Taken as whole, with exceptions, the American people have the strangest attitude toward the Congress. Our national legislature spends nearly a quarter of our income and affects us one way or another every day of the year. Yet too many people withdraw in disgust instead of making Congress accountable to them. Warren Buffett once said, “It’s time for 535 of America’s citizens to remember what they owe to the 318 million who employ them.”

People have a low regard for Capitol Hill. Polls show less than 20% of people approve of what Congress does and does not do. In April a poll registered a 14% approval rate.  People know that Congress takes a lot of days off – all with pay. Senators and Representatives work over 100 fewer days than average Americans do. Specifically, members were in session 157 days in 2015 and 135 in 2014. This year the House is scheduled to be in session for only 111 days, with the August recess alone stretching nearly six weeks.

People also know that these politicians feather their own nests. At a minimum, members of Congress receive a $174,000 annual salary, plus a great pension, health and life insurance, assorted deductions and expenses. These are benefits that many Americans can only dream of getting.

Even when Senators and Representatives are in Washington, Congressional leaders expect them to spend about 20 to 30 hours per week dialing for campaign for campaign dollars – for their re-election and for their Party’s coffers. Asking for money in or from their office is illegal, so members of Congress trot out daily, on your nickel, to “call centers” in nearby office buildings.

Congressman David Jolly (R-Florida) was told at his party headquarters that he was expected to raise $18,000 per day as his “first responsibility.”

When not dialing for dollars, members of Congress go to fund-raising parties at fancy restaurants or the homes of wealthy donors.

We’ve all heard a popular refrain from folks back home reacting to their absentee lawmakers. “It’s good they’re not in Congress making government bigger, increasing taxes and causing mischief.” The lawmakers, on their part, argue that time away from Congress is time with their constituents back home.

There is some useful truth to this claim, even though that time is also used to raise campaign money and schmooze with political backers and allies. Contact with the voters is becoming impersonal – over the internet instead of the diminishing public town meeting and its eye-to-eye contact.

But let’s be serious. Your Senators and Representatives have a job description. It is to move the country forward for the people by wisely enacting tax laws, spending programs, evaluating the president’s nominees, empowering voters with clean elections, upholding their Constitutional duties, such as making foreign and military policy, and overseeing the sprawling executive branch, exposing waste, corruption, recklessness and obeisance to the powers-that-be by not fairly enforcing the laws of the land.

The Congressional oversight function requires logging hours and hours of public committee hearings scrutinizing the performance of federal agencies and departments on behalf of the people. Congressional staffers need to be investigating or following leads sent to them by citizens or government whistleblowers regarding the federal bureaucracy.

Members of Congress do not have time for this responsibility when they are spending so much of their workday asking for money and implying agreement with the demands of the “monied interests,” to use Thomas Jefferson’s phrase.

This is why Congressman Jolly introduced the “Stop Act,” which would ban all federally-elected officials from directly soliciting donations. Members of Congress can attend fund-raisers but others would have to ask for the money. No more direct telephone calls to the “fat cats” for checks. So far he only has nine co-sponsors for his bill.

Congressman Jolly says this is not “campaign finance reform,” it is “Congressional reform,” adding “members of Congress spend too much time raising money and not enough time doing their job. Get back to work. And do your job.”

Hey America! No more withdrawal cynicism. Shaping up or shipping out your members of Congress can be our great national civic hobby! There are plenty of opportunities for improvement and it could be lots of fun. Don’t forget there are only 535 of them and they put their shoes on every day like we do!

Start small and build. Announce to your lawmakers with a letterhead – “Congress Watchdogs from the xxx Congressional District. The people want you to do your jobs!” The benefits of this effort are better lives and livelihoods for all Americans.”

By Manish Dabhade*

The Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, is on a three day visit to India from 12-4 August, 2016. This visit is significant for numerous reasons. First, it is largely about the September 2016 G20 Summit, scheduled to take place in China and the October 2016 BRICS Summit, scheduled to take place in India. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet during both events.

However, it is the backdrop of the visit that has drawn increased national and global attention. From the Indian perspective, important matters include the June 2016 Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) meeting that took place in Seoul, South Korea, during which China blocked India’s membership to the Group on procedural grounds; the recent Chinese incursions in Uttarakhand; and repeated Chinese veto on a UN ban on Masood Azhar, the chief of the Pakistan-based terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed. From the Chinese perspective, important matters include its concerns regarding India’s position on the South China Sea issue, especially after the July 2016 ruling by the Arbitral Tribunal that rejected China’s historical claims on the territory. In fact, one of China’s primary agendas at the next few multilateral settings is to prevent any endorsing of the tribunal decision.

Other important irritants have been the recent non-renewal of Indian visas to three Chinese journalists. That Prime Minister Modi will be stopping over in Vietnam en route to China for the G20 summit has also worried Beijing as it sees it as a sign of India’s readiness to join the encirclement of China as led by the US.

In the light of the aforementioned issues in the India-China relationship, the spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry highlighted that during this visit, Beijing would try to identify ways to carry forward the consensus reached by President Xi and Prime Minister Modi. Xi’s 2014 India visit followed by Modi’s 2015 China visit surely marked a sincere attempt by both sides to develop a strong relationship based on personal chemistry as well. But the NSG bid again proved the limits of personalised diplomacy.

Vis-a-vis the economic aspects of relations, though China is now India’s largest trading partner, there has reportedly been a drop in Indian exports to China in 2016, which has triggered alarm bells in India, especially when the Modi government sees Make in India as its priority policy. This is in addition to the ever widening trade deficit bending in China’s favour that both have already pledged to resolve. India feels the discriminatory tariff regime in China is hampering its exports while the latter sees business visa procedures as time consuming and a big hurdle to increasing bilateral trade. There also seems to be a Chinese attempt to use this to warn India that it should worry more about falling exports rather than the South China Sea issue, as pointed out in recent state media reports and analyses. Some reports went on to further state that India should not add another irritant that might affect its bilateral ties and will lead to “side effects.”

What is actually taking place between India and China is that although economic partnership is actively flourishing, it is at the political and strategic levels that difficulties in finding common grounds are being felt. This is despite the increased interactions at the highest levels from both sides. The principal reason for this is that India has always viewed China through the lens of its ever growing political-economic-military alliance with Pakistan aimed at countering India, coupled with the unresolved border dispute since the 1962 war. That China remains unwilling to accept India’s global rise and rightful place in various international institutions seems to be proven by the former’s refusal to endorse membership of either the UN Security Council or the NSG. Conversely, Beijing now views New Delhi’s courting of the US, and of other powers in China’s periphery, such as Vietnam, as being aimed at containing and countering China.

Though this game and counter-game seems natural, it assumes greater value and high voltage for numerous reasons. On a wider global level, the gravity of power has again shifted from Europe to Asia in the past few decades, making India and China the key, and major powers in our continent. Increasing globalisation and economic integration witnessed by all have further complicated all power calculations.

We must not forget that China remains the principal trading partner for many states – including the US, India and Vietnam – that seek to oppose it in the strategic arena.

In this regard, many analysts have already predicted that Europe’s past dotted by many wars of nationalism would all likely be Asia’s future. However, this should not allow us to resign ourselves to this fate. Diplomacy provides a meaningful, purposeful instrument to manage and resolve these conflicts and develop a better, peaceful future in Asia. An economic and strategic dialogue on the lines of US and China could be a way forward for India and China.

* Manish Dabhade
Assistant Professor, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Email: mdmanish@jnu.ac.in

Although, I admit that Donald Trump’s recent remarks that Obama Administration willfully created the Islamic State were a bit facile, but it is an irrefutable fact that Obama Administration’s policy of nurturing the Syrian militants against the Assad regime from August 2011 to August 2014 created the ideal circumstances which led to the creation of not just Islamic State but myriads of other Syrian militant groups which are just as fanatical and bloodthirsty as Islamic State.

It should be remembered here that the Libyan and Syrian crises originally began in early 2011 in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings when the peaceful protests against the Qaddafi and Assad regimes turned militant. Moreover, it should also be kept in mind that the withdrawal of the United States’ troops from Iraq, which has a highly porous border with Syria, took place in December 2011.

Furthermore, the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, served as the United States’ Secretary of State from January 2009 to February 2013. Thus, for the initial year-and-a-half of the Syrian civil war, Hillary Clinton was serving as the Secretary of the State and the role that she played in toppling the regime in Libya and instigating the insurgency in Syria is not hidden from anybody’s eyes.

Additionally, it is also a known fact that the Clintons have cultivated close ties with the Zionist lobbies in Washington and the American support for the proxy war in Syria is specifically about ensuring Israel’s regional security as I shall explain in the ensuing paragraphs. However, it would be unfair to put the blame for the crisis in Syria squarely on the Democrats; the policy of nurturing militants against the regime has been pursued with bipartisan support. In fact, Senator John McCain, a Republican, played the same role in the Syrian civil war which Charlie Wilson played during the Soviet-Afghan war in the ‘80s. And Ambassador Robert Ford was the point man in the United States’ embassy in Damascus.

More to the point, the United States’ Defense Intelligence Agency’s report [1] of 2012 that presaged the imminent rise of a Salafist principality in northeastern Syria was not overlooked it was deliberately suppressed; not just the report but that view in general that a civil war in Syria will give birth to the radical Islamists was forcefully stifled in the Washington’s policy making circles under pressure from the Zionist lobbies.

The Obama Administration was fully aware of the consequences of its actions in Syria but it kept pursuing the policy of funding, training, arming and internationally legitimizing the so-called “Syrian Opposition” to weaken the Syrian regime and to neutralize the threat that its Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah, posed to Israel’s regional security; a fact which the Israeli defense community realized for the first time during the 2006 Lebanon war during the course of which Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into northern Israel. Those were only unguided rockets but it was a wakeup call for Israel’s defense community that what would happen if Iran passed the guided missile technology to Hezbollah whose area of operations lies very close to the northern borders of Israel?

Notwithstanding, how can the United States claim to fight a militant group which has been an obvious by-product [2] of the United States’ policy in Syria? Let’s settle on one issue first: there were two parties to the Syrian civil war initially, the Syrian regime and the Syrian opposition; which party did the US support since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in early 2011 to June 2014 until Islamic State overran Mosul?

Obviously, the United States supported the Syrian opposition; and what was the composition of the so-called “Syrian Opposition?” A small fraction of it was comprised of defected Syrian soldiers, which goes by the name of Free Syria Army, but a vast majority has been Sunni jihadists and armed tribesmen who were generously funded, trained and armed by the alliance of Western powers, Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf States.

