A senior Iranian official has said that Tehran will take action should Pakistan fail to meet its obligations with regard to the construction of a pipeline for receiving Iran’s natural gas.

“Iran has taken plenty of measures with regard to gas exports to Pakistan and has already laid out a major part of the pipelines as far as the Pakistani borders,” Ali-Reza Kameli, CEO of National Iranian Gas Exports Company, said.

“It would be natural that every country would think about the interests of its own people. Therefore, if Pakistan’s action harms our interests we will definitely act in line with terms of the contract,” Iranian petroleum ministry’s official monthly Iran Petroleum quoted Kameli as saying.

He complained that Pakistan has not taken “any specific action with regard to the construction of 780 kilometers of gas pipeline on its soil under the pretext of sanctions on Iran.”

“Therefore, the project has been held in abeyance…In every contract, penalties are envisaged for non-compliance with obligations, but Iran does not like to enter the phase of penalties vis-à-vis its neighboring country with which it has friendly ties,” said Kameli.

Iran plans to deliver 21.5 mcm/d of gas to Pakistan.

Iran looks on course to emerge from sanctions under a July 2015 nuclear deal.

However, Islamabad was dragging its feet even before the West imposed new sanctions on Tehran in 2012.

The US has long pressed Pakistani officials against going for the pipeline, promoting Turkmen over Iranian natural gas even though the route requires the extra mile of more than 700 km across volatile regions in Afghanistan.

The energy crisis in Pakistan which suffers about 12 hours of power cuts a day has worsened in recent years amid 4,000 megawatts of electricity shortfall.

Iran has completed its part of the gas pipeline project with more than $2 billion of investment but Pakistan has fallen behind the target to take gas deliveries in the winter of 2014.

Contractually, Pakistan has to pay steep fines to Iran for failing to build and operate its section of the pipeline by the winter of 2014.

Original article

In an exemplary punishment, the Criminal Court in Taif, Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man in his twenties to 20 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for raping and blackmailing a young woman.

Sources reveal the young man violated the housewife and threatened to publish her inappropriate photos online.

Upon receiving a report, authorities arrested the man, who admitted to the charges at the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution. He was then handed over to the court in Taif, where he was sentenced.

The 2,000 lashes would be carried out in parts with 70 at a time. The court ruled that some of the lashes would be carried out in commercial markets after Isha prayer and some after Friday prayer. His name would be announced to the public with his face exposed during the punishment.

The first round of lashes was carried out on Tuesday night in front of the Taif International Market after Isha in the presence of a number of security agencies and a representative from the province and the Haia.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it is worried by the terrorism charges brought against Mahmood Al Jazeeri, a journalist with the independent daily newspaper Al Wasat, who has been held for the past 12 days

Al Wasat’s parliamentary correspondent, Jazeeri has been formally charged with supporting terrorist activities funded by Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Arrested during a raid on his home on the morning of 28 December, when electronic equipment was seized, he is one of 12 suspects who are charged in this case. His last article, published the day before his arrest, referred to a controversial bill before the Shura Council, the Bahraini parliament’s upper house, providing for the confiscation of state housing from members of a family whose head has been stripped of his nationality.

RSF is concerned about the nature of the charges and calls for Jazeeri’s immediate and unconditional release.

“Journalists cannot be treated as terrorists just for criticizing the government in their reporting,” said Alexandra El Khazen, the head of the RSF’s Middle East desk. “Security grounds cannot justify violations of freedom of information. RSF calls for the release of all journalists who are unjustly detained in Bahrain.”

Jazeeri was also officially accused on state TV of seeking to overthrow the government, inciting hatred, having contacts with a foreign country and supporting the unauthorized Al Wafaa movement and the 14 February Coalition, which has been organizing peaceful demonstrations since 2011.

An Al Wasat source told RSF that Jazeeri has not been a member of any political movement since joining the newspaper in 2012.

Wafaa Marhoon, Jazeeri’s lawyer, told Al Wasat four days after his arrest that the authorities had yet to produce any evidence against him. When contacted by RSF, she stressed the importance of the political context and the vagueness of Bahrain’s terrorism legislation, which makes it hard to defend anyone accused of terrorism.

If convicted, Jazeeri is facing the possibility of a life sentence and being stripped of his nationality.

This is not Al Wasat’s first run-in with the authorities. It has been closed arbitrarily several times, including last August, when it was closed for several days for threatening “national unity” and “Bahrain’s relations with other countries.” The newspaper’s founder, Karim Fakhrawi, died in unclear circumstances in police detention in 2011.

At least 13 professional and citizen-journalists are currently detained in Bahrain, which is ranked 163rd out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.

By Khalid Kazimov

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has urged people to show a high turnout at the upcoming elections for parliament and the Assembly of Experts to be held in February.

“Elections are not owned by the leader, they belong to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Fars news agency quoted him as saying during his address to a group of people from Qom city in Tehran.

Khamenei also said the elections strengthen the system and increases the credibility and honor of the nation.

“To protect the country and its credibility, everyone should cast vote in the elections even those individuals who do not believe in the system,” Ayatollah Khamenei added.

“Everyone should try to make a right choice. The current parliament takes proper stances regarding the international issues,” he said.

He said that if people do not know all the candidates personally, they should vote in favor of those introduced by religious and revolutionary individuals who follow the path of late founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini.

He urged people to refrain from casting votes in those candidates who may act in the favor of the USA.

The Assembly of Experts is of high importance as it is expected to choose the next leader, he added.

He further accused the US of perpetrating the post-election unrests in Iran in 2009 and said the unsuccessful protests were aimed at toppling the Islamic Republic.

He added that Iranians should remain vigilant and stand against the US.

Iranians are getting ready to elect both law makers for parliament and clerics for the Assembly of Experts on February 26.

The Assembly of Experts is comprised of 86 Islamic scholars (Mujtahids) who are elected by the public to eight-year terms. The Assembly of Experts is an influential body in charge of supervising the supreme leader and organizations under his direct control as well as electing a successor for him.

The next Administration should make reducing work time a major focus. In addition to mandated paid sick days and paid family leave — proposals that have received some welcome attention thus far on the presidential campaign trail — policymakers should go much further and enact measures aimed at shortening workweeks and work years. Reducing our workweek and work years will lead to a whole host of benefits, including reduced stress and higher levels of employment.The United States has become an outlier among wealthy countries in having had little reduction in the length of the average work year since 1980. According to the OECD, between 1980 and 2013, the number of hours in an average work year fell by 7.6 percent in Belgium, by 19.1 percent in France, and by 6.5 percent in Canada. By comparison, it declined by just 1.4 percent in the United States. The average worker puts in 26 percent more hours a year in the United States than do workers in the Netherlands and 31 percent more hours than workers in Germany, a difference of more than 400 hours a year.

This gap is partly due to the fact that every other wealthy country requires employers to give workers paid family leave and paid sick days. But an even more important factor in this gap is vacation time. Other wealthy countries now mandate four to six weeks a year of paid vacation. Our government, of course, does not mandate any. As a result, 23 percent of American workers have no paid vacation. Moreover, some European countries have also taken steps to shorten the workweek, most notably France, with its 35-hour workweek. Here in the United States, workers must put in 40 hours to be entitled to any overtime premium, and many salaried workers can be forced to work even longer hours with no premium.

The lengths of the workweek and work year are not just the result of the natural mechanisms of the market. The government has had a big thumb on the scale pushing in the direction of longer work hours by promoting employer-based benefits, notably health care and pensions, as an alternative to providing such benefits through the government. These benefits amount to large overhead costs for businesses that are incurred on a per-worker basis. As a result, it is often cheaper for an employer to pay a worker already on staff an overtime premium than it is to incur the costs of paying for a new worker’s health care and pension.

A more active government push to reduce work time will help counteract trends that have been hurting workers for decades. In general, higher productivity has led to higher wages and more leisure. This is the pattern in the rest of the world and was the pattern in the United States through much of the last century. But the last four decades have seen a widening gap between productivity and worker pay and also little expansion of leisure time. Pushing for shorter work time means workers can get some of the benefits of productivity growth in the form of more leisure time.

Reducing the workweek can also have another benefit: It will bring us to full employment faster. The economic collapse in 2008 and the weakness of the subsequent recovery have led many economists to recognize that persistent demand shortfalls — or “secular stagnation” — could be a real problem. As a logical matter, it is not difficult to overcome a shortfall in demand; governments just have to spend money. However, the politics around increased government spending and deficits have been extremely difficult, and that path seems closed to us.

In this context, policies that seek to reduce supply by getting workers to put in fewer hours may be the most promising path to full employment. At the start of the recession in 2008, Germany quite explicitly promoted a “short work” policy, encouraging employers to cut hours rather than lay off workers. As a result, the country’s unemployment rate actually fell during the recession, dropping from 7.2 percent at the end of 2008 to 6.5 percent at the end of 2010.

Critics may say that the government should not be telling employers how long people should work. But that ignores all the government policies that pushed in the direction of longer hours. This idea is really just an effort to level out the incentive structure. Others argue that workers can’t afford to work fewer hours. That is undoubtedly true in many cases, but nothing will prevent workers from seeking additional hours of employment, though admittedly some may find it difficult to make up for lost pay. Still, missing a few hours is better than being unemployed.

The best path to ensure that workers can secure a share of the gains in economic growth is a full-employment economy, like the one we saw in the late 1990s. Shortening work time is not just good, family-friendly policy — it might be the quickest path to full employment.

This column originally appeared in Democracy and is reprinted with permission.

The current reduction in Arctic sea-ice extent causes unpredictable weather phenomena in the Arctic Ocean (strong winds, high waves, and rapid sea-ice movement associated with cyclones) also over the mid-latitudes (heat waves, severe winters, etc.).

With such changing background conditions, more accurate weather forecasts are needed to safely navigate along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and to understand the climatic linkage between the Arctic and the mid-latitudes. However, this is difficult because of the sparse number of atmospheric observations across the Arctic Ocean. As it is highly difficult to make additional observations in Arctic regions because of limited logistical support, a cost-benefit optimized Arctic observing network is required for improving polar predictions.

In September 2013, Dr. Jun Inoue from the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR), Japan, and his international research team conducted joint Arctic atmospheric observations using radiosondes (instruments carried into the atmosphere by weather balloons, which measure various atmospheric parameters) on the research vessel Mirai and at meteorological stations surrounding the Arctic Ocean (Ny-Alesund, Alert, and Eureka). The team launched radiosondes eight times a day from RV Mirai (operated by NIPR and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC)), six times a day from Ny-Alesund (operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute), and four times a day from Alert and Eureka (operated by Environment Canada). Their high daily observing frequency improved the accuracy of atmospheric data used to estimate the state of the climate and weather forecasts because much of the observed data were incorporated into the initial conditions of the weather simulations in real time.

To investigate the impact of these special observations on the weather forecasts over the Arctic, the research team focused on a high-pressure system along the NSR on September 20, 2013 that caused strong coastal winds and rapid wind-driven sea-ice drift over the NSR. They incorporated multiple observations into the initial conditions of the weather simulations, including these special data and conducted ensemble forecasting experiments with an atmospheric general circulation model.

The influence of the special observational data on the predictability of the high-pressure system was then tested using the different initial fields by excluding these special data from each station separately. It was found that the uncertainty in the modeled wind fields associated with the high-pressure system was reduced when all the radiosonde data was included. In particular, the data from Ny-Alesund and RV Mirai were very important for predicting this event, partly because of the flow-dependent characteristics in the upper atmosphere. Based on several sets of sensitivity tests, they also determined that four launches per day, once every six hours, is the most cost-effective observing frequency.

Predicted surface wind fields are usually used in sea-ice forecast models as forcing data; therefore, the growth of errors in sea-ice forecasts heavily depends on the accuracy of the predicted wind fields. The research team ran an ice-ocean-coupled model to understand the impact of the accuracy of the predicted wind fields on sea-ice forecasts. It was found that sea-ice forecasts initialized by wind fields that included the special observations adequately predicted the rapid wind-driven sea-ice advection along the NSR.

