Women live longer than men.

This simple statement holds a tantalizing riddle that Steven Austad, Ph.D., and Kathleen Fischer, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham explore in a perspective piece published in Cell Metabolism on June 14.

“Humans are the only species in which one sex is known to have a ubiquitous survival advantage,” the UAB researchers write in their research review covering a multitude of species. “Indeed, the sex difference in longevity may be one of the most robust features of human biology.”

Though other species, from roundworms and fruit flies to a spectrum of mammals, show lifespan differences that may favor one sex in certain studies, contradictory studies with different diets, mating patterns or environmental conditions often flip that advantage to the other sex. With humans, however, it appears to be all females all the time.

“We don’t know why women live longer,” said Austad, distinguished professor and chair of the UAB Department of Biology in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences. “It’s amazing that it hasn’t become a stronger focus of research in human biology.”

Evidence of the longer lifespans for women includes:

• The Human Mortality Database, which has complete lifespan tables for men and women from 38 countries that go back as far as 1751 for Sweden and 1816 for France. “Given this high data quality, it is impressive that for all 38 countries for every year in the database, female life expectancy at birth exceeds male life expectancy,” write Austad and Fischer, a research assistant professor of biology.
• A lifelong advantage. Longer female survival expectancy is seen across the lifespan, at early life (birth to 5 years old) and at age 50. It is also seen at the end of life, where Gerontology Research Group data for the oldest of the old show that women make up 90 percent of the supercentenarians, those who live to 110 years of age or longer.
• The birth cohorts from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s for Iceland. This small, genetically homogenous country — which was beset by catastrophes such as famine, flooding, volcanic eruptions and disease epidemics — provides a particularly vivid example of female survival, Austad and Fischer say. Over that time, “life expectancy at birth fell to as low as 21 years during catastrophes and rose to as high as 69 years during good times,” they write. “Yet in every year, regardless of food availability or pestilence, women at the beginning of life and near its end survived better than men.”
• Resistance to most of the major causes of death. “Of the 15 top causes of death in the United States in 2013, women died at a lower age-adjusted rate of 13 of them, including all of the top six causes,” they write. “For one cause, stroke, there was no sex bias, and for one other, Alzheimer’s disease, women were more at risk.”

Cell Metabolism invited Austad to contribute this perspective paper, “Sex differences in lifespan.”

Austad first became interested in the topic when Georgetown University asked him to lecture on it in 2003. Although lab models like the roundworm C. elegans, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and the mouse Mus musculus are intensively used in scientific studies, people in those fields are not very aware of how longevity patterns by sex can vary according to genetic backgrounds, or by differences in diet, housing or mating conditions, Austad says.

Those uncontrolled variables lead to different results in longevity research. A survey of 118 studies of laboratory mice by Austad and colleagues in 2011 found that 65 studies reported that males outlived females, 51 found that females outlived males, and two showed no sex difference.

But if variables are carefully controlled, mice may prove to be a useful model to study sex differences in the cellular and molecular physiology of aging, Austad and Fischer write.

This understanding will be helpful as researchers start to develop drugs for human use that affect aging, Austad says. “We may be able to develop better approaches,” he said. “There is some complicated biology underlying sex differences that we need to work on.”

Differences may be due to hormones, perhaps as early as the surge in testosterone during male sexual differentiation in the uterus. Longevity may also relate to immune system differences, responses to oxidative stress, mitochondrial fitness or even the fact that men have one X chromosome (and one Y), while women have two X chromosomes.

But the female advantage has a thorn.

“One of the most puzzling aspects of human sex difference biology,” write Austad and Fischer, “something that has no known equivalent in other species, is that for all their robustness relative to men in terms of survival, women on average appear to be in poorer health than men through adult life.”

This higher prevalence of physical limitations in later life is seen not only in Western societies, they say, but also for women in Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Thailand and Tunisia.

One intriguing explanation for this mortality-morbidity paradox is a possible connection with health problems that appear in later life. Women are more prone to joint and bone problems, such as osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and back pain, than are men. Back and joint pain tends to be more severe in women, and this could mean chronic sleep deprivation and stress. Thus, the sex differences in morbidity could be due to connective tissue maladies in women, and connective tissue in humans is known to respond to female sex hormones.

But this is just one of several plausible hypotheses for the mystery of why women live longer, on average, than men.

Reynaldo Gonzalez, father of American national Nohemi Gonzalez, who was killed in the 2015 Paris attacks, on Tuesday accused the corporations of “providing material support for terrorism.” According to the plaintiff, the companies “purposefully, knowingly or with willful blindness” allowed militants to use their networks, while preparing for bloodbath attacks in France that killed over 130 people last November.

The lawsuit suggests that Daesh has used social media for the last few years to distribute propaganda, raise money and recruit members.

For instance, the leader of Daesh’ British division, Omar Hussain, was spotted by media recruiting members through Facebook. Google’s YouTube has been used for posting videos of brutal Daesh executions. In another case, Daesh sympathizers posted to Twitter images of murdered soldiers with the hashtag #AMessagefromISIStoUS.

Tech companies are sued often for alleged associations with terrorism. Responding to increasing challenges, the social media corporations consistently attempt to prevent their platforms from being used to promote terrorism. As a result, Facebook, Twitter and Google have tightened their rules regarding the violent and graphic content extremists ordinary post to social media.

“Anyone can report terrorist accounts or content to us, and our global team responds to these reports quickly around the clock,” Facebook spokesperson said. “If we see evidence of a threat of imminent harm or a terror attack, we reach out to law enforcement. This lawsuit is without merit and we will defend ourselves.”

Twitter claims to have shut down some 125,000 Daesh-linked accounts up to February, according to a blog, but the company is being sued for the second time in a year.

“We have teams around the world actively investigating reports of rule violations, identifying violating conduct, and working with law enforcement entities when appropriate. We believe this lawsuit is without merit,” a Twitter spokesperson said to International Business Times.

Many believe that the companies should contribute more to security by opening access for governments to users’ private data. Following the December 2015 San Bernardino shootings, the US House of Representatives passed a bill demanding more scrutiny into terrorism on the internet.

Tech companies claim that such a scenario will lead to more insecurity in social media. This time they have fought back, appealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, that web-based hosts are not responsible for the content posted by users.

Results from quantitative MRI and neuropsychological testing show unprecedented improvements in ten patients with early Alzheimer’s disease (AD) or its precursors following treatment with a programmatic and personalized therapy. Results from an approach dubbed metabolic enhancement for neurodegeneration are now available online in the journal Aging.

The study, which comes jointly from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and the UCLA Easton Laboratories for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, is the first to objectively show that memory loss in patients can be reversed, and improvement sustained, using a complex, 36-point therapeutic personalized program that involves comprehensive changes in diet, brain stimulation, exercise, optimization of sleep, specific pharmaceuticals and vitamins, and multiple additional steps that affect brain chemistry.

“All of these patients had either well-defined mild cognitive impairment (MCI), subjective cognitive impairment (SCI) or had been diagnosed with AD before beginning the program,” said author Dale Bredesen, MD, a professor at the Buck Institute and professor at the Easton Laboratories for Neurodegenerative Disease Research at UCLA, who noted that patients who had had to discontinue work were able to return to work and those struggling at their jobs were able to improve their performance. “Follow up testing showed some of the patients going from abnormal to normal.”

One of the more striking cases involved a 66-year old professional man whose neuropsychological testing was compatible with a diagnoses of MCI and whose PET scan showed reduced glucose utilization indicative of AD. An MRI showed hippocampal volume at only the 17th percentile for his age. After 10 months on the protocol a follow-up MRI showed a dramatic increase of his hippocampal volume to the 75th percentile, with an associated absolute increase in volume of nearly 12 percent.

In another instance, a 69-year old professional man and entrepreneur, who was in the process of shutting down his business, went on the protocol after 11 years of progressive memory loss. After six months, his wife, co-workers and he noted improvement in memory. A life-long ability to add columns of numbers rapidly in his head returned and he reported an ability to remember his schedule and recognize faces at work. After 22 months on the protocol he returned for follow-up quantitative neuropsychological testing; results showed marked improvements in all categories with his long-term recall increasing from the 3rd to 84th percentile. He is expanding his business.

Another patient, a 49-year old woman who noted progressive difficulty with word finding and facial recognition went on the protocol after undergoing quantitative neuropsychological testing at a major university. She had been told she was in the early stages of cognitive decline and was therefore ineligible for an Alzheimer’s prevention program. After several months on the protocol she noted a clear improvement in recall, reading, navigating, vocabulary, mental clarity and facial recognition. Her foreign language ability had returned. Nine months after beginning the program she did a repeat of the neuropsychological testing at the same university site. She no longer showed evidence of cognitive decline.

All but one of the ten patients included in the study are at genetic risk for AD, carrying at least one copy of the APOE4 allele. Five of the patients carry two copies of APOE4 which gives them a 10-12 fold increased risk of developing AD. “We’re entering a new era,” said Bredesen. “The old advice was to avoid testing for APOE because there was nothing that could be done about it. Now we’re recommending that people find out their genetic status as early as possible so they can go on prevention.” Sixty-five percent of the Alzheimer’s cases in this country involve APOE4; with seven million people carrying two copies of the ApoE4 allele.

Bredesen’ s systems-based approach to reverse memory loss follows the abject failure of monotherapies designed to treat AD and the success of combination therapies to treat other chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and HIV. Bredesen says decades of biomedical research, both in his and other labs, has revealed that an extensive network of molecular interactions is involved in AD pathogenesis, suggesting that a broader-based therapeutic approach may be more effective. “Imagine having a roof with 36 holes in it, and your drug patched one hole very well–the drug may have worked, a single ‘hole’ may have been fixed, but you still have 35 other leaks, and so the underlying process may not be affected much,” Bredesen said. “We think addressing multiple targets within the molecular network may be additive, or even synergistic, and that such a combinatorial approach may enhance drug candidate performance, as well.”

While encouraged by the results of the study, Bredesen admits more needs to be done. “The magnitude of improvement in these ten patients is unprecedented, providing additional objective evidence that this programmatic approach to cognitive decline is highly effective,” Bredesen said. “Even though we see the far-reaching implications of this success, we also realize that this is a very small study that needs to be replicated in larger numbers at various sites.” Plans for larger studies are underway.

Cognitive decline is often listed as the major concern of older adults. Already, Alzheimer’s disease affects approximately 5.4 million Americans and 30 million people globally. Without effective prevention and treatment, the prospects for the future are bleak. By 2050, it’s estimated that 160 million people globally will have the disease, including 13 million Americans, leading to potential bankruptcy of the Medicare system. Unlike several other chronic illnesses, Alzheimer’s disease is on the rise–recent estimates suggest that AD has become the third leading cause of death in the United States behind cardiovascular disease and cancer.

THE BREDESEN PROTOCOL, Dr. Bredesen’s book describing for a lay audience the interventions described in this paper, will be released by Penguin Random House in May 2017. Dr. Bredesen hopes to eventually transform the perception and reality of Alzheimer’s disease from a death sentence to a preventable reversible condition.