Islamic State is nothing more than one of the numerous Syrian jihadist outfits, others being: al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Tawhid brigade, Jaysh al Islam etc. The United States-led war against Islamic State is limited only to Islamic State while all other Sunni Arab jihadist groups are enjoying complete impunity, and the so-called “coalition against Islamic State” also includes the main patrons of Sunni Arab jihadists like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Turkey and Jordan.

Regardless, many biased political commentators of the mainstream media deliberately try to muddle the reality in order to link the emergence of Islamic State to the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the Bush Administration. Their motive behind this chicanery is to absolve the Obama Administration’s policy of supporting the Syrian opposition against the Assad regime since the beginning of the Syrian civil war until June 2014 when Islamic State overran Mosul and Obama Administration made a volte-face on its previous policy of indiscriminate support to the Syrian opposition and declared a war against a faction of Syrian opposition: that is, the Islamic State.

Moreover, such spin-doctors also try to find the roots of Islamic State in al-Qaeda in Iraq; however, the insurgency in Iraq died down after the “surge” of American troops in 2007. Al-Qaeda in Iraq became a defunct organization after the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi and the subsequent surge of troops in Iraq. The re-eruption of insurgency in Iraq has been the spillover effect of nurturing militants in Syria against the Assad regime when Islamic State overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in January 2014 and subsequently captured Mosul in June 2014.

The borders between Syria and Iraq are highly porous and it’s impossible to contain the flow of militants and arms between the two countries. The Obama Administration’s policy of providing money, arms and training to the Syrian militants in the training camps located at the border regions of Turkey and Jordan was bound to backfire sooner or later.

Notwithstanding, in order to simplify the Syrian quagmire for the sake of readers, I would divide it into three separate and distinct zones of influence. Firstly, the northern and northwestern zone along the Syria-Turkey border, in and around Aleppo and Idlib, which is under the influence of Turkey and Qatar. Both of these countries share the ideology of Muslim Brotherhood and they provide money, training and arms to the Sunni Arab jihadist organizations like al-Tawhid Brigade and Ahrar al-Sham in the training camps located at the border regions of Turkey.

Secondly, the southern zone of influence along the Syria-Jordan border, in Daraa and Quneitra and as far away as Homs and Damascus. It is controlled by the Saudi-Jordanian camp and they provide money, weapons and training to the Salafist militant groups such as al-Nusra Front and the Southern Front of the so-called “moderate” Free Syria Army in Daraa and Quneitra, and Jaysh al-Islam in the suburbs of Damascus. Their military strategy is directed by a Military Operations Center (MOC) and training camps [3] located in the border regions of Jordan. Here let me clarify that this distinction is quite overlapping and heuristic at best, because al-Nusra’s jihadists have taken part in battles as far away as Idlib and Aleppo.

And finally, the eastern zone of influence along the Syria-Iraq border, in al-Raqqa and Deir al-Zor, which has been controlled by a relatively maverick Iraq-based jihadist outfit, the Islamic State. Thus, leaving the Mediterranean coast and Syria’s border with Lebanon, the Baathist and Shi’a-dominated Syrian regime has been surrounded from all three sides by the hostile Sunni forces: Turkey and Muslim Brotherhood in the north, Jordan and the Salafists of the Gulf Arab States in the south and the Sunni Arab-majority regions of Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in the east.

Sources and links:

[1] United States’ Defense Intelligence Agency’s report of 2012:

http://levantreport.com/2015/05/19/2012-defense-intelligence-agency-document-west-will-facilitate-rise-of-islamic-state-in-order-to-isolate-the-syrian-regime/

[2] How Syrian Jihad spawned the Islamic State?

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-220914.html

[3] Weapons flowing from Eastern Europe to Middle East:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/27/weapons-flowing-eastern-europe-middle-east-revealed-arms-trade-syria

Well-understood physical and chemical processes can easily explain the alleged evidence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program, commonly referred to as “chemtrails” or “covert geoengineering,” concludes a new study from Carnegie Science, University of California Irvine, and the nonprofit organization Near Zero.

Some groups and individuals erroneously believe that the long-lasting condensation trails, or contrails, left behind aircraft are evidence of a secret large-scale spraying program. They call these imagined features “chemtrails.” Adherents of this conspiracy theory sometimes attribute this alleged spraying to the government and sometimes to industry.

The authors of this study, including Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira, conducted a survey of the world’s leading atmospheric scientists, who categorically rejected the existence of a secret spraying program. The team’s findings, published by Environmental Research Letters, are based on a survey of two groups of experts: atmospheric chemists who specialize in condensation trails and geochemists working on atmospheric deposition of dust and pollution.

The survey results show that 76 of the 77 participating scientists said they had not encountered evidence of a secret spraying program, and agree that the alleged evidence cited by the individuals who believe that atmospheric spraying is occurring could be explained through other factors, such as typical airplane contrail formation and poor data sampling.

The research team undertook their study in response to the large number of people who claim to believe in a secret spraying program. In a 2011 international survey, nearly 17 percent of respondents said they believed the existence of a secret large-scale atmospheric spraying program to be true or partly true. And in recent years a number of websites have arisen claiming to show evidence of widespread secret chemical spraying, which they say is linked to negative impacts on human health and the environment.

“We wanted to establish a scientific record on the topic of secret atmospheric spraying programs for the benefit of those in the public who haven’t made up their minds,” said Davis. “The experts we surveyed resoundingly rejected contrail photographs and test results as evidence of a large-scale atmospheric conspiracy.”

The research team says they do not hope to sway those already convinced that there is a secret spraying program–as these individuals usually only reject counter-evidence as further proof of their theories–but rather to establish a source of objective science that can inform public discourse.

“Despite the persistence of erroneous theories about atmospheric chemical spraying programs, until now there were no peer-reviewed academic studies showing that what some people think are ‘chemtrails’ are just ordinary contrails, which are becoming more abundant as air travel expands. Also, it is possible that climate change is causing contrails to persist for longer periods than they used to.” Caldeira said. “I felt it was important to definitively show what real experts in contrails and aerosols think. We might not convince die-hard believers that their beloved secret spraying program is just a paranoid fantasy, but hopefully their friends will accept the facts.”

A string of bomb and arson attacks in Thailand’s southern provinces on August 11-12, 2016, killed at least 4 civilians and wounded 35 others, Human Rights Watch said today. Within 24 hours, there were at least 11 explosions in five provinces in Thailand’s southern region. No individuals or groups have claimed responsibility for the attacks.

“Whatever the grievances of those responsible, there is no acceptable justification or excuse for these deliberate attacks on civilians,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

The first explosion took place at about 3 p.m. on August 11, at Center Point Market in Trang province’s Muang district, killing one person and wounding six. Later that evening, two bombs went off in the tourist area in Prachuab Kirikhan province’s Hua Hin district. One person was killed and 21 were injured. On the morning of August 12, one person was killed and two were wounded in two explosions in Surat Thani province’s Muang district. Shortly after that, in Phuket province’s Patong Beach area, two explosions caused one injury. Hua Hin district was then struck again with two more bombs, killing one person and wounding three.

In addition, unidentified individuals carried out arson attacks at markets and shopping malls in Trang, Krabi, Phang Nga, Surat Thani, and Nakhon Srithammarat provinces. Incendiary improvised explosive devices were used in some cases.

Every effort should be made to identify those responsible for the attacks and bring them to justice, Human Rights Watch said. In the face of these attacks, during Thailand’s celebration of the Queen’s birthday, it is important for the Thai government to demonstrate a strong commitment to human rights and the rule of law. Thai authorities should take all necessary steps to conduct a serious, impartial, and transparent investigation to bring those responsible to justice, while ensuring that due process rights are respected.

“Upholding due process and the fair trial rights of those responsible will be key not only to delivering justice for the victims, but also to demonstrating Thailand’s commitment to the rule of law in the face of heinous crimes,” Adams said.

Timeline of bomb attacks

August 11
At 3 p.m., a bomb went off at Center Point Market in Trang province’s Muang district, killing one and injuring at least six others.

At 10:15 p.m., a bomb hit Prachuab Kirikhan province’s Hua Hin district in front of the Johnny’s 56 Bar. Around 11 p.m., a second explosion took place in front of Raintree Spa. The bombs killed one person and injured 21 others, including 10 foreign tourists.

August 12
At 7:45 a.m., there was an explosion in a park on Phuket province’s Patong Beach, wounding one. Another bomb went off around 8 a.m.at a nearby police box, but no one was injured.

At 8 a.m., two bombs went off near Surat Thani Police Station and Surat Thani Marine Police Station, where a ceremony for the Queen’s birthday was held. One person was killed and three were injured.

At 9 a.m., two bombs exploded at a clock tower in Prachuab Kirikhan province’s Hua Hin district, killing one person and injuring three.

At 9 a.m., there were two explosions at Bang Niang Market in Phang Nga province’s Takua Pa district. No one was injured.

By Kingsley Ighobor*

A Liberian women’s peace movement led by 31-year-old Leymah Gbowee did something extraordinary in July 2003 to force Liberian warlords to sign a peace agreement that ended 10 years of a bloody civil war.

After months of fruitless negotiations, hundreds of women, members of Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, gathered at the venue of the peace talks in Accra, Ghana, and sat at the entrance to the conference hall. They looped their hands and vowed to stop the warlords from leaving the venue until they had reached a peace agreement.

Security guards attempted to arrest Ms. Gbowee for obstruction, but she was not about to go without a fight. “Let me make it easy for you,” she told the guards. “I am going to strip naked, right now, and you can take me to jail.” As she began to undress, the security guards ran away. In Liberian and Ghanaian cultures, it is a taboo for men to see a naked woman in public.

Soon after the warlords and rebels softened their positions and signed a peace agreement. United Nations peacekeepers later disarmed and reintegrated more than 100,000 combatants and conducted general elections.

Mostly for her efforts in mobilising women to help end the war, Ms. Gbowee (and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf) bagged the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

Civil society as watchdogs

The Liberian women’s struggle and ultimate success suggest the potential power of civil society in Africa. Civil society has provided an opening for youth seeking employment opportunities and democratic reforms in many countries, as in Liberia and in the countries of the Arab Spring in 2010 and 2011, when young people organised themselves on social media and utilized civil disobedience that unseated the governments in Tunisia and Egypt. A wave of unrest followed in Algeria, Jordan and Yemen, among others.