The research team concluded that additional atmospheric observations would effectively predict not only severe weather phenomena over the Arctic Ocean but also sea-ice distribution influenced by atmospheric forcing. During the Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP), from mid-2017 to mid-2019, proposed by the World Weather Research Programme — Polar Prediction Project (WWRP — PPP), these types of observations and modeling activities will be accelerated within the international framework and could contribute to establishing a sustainable Arctic observing network.

The Islamic State (IS) has become a magnet for international brigades, drawing over 30,000 fighters from 5 continents, 86 countries to their war in Iraq and Syria.

While the international brigades are part of a global movement, the bulk of the volunteers come from two dozen countries mainly in the Middle East, Maghreb, Western Europe, Russia and Central Asia.

The bulk of the internationalists are paid a salary to fight and engage in police functions in the IS occupied regions.
We will proceed to identify the principle sources of recruitment and the reasons underlying their commitment. We will also contrast and compare IS internationalists to the earlier international brigades fighting for the Spanish republic against fascists in the 1930’s; for the Nazis against the USSR in the 1940’s; and in the 1970’s with the Sandinista revolution against the Somoza dictatorship.

Comparing IS to Past Internationalists

The IS ‘volunteers’ most closely resemble the Nazi internationalists in the substance and style of politics. Both fused rabid nationalism and religion in their fight against “godless atheism and communism” as was the case of the Ukrainian volunteers who collaborated with the Nazi armies invading the USSR. IS mouths similar slogans in its
attacks against secular Syria and westernized Iraq. Both the Nazi volunteers and IS are financed by established rightwing regimes; in the past by Hitler’s Germany and today by Saudi Arabia, the US and Turkey.

In contrast the international brigades that fought for the Spanish Republic were mostly secular democrats, socialists and communists who received arms from the USSR and limited financial aid from leftist individuals and organizations in the western capitalist democracies.

The internationalists who went to Nicaragua and joined with the Sandinista struggle against the Somoza dictatorship were mostly Latin Americans, with a sprinkling of Europeans and North Americans. Most of the volunteers were from Central America (El Salvador, Panama and Costa Rica) and political refugees fleeing military takeovers in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. The conflict pitted internationalists who were anti-imperialists, democrats, socialists and supporters of liberation theology against a US backed oligarchical dictatorship which monopolized land, wealth and power.

The Sandinistas like the IS opposed US dominance but differ in their tactics, allies and strategic goals. The internationalist volunteers in Nicaragua sought a secular democratic socialist government with close ties to socialist Cuba. IS retains ideological links and economic ties with the theocratic absolutist monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the authoritarian Islamist regime of Recep Erdogan of Turkey.

The IS internationalists engage in generalized terror, mass murder, and destruction of historic and symbolic sites in conquered towns, cities and villages to ensure conformity. Likewise the pro-Nazi internationalists in the Ukraine, Baltic States and elsewhere imposed a regime of terror, murdering any and all members of trade unions, cooperatives and jewish and leftist organizations.

A major difference between the Nazi and Islamist volunteers is found in the areas of action. Most of the Nazi internationalists engaged in terrorist activity overseas against their republican, democratic and communist enemies. In contrast IS volunteers rotate from their home base to Iraq-Syria and return. According to one study up to 39% of the European jihadist internationalists return to their country of origin. Many continue to believe and practice Islamic armed struggle. In contrast the Spanish republican and Nicaraguan internationalists of the 1930’s and 1970’s returned home in pursuit of democratic and socialist politics, via elections and mass movements, where possibly and by arms where necessary (like El Salvador).

In summary whereas internationalism earlier reflected the polarization between left and right, between Hitlerian fascism and varieties of socialism, today left internationalism is in decline and rightwing Islamic internationalism is on the rise.

According to recent studies the number of IS volunteers has doubled between 2014 and 2015: between January – June 2015 over 30,000 overseas volunteers joined IS fighters compared to 12,000 fighters a year earlier (Independent 8/12/15).

The Growth Centers of IS Internationalists

The number of IS volunteers from Western Europe has doubled over the past year, to over 5,000. (In contrast the number from North America continues the same at 280 jihadists.) The number of IS volunteers from Russia and Central Asia increased 300% reaching 4,700 of which 2,400 are Russians (mostly Chechnyan’s and Dagestanians) and 2,100 are Turks and Kazaks.

The key centers of IS growth are found in the Middle East where 8,240 fighters joined the terrorist army in Syria and Iraq, Other “hot spots” are the Gulf states 2,500 Saudis and 6,000 from the Maghreb, mostly Tunisians.

IS internationalists are increasing in direct proportion to the increasing military intervention of US, EU and Russia. The reasons for joining IS vary by country and cannot be subsumed under a single cause, whether it is religion, ethnicity, class , imperialism or economic remuneration.

In many ways IS has become a magnet for global grievance – holders in a deteriorating world. Force and violence of the dominant western countries has provoked a reciprocal response from a great variety of uprooted, deracinated and educated classes. The IS war against the West is in part a convergence of Saudi billionaires experiencing vicarious holy wars and underworld semi-literate fighters from European ghettos.

The IS is a multi-national and national army which rules by fiat, bound by a rigid hierarchical structure and fundamentalist ideology which is transmitted through the use of sophisticated high tech social media. Like the Israeli State, IS harnesses billionaires and high-tech innovations to primitive, tribal ethno-religious beliefs of a ‘superior people’. IS draws economic support from various apparently contradictory forces. Financial backing from oil sales via Turkey to Israel; billions from the Saudi regime at war with Shia and secular regimes and movements; arms from the US and EU fighting the Bashar Assad government.

IS and Washington’s ‘Coalition of 60’

Washington’s claim that it is leading a coalition of 60 governments against IS is deeply flawed because it is based on verbal commitments from regimes which in practice are actually working with the IS. Moreover, for many crucial US ‘partners’ the fight against IS is a pretext for other political-military priorities.

A prime example is Turkey which attacks and bombs Kurds in Syria and Northern Iraq under the pretext of fighting IS; Ankara supplies ‘volunteers’, supplies arms, training, financing and sanctuaries to the IS. Their Turkomen proxies in Syria fight against Kurds and the Government of Bashar Assad.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States provide ‘volunteers’, finances, religious ideology and arms to IS and other extremists groups to fight and defeat the Shia regime in Iraq, the secular government in Syria and the Houthis movement in Yemen – while claiming to be a member of the US coalition against IS.

Israel which claims to oppose IS and Islamic terrorism, provides cross border medical care to IS fighters wounded in southern Syria and bombs Assad’s army pursuing IS fighters.

Most egregious of all, most of the IS arms come from the US, either captured from retreating Iraqi armies or received directly from so-called “moderate rebels” who either sell, or join and hand over their US arms to IS.

Like the Nazi international brigades, IS internationalists have powerful state backers who wage phony wars, in a game of mutual manipulation. The Saudi’s export their extremists to Syria and Iraq to safeguard the absolutist monarchy. The US and EU allowed IS volunteers to travel to Syria to overthrow the Bashar Assad government – and then exploit the returnees’ terrorism, to strengthen the domestic police state. Turkey promotes IS to prevent an autonomous Kurdish state in northern Syria and to expand its southern border by annexing a band of Syrian territory.

Russia, Iran and Hezbollah which were invited by the Bashar Assad government to fight against IS are genuinely and totally engaged in the war against IS. They fear an IS conquest of Syria will result in a launch-pad for terrorists returning to their countries. Chechens and Dagestan fighters with IS receive arms, training and financing and are preparing to return to Russia to apply the terror tactics they learned in Syria and Iraq.

Turkey’s aggression and attack against Russia – including the shooting down of a Russian warplane bombing IS oil convoys heading for Turkey and its military allies among the Turkomen – is indicative of its powerful links to IS.

Conclusion

The formal and informal international organization of Islamic extremists, led and inspired by the IS, has encouraged tens of thousands of volunteers from dozens of countries in 5 continents. These international brigades are recruited on the basis of various appeals – not merely religious, but with personal, political and monetary appeals. Many go abroad to Syria and Iraq to secure training to return and engage in armed attacks in their country of origin. Their strength is not so much in their numbers or commitments but in the powerful support they receive from major powers in the region and the world. If it was not for Turkey, they would not be able to enter Syria nor receive pay or arms thanks to IS oil sales via the Erdogan connection. The volunteers would not advance in battle if it were not for US arms captured or bought from Iraqi arms depots and US supplied Syrian ‘rebels’. Wounded IS volunteers would not return to battle if it were not for Israeli medical care.

Many IS volunteers would not fight under the banner of Wahhabi extremism if the Saudi Arabians did not pay their salaries and buy their arms. In other words, IS “internationalism” is largely state sponsored, dependent on the interests and strategic needs of global and regional powers.

In contrast the internationalists who fought on the side of the Spanish democratic Republic (between 1936-39) against fascist Franco and great regional powers (Germany and Italy) were not supported by the US, Great Britain, France etc.
Likewise, the internationalists who fought with the Nicaraguan Sandinistas against the Somoza dictatorship fought against the Great Powers – mainly the US – and received marginal support from Cuba and Panama.

The question of internationalism and the justice of the cause is largely determined by the nature of the class composition, ideology and backers of their struggle.

The internationalism of the current IS led movement is backed by regional and global imperial powers intent on using international volunteers as cannon fodder for their imperial goals; destroying independent governments, establishing client regimes, seizing economic resources, expanding territory in order to establish military bases surrounding global and regional rivals, Russia, Iran and China.

An open data platform will help developers create new urban apps that benefit citizens and contribute towards the achievement of Smart Cities.

The EU-funded ICITY project – which was extended last year to run until September 2015 – offers public authorities and innovative urban-focused start-ups everything they need to create apps that boost business, improve public services and attract investment. Although the project is now officially completed, the iCity Platform will continue beyond 2015, helping developers to create innovative services of public interest through the sharing of ideas and information.

The project has created a single point from which to access public information systems from numerous cities, along with app-building guidance and tools. This will facilitate efficient collaboration between cities, organisations and developers, and means that anyone interested in developing urban-focused apps now has easy access to open data from numerous cities.

For example, a recently completed iCity Platform app is ParkFinder from SEAT. The automobile company partnered with developers to produce an app that facilitates parking, by collecting information about free parking spots across the city. Local talent will also find it easier to develop their ideas, as highlighted by a recent project-led competition for locally developed apps in Genoa. A platform integrating different systems to monitor air quality was the winner.

The iCity App portal was launched earlier this year, and contains all the developed apps together with their corresponding download links. There is also information about their developer, functionalities, advantages and indications of the cities where the app is available.

Newly developed apps include one that monitors and scores your recycling and waste management habits, an app that supports people’s mobility in several cities by informing them about possible obstacles and an app for runners in London that provides temperature and wind speed details. There is even an app that allows people to create an inventory of their personal belongings.

The iCity Apps site also contains an Ideas Exchange section where users and developers can share inspiration and see what is going on elsewhere. The project team believes that this will be especially useful for developers looking for new ideas because they can find what kind of services or apps users consider are missing in their cities.

There is also a general website, which offers all reports and information developed through the lifetime of the project. This provides the general public with a user-friendly interface, and makes it easier for developers to access the data and technology they need to build new apps. Since it has been created with end users in mind, the interface is simple and modern. The navigation has been designed to be intuitive, practical and provided with filtering systems that allows the user to focus his or her search.

The pioneering four year project focused on the cities of Genoa, Barcelona, Bologna and London. The guiding principle throughout has been to help make Europe’s cities Intelligent, Integrated, Innovative, Inclusive and Internet-enabled (the so-called five I’s). During the project’s lifetime for example, Genoa City Council integrated into the platform eight information systems along with its own open data portal.