Vietnam’s deputy prime minister has asked religious affairs officials to enhance state management on religious affairs.

At his June 9 meeting in Hanoi with officials from the Government Committee for Religious Affairs, the body that controls and manages all religious activities in Vietnam, Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh asked committee officials to complete policies and pass a draft law on faith and religion in order to increase state management of religious affairs.

The fifth draft of the first-ever law on faith and religion that is provoking anger among religious followers is expected to be approved by the National Assembly at the end of this year.

“The state respects and guarantees religious freedom of the people but all religious activities must obey laws,” Binh said in a statement published by Vietnam’s Communist Party’s online newspapers.

Binh also urged officials to direct religions to operate within the law and fight against “bad elements who abuse religious activities to undermine national unity.” The communist government has used this arbitrary accusation to imprison or persecute followers of unregistered groups.

According to the committee’s statistics, Vietnam has recognized 39 religious organizations within 14 religions that have 24.3 million followers, or 27 percent of the 90 million population.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has strongly condemned Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s decision to revoke The Washington Post’s press credentials and sees it as a serious violation of freedom of the press.

Donald Trump, the Republican party nominee for the 2016 United States Presidential election, proclaimed Tuesday on Facebook and Twitter that “based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign, we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post.”

Trump himself indicated that the decision came after he disagreed with a Washington Post article with the headline “Donald Trump seems to connect President Obama to Orlando Shooting.”

“RSF strongly and unequivocally condemns this latest act of hostility toward the press as a serious violation of press freedom,” said Delphine Halgand, RSF USA’s Director. “How, in the country of the First Amendment, can the Republican party’s nominee for President justify revoking press credentials for one of the country’s major newspapers?”

Marty Baron, Executive Editor of The Washington Post, responded to Trump’s decision in a comment: “[this] is nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press. When coverage doesn’t correspond to what the candidate wants it to be, then a news organization is banished. The Post will continue to cover Donald Trump as it has all along – honorably, honestly, accurately, energetically, and unflinchingly. We’re proud of our coverage, and we’re going to keep at it.” RSF could not agree with him more.

This is the latest incident where Donald Trump and his campaign have made clear his disregard for freedom of the press. Previously, Donald Trump’s team has restricted media access to campaign events, he has insulted and bullied reporters who portray him negatively or ask him tough questions, and refused to participate in a republican debate because FoxNews refused to remove its reporter Megyn Kelly as a moderator.

Trump’s actions during the run up to the 2016 presidential election mark an alarming trend of curtailing freedom of the press in the United States. The U.S. ranks 41 out of 180 countries on RSF’s 2016 World Press Freedom Index.

The mass murder of 50 people in an Orlando gay nightclub by an Afghan-American in the name of ISIS raises questions about terrorism as a consequence of intolerance. Ostracising Muslims as a suspicious collective dehumanises them and perpetuates radicalism.

By Irm Haleem*

The 12 June 2016 Orlando massacre at a gay nightclub, which claimed the lives of some 50 individuals, marks the deadliest shooting massacre in US history. Despite speculations as to the homophobic sentiments of the shooter, political conservatives in the United States have homed in instead on his Muslim identity.

That Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old son of Afghan refugees, is reported to have called 911 (the US emergency hotline) to declare allegiance to Islamic State (IS) only lends credence to this conservative assessment. Not surprisingly, Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for US president, took this opportunity to tweet about the timeliness and credibility of his warning against Muslim immigration to the US to legitimise his Islamophobic policy stand.

Not all Muslims are terrorists; not all terrorists are Muslims

Beyond the fact that Trump’s strict policy proposals related to Muslim immigration would have had no impact in this case, given that the shooter was an American-born citizen, a larger problem is present here: intolerance for all those who are different, especially if this difference is demarcated by their Muslim identities. An obvious fact needs to be noted: not all Muslims are terrorists; not all terrorists are Muslims.

Some examples to note: Baruch Goldstein, an American-born Jewish-Israeli physician who massacred 29 Muslim Palestinian worshippers in a mosque in Hebron in February 1994, had ties to the Jewish terrorist group Kahana Chai; Anders Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing xenophobe who killed 77 individuals he suspected belonged to the Norwegian Labour Party in Oslo and Utoya in July 2011, had anti-Muslim and anti-Marxist, ultranationalist extremist outlook; and Gregor S, responsible for firing 40 shots in a crowded rock concert in Austria, killing two individuals in May 2016, was a member of the neo-Nazi group Blood and Honour; neo-Nazism is thought to be on the rise in Europe in light of the influx of Muslim refugees there.

The point here is that terrorism cannot be effectively understood as a consequence of a particular religion or religious group, but must be understood instead as a consequence of intolerance at large. And as the human histories of intolerance indicate, no race, religion or culture holds a monopoly in this regard.

The singling-out of Muslims as a collective that should be on the radar of policymakers is to engage in two forms of unethical behaviour: one which views the criminal behaviour of some individuals from the Muslim community as reflective of the sentiments of the entire group, thus dehumanising Muslims as somehow anomalous to all other racial, religious or cultural groups; the other, in contrast, which views the criminal behaviour of individuals belonging to non-Muslim communities as mere social deviation which encourages a form of exceptionalism that is problematic.

Such double-standards only breed a sense of injustice and marginalisation that lends itself easily to justifications of violence perpetrated by the radical entities (such as IS) looking for such vulnerability amongst their audiences.

Locke’s Plea for Religious Toleration

Of relevance to the issue of Islamophobia, John Locke, the 18th century English philosopher wrote A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), in response to the growing fear of the time that Catholicism was taking over England. The ‘letter’ thus advocates religious tolerance.

Locke argued that religious plurality, and its toleration, were key antidotes to civil unrest and violence, since lack of toleration involves coercion and that can only lead to resentments. Locke’s central premise was that civil government should keep out of the business of private religion.

Though the United States constitution itself is premised on a separation between ‘Church and State’, the contemporary relevance of Locke’s ‘letter’ seems to be the implication of his call for religious toleration: that one ought to avoid the tendency to objectify ‘minority’ religious groups as threatening. Religious toleration has no meaning if it does not reject the demonisation of a religious group as a collective, even if some individuals resort to criminality from within the group. These individuals must be seen as an anomaly and not as a representation of the group at large.

It is also important to note that contemporary sociologists have long been critical of the authentic religious nature of ‘religious’ terrorism. This is because religions, as frameworks of norms and sanctions for actions, lend themselves very conveniently as tools in the hands of extremist individuals given that any action can easily be justified under the notion of ‘Divine sanctions’ and accepted as such by their uncritical audiences.

Policy Implications

It is paramount we understand that religiously justified violence is no different in essence from other ideologically justified violence given that all violence is fundamentally a struggle for recognition. Hegel, the 18th century German philosopher, had argued that struggles for recognition were an existential struggle against (actual or perceived) negation and oppression, and thus struggles for an equitable (not subservient) status in society.

The counter to the rise of violence ostensibly in the name of Islam, should not therefore be a rise in Islamophobia; this would only feed the sense of ostracisation that led to radicalisation in the first place. There should instead be policies that address the deeper societal inequalities that lead to violent struggles for recognition.

Equally, the response to the rise of neo-Nazi violence in contemporary Europe should not be Europhobia, but a deeper understanding of the economic, demographic and political strains that are caused by an influx of refugees, leading to violent reactions against it.

The tendency to view individuals prone to ideologically justified violence (whether in the name of Islam or Nazi) as being representative of their societies at large is not only unintellectual and reductionist; it is also ironic as it demonises the collective these criminals belong to, in the same way these criminals demonise their victims as collectively responsible for their grievances. The consequence of such aggregation can only be more misguided policies that do not address the root causes, or essence, of terrorism, but perpetuate it.

*Irm Haleem is an Assistant Professor at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and manager of research and publications at RSIS’ Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR).

By Aline Robert

(EurActiv) — Nominally a supporter of the European project, Nicolas Sarkozy’s Republican party has made increasingly frequent attacks on the European Commission, which it accuses of “pushing out the UK and letting Turkey in”. EurActiv France reports.

French politicians have a habit of pushing the boundaries of their European political groups. But with the French presidential election campaign getting under way, Sarkozy has chosen to take a conscious step to the right-wing side of the Republican party, and depart from the more centrist line of the European People’s Party (EPP).

“Pushing out the UK and letting Turkey in”

“Between the Europhiles and the Europhobes, EU citizens no longer recognise themselves in the European project,” Nicolas Sarkozy said at the Republican headquarters in May. He added that “the European project has grown old” and that the EU’s ultimate failure would be to “push out the United Kingdom and let Turkey in”.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Sarkozy would hold Brussels responsible if the UK votes to leave.

On Tuesday (14 June) Republican MEP Françoise Grossetête denounced the EU’s habit of producing “long lists of advances in the single market, which reduce our citizens to consumers.”

“It is high time to leave these technocratic arguments behind and to speak out: Europe is more than a big market, an assembly of sectoral programmes, a machine for producing standards… Europe has a soul, a history, a culture,” she said.

This was clearly designed to be an attack on Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, who published an editorial in the French newspaper Le Monde on Monday (13 June), entitled “For the completion of the European Union’s single market”.

In this article, the former prime minister of Luxembourg, together with Mark Rutte, the premier of the Netherlands, called on EU member states to accelerate the establishment of the single market, particularly in digital sectors. They argued that this would create thousands of jobs.

Republicans propose treaty change

These criticisms reveal the complexity of the French right’s relations with the EU.

“The most exciting time in my political life was when I held the presidency of the EU,” Sarkozy said nostalgically, before making concrete proposals for Europe, some of which would require a revision of the treaties.

At a time of such widespread Euroscepticism, this hardly seems likely to happen. But the irony is that many within his own party buy into much of the anti-EU sentiment that is so visible today. The questionnaire presented to party members last month showed how strongly they agree with their leader’s criticisms of the EU.

According to results published on 25 May, 90% of French Republican activists believe their country should “re-establish national border controls for as long as a new Schengen agreement guaranteeing the effective protection of Europe’s borders has not been reached”.

Foreign border guards?

And the proposals for reform are punctuated with violent criticisms of the current European Commission. The party soundly rejected the idea of a European border force and heavily criticised the Commission’s current plans on the subject.

“Can you imagine Bulgarians controlling the French borders?” asked Sarkozy. He proposed that the EU create a “EuroSchengen” to run Frontex, based on the Eurogroup that governs the euro.

The party also raised questions over the freedom of movement, both for EU and non-EU citizens, and expressed its support for David Cameron’s proposal to withhold migrant benefits for their first five years of residence.

Finally, the party condemned the EU’s migrant relocation scheme, which it judged not fit for purpose. Hungary and the Czech Republic have already attacked the decision before the Court of Justice of the European Union.

A closed debate

“The problem is that there is no real debate, as the questionnaire with closed questions proves: we are only allowed to think like Nicolas Sarkozy,” said one disgruntled member of the Republican party.