Civil society organisations (CSOs) also function as watchdogs of accountability. In 2013, Kenyan citizens were so angered by an effort by members of parliament to increase their own salaries and allowances that they brought about a dozen blood-soaked pigs and piglets to parade in front of the parliament building.

Boniface Mwangi, a photojournalist-turned-activist and organizer of the Occupy Parliament march, referred to the MPs as “Mpigs,” highlighting the parliamentarians’ unprincipled appetite for money. “We have spilled the blood on the pigs to show that the MPs are greedy,” said Mwangi.

A study by the UK-based Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and the International Monetary Fund revealed that Kenyan MPs’ basic pay was 76 times that of the country’s GDP per capita. That gap is second only to Nigeria’s in global ranking. This buttressed CSOs’ opposition to the pay raise. After the “bloody pigs” spectacle, the MPs accepted $6,300 per month instead of the $10,000 they had initially requested. Even President Uhuru Kenyatta directed the salaries commission to slash his salary from $340,000 to $185,000 per annum.

Flexing muscles

The Kenyan CSOs declared victory, although some Kenyans saw the result as insufficient. “Slashing the salaries of MPs or that of the president is just a drop in the ocean,” said Verah Okeyo, an award-winning Kenyan journalist, in an interview with Africa Renewal. “The wage bill is still too high. The MPs make the news, but civil society still has a lot to do to make government accountable.”

The World Bank lists the key elements of good governance as open access to information, efficient public-sector management and the adoption and implementation of policies that benefit citizens, among others. Nongovernmental organizations and community or faith-based organizations, among other groups, usually find themselves forced to adopt a confrontational approach to make governments enact policies that benefit the citizenry.

The Arab Spring involved citizens mobilising to demand social justice, free elections, and the reform or replacement of autocratic governments. Grassroots movements such as Y’en a Marre (We’ve Had Enough) in Senegal, Le Balai Citoyen (the Citizen’s Broom) in Burkina Faso, and the Black Monday Movement in Uganda took their cue from the Arab Spring, employing citizen action to achieve good governance.

In a collection of essays titled Good Governance and Civil Society Participation in Africa, published by the Addis Ababa-based Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa in 2009, civil society’s oppositional role is viewed as an effective strategy for dealing with intransigent governments.

Governments with enormous powers to control the socioeconomic life of citizens are feeling greater pushback from civil society. Also, across the continent, civil society organizations are more openly playing their watchdog role.

In his 2008 book, The Rise of Global Civil Society, evangelical public policy expert Don Eberly, former deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under former U.S. President George W. Bush, affirms civil society’s important role. “The health of a republic is dependent on the vitality of civil society and the voluntary actions of people.”

The 2014 CSO Sustainability Index for Sub-Saharan Africa, developed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), commends CSOs for performing a vital function in providing services and materials to needy populations. In contrast to the varied attitudes of authorities towards advocacy organizations, nearly all surveyed countries reported that governments generally recognize and approve of CSOs’ service-providing role.

Many CSOs in Africa partner with governments on development issues. In March 2015, for example, 60 participants, including representatives of African governments and CSOs from across the continent focusing on good governance, met in Addis Ababa and agreed to jointly fight corruption on the continent.

However, there are CSOs, such as Burkina Faso’s Le Balai Citoyen, that work to expose ills in society and are reluctant to work with governments. Some governments criticize such CSOs as focusing on bad situations to attract foreign funding.

These governments perceive CSOs as “foreign-funded agents of the opposition”. That was an opinion heard at the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit, organised by President Barack Obama and the White House and held in Washington DC, in August 2014 for African heads of state and government in good standing with the U.S., African and U.S. business leaders, and private-sector and nonprofit organizations.

Funding dependency

Egypt and Morocco, for example, forbid CSOs from engaging in “political activities”, according to a USAID report titled CSO Sustainability Index for the Middle East and North Africa. Without a clear definition of what political activities are, activists fear arbitrary enforcement of laws that restrict civil society activities.

In short, African CSOs face the twin challenges of inadequate funding and hostile governments. This has led some donors to work directly with CSOs instead of governments. Andris Piebalgs, a former European Commissioner for Development, says that between 2007 and 2013, the EU funneled €5 billion ($5.5 billion) of its development aid to Africa through CSOs.

CSOs can receive significant amounts of funding depending on their areas of focus, says Ms. Okeyo, the Kenyan journalist. CSOs dealing with health and social issues such as HIV/AIDS, reproductive health and the rights of women usually get more funding than others, she added.

Inadequately funded CSOs lack independence and financial sustainability, says Lars Benson, senior programme officer for Africa at the Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) – a non-profit, private sector organization that provides financial support in the form of grants to non-government business organizations.

One way for CSOs to achieve financial independence is for donors to move away from funding grant-specific activities and instead shift to a model of investing to create local trust funds that will sustain organizations, suggests Natalie Ross, former programme officer at the Aga Khan Foundation USA, which funds African CSOs involved in poverty-alleviation activities.

Benson cites the example of the Voice of Addis Chamber, a radio station in Ethiopia that received seed money from CIPE but is now able to sustain itself through advertisements and private sponsorships.

Some CSOs are successfully sourcing funds locally, notes USAID. In Egypt, the Gozour Foundation for Development, which supports poor communities, receives funding from Egyptian banks – Barclays and Commercial International Bank.

Other faith-based organizations, including the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services (CEOSS), which promotes social justice and intercultural harmony, and Caritas Internationalis, a global confederation of over 160 national Catholic charities that supports poverty-alleviation efforts, also depend, to some extent, on local funding.

Other income-generating avenues available to CSOs are membership and services fees and the sale of products such as carpentry, prints or crafts.

Despite the successes of the Voice of Addis, Caritas and others in gaining local funding, CSOs still need external help, says Flora Oyakhilome, the community mobilization officer at the at Edo State Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria.

“It is difficult getting support locally, most civil society organizations will tell you. And funding from abroad is not coming like before. Our work is suffering.”

Faced with sometimes hostile governments and with foreign funding drying up, African civil society groups are battling to survive the tough times. But they will continue to strive to improve their societies. “This is what we live for,” says Ms. Oyakhilome.

*Dr. Kingsley Ighobor is Information Officer, UNHQ Africa Section, New York, Information Services. This article is being published by arrangement with Africa Renewal. It first appeared in Africa Renewal’s August-November edition with the headline ‘Unleashing the power of Africa’s civil society’.

The recent terrorist attacks in several countries by individuals inspired by the so-called Islamic State (IS) highlight the enduring ideological threat of IS. Serious consolidated efforts are needed to meet the threat with counter-ideology messages to target audiences.

By Mohamed Bin Ali*

The spate of terrorist attacks across Asia claimed by the so-called Islamic State group during Ramadan have marred the spiritual victory enjoyed by Muslims during the holy fasting month. Spanning cities across the Muslim world like Istanbul, Baghdad, Dhaka, Jakarta and even Islam’s second holiest city, Medina in Saudi Arabia, the terror attacks appear coordinated.

The deliberate attacks by terror groups like IS were probably motivated by their fallacious claim that Ramadan is a month of armed struggle for Muslims, which is another misuse of the notion of Jihad in the Islamic legal tradition. While efforts to step-up counter-IS ideology is necessary it is more critical to dispense accurate counter-extremist prescriptions that reach all of its target audiences.

IS Attacks in Ramadan

Terror attacks by Muslim extremist groups in the month of Ramadan are not new. Before IS, Al-Qaeda had a history of launching attacks in Iraq during Ramadan. However, the attacks in Ramadan 2016 are seen to be the worst to date in terms of their frequency, intensity and choice of location, especially those attacks that took place in three locations in Saudi Arabia where four suicide bombs exploded killing at least four people. One of the locations was in proximity to the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina.

While Muslims devote the month of Ramadan to spiritual jihad, IS and other violent Islamist groups claim that Muslims must also perform the physical jihad or armed struggle in this holy month. The attacks in Ramadan are based on their interpretation and emulation of the Battle of Badar, the first battle in Islam which occurred in the month of Ramadan. In that battle that took place in 624 CE, Muslims gained victory against their opponents, the then-pagan Quraish of Mecca.

The attacks by IS in Medina, Dhaka and Baghdad occurred in the last ten days of Ramadan. According to Islamic traditions, the Night of Power or Lailatul Qadar will occur in the last ten nights of Ramadan when Muslims are encouraged to perform devotional acts such as extra night prayers and charity to seek blessing and forgiveness of God. IS believe that killing their enemies in the name of jihad – as understood by them – in the last ten days of Ramadan is one of the most preferred forms of devotional acts and a way to gain martyrdom.

IS Ideology

To counter IS ideology and the misuse of religious concepts such as jihad and martyrdom it is important to understand their religious orientations. IS attempt to assert themselves as the representative of the authentic and original Islam as practised by the early Muslims. They advocate strict adherence to their understanding of Islamic practices as enjoined by Prophet Muhammad, the final prophet, and subsequently practised by the early pious Muslims known as the salaf al-salih.

In their attempt to portray the authenticity of Islam in their propaganda, IS manipulate religious doctrines such as Jihad (struggle), Syahadah (martyrdom), Al-Wala’ wal Bara’ (Loyalty and Disavowal), Hijrah (migration) and many others to influence young Muslims to join their fold. They also inherited a legacy of takfiri (excommunication) from violent Islamists before them.

As shown in the recent attacks, IS ideology is also based on a culture of hate and hostility towards both Muslims and non-Muslims. This means that while they preach hatred towards infidelity (kufr) and polytheism (syirik), they also harbour hostility towards Muslims who hold different opinions and disagree with them such as the Shias or those Muslims who promote innovations in religious matters (bid’ah).

It is critical to appreciate that IS strength lies not only in their military capabilities but also their ideology and propaganda. This is paramount in any counter-terrorism efforts against them. IS rely heavily on jihadi literature that supports their stance to attack nominal Muslims. This propaganda and literature can be clearly seen in their online magazines such as Dabiq and more recently, their Malay language newspaper known as Al-Fatihin. Using this online magazine, IS reinforce their ideology and attempt to unite all jihadists from across the globe including Asia.

Three Target Groups in Counter-ideology

IS utilise Islam and Islamic concepts for both recruitment and justification purposes. This ideology and propaganda are seen as the most powerful tool for IS. Countering IS ideology has become a priority in the fight against IS. While this is important, it is more critical to ensure that counter-ideology messages effectively reach their targeted audiences.