Source: CORDIS

From scheduled jet airline services to millions of bookings simultaneously around the world, experiencing foreign exchange turnover $3,500 billion in a daily basis, a broadcast of CNN reaching 260 million households within a second, on the other hand, several aeroplane crashes or computer viruses which are designed by an individual who knocks off a bank account at the diametrically opposite geography in the world…

These facts are being considered as a daily routine for most communities without interrogating the insight of these facts, however, a combination of forenamed practices also poses a challenge for our reality and our perception on reality: namely globalization. To describe the phenomenon, liberalists argue that its main focus is the economic interconnectedness of actors while political realists put forward inter-state activities in terms of core-periphery relations. Nevertheless, the mutual opinion which they agree on is that intensification of supra-territoriality in the 21st-century world affairs and the decline in statism promoted the notion of global governance which emphasizes polycentric governance notion. Since the consensus has been reached by many scholars, accessing a coherent basis for operational polycentric global governance and actors of the concept have become prominent variables. From this perspective, understanding Global South is the key component to launch a more inclusionary and functioning system.

In the contemporary world, it is a fact that multinational actors and NGOs have an ability to act beyond the defined borders. For instance, agencies who are heads of global financial and communicational companies like Shell and General Motors or non-governmental organizations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International have the capacity to lobbying and involving decision-making mechanisms, shaping future global agenda on various topics from ecological preservation to transcontinental agreements.

Equivalent practices are recognized as the primary characteristics of globalization also known as the post-Westphalian state model. Before the post-Westphalian understanding, the majority of states were functioning as Scholte argued “Westphalian sovereignty held that each state would exercise supreme, comprehensive, unqualified and exclusive rule over its territorial jurisdiction” (2005, p.188). This notion of centralised and incontestable state authority dominated world affairs for almost four hundred years, however, as a result of a decline in statism, the state has transformed itself into a polycentric and more transparent model that authority has become a questionable concept by states’ “citizens”.

More significantly, the state authority has recognized its society as rulers, not the subjects to be ruled. In this sense, states are expected to adopt and internalize some patterns such as an efficient social welfare system, avoiding unnecessary armed conflicts or defend its domestic interest by collaborating through foreign investors. Thus, obsolescence of statism has been proposed as a new outlook which paved the way for polycentric global governance driven by reconstructed intrastate relations and capable agencies in the system.

Apart from all these progress, there is Global South where the historical development of state-state and citizen-state relations are fairly dissimilar in comparison with the Global North case which limits Global South’s contribution to the global governance. To specify most diversified inspirations on global governance, nation-building myth can be elaborated. It is assumed that the idea of nation is standardized by a common language, law, religion and territory.

Furthermore, discussion maintains as such “Longevity, effectiveness, and successful mythmaking are essential ingredients of the state legitimacy formula” (ed. Aydinli & Rosenau, 2005). From this viewpoint, industrialized countries in Global North, namely in Europe and North America, have had the stage and considerable material and intellectual capability to accomplish communal nexus and to form collective myths which ended up with the foundation of the EU, NATO and suchlike bodies which substantially contribute to global governance at the moment.

However, most of the countries in Global South, particularly the Third World countries, are far beyond reaching such an integrity with their neighbors since the Third World emancipation has been started in mid-18th century up to mid-20th century. According to Scholte, “National identities in the South developed largely through opposition to colonial rule” (2005, p.132). It can be deducted from the argument, there is no wonder that components and historical developments of the post-Westphalian state structure sound unacquainted advancements to communities in Global South which have established their national identities against the predecessors of post-Westphalian argument. In fact, as Scholte argues, “polycentrism both captures the multi-sited character of current governance and invites an exploration of the interplay between sites” (2005, p. 187).

Nevertheless, within this North-South framework, approaches to the global governance do not highlight inclusive skeletons of the notion and support the polycentrism idea which ensures practical basis on the topic since interplay between states are mainly based on one-sided view and the social cognitions are immensely dissimilar.

Secondly, another core element of the global governance is a civil society that assists to exceed the polycentric point of view by the masses whose constitutional rights and liberties are not evaluated as low politics any longer thanks to the changing state dynamics.

At this point, Scholte argues that “The shift from statism to polycentrism has prompted changes in the object of civil society activity away from the state alone to a multi-scalar and diffuse governance apparatus” (2005, p. 186). Within this context, civil society is principally organized around NGOs and empowering them to act on the legitimate basis in order to monitor events at the UN or the WTO; also lobbying to remark various concerns as well as proposals. Yet, the participation of Global North to civil society activities are much influential than Global South because the state transformation of the Third World has not been experienced comprehensively.

Since colonial ties of Global South were not broken off until the mid-20th century, the state reconstruction process building upon social evolutions of communities has not taken place in most Global South countries. Scholte mentions that “National-territorial constituencies remain very important, but raison d’état has become more than raison de la nation” (2005, p. 194). The situation is a meaningful fact for societies in Global North but not for authoritarian regimes of Global South which control and intentionally restricts its citizens’ participation to civil initiatives. In other words, the polycentric outlook in the global governance which apprehends the compact interaction between states, actors and agencies has to concentrate on civil society of Global South and critically approach to understand the limited dynamics towards the concepts.

In light of the aforementioned explanations, it can be claimed that globalization has broadened our outlooks both on the world affairs and societal relations. This domain also revitalizes academic dialogues taking a shape around how to explain and expand the global governance idea in a more effective and functional way. Accordingly, if the global governance is analyzed to offer polycentric and inclusionary solutions addressing world-wide difficulties or, at least, catalyzes the delicate issues, understanding characteristics of actors and making an effort for their ongoing emancipation on nation building phenomenon and civil society case play a crucial role. Therefore, Global South constitutes a key paradigm for the better global governance.

References:
Aydinli, E. & Rosenau, J. eds., 2005. Security in the Age of Globalization. In Globalization, security, and the nation-state paradigms in transition. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, p. 17.

Scholte, J.A., 2005. Globalization and Governance: From Statism to Polycentrism. In Globalization: a critical introduction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 132–194.

The security dilemma is a concept in international relations theory (a variant of realism) according to which the means by which one state seeks to increase its security have the unintended effect of decreasing the security of another state, which in turn makes a similar response having a similar effect leading to a cycle of competitive moves that in the worst case result in conflict.i More generally, a security dilemma arises out of the anarchic nature of the international system.

In the absence of a common and superior power, who can protect it, each state tries to maintain its own security for its survival and existence. Faced with the great responsibility, state try to expand their power – economically, politically, militarily and strategically so as to defend themselves, should the need arise.ii But by increasing their own power in this way, they may make their neighbors or other perceived strategic rival states less secure. This compels those neighbors or potential rivals to take counter measures to enhance their own power. Thus, a common search for security creates a situation in which these states feel less secure towards each other. For example, the weapons that a state might acquire for its own self-protection, potentially or actually ‘threaten harm’ to others.iii

This sort of security dilemma is often witnessed among the two Asian giants- China and India due to the complexity of their strategic and security interests. Since the inception of the people’s Republic of China and the Republic of India, on the world stage in 1949 and 1947 respectively, both the states have been forging relations with other powers regional or otherwise to increase their security perceptions. After the Sino-Indian War (1962) and then Indo-Pak War in 1965, Sino-Pak cordial entente came into existence. This Sino-Pak nexus alarmed the Indian security establishment which compelled her to lean towards Soviet Union and which ultimately led to the Indo-Soviet Friendship and Peace Treaty in 1971. Both the sides realized that their bilateral relationship was increasingly sensitive to their relationship with other major powers.

During and after the Cold War, both the giants used their relationship with the United States to gain strategic advantage over the other. That is the main reason, when one state tries to forge the close relations with US, it tremendously increases the security apprehensions in the other country. It can be illustrated from the fact that the growing relations between China and US after the end of Cold War increased apprehensions among Indians about the prospect of a Sino-American Joint hegemony over the Sub-Continent.

The was more apparent when Washington and Beijing issued a Joint Statement on South Asia in the wake of India’s nuclear tests in May, 1998 calling India and Pakistan to halt their nuclear program and resume bilateral dialogue. This development was perceived in India as going against its overall security interests. According to an Indian analyst, “In Indian eyes, the October 1997 Sino-U.S. Joint statement suggested that under the wings of the United States, China might play a wider role in South Asia”.iv

On the other hand, warming relations between India and US in the recent years have raised apprehensions in China about India joining the American containment plan against China. The Indo-US defence cooperation particularly the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP), New Framework for US-India Defense Relations, Indo-US Civil Nuclear Cooperation, etc. were perceived in Beijing as an important ingredients of this containment policy. Thus, the fear of hostile strategic alignments by the other has gained ground in both the states and laid the basis for what international relations theorists call the “Security Dilemma”.28 What one nation sees as a necessary step in protecting its own interests be it upgrading their weapons, building infrastructure along the Sino-India border, gaining access to new markets or regional organisations like Association for South East Nations (ASEAN), South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and other organisations, building strategic relations with other countries like the United States, Japan and Pakistan, are seen by other as an aggressive move to undermine its position.

The Security Dilemma, thus, sets-off the two mutually suspicious nations on an ever escalating competition resulting in reducing security for both. It is in the context of these security related apprehensions towards each other that some analysts predict in Asia a coming battle for supremacy between India and China.v They maintain that the overlapping areas of influence between China and India and the determination of both the countries to emerge as major powers on the world stage will ultimately result into the open conflict between the two giants.

Today, rising China and emerging India are more powerful nations, have wide ranging interests, are driven by strongest nationalist impulse with high economic growth rates. They are repeatedly finding themselves at odds in reshaping the regional and global institutions. India has been wary of China’s increasing influence of China along its periphery especially in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and deepening military and strategic ties with India’s arch rival Pakistan.

On the other hand, China is concerned about India’s ‘Act East Policy’ and especially the growing ties with Japan and Vietnam. Both have clashed over the reform of UN Security Council where New Delhi aspires a permanent membership owing to its size, geography and economy while as China is reluctant to see another peer competitor in this elite body.vi India watches China carefully and keeps close watch on China’s military assistance to Pakistan.

China, also had its own concern, e.g., India’s hosting of the Tibetan government in exile and instigating Tibetan refugees against China on the Indian soil. Both the countries pay careful attention to each other’s military developments, whether nuclear capabilities, planned blue water navies, missile tests or the exercises of troops along their common border.vii

Thus it can be asserted that due to this security dilemma, the cleavages and strategic gap between New Delhi and China will not only widen but will assume new dimensions. However, in spite of all these facts, the civilizational and cultural links between the two countries provide India and China with the foundation to build a strong relationship.

Besides, the present global economic drive has made it essential for both the states to look afresh at each other as friends and cooperate with each other in order to address varied problems at the bilateral, regional and global level.

Hence in the contemporary international scenario, they cannot afford any potential confrontation which may hinder their economic development and their ambitions of big power status. Within these parameters, a substantial measure of success have been achieved by now in the endeavor to establish mutual understanding. The two countries have been successful in maintaining relative peace and tranquillity along the Sino-India border though there exists material differences in perception regarding the exact demarcation of boundary.

Moreover, Sino-Indian relations have been diversified and a series of dialogue mechanisms are in place including on subjects such as counter terrorism, security issues, joint stand on global issues. High level visits are also being exchanged regularly. However, the fact that Sino-Indian relations today seem to be better than at any time during the last four decades should not led one to assume that all the hurdles in the relationship have been overcome. Despite improvement in Sino-Indian relations, an under-current of mutual mistrust continues to haunt Sino-Indian relations due to various factors related to security as discussed above. It can be asserted the Sino-Indian current relations are complex where competition and cooperation, suspicion and trust, friendliness and rivalry co-exist side by side. If the rivalry culminates in war, it is bound to diminish both China and India. Thus, the big question is whether the two can manage their rivalry by keeping it limited and peaceful without the wisdom to do so, both will find it difficult to realise their larger global aspirations.

In the 21st century as both the giants will emerge as great powers, they have the responsibility to reshape and reorient the world in a more positive and equitable direction. In future, both the states will play an important role in framing the international rules (the recent international negotiations on global warming and WTO rules are main example in this regard). It will be even more evident in the coming years as China and India position themselves at the top of global power hierarchy. Peaceful co-existence and deeper bilateral cooperation between China and India, are then the primary pre-conditions for stable and sustainable world order in the 21st century and more appositely for the 21st century itself as on ‘Asian century’.

About the author:
*Mehraj Uddin Gojree, Research Scholar, Aligarh Muslim University, India.

Notes:
i. Sankhya Krishnan, India’s Security Dilemma vis-à-vis China: A Case of Optimum or Sub-Optimum Restraint? Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS), Colombo, 2009, p. 7. Retrieved Oct. 21, 2010, from http://www.rcss.org/publication/ policy_ paper/Policy47.pdf
ii. John W. Garver, The Security Dilemma in Sino-India Relations, India Review, Vol. 1, No. 4, Frank Cass, London, October 2002, p.1. Retrieved July 25, 2010, from http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/11418579/securitydilemma-sino-indian-relations
iii. Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The Security Dilemma, Fear, Cooperation and Trust in World Politics, Palgrave Hamilton, New York, 2008, p. 1.
iv. Keshav Mishra, Rapprochement Across the Himalayas: Emerging India-China Relation in the Post Cold War Period (1947-2003), Kalpaz Publishers, New Delhi, 2004, p.304.
v. K. Santhanam, Srikanth Kondapall (Eds.), Asian Security and China: 2000-2010, Institute of Defense and Strategic Analysis (IDSA), Shirpa Publications, New Delhi, 2004, p. 3.
vi. Ashok Dogra, Think India Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2, June 2010, Vichar Nyas, New Delhi, pp. 210-211.
vii. Francine R. Frankel and Harry Harding (Eds.), The India-China Relationship: Rivalry and Engagement, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2004, p. IX.

The coffee berry borer is a plague that affects coffee crops, but amazingly this beetle has a detoxification system that allows it to safely consume the equivalent of 500 espressos, a level so high that it would kill a human.

This is the finding of Mexican researcher Javier A. Ceja Navarro, as part of his work in the Berkeley National Laboratory (US) where he extracted DNA from the beetles, then sequenced it to study the insect-associated microbes.

In his first results he disclosed that the insects, although feeding from the coffee grain in several countries, have different microbial communities, sharing just a set of 19 species of bacteria.

“The aim was to study which are they and how they are associated with the digestive tract of the insect. For the study we took samples of insects from different locations like Hawaii, Indonesia, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Kenya, India and Guatemala,” Ceja said.

Considering this insect’s capability, the specialist in biotechnology decided to study microbial communities associated with the digestive system of the beetle native to Africa, and which has the virtue of surviving such exposure to this kind of substances.

In the second part of the research, Ceja extracted the digestive tract of the insect and isolated 13 species of bacteria with the ability to survive only with caffeine.

Once discovered that the coffee berry borer has this amount of bacteria able to live actively on caffeine, the researcher took the task of finding out whether it was possible to control them.

After analysis, the team decided to test antibiotics on the borer beetle, to see if it was still able to degrade caffeine and the result was negative.

“We removed the microbial communities in the digestive tract and the transformation of caffeine stopped, then decided to take some of the isolated microorganisms, reintroduce them in the bug and see if the ability to degrade a bit of caffeine came back and it did,” Ceja said.

Currently, the team is trying to develop new strategies to control the microbes that support the destructive ability of the coffee berry borer. “We look to take away the beetle’s taste for coffee and for it to be affected by consuming it like any other insect would,” said the researcher.

The research team will study the entire genome of the microorganisms in the digestive tract of the beetle to understand their mechanisms, and test the development of small chemical molecules that would only affects the coffee berry borer.

Berkeley National Laboratory is interested in continuing this project because of the impact it may have to mitigate the damage caused by the borer to the coffee crops.

The specialist said that the next stages of research for the development of chemical molecules could take up to two years to have a final product approved and ready to be used in the control of the coffee berry borer.

Source: Agencia ID

By Ritu Sharma

An Italian nun who has helped people with leprosy for over four decades in India has been denied a visa and must leave the country.

Sister Bertilla Capra’s visa expired in November and she has since been denied a renewal.

Officials told Sister Capra, who belongs to the Missionaries of the Immaculate Congregation, that the visa application format has changed and she will need to apply using the new format.

Since first arriving in India in 1970, Sister Capra had to only apply for a visa renewal every five years up until 2010. After that, rule changes meant she needed to renew her visa annually.

Sister Capra said she got the message to leave the country twice: once in November, then again in December.

Sister Capra is the director of the Vimala Dermatological Center, which is involved in the rehabilitation of leprosy patients in Mumbai, and she has never had visa problems before.

“If I do not get the visa, I will have no choice but to leave,” she told ucanews.com.

“I am so attached to the place and people here. Also, I do not have the chance to go to any other country and join some other mission. It is not easy for me to move,” she said.

Bombay Archdiocese spokesman, Father Nigel Barret, told ucanews.com that Sister Capra is complying with the instructions given to her by the authorities but she does not have enough time to file all the papers.

“This is not a direct deportation but it is being done very indirectly,” he said.

Sister Capra added that nuns from her congregation in New Delhi are trying to meet with officials to try and resolve the issue.

Sources in the Foreign Ministry told ucanews.com that visa rules change from time to time depending on security and other related issues. There is no particular reason to deny visas to genuine applicants, the sources said.

“In this case enough time is being given to apply fresh papers according to the new norms,” a source said.

The visa denial comes amid accusations that the ruling partners in Maharashtra state the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena are stoking a climate of intolerance against minority religions in India.

Aamir Khan, a popular Muslim actor was recently removed as head of the Indian campaign to market the country to tourists abroad because he reportedly criticized the country for being intolerant toward Christians and Muslims.

Maharashtra state has also banned the slaughter of cows and the sale and consumption of beef. Cows are revered by most Hindus who make up about 80 percent of India’s 1.2 billion people.

By Jim Garamone

Iraqi forces have momentum against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Saturday.

Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. spoke to reporters following a two-day visit to Iraq. During the visit he met with U.S. and Iraqi leaders including Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones and Army Gen. Sean McFarland, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve.

Dunford also met U.S., coalition and Iraqi troops in Baghdad, Asad and Irbil. He last visited the country in October, just after taking over as chairman.

“I believe the Iraqis now have the momentum,” the general said. The seizing of Ramadi, the operations that have been conducted in Anbar province, the recapture and continued control of the oil refinery in Beiji, and the successful operations cutting ISIL’s main supply line south of Sinjar make him “comfortable saying the Iraqis have the momentum.”

Attitude Shift

The big takeaway from the trip, the general said, is the psychology of the Iraqis. The general met with senior Iraqi leaders, but he also met with Iraqi special operators, soldiers in training, and wounded warriors. The mood is more upbeat across the board, he said.

They are more confident in their capabilities. The Iraqi operation in Ramadi, especially, was Iraqi-planned, Iraqi-resourced and Iraqi-executed. “I felt the Iraqi leadership was pretty proud of their guys,” Dunford said.

And the Iraqis are continuing with the battle. Iraqi forces are moving north into Haditha and they are moving to the east. “They feel it in terms of pressure on ISIL, and they realize they have to keep moving to provide that pressure,” the general said. “They are kind of pumped up about it.”

Iraqi, Syrian and coalition forces have put increasing pressure on Raqqa, Syria, the nominal capital of the so-called caliphate, and Mosul, Iraq, the largest city captured by the terrorists, the general said.

Simultaneous, Increasing Pressure

“We have to continue to do things across all of Iraq and Syria simultaneously,” he said. While coalition forces are isolating the two important cities, Dunford said, “it’s not Ramadi, it’s not Mosul, it’s not Raqqa — it’s all of those and all of it happening at the same time.”

Iraqi forces are becoming more proficient in a new style of warfare for them. Iraqi leaders have learned the true power of combined arms and harnessed coalition airpower with their ground forces, “It’s not just about using aviation and waiting until it’s done,” he said. “It’s about using aviation as a cover so they can move and fire and clear. They are better able to integrate effects.”

And Iraqi security forces now have the success of Ramadi to use in planning further operations. Success breeds success, the general said. This is important, because as Syrian anti-ISIL groups move south they are moving into traditionally Sunni Arab lands, Dunford said.

“I don’t want to overstate this, but when we went to Anbar, you could see the tribes are much more interested in talking to our special operations forces,” and momentum builds, he said.

Dunford was not the only American official to congratulate Iraqi leaders this week. President Barack Obama also told al-Abadi that the coalition wants to help the Iraqis exploit the success they are having.

Iraqi military leaders will put together their plan and present it to McFarland, and his team will look for the best ways to support the anti-ISIL effort.

The terrorist strike at an Indian military installation early in the New Year has not immediately set the clock back on the positive outcome of the earlier Christmas-Day informal meeting between the leaders of India and Pakistan in Lahore. However, the success of the new “comprehensive bilateral dialogue”, if launched by mid-January 2016 as anticipated, is not assured yet, despite the Pakistani military itself having a ‘proxy negotiator’ now. Nor can external stakes in a stable Pakistan-India equation guarantee a settlement between them. For now, there are some signs of a cautious, new resolve for peace on both sides of the conventional divide.

By P S Suryanarayana*

By the turn of 2016, a pleasant cameo of camaraderie, which featured the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan in a vivid display of friendliness on Christmas Day 2015, has been eclipsed by a familiar but distressing reality. Quite often, a high-point in the India-Pakistan engagement has been followed by a negative development. Such a sequence was dramatically evident when a high-profile summit between the Prime Ministers of Pakistan and India in Lahore was followed by an armed conflict between the two sides at the snowy heights of Kargil in 1999. But the latest cameo of a feel-good meeting in Lahore has not been fully erased, at this writing.

On a serene day in the Christian calendar, the ‘Hindu-nationalist’ Prime Minister of secular India, Narendra Modi, held talks, sans prior publicity, with his counterpart from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, in Lahore, as 2015 was drawing to a close. The wider international community, weary of tensions across the globe, heaved a sigh of relief over the digitalised images of such a “surprise” diplomatic development. But some subterranean forces would have none of this. Or, so it appears. A few terrorists, suspected to have operated from out of Pakistan, have struck at an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, near the border between the two uneasy neighbours, on 2 January 2016. Several lives, including those of the attackers, were lost; the terror strike was, by and large, ‘foiled’, in the sense that there was no greater carnage.

A stoic sense of resistance descended on the political camp in India which was beginning to count the blessings of having a hawkish prime minister who might be able to stabilise relations with Pakistan.2 For his part, Mr Modi did not blame Pakistan when, in his initial comment, he said “enemies of humanity [,] who cannot see the nation succeed, had attempted to cause harm to the Indian Armed Forces.3 In a parallel sign of dismay, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry lost no time to “condemn the terrorist incident”. Heartfelt condolences were also expressed. More significantly, Pakistan conveyed a political punch-line of real-time relevance: “Building on the goodwill created during the recent high level contacts between the two countries, Pakistan remains committed to partner with India as well as other countries in the [South Asian] region to completely eradicate the menace of terrorism afflicting our region”.4 (Emphasis added).

This was a statesman-like stand by both India and Pakistan in the immediate wake of the terror attack at Pathankot. However, diplomatic circles were soon agog with speculation that New Delhi might still feel constrained to call off the foreign-secretary-level talks, which Mr Sharif and Mr Modi were believed to have agreed upon during their latest meeting in Lahore. In an apparent effort to bring back a sense of new normality, in this context, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry said: “In line with Pakistan’s commitment to effectively counter and eradicate terrorism, the Government is in touch with the Indian government and is working on the leads provided by it. Living in the same region and with a common history, the two countries should remain committed to a sustained dialogue process. The challenge of terrorism calls for strengthening our resolve to a cooperative approach”.5

Such a ministerial-level assurance from Pakistan did not appear to have addressed India’s concerns, prompting Mr Sharif to telephone Mr Modi on 5 January 2016. After that, the Indian side disclosed as follows: “Prime Minister Modi strongly emphasised the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organisations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack. Specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif assured Prime Minister Modi that his government would take prompt and decisive action against the terrorists”.6

A day later (on 6 January 2016), Pakistan disclosed that Mr Sharif had, in his telephonic conversation with Mr Modi, “appreciated the maturity shown by the Indian Government in its statements” after the terrorist strike at Pathankot. Mr Sharif was quoted as saying that “his government was working on the leads and information provided by the Indian government”. Assuring Mr Modi that Pakistan would “investigate this matter”, Mr Sharif noted that “whenever a serious effort for bringing peace between the two countries was underway, terrorists try to derail the process”. The authoritative Pakistani version of this important telephonic talk concluded on these lines: “Both the Prime Ministers agreed that a cordial and cooperative relationship between the two countries would be the most appropriate response to the nefarious designs of the terrorists”.7

Amid the latest surge in the Indo-Pakistani tensions, so soon after the Modi-Sharif talks on Christmas Day last year, the Afghan National Security Forces thwarted a terrorist attack on the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif. The Afghanistan factor in the India-Pakistan matrix is a study in itself, with the Pakistani military-intelligence agencies widely believed to scout in Afghanistan for gaining ‘strategic depth’ there against India.

Regardless of the Afghan factor, the recent high-level India-Pakistan contacts in focus here are: (1) the latest “unscheduled” Indo-Pakistani prime ministerial meeting in Lahore; (2) India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s visit to Islamabad where she attended a multilateral meeting on Afghanistan, and met Mr Sharif on 9 December 2015 – when the two sides announced their agreement to re-start the stalled talks, now in the name and style of “Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue”; (3) the talks between the national security advisors of the two countries in Bangkok earlier in the same month; and (4) the Modi-Sharif encounter of the diplomatic kind on the margins of the United Nations Climate Conference in Paris in late- November 2015. In order to sustain such a surge of diplomatic momentum, the Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan are slated to meet in Islamabad by mid-January 2016. They are expected to chart a road-map for the newly-agreed “comprehensive dialogue” on all issues that trouble the two sides.

It is obviously prudent to wait for the start of this yet-again-new Indo-Pakistani dialogue to draw even tentative projections about the future trajectory of this deeply chequered and crisis- prone relationship. A nodding acquaintance with this relationship will suffice to recognise how circular it is: the same starting points are reached time and again. It is logical, therefore, that the future talks, if they have to be meaningful at all, must be aimed at straightening this circle so as to facilitate a linear forward movement. Obviously, such a task is easier to visualise in a geometrical metaphor than to accomplish in the Indo-Pakistani geopolitical setting. At this writing, though, the terrorist strike on 2 January 2016 has not set the clock back on the current slow momentum towards an aspirational new wave of dialogue.8 In this context, it will be instructive to study the so-called “surprise” meeting between Mr Modi and Mr Sharif in Lahore on a day that was best left to Santa Claus to spring pleasant surprises.

The outcome of the Modi-Sharif meeting in Lahore, for all its substantive symbolism, was hardly commented upon by either India or Pakistan through concrete official details about what exactly was discussed. So, an intelligent assessment of the factors at play during and after that Lahore meeting is the only sure guide to the more-immediate future of this new “comprehensive bilateral dialogue”, which is yet to take off.This new nomenclature reflects the possibility of discussions on the entire spectrum of issues, inclusive of India’s sense of being a constant target of terrorism emanating from Pakistan, and Pakistan’s quest for a final settlement of the political status of Kashmir, besides several other issues. In a nuanced difference, the earlier ill-fated “composite dialogue”, while covering much the same issues, gave rise to the impression that a package-settlement of all issues might be preferred at the same time. Nevertheless, this was not really specified as the goal. There was a masterly ambiguity, perhaps as a strategic intent in a complex situation. It now remains to be seen whether the anticipated road-map for the present aspirational “comprehensive bilateral dialogue” will allow for subject-specific fast-track and normal-track of discussions.

Ebb and Flow of Political Resolve

As for the spade-work that has set the stage for the possibility of this “comprehensive bilateral dialogue”, the Modi-Sharif meeting in Lahore was certainly not the first time that they talked to each other. Their very first meeting as prime ministers, another huge “surprise” (if you will), happened at the very stroke of Mr Modi assuming office as Prime Minister of India in New Delhi in late-May 2014. It was widely believed that Mr Sharif, himself a thrice-elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, did exert diligence, in consultation with that country’s powerful military establishment, before accepting Mr Modi’s invitation and attending his ceremonial assumption of office.

When the two leaders met in New Delhi after that ceremony, they decided that the foreign secretaries of the two countries should meet in due course. That, in itself, was viewed as a significant move, considering that the “composite dialogue” had withered on the vine, for one reason or other, since the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in 2008. India had duly traced those attacks to Pakistani terrorist master-minds, and the two countries are even now locked in arguments and counter-arguments over the slow pace of evidence-based trials in Pakistan in the relevant cases. In such an ambience, but unrelated to this terrorism issue per se, the planned resumption of Indo-Pakistani foreign-secretary-level talks in 2014 – the anticipated first step in “structured” official-level talks by Mr Modi’s watch – did not take place, because Islamabad was assessed to have crossed a red line that his government had drawn.

The contacts that Pakistan publicly renewed with an anti-India separatist group in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, in the run-up to the commencement of those “structured” official- level talks in 2014, angered the Modi Government which called off that process. Thereafter, a frosty phase of minimal contacts, essentially on the margins of multilateral meetings, ensued in Indo-Pakistani official relations. As Raja Mohan explains, “the resurgence of tensions on the [India-Pakistan] border [sometime after Mr Modi’s first outreach to Mr Sharif] and Islamabad’s engagement with the Kashmiri separatists saw [Mr] Modi suspend the [planned] talks with Pakistan in August 2014. [Thereafter] Recognising the problems [that the] continued disengagement would create for India, [Mr] Modi lifted the suspension of political contacts in February 2015”.9 It was in this changing milieu that Mr Modi and Mr Sharif met at Ufa (Russia) in July 2015. The two leaders were there to attend a summit of the China-Russia- pioneered Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), in a prelude to the admission of India and Pakistan as full-fledged members in due course. (At this writing, the formalities of India’s and Pakistan’s entry into the SCO as full-fledged members are still under way).

At Ufa, Mr Modi and Mr Sharif agreed upon an outline of a possible new course of dialogue between their countries;10 a meeting of their national security advisors was agreed upon. However, the scheduled meeting of the advisors did not take place, amid an acrimonious dispute between India and Pakistan on the finer limits to the possible conversation between the two security-mandarins. India wanted laser-like focus on just the terrorism issues, while Pakistan desired a broad-spectrum conversation that would cover the Kashmir question as well. After this fiasco, Islamabad appointed a military-anchored official, General (Retired) Naseer Khan Janjua, as the country’s new National Security Advisor. He is believed to be a close associate of Pakistan’s current Chief of Army Staff, General Raheel Sharif (not related to Mr Nawaz Sharif). In a sense, this aspect changed the dynamics of the India-Pakistan diplomacy itself. It was in this overarching ambience that the two Prime Ministers met in Lahore on Christmas Day last year.

On that day, Mr Modi first telephoned Mr Nawaz Sharif from Kabul, greeted him on his 66th birthday, and rushed to Lahore for a follow-up conversation. It is this sequence that lent their conversation an aura of a “surprise” informal ‘summit’. Significantly, Pakistan’s new National Security Advisor (NSA), Gen (Retd) Janjua, did not participate in this informal meeting, as its sudden timing might not have actually suited him.11 This, too, lent some credence to the hypothesis of a “surprise” ‘summit’. It is nearly impossible, though, to believe that all the sensitive protocol-and-security clearances for the many Indian visitors in Mr Modi’s delegation were secured at lightning speed, without any prior permission from an India-wary country. These doubts do not, however, downplay this informal meeting.

An interesting line of inquiry is whether Mr Nawaz Sharif was also trying to capitalise on such a situation and spring a “surprise” of his own in Pakistan’s domestic politics. Gen Sharif is hugely popular in Pakistan now, because of his over-drive against the terrorists who have been acting with impunity in his country, and on account of his calls for good civilian governance (an indirect indictment of Mr Nawaz Sharif’s rule). In these circumstances, it is possible that the civilian Mr Sharif might have really wanted to make a point that the civilian leaders were still central to Islamabad’s diplomacy towards New Delhi. This could have prompted the Pakistani Prime Minister to go ahead with his meeting with Mr Modi even in the absence of Gen (Retd) Janjua, whereas the Indian leader was accompanied by his NSA Ajit Doval.

However, a key requirement is that Pakistan’s military establishment must also be seen to be supportive of the current process of dialogue between Islamabad and New Delhi. A statement of support from the Pakistan Army might have magnified the forward-looking aspect of the latest Nawaz Sharif-Modi meeting. The basic reasoning in this sub-context is that Gen Sharif is seen, in some ways, as a ‘praetorian prime minister’ (virtually a prime minister without that designation, while still being from the military stream). Under such a canopy, Pakistan’s military-anchored NSA will need to engage New Delhi on issues arising from its genuine concerns about the anti-India terrorism emanating from Pakistan. India’s concerns in this regard cannot be discounted at all, even if Pakistan, too, wants to talk of similar concerns regarding India.

Fallacy of a Military Talisman

A fashionable hypothesis is that Gen (Retd) Janjua’s recent talks with Mr Doval in Bangkok, in the company of the foreign secretaries of the two countries, is proof that the Pakistan Army is on the same page as the country’s civilian leadership on the issue of dialogue with India. Nonetheless, it will be a fallacy to pre-judge, at best, and over-estimate, at worst, that a new wave of Pakistan-India dialogue, if it takes place, has a higher quotient of possible success than in the past because the present Pakistani NSA enjoys close professional proximity to Gen Sharif. Gen (Retd) Janjua is being seen as the domestically-powerful Pakistani military’s proxy for talks with India, going forward. But there is no empirically-tenable military talisman for the success of the new aspirational Pakistan-India “comprehensive bilateral dialogue”. Recent history is instructive.

It is well-known that the Agra Summit between India’s democratic leader, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and Pakistan’s powerful military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, collapsed some years ago. For a variety of reasons, surely, the Agra summit got torpedoed at the finishing line, as it were. Later, Gen Musharraf sought to blame India’s civilian hawks rather than his own failure to clinch an accord, or a framework-formula, which might have been mutually acceptable. The dismal outcome at Agra showed that Pakistan’s highest military leader, who was also the country’s unchallenged ruler at that time, did not succeed as a peace-maker. Given such a relevant reality check, it will be premature, at best, and unwise, at worst, to imagine that a settlement is now possible merely because the Pakistani military is believed to be supporting a ‘civilian’ peace initiative towards India. This is how the current situation appears to me, and this could serve as a valuable insight, going forward.

A relevant poser, therefore, is whether “external pressures” on Pakistan and, perhaps India too, have made, or could make, a positive difference to an Indo-Pakistan dialogue, if begun now. There is considerable speculation in diplomatic circles that Gen Sharif was, during his recent visit to the United States, advised by his top American interlocutors to let his civilian colleagues talk to India. This is believed to have happened after New Delhi had insisted that Islamabad should not seek to associate Kashmiri separatists with any Indo-Pakistan dialogue. Such speculation sounds credible, because the US has influenced the thinking of the Pakistani state in the past.

A point to recall: at the height of the Pakistan-India Kargil War (or crisis, as some would insist) towards the end of the last century, the US is known to have played a critical behind-the-scene role that soon became widely known. On that occasion, the then US President Bill Clinton had “influenced” a Pakistani civilian leader, the same Mr Nawaz Sharif, to halt the Kargil War which was widely known to have been master-minded by his military chief, the same Gen Musharraf.12

External Stakes in India-Pakistan Talks

The primary worries of the international community then (as even now) were (and remain) the ‘potential’ for a ‘nuclear conflict’ between Pakistan and India. A key factor in this ‘scenario’ is the empirical reality that, unlike India, Pakistan does not adopt the doctrine of a “no-first- use of nuclear weapons”. Moreover, prior to the Modi-Nawaz Sharif meeting on 25 December last year, the Indo-Pakistan tensions were heightened by public pronouncements to the effect that Pakistan had now deployed or at least acquired short-range tactical nuclear weapons to deter possible Indian “aggression”.13 The perceived “bellicosity” of Mr Modi’s India in laying down new red lines for talks with Pakistan was projected as the topical context for Islamabad’s fresh ‘nuclear’ moves at military preparedness.

In such a climate, it is easy to view Gen Sharif’s recent visit to the US as a turning point that has impelled Pakistan to try and engage India in dialogue once again, presumably without matching New Delhi with tit-for-tat conditions at every turn. A perspective of this magnitude is more than plausible indeed, because neither the US side nor Gen Sharif is going to acknowledge this publicly. However, Pakistan’s military and civilian establishments cannot ignore the US because of their calculations of gaining “strategic depth” against India through good relations with Afghanistan – a country of enduring relevance to Washington in its continuing “global war on terror” in some form or other.

At the other end of the Pakistan-India equation, Mr Modi is often portrayed as a statesman who makes independent decisions.14 Implicit in such a depiction of Mr Modi is the point that his recent moves of leaning towards the US has had a purpose other than compromising India’s independent foreign policy by his watch. Also, an implied corollary is that the recent Indo-US statements of ‘strategic vision’ are designed to shore up India’s position vis a vis China, with Pakistan per se not being the primary factor in the Indo-US calculus now.

At a different level, the unstated Chinese stake in Pakistan’s dialogue with India is of critical relevance, going forward. China and Pakistan are well-known “all-weather partners” of practical relevance to India. I think that an emerging reality must be recognised: Beijing’s genuine stake in Pakistan’s stability so that China could gain strategic access to the Arabian Sea (and onwards to the Indian Ocean) through the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir’) and the ‘Northern Areas’ as well as the Karakorum Highway. China’s stake in Pakistan’s stability in this new context can be inferred from the tenacity of purpose that the Chinese leaders, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, have displayed in promoting the US$ 46-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project. Implicit in this drive is China’s enlightened self-interest of not wanting Pakistan-India instability, conflict, and war in the unfolding times. So, China may well have influenced Pakistan to talk to India now. Unsurprisingly, China welcomed the Modi-Nawaz Sharif informal meeting in Lahore as a sign of an increase in their mutual trust.15

In the final analysis, though, India will have to reckon with Pakistan’s “ideological frontier”, a phrase made popular by some scholars. To my way of thinking, Pakistan’s psycho-political frontier has three dimensions; (1) the notion that the Pakistani state is intrinsically different from India’s; (2) the growing signs that the Pakistan Army seeks to justify its towering presence in Pakistan by demonstrating a sustained ability to challenge or confound India continuously; and (3) the calculation that the “success” of the Pakistani state is somehow achievable through the “failure” of the Indian model. In coming to terms with Pakistan’s psycho-political frontier of such dimensions, India should not lose sight of Islamabad’s conventional geopolitical advantages, too, in the international arena. For the Pakistani military and civilian elites, a shared challenge now is to figure out whether Mr Modi’s India is, or will be, qualitatively different from the India that they have known all these years.

About the author:
*1 Mr P S Suryanarayana is Editor (Current Affairs) at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), an autonomous research institute at the National University of Singapore. He can be contacted at isaspss@nus.edu.sg. The author, not ISAS, is responsible for the facts cited and opinions expressed in this paper.

Source:
This article was published by ISAS as ISAS Insights 303 (PDF)

Notes:
2 The roller-coaster mood of hopes, generated by the Christmas-Day confabulations between Mr Narendra Modi and Mr Nawaz Sharif, and despair, caused by the terrorist strike on 2 January 2016, is evident from the varied media reportage on these two events.
3 A message on the website of the Prime Minister of India, http://pmindia.gov.in/en/news-updates/
4 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Pakistan, Pakistan condemns the terrorist incident in Pathankot, India, 2nd January 2016, http://www.mofa.gov.pk/pr-details.php?mm=MzM3MA
5 http://www.mofa.gov.pk/pr-details.php?mm=MzM3NQ
6 http://www.mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/26256/Telephone_Call_from_Prime_Mini…
7 http://www.pmo.gov.pk/news_details.php?news_id=464
8 This is true as of 6 January 2016 (mid-day).
9 C. Raja Mohan, Modi’s World: Expanding India’s Sphere of Influence, Harper Collins Publishers India, 2015, p. 67
10 For a scholarly interpretation of the India-Pakistan understanding at Ufa, read ISAS Working Paper No. 209 (17 September 2015): After Ufa: Why the India-Pakistan Dialogue needs to be reconceptualised on the lines of ‘Principled Negotiations’ by Subrata Kumar Mitra; for a diplomatic perspective on the South Asia-relevant developments at Ufa, read ISAS Insights No. 290 (2 September 2015): New Cross-Currents in the India-China- Pakistan Triangle by P S Suryanarayana.
11 While Gen (Retd) Janjua’s conspicuous absence during the Modi-Nawaz Sharif meeting in Lahore on 25 December 2015 is a matter of public knowledge, most of my arguments from this passage onwards closely mirror my earlier article on the same subject, for an Indian news journal (Border Affairs), in late-December 2015.
12 While Mr Bill Clinton’s intervention during the Pakistan-India Kargil War in 1999 was widely-chronicled by the international media then itself, scholars have heavily drawn on this episode in various ways. See, for instance, Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War, by C. Christine Fair, Oxford University Press, New York, 2014, p. 153
13 Read ISAS Insights No. 295 (11 November 2015); Pakistan’s Nuclear Deterrence: From ‘Credible Minimum’ to ‘Full Spectrum’ by Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury.
14 India’s External Affairs Minister, Ms Sushma Swaraj, hailed Mr Modi as a statesman as soon as his “surprise” visit to Lahore on 25 December 2015 became known.
15 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the People’s Republic of China, Spokesperson’s Comment, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/t1328157.shtml

The Swiss army has begun on-site preparations for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos. Despite terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, security at the event is not being significantly bolstered.

The head of the canton Graubünden police force, Walter Schlegel, who is responsible for the operation overall, said back in December that his anti-terror resources had already been at maximum capacity since the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, and that expanding them was “not even possible”.

Parliament gave its approval for an upper limit of 5,000 soldiers to help with the WEF meeting from January 15-25.

In response to a question from the German-language newspaper Südostschweiz as to whether there would be a heightened security presence this year Schlegel said that the upper limit of 5,000 army personnel would “definitely not be reached”.

There are currently 450 army personnel in Davos preparing security measures for the meeting, according to the defence ministry. The yearly get-together of the world’s most influential politicians, CEOs, celebrities and social-change makers in the south-eastern corner of Switzerland, begins on January 20 and runs for four days.

Who does what

Professional soldiers from the military police, and not members of the militia, will be deployed for the protection of specific people and for running entry checkpoints for access to the meeting area. A number of police officers from around Switzerland will also provide support in Davos, although the exact numbers are not yet known.

Outside of Davos the army will be protecting infrastructure, carrying out logistical tasks and providing command support during the event. They will have the same powers as the police.

The airforce will be carrying out observational and transport flights. In addition, access to the airspace above Davos and nearby airfields will be restricted from January 18 to 24.

Visitors to the WEF meeting will be able to land at the Dübendorf military airfield in canton Zurich and then fly by helicopter to Davos, as in previous years. Entry and customs checks will be carried out at Dübendorf.

India, which I often describe as miracle in the name of democracy, has of late, since the BJP came into power turned into an extreme intolerant firepot with a 25% increase in incidents of communal violence as reflected by Home Affairs data and quoted by India Today magazine as, “a surge in communally charge incidents in BJP led states” and the innocent lynching, brutal shooting, merciless burning and rampant killing of her citizens that absolutely was not carried out by fringe elements, but by Hindu fanatics.

The recent forensic report in the lynching case of Mohammad Akhlaq, clearly indicates that the meat sample found in his house was not beef. Such a heinous and horrendous, cold blooded murder was carried out in the name of beef. Anyways as I observed, the year of “intolerance”, the word that I somewhat find unsuitable for describing the whole phenomenon through which India has passed in 2015 and has really tarnished the very secular fabric for which it claims to be remembered and championed.

The situation seemingly looks alarming, since India’s renowned artists and writer’s et’al have returned their awards in the backdrop and aftermath of the ugly, unacceptable and provocative statements and incidents. Such seems to be the magnitude that L K Advani also spoke out and said “intolerance has threatened very essence of democracy”. The question of extreme intolerance goes beyond this, to the extent that freedom of speech and expression has become hard to exercise and who so does it meets the fate like M.M.Kalburgi and Govind Pansare. Of course they were very much opinioned personalities in India and dared to speak up against the extreme Hindu fanatics and nationalists, but they were silenced very soon. The audacity of events became more visible when ruling coalition party’s MLA in Jammu and Kashmir was caught on camera fighting in the legislative assembly with independent MLA Er. Rashid over the beef issue. This set the stage for digging the erstwhile law related to banning consumption and sale of beef in the world’s militarized zone.

The Indian Prime Minister’s attitude was indifferent and kept quiet for two weeks on the lynching of this man, but was very sharp to write a get well soon tweet to Navjot Singh Sidhu, after he was injured in a road accident. This has created an environment of unease among the Indian civil society and hence a sense of pushing back. The award returning from eminent persons and their letters to the head of the nation is a reflection of “how democracy is undemocratic in India”. I am of the opinion that it’s not just intolerance perpetrated by Hindu fanatic elements, but a  “reign of terror” that has manifested in different forms since BJP came into power and I suggest amending NHRC which will specifically monitor crimes committed and violence inflinged by Hindu fanatics.

The serious ramifications, be they in economic or social form arise when it comes to “intolerance beyond theatrics” and this has lead to incessant debates on print and electronic media. This has resulted in deep fair and anger among minorities and if same persists, then its more than obvious that India’s international relationships will suffer and the country will be dictated by Hindu fanatics and ruin its cultural ethos. This debate was brought more into media glare with the statements like “Muslims can continue to live in this country, but they will have to give up eating beef” by M.L. Khattar (CM, Haryana) or for that matter statements by Amit Shah, Tarun Viay et’al, who form the core of BJP’s cabinet committee. The debate is so volatile and more is added to it every day by BJP members, barely resisting in putting their feet in their mouths.

The brand new hoodlum violence has emerged in India supported by influential persons in government who are busy on working on Modi’s development agenda, but with a soft and elegant touch for latent hooliganism. Albeit prejudice and communal violence is not a new phenomenon in world’s largest democracy, but it has been summoned in new forms. Since BJP came into power in 2014, intolerance and religious extremism has increased and seems India is swaying from democracy and sinking in fascism, run by fascists, nationalist elites, and corporate elites and can’t become super power till it remains super poor and is moving instead towards reactionary direction. People are very much in deep fear with this growing scenario of polarization and despondency and what irks more is the silence from prime minister on these issues and is tantamount for holding him accountable.

Cautious Note

Studying in a country where human blood is spilled just on conjecturing of eating beef, doesn’t signify an end but reflects broad enervation and lassitude. It’s ironical to watch that the Indian government is toiling hard to get the membership of United Nations Security Council, when Indian minorities are made to live in horror. The Indian government prefers to say that we are working on the development mantra, but at the expense of mercilessly butchering Dalits, deliberately deploying more armed personnel in Muslim ghettos.

One finds it hard to stand up and express remorse in India without being lynched or attacked like B.R. Ambedkar said “to the untouchables, Hinduism is a veritable chamber of horrors” and M.K.Gandhi said “no one probably experiences a greater agony of the soul when a cow is killed. But what am I to do? Am I to fulfill my dharma myself or am I to get it fulfilled by proxy? To make a Muslim, therefore, to abstain from cow killing under compulsion would tantamount in my opinion to converting him to Hinduism by force”. This deficit and extreme view is a result of a toxic mixture of a government which has come to power which is economically neo-liberal, Hindu supremacist, socially regressive and if hindu fanatics are not kept at bay then Indians are intellectually bankrupt, morally annihilated.

*Author is a Columnist at various International Dailies. He is currently working on his novel ” The Bleeding Bride”.

By Georgi Gotev

(EurActiv) — A report by the EU’s disease prevention agency says the risk of Europeans being affected by infectious diseases brought by refugees remains low, but recommends that countries should be prepared to respond to such health threats.

Some media have reported worrying information about migrants bringing malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and scabies to Europe. In particular, reports of Syrian refugees bringing Leishmaniasis, a flesh-eating disease that damages internal organs, have caused serious worries in the US.

Last November, the Gatestone Institute, a US-based right-wing think tank, best known for its pro-Israel politics, published an alarming paper focusing on Germany, citing medical sources alleging that refugees would bring exotic diseases with them, for which the German health system is unprepared.

The Gatestone report also says that German hospitals are increasing security to protect doctors and nurses from violent attacks by refugees who are unhappy with the medical treatment they are receiving, that Muslim women refuse to be treated by male doctors, and that many Muslim men refuse to be treated by female medical personnel.

EurActiv asked the Commission to assess the credibility of such publications. Commission spokesperson Enrico Brivio said he would not make specific comments on these publications, but referred to a report by the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which made an evaluation of the situation last November.

The risk is for the migrants themselves?

“The risk to European residents of being affected by outbreaks occurring among refugee populations remains extremely low since the hygiene levels, overcrowding and limited access to clean water responsible for their transmission are specific to the reception facilities in which they are occurring,” says the ECDC report.

It also says that refugees are currently not a threat to Europe with respect to communicable diseases, but they are a priority group for communicable disease prevention and control efforts because they are more vulnerable.

However, the report also acknowledges that “there is limited information on the health situation of the refugees currently in Europe”.

The report mentions 27 cases of louse borne relapsing fever in different locations along the route that the refugees arriving in Italy are following, as well as four cases of tuberculosis diagnosed among refugees in Calais, France.

In the report’s conclusions, EU countries observing an influx of refugees are recommended to assess their overall preparedness and response capacity to infectious health threats.

According to ECDC, the risk to refugees contracting communicable diseases has increased because of overcrowding at reception facilities, and the consequent compromising of hygiene and sanitation. It is also expected that incidences of respiratory and gastrointestinal conditions will increase in coming months.

ECDC estimates that the low coverage for some vaccines, along with low immunity for some diseases, may result in susceptible refugees developing diseases such as measles and chickenpox, given the high incidence of these in some areas of the EU.

Brivio quoted Health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis, according to whom migrants and refugees are not a health threat for Europe with respect to communicable diseases.

Andriukaitis, who is a physician, believes that migrant and refugees are more vulnerable to diseases, especially due to their living conditions once arriving in the EU, and while transiting different countries.

If necessary, the Commission remains ready to coordinate the response with the member states, under the already-existing EU Decision on serious cross border threats to health, Brivio said.

Valerirya Voytenko, an regional specialist at Moscow’s Center for Scientific and Political Thought, suggests that Moscow has made so many mistakes in its dealings with the regions of the Russian Federation that it is difficult to speak of any policy or progress in that area.

Indeed, she says in a review of regional developments over the last 12 months that “unfortunately, regional policy has been carried out only in the form of expensive megaprojects” like the Olympics and World Cup intended to enhance “the prestige of the top people in Russia in the international arena” (politobzor.net/show-77285-regiony-rossii-itogi-2015-goda.html).

If there is a regional policy in fact, Voytenko suggests, the Kremlin is keeping it a secret from the rest of the country, and “the situation will only deteriorate if double standards and the imitation of activity do not cease to be the rule and guide to the activities of the Russian powers that be.”

To make her case, the Moscow scholar points to seven of what she labels “the bloopers” of the central government, actions and inactions that have made the situation worse already and that are likely to make it still worse in the years ahead.

1. Ending Direct Elections of Local Administrations. This move was “the latest step in the strengthening of the power vertical and the latest means to provide ‘insurance” to the ruling United Russia Party of challenges from the opposition.” But the results have been the opening of “a path to the degradation of the political system.”

2. Crimea Becomes Russia’s ‘Achilles’ Heel.’ Moscow has not figured out a way to prevent Crimea from being a black hole into which money flows but out of which comes little political loyalty from the Crimean Tatars, despite all of the Russian government’s efforts to win them over to its side.

3. Russia’s Muslims a Problem Because of Russia’s Foreign Policy. Moscow’s campaign in Syria has intensified Moscow’s problems at home with its own Muslim population. The number of counter-terrorism actions in many places has risen despite claims that the departure of radicals to fight for ISIS in the Middle East has led to a decline in radicalism at home.

Moscow’s problems in this area are compounded by the fact that many of the nations in the Caucasus have large co-ethnic communities in Syria and Turkey, and consequently, the reaction of the latter to Moscow’s bombing and hardline on Turkey have affected the attitudes of the former.

“The Russian leadership,” Voytenko says, “has done nothing besides papering over ‘the cracks’ of federalism by continuing its policy of loyalty toward the Muslim republics.”

4. Communist Victory in Gubernatorial Elections a Danger Signal for the Kremlin. With the election of KPRF candidate Sergey Levchenko to the governorship of Irkutsk Oblast, United Russia’s monopoly on power at that level begins to look less secure. There are now two KPRF governors, one LDPR member, and 12 non-party, alongside the 70 United Russia loyalists.

Moreover, even where the United Russia candidate won, he often did so with less than half the vote and with barely more than his opponent,, as was the case in Mari El and Amur Oblast.

5. Double Standards in Dealing with Cadres in the Regions. The arrest of one governor, the dismissal of others, and the declining ratings of still more shows that Moscow hasn’t figured out a single standard for dealing with the heads of the regions. Some regional heads are exploiting this; others are simply quaking in fear.

6. Moscow Failing to Address Regions’ Needs. The demographic and social needs of people in the regions are not being met. In 45 subjects, there was a decline in the number of people as a result of more deaths than births, and the overall increase in the country’s population—6800 in 2015 – reflected strong growth in Muslim areas and steep declines in ethnic Russian ones.

Unemployment has been much higher in many regions than in Moscow or other cities. Production industrial and agricultural is down there. And the standard of living in the regions remains much behind that of the major cities, something ever more people in those regions are aware of.

The regions lack the resources to do much about this, Voytenko says, as more than half of htem –49 – showed a deficit in their consolidated budgets last year.

7. Moscow Only Raises New Questions by Its Bureaucratic Moves. Moscow has disbanded some structures like the Ministry for Crimean Affairs without a good explanation and then seen the situation on the peninsula deteriorate given that instead of 200 officials working on it, only 15 are.

That is part of a general problem in which it has become entirely unclear why Moscow is doing what it is doing, what any reorganization will mean besides an effort to grab more money, and whether any given arrangement will last very long.

China is building a 100 MW dam in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, despite India’s strong objection.

The dam on the Jhelum River will be constructed by the Chinese company Three Gorges Corporation (CTGC) and on January 7 the company announced that it won the right to develop a hydropower project in PoK. In September, CTGC registered a subsidiary for the project in Pakistan. A Pakistani government supporting letter for the project was issued last week.

According to Pakistani media reports, this 1,100 MW dam will be built on the Jhelum River, downstream from Muzaffarabad in PoK. Both countries had agreed on a 30-year tariff for the dam.

One of China’s biggest state-run hydropower companies, the China Three Gorges Corporation (CTGC) which manages the 22,500 MW Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river – the world’s largest dam – has signed an agreement to develop the Kohala hydropower project in PoK, the firm said in a statement posted on its website. Total investment in this project is $2.4 billion, with a 30-year tariff for the 1,100 MW dam.

The China Three Gorges Corporation, which manages the world’s largest dam on the Yangtze River, stated on its website that it will go ahead on the agreement with Pakistan to construct the Kohala dam on the Jhelum River, downstream from Muzaffarabad in Azad Kashmir or Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Ignoring Indian government’s strong objections, China has decided to go ahead with the construction of a mega dam in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir (PcK) on the Jhelum River.

India even asked the company not to pursue the Kohala dam project by citing the land dispute. The Chinese state-run company’s announcement of plans to go ahead with a mega dam in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), the latest indicator of Beijing moving forward with major projects in the region despite India’s strong opposition.

It appears the Chinese dam move has taken Indian government and New Delhi’s strategist class by surprise, if not shock.

Established in 1993, CTGC is a clean energy group focusing on large-scale hydropower development and operation. It manages the development and operation of the Three Gorges Project, the world’s largest hydropower project in terms of installed capacity.

The Kohala Hydropower Project, the firm’s biggest investment in the Pakistani hydropower market, is expected to have an installed capacity of 1.1 million kilowatts. The project is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a 3,000-km network of roads, railways and energy infrastructure to assist development in Pakistan and boost growth for the Chinese border economy.

Last year in September, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif inaugurated five tunnels on the key Karakoram Highway that connects the country with China. According to a BBC report, these tunnels have been constructed by China over the Attabad Lake in Gilgit-Baltistan’s Hunza valley. The project has been named as Pakistan-China Friendship Tunnels. The seven kilometre long five tunnels are part of the 24km long portion of the Karakorum Highway (KKH) which was damaged six years ago.

The Kohala dam has been billed as a key project in the new China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) venture that envisages widening the Karakoram Highway, exploring a railway link and a number of energy and infrastructure projects in a corridor connecting Kashgar, in China’s far western Xinjiang region, through PoK, to the Gwadar port in Pakistan on the Arabian Sea that is built and managed by China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping had announced the ambitious 3,000 km-long China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) during his visit to Pakistan in April, 2015. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had raised “very strongly” the issue of the China-Pakistan economic corridor during his visit to Beijing and told them that it is “unacceptable”.

The deal shows that China is unwilling to take on board India’s objections to projects in Azad Kashmir (PoK). Beijing apparently said that these are purely commercial projects undertaken without prejudice to the Kashmir disputes between India and Pakistan. This was despite India pointing to China’s own objections to exploration projects between India and Vietnam in the South China Sea which China claims as its own.

The dam is part of several infrastructure projects planned for the China Pakistan Economic Corridor that includes widening the Karakoram highway and constructing a railway link connecting Kashgar in China with Pakistan’s Gwadar port, which was built and is managed by China. The Economic Corridor is part of China President Xi Jinping’s ‘Belt and Road’ that envisages a Silk Road Economic Belt comprising China, Central Asia and Europe, and a Maritime Silk Road to the Indian Ocean. India has said that it would cooperate with China on this initiative only when there is a synergy between China’s ‘Belt and Road’ and India’s own ‘Act East’ initiatives.

The deal for the dam underlines China’s willingness to go forward with major projects in PoK, despite India’s consistent opposition. Beijing, however, has said the ‘purely commercial’ projects were without prejudice to the Kashmir issue and that it was not taking a position on territorial disputes between India and Pakistan.

The CPEC has been pushed by President Xi Jinping as a key pillar of his pet ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, referring to a Silk Road Economic Belt connecting China to Central Asia, Europe, and a Maritime Silk Road to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. The CPEC, emerging as a key part of the project, is a significant reason for India declining to officially support the ‘Belt and Road’, which has been backed by most of India’s neighbors.

Initially, India’s official stand was that as the ‘Belt and Road’ was a domestic initiative of China’s, there was no need to back it as a national initiative. That stand has since been somewhat toned down, with most of India’s neighbours, including Sri Lanka, Nepal and Southeast Asian countries backing the plan.

New Delhi has since said that it would cooperate with China where there was ‘synergy’ between the ‘Belt and Road’ and India’s own ‘Act East’ initiative. Delhi has since emerged as the second biggest shareholder, after Beijing, in the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), committing $8billion, although the bank is expected to fund many ‘Belt and Road’ projects.

India has repeatedly rebuffed Beijing’s requests to refer to the ‘Belt and Road’ in joint statements and declined official backing in the project.

By Douglas Schorr*

Once again the darling of Europe, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, recently delivered a powerful climate change rebuke in Paris.[1] He loves travelling almost as much as making speeches and as frail as he is he wasn’t going to miss it. His most famous speeches, words that went viral without the help of the internet, were made in 1980 when he called for national unity and forgiveness as he graciously accepted the Prime Ministership from the people and the independence of Zimbabwe from the British royals.[2]

I’ve never liked him. At first that was because I was seeped in Rhodesian Front propaganda. I was on the losing side and he spoke and wrote English better. But when I woke to the depth of the Rhodesian Front’s lies to understand it was a war that should never have been fought, I realised there were many better others who could have led the new Zimbabwe.

Even as I watched from afar for him to fall, from 1980 until the mid-90s, everybody loved him. The Lancaster Agreement he honoured in every respect for the full agreed 10 years and more. He committed Zimbabwe to paying off its huge war debt. He and Smith was best buddies – the old whitie was in and out of his office until around 1983 – and at first even General Walls was there too, shooting the breeze, planning the country and though he wasn’t in on the genocide, other whitie colleagues were.

Though PW Botha of South Africa tried to derail him financially and through terror tactics, and though the West didn’t give all they said they would, he nevertheless marched on his rebuilding ticket. The world lauded him, proclaiming statesman of the decade, not because he was Uncle Bob the rare trustworthy black, but because he was a true blue capitalist.

Under him there was little change in land ownership. The affluent West continued to hold their great hunks of land to play in (De Beers still had likely the world’s biggest private holding) and they continued to enjoy all the produce of the fertilized, watered and tended to land by cheap labour country, the beef, food crops, fine tobacco and flowers too. While the white farmers made a bomb with their new-found partner in Bob, the IMF and others plied the new country with loans they knew, soon, Mugabe wouldn’t be able to repay. To his socialism ideas, and the fact that he favoured those who had voted for him, they turned a blind eye.

African agriculture soon surpassed prewar levels, supplying nearly all the country’s basics. The Tribal Trust Lands, in terms of education, health, roads and dip tanks that Smith had devastated were re-built, and more. The West sniggered when he bought a mine or a bank to save it from failing (to keep the jobs), when he (with World Bank help) introduced micro-lending to indigent farmers (to keep them afloat and to expand), and they laughed loud when he did away with the financial controls that had kept Rhodesia upright, allowing the importation of luxuries and whites to take their money out. Some mines, farmers and trading-others carried on selling the resources of Zim to themselves, calling it ‘transfer pricing’, fine words that in old speak mean ‘taking the country’s profits out’. They clapped.

The late 80s saw too the start of serious corruption, a colourless phenomenon.

The West had drained Zimbabwe and while the whole world watched Mugabe play Father of the new land, all of Central Africa was being quietly and, out of sight out of mind, viciously plundered.

The great thing about a fading memory is that I can take up a Tom Sharp novel, decide I’ve never seen it before, and once again laugh for days. Concerning Mugabe many have aspired to forget those heady days when Zimbabwe leapt forward, when the Queen knighted him and when the governments of the UK and the USA assisted in his ‘problem’ with the Matabele and Renamo – not for free of course.

The crunch came in 1991 when Mugabe was persuaded to participate in the IMF’s standard (what is good for Indonesia/Zambia is good for all) Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), a system of loans tied to a non-negotiable action programmes ostensibly to bolster Zimbabwe’s economy, but in reality a wave of escalating debt that would cripple the country (and any other) under rising compound interest rates – a technique perfectly designed to keep the West in a constant flow of hard cash from the Third World, the same as any money lender. ‘Amazingly, the Bank’s 1995 evaluation of ESAP declared it “highly satisfactory” (the highest mark possible).’[3]

Never a truer declaration. Zimbabwe, Africa’s pre-eminent Black State, born after years of pleading for a peaceful settlement and finally won through the barrel of the gun against better armed and trained white folk, proving that Black Africa could be competitive with the best in all the world, was being collapsed. The West’s destabilisation objective was finally reached.

The IMF demands brought ridiculous levels of hardship overnight. All the good works of the 80s in the poverty stricken zones of the TTLs and townships were undone. Staff trained at the cost of millions of borrowed money were fired. The great diaspora was underway and commonwealth countries picked the best qualified personnel while Zim still had to pay them for them. If that wasn’t enough, the ground work was being laid for the US funded MDC, and the fun had just begun.

‘ESAP brought immediate, unprecedented increases in interest rates and inflation’[4] just when the entire region was hit by the worst droughts in recorded history. Money was fleeing the country, the stock market (up to then rife with insider trading – I was invited) crashed, manufacturing’s steep decline (the corporates’ way of adding pressure) was devastating the employment market, never to stop until today.

Mugabe’s naivety was shown to the full when, after all of that, his lack of exchange controls allowed the fragile Zim$ to come under easy attack, beginning in 1997 where it ‘[fell] 74% during one four-hour raid after Mugabe joined the DRC conflict and paid generous pensions to protesting liberation war vets.’ Reacting to growing unpopularity and two Harare food riots, he finally invoked three pro-poor policies in 1997-98. He reimposed price controls on staple foods, controls on conversion of corporate foreign exchange accounts to local currency, and steep luxury import taxes.[5]

Under the demands of the financier(s) every social project and every black empowerment process collapsed. Only the army and police were allowed to stay because the money men (the IMF and partners) knew the hardship would be so dramatic and so deep that their guns and muscle would be needed to keep order. It was and should have been the end for Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Instead of following a slowly slowly make a place for all Castro route, as indeed Machel advocated, in gods, the West and debt he had trusted. By 1999 all except the privileged original white miners and white farmers were blown apart (they had had a bonanza right through the 90s).

But he didn’t go and so the farm invasions had to happen. For Mugabe to have stopped them would have been political suicide, just as Smith would have seen his had he allowed a black to own a white farm before 1977. Having a devastated black portion in 2000 after the heroic fight for liberation while the white portion continued as if nothing had happened was dynamite, exacerbated by a continued refusal of whites to share.

And so began the era of wholesale corruption as the failed Mugabe paid to stay in power. Cronyism reached and has stayed at record levels even for a capitalist outfit.

It was the farm invasions however that allowed media to focus on little Zimbabwe (with an economy smaller than a US state capital), while massive abuses of power and plunder were happening elsewhere – in big brother’s Pretoria and with the Queen’s very own Blair.[6] Had the MDC acted honestly and proved their grass-roots they’d have likely taken Mugabe down, but the people remembered Zanu had defeated the colonists. ‘If you’re going to pressure us,’ was the natural thought dictating most of the land, ‘we’ll resist just as we did before.’

Retaliation came from outside. The big boys with the reserve currencies of the US$ and Brit£ crashed the tiny Zim$ with inflation hitting 12,875% per year in 2007,[7] an action that made sure the country couldn’t even borrow wheel barrows and which forced Mugabe to turn to (the non-aligned, for a time) Gadhafi for assistance for the first time ever.

Some kind of land reform had to happen. For once the country had to look to feeding its own and not growing and supplying the over-fed, wealthy and hugely subsidised Europeans. And, over and above the obvious cronyism, there were huge extraneous reasons adding to the fire, such as no money and no rain.

Land reform hasn’t gone well but nor has it been a total failure. There are many reports of successes recorded in UK university studies, in the work of Ian Scoones and his team in among the hype of land left lying (just as it did under the Rhodesian Front).

Suddenly it’s all changed and the dictator, Zimbabwe’s newest destroyer-in-chief who has been in violent action since the late 1990s, is once again the darling capitalist of the West. Paris last week and who knows where next.

The reason is the standard and most simple: Zimbabwe has the world’s second largest reserves of platinum, its uranium production is going westwards and Mugabe has agreed to toe the line on the marketing of the world’s largest ever single field diamond operation, Marange. Where before it was a free-for-all,[8] now apparently the prices stay stable and the traders continue to number among the world’s most wealthy.[9] Tobacco is flowing again, the wild profits and collateral damage is all on track and wild-life safaris are in demand.

The Greedy capitalist pig Robert G Mugabe is back at the trough and Europe is wetting itself with joy.

I refused to go back during the 80s and 90s. I turned offers down because I didn’t trust Mugabe. I’ve been proved right but for all the wrong reasons. Who knows, had I stayed perhaps I’d have been invited into the white fringe and ended up with an amazing Billy Rautenbach farm,[10] a piece of one of the vast De Beers Estates or luxuriant living at Van Hoogstraten, or assisted to retire to a palatial Bredenkamp place in the UK and got to know a royal. Or, more likely, I’d have simply been able to enjoy life. As an ex-colleague wrote a few days ago: ‘but (Zim) is still the best place for me and my kids and my grandkids …Kariba and the Zambezi, golf and mates …and the people still friendly and well-intended.’

That the whites of Rhodesia institutionalised apartheid with the infamous Land Apportionment Act of 1930, a process that saw 99% of blacks excluded and which led to an insane war was dreadfully wrong, but it was done in the framework of an old world. That Mugabe and Zanu have debased and all but destroyed 60% of their own in the new world isn’t acceptable to me, but that many of my contemporaries pour the same misguided diatribe onto him, inaccurate fodder manufactured by the West’s corporate owned media, is unacceptable to me also. Mugabe is a fool caught in a wider conspiracy, an effective puppet made better by his mad ravings.

My new year’s wish is to see Robert Gabriel Mugabe gone before the bells clock in January 1, 2016, and even bigger, some sanity and peace restored to the world.

* A former soldier and district commissioner in then Rhodesia, Douglas Schorr is today a committed critic of capitalism and colonial legacies, citing them as the source of poverty in Africa. His first book, The Myth of Smith, is available for sale on [url=file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/bit.ly/TheMythOfSmith]Amazon Kindle[/url] as are the short stories Mr Boomslang & 7 Other Rhodesian Fireside Tales. Schorr blogs at www.douglasschorr.com Follow him on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates.

END NOTES

[1] http://www.newsdzezimbabwe.co.uk/2015/11/mugabe-on-attack-in-paris.html
[2] The same family that turned a blind eye to the illegalities of the Occupation of Mashonaland in 1890.
[3] Prof Bond is a store-house of data and opinion on modern Zimbabwe: All those really interested must read his work. For this piece I have supported by experiences with his ‘Zimbabwe’s Crisis Showcases Reasons for Bank/IMF Protest’ (see http://www.tokyoprogressive.org/) and ‘Lessons of Zimbabwe: An exchange between Patrick Bond and Mahmood Mamdani’ @ http://links.org.au/node/815
[4] Bond
[5] https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/22406
[6] Blair was in at the end of Thatcher’s Saudi arms deal – http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/05/bae-saudi-yamamah-deal-background, as well as at the pre-planning stage of the invasion of Iraq – http://metro.co.uk/2015/10/18/smoking-gun-memo-shows-tony-blair-agreed-to-military-action-a-whole-year-before-iraq-invasion-5446527/
[7] Cato Institute
[8] https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08HARARE1016_a.html
[9] Europe has always ignored the blood on diamonds … they have a few fancy-smart sounding rules that amount to ‘little man –away with you, we’re here’. Some stories suggest Daniel Gertler (said to be grandson of the once big man in the Israeli Diamond scene) is/was cheek to jowl with Mugs and team. It is confusing – many other names are suggested. I recall being skyped by a (black) Zimbabwean that the Zim Forces had suddenly acquired new equipment and in particular (some, a) awesome helicopter gunship. Days later the news broke officially of the diamonds we like to wear and of diggers being driven out of Marange.
[10] Billy Rautenbach see http://mg.co.za/article/2009-11-20-rautenbachs-fast-and-furious-ride-to-riches, and there’s Nicholas van Hoogstraten @ www.theguardian.com › World › Zimbabwe of May 23, 2014 and old timer, Smith’s sanctions mate, John Bredenkamp – Wikispooks – https://wikispooks.com/wiki