Alain Lamassoure, the head of the Republican delegation in the European Parliament, expressed similar concerns. Questioned by EurActiv.fr, he confirmed that he shared many of his party’s concerns, but distanced himself from party strategy.

“The debate is rich and interesting, even if it leads to very commonplace ideas,” said Lamassoure, 72, who is serving his fifth mandate as MEP. He also expressed his disappointment that the party questionnaire was formulated in such a way as to encourage the most obvious answers.

“That is just to make it look like the activists follow the party leader,” he said.

On the subject of refugee relocation, the MEP said he had always had his doubts over whether the plan was workable. “But we have to make counter-proposals to express our commitment to European solidarity,” he said. Such proposals have not been forthcoming.

European IMF

On economic questions, the positions of the Republican party appear to be less controversial. The need to strengthen the Economic and Monetary Union has been evoked in several reports, like the one by the European Parliament on the eurozone budget, and the report currently being prepared by Pierre Moscovici, European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs.

The Republicans support this reform, which would see Germany and France take the lion’s share of the influence within the Eurogroup. They also joined Angela Merkel in calling for the establishment of a European IMF, where the more federalist left would prefer to see a European treasury.

The shocks of Brexit could galvanize a smaller EU toward integration, common institutions and direct elections.

By Alan Stoga*

The conventional wisdom is that the British exit from the European Union – Brexit – would be bad for everyone: the British people, the United Kingdom, the European Union and even the United States. While that may be true, in the age of Trump – the unconventional presumptive Republican nominee for US president – every bit of such received wisdom needs to be examined carefully to determine if, as with American politics, the stars might have realigned.

Arguably, Brexit needs to be judged against – and may well turn out to be a referendum on – the state and prospects of the European Union. Unfortunately, by almost any measure, the state of Europe is forlorn and the prospects grim. Perhaps, the shock of Britain leaving the Union could be exactly what’s needed to jumpstart Europe out of its near catatonic state.

From an economic perspective, Europe is stuck in a slow-growth, deflationary scenario; the EU’s total GDP only recovered to its 2008 level during the first quarter of 2016. Even that sad performance conceals dramatic differences: From 2008 to 2014, disposable income for the average household – essentially, take-home pay – shrank 6 percent in Ireland, 4 percent in Italy and 1 percent in Spain, while Greek households lost almost one-quarter of their income.

Across much of Europe unemployment remains high: Spain (20.4 percent), Italy (11.2 percent) and France (10.2 percent) explain most of Europe’s overall unemployment rate in excess of 10 percent. The combination of stagnation and weak labor markets has resulted in a sustained increase in income inequality in these countries and others.

On the other hand, German household income grew 15 percent. Unemployment is 4.3 percent and dropping, with accelerating wages and improving equality. No wonder that they remain enthusiastic Europeans!

From a financial perspective, the euro has survived as a single currency and certainly has contributed to export competitiveness, particularly for northern manufacturers who otherwise might be suffering from supersized currencies. However, the euro has failed to realize its potential to become a rallying point for continued European integration and, hence, a true global reserve currency.

This reflects the lack of an appropriate European institutional underpinning including a common fiscal policy, common banking and regulatory frameworks and a popularly elected European governance structure that would help make the European Central Bank, and the euro, legitimate.

Last year’s “Five President’s Report” by the leaders of key EU institutions recognized that the European construct is incomplete.1 Arguably, it’s worse than that: the EU is increasingly illegitimate for many whom it’s supposed to serve.

In all but a few European countries, fiscal policy is hamstrung by the spendthrift residue of past policies. As in the United States, that leaves most of the burden of macroeconomic management on monetary policy, which is “independent,” controlled by European technocrats out of the reach of national politicians. The practical result is that voters in France or Spain, say, have little input in the decisions that determine whether their economies grow or contract, and no possibility of persuading the Germans and other European creditor countries to share their wealth.

The solution is not to politicize monetary policy, but to recognize that the failure to evolve political structures – to give voters an effective voice in their own futures – is contributing to the hollowing out of the political center and growing populism.

This is only part of the political problem. Europe is also riven by north/south and east/west divides. On the one hand, countries like Germany, Sweden, Finland, Austria and the Netherlands are fiscally conservative and growing, albeit slowly, while the countries of southern Europe are economically stagnant and burdened with uncompetitive labor and regulatory policies. On the other hand, the countries in Europe’s east are much less committed to the multicultural, socially liberal model that typifies western Europe and, in cultural terms, defines “European” to much of the rest of the world.

Indeed, when the EU expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was no reengineering to take into account the dramatically different postwar histories of western and eastern Europe. Those differences have become increasingly evident under the twin pressures of recent Russian aggressiveness and mass migration from the Middle East and Africa; in general, the eastern countries are less interested in compromising with Russia as well as less interested in accepting refugees than their western neighbors.

Finally, from an ethical perspective, Europe’s failure to deal humanely with the migration onslaught has destroyed its claims for the moral superiority of its “soft power” approach to foreign policy. European leaders have found it easier to outsource border control than to agree on shared responsibilities for caring for migrants within the EU. Payments, in fact or in prospect, to Turkey, Morocco, Libya, Nigeria and other countries may be practical ways to stop migrants, but certainly do not rise to the standards of human rights and democracy that characterized European diplomacy for decades.

In short, the European Union is on trajectory to bounce from crisis to crisis, with ever-rising economic and social costs. Governments are supposed to create well-being for their people, and the EU is clearly not doing much of that. What might happen if the British voters, in their wisdom, decide that exit might be less scary than hoping to prosper amidst all that bouncing?

In the spirit of Winston Churchill’s dictum, “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” perhaps the Brexit vote could become the catalyst for reinventing the EU in ways that would make its institutions more democratic, more resilient and more effective – at least for some.

A new EU would almost certainly be smaller, built around a core of countries willing to integrate, create common institutions and directly elect European-level leaders. This would entail surrendering considerable sovereignty, particularly with respect to the control of what today are national economies, regulatory structures and banking systems. It would also require a common commitment to defense – embedded in NATO – a common foreign policy and effective border controls.

Germany and countries like the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Finland, Austria, Belgium and even Sweden are potential core members, while countries like Italy, Spain and Poland are surely not. The key question is whether France could overcome its increasingly divided politics and choose a European instead of a French future; the corollary is whether a new European project without France would make any sense.

It’s conceivable that a strong core could anchor a free trade area open to countries unwilling to participate in a unified European state. This would not as much mean creating fast and slow-track Europes, as it would mean recognizing that the current track is demonstrably failing.

Of course, Brexit would not necessarily mean that what’s left of the EU would break up. Over the last several years – through the Great Recession, the Greek debt crisis and the migration crisis – Europe has demonstrated enormous capacity to muddle through, if with increasingly unsatisfactory outcomes.

However, if British voters on June 23 choose to leave the EU, they would certainly provoke an “emperor has no clothes” moment. If the rest of Europe is lucky, that could be an opportunity to construct something that is actually equal to the challenges of the 21st century.

*Alan Stoga is senior adviser with Kissinger Associates and chairman of the Tällberg Foundation.

1″Five Presidents’ Report” sets out plan for strengthening Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union as of 1 July 2015. Press release, Brussels, 22 June 2015.

By Abdulateef Al-Mulhim*

Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is currently visiting the United States. The action-packed royal visit is very important for the world and the entire region. Riyadh and Washington are two key players on the stage of global politics.

It is necessary for the two countries to cooperate on various regional and global issues so as to ensure lasting peace in the region and to effectively extirpate the menace of terrorism.

The Saudi-American ties are not only important for the two countries but a good equation between the two friendly nations is important to the region and the entire world. The royal visit comes at a very crucial time, as many countries around the world are facing economic difficulties and terrorism.

The Middle East, due to multiple reasons, is facing unprecedented instability. Those who are well-versed with the dynamics of global politics know the importance of a stable Middle East for the entire world. In such a situation, we need increased cooperation from our time-tested allies to ensure stability in the region.

Saudi Arabia and the United States have always enjoyed cordial relations. Timings of the ongoing royal visit is of utmost important for the Kingdom as well, as it is embarking on a new path of development, as envisaged in the recently announced Saudi Vision 2030. The Kingdom is taking measures to do away with its dependence on oil income. In order to diversify its economy, the Kingdom will not only need to make necessary changes at the domestic level but it will also need to make adjustments at the international level to achieve it goals. At such a crucial stage, Saudi Arabia will definitely need its trusted allies to help it implement the ambitious plan.

Saudi-American economic ties are considered one of the most extensive in the world and the trade between the two countries had never slowed down since the discovery of oil in the Kingdom in 1938. Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is working relentlessly to liberalize the Saudi economy and the United States has a lot to offer in this regard because of its unchallenged position as the largest and most advanced economy in the world.

In addition to this the visit is also an extension of the extensive communication between the two countries.

In the past few years, Saudi-American relations were strained due to difference of opinion over some regional issues. We all believe that it is a normal thing and strong ties between countries are not affected permanently due to such issues. Fortunately, these differences never hindered the Saudi-US efforts to find solutions to stop the ongoing violence in the region.

Both Saudi Arabia and the US have the capability and willingness to work together to find solutions for many of the complicated issues of the region. It was done in the past and can be done now. The fast-changing situation in the region calls for the further modernization of the Saudi armed forces and our leadership is working overtime to achieve this goal so as to further strengthen the defenses of the Kingdom.

Discussions on defense and security are also on the agenda of the deputy crown prince.

One of the vital issues on the agenda is security cooperation to combat terrorism, which is becoming complicated and unpredictable. Today’s terrorism is taking a different form. This is why it is important for countries like Saudi Arabia and the US to work together to eradicate terrorism and to take preemptive measures to ensure safety of their respective citizens.

The deputy crown prince’s visit highlights the importance of Saudi Arabia in the international arena. Saudi Arabia had and still plays a vital role in enhancing and stabilizing the world economy and politics and this is the reason respected US media outlets should highlight the constructive role the Kingdom has so far played for the stability of the world.

By Cheryl Pellerin

U.S. forces in Afghanistan now will be able to boost support for Afghan conventional forces with more firepower and by accompanying and advising them on the ground and in the air, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said this morning in Brussels.

The secretary spoke during a news conference after this week’s NATO defense ministers conference, his fourth as defense secretary and the last such meeting before the July 8-9 NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland.

Based on his recommendations and those of Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Carter said, President Barack Obama decided to grant more flexibility to U.S. forces in Afghanistan this year.

More Proactive Support

The new authority means U.S. troops can more proactively support Afghan conventional forces in two critical ways: with more American firepower, especially through close air support, and by accompanying and advising Afghan conventional forces on the ground and in the air, he explained.

“In practical terms, this means U.S. forces will have more opportunities to accompany and enable Afghan conventional forces, just like we have already been doing with Afghan special operations forces,” the secretary said.

Enabling Capabilities

“As I told my fellow defense ministers,” Carter added, “this supports our ongoing counterterrorism and force-protection missions there [and] NATO’s Resolute Support mission, because a more capable Afghan force only makes our [deployed] forces … more secure, and it will help the Afghans … as we prepare for the U.S. and NATO missions in 2017.”

Carter said U.S. defense budget planning includes full funding for Afghan national defense and security forces through 2020, and that he learned today from NATO counterparts that they also intend to provide funding through 2020 for the Afghan national security forces.

“Regarding U.S. troop levels for future years,” the secretary said, “the current plan announced last August is for 9,800 U.S. service members to remain in Afghanistan for most of this year and … to draw down that number to 5,500 by the end of the year.”

Since then, he said, other nations also have decided to commit to having forces in Afghanistan beyond this year.

“This commitment will be part of NATO’s flexible regional approach to the Resolute Support mission,” Carter said. “The United States will continue to lead the NATO effort in southern and eastern Afghanistan, and we will continue to provide coalition partners with sufficient enabling capabilities needed for their own presence, particularly in northern and western Afghanistan.”

Counter-ISIL Fight

On the U.S.-led coalition campaign to deliver a lasting defeat to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Carter said he and the ministers agreed that ISIL’s parent tumor in Iraq and Syria and its metastasis are among the leading sources of instability emanating from NATO’s southern flank.

The effort has received contributions from nearly every NATO member, Carter added, but every nation and the NATO alliance itself need to do more.

“At this ministerial, we discussed specific ways that NATO could contribute more directly to the counter-ISIL campaign, including by providing NATO [Airborne Warning and Control System] aircraft and by conducting training and defense capacity building for the Iraqi security forces in Iraq rather than in Jordan,” he said.

With his French and British counterparts, Carter discussed recent momentum in the counter-ISIL campaign in Iraq and Syria.

Three Major Operations

The coalition is supporting local, capable and motivated forces on the ground in three major operations, all of which are putting a stranglehold on ISIL and applying pressure on multiple fronts, the secretary said.

“In western Iraq we’re assisting the Iraqi security forces in Iraqi operations under the leadership of Prime Minister Abadi to retake Fallujah,” he added. “In Northern Iraq, we’re also supporting the ISF in operations to isolate and pressure Mosul.”

In Northern Syria, Carter said, the coalition is enabling Syrian-Arab coalition forces working to envelop Manbij City, an operation that’s critical for helping seal the Turkish border and cut off the flow of foreign fighters in and out of Syria.

“Another challenge emanating from NATO’s southern flank is the migrant and refugee crisis, which NATO is helping address in the Aegean Sea,” the secretary said. “Soon, the United States will be contributing to that NATO activity by sending the USNS Grapple to support it.”

NATO’s Eastern Flank

On NATO’s eastern flank, after Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, NATO took initial actions that included enhancing the NATO Response Force and standing up the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, Carter said, noting that these were good first steps.

“We agreed that NATO would further strengthen its posture to deter and if necessary defeat any aggressor across the full spectrum of conflict [and] we’ve seen results since then,” he added.

The secretary called this an important alliance commitment to deterrence, one that is in addition to bilateral efforts such as the U.S.-European Reassurance Initiative. Details will be finalized in Warsaw, he said.

“More needs to be done,” he added, “particularly to bolster the readiness and capabilities of key NATO units that might be called upon in a crisis.”

That requires resources and rebuilding basic military skills that have atrophied in parts of the alliance over the past quarter century, he said.

Writing a New Playbook

“Since the Wales summit [in 2014], NATO forces have been adapting and writing a new playbook for the 21st century,” the secretary said. “We’ve been innovating to counter new challenges like cyber and hybrid warfare, integrating conventional and nuclear deterrence, and adjusting our posture and presence so that we can be more agile in responding to new threats.”

Meanwhile, he added, NATO is helping support the resilience of its partners against Russian aggression and coercion. In Ukraine, NATO has stood up a trust fund to help the Ukrainian armed forces in areas like cyber, logistics, medical support and countering improvised explosive devices.

By Dr Subhash Kapila

The Modi Doctrine christened as such by the Obama Administration in June 2016 was a strategic inevitability from which India shied away in earlier years in defiance of compelling geopolitical and strategic realities.

Indian Prime Minister during his visit to the United States in June 2016 audaciously unshackled India from its “history of hesitations” in forging an unambiguous US-India Strategic Partnership in strategic hues hitherto fore absent. Embedded in Modi Doctrine are a vast array of strategic, security, political and economic gains for India and similarly corresponding gains for the United States in terms of United States continued embedment and predominance in Indo Pacific Asia.

The Modi Doctrine seems well-synchronised with the strategic moment when it can be said that the ‘India Card’ has come to the fore in full play. Prime Minister Modi can be said to have audaciously seized the moment to India’s geopolitical and strategic advantage.

Rightfully observed in a Western media report was that the Modi Doctrine marks the transformation of India’s strategic formulations from Non-Alignment to a “Structured Alignment.” One could add that Modi Doctrine’s “structured alignment” with the United States would be one of equitable equations between the world’s most powerful democracy and the world’s largest democracy bound by commonality of strategic convergences synchronising with the changed global and regional strategic narratives.

Reflected on the back-cover of my Book released in January 2016“CHINA-INDIA MILITARY CONFRONTATION: 21ST Century Perspectives” was my long-held conviction that: “Evolving geopolitical compulsions and imperatives would ultimately force the United States to dispense with its strategic ambiguities on Chia and Pakistan and push the United States to stand by India in the intensifying China-India military confrontation. Such a game-changer would ensure that the United States not only stands on the right side of history but also ensures the continued strategic embedment in the Indo Pacific of the United States, with India’s strategic support.”

India today needs the United States strategically as much as the United States needs India with the changed global and Indo Pacific strategic narratives, and this inevitability for both nations was building up from the turn of the millennium.

The statements and assertions made by Prime Minister Modi in his address to the Joint Session of the US Congress signalled to the United States that India has no hesitations in 2016 in moving ahead to a heightened security relationship with the United States to provide some semblance of a security architecture for Indo Pacific Asia in which China with its burgeoning power is not inclined to act as a responsible stakeholder. On the contrary China is perceived as the regional destabiliser and posing a threat to the entire region.

Assumingly, it should be hoped that both the United States and India would give up their respective “China Hedging Strategies” and with existing and evolving strategic convergences work towards the common strategic objective of being the ‘nett providers of regional security’ in troubled and turbulent Indo Pacific Asia, more specifically, and consequently in other contiguous regions.

The Modi Doctrine can be said to have strategically united both ends of Indo Pacific Asia into a semblance of a security architecture where United States and India will be able to secure the Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean maritime expanses with consequent influence and impact on the Asian littorals that are enjoined to them.

China and Pakistan have been hit hard strategically by the Modi Doctrine as no longer available to them for exploitation are the ambiguities of US policy formulations. Like India, the United States too in response to the Modi Doctrine has signalled strategic shifts in relation to China and Pakistan. China would be continued to be engaged by the United States but absent would be the United States strategic permissiveness at India’s expense of earlier years. Pakistan does not need any more signals from the United States that its strategic utility to the United States is over.

Pakistan’s strategic and security anxieties are already surfacing in Islamabad where the Pakistan Army Chief, the presiding deity of Pakistan’s foreign policies was in huddles with Cabinet Ministers and Pakistani Generals in the wake of PM Modi’s Washington visit.

Barring China and Pakistan, the rest of Asia seems comfortable with the heightened security relationship of India with the United States and would be inclined to invest strategically in the same.

Perceptively, the outcome of the Modi Doctrine would be that henceforth the United States would not be engaged in balancing Pakistan against India but balancing India against China. Obliquely, this switch in US strategy would likely affect the strengthening of the China-Pakistan Axis.

Within India the usual political and policy analysts circles are bemoaning the loss of India’s strategic autonomy with fears that India will end up as United States B-League partner. My retort would be that was not India then a B-League partner of the Soviet Union in the Nehru and Indira Gandhi tenures and to what effect?

It is high time that a resurgent India aspiring to be a global power sheds the disputable piety and redundancy of Non-Alignment and move forward towards strategic pragmatism suiting and propelling India’s rise as a global power.

To the credit of all US Administrations from Clinton, through Bush and now the Obama Presidency of both political dispensations, a constant affirmation was that the United States was committed to the rise of India to its rightful stature. In the last decade and a half, the United States may have reversed gears in response to Chinese and Pakistani sensitivities but in mid-2016 the United States seems to have realised the futility of earlier policy formulations. The United States now would seem to be set on a course of a substantial security relationship with India responding to challenges posed by China to both nations.

There should be no fears in India that with a new President assuming charge in January 2017, India would have prematurely committed itself to an outgoing US Administration. Two things need to be remembered here with the first being that United States strategic investments in India’s rise to a global power enjoy bipartisan support in the United States. Secondly, with PM Modi being in power definitely till 2019 and predictably till 2024, thus provides any new US President with a predictable strategic template of assured Indian strategic commitments to US-India strategic convergences.

Implicit in the Modi Doctrine would be India’s readiness to assume in coming decades regional power and Big Power responsibilities in consonance with its enhanced power profile. India would have to take this call as the United States, Japan and other Asian countries, excepting China and Pakistan, would expect India to do so.

Concluding, one feels tempted to quote again from my above referred Book on Page 209 referring to India’s acceptance of Big Power and regional power responsibilities which reads that: “In such an eventuality it can be assessed that the United States would have no problems in working with India as a Big Power and then only can a meaningful “US-India G-2” management of Asian security may be possible, unlike the much China-hyped US-China G-2 combination which Asian countries find unacceptable.”

By Mrinal Kanta Das*

On June 9, 2016, an armed squad of suspected Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres killed a man for allegedly resisting when two ‘commanders’ of the outfit tried to rape his wife in Aurangabad District. Awadhesh Singh Bhokta was shot seven times by an AK-47 assault rifle at Gewal Bigha village in the Madanpur Police Station area of the District. Giving details Bhokta’s wife stated, “Maoist ‘commanders’ Prasadji and Nawalji had been raping her for the last one month. This was opposed by her husband. A dozen armed Maoists raided their house on Thursday [June 9], picked up Bhokta, took him to a secluded place and shot him dead.” The Maoists, meanwhile, in some leaflets left behind, claimed that Bhokta was killed for being a ‘police informer’. The leaflets also threatened to teach a lesson to Aurangabad Member of Parliament Sushil Kumar Singh and Member of Legislative Council Rajan Kumar Singh. Aurangabad Superintendent of Police (SP) Babu Ram, denying the Maoists charge, stated, “Maoists have killed an innocent person. Their claim that Bhokta was a police informer is baseless.”

On May 25, 2016, CPI-Maoist cadres killed two persons at Duaath village in Gaya District. The slain persons were identified as Sudesh Paswan, Dumaria Block (rural administrative unit) president of the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). The other victim was Sunil Paswan, a cousin of the slain LJP leader. The Maoists on June 2, 2016, claiming responsibility for the incident, alleged that Sudesh was the ‘ring leader of Police informers’.

On May 21, 2016, the Maoists killed three villagers at Gadi village in the Chakai area of Jamui District. Their bodies were recovered by the Police on May 22. In a hand written pamphlet, the Maoists claimed that they were ‘Police informers’ who facilitated the encounter killing of their leader Ram Chandra Mahto aka Pramod aka Chirag Da in Jamui District on January 29, 2016. Chirag was a ‘special area committee’ member of Northeast Bihar and North Jharkhand Special Area Committee carrying two rewards – INR 2.5 million announced by Jharkhand Government and INR 0.5 million declared by Bihar Government.

Incidentally, these three Districts – Aurangabad, Gaya and Jamui – remain the epicenter of Maoist-violence in Bihar. According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), 14 persons, including seven civilians, two SF personnel and five Maoists, have been killed in the State during the current year (data till June 12, 2016); of which 13 fatalities, including all seven civilians, one of two SF troopers and five Maoists have been reported from these three Districts alone.

Since the formation of the CPI-Maoist on September 21, 2004, Bihar has accounted for at least 632 Maoist-linked fatalities, including 284 civilians, 175 SF personnel and 173 Maoists. Of these, 269 fatalities (42.56 per cent of the total), including 140 civilians, 79 SF personnel and 50 Maoists, were recorded in these three Districts. The region has been highly insecure for the civilian populace in terms of Maoist violence, with 49.29 per cent of total civilian fatalities recorded in such violence during this entire period (since September 21, 2004) located in these Districts alone.

Apart from the CPI-Maoist, the Tritiya Prastuti Committee (TPC), a Maoist splinter group operating out of Jharkhand, has also made its presence felt in the region. Aurangabad-Gaya-Jamui, in fact, have been the ground for a turf war between the Maoists and the TPC cadres. According to the SATP database, at least four TPC cadres and three Maoists have been killed in six separate incidents of fratricidal killing since 2004. TPC cadres have also targeted Police and civilians in the region, with four such incidents recorded thus far. In the current year, on January 3, 2016, TPC cadres assaulted two persons, identified as Ramvilas Ram and Ramdeep Ram, 70-year-old father and brother, respectively, of a sarpanch (head of panchayat, village level local self-Government institution) in Aurangabad District. The fear of a TPC backlash prevented the sarpanch Ramji Ram from lodging a Police complaint after the assault. The sarpanch said TPC cadres had demanded 20 per cent of the grant sanctioned by the Government for welfare schemes in his panchayat.

Unsurprisingly, Aurangabad, Gaya and Jamui are among the 35 worst Naxal-[Left-Wing Extremism (LWE)] – affected Districts identified by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UMHA) across the country.

These three Districts are strategically located and close to the border with Jharkhand, another severely Maoist-affected State. The Garwah, Palamu, Chatra, Hazaribagh, Koderma and Giridih Districts of Jharkhand, all LWE-affected, share borders with these three Districts in Bihar. In the current year, Jharkhand has thus far accounted for 36 LWE-linked fatalities, including 11 civilians, eight SF personnel and 17 Maoists.

Backwardness, poverty and poor governance continue to create pools of potential violence in this region, and the Maoists have been quick to tap into these reserves. A joint survey conducted by the US-India Policy Institute and the New Delhi based Centre for Research and Debates in Development Policy found that among 599 Districts across India under the purview of the survey, Jamui ranked near the bottom, at 587; Gaya, 562nd and Aurangabad, 557th. The report took composite development — measured in terms of economic development and the indices of health, education and material well-being – into consideration, and was released on January 29, 2015. According to the Annual Health Survey 2011-12, Bihar, the institutional delivery rate in Gaya and Jamui are 42.8 and 42.9 per cent, respectively, as against the State average of 51.9 per cent.

Bihar has seen continuous and positive developments in its counter-insurgency campaigns through 2014 and 2015, though these have been periodically undermined by political indecision and ambivalence. The lack of political direction has brought misery to the region, and particularly to its worst LWE-afflicted Districts. It is imperative that a clear political will enables and reinforces SF operations to bring enduring peace and stability to the remaining areas of LWE influence in the State.

*Mrinal Kanta Das
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

By Nijeesh N*

On June 9, 2016, 68 cadres of the United Achik Liberation Army (UALA) led by its ‘chairman’ Novembirth Marak bade farewell to arms in an official disbanding ceremony held at the SMELC Building at Dakopgre in the Tura area of West Garo Hills District. “I appeal to other outfits to accept the call of the government, join the mainstream and work for the welfare of the Garo society,” Marak stated after the surrender. He also claimed that he had tried to convince at least five other outfits to come together and join the mainstream under the banner of A’chik Revolutionary Front (ARF), but the plan failed to materialize.

Earlier, on May 13, 2016, at least 24 Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA) cadres surrendered in a ceremony in Shillong, the State capital. Among those who surrendered was ‘action commander’ Hedeo Ch Momin, ‘area commander,’ Chingnang and ‘deputy area commander,’ Sengrak M. Marak from the West Garo Hills District ‘command’ of the outfit, as well as four personal bodyguards of GNLA ‘commander-in-chief’ Sohan D. Shira. The militants also deposited a huge cache of weapons, including two AK and one SLR rifles, two pistols, 1,304 rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition, 3,446 rounds of medium machine gun ammunition, and incriminating documents. Hedeo later revealed that the huge amounts of ammunition which were purchased from Bangladesh were buried underground by Sohan at Durama in West Garo Hills.

On May 9, 2016, at least 14 GNLA cadres, including the ‘finance secretary’ Belding Marak aka Rakkam surrendered in Shillong. The surrendered militants, most of who belonged to the Nangalbibra area of East Garo Hills District, deposited a cache of arms and ammunition, including four AK rifles, one Heckler & Koch (HK) rifle, six pistols, grenades, and VHF communication sets. A large quantity of GNLA documents, including demand (extortion) letters, were also handed over to Police.

On May 4, 2016, 14 cadres of the ‘Northern command’ of the GNLA, including its ‘area commander’ Philiport D. Shira, along with two cadres of the Independent faction of United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA-I) surrendered to the Meghalaya Police. The cadres also deposited a cache of weapons, including four AK and one INSAS rifles, six pistols, one carbine, a grenade, 484 rounds of ammunition, four handsets, incriminating documents and 19 illegal SIM cards.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), a total of 181 militants [GNLA (84), UALA (68), 11 each from A’chik Matgrik Elite Force (AMEF) and Liberation of Achik Elite Force (LAEF), two each from Achik National Liberation Army (ANLA) and Independent faction of United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA-I), and one each from Achik National Volunteer Council (ANVC), Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) and United Garo Security Force (UGSF)] have surrendered in the State during the current year (data till June 12, 2016). This adds to 67 surrenders through 2015 and 796 surrenders in 2014. The number of surrendered militants was just at nine in 2013, 14 in 2012, 34 in 2011, 17 in 2010, 10 in 2009, 15 in 2008, 27 in 2007, 42 in 2006, six in 2005, 73 in 2004, three in 2003, zero in 2002, 13 in 2001 and no surrenders in 2000. The significantly high number of surrenders in 2014 was primarily due to the disbanding of two factions of ANVC – 447 from ANVC and 301 from its Breakaway faction (ANVC-B) at a function at the Dikki-Bandi Stadium at Dakopgre in Tura in West Garo Hills District on December 15, 2014.

According to Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UHMA) records , the total number of militants surrendered in Meghalaya in 2015 was 78; 733 in 2014; 10 in 2013; 20 in 2012; 39 in 2011; 27 in 2010; 20 in 2009; 14 in 2008; and 40 in 2007.

The acceleration in surrenders since 2014 has been the result of counter-insurgency (CI) operational successes. State Police Forces backed by Central Forces jointly initiated an operation code-named ‘Operation Hill Storm-1’ on July 11, 2014, to flush out militants from the interior areas of the Garo Hills, which comprises of five Districts – West Garo Hills, East Garo Hills, South West Garo Hills, South Garo Hills and North Garo hills. The main aim of the operation was to deny the extremists, mainly the GNLA and ULFA-I, any ‘comfort zones’ in the region. The first phase ended on December 31, 2014. The Security Forces (SFs) launched the second phase, ‘Operation Hill Storm-2’, on April 2, 2015, and the operation lasted till June 6, 2015. ‘Operation Hill Storm-3’ launched on February 25, 2016, is ongoing.

‘Operation Hill Storm-1’ was launched in the aftermath of a sharp increase in civilian fatalities and cases of abduction and extortion in the Garo Hills region.

According to SATP, during Operation Hill Storm-1, the Forces eliminated at least 16 militants while losing six of their own personnel. Under Operation Hill Storm-2, at least 17 militants were neutralized and the number of SFs killed stood at four. In the ongoing third phase of the Operation, at least three militants have already been killed, while one SF trooper has also lost his life.

Inspector General of Police (IGP), in-charge of Law & Order / Operations, G.H.P. Raju stated on March 9, 2016, “As many as four GNLA camps have been busted and SFs have already recovered 70 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), 1,475 electrical/non-electrical detonators and half a kilogram of gelatine explosive materials during the current phase of the operation.” Further, on May 13, 2016, he disclosed that 130 GNLA militants had been arrested since Operation Hill Storm-3 was launched. Earlier, SFs had claimed that they had destroyed 12 major GNLA camps in the East Garo Hills as a part of Operation Hill Storm-1, and another five camps during the Operation Hill Storm-2, along with several arrests and recoveries.

Clearly, the SFs have established an upper hand and the militants are feeling the heat. During the surrendering ceremony on May 4, 2016, Philiport D. Shira stated, “There have been serious internal conflicts within the GNLA after Sohan D. Shira, the ‘military wing chief’, refused to share extortion money with various commands. The other reason for the entire command to surrender to the authorities was pressure from the general public in the wake of counter-insurgency operations in Garo Hills.” Similarly, GNLA’s ‘action commander’ Hedeo Ch Momin during the surrender ceremony on May 13, 2016, admitted, “We were forced to surrender since we cannot bear the brunt of the operation launched by the state against us. We have not been able to stay in one place but have always been on the run. We had to remain alert all the time and in the process face a lot of hardships.”

The security environment in Meghalaya had started deteriorating from 2011, but has seen considerable improvement since the launch of Operation Hill Storm. The number of civilian fatalities in the State had risen from three in 2010 to 11 in 2011, and further to 27 in 2012, and 28 in 2013. [Meghalaya recorded 29 civilian fatalities in 2002, the highest ever in the State since 1992]. Civilian fatalities came down to 23 in 2014 and further declined to 19 in 2015. The improvement continues as the total number of civilians killed in the State during the current year stands at five (data till June 12, 2016) as against seven recorded during the corresponding period of the previous year.

Troubles, nevertheless, persist. On March 10, 2016, GNLA ‘publicity secretary’ Garo Mandei Marak warned, “If Government of Meghalaya doesn’t withdraw or stop the ongoing Operation Hill Storm-3 against GNLA, then we will push the buttons for serial blasts in all the five districts of Garo Hills.” The outfit also threatened IGP Raju, Chief Minister Mukul Sangma, along with non-governmental organizations and Church elders, stating that the leaders would have to bear the responsibility for the loss of life and property that would take place. There have, however, been no attacks reported so far, subsequent to the threat.

On April 18, 2016, ignoring the GNLA threat, the Meghalaya Government decided to continue ‘Operation Hill Strom-3’ for another six months. Announcing this, IGP Raju stated on April 18, 2016, “Additional Special Force-10 Commandos, who are under intense commando training in jungle warfare, would be inducted for special operations against these militants to supplement the SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams who are already involved in counter insurgency operations in Garo Hills”. Moreover, on June 9, 2016, Meghalaya Director General of Police (DGP) Rajeev Mehta ruled out the possibility of holding talks with the GNLA. “I think the most feasible way for the cadres of the GNLA is to surrender than thinking of talks”, Mehta said, adding, “Most of the cadres have already surrendered and my opinion is that there should be no leeway for such a group.” SATP data shows that at least 178 GNLA militants have surrendered since 2010: 84 in 2016 (data till June 12), 23 in 2015, 27 in 2014, three in 2013, nine in 2012, 27 in 2011, and five in 2010. The GNLA was formed in November 2009.

Meanwhile, in January 2016, the Meghalaya Government also decided to implement a proper scheme for the rehabilitation of surrendered militants. The State Government decided to turn the non functional Baljek Airport into a hub to house surrendered militants. Further, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Shri Kiren Rijiju, on May 4, 2016, stated in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament) that “The Government of India is implementing a Scheme for Surrender-cum-Rehabilitation of Militants in the North-East… Surrenderees are paid monthly stipend upto Rs. 4000/- for a period of 36 months and an immediate grant upto Rs. 2.5 lakhs is kept in a bank in the name of each surrenderee as fixed deposit for a period of 3 years. Persons eligible under the scheme are initially lodged in a Rehabilitation camp where they are trained in a trade/ vocation of their liking or befitting their aptitude. The Scheme provides for impact assessment of the policy every year to ensure corrective action.” According to UMHA, at least 7,740 militants have surrendered across seven northeastern States (Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura) since 2007, including 143 who surrendered in 2015.

Just as the spurt in surrenders is a consequence of effective CI operations, any lessening of pressure will result in a reversal of this flow, as has been the case in the past, when surrendered groups have gone back to ‘business as usual’. The situation in Meghalaya – and in the wider Northeast – has enormously improved, but remains extremely unstable, with a number of surviving groups threatening peace, and wide gaps in governance, development and the outreach of public goods creating opportunities for militant recruitment.

* Nijeesh N
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

The Singapore Home Team is leveraging technology, such as drones for operational efficacy, in support of the SG Secure movement. A powerful tool, the use of drones for homeland security must be accompanied by clear guidelines and with public trust.

By Muhammad Faizal bin Abdul Rahman*

In response to a Parliamentary Query on 27 January 2016, Senior Minister of State for Home Affairs Desmond Lee said that the Home Team is leveraging new technologies to cope with increasing demands amid manpower constraints; including exploring the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones to support the management of public order and major incidents. Drones are currently being tested by homeland security forces overseas for surveillance of public space. However, is our Singapore public ready for the Big Brother in the Sky?

The benefits of surveillance drones to the homeland security are manifold; including increased police presence to deter terrorism and crime, and enhanced data collection for situational assessment to support incident management. In extreme and perilous public order situations, drones could possibly be armed with non-lethal weapons such as tear gas to aid ground officers in dispersing rioters. Drones could undoubtedly be a high-utility asset in the Home Team’s arsenal to safeguard safety and security in a densely-populated and highly urbanised operating environment.

Drones – High Tech Guardian or Creepy Big Brother?

Notwithstanding its potential, drones like any new technology could conjure both curiosity and fear. A September 2012 article “One-third of public fear police drone use” by The Washington Times reported that a third of the people polled were concerned that the use of police drones could lead to loss of privacy. In an era of vocal and demanding citizenry, the government faces an increasingly herculean task of communicating its policies to the public. Likewise, the Home Team through community engagement (e.g. the Community Safety & Security Programme) endeavours to build and sustain trust and confidence of the public.

Given the heightened terrorist threat, the Home Team seeks to deepen partnership with the public by launching the SG Secure movement to better engage the community and strengthen its vigilance and resilience. In sync with this overarching movement, any testing and implementation of new technology (e.g. drones) in the public domain must be accompanied by careful public messaging that would inspire confidence instead of fear and distrust.

A homeland security drone programme must be seen by the public as a contemporary symbol of the Home Team’s reliability and unwavering resolve to public security – not misconceived as a mass surveillance tool for an authoritarian state. Misconceptions could negate positive sentiments towards the Home Team, and run counter to relationship-building efforts under the ambit of SG Secure.

Can Drones Co-exist with Community Partnership?

One may ask how a drone programme might be profoundly different from other surveillance technology rolled out earlier by the Home Team such as PolCam 2.0. For starters, drones are capable of discreet and mobile surveillance unlike fixed CCTV cameras (i.e. fear of being followed). Drones could provide greater scope of coverage in terms of geographic area (i.e. fear of mass surveillance), and vertical space for high-rise buildings (i.e. fear of invasion of private space – note how LRT windows switch to opaque when the trains pass by HDB residential units). As an unmanned vehicle, there would be a hidden human operator actively controlling the drone by remote, and this might raise concerns over possible abuse or misuse.

Public sentiments towards the use of drones specifically by security agencies might be muddied by its battlefield reputation as faceless killing machines; popularised by Hollywood movies such as “Eye in the Sky”. A drone as a faceless extension of a police officer, yet interacting obliquely with the populace from a distance by virtue of its aerial presence in public space, might propagate an impersonal and cold connection between homeland security agencies and the community. This could inadvertently be counter-productive to ongoing community engagement efforts (e.g. new “Community Engagement Officer” vocation), where public trust and cooperation are critical success factors for SG Secure.

The Home Team in its commendable efforts to ensure effective operations amid increasing demands and resource constraints, need to be circumspect that the technology it adopts could have the side-effect of making its agencies appear less human or socially detached.

Introducing Drones to the Public – Measures for Holistic Approach

The current global discourse examines the socio-political, ethical and legal issues from the use of drones and its perceived lack of humanity. A May 2012 article “Send in the Homeland Police Drones, Says Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell” by Forbes posited that the legitimacy of policing hinges on the moral authority of our shared humanity. The International Association of Chiefs of Police had in August 2012 published a set of Recommended Guidelines for the Use of Unmanned Aircraft. These underscore the importance of taking concurrent steps to safeguard the collaborative relationship between the public and the law, as security agencies seek to leverage technology.

Singapore’s homeland security community should, as strategic anticipation, have its own discourse and explore approaches – including policy and strategic communications – to these issues. Policy should clearly articulate the operational considerations (e.g. type of incidents & events) that would necessitate the use of drones, operating procedures and training to ensure safe and responsible piloting, and public notification on the deployment of drones. Policy on the use of drones, and the data amassed, must stand up to legal and moral scrutiny.

Security agencies should work with the media (mainstream & social) and grassroots to involve the public early in communicating the benefits, trade-offs and safeguards in the use of drones; concurrently addressing the public’s concerns and incorporating their feedback to the drone policy. In essence, the public must be effectively informed and convinced that drones would be used in good faith and responsibly by the state for the benefit of public security.

*Muhammad Faizal bin Abdul Rahman is a Research Fellow with the Homeland Defence Programme at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Owing to the increasing belligerence demonstrated by China in recent times on the South China Sea (SCS) issue, this oceanic space has emerged as a major flashpoint in the Asia-Pacific region as there are several claimants to this disputed maritime territory. While several smaller nations of the ASEAN grouping claim to some parts of the SCS which are in their exclusive economic zones, China claims its sovereignty over the region in its entirety. It has declared the SCS as one of its core interest, along with Tibet and Taiwan.

Vietnam and the Philippines have contested Chinese claim vigorously. While Vietnam is getting prepared to repulse to any Chinese advance and also beefing up its defence relationships with countries friendly to it such as the US, Japan and India, the Philippines has taken up the case before the international tribunal for arbitration. China has already announced that it would reject the world court verdict if it goes against it. China has categorically said that it does not recognise the arbitration and has reacted angrily to the Philippines’ legal efforts over Beijing-controlled Scarborough Shoal, which sits just 230 kilometres off the main Philippine island of Luzon. While the US and regional powers are awaiting the official response to the tribunal court ruling before reacting, Beijing stands firm. The US and the European Union have urged China to respect the ruling from The Hague when it comes. China has ignored such advice. The court has no powers of enforcement and its rulings have been ignored before.

Chinese claims

China bases its sovereignty claims on historical maps, which it has circulated with an arbitrary nine-dash line. Based on this map, China claims its jurisdiction over the bulk of the maritime space in the SCS in total disregard to other claimant nations and in violation of the universally recognised principles of international law including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The UNCLOS does not recognise historical claims and permits coastal states an exclusive economic zone of up to 200 nautical miles and a continental shelf up to 350 nautical miles.

Not only China violating global rules and disrespecting other nations’ sensitivities, it is also building new islands and enlarging some existing islands by claiming land in the SCS. Besides, it is creating civil and military infrastructure such as runways, jetties, helipads, military posts and surveillance equipment. It has also deployed surface-to-air missile launchers and operating fighter aircraft. China has also unilaterally imposed prohibition on fishing by other nations in disputed area.

The US is worried with Chinese intent to extend its strategic space much beyond its legitimate zone. In order to reassure its allies such as Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, the US has stationed aircraft carrier battle group in the sea and ignored Chinese protests. The Philippines has welcomed the return of the US marine to its bases. With Vietnam, the US has entered into a new era of partnership after President Obama’s visit to that country in May 2016. Not only the US lifted the ban on the export of lethal weapons to Vietnam, Vietnam’s defence and security ties with India and Japan have too deepened. From the ASEAN’s perspective, India is viewed as a counterweight to China’s advances.

India has also its own economic interests in the South China Sea. In September 2011, shortly after China and Vietnam signed an agreement seeking to contain a dispute over the SCS, India’s state-owned explorer, ONGC, said its overseas arm, ONGC Videsh Limited, had signed a three-year agreement with Petro Vietnam for developing long-term cooperation in the oil sector. It also said that it had accepted Vietnam’s offer of exploration in certain specified blocks in the SCS. This oil drilling activities are in the areas claimed by Vietnam. Therefore, India would not hesitate to intervene militarily if its national interests are jeopardized by another country. Indian political leaders are cautious, however, in naming China directly, though India has stressed time and again that it upholds freedom of navigation in international waters and respect for global code of conduct. Because of such tense situation, almost all stakeholders are engaged in expansion of their naval capability in order to safeguard their maritime interest.

While preparing to repulse China’s military advance at the appropriate time, the claimants from the ASEAN grouping have not given up dialogue as a means to resolve dispute as they realize that military is not an option to anyone’s interests.

Fissures in ASEAN grouping

In recent times, there are some fissures within the ASEAN grouping and China is clearly taking advantage of this. For example, a meeting between Chinese and ASEAN ministers over the SCS on 14 June 2016 in Kunming in south-western Yunnan province ended in confusion after Malaysia released and then retracted a joint statement that expressed “serious concerns” over developments in the disputed waterway. This was a clear demonstration of disunity in the 10-member organization, a departure from the normal practice of consensus before the members issue any such joint statement. Like India, ASEAN avoided citing China by name in statements calling from a lowering of tensions over the area. The statement merely said: “We emphasised the importance of non-militarisation and self-restraint in the conduct of all activities, including land reclamation, which may raise tensions in the South China Sea”.

Though China has reclaimed thousands hectares of land in the area and increased military presence there, it argues that the disputes in the waters, which handle more than $5 trillion of trade a year, have nothing to do with its relationship with ASEAN. The withdrawn statement read: “But we also cannot ignore what is happening in the South China Sea as it is an important issue in the relations and cooperation between ASEAN and China”. This is being interpreted by analysts as a direct rebuke to China’s position.

More often than not, the ASEAN as a grouping has struggled to reach consensus on the matter relating to SCS and therefore issuing a joint communiqué is a problem because of disagreement within the ASEAN. Seen differently, by design China has increased ASEAN’s dependence on it so much that ASEAN would be constrained to take any precipitous action so as to adversely impact the economic interests of the member nations. It may be observed that China is the largest trading partner for the ASEAN grouping and the group would find difficult to ignore China’s deep pocket. China, it seems, is seized of this fact as in April 2016, the Chinese foreign ministry observed after a meeting with Laos, Cambodia and Brunei that the countries agreed the disputes “are not an issue between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and should not affect China-ASEAN relations”.

There have been also other occasions too when the ASEAN grouping has found it difficult to arrive at a consensus. For example, in November 2015 in Kuala Lumpur, defence ministers from the bloc were unable to agree on a final declaration. Also in August, foreign ministers struggle to reach a consensus on the matter after three-days’ of deliberations. In 2012 too when Cambodia held the ASEAN chair, the group failed to reach common ground on the SCS issue, ending a regional conference without a joint statement, the first time in its 45 year history. It was suspected that the ASEAN nations succumbed to Chinese warning not to mention the territorial spats and avoiding issue a joint statement was a convenient face saver.

Disunity in Kunming

No wonder, therefore, the June 2016 meeting went too like the earlier meetings. Malaysian and Thailand delegations were evasive, noting just that there were “serious concerns by the ASEAN foreign ministers over the developments on the ground”. Just hours after the statement was issued, the Malaysian delegate announced that the statement would be retracted with “urgent amendments” to be made. It was confusing why Malaysia wanted amendments as the carefully worded statement was nothing different from the ones used in previous statements, including at summits in Vientiane and with President Barack Obama in Sunnylands in February 2016. After all, it was not a particularly strong statement.

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, however, described the meeting as “a timely and important strategic communication”, and that there were more “cooperation than disagreement in the China-ASEAN relationship, and more opportunities than challenges, more unity than friction”, implying that ASEAN resentment is too less important to be bothered. In anticipation of an imminent tribunal ruling that is expected to come down against Beijing, China has ramped up its diplomatic offensive and seems to have succeeded again by cajoling the ASEAN foreign leaders in its own soil.

The ASEAN leaders’ quick vanishing act – first issuance of the joint statement and then quick retraction – was just unusual to happen in such an important international gathering discussing an important issue such as the SCS. China seems to have used blunt diplomatic force to muzzle ASEAN on the SCS, though Laos which holds the rotating leadership of ASEAN assured many stakeholders that there shall be no repeat of 2012. What transpired at Kunming revealed the disorganization and discord among the foreign ministers of ASEAN, which is long criticized as a toothless body for its failure to address and solve key regional issues. ASEAN is based on consensus and any statement by the regional body is expected to be agreed upon by all ten member states. The Kunming experience violated this principle. After retraction, no revised joint statement was issued and individual states were open to release their own statements. Such an approach was against the ASEAN spirit. This debacle was indeed unfortunate and is surely to ratchet up the tensions.

China garners support

Knowing full well that it is being isolated within Asia because of its assertive stances on territorial issues, China is aggressively courting support from outside Asia, especially from the predominantly economically dependent countries in the Middle East and Africa. In May 2016, China claimed to have garnered support from 40 countries, including Afghanistan, Sudan and Vanuatu. China also claims to have the support of Kenya and Sierra Leone. China is taking advantage from the disunity within the ASEAN grouping with member countries pushing for a tougher response while wary of angering their key economic partner. Not only they failed to issue a joint statement, of the 10-member countries, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have competing territorial claims against China in the South China Sea. The non-issuance of a joint statement shows the kind of pressure China has applied on ASEAN countries on this issue over the last six months or so.

In its efforts to garner support from outside of the region, China is lobbying hard to its claims in the SCS. In doing so, China is using its economic clout to get compliance of its aid recipient countries. The importance of the SCS has increased as it is believed that it has significant oil and gas deposits. The SCS is also a major shipping route, besides a zone of high rich energy resources. More than $5 trillion of maritime trade passes each year. The US is a major user of the sea route mainly for trade purposes. The US is not a claimant in the SCS dispute but has interest in ensuring freedom of navigation and over flight in the area. China questions the US surveillance activities and other military activities over the SCS. In the past, China has warned the US against making the SCS an international issue or multilateral issue. The US resents the Chinese domination in the region and wants India and many others to back it. China took the opportunity to thank a dozen countries who have offered support at the 14 June meeting in Kunming. China is firm in its position that all disputes should be resolved through bilateral talks.

Way out

In view of the rising tensions and mounting Chinese pressure on the ASEAN, the grouping needs to foster a long-term perspective on the SCS dispute. What needed is to intensify efforts to achieve further progress in the implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the SCS and substantive development of the Code of Conduct. The code will set guidelines for parties involved in disputes to manage tensions and avoid conflict. Dialogue is the only means to seek resolution of conflict. As the ASEAN member nations and China prepare for the ASEAN-China Commemorative Summit in Laos in September 2016 to celebrate 25 years of Dialogue Relations, one only hopes that the SCS issue shall also be on the table and resolution sought.

Like other stakeholders, Vietnam too echoed its concerns over increased military build-up in the SCS “especially the large-scale accretion and embellishment and construction of the reefs, the militarization of the artificial islands and actions of sovereignty claims that are not based on international law”. Singapore and Indonesia take a softer tone, calling on ASEAN and China to “continue working together to maintain the peace and stability of the South China Sea”. Indonesia’s position seems to be non-committal. Indonesia does not acknowledge a dispute with China, though it recently encountered difficulties with illegal Chinese fishing activities in its exclusive economic zone. Such conflicting positions within the ASEAN member nations put extra responsibilities on the organization to seek common grounds to resolve disputes, whose outcome shall serve the interests of all. Doors to dialogue ought to be kept open, notwithstanding the differences, because there is no better option than this.

Ethiopian security forces have killed more than 400 protesters and others, and arrested tens of thousands more during widespread protests in the Oromia region since November 2015. The Ethiopian government should urgently support a credible, independent investigation into the killings, arbitrary arrests, and other abuses, aaid Human Rights Watch.

The 61-page report. “‘Such a Brutal Crackdown’: Killings and Arrests in Response to Ethiopia’s Oromo Protests,” details the Ethiopian government’s use of excessive and unnecessary lethal force and mass arrests, mistreatment in detention, and restrictions on access to information to quash the protest movement. Human Rights Watch interviews in Ethiopia and abroad with more than 125 protesters, bystanders, and victims of abuse documented serious violations of the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly by security forces against protesters and others from the beginning of the protests in November 2015 through May 2016.

“Ethiopian security forces have fired on and killed hundreds of students, farmers, and other peaceful protesters with blatant disregard for human life,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should immediately free those wrongfully detained, support a credible, independent investigation, and hold security force members accountable for abuses.”

Human Rights Watch found that security forces used live ammunition for crowd control repeatedly, killing one or more protesters at many of the hundreds of protests over several months. Human Rights Watch and other organizations have identified more than 300 of those killed by name and, in some cases, with photos.

The November protests were triggered by concerns about the government’s proposed expansion of the capital’s municipal boundary through the Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan. Protesters feared that the Master Plan would displace Oromo farmers, as has increasingly occurred over the past decade, resulting in a negative impact on farm communities while benefiting a small elite.

As protests continued into December, the government deployed military forces for crowd-control throughout Oromia. Security forces repeatedly fired live ammunition into crowds with little or no warning or use of non-lethal crowd-control measures. Many of those killed have been students, including children under 18.

The federal police and military have also arrested tens of thousands of students, teachers, musicians, opposition politicians, health workers, and people who provided assistance or shelter to fleeing students. While many detainees have been released, an unknown number remain in detention without charge and without access to legal counsel or family members.

Witnesses described the scale of the arrests as unprecedented. Yoseph, 52, from the Wollega zone, said: “I’ve lived here for my whole life, and I’ve never seen such a brutal crackdown. There are regular arrests and killings of our people, but every family here has had at least one child arrested.”

Former detainees told Human Rights Watch that they were tortured or mistreated in detention, including in military camps, and several women alleged that they were raped or sexually assaulted. Some said they were hung by their ankles and beaten; others described having electric shocks applied to their feet, or weights tied to their testicles. Video footage shows students being beaten on university campuses.

Despite the large number of arrests, the authorities have charged few individuals with any offenses. Several dozen opposition party members and journalists have been charged under Ethiopia’s draconian anti-terrorism law, while 20 students who protested in front of the United States embassy in Addis Ababa in March were charged with various offenses under the criminal code.

Access to education – from primary school to university – has been disrupted in many locations because of the presence of security forces in and around schools, the arrest of teachers and students, and many students’ fear of attending class. Authorities temporarily closed schools for weeks in some locations to deter protests. Many students told Human Rights Watch that the military and other security forces were occupying campuses and monitoring and harassing ethnic Oromo students.

There have been some credible reports of violence by protesters, including the destruction of foreign-owned farms, looting of government buildings, and other destruction of government property. However, the Human Rights Watch investigations into 62 of the more than 500 protests since November found that most have been peaceful.

The Ethiopian government’s pervasive restrictions on independent human rights investigations and media have meant that very little information is coming from affected areas. The Ethiopian government has also increased its efforts to restrict media freedom. Since mid-March it has restricted access to Facebook and other social media. It has also restricted access to diaspora television stations.

In January, the government announced the cancellation of the Master Plan. By then, however, protester grievances had widened due to the brutality of the government response.

While the protests have largely subsided since April, the government crackdown has continued, Human Rights Watch found. Many of those arrested over the past seven months remain in detention, and hundreds have not been located and are feared to have been forcibly disappeared. The government has not conducted a credible investigation into alleged abuses. Soldiers still occupy some university campuses and tensions remain high. The protests echo similar though smaller protests in Oromia in 2014, and the government’s response could be a catalyst for future dissent, Human Rights Watch said.

Ethiopia’s brutal crackdown warrants a much stronger, united response from concerned governments and intergovernmental organizations, including the United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch said. While the European Parliament has passed a strong resolution condemning the crackdown and a resolution has been introduced in the United States Senate, these are exceptions in an otherwise severely muted international response to the crackdown in Oromia. The UN Human Rights Council should address these serious abuses, call for the release of those arbitrarily detained and support an independent investigation.

“Ethiopia’s foreign supporters have largely remained silent during the government’s bloody crackdown in Oromia,” Lefkow said. “Countries promoting Ethiopia’s development should press for progress in all areas, notably the right to free speech, and justice for victims of abuse.”

If the peace agreement that the government of Colombia has negotiated with armed revolutionaries is voted down by the Colombian people, the country would again be plunged into conflict and the guerrillas would engage in urban warfare, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos warned in a session on the peace plan at the World Economic Forum on Latin America.

The country’s Constitutional Court is currently considering a proposed plebiscite on the accord. If Colombians reject the agreement, “we will go back to the state of war,” Santos declared. He expressed confidence that “the vast majority of Colombians” would vote for the deal. “We will bring an end to the war and all of the Americas will be a territory of peace.” The peace agreement would end one of the longest civil conflicts in the world, which has lasted nearly 60 years and resulted in the deaths of more than 220,000 people.

President Santos assured participants that his government conducted the negotiations from a position of strength and that in no way was he easy on the insurgents. The agreement includes programmes for rural development, he noted. But the government would have undertaken these initiatives, including the building of schools, roads and hospitals, whether or not the rebels were involved.

“We are not building a policy just for FARC (as the main revolutionary group is known),” Santos argued. “This is a policy to benefit farmers and all the people who work the land.” The agreement involves the demobilization of the rebels, who will lay down their arms, and their reintegration into society. Another key measure is the investigation of atrocities in the pursuit of truth and justice in tandem with reconciliation. “This is not a peace with impunity,” Santos asserted. “There is no such thing.”

In answer to a question, the president stressed that all but one of the opposition political parties in the country were involved in the peace process. “This isn’t just my peace,” he explained. Remarking on the potential for the peace agreement to succeed, Felipe González Márquez, Prime Minister of Spain from 1982 to 1996, asked participants to consider the economic opportunities that the end of the insurgency would provide Colombia. “We have Colombia growing at 3% with an armed conflict. Can you imagine what the potential is without it?” Added González: “I hope it happens soon. We are in a hurry in every sense of the word.”

More than 550 participants are taking part in the 11th World Economic Forum on Latin America in Medellin, Colombia from 16 to 17 June 2016. The theme of the meeting is “Reigniting Latin America’s Inclusive Growth”.

Pope Francis said Thursday that the great majority of sacramental marriages today are not valid, because couples do not enter into them with a proper understanding of permanence and commitment.

“We live in a culture of the provisional,” the Pope said in impromptu remarks June 16. After addressing the Diocese of Rome’s pastoral congress, he held a question-and-answer session.

A layman asked about the “crisis of marriage” and how Catholics can help educate youth in love, help them learn about sacramental marriage, and help them overcome “their resistance, delusions and fears.”

The Pope answered from his own experience.

“I heard a bishop say some months ago that he met a boy that had finished his university studies, and said ‘I want to become a priest, but only for 10 years.’ It’s the culture of the provisional. And this happens everywhere, also in priestly life, in religious life,” he said.

“It’s provisional, and because of this the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null. Because they say “yes, for the rest of my life!” but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.”

He spoke of his encounter with a woman in Buenos Aires who “reproached” him. She said that priests study for the priesthood for years and can get permission to leave the priesthood to marry and have a family. For the laity, this woman said, “we have to do the sacrament for our entire lives, and indissolubly, to us laity they give four (marriage preparation) conferences, and this is for our entire life.”

Pope Francis said that marriage preparation is a problem, and that marital problems are also linked to social situations surrounding weddings.

He recounted his encounter with a man engaged to be married who was looking for a church that would complement his fiancée’s dress and would not be far from a restaurant.

“It’s social issue, and how do we change this? I don’t know,” the Pope said.

He noted that as Archbishop of Buenos Aires he had prohibited marriages in the case of “shotgun weddings” where the prospective bride was pregnant. He did this on the grounds there was a question of the spouses’ free consent to marry.

“Maybe they love each other, and I’ve seen there are beautiful cases where, after two or three years they got married,” he said. “And I saw them entering the church, father, mother and child in hand. But they knew well (what) they did.”

Pope Francis attributed the marriage crisis to people who “don’t know what the sacrament is” and don’t know “the beauty of the sacrament.”

“They don’t know that it’s indissoluble, they don’t know that it’s for your entire life. It’s hard,” the Pope said.

He added that a majority of couples attending marriage prep courses in Argentina typically cohabitated.

“They prefer to cohabitate, and this is a challenge, a task. Not to ask ‘why don’t you marry?’ No, to accompany, to wait, and to help them to mature, help fidelity to mature.”

He said that in Argentina’s northeast countryside, couples have a child and live together. They have a civil wedding when the child goes to school, and when they become grandparents they “get married religiously.”

“It’s a superstition, because marriage frightens the husband. It’s a superstition we have to overcome,” the Pope said. “I’ve seen a lot of fidelity in these cohabitations, and I am sure that this is a real marriage, they have the grace of a real marriage because of their fidelity, but there are local superstitions, etc.”

“Marriage is the most difficult area of pastoral work,” he said.

A team of University of Miami researchers has developed a model to identify behavioral patterns among serious online groups of ISIS supporters that could provide cyber police and other anti-terror watchdogs a roadmap to their activity and indicators when conditions are ripe for the onset of real-world attacks.

The researchers, who identified and analyzed second-by-second online records of 196 pro-ISIS groups operating during the first eight months of 2015, found that even though most of the 108,000-plus individual members of these self-organized groups probably never met, they had a striking ability to adapt and extend their online longevity, increase their size and number, reincarnate when shut down–and inspire “lone wolves” with no history of extremism to carry out horrific attacks like the nation’s deadliest mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando this week.

“It was like watching crystals forming. We were able to see how people were materializing around certain social groups; they were discussing and sharing information–all in real-time,” said Neil Johnson, a physicist in the College of Arts and Sciences who uses the laws of physics to study the collective behavior of not only particles but people. “The question is: Can there be a signal of how people are coming collectively together to do something without a proper system in place?”

The answer, according to the study, “New online ecology of adversarial aggregates: ISIS and beyond,” to be published in the journal Science on June 17, is yes. Generalizing a mathematical equation commonly used in physics and chemistry to the development and growth of ad hoc pro-ISIS groups, Johnson and his research team witnessed the daily interactions that drove online support for these groups, or “aggregates,” and how they coalesced and proliferated prior to the onset of real-world campaigns.

The researchers suggest that by concentrating just on these relatively few groups of serious followers–those that discuss operational details like routes for financing and avoiding drone strikes–cyber police and other anti-terrorist watchdogs could monitor their buildup and transitions and thwart the potential onset of a burst of violence.

“This removes the guess work. With that road map, law enforcement can better navigate what is going on, who is doing what, while state security agencies can better monitor what might be developing,” Johnson said. “So the message is: Find the aggregates–or at least a representative portion of them–and you have your hand on the pulse of the entire organization, in a way that you never could if you were to sift through the millions of Internet users and track specific individuals, or specific hashtags,” Johnson said.

While the Johnson team concentrated on the ecology of collective behavior, not on single individuals, he said their roadmap could eventually help security officials track individuals like Omar Mateen, who claimed allegiance to ISIS and other extremist groups while killing 49 people and wounding 53 others at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub early Sunday. Authorities say the New York-born Florida man was a lone actor who was radicalized online.

“Our research suggests that any online ‘lone wolf’ actor will only truly be alone for short periods of time,” Johnson said. “As a result of the coalescence process that we observe in the online activity, any such lone wolf was either recently in an aggregate or will soon be in another one. With time, we would be able to track the trajectories of individuals through this ecology of aggregates.”

For the study, Johnson and his research team monitored pro-ISIS groups on VKontakte, the largest online social networking service in Europe, which is based in Russia and has more than 350 million users from multiple cultures who speak multiple languages. Unlike on Facebook, which very quickly shuts down these groups, they are able to survive longer on VKontakte.

The researchers began their online search of pro-ISIS chatter manually, identifying specific social media hashtags, in multiple languages, which they used as “signals” to trace the more serious groups. Study co-author Stefan Wuchty, a computer science professor in the College of Arts and Sciences and member of the Center for Computational Science, compared the hashtag search to throwing a stone in a lake, watching the ripples, then following each one.

The hashtags were tracked to the online groups, and the data was fed into a software system that mounted the search; the results were repeated until the chase lead back to groups previously traced in the system. The mathematical equation Johnson and his team borrowed from chemistry and physics illustrated the fluctuation of online groups and pointed to possible predictions.

“The mathematics perfectly describes what we saw in real-time–how big and quickly these online groups grew and how quickly they were shut down by agencies or other monitoring groups,” Johnson said.

As cyber police or other anti-terror entities got better at shutting down the groups, Johnson and his team watched the groups reincarnate by changing their names and identities, or shutting themselves down and going quiet, as if they were in stealth mode, only to reappear under a different identity later.

“Much of the scientific community is focusing on different explanations as to why social media is so important, and I think we found research that presents a kind of crystallization method, looking at the dynamics of these groups and how they crystalize, appear, and morph into other groups.”

Johnson and his team’s quest to distinguish serious pro-ISIS support from casual chatter began largely by coincidence in 2014, when he was working on a grant from the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity to develop a model for predicting unrest or mass protest based on online activity. Just as that grant was concluding, ISIS emerged on the world stage, becoming a feared and familiar household name after the beheading of one then another U.S. journalist on camera. More would follow.

The second journalist to lose his life in such a ghastly fashion, Miami native Steven Sotloff, has ties to the University of Miami. To honor their son’s work overseas, his parents established the 2Lives: Steven Joel Sotloff Memorial Foundation, which awarded its first Steven Joel Sotloff Memorial Endowed Scholarship to a UM student in the School of Communication.

Officials at the Vatican got a sneak peak of Ignacio de Loyola, a historical drama about the life of St. Ignatius of Loyola, June 14.

According to CBCP News, Vatican officials such as Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, current director of the Holy See Press Office and Father Antonio Spadaro, SJ watched the film. Pope Francis was not able to attend the screening.

Father Emmanuel L. Alfonso, the film’s executive producer, said the story of St. Ignatius can be a light, a guide to a healthier life.

“Especially now that the world has become very materialistic and secular, with people given to addictions, we need movies such as this,” said Father Alfonso.

Produced by Jescom Films Philippines, the English-language film will initially be screened for the public in the Philippines from July 27. International screenings will follow. See the film’s trailer below.