Generally, there are three target groups in counter-ideological efforts. The first comprises those IS-influenced individuals who have been apprehended by the authorities. These individuals need to be deradicalised and given religious counselling. The most important objective of the religious counselling is to correct any misinterpretations of Islamic concepts held by them. Consequently, this is hoped to bring about genuine feelings of remorse and repentance, hence removing the motivations for their involvement in extremist and terrorist-related activities.

The second group is the community at large. The Muslim community needs to be informed on the dangers of IS ideology. In fact, the primary and more effective target of the ideological response is the Muslim majority by providing them with a correct understanding of Islam so that they will not be easily influenced by IS propaganda.

One of the biggest challenges is to educate the masses and engage them in a battle of ideas against deviant religious ideologies. Of particular concern are the Muslim youths, who are more vulnerable victims to deviant understanding of Islam, as indicated by the recruitment of youths for IS suicide bombing squads.

The third group is the IS members and supporters themselves. While the two former target audiences have received adequate attention, this third group has been largely neglected. However, they are the ones who may hold the key to swing the counter-terrorism tide. Several considerations come into play to engage this group. First, what can be done to develop a realisation among the terrorists and extremists who are still at large?

What differing approaches could we adopt to make them agree their religious beliefs are warped and indeed unIslamic? What strategies could we offer to provide them with insight into the repercussions of their actions? What are the steps we could suggest for them to take towards true and lasting repentance from their ways? Targeting them in counter-ideological work is critical as they are the ones who will be able to influence their peers and subsequently bring change in their lives.

The enduring threat of IS clearly highlights that the ideological battle is still far from won. Looking at the significant role that ideology plays in terrorist groups like IS, there is a need to move forward and search for a new and strategic approach to deal with their ideology and appeal.

*Mohamed Bin Ali is Assistant Professor with the Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He is also a counsellor with the Religious Rehabilitation Group (RRG).

By Amity Saha*

In a historic referendum on June 23 of this year, the people of Britain voted for a British exit from the European Union, popularly called ‘Brexit’. The decision has already made some recognisable changes in the political setting of Britain.

The June 23 referendum is not legally binding yet. It may take two years of planning and work to make Brexit really happen, once article 50 is invoked. So what is this article 50? According to Article 50: any member state may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements. A Member State (of the European Union) which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that Member State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. So, we can see that for starting the Article 50 procedures, the UK needs to create a formal decision to leave the EU and notify the EU Council of member states of this decision.

EU and UK both used to get mutual benefit and assistance from each other. Within the European Union, free movement of labour helped British people to live and work in other European countries, quite the same way in which people from other Member States were given the permit to reside and work within the United Kingdom. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) World Investment Report 2010, roughly 1.6 million British reside in the EU, outside the UK. The UK at present enjoys considerable influence both in and through the EU. This would certainly get reduced if the UK leaves the EU.

The UK’s formal supremacy comes from the power of veto and voting power in both the Council and the European Parliament. The UK would not benefit from the same protection outside the EU. The UK may lose influence in the international fora. For example, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would be one place where collaboration among EU states has helped the UK to pursue international negotiations with success. The UK may also discover its diplomatic massiveness gets reduced in the light of its impeding exit. Europhiles are worried that foreign companies will be less likely to invest in the UK now and could transfer their headquarters.

The EU will definitely witness a decline in influence in foreign policy and military matters after Brexit, especially as Britain is one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. The United Kingdom has been a great hub of soft power through its cultural and linguistic base through all over the world. This is a source of influence for the EU also. Soft power is the capacity of a country to modify the behaviour of others through the means of attraction and persuasion instead of coercion or payment. The UK always ranks highly in international surveys of soft power and if the UK leaves the EU, this will reduce the bloc’s soft power strength. Even the rest of the EU has benefitted from the position of UK in international institutions, including the G8, the G20, the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD, IEA, the UNSC, the FSB, and the UNFCCC. The UK has managed to provide the EU members more leverage when applying sanctions, mainly in the financial sector. In Europe, this is matched simply by France now.

Another question is whether the international agreements accomplished by the EU will continue to apply to the UK after Brexit or not. If this would continue, which mechanisms will it now work with? Even if the EU along with its remaining 27 member countries continue to uphold their regional legal commitments in the post-Brexit scenario vis-à-vis Britain, it cannot be denied that concerns related to these commitments would at some point of time emerge and question the validity of maintaining the ties which the UK has voluntarily renounced. In some cases, particularly in the economic domain, these worries have already emerged.

Undeniably, those who are advocating for a more tethered union and are supporters of the European project are frustrated by this referendum. Any other further fragmentation in EU is bound to leave them heartbroken and, to avert which, they might be compelled to adopt a tough stance with Britain in future negotiations. The politics of UK has already witnessed a massive re-alignment, but foreseeing how this will end up is an extremely difficult task.

*Amity Saha is a Research Assistant (Int’l Affairs) at Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs (BILIA). She can be reached through at: meetee88@gmail.com

By Ankita Gothwal*

Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump is building his political fortunes on growing schisms in American society through his sharply dividing claims on how he is going to make America “great again”, especially by walling the US borders to stop immigrants from entering the country. His political campaign has presented the threat to Americans at home and abroad from terrorism as a problem emanating solely from radical Islam; as a problem that is religious opposed to an ideological one. Even more surprisingly, a good proportion of the American population has emerged as a buyer of this divisive rhetoric, exposing the economic, social and political fault lines that exist in the US.

For the first time, terrorism, religion and ensuing divisiveness have churned such intense political bickering in any US election. The Trump and Hillary campaigns have divided America more sharply than ever before. There are various nuances in this overarching vote bank shift. The most visible have been the domestic considerations for supporting Donald Trump and the resultant respective internal dilemmas in both the Republican and the Democratic parties. This has, in turn, led to the change in the nature of voters and their criteria for casting the ballot.

Trump has unleashed a barrage of racial, anti-Islam, misogynistic and chauvinist slurs that anything but assure his credibility as a future President. Moreover, he has spelled out a confounding mix of opinions on the US’ future allies and the country’s economic and trade policies. His pandering to Russia has left foreign policy analysts, current establishment and practically most of the world wondering about the future of US-Russia relations. Speculations about the Trump-Putin rapport have further blurred the US’ foreign policy goals under Trump.

Recent numbers show that although Trump is trailing Hillary, his campaign is doing relatively well. However, sustaining Trump’s momentum is highly doubtful in the face of the sitting President’s criticism declaring him as ‘unfit’ to be the next President of the US; Hillary’s concerns about US’ nuclear future under a highly volatile and aggressive Trump as US President; and most surprisingly, in the face of the opposition that Trump faces from within the Republican Party. Trump’s campaign has weakened the Republican Party like never before, as probably this is the first time the Grand Old Party (GOP) is witnessing a prominent political shift to the Democratic Party’s candidate with open anti-Trump declarations coming from within the Party. Especially over the past few weeks, Trump’s divisive, anti-Islam political tone has been critically damaging for his campaign. His tirade against Captain Humayun Khan of the US army has fuelled a war of words with John McCain. Added to which, his disparaging comments about women, on race and the like have all managed to ensure that even the most conservative, staunch supporters of the GOP distance themselves from this Presidential hopeful and instead side the Democrat’s candidate.

Trump might end up on the losing side in the approaching November elections. However, many reckon that the damage is done. Regardless of whether Trump wins or loses, America might not be as tolerant a nation when it comes to issues of immigration, extremism and terrorism. A post-election America might witness a conservative backlash, the possibilities of which emerge in two facets. If Trump wins, we could see an increasingly aggressive opposition to immigrants, especially against those from Asia. This backlash might manifest at the level of a changing American psyche not only in private but in public places too. If Trump loses, these actions from Trump’s conservative supporters might not see an open display but a cognitive shift to a more pronounced xenophobia would stay and for long!

In either case, Trump’s support base has brought to the fore a section of Americans that was waiting for someone like Trump to tap their growing frustration with immigration, religious fundamentalism and most importantly, political correctness of Washington DC. However, his supporters have failed to assess his flip-flops, lack of coherence and his political incorrectness. There is a danger in reading the aforementioned Trumpian attributes as his feats; rather these are symptomatic of what could become of America should this man be chosen as the President of this country.

The most unfortunate part about the Trump campaign is that the divisive and hateful rationales that have been evoked have affected the entire world. While Hillary Clinton might not be the best candidate given her possible scandalous past but she stands tall in comparison to Trump, especially with her open accommodating approach to work towards integrating the country’s citizens as well as its immigrants.

The question that begs an answer is: what will become of the American cadre that would vote for Trump in the 2016 elections? In case he wins, the political hubris could turn into open xenophobia, but the clear and present danger is that even if he loses, the latent, simmering hatred will wait to tapped into by another Trump clone in the future.

*Ankita Gothwal is a PhD Scholar at American Studies Programme, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She can be reached at: ankita.gothwal@gmail.com

The UK’s decision to exit the European Union taken with only a small majority in a referendum on 23 June continues to cause divisions within the United Kingdom.

According to the observers, numerous demonstrations and protests organized by the supporters of European integration throughout the country highlight the split of the nation based on age, social and geographic grounds.

In particular, the Scottish National Party – the third largest party at Westminster – expressed the intention to block a UK Government plan for Brexit.

“Theresa May can serve Article 50 without going to the House of Commons but she needs to get the Brexit plan for what happens next through the House of Commons and there isn’t a majority for Brexit in the House of Commons, which she knows full well. So our votes, our 56 votes in the House of Commons are going to be quite critical to her getting something through,” SNP deputy leader candidate Tommy Sheppard said.

Commenting on the social moods in the United Kingdom, European politics expert Simon Usherwood, University of Surrey, said that the British are particularly concerned about the unknown future.

“As much as people still care, there is unhappiness about the lack of progress and the lack of a clear plan. However, protests are unlikely to help change this,” he said.

According to him, the situation may become more clear in 2017.

“Probably only in early 2017 will we have of Article 50, by which time we should also have some idea of what each side is looking to achieve,” Simon Usherwood added.

However, to date, the UK’s decision to exit the European Union significantly complicated the situation in the country.

“Economically, the main impact is uncertainty, which is delaying investment decisions. Politically, it has opened up the internal problems of the Labor party, which will be very complicated to resolve,” the expert explained.

In turn, Simon Lightfoot, researcher of European Politics at the University of Leeds, suggested that the new government will need time to work out its demands, what it is willing to compromise on and what its red lines are.

“The key issues are access to single market and free movement. The government has to try and get as much access to the single market whilst accepting a political acceptable level of free movement. The current round of visits by Theresa May suggest that she is taking soundings from the key players in EU capitals,” he told PenzaNews.

He also pointed to the fact that British society and political circles are divided in a variety of ways.

“Voting to leave one union might prompt the breakup of another union – the UK. The SNP calls are for a new referendum on Scottish independence. The issue of Northern Ireland is also unclear,” Simon Lightfoot said.

However, in his opinion, Brexit will not have a serious impact on other EU countries, despite the fact that there are Eurosceptics in many EU states, including France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Hungary.

“My sense is that the European project will continue. It might be that we see increasing cooperation amongst a core group of states especially the Eurozone states. […] I think the key difference [regarding the issue of leaving the EU] is whether another state could work outside the EU given the connected borders. As an island, non-Schengen state it is slightly easier for the UK,” he said and added that anti-EU message in other European countries is more in a sense of reform not reject.

According to him, the political turmoil within the EU clearly means that all diplomatic and political efforts will be focused on Brexit for the next few months.

“When the process starts, some of the uncertainty will stop. How it effects the EU longer term is hard to say but clearly when the UK leaves the EU it will have an impact. […]The EU has to be careful not to blame the British and the Exit camp has to be careful not to sound too triumphant and remember 16 million voted to remain,” the expert added.

Meanwhile, Neil MacKinnon, Global Macro Strategist at VTB Capital, stressed that he is pro-Brexit.

“It is good for the UK in my opinion. I think the EU is an economic disaster with its one-size-fits-all economic policy; voters in France, Italy and Spain don’t like the EU and I think the EU starts to unravel,” the analyst explained.

He also pointed to some difficulties connected with the UK’s decision to leave the EU, stressing, however, their temporary nature.

“UK business and consumer confidence has declined but this is likely to be temporary. The fact is that the UK economy is in better shape than the Eurozone where growth is slower and the unemployment rate higher. Already many companies are planning to increase investment especially from overseas given the 10% depreciation in sterling which makes UK assets cheaper to buy. My view is that Brexit is good for the UK though the process of disentanglement will take time,” Neil MacKinnon said.

According to Bill Durodie, Head of Department and Chair of International Relations, Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies, the University of Bath, today, across the UK, it is as if the vote to leave the European Union had never happened.

“Despite the new Prime Minister, Theresa May, asserting that ‘Brexit means Brexit,’ all of her actions, as well as those of the people around her and even, increasingly, European players too, such as Angela Merkel and others, points to a desire to kick the Brexit ball into the long grass where it cannot be seen and they hope, may never be recovered,” the expert said.

Theresa May has indicated that the earliest she would trigger negotiations for the withdrawal would be next year at the earliest, he reminded.

“So what happened to the assertion of former Prime Minister, David Cameron, that he would enact the people’s will with immediate effect? We should recall that this vote was the single biggest mandate in British electoral history and yet it remains unfulfilled. […] Instead, various groups, including middle-class hippies dancing in dresses made of the European Union flag, members of the unelected second chamber in the British Parliament, as well as a law firm and even one of the candidates standing to become the new Leader of the Opposition either assert that the public were duped when they voted, or that they were too ignorant to vote, or that such a momentous decision ought not have been left to them in the first place,” Bill Durodie said.

In his opinion, the lack of practical steps for Brexit has a negative impact on the situation in the state.

“What does this all mean for the future? Well, if we are not very careful what it points to is how democracy is now upheld in principle but not in practice in one of the birth places of democracy. It reveals in sharp contrast the elite’s disdain for the people that they govern and it can only lead, much further afield, to more significant social challenges as people will eventually have to assert themselves more forcefully for their voices to be heard. How much better it would be to hear them now, now that they have spoken, and to start taking them seriously as agents of their own destiny,” the analyst said.

According to Kent Matthews from Cardiff University, Wales, the referendum result was as much a surprise to those who campaigned for a Leave as for those who expected a Remain.

“The initial perception is that the EU will be weakened by the exit of the British. But the reality however, is that the EU was never a united front. It was rare for the EU to speak with one voice, in particular, on foreign policy, and despite the attempt of a Franco-German leadership, it was hard to get agreement across so many countries” the expert said.

From his point of view, the strength of the EU was its role in world trade.

“It remains an important market in the world but it is a declining one. The focus of world trade has moved east and being tied to a trading bloc that is declining in its share of world trade is not a good place to be,” Kent Matthews stressed.

In his opinion, the UK got the opportunity to be truly international by being open to the rest of the world.

“Freed from the shackles of EU regulations and laws, which place significant burdens on small businesses, it is free to trade with the rest of the world on WTO rules at world prices. This will mean that the UK will be able to import cheaper raw materials and food from Africa and South America and cheaper manufacturing goods from China and India. In return, it will be free to sell its services which constitute nearly 80% of its economy to the rest of the economy,” the analyst said.

According to him, the United Kingdom will only receive benefits from Brexit.

“The scare tactics of the Remain with their ‘project fear’ has had an effect but in time the world and the British people will realize that as Franklin Roosevelt once said, ‘there is nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Of course there will be pain in the short-term, but this is short term pain for long term gain,” the expert concluded.

Zimbabwe has embarked on a trajectory of economic decline and political regression, with massive human rights abuses and international condemnation. Now, however, the non-violent approach of Zimbabwean’s is overwhelming the fear instilled in the masses and threatening the country’s oppressors.

By Tendaishe Tlou*

Zimbabwe’s post-colonial era was embraced with mixed emotions. It has become the subject of a plethora of interpretations. On the one hand, Zimbabwe was dubbed ‘the break-basket of Africa’ because of its successful agricultural sector. It was spoken about as one of Africa’s success stories, with its local currency going head-to-head with the United States dollar in the eighties and nineties. On the other, Zimbabwe was being modelled into a one party state, wherein opposition and dissenting voices were heavily criticised and in some cases persecuted, which brings to light the infamous Gukurahundi massacre. Early opposition leaders were arrested and expelled, such as Joshua Nkomo, Ndabaningi Sithole, Margret Dongo and Edgar Tekere, whose organisations were barely successful and consequently obliterated. From here Zimbabwe embarked on a constant trajectory of economic decline and political regression, with massive human rights abuses and international condemnation.

Brief historical background

After 1980, Zimbabwe was bound to become an autocracy due to the government’s Socialist stance, with governance anchored in the Soviet  leadership style. ‘Unity and nation-building’ was pursued by thwarting any forms of opposition and dissent. The state was recalibrated. It did not recognise multi-partyism and an independent civil society to advance the needs of marginalised groups. This was also coupled with the formation of a strong security apparatus, responsible for maintaining ‘unity and nation-building.’ This imposed negative peace in Zimbabwe, a state of cosmetic stability which is maintained by police surveillance, extra-judicial arrests and abductions. This fear is the one which compelled the masses to be silent despite socio-economic difficulties. As such, Zimbabweans never enjoyed civil-political rights, despite obtaining independence in 1980.

Despite the State’s efforts to curb opposition, soaring prices and decreasing living standards in the nineties lead to the mobilization of Unions. The impending 2000 referendum to reinforce Presidential powers contributed to the formation of resilient civil society organisations, such as the National Constitutional Assembly, and an opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change [1], which entirely changed the face of Zimbabwean politics. Despite these democratic developments, the larger sector of the population remains gripped with fear and paralysis due to ongoing crackdowns and arrests by the police and military. Between 2000 and 2016, human rights activists such as Itai Dzamara and Evan Mawarire have been abducted, disappeared or charged with treason, opposition legislators sent death threats and rallies violently disrupted. This approach has kept many autocracies in power, including the one which has ruled for 36 years with an iron fist.

The current situation

Following the government’s announcement about the introduction of bond notes in March 2016, people and opposition parties started to mobilise en masse, marching mainly in Harare and Bulawayo, the two main cities. All hell broke loose when the government unwittingly introduced a new law which imposes import bans between South Africa and Zimbabwe, in the midst of the latter’s protracted and unprecedented economic meltdown. This regulation triggered violence in the least expected town, Beit Bridge because over the years this has increasingly become the life line for most citizens grappling with the economic meltdown.

This regulation is a deliberate move to increase suffering upon an already troubled nations which will also trigger acute food shortages in a country with a dormant industrial and agricultural sector. Furthermore, Zimbabwean citizens were heavily relying on this border post for revenue generation in a country with a staggering 85% unemployment rate [2]. This translated into frustration-aggression against a government which imposes protocols which increase the suffering of ordinary people. Citizens are tired of people in power who always go against the people’s will.

Resilience in the face of police brutality

Democracy and human rights have since been undermined in Zimbabwe, but “… people should not sit idly and not be concerned about what happens elsewhere, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”[3]. The security sector, in particular the police, remain the main obstacle to good governance in Zimbabwe. They support a government which mismanages the country. Under normal circumstances, the security sector breaks ranks with the state when it is apparent that citizen’s concerns are legititimate. The relationship between the Zimbabwean State and its citizens is a delicate one, constituting a potential threat to peace and security in Zimbabwe. Democracy is a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable by citizens [4] (emphasis added). If they reject to be held accountable the country becomes ungovernable. The mood to democratize is now everywhere. People in the diaspora are also mobilising and protesting at Zimbabwean embassies.

The present generation in Zimbabwe is confident that the destiny of their country is in their hands. It is important for them to remain resilient in the face of police brutality. Given the economic tempest the state is facing, it is impossible for the crackdown to remain sustainable. The army and police equipment require millions to operate, which the government does not have. The operation might be sustained for a week or two, but in the long run the government will fall on its knees and give in. Police brutality is not sustainable against a resilient citizenry. America and South Africa, among others, are testament to that when their citizens were fighting for their rights. Martin Luther King Jr. once argued that to ignite a concerted and unequivocal voice to force the leadership to hear and act on our demands, we must “demonstrate, march, protest…disturb the peace” [5], peacefully of course. Videos have been circulating on social media showing the police beating peaceful protesters, including women and children, even those suspected of verbally supporting the uprising.

The State has since employed such draconian mechanisms to curb the opposition; Aziz (1993) raises the ante by arguing that State battles…are won by striking fear into the heart of the (perceived) enemy [6]. However, to its own peril. “Non-violent movements are successful because they wield power that is greater than that of the oppressors” [7] and attributes this success to the morality associated with the approach. In essence, peace overcomes violence. Non-violent resistance attracts local, regional and international attention and support. Power does not only originate from traditional elements such as holding political offices, control of material resources and the State’s capacity to use force alone, but mass non-violent resistance is also equally if not more powerful.

The people have embraced and understood ‘people power’, from the #Arab springs to the recent #feesmustfall campaigns in South Africa. In Zimbabwe, mantras such as #Tajamuka, #Asijiki and #ThisFlag are trending on social media and people participation in back-to-back stay aways is on the rise. Hence, people must not fear to continue protesting. A reign of terror only isolates the oppressor. Zimbabwean’s non-violent approach overwhelms the fear that is instilled in the masses because “these actions undermine even a despot’s support…”[8], even amongst his cronies. Zimbabweans must remain resilient which is viewed as a strange turn against the tide. The fact is when people do not obey, rulers cannot rule. Zimbabwe’s future lies in its citizen’s hands.

*Tendaishe Tlou is a freelance researcher and writer specialising in human rights, environmental security, peace and governance issues. He holds a BSc (Honours) Degree in Peace and Governance with Bindura University of Science Education and a Post-graduate Certificate in Applied Conflict Transformation. He works with various NGOs and Government Ministries in Zimbabwe and South Africa. 

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of TransConflict.

Footnotes

1. Brian Raftopololous (2009), Becoming Zimbabwe, Weaver Press, Harare.
2. United Nations Development Programme (2015), Harare, Zimbabwe.
3. King, Martin Luther Jr, The Martin Luther Jr Research and Education Institute, United States of America.
4. Schmitter P.C and Karl T.L (1991), What Democracy is and is Not, Vol.2, No.3,76 Journal of Democracy
5. Martin Luther Jr (1963)”; Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King, Martin Luther Jr, The Martin Luther Jr Research and Education Institute, United States of America.
6. Aziz,A(1993), Terrorism: Patterns of Internationalization, Sage Publications, USA.
7. Merriman H (2010) “The Trifecta of Civil Resistance: Unity, Planning, Discipline” International Centre on Nonviolent Conflict.
8. Ibid.

For all the hand-wringing about the threat to liberty and constitutional government posed by the major party presidential candidates, there is little discussion of how this threat is due to the political class’s long history of supporting expanded presidential power. There is also little talk of how the imperial presidency is just as much a creation of Congress as it is of power-hungry presidents.

Since war is the health of the state, it is not surprising that presidential power expanded in tandem with the expansion of the warfare state. Perhaps the best, and most terrifying, example of how “national security” has been used to justify giving the president dictatorial powers is the Defense Production Act.

This law, which is regularly renewed with large bipartisan congressional majorities, grants the president broad powers over the economy. For example, it explicitly authorizes the president to tell manufacturers what products to make, impose wage and price controls, “manage” labor relations, control the use of natural resources, and even allocate credit. All the president need do to exercise these powers is declare a national emergency.

The Defense Production Act is hardly the only example of congress’s complicity in the growth of presidential power. For example, Congress rarely, if ever, insists that the president seek a formal declaration of war before commencing military action. When I attempted to force Congress to vote on a declaration of war against Iraq, a prominent member of Congress, who was considered a constitutional scholar, told me that the constitutional requirement that Congress declare war was an “anachronism.”

Many neoconservatives claim that the president’s status as commander in chief gives him the inherent authority to take whatever actions he deems necessary for national security. This turns a limited grant of power intended to preserve civilian control of the military into an unlimited authorization for military control of civilians.

Presidents have hardly limited their abuse to foreign policy. Ironically, many conservatives who (correctly) oppose abuses of presidential authority in the domestic sphere support giving the president unlimited authority over “national security.” These conservatives fail to realize unfettered presidential discretion in foreign policy will inevitably lead to presidential usurpation of Congress’s authority in domestic matters.

Modern presidents routinely use executive orders to create new laws or rewrite existing statutes. President George W. Bush regularly usurped congressional authority via signing statements listing the parts of congressionally-passed legislation he would refuse to enforce.

In his 2014 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama actually bragged about his intention to use his “pen and phone” to go around Congress via executive orders and regulations. Some members of Congress do criticize presidential usurpation of congressional authority. However, few members of Congress raise concerns about presidential overreach when the White House is occupied by a member of their political party. This suggests that most legislators are more concerned with partisanship than with protecting their constitutional authority.

As long as people expect the president to provide economic and personal security, the presidency will be a threat to liberty regardless of who holds the office. Therefore, instead of obsessing over whether demagogue A is less dangerous than demagogue B, we must focus on spreading the ideas of liberty. Only when a critical mass of the people demand it will we return to limited constitutional government. The growth of the liberty movement gives me hope that we will soon see a day when our peace, prosperity, and liberty is not threatened by the results of the presidential, or any other, election.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

The word fascism has reappeared in the American popular lexicon thanks to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The word is used to keep progressive Democrats in a state of fear should he win, but its existence in this country right now is rarely discussed.

If Trump became president and was indeed a fascist he wouldn’t bring anything to the country that is not already in existence for black Americans. Fascism is practiced against them on a daily basis. They are at risk of police interaction, arrest and even death for committing the most minor infractions or for no infraction at all.

Korryn Gaines was shot to death by police in her own home near Baltimore, Maryland. Her five year-old son was also shot and injured. Ms. Gaines came into contact with police initially because of a traffic violation and a dispute with her boyfriend. Every day thousands of people are given tickets or make accusations against one another but rarely do they have an expectation of ending up dead as a result.

Arrest warrants are the first line of defense for the police, who are the 21st century embodiment of the slave patrol. If black people are lucky they may have to pay a fine or suffer some inconvenience, if unlucky they are killed.

The Baltimore police used maximum force and disregarded accepted police practice meant to de-escalate such situations. They broke down Gaines’ door and cut off her Facebook feed. As is typical, their much vaunted body cameras were turned off and the dead woman was deprived of any means of defense or telling of her story. The only version of events comes from the people who killed her.

Death is the worst result but not the only means of keeping black people under physical control and in a state of humiliation. A recent video from a Kentucky courtroom shows an unidentified black woman suffering the cruelties of the police system. She was arrested for not completing a diversion program after a 2014 shoplifting charge. The only logic to arresting someone for this violation is cruelty for its own sake and the proof of that played out in the courtroom.

The woman arrived at court wearing only a pair of shorts. She reported that she had been denied feminine hygiene products and clean pants. The judge dismissed the charges but not before lecturing the woman. “The fact that you’re in custody is your fault. You gotta come to court. But once you were arrested, the rest of this is completely inhumane and unacceptable and I’m very sorry that you had to go through this.” She added, “This is not normal. I’ve never seen this.” Of course this treatment is normal and happens all the time. Her arrest for a minor offense was normal and so was the denial of her human rights in an American jail. Actually the humiliated woman may be considered lucky. It was recently revealed that 6,900 people died in custody in Texas jails and prisons in the last ten years.

All of the tools which are supposed to protect the public from this system are useless. Paul O’Neal (*link O’Neal) was summarily executed by Chicago police while driving a stolen car. Again their cameras were turned off during the shooting. But once they felt safe, they recorded themselves rejoicing over their kill, giving one another high fives. One complained, “Fuck, I’m going to be on desk duty now for 30 days.” The nonchalance is logical. The officer has no reason to fear anything worse.

Body cameras and other “reforms” won’t save black people’s lives because they are meant for public relations purposes only. The system in this country spends large sums of money, passes legislation and empowers the police to do what they like to black people. The suffering is quite intentional.

All the videos in the world won’t upend the brutality of the laws enforced against black people. It matters not whether a victim complies, or has hands up, or is armed, or is unarmed, or opens a door, or speaks, or doesn’t, or flees, or stays put, or does or doesn’t resist arrest. The police are a constant threat to black lives because the system demands it.

There will be no end to the body count without serious discussion about the ways in which racism is supported and encouraged. None of the supposedly non-fascist politicians dare lay a finger on the modern day slave system. Occasionally white people die at the hands of police, too. But that is considered a small price to play to keep the racial hierarchy in order. There is no hope of ending the carnage without first understanding the system we have and calling it what it is. Black Americans have always lived under fascism.

Indian aspirations of uranium treasury could be best seen in the statement made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who described uranium as “not just a mineral but an article of faith for India.” The on-going uranium sales to India is at its peak since 2005 right after the US announced its budding strategic partnership with India. The US called India as its like-minded, best strategic partner and granted it an immensely gigantic uranium deal by paying all the prices whether it comes amend its domestic laws or requesting waiver from the export control cartel, NSG. Ever since then, India went for similar deals with Australia, Kazakhstan, France and many other countries.

Palpably, Tony Abbott signed the agreement to make Australia a “long-term, reliable supplier of uranium to India” in New Delhi. Article six of the treaty grants India unprecedented open-ended “reprocessing consent”, which could leave Australia without a say in how the nuclear material it shipped to India was used. Ironically, when uranium is used to generate electricity, weapons-grade plutonium can be recovered as a byproduct and “reprocessed” to create more energy or to produce nuclear weapons.

Since the treaty permits India to reprocess Australian uranium provided it does so in a US-approved facility. But Carlson, now a fellow at the Lowy Institute, said the US deal with India did not specify how the resulting plutonium should be managed. Similarly, he showed skepticism over the use of plutonium by this deal too.

Indian uranium deals with Kazakhstan and Australia. It imports around 40 per cent of its requirement — between 2008 and 2014, imports of uranium totaled 4,458 metric tonnes, 2,058 MT of which came from Russia’s Tvel Corporation, 2,100 MT from NAC Kazatomprom of Kazakhstan and 300 MT from Areva of France.

It is not possible to exactly identify how much uranium does India produces. Ironically, Indian government has never released fixed or exact data on local uranium production, but it is estimated to be around 350-400 MT. Total Indian reserves are estimated at 181,600 MT, mainly in Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Meghalaya.

Acknowledging the fact that India is inclined towards uranium usage day by day, India has 21 operational nuclear reactors and six under construction, which use uranium as fuel. The nuclear component of India’s energy production is currently under 3 per cent at 6,000 MW. By 2032, India expects to have 45,000 MW of nuclear capacity, provided it has assured uranium fuel supplies.

India is believed to have stores of up to 110 warheads. A 2012 report by India’s auditor-general facilities were under-resourced and poorly regulated. When such facilities would be kept open-ended without any check and balance upon them, it is obvious that they would be subject of miss use and miss handled. The truth is written very openly in one of the clauses of the 123 agreement that the by-product material shall not be subject to safeguards or any other form of verification under this Agreement, unless it has been decided otherwise by prior mutual agreement in writing between the two Parties. Factually, India is getting Uranium and its indigenous PHWR plants are now able to run on full capacity. Also, India is in a position to set up many more of the 700 MWe indigenous units … 4 are already under construction, and 12 more under advanced stages of planning. Given that India is estimated to possess reserves of about 80,000–112,369 tons of uranium, India has more than enough fissile material to supply its nuclear weapons program, even if it restricted Plutonium production to only 8 of the country’s 17 current reactors, and then further restricted Plutonium production to only 1/4 of the fuel core of these reactors.

According to the calculations of one of the key advisers to the US Nuclear deal negotiating team, Ashley Tellis: operating India’s eight unsafeguarded PHWRs in such a [conservative] regime would bequeath New Delhi with some 12,135–13,370 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium, which is sufficient to produce between 2,023–2,228 nuclear weapons over and above those already existing in the Indian arsenal. Although no Indian analyst, let alone a policy maker, has ever advocated any nuclear inventory that even remotely approximates such numbers, this heuristic exercise confirms that New Delhi has the capability to produce a gigantic nuclear arsenal while subsisting well within the lowest estimates of its known uranium reserves.

This growing inclination towards uranium reservations and increasing disastrous and advanced level weaponry would adversary impact the regional security architecture and strategic stability concerns. Keeping the above mentioned clues, it is not only India behind this entire catastrophe; it is in effect a part of a colossal plan of the entire power seeking community.

By Lt Gen (Retd) Syed Ata Hasnain*

Recently, this author was in Singapore interacting with that city state’s marvellous intellectual and strategic institutions. The issue of J&K raised no apparent interest there but scholars were aware about the strife in the streets. It bodes well for India that Pakistan’s efforts to internationalise the issue find little favour thus far. However, the UN Secretary General’s gentle observation and the the UNHCR’s demand to send a team to Srinagar must not be taken lightly either. There are Pakistan sponsored organisations that are attempting to raise the temperatures on J&K. The lack of any success so far must not lull India into complacency.

On the ground in the Valley, 41 days of virtual lock down is a test for the administration and the security forces. Rumours are rife and the Separatists are making effective use of the limited means of communication available to them. The ‘Chalo’ programs are reminiscent of the 2008 strategy. The strategy in itself looks at using a landmark to gather large masses with people travelling to the event, commencing resistance from the moment they are obstructed by security forces. This ensures that instead of just the weight of strength at the announced landmark, there are smaller fires too that are burning at different spots all along the National Highway and the feeder roads. The Valley has rarely been subjected to suicide bombings although suicide attacks, in which terrorists fought till their last breaths have been common. In street confrontations with security forces, however, there is a virtual propensity towards suicide through extreme resistance on display. It is a leaf out of an Intifada type resistance commenced by the Palestinian resistance in 1997.

This type of resistance alongside ‘Chalo’ programs will inevitably add to the numbers of casualties as police forces have no other means to control mobs; and non-lethal weapons do not work in the face of such suicidal resistance. This is something people outside Kashmir do not understand and blame the security forces for excesses. It is this very blame game which is part of the communication strategy adopted by the Separatists. They have been working on this for many years and have an effective system to communicate through couriers. A decentralised system of command works overtime to keep important towns in a state of turbulence.

The government has to go beyond the ordinary methodology of obstructing with use of police forces. Only when the streets are quiet will a counter strategy of communicating with the masses become effective. Foremost must be the understanding that the Separatist leadership is now beyond repair and any chances the government had of employing it for a future dispensation are now passé. The top and middle leadership, along with the important rising stars from the towns have to be neutralised through detention away from the Valley. Fears exist of the possibility of yet another leadership emerging as it happened in the case of Masrat Alam. This is where the measure of test of intelligence comes. All other detainees, the prime leaders among stone throwers, must not be detained in facilities within the Valley since such facilities do not exist. Keeping a stone thrower and a captured terrorist together is the surest recipe to convert the stone thrower to radical terrorist.

There are still many sensible people in Kashmir who are silent due to fear. The local media is also helping in promoting this fear psychosis. A perception is being attempted to project that the Governments in Delhi and Srinagar are incapable of any further initiatives and Azadi is but a matter of time. A similar sentiment was witnessed in 1989-90 and to an extent in 2010. It is dangerous if people believe this because fence-sitters commence moving to the other side.

That is why communication is the key. It is by gestures, actions, events, direct communication, word of mouth, and communicators.

Firmness is the first of the gestures, the resolve that street resistance cannot get a nation of 1.3 billion and an Army of 1.3 million to its knees. There is a thin line dividing routine human rights and the rights of those who choose to challenge the authority of the state through usage of violence. The governments have exhibited all norms of openness and democracy in ensuring that no curbs have been placed on the local media. This issue must be appreciated by the international community to which it should be projected. The views and position of the Central and State Governments must continue receiving space in the local media; and it cannot be a one sided affair in which the local media only espouses the cause of separatism.

The Governments must use the local media as a platform to communicate with the people and use their authority to do so.

The other connectors are politicians who in the face of the anger on the streets cannot easily move about and meet people. Yet, at some stage they will have to. The Army, which otherwise has ensured that it did not directly intervene except in a few stray cases, is probably the best organisation to bring the politician to the people and open new channels. All suspicions about employing the Army for such unconventional tasks is a denial of the tremendous capabilities of the Indian Army. In 2010, it is the liaison and hold of middle level Army officers over local populations which saw them being officially tasked to prevent surge of mobs from rural areas towards the National Highway.

There may be a belief that stamina usually runs out of such movements. It is never good to rely on that although chinks do start appearing and curfew weary people commence counter resistance against mob leaders. Already the taxi unions and tourist operators are indicating their displeasure.

Before long, orchard owners will start doing the same. In 2011, the total number of apple laden trucks which left the Valley crossed the 100,000 mark adding Rs 3000 crores to the pockets in the Valley. This is where the mind games begin and the power of the State to play these if done intelligently can be simply immense. What may be lacking is just ideation.

Lastly, before long, the resistance will peter out; and when exactly that will happen depends on further handling. However, the one thing that cannot be allowed to happen is a surge in terror activity. The attack on a night convoy at Baramulla is indicative that the terror leadership is also thinking. The surge in infiltration attempts in Uri and Lipa sectors although fully countered by the army is an indicator of more to come. The JKP’s intelligence capability is bound to take a hit so there will be less success in the hinterland and more losses in stray hits against policemen or convoys. The army must keep a tight control on all this and not hold back from continuous advice to the Government.

A fresh communication and outreach strategy must be placed on the drawing board even as the situation improves over the next few weeks.

*Lt Gen (Retd) Syed Ata Hasnain
Member, IPCS Governing Council, and former GOC, 15 Corps, Srinagar

By Sanchita Bhattacharya*

The death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in Kashmir Valley has once again provided a pretext to Jama’at-ud-Dawa (JuD) and its chief Hafiz Saeed to mobilise the Pakistani masses and amplify their anti-India rhetoric. JuD, under the leadership of Saeed, was the first one to take the lead with its “Azadi Caravan”. Setting out from Lahore on July 19, the caravan was expected to arrive in Islamabad on July 20. The caravan was received warmly in cities on the way, as participants kept joining the rallies. This rally was the first of the three stages of the movement that Saeed had described the process to be as at its start in Lahore. The stated purpose was to “wake up the Parliamentarians” in Islamabad.

The second stage, Saeed announced, would be to march to Chakothi, a small border town on Pakistan’s side of the Line of Control (LoC). “And in the third phase, we will march into occupied Kashmir (Jammu and Kashmir) and we will continue marching till Kashmiris get freedom,” he declared.

Many analysts within Pakistan see the free movement of JuD throughout the country as a continuance of state’s policy of supporting and sponsoring jihadists to attain the desired results. Interestingly, though JuD enjoys tacit support of Pakistani establishment, in a recent development, on April 27, 2016 a Pakistani judge directed the Punjab province to present its case on a complaint that was filed against JuD for running unauthorised Sharia courts in the eastern city of Lahore. The documents submitted to the court show that the group is accused of holding parallel Sharia courts where Islamic law experts decide family, civil and criminal law cases without official supervision.

The history of the organisation and its terror proxies go back in mid 1980s. In 1985, Hafiz Saeed and Zafar Iqbal, two professors at Lahore University, created JuD as a missionary group dedicated to the tenets of Ahl-e-Hadith Islam. In 1987, Mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan formed a group named Markaz Dawat wal Irshad (MDI) – Center for Preaching and Guidance, under the leadership of Hafiz Saeed. The MDI continued jihad in Afghanistan where it set up its first training centre. MDI enjoyed active support from both the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of US for fighting alongside the Mujahideen. The founders of the MDI wanted the group to carry on even after the Afghan jihad came to an end. The group was conceived to wage both armed and peaceful jihad alternately or at the same time. As the Afghan jihad came to an end, the MDI found another front in Kashmir to continue its armed jihad. In 1990, MDI formed its armed wing, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), to fight jihad in Kashmir, while JuD acted as the “public facade” of the terror group.

The US government offered a USD 2 million reward for information leading to the capture of Abdur Rahman Makki, a founder of MDI and also senior leader in JuD establishment notorious for his “overt justifications of fidayeen missions”, and also a USD 10 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Hafiz Saeed. In an interview to Al Jazeera in April 2012, Saeed did show his attitude towards the US move: “we are not hiding in caves for rewards to be set on finding us. We are addressing hundreds of thousands of people daily in Pakistan…. Their [US] presence is destabilising the region and causing economic downturn. We are creating a grassroots movement [to tell the US] to leave this region and withdraw its troops…We are mobilising people and it is our right to raise our voice…”.

Overtly, JuD, with headquarter in Muridke, in outskirts of Lahore (Punjab) acts like a socio-religious, cultural, spiritual and educational driving force behind the armed wing represented by the LeT. A 2011 report suggests that JuD has about 50,000 registered members to spread its influence and raise funds. JuD owns a solid and stretched-out infrastructure inside Pakistan which includes more than 300 offices, mosques and madrasas. The group has set up many commercial ventures including more than 400 English-medium schools, colleges, transportation companies, residential projects and media groups and has acquired farmland on a large scale. Its charity wing has one of the biggest fleet of ambulances in the country, seven hospitals and more than 200 health centres. Moreover, the group also manages 16 religious institutions, ambulance service, mobile clinics and blood banks.

The JuD funds include state sponsorship, charities, and businesses. Money is transferred through banks, use of hawala (illegal money transaction) and by couriers. Funds are utilized mainly for dawa (preaching), khidmat-e-Khalq (provision of social services), and jihad (Islamic campaign against non-believers) through recruitment, training, and procurement of equipment and weapons. Sources say that JuD also collects donations from Pakistani committees in Gulf countries and the United Kingdom in addition to Islamic NGOs and Pakistani and Kashmiri businessmen. Reportedly, JuD furthermore used the social sites to collect fund. During June, 2012 JuD sent messages on Twitter and Facebook asking Muslims across the world to donate zakat and fitra (a gift of food or money given after the sighting of new moon) during Ramzan.

Moreover, the “farmers and labor wing” of JuD is responsible for the collection of ushr (an Islamic land tax). Notably, the group collects hides of most of the animals slaughtered during the holy festivals of Eid al-Adha and sells them for a profit. Yahya Mujahid, ‘spokesperson’ for JuD, said during November 2010, under FIF’s banner, JuD set up seven camps for collecting hides of sacrificial animals in Islamabad and ten such camps in the adjacent city of Rawalpindi. Some 31 banned outfits successfully launched hides collection campaign under the guise of welfare organisations during Eid-al-Adha. However, as reported in April 2013 Pakistan’s Interior Ministry banned JuD, from buying and selling animal hides. The leather trade has been an extremely lucrative business for jihadist entities, particularly in Punjab.

Presently, the organisation’s stated objective is to destroy India, Israel and the United States for they are the enemies of Islam. The followers of JuD also seek to spread the rule of Islam all over the world through violent means and liberate Indian administered Kashmir. Another stated aim of this group is to exact revenge from the enemies of Islam while defending Muslim states and forcing the infidels in the Muslim world to pay jazia. The group has marked hundreds of potential targets around the world which have to be struck.

JuD with its network mostly in Punjab and Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) has also concentrated its activities in Karachi, with Hafiz Saeed making frequent visits to the city when addressing Friday gatherings and congregations. The organisation is also making inroads into Balochistan.

The LeT’s propaganda network is mostly carried out by the JuD. It operates several websites, publishes periodicals and books, and distributes tapes of Hafiz Saeed. Most of these are in the Urdu, in addition to Arabic and English versions, addressing all sections of society. From monthly publications like Ud-Dawa, Voice of Islam, Irada Khidmat-e-Halla, Al Rabat and Zarb-e-Tayyeba, to weekly ones like Ghazwa, Al Anfal and Jihad Times, these magazines preach the LeT world view.

According to a 2013 report, following the UN Security Council ban, the Pakistani government came under international pressure and shut down the group’s websites and publications. However, the group began using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The JuD launched a website in mid-2012, releasing a video in which Hafiz Saeed observed, “Media is a two-sided sword. Instead of it having an impact on us, we want to use it in an effective way. Allah willing, [we] want to convey our message of Dawah [Invitation to Islam] and jihad to the people through it….”

It is worth mentioning that Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior had also enlisted JuD as a terrorist organization in November 2015 and the government has banned the publications related to the group’s issues. Yet, JuD remains a legitimate group in the country, which practices charity activities and organizes protests across the country. Further showing its presence in the country, over the past five years, JuD has formed alliances with six other religious groups to establish the group known as “Pakistan Defense Council”, which is still active and organises protests against American drone strikes in the Pakistani tribal regions.

The degree of impunity and political leverage exercised by JuD-LeT and Hafiz Saeed within Pakistan is a sure indication of its inroads into the socio-political arena of the country. The popular and establishment support for the organisation has serious security implications for India, as the Muridke training centre is infamous for breeding anti-India terrorists. Moreover, the ongoing delays in the 26/11 trials in Pakistan against LeT ‘operational commander’ Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi is just another eyewash for the international community and one more audacious tactic of JuD-LeT cohort to showcase its dominance and legitimacy in the power-sharing game of Pakistan.

*Dr. Sanchita Bhattacharya is a Post-Doctoral Fellow, UGC and Visiting Scholar, Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi. Comments and suggestions can be sent to: editor@spsindia.in

Slowly, and much to the distaste of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the possibility of a united autonomous Kurdistan stretching across the northern reaches of Syria and Iraq is emerging.

The capture of the township of Manbij from Islamic State (IS) on 12 August 2016 produces along Turkey’s southern border an uninterrupted swathe of territory controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – an alliance of Arab and Kurdish militias. This area joins seamlessly with Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, the Kurdish populated area granted autonomy in Iraq’s 2005 constitution.

Just as the artificial boundaries and borders imposed on the Middle East by the victorious allies after the First World War are laughed to scorn by Islamic State (IS) in declaring its caliphate, so any united autonomous Kurdistan – if such an entity were ever to come into existence – would have to sit fairly and squarely across what now constitute the internationally recognised borders of Turkey, Syria. Iraq and Iran.

Iraq’s Kurdistan contains about 5 million of the world’s approximately 30 million ethnic Kurds; the liberated region in Syria about 2 million. Most of the rest reside in the areas immediately adjacent to Kurdistan’s northern and eastern borders, in Turkey and Iran respectively – both of which are deeply opposed to any suggestion of granting Kurds independence, or even autonomy on the Iraqi model.

It was in August 1920, shortly after the end of the First World War, that the dissolution and partition of the Ottoman Empire were incorporated into the Treaty of Sèvres. That Treaty, made between the victorious Allied powers and representatives of the government of Ottoman Turkey, abolished the Ottoman Empire and obliged Turkey to renounce all rights over Arab Asia and North Africa. Moreover, it required a referendum to be conducted to decide the issue of the Kurdistan homeland.

Sèvres was very quickly rendered null and void by the establishment in 1922 of the Turkish Republic under Kemal Ataturk. The result was a new treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne, which gave control of the entire Anatolian Peninsula, including the Kurdistan homeland in Turkey, to the new republic.

Kurdish nationalism emerged largely as a reaction to the secular nationalism that revolutionized Turkey under Ataturk. The first of many violent uprisings occurred in 1923 and, after 20 more years of struggle, Mullah Mustafa Barzani emerged as the figurehead for Kurdish separatism. Years of rebellion in Iraq ended with a peace deal between the government and the Kurdish rebels in 1970, granting recognition of their language and self-rule, though clashes over control of the oil-rich area around Kirkuk continued.

When Barzani died in 1979, the leadership of the KDP passed to his son, Masoud. But a new – and, as it turned out, rival – force had emerged in Kurdish politics with the founding by Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). During the Iran-Iraq War, which began in 1980, the KDP sided with the Iranians against Saddam Hussein and Kurdish Peshmerga troops helped launch an offensive from the north. In retribution Saddam ordered the notorious poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja, during which some 5,000 civilians were massacred.

The journey towards a unified Kurdish movement in Iraq, bedevilled by internal politicking, was long and bitter. In 1994 a power-sharing arrangement between the KDP and the PUK fell apart, leading to two separate administrations in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah and a no-holds-barred civil war for control of the Kurdish-dominated parts of northern Iraq. Finally, in 1998, Barzani of the KDP and Talabani of the PUK agreed a peace treaty and signed a joint leadership deal. Eventually the PUK and the KDP set up a unified regional government, and Masoud Barzani became a member of the Iraqi Governing Council.

When the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, the Kurdish Peshmerga troops joined in the fight to overthrow Saddam Hussein. After he was driven from office the Iraqi people, in a national referendum, approved a new constitution which recognized the Kurdistan Regional Government as an integral element in Iraq’s administration. Barzani was elected President of Iraqi Kurdistan in June 2005.

In Syria the civil war, which began in earnest in 2011 in an attempt to topple President Bashar al-Assad and his administration, brought the Kurds to the forefront of the region’s politics. In early fighting Syrian government forces abandoned many Kurdish occupied areas in the north and north-east of the country, leaving the Kurds to administer them themselves. As early as October 2011, sponsored by President Barzani of Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government, the Syrian Kurds established a Kurdish National Council (KNC) to press for eventual Kurdish autonomy. As in Iraq, political differences within the Kurdish community have resulted in a breakaway party, the PYD, challenging the national council.

The KNC is wholeheartedly in favour of establishing a Kurdish Regional Government in Syria, to mirror that in Iraq. The PYD favours establishing a multi-ethnic administration in the areas of northern Syria captured from government forces. An uneasy truce between the two groups, brokered by Barzani in 2012, seems to be holding, despite a succession of incidents between them.

Is some sort of amalgamation of the Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish areas a practical proposition?

“We will never allow a state to be formed in northern Syria, south of our border,” declared Erdogan in Istanbul on June 26, 2015. “We will maintain our struggle whatever the cost. They are trying to…change the demographics of the region. We will not condone it.”

If anything like Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan were to be established in Syria, and worse if it were to amalgamate with Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government, it would feed demands by Turkey’s Kurds to be linked to it in some way. This would be anathema to Erdogan, who has consistently opposed his domestic Kurdish separatist movement – which explains why, on joining the US-led anti-IS coalition in Syria in July 2015, he began air-strikes against IS and the Kurds indiscriminately, tarring both with the terrorist brush.

Nevertheless Erdogan may have to bow to the politically inevitable, even if it causes him continuing domestic headaches with his substantial Turkish-Kurdish population. Everything turns on what sort of Syrian entity emerges from the current conflict.

It seems highly unlikely that Syrian President Bashar Assad, even with combined Russian and Iranian support, will ever regain the whole of his former state. Even the eventual elimination of IS in Syria, if that were ever to be achieved with the help of the US-led coalition, would scarcely be to Assad’s advantage, since the coalition is pretty well unanimous in wishing to see him deposed. The anti-IS coalition, moreover, is highly indebted to the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, who have proved themselves outstandingly effective fighters on the ground.

When the conflict is eventually resolved, and the spoils of victory come to be disbursed, gratitude and common decency seem to demand that Syria’s Kurds are at last awarded their autonomy. In that eventuality, a unified Kurdistan would be one step nearer to fulfilment.

India’s recently anointed Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar is currently on a nearly week-long visit to West Asia from August 17. A visit seen by some as using the minister’s astute understanding of the region’s complex interplay of religious and social forces to get a closer assessment of the ground situation in the Middle East. Some see it possibly as a precursor to the long awaited Indian move for a more ‘substantial’ role in the Middle East. On August 20, during his tour, Akbar was in Damascus where he met with the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

During the meeting Assad reportedly said that India as a growing power has a role to play in meeting the challenge of terrorism and the two countries agreed to upgrade their security consultations. Assad also invited India to play an active role in the reconstruction of the Syrian economