain the gatekeepers of the political selection process, as independent candidatures are challenging due to existing regulations. 4 Second, political parties offer a decisive contribution to campaign management. While Jakarta-based consultants are occasionally hired, almost all campaign executives are recruited among Manado party cadres and their personal connections. Furthermore, parties can mobilize a capillary, grassroots-level network of sympathizers and volunteers to work for the campaign, a crucial resource for political communication. Candidates supported by political parties thus enjoy a significant advantage over independents.

As for the campaign strategies followed, differences across the three candidates can be identified. The incumbent’s attempt to secure re-election emphasized candidate qualities such as competence and intelligence and an eight-point policy programme advertised in various campaign materials and events. The programme was varied, but it focused on proposals to consolidate the incumbent’s popular social policies (such as free universal healthcare and a scheme for the elderly and disabled) and to strengthen his image as a “pro- rakyat” (pro-people) leader. The vice-mayor also tried to claim credit for popular incumbent policies, but his campaign highlighted two additional factors to differentiate his profile. First, it capitalized on the prestige of his family name, touting this lineage as evidence of the candidate’s leadership qualities.5 Second, it underscored the candidate’s wife’s Sangir background, targeting more aggressively the sub-districts where this community is concentrated.6 Against these two strong contenders, the third challenger tried to improve his electoral prospects by adopting a critical stance on some incumbent policies and by associating his name to that of the popular PDI-P gubernatorial candidate, now governor- elect Olly Dondokambey. For all candidates, campaign communication tactics included a mix of grassroots initiatives, traditional media advertising, engagement through social media, and attempts to obtain endorsements from religious leaders.

Interviews with local political elites and professionals also allow the drawing of some inferences about prevailing patterns of voting behaviour in Manado. First, while there is anecdotal evidence of vote-buying, local politicians are increasingly skeptical of its effectiveness due to the common practice of accepting material benefits from candidates and then voting according to one’s own preferences. Second, candidate attributes such as leadership, integrity and competence are a pivotal driver of voter preferences, especially when compared with partisan affiliations, which appear to be marginal. As for identity- related factors, they are acknowledged to play a role in voting behaviour, although rarely a decisive one. Finally, the case of Manado signals that policy-based voting may be more prevalent in Indonesian local politics than previously thought. Public policy was a powerful tool for the incumbent to shape voting behaviour, and the very strong incumbent performance in this wave of pilkada suggests that Manado may be representative of a national trend in this regard.

EAST JAVA: INCUMBENCY AND AMBIGUOUS VOTERS

There were 18 direct elections conducted in East Java. Three of these are discussed in the following paragraphs, namely the city of Surabaya, and the districts of Malang and Sidoarjo. Electoral campaigns in these three regions clearly show the importance of incumbency in electoral competition. At the same time, voters are increasingly disengaged and uninterested, partly because their involvement in the campaign had been limited by new electoral rules. As such, elections in these three regions reflect trends similar to the other areas, where parties continue to fail in nurturing attractive candidates, and low electoral turnout signals low interest among voters.

The three regions in East Java indicated that some experience in local bureaucracy or as party politicians, afforded candidates visibility and adding to their electability. The two pairs of candidates in Surabaya, three in Malang, and four in Sidoarjo all have these backgrounds. The process of determining candidates depends on parties’ central leaders as well as the electability or popularity of the candidates at the local level. As such, the pairing up of candidates typically reflects the effort to combine various bureaucratic and organizational backgrounds to expand the support base. To name some examples, in Surabaya, Tri Rismaharini is a professional-bureaucrat and Wisnu Sakti Buana provides the party politician background; in Malang, Dewanti Rumpoko is a PDIP politician and her partner Masrifah Hadi has a strong Nahdlatul Ulama background. Similarly, in Sidoarjo, candidate Ustman Ikhsan is a local bureaucrat and his partner is Tan Mei Hwa, a Chinese Muslim preacher.7 In the process of pairing candidates, the effort to appeal to as wide a constituency as possible was clear.

While parties and local politics determined candidacy, they have rather limited influence in the actual running of the candidates’ campaigns in East Java. Most parties have to build alliances with others in promoting the candidates, particularly as there is a shortage of eligible candidates.8 Campaigns were designed by teams (commonly known as tim sukses/success team), consisting of party politicians, professionals, and even consultants. Some notable trends can be seen in the methods used. Instead of the conventional mass rallies, candidates focused on small-scale blusukan (going direct to the small constituencies) where they opted for face-to-face interaction with voters. In addition, there was selective use of social media to reach the technology-savvy constituencies, and limited use of print media to reach the more general constituencies. In terms of the role of the parties’ grassroots, they were influential in determining which specific constituents needed to be engaged by the candidates, although it was not always apparent which grassroots members (numbering in thousands) could actually bring in the votes.

Typically, the candidates’ platforms and programs were rather generic and abstract, with a lot of focus on populist aspects such as education and health. In terms of funding, the candidates’ teams said that while parties would usually donate some, most of the funding came from the candidates and other undisclosed sources. There was also a clear trend of professionalization, as campaign activities were carefully designed under consultation with local experts on politics and also survey bureaus.

On voting behaviour, a few trends could be observed. Firstly, incumbency proved crucial for the three sites studied in East Java, as all the winners were incumbents. This clearly points to the difficulty faced by challengers in offering a better alternative, perhaps due to their lower visibility or the actual efficacy of the incumbents. Slogans such as ‘Surabaya move on’, and ‘New Malang’ offered by challengers simply did not work. Secondly, the low voter turnout (about 40-50 percent) points to the increasing apathy of voters. While the string of corruption cases against various parties had played a role in creating this apathy, the greater control of campaign by the Electoral Commission may also have contributed to the loss of sense of belonging – as voters were much less involved compared to the 2014 legislative elections.9 In contrast with the legislative round last year where voters were more involved in producing paraphernalia and other campaign materials and putting them on display; pilkada serentak featured increased involvement from the Electoral Commission to manage the campaign. While the numbers of debates and mass rallies have been regulated since the 2014 elections, these direct elections saw the campaign paraphernalia (Alat Peraga Kampanye, including the size and locations of the banners) closely regulated. Thirdly, it is increasingly clear that voters have ambiguous perception towards corruption. Although they want clean candidates, they generally will not reject being bribed for votes. While this is clearly a reflection of the poor socio-economic conditions of most voters, it is nevertheless a source of concern for the progress of Indonesia’s democracy.

MEDAN: INCUMBENCY AND APATHY

In North Sumatra, 23 districts and municipalities were scheduled to hold direct elections simultaneously on December 9. However, two regions, namely Pematang Siantar (or Siantar city) and the district of Simalungun, ended up in plights similar to that of Manado’s, and had their elections postponed by the respective region’s KPUs.

The pilkada in Medan, the capital city of North Sumatra province, was marked by a very low voter turnout. Of 1,961,471 registered voters, only 527,206 voted, which meant that the city had only a turnout rate of 26.8%, the lowest among all the regional elections this year.10 According to Medan KPU’s Pandapotan Tamba, such political apathy was due to the high number of elections (e.g. presidential, parliamentary, gubernatorial and mayoral elections) taking place within a short time span.11 While these considerations may hold true for this year’s pilkada in general, low turnout in Medan’s case may also be due to disappointment with the many cases of corruption which have engulfed the leadership of both the province of North Sumatra and the city of Medan in recent years.12 The consequent political apathy, as evident in the abysmal voter turnout, could be interpreted as a “weapon of the weak”, conveying the people’s disappointment with and distrust of their political leaders.

Focusing on this year’s pilkada in Medan, there were only two pairs of candidates: the first pair consisted of the incumbent mayor Dzulmi Eldin and Akhyar Nasution, a PDIP cadre; and the second of the relatively less known Ramadhan Pohan, a parliament member from East Java and a Democrat Party cadre, and Eddie Kusuma, a Chinese-Indonesian businessman-turned-politician. The former was supported by eight major parties including Golkar (the official leader of the campaign team, tim sukses) and PDIP, while the latter was supported by three parties including the Democrat Party and Gerindra (the official leader of their team sukses). The incumbency of the first pair helped boost their popularity in Medan. The fact that the other pair was relatively unknown and did not usually reside in Medan (both lived in Jakarta) made their campaign slogan of “bringing change to governance” sound hollow. Other important facts which did not help the second pair was their past failures in other elections. Pohan, for example, failed in his bid for a national parliamentary seat representing North Sumatra in 2014, and Eddie Kusuma similarly failed in his bid for the national parliamentary seat for Jakarta.

As for campaign methods, both pairs seemed to focus on direct interaction with potential voters by holding free medical clinics in poor areas, going for blusukan (i.e. impromptu visits to markets, the harbour, etc.), getting declaration of support from various ethno- religious groups and participating in cultural/sports events. In contrast to past mayoral campaigns, this year’s campaign period featured only one open rally, held by the incumbent. At the same time, this year’s elections were heavily regulated by the local KPUs, such that campaign paraphernalia, for example, banners, were all provided by them in order to make campaigning financially more equitable between candidates. The candidates were still allowed to distribute small souvenirs and brochures, but the production cost for each item was limited to IDR 25,000 (S$2.5). However, in Medan’s case, the first pair clearly maintained an advantage in their campaign, both in the usage of media, which was well- coordinated and high-tech (due to the presence of a senior media representative on their campaign team), and in the mobilization of local ethnic/interest groups that “voluntarily” put up banners supporting the incumbent candidates.

Accusations of money-politics and the lack of neutrality of the civil service were mostly targeted at the incumbent, although proving this would be difficult. Evidence of gift-giving was however found in poor areas in North Medan, allegedly by both pairs, although the amounts involved were negligible.13 Aside from money-politics, other familiar methods such as the usage of ethno-religious sentiments were also not as intensive as in past pilkada. However, personal communications with potential voters revealed that they might not vote for a candidate who was of Chinese descent.

CONCLUSION

This paper has discussed electoral politics in three Indonesian regions, namely North Sulawesi, North Sumatra, and East Java, to shed light on broader processes of democratic consolidation and regional autonomy in Indonesia. An analysis of candidates running for office, their relations with political parties, their campaign strategies, and of voting behaviour patterns reveals commonalities and differences across the three field sites.

The behaviour of political elites and the relationship between candidates and political parties in particular appear similar across the three regions. First, although the degree to which party machinery plays an important role during the electoral campaign varies across cases, political parties are the primary gatekeeper of the candidate selection process. Second, in selecting candidates for office, parties mainly seek figures with high levels of electability and the capacity to make substantial financial contributions to the campaign. Partisan affiliations are thus fluid, and party coalition formation is not influenced by ideological factors or partisan alignments in the national legislature. Third, the composition of candidate “pairs” is designed to reach out to multiple constituencies, which typically entails matching candidates with diverse ethnic, religious, professional and partisan backgrounds. These three trends strongly suggest that most of the political agency among political elites lies with prominent local figures with political ambitions rather than with party cadres: while parties have the power of nomination, candidates command the votes.

As for campaign strategies, evidence from the three field sites suggests that the method of “blusukan”, or impromptu visits in public places, has become a routine tactic, probably thanks to its direct impact on specific constituencies and its much lower cost compared with conventional mass rallies. Campaign strategies also appear to be more sophisticated and customized with the use of print and social media, which are tailored to the constituencies’ lifestyles and cultural references. Candidates vary in the kind of appeals that they formulate to secure support from voters. For most of them, a focus on personal traits such as integrity, leadership and competence is the cornerstone of the communications strategy. Others choose to complement this approach by also emphasizing identity-related factors or specific policy propositions.

Finally, a few observations about voting behaviour can be drawn based on the analysis presented here. First, low participation is recorded in most regions. While turnout is typically low in local elections in consolidated democracies too, evidence from the field sites suggests that, in the Indonesian case, this may be due to dissatisfaction with the candidates, the low level of trust in local government institutions, and the introduction of new electoral regulations. Second, the incidence of vote-buying varies across regions, and appears to be much more prominent in rural districts in North Sumatra and poorer parts of East Java than in more socioeconomically advanced urban settings such as Manado and Surabaya. Finally, the ease with which most incumbents have secured re-election in this pilkada round raises questions about accountability patterns in Indonesian local politics. Further research and survey-based evidence will have to ascertain if the success of incumbents is a mere product of elite entrenchment or if it is instead a sign of increased accountability between politicians and voters.

About the authors:
*Diego Fossati
is Visiting Fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, e-mail: diego_fossati@iseas.edu.sg; Deasy Simandjuntak is Visiting Fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, e-mail: deasy_simandjuntak@iseas.edu.sg; and Ulla Fionna is Fellow at ISEAS- Yusof-Ishak Institute, e-mail: ufionna@iseas.edu.sg.

Source:
This article was published by ISEAS as ISEAS Perspective 2016 1 (PDF)

Notes:
1 An attempt by the House of Representatives to abolish pilkada in late 2014 was reversed after unprecedented public uproar against the bill.
2 Wahyu Sabda Kuncahyo, “Pilkada Serentak 2015 LSI: Mayoritas Petahana Menang Pilkada”, RMOL, 10 Desember 2015, (http://www.rmol.co/read/2015/12/10/227671/LSI:-Mayoritas-Petahana-Menang-Pilkada-).
3 Rogi’s term was abruptly terminated in 2007 by a nine-year reclusion sentence on corruption charges. After being admitted as a candidate by the local office of the Electoral Commission (KPU) despite his legal standing as free on parole, Rogi’s candidacy was voided by a directive from KPU headquarters. However, on the day before the election, the State Administrative Court of Makassar accepted a complaint filed by Rogi’s representatives, ordering that the mayoral elections in Manado be postponed until further notice.
4 Out of the 23 candidates running for office in North Sulawesi, only five were independent, three of which were from the city of Bitung, an extreme outlier in terms of number of candidates.
5 Ex-governor Evert Ernest Mangindaan, the candidate’s father, is commonly credited to have been a strong, civic-minded leader who ensured peace and prosperity at a time when neighbouring provinces such as Central Sulawesi and Maluku were torn by large-scale ethnic violence.
6 The same heritage, however, was also asserted by Mor Bastiaan, the incumbent mayor’s running mate.
7 There were two pairs of candidates for Surabaya, where Risma-Wisnu had to compete against Rasiyo- Lucy. Malang had two pairs of candidates other than Dewanti-Masrifah, the incumbent regent Rendra- Sanusi and Nurcholis-Mufidz. Sidoarjo had three other pairs of candidates, Hadi Sutjipto-Abdul Kholik, Saifullah-Nur Ahmad Syaifuddin, and Warih Handono-Imam Sugiri.
8 Except for PKB candidates in Sidoarjo (Saifullah-Nur Ahmad Syaifuddin), PDIP candidates in Malang (Dewanti Rumpoko-Masrifah Hadi) and Surabaya (for Risma-Wisnu), and a pair of independent candidates in Malang (Nurcholis and Mufidz), other candidates were backed by a coalition of parties.
9 “Angka Golput Masih Tinggi”, Koran Sindo, 10 December 2015, (http://www.koran- sindo.com/news.php?r=0&n=3&date=2015-12-10).
10 “Partisipasi kota Medan paling rendah”, Republika, 18 December 2015, (http://www.republika.co.id/berita/koran/nusantara-koran/15/12/18/nzji064-partisipasi-kota-medan-paling- rendah).
11 Interview with Pandapotan Tamba, head of Medan’s KPU, 10 December 2015.
12 In the last ten years, North Sumatra has had many elected government leaders brought to custody due to corruption. Among them were two of Medan’s former mayors, Abdillah (who won the 2005 Pilkada) and Rahudman Harahap (who won the 2010 Pilkada), and two of North Sumatra’s former governors, Syamsul Arifin (who won the 2008 gubernatorial election) and Gatot Pujo Nugroho (who won the 2013 gubernatorial election).
13 Interview with Henry Sitinjak, head of Medan’s Election Supervisory Body, 10 December 2015.

Judge Rules Monkey Cannot Own Selfie Photos

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A macaque monkey who took now-famous selfie photographs cannot be declared the copyright owner of the photos, a federal judge said Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick said in a tentative ruling in federal court in San Francisco that “while Congress and the president can extend the protection of law to animals as well as humans, there is no indication that they did so in the Copyright Act.”

The lawsuit filed last year by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sought a court order allowing PETA to represent the monkey and let it to administer all proceeds from the photos for the benefit of the monkey, which it identified as 6-year-old Naruto, and other crested macaques living in a reserve on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

The photos were taken during a 2011 trip to Sulawesi with an unattended camera owned by British nature photographer David Slater, who asked the court to dismiss the case. Slater says the British copyright obtained for the photos by his company, Wildlife Personalities Ltd., should be honored worldwide.

PETA sued Slater and his San Francisco-based self-publishing company Blurb, which published a book called “Wildlife Personalities” that includes the “monkey selfie” photos.

The photos have been widely distributed elsewhere by outlets, including Wikipedia, which contend that no one owns the copyright to the images because they were taken by an animal, not a person.

Slater described himself as a nature photographer who is deeply concerned about animal welfare in court documents and said it should up to the U.S. Congress and not a federal court to decide whether copyright law applies to non-human animals.

North Korea Claims Successful H-Bomb Nuclear Test – Analysis

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By Bruce Klingner*

North Korea announced on January 4 that it had conducted a successful H-bomb nuclear test of a miniaturized warhead.[1] Prior to the announcement, sensors had detected a 5.1 magnitude seismic event at the same approximate location as North Korea’s 2013 nuclear test. Nuclear experts are continuing to analyze the data, but preliminary assessments are that North Korea did indeed conduct its fourth nuclear test. South Korea has convened an emergency cabinet meeting to consider its response.

Seismologists can distinguish between natural earthquakes and man-made explosions since each has distinctive characteristics. The South Korean meteorological administration stated, “Considering the waveform and the amplitude of the earthquake, it seems certain that it was an artificial quake. [There is] the high possibility of it being a nuke test.”[2] An estimated size of the explosion has not been determined nor have radioactive isotopes—which would confirm a nuclear explosion—yet been detected.

Satellite imagery had shown excavation and preparatory activity at the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site during the past two years. However, no indications of an imminent nuclear test were detected prior to the explosion. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un asserted last month that his country had built a hydrogen nuclear bomb to “defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation.”[3] Kim’s initial assertion about hydrogen bombs was met with expert skepticism, and it may be more likely that Pyongyang has achieved a boosted fission rather than a fusion bomb.[4] Such a weapon would be larger than Pyongyang’s first three nuclear tests (and the 1945 U.S. atomic weapons) but not of the magnitude of a hydrogen fusion bomb.

If confirmed, North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, particularly of an improved weapon, is a dangerous development. With its ongoing development of several different missile systems, North Korea poses an increasing direct threat to the United States, South Korea, and Japan. Experts estimate that Pyongyang currently has 10–16 nuclear weapons, with the potential to increase that cache to as many as 50–100 by 2020.[5] North Korea has likely already achieved warhead miniaturization, the ability to place nuclear weapons on its medium-range missiles, and a preliminary ability to reach the continental U.S. with a missile.[6]

What Washington Should Do

Washington should be consulting with Seoul and Tokyo to devise a common response to the North Korean nuclear test. The allied response should include:

  • Convening the U.N. Security Council to implement a new resolution to impose strong punitive sanctions as well as to close loopholes, such as Article 42 of Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, which allows for enforcement by military means. This would authorize naval ships to intercept, board, and inspect North Korean ships suspected of transporting prohibited nuclear, missile, and conventional arms, components, or technology.
  • Calling upon all U.N. member nations to fully implement existing U.N. resolution requirements to prevent North Korea’s procurement and export of missile-related and WMD-related items and technology, as well as freeze the financial assets of any involved North Korean or foreign person, company, or government entity. Any violating government, business, bank, or individual should be subject to sanctions.
  • Adopting a more comprehensive list of prohibited items and materials. The U.N. Experts Group identified several items and materials critical to Pyongyang’s nuclear programs that should be—but have not been—added to the list of products banned for transfer to North Korea.
  • Publicly identifying and sanctioning all foreign companies, financial institutions, and governments assisting North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. The U.N. and U.S. should target financial and regulatory measures against any entity suspected of aiding or abetting North Korean nuclear, missile, and conventional arms development; criminal activities; money laundering; or import of luxury goods.
  • Imposing third-party sanctions. The U.S. should penalize entities, particularly Chinese financial institutions and businesses, that trade with those on the sanctions list or export prohibited items. The U.S. should also ban financial institutions that conduct business with North Korean violators from access to the U.S. financial network.
  • Augmenting U.S. sanctions.[7] President Obama’s assertion that North Korea is the most heavily sanctioned country in the world is simply not true. Washington has targeted fewer North Korean entities than those in the Balkans, Burma, Cuba, Iran, and Zimbabwe.[8] The U.S. has targeted more than twice as many Zimbabwean entities than North Korean. Nor has Washington designated North Korea as a primary money-laundering concern as it has Iran and Burma.

For its part, South Korea should:

  • Resume propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, dramatically increasing broadcasting into North Korea. These efforts should include assessing the viability of using drones along North Korean coasts and removing any restrictions on nongovernment organizations sending information leaflets via balloons into North Korea. The August land mine crisis showed the sensitivity of the Kim Jong-un regime to psychological operations.
  • Sever its involvement in the Kaesong industrial park. The joint business venture was always more focused on political than economic objectives. Since its inception, the Kaesong venture failed to achieve its primary objective of inducing economic and political reform in North Korea and moderating the regime’s belligerent foreign policy.
  • Request U.S. deployment of the terminal high altitude air defense missile defense system. South Korea’s indigenous missile defense system is insufficient to defend against North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threat.[9]

Conclusion

North Korea’s nuclear test is a flagrant violation of numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions. It reflects Pyongyang’s continued pursuit of its prohibited nuclear weapons programs in open defiance of the international community despite countless attempts by the U.S. and its allies to reach a diplomatic resolution. The regime has repeatedly asserted it has no intention of ever abandoning its nuclear weapons, even revising its constitution to enshrine itself as a nuclear weapons state. North Korea’s continuing improvement and augmentation of its nuclear arsenal threatens the U.S. and its allies. It is time for the Obama Administration to abandon its policy of timid incrementalism and fully implement existing U.S. laws by imposing stronger sanctions on North Korea and to work with Congress to determine additional measures.

About the author:
*Bruce Klingner
is Senior Research Fellow for Northeast Asia in the Asian Studies Center, of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, at The Heritage Foundation.

Source:
This article was published by The Heritage Foundation

Notes:
[1] Joohee Cho, Luis Martinez, Tom Liddy, and Emily Knapp, “North Korea Says It Has Successfully Tested Hydrogen Bomb,” ABC News, January 6, 2016, http://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korea-successfully-tested-hydrogen-bomb-amid-earthquake/story?id=36109939 (accessed January 6, 2016).

[2] “S. Korea Says ‘High Possibility’ of Nuke Test by N. Korea,” Yonhap News Agency, January 6, 2016, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2016/01/06/0200000000AEN20160106003252315.html?input=www.tweeter.com (accessed January 6, 2016).

[3] Bruce Klingner, “Why North Korea’s Claim That It Has a Hydrogen Bomb Is Worrisome,” The Daily Signal, December 10, 2015, http://dailysignal.com/2015/12/10/why-north-koreas-claim-that-it-has-a-hydrogen-bomb-is-worrisome/.

[4] Anna Fifield, “North Korea Hints It Has a Hydrogen Bomb, But Skepticism Abounds,” The Washington Post, December 10, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korea-says-its-ready-to-detonate-h-bomb-but-skepticism-abounds/2015/12/10/fe69922e-17ef-4020-8342-1b07fde0a55b_story.html (accessed January 6, 2016).

[5] Joel S. Wit and Sun Young Ahn, “North Korea’s Nuclear Futures: Technology and Strategy,” Johns Hopkins University, U.S.–Korea Institute at SAIS, February 2015, http://38north.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/NKNF-NK-Nuclear-Futures-Wit-0215.pdf (accessed January 6, 2016).

[6] Bruce Klingner, “Allies Should Confront Imminent North Korean Nuclear Threat,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2913, June 3, 2014, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/06/allies-should-confront-imminent-north-korean-nuclear-threat.

[7] Bruce Klingner, “Time to Get North Korean Sanctions Right,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2850, November 4, 2013, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/11/time-to-get-north-korean-sanctions-right.

[8] Bruce Klingner, “Six Myths About North Korean Sanctions,” Korea Chair Platform, Center for Strategic and International Studies, December 19, 2014, http://csis.org/files/publication/141219_Six%20Myths%20About%20North%20Korean%20Sanctions.pdf (accessed January 6, 2016).

[9] Bruce Klingner, “South Korea Needs THAAD Missile Defense,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3024, June 12, 2015, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/06/south-korea-needs-thaad-missile-defense.


The Controversy Of Blasphemy In Egypt – OpEd

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An Egyptian court sentenced the Islamic scholar and theologian Islam Al-Buhairi to one year in prison for blasphemy. Al-Buhairi was accused of insulting Islam in his TV show “With Islam Al-Buhairi” on “Al-Qahira wa Al-Nas” channel. Al-Buhairi questioned the “Islamic heritage”, which angered the Al-Azhar scholarship.

Confused to say luckily or sadly, this sentence against Al-Buhairi was softened from five years to one year. Al-Buhairi’s lawyer Jamil Saad told AFP: “Islam Al-Buhairi didn’t insult religions because the pillars of Islam are the Quran, Allah and the Day of Judgment and he didn’t come close to these circles at all.”

Engaged in a demonstration of Egyptian liberal intellectuals against the conviction of Al-Buhairi, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Nasr said: “Blasphemy is a fascist law. It is a legacy of the Spanish inquisition courts.”

But what did Al-Buhairi really do?

Al-Buhairi’s Blasphemy

Al-Buhairi criticised several books of Islamic interpretation, which according to him include radical interpretations of the Quran and the Sunnah. Al-Buhairi argued in his program that these radical interpretations constitute the basis for extremist organizations such as the “Islamic State” and “Al-Qaeda”.

According to Al-Buhairi, the followers of the prophet Muhammad are the ones who were born or converted to Islam after the demise of the Prophet Muhammad.

“The followers [of the prophet] have no sanctity. They were men and we are men,” said Al-Buhairi referring to the need of scrutinizing the Hadith collections of Mohammad Al-Bukhari and Muslim Al-Hajjaj, Persian Islamic scholars lived in the ninth century.

The Former authored the hadith collection Sahih Al-Bukhari including 7257 sayings and acts of the prophet Muhammad, whereas the latter authored the hadith collection Sahih Muslim including 9200 acts and sayings of the prophet Muhammad.

Al-Buhairi called for examining the interpretations of other ‘men’. He also demanded from Islamic scholars to stop taking Islamic sources for granted because they sometimes contain discriminatory, violence-inciting and illogical arguments

“They had opinions which we would never be able to imagine. This is what we inherited.

“All the bloodiness, killing, sectarianism, backwardness and extremism we are living have jurisprudential basis and not related to the manuscript,” Al-Buhairi explained.

Furthermore, Al-Buhairi accused the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb of doing nothing to reform traditional curriculum of Al-Azhar and to limit the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in Al-Azhar.

Fatwas (Islamic rulings) of Al-Azhar, Al-Buhairi claims, don’t cope with contemporary developments and ways of life followed by the Egyptian citizens.

Al-Azhar’s Debate with Al-Buhairi

While Al-Azhar refused to call ISIS militants infidels (Kafer) claiming not to have the right to call Muslims infidels no matter what their sins were, Al-Azhar initiated court proceedings against Al-Buhairi. Cosequently, Al-Azhar committee, on behalf of Ahmed Al-Tayeb, filed a case against Al-Buhari in April 2015 for “calling the precepts of religion in question and inciting a communal strife among Muslims.”

Media Centre of Al-Azhar told Egypt Independent in 2015 that Al-Azhar’s position rejects Al-Buhairi’s views describing him as abnormal and deliberately undermining the imams and scholars of Islam. Al-Buhairi, according to Al-Azhar scholarship, is ignorant or unaware of the great Islamic heritage, which has enriched the Islamic library and even the world.

The Egyptian hard-line Salafist Abu Ishaq Al-Huwaini described Al-Buhairi last year as an ignorant, who thinks “Christians are not infidels”. The Salafi Muhammad Hassan said: “Throughout history, those who fought against Allah and his messenger have never succeeded.”

It is noteworthy that after hundreds of years as an independent institution, Al-Azhar was nationalized in 1961 by former President Jamal Abdel Nasser. Since that time, Al-Azhar has become inseparable from the government. It has become the official institution to oversee cultural and educational materials related to the Islamic faith.

Al-Sisi’s Islamic Revolution

In a speech to Al-Azhar scholars on 01 January 2015, Abdulfattah Al-Sisi said: “we are in need of a religious revolution […] That thinking—I am not saying “religion” but “thinking”—that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralised over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world.”

Al-Buhairi’s statements can be seen as a part of a campaign to renew the Islamic discourse initiated by Al-Sisi upon his presidential win in 2014. Controversially, Al-Sisi needs Al-Azhar, which is responsible for the content of sermons in more than 140,000 mosques across Egypt. Thus Al-Sisi pointed out clearly that all changes in religious discourse should be within the framework of the state apparatus and headed by Al-Azhar institution.

In response to Al-Buhairi’s thoughts, Al-Sisi said in April 2015 that: “When I spoke about religious discourse, I just posed a title and did not go into detail,” claiming that he doesn’t agree with Al-Buhairi’s statements.

Blasphemous Critical Thinking

While a spirit of critical thinking can be detected in the writings of many Egyptian intellectuals about sensitive religion-related topics, these intellectuals have been systematically subjected to hate campaigns and crimes according to the Human Rights Watch. Here are two examples:

The story of professor Farag Foda in the beginning of 1990s, an activist in the field of human rights, is a case in point. He was assassinated by Al-Jama’a Al-Islamiyya in 1992 not because of his atheism and infidelity but because of his harsh criticism of the violence of the armed Islamic groups. While Foda was a critic of religious intolerance, his murderers, religious zealots, proved him right. Because the killers didn’t like Foda’s writings, they simply killed him.

The Egyptian liberal theologian and university professor Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd also suffered a major religious persecution in the 1990s and had to flee to the Netherlands to be safe. The crime of Abu Zayd was his academic work. When certain individuals refused to accept his academic research, they took it to the Egyptian court instead of the Egyptian debate. The court declared him an apostate and based on this sentence, he was not to remain married to his wife Ibtihal Younis, a French Literature professor. The logic behind the forced divorce is that Muslim women are not permissible to marry non-Muslims.

Constitutionally, blasphemy (contempt of monotheistic religions) is based on the article 98 of the Egyptian Penal Code, which was added 1982 and then amended in 2006. According to this law, citizens who insult or ridicule heavenly religions, propagate extreme ideas for the purpose of inciting strife or contribute to damaging national unity can be confined for a period of no less than six months and no more than five years. This is, in other words, a legal license for the Egyptian state and its religious institution to persecute its own intellectuals.

Bleak Prospects For Latin America Under Trans-Pacific Partnership – Analysis

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By Ian Gustafson*

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, agreed to on October 5, 2015 by the twelve participating countries, is likely to prove disastrous for the Latin American states—Chile, Mexico, and Perú—that have joined the pact up to now. Multinational economic interests based in the United States have exerted extraordinary influence over the accord, inserting language that will arguably serve to damage Latin American interests.

Though the TPP has often been presented as a disinterested effort to stimulate basic economic growth and development in the Pacific Rim, the economic principles that underlay the TPP may instead serve to advance the interests of the world’s leading corporations. U.S. President Barack Obama promised in a statement that the TPP would slash over 18,000 foreign taxes that the U.S. faces for its exports.[1] Despite being heralded as a path to prosperity for developing countries, eliminating protectionist measures in countries like Chile, Perú, and Mexico could prove to be very harmful.

The great nineteenth century German economist Friedrich List argued that developed countries calling for expanded free trade in less developed countries is hypocritical as well as misleading. As List put it, “it is a very common clever device that when anyone has attained the summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he has climbed up, in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him.”[2]

Britain and the United States, which historically have been unflagging proponents of free trade for developing countries, both adopted free trade policies only after they were technologically advanced enough not to need protectionist policies.[3] Britain adopted free trade in the mid-nineteenth century, while the United States eliminated its highly protectionist policies only in the early twentieth century.

The unprecedented productivity gap that exists today between developed and developing countries makes high tariffs and other support for infant industries even more necessary to provide protection and foster the conditions under which today’s advanced countries developed, according to Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang.[4]

The United States’ promotion of free trade in the Trans-Pacific Partnership ignores its own history and could set a troubling course for the Latin American states involved, which will now have an even more difficult time competing in global markets. The TPP, whose twelve members represent some 40 percent of the global economy, pits two of the world’s three biggest economies (the U.S. and Japan) against much smaller states in a productivity battle.[5] It will not be a fair fight, but neither is it guaranteed that any adjustation of the free trade zone will necessarily bring economic justice to some of the poorest countries in the world.

Even the most ardent defenders of free trade ideology acknowledge that there are certain conditions under which protectionism is the better policy, conditions that are present in the Latin American countries taking part in the TPP. Economists of international trade agree that improving a country’s terms of trade—the ratio of the price of goods it exports to the price of goods it imports—is unequivocally beneficial.[6] Tariffs improve a country’s terms of trade, because a tariff will lower demand for the imported good and increase demand for the now relatively less-expensive domestically produced product. Latin American states generally export lower-priced goods and thus have quite a bit to gain from improving terms of trade; the TPP hampers the potential for these gains by eliminating tariffs on goods from more developed states.

Pro-Corporate Regulations

Besides promising some potential macroeconomic difficulties for the Latin American countries involved, the TPP also includes provisions to allow big corporations to undertake more unrestricted and potentially predatory behavior.

One part of the agreement that has been generating quite a bit of criticism from the left is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement Program, or ISDS. The ISDS permits companies to sue governments directly if they believe any TPP country has legislation that could restrict their potential future profits, with the hearing before a tribunal of three private sector lawyers operating under United Nations guidelines.[7] U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) has argued that this provision will violate the sovereignty of individual country’s legislative bodies and provide far too much leverage for corporations.

Senator Warren also condemned the TPP’s ISDS program for not providing adequate safeguards for impartiality. “ISDS could lead to gigantic fines, but it wouldn’t employ independent judges,” she noted. “Instead, highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgment the next.”[8]

The Investor-State Dispute Settlement Program, which also exists in other trade agreements, does not directly override laws, but imposes a financial penalty for regulations that are restrictive to big business.[9] This provides a financial incentive for states to be lax in their regulations, and will likely force smaller states to give in to corporate demands or else risk stiff financial penalties. For less-developed Latin American states which do not have the discretionary government funds that some other countries do, this issue will be particularly acute. Further, taxpayers will have to pay the legal defense bills when their nations decide to take on the corporate titans.

The ISDS is not the only section of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that will potentially provide corporate interests with ruinous power at the expense of less developed nations. Language from the trade pact suggests that it will be far more difficult for generics to challenge brand-name pharmaceuticals abroad, and that there is a serious possibility for monopolistic competition in that industry with the passing of the TPP.[10]

The TPP’s treatment of the pharmaceutical industry has sparked controversy because it requires eight years of data exclusivity for all prescriptions for all countries except Australia.[11] This lack of transparency for drug companies would make it impossible for TPP countries to make a generic version of new drugs. Language from the TPP also suggests that negotiating bulk purchases of drugs from these companies will be significantly more expensive for governments that use such bulk purchases for aid programs and prisoners.[12]

Doctors without Borders suggested in a press release that, “The TPP agreement is on track to become the most harmful trade pact ever for access to medicines in developing countries.”[13] Restriction of access to affordable drugs will deny a fundamental human right to the poor, and could become a devastating burden for the people in TPP’s Latin American countries. Preventing generic medicines from entering the market is particularly devastating in light of the ascension of India’s revolutionary generics program that has made life-saving medicines accessible to even its poorest citizens, a model that could be implemented in Latin America if not for these regulations.

Some commentators have suggested that the TPP is at its core a geopolitical maneuver by the U.S. and any economic benefit from the agreement is really a secondary consideration. There certainly is some truth to this statement. The United States is desperate to follow through on President Obama’s “pivot to Asia” and establish a foothold there to combat growing Chinese geo-political power. The TPP provides just the vehicle for them to do so.

Many analysts agree that Obama’s argument that the trade pact will be a stanchion against China’s power in Southeast Asia will be an effective cudgel in his efforts to get Congress to pass the deal.[14] Another important geopolitical consideration that likely motivated America’s leadership in this endeavor was the tension between the United States and Japan in recent decades over trade policy. The TPP is meant to assuage any concerns that Japan, one of America’s most vital allies, might have about future trade wars with the U.S.[15]

Despite all the rhetoric that the U.S. espouses about lifting countries out of poverty with free trade and economic union, a significant reason for the U.S. to lead the way in establishing the Trans-Pacific Partnership was geopolitical concerns. It is manipulative for America to involve poor Latin American countries in Washington’s global political ambitions, especially when that involvement comes with a potential hit to economic health.

NAFTA’s Foreboding Example

An illuminating example of how seemingly well-intentioned free trade agreements can end up exacerbating inequality within designated countries and unfairly benefitting American corporations, as the TPP seems poised to repeat, is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was enacted in 1993 and implemented in 1994.

In the aftermath of NAFTA’s inception, two million Mexican agricultural laborers lost their jobs and eight million farmers were forced to sell off their land at fire-sale prices.[16] They simply could not compete with more technologically advanced American farming, especially in producing corn, which remained heavily subsidized in the United States. The suffering of Mexican farmers under free trade terms is a stirring example of Friedrich List’s “kicking away the ladder” thesis, and should provide a cautionary note for additional Latin American countries joining the TPP.

In fact, the World Bank’s poverty headcount ratio metric for Mexico displays a higher proportion of people in poverty there today than before NAFTA’s passage in the early 1990’s, and inequality has widened in the country by several metrics.[17] It is easy to imagine the TPP having similar results for its Latin American members.

Further, the regulations that NAFTA eliminated in Mexico had served as a valuable safety net for many poor Mexicans. Provisions of the agreement forced the liquidation of the Compañía Nacional de Subsistencias Populares (CONASUPO), or the National Company of Popular Subsistence, which for years had prevented monopoly control and price speculation to protect basic commodities and staple foods. In early 2007, a 67 percent increase in the price of tortillas left many impoverished Mexicans hungry and desolate without the price guarantees CONASUPO had offered.[18] The ISDS portion of the TPP threatens to spell doom for protective regulations like CONASUPO that would restrict corporations from exploitative practices that would jeopardize the welfare of Latin America’s poorest residents.

While the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s terms have yet to be fully disclosed by the participating countries, early indications suggest that this could be a very harmful agreement for the Latin American states involved. Creating a favorable climate for business to operate in was clearly a major goal, as was slashing the trade barriers that would force nascent Latin American industries to compete with more developed economies. Only time will tell what the practical repercussions will be, but additional Latin American states should exercise caution while considering joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Certainly more profound dialogue is needed.

*Ian Gustafson, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Notes:
[1] The White House Office of the Press Secretary. Statement by the President on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, 2015. Web. 8 Oct. 2015

[2] Chang, Ha-Joon. “Kicking Away the Ladder: Infant Industry Promotion in Historical Perspective.” Oxford Development Studies. Volume 31, No. 1, 2003. Page 24.

[3] Chang, Ha-Joon. “Kicking Away the Ladder: Infant Industry Promotion in Historical Perspective.” Oxford Development Studies. Volume 31, No. 1, 2003. Page 25.

[4] Chang, Ha-Joon. “Kicking Away the Ladder: Infant Industry Promotion in Historical Perspective.” Oxford Development Studies. Volume 31, No. 1, 2003. Page 27.

[5] Granville, Kevin. “The Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal Explained.” The New York Times, August 1, 2015.

[6] Irwin, Douglas. Free Trade Under Fire (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2007), Page 99.

[7] Sargent, Greg. “Elizabeth Warren fires back at Obama: Here’s what they’re really fighting about”. The Washington Post, May 11, 2015.

[8] Warren, Elizabeth. “The Trans-Pacific Partnership clause everyone should oppose”. The Washington Post, February 25, 2015.

[9] Sargent, Greg. “Elizabeth Warren fires back at Obama: Here’s what they’re really fighting about”. The Washington Post, May 11, 2015.

[10] Grunwald, Michael. “Leaked: What’s in Obama’s Trade Deal”. Politico.

[11] McGregor, Jaynce. “Spin Cycle: Will joining the TPP increase drug costs?” CBC News, October 16, 2015.

[12] McGregor, Jaynce. “Spin Cycle: Will joining the TPP increase drug costs?” CBC News, October 16, 2015.

[13] Doctors Without Borders. Trading Away Health: The Trans-Pacific Partnership. 2015. Web 11 October 2015

[14] Calmes, Jackie. “Trans-Pacific Partnership is reached, but faces scrutiny in Congress.” The New York Times, October 5, 2015.

[15] Solís, Mireya. “The geopolitical importance of the Trans-Pacific Partnership: At stake, a liberal economic order”. The Brookings Institute, March 13, 2015.

[16] “The Failures of NAFTA”. The Council on Hemispheric Affairs. June 19, 2012. Accessed October 15, 2015.

[17] “Poverty and Equity”. The World Bank. 2015. Accessed October 15, 2015.

[18] “The Trans-Pacific Partnership”. Bilterals.org, 2015. Accessed October 13, 2015.

Challenges And Opportunities For Russia After North Korean Hydrogen Bomb Test – Analysis

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By Tony Rinna*

Even in situations where diplomatic negotiations over the North Korean nuclear weapons program are handled in a largely bilateral level, there is still often an element of multilateralism, as exemplified by the late Ambassador Bosworth’s briefing to Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov regarding DPRK-US bilateral talks in 2009. Now, once again, Russia has received a challenge and an opportunity not only for its diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula, but for its broader relations with other states in Northeast Asia and, in particular, the United States.

The North Korean nuclear program is a case-in-point of where defense and diplomacy meet, for both are highly important factors in the Korean nuclear crisis. Given the highly multilateral nature of international handling of Pyongyang’s WMD program, the Russian Federation, which has been a somewhat lesser yet significant actor in diplomatic negotiations with the DPRK, may have a chance to play a greater role in this most recent development, and thus mitigate some of its own diplomatic isolation.

To be sure, there is some speculation and uncertainty as to whether North Korea has a truly functioning hydrogen bomb, or if it is a close but yet-incomplete hydrogen explosive device. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt of a new shift in the security landscape of both the Korean Peninsula and the broader Northeast Asia region. Regardless of whether this test means that North Korea currently does possess a functioning hydrogen bomb or is close but not in full possession yet, the Korean security game has been ratcheted up to a new level. Seeing as a hydrogen bomb has even more destructive power than a nuclear weapon, the stakeholders in the Korean nuclear crisis must now contend with an ever higher-stakes situation that will require even more diplomatic finesse.

Among the members of the former Six Party Talks, the Russian Federation was in a rather unique position. After the collapse of the USSR, its relationship with North Korea took a dramatic downturn, especially as post-Soviet Moscow established diplomatic relations with Seoul. Russia’s official policy toward North and South Korea was often described as “equidistance” toward the two Korean states. China, for its part, stepped into the void and became more closely aligned with North Korea.

After ties between China and the DPRK began to worsen once again, Russia has moved in as a partner for North Korea once again. This partnership has been limited largely to economic considerations. The DPRK and Russia have, however, initiated some limited cooperation on security issues, such as the signing of an agreement on preventing dangerous military activities in Northeast Asia. Yet even with these developments, there are certain limits to this revived partnership between Pyongyang and Moscow.

A common perception of the budding DPRK-Russia partnership is that both countries see an opportunity to essentially team up against the West. A crucial point to remember, however, is that while Russia may be willing to cooperate with North Korea on some economic and even security issues, North Korea’s nuclear program remains a source of anguish for Moscow just as it does for other countries in the region.

Shortly after the test, Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee of the upper house of Russia’s parliament, declared on his Facebook page that such activities directly affect Russia’s national security interests.

Not only has North Korea’s nuclear test drawn concern from Moscow, but Russian citizens in Primorsky Krai (the Russian federal division that shares a small border with North Korea) have also expressed concern about the potential for nuclear fallout to reach inhabited areas. The Primorsky Weather Center, however, has declared that citizens did not need to worry, as the test was underground, and that radiation will not be carried by the wind into any residential parts of the region.

In response to the test, South Korean president Park Geun-hye has called for the UN Security Council to issue new sanctions against North Korea. The Japanese government has also condemned the test, and has stated that it will be in close contact with other regional governments, including that of the Russian Federation, regarding the incident.

One of the most crucial factors in Russia’s stance toward the North Korean nuclear crisis is that it has been a major proponent of multilateral talks and not just bilateral discussions between Pyongyang and Washington. To be sure, while the Six Party Talks have officially been defunct since North Korea walked out after its second nuclear test in 2009, informal negotiations and interactions between regional stakeholders have continued in earnest. This does not mean, however, that they have in any way been equal. Just as Russia fought hard to earn a place at the Six Party Talks against American wishes, Russia has once again found its interests affronted in the unofficial interstate interactions over the DPRK’s nuclear capabilities. Russia regarded the Sino-American cooperation on UN Resolution 1718 as an unpleasant surprise.

The news surrounding the North Korean test may present an opportunity for Russia to mitigate its diplomatic isolation. The last North Korean nuclear test occurred in 2013, before Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the attendant international condemnation. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia has a chance to present itself as a cooperative and constructive actor on the international stage. As Russia shares concerns with the US, there may be a chance for Russia to mend some of its broken ties with the US.

Yet while Russia has been condemnatory of the DPRK’s nuclear adventurism in the past, it has also been less outspoken than the United States in this regard. Depending on the extent to which Russia considers its revived partnership with North Korea to be important, Moscow’s diplomatic calculations may lead it to either take a harder stance toward Pyongyang, or continue in its role of condemning North Korea’s tests but not in the same way as the US. Regardless of which direction Russian diplomacy takes, the North Korean nuclear test will likely provide Russia yet another major opportunity to exercise some level of influence in inter-Korean and Northeast Asian affairs. In the end, the Kremlin will do what it feels is best for Russia’s own national interests. Yet it may also be a chance for Russia to mend broken bridges, or at least portray itself once again as a responsible member of the global states’ system.

About the author:
*Tony Rinna
is a specialist in Russian foreign policy and security affairs in East Asia. He currently resides in South Korea.

Source:
This article appeared at Modern Diplomacy

China To ‘Firmly Oppose’ North Korea’s H-Bomb Test – OpEd

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By Mitchell Blatt*

China has expressed firm opposition to North Korea’s nuclear test, but their foreign affairs spokesperson wasn’t clear about whether China would be open to sanctions or any other disciplinary actions.

The nuclear test was the lead story on the Shanghai Morning Post on January 7, 2016, under the headline, “Firmly Oppose North Korea Again Testing Nuclear.” Shanghai Morning Post is published by the Liberation Daily Newspaper Group, a government-connected company that publishes Liberation Daily, the official daily newspaper of the Shanghai Committee of Communist Party of China.

According to the text of the article, the Foreign Ministry expressed anger at North Korea’s continual stifling of international and Chinese efforts to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, but they didn’t state what–if any–reprisals North Korea would face:

A reporter asked did North Korea alert China of its test before hand? And will China consider adopting sanctions against North Korea? The Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Hua Chunying said, about the first question, that China was completely in the dark about the nuclear test before it happened. About the second question, [he said] China will continue to fulfill its international obligations, and the international community will work hard together to achieve a nuclear-free North Korean peninsula.

Foreign Affairs spokesman Hua also said China would make efforts to monitor the environment near the North Korean border to assess whether the test had made any pollution impact on China.

About the author:
*Mitchell Blatt moved to China in 2012, and since then he has traveled and written about politics and culture throughout Asia. A writer and journalist, based in China, he is the lead author of Panda Guides Hong Kong guidebook and a contributor to outlets including The Federalist, China.org.cn, The Daily Caller, and Vagabond Journey.

Source:
This article was published by Bombs and Dollars

The Iran-Saudi Confrontation: Who Will Win In The End? – Analysis

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By K. P. Fabian

2016 has begun with a sudden escalation of tension between Iran, the leading Shia power, and its regional rival, Saudi Arabia, the leading Sunni power. Such escalation, unless addressed, can have serious adverse consequences for regional stability and peace and also for the efforts under way to bring to an end the war in Yemen and the wars in Syria. It might also have an impact on oil prices, by either accelerating the fall in prices or inflating them.

Let us look at the basic facts. On 2 January, Saudi Arabia announced that it had executed 47 persons, all Saudi citizens except for a Chadian and an Egyptian. The most prominent person executed was Nimr al-Nimr, 57, a Shia leader who had never advocated violence against the Saudi state. He had spoken out for the rights of the Shias who are concentrated in the eastern part of the kingdom. Incidentally, oil is also concentrated in the same region. It is difficult to take seriously the official Saudi assertion that Nimr-al-Nimr was a terrorist.

Nimr, arrested in 2012, was sentenced to death in 2014. King Abdullah, the previous ruler, was apparently reluctant to permit Nimr’s execution. King Salman, 80, ascended the throne in January 2015. He has had a stroke and is believed to have delegated powers to his nephew Mohammed bin Nayef, 55, the Crown Prince, and Mohammed bin Salman, 30, the Deputy Crown Prince and Defence Minister. The Defence Minister is believed to be a hard-liner and is probably the main force behind the decision to intervene militarily in Yemen. The intervention begun in March 2015 faces an uncertain future and it might not prove as successful as anticipated in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of being behind the Houthi rebels. But, so far, no evidence has been brought forward pointing to Iranian involvement. Most observers are of the view that the Houthis revolted because of grievances against the newly adopted constitution and that they succeeded in dislodging President Hadi only because of support from the previous President, Saleh. But even more than the troubles in Yemen, it was the US-Iran nuclear deal that infuriated Riyadh, which was under the wrong impression that Iran could be treated as a pariah forever. Despite Saudi opposition, the US went ahead with the Iran nuclear deal. And Saudi Arabia got slightly disenchanted with its American ally. Earlier, following the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Shias had taken over political power in Iraq, which increased Iran’s regional clout. Saudi Arabia fears that, with the nuclear deal, Iran’s clout will increase even more and that this is likely to pose a serious threat to it.

It was Jordan’s King Abdullah who some time back spoke of a ‘Shia crescent’ led by Iran posing a danger to the Sunnis. Perhaps, it was an unnecessary coinage and in any case it was adopted by Iran’s neighbours and the West with much alacrity. The ‘Shia crescent’ is supposed to include the Alawite regime of Basher al Assad in Syria and the Lebanese Hezbollah. One of the main reasons for Saudi Arabia’s insistence on the exit of Assad from power is his closeness to Iran.

Riyadh broke off diplomatic relations following the attack on its Embassy in Tehran and its Consulate General in Mashhad. The Saudi missions desperately requested for protection from the Iranian Foreign Office, but no protection was given. Attack on an embassy is always unpardonable whatever the provocation. But the key question is: Did Riyadh expect that it could execute Nimr without provoking adverse reaction in its own eastern region and elsewhere in the region? Anyone familiar with the region could have told Riyadh of the perilous consequences of executing Nimr and branding him as a terrorist. Washington pointed out the dangers, but Riyadh ignored the warnings and concluded that a tough message to Tehran was in the best interest of the kingdom. Is it the case that Riyadh had correctly anticipated the likely outrage in Tehran and elsewhere and still went ahead as it wanted to provoke Iran into doing things that might unravel the nuclear deal? If there was any such calculation it was a wrong assessment of the ground realities.

How much support can Riyadh expect in its confrontation with Tehran? Within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), there is no unanimous support. Bahrain has broken off diplomatic relations and broken air links with Iran, UAE has downgraded relations, and Kuwait has merely recalled its ambassador. Qatar and Oman have not followed the Saudi lead and are unlikely to do that going by their past behaviour. Riyadh has cut off trade and air links, though it has added that pilgrims from Iran can come. We do not know whether Iranian pilgrims will go to Saudi Arabia in big numbers. But the Saudis might be worried that trouble-makers might be among the pilgrims. There is potential for trouble when and if Iranian pilgrims are subjected to extra security checks.

Outside the GCC, Sudan broke off relations with Iran, and Egypt has lent support to Saudi Arabia. But, given the lack of strong support within the GCC, such outside support does not count much. Washington has embarked on damage control, but as of now its clout in Riyadh is not rising. Unless the military intervention in Yemen is proved to be a disaster, and it might take time and more deaths in Yemen for that to happen, the current toll being 6,000, Riyadh is unlikely to look at any course correction.

What are Iran’s options? The Shias in Bahrain and in eastern Saudi Arabia can be encouraged to revolt. Tehran can send military assistance to the Houthis. At present, we do not know whether Iran will exercise any of these options. Incidentally, Nimr never sought support from Iran and wanted to fight for the Shias without involving foreign powers. Iran has the option to watch the disarray within the GCC and do what it can to deepen it as subtly as possible. Iran might as well watch the rather concealed succession battle in Riyadh. The GCC itself was established as Saudi Arabia and its neighbours felt threatened by the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini had condemned hereditary monarchies as incompatible with Islam.

Coming to oil, usually any political tension in West Asia pushes prices up as speculators seek profit. This time, prices did go up marginally for a while before coming down. Iran had threatened to interfere with the movement of oil tankers in the past. But it is unlikely to threaten such a course of action this time around. Its primary focus is upon getting rid of the sanctions and to revive its economy. It may not even engage in an oil war with Saudi Arabia by flooding the market with oil. In the past, even during the Iran-Iraq war and Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, OPEC has met and conducted business almost insulated from politics. In any case, the clout of the 13-member OPEC accounting for one-third of world oil production has decreased following the surge in US production.

What will be the impact of the Tehran-Riyadh confrontation on Syria? The UN Security Council passed Resolution 2254 on 18 December 2015 authorising the Secretary General to take the lead for a political, negotiated resolution of Syria’s plight. The process is supposed to start in early January. For long, Saudi Arabia had resisted Iran’s participation in the talks on Syria. It was only recently that the US, after great efforts, succeeded in making Saudi Arabia consent to Iran’s participation. However, Riyadh made uncomplimentary comments on Iran after the meetings. For sound diplomatic reasons, the Saudi Permanent Representative to UN Abdullah al-Mouallimi has announced that the confrontation will not affect the talks on Syria and that Riyadh is prepared to work with Tehran. Since Riyadh has branded Tehran as a sponsor of terrorism, it is difficult not to ignore the incoherence in Saudi public pronouncements. All told, there is a distinct probability that the Syrian political process will be adversely affected by the confrontation. The same can be said about the UN-sponsored efforts for a political solution in Yemen.

How might the confrontation affect India? For India, both Saudi Arabia and Iran are valuable partners and there is no question of choosing one against the other. Indian diplomacy should not find it difficult to navigate in the troubled waters and take care of India’s interest.

In the chess game between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the former is in a better position. Saudi Arabia might need to attend to course correction sooner or later. Iran is going to have Parliamentary election in weeks and the conservatives opposed to President Rouhani’s opening to the West might have been behind the attack on the Embassy. But the Government should not have permitted such an attack. It is doubtful whether the US or any other power can do much to de-escalate the mounting tension between Tehran and Riyadh. Probably, the confrontation might have to get worse before it gets better. But a war is unlikely.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India. Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://idsa.in/idsacomments/the-iran-saudi-confrontation_kpfabian_060116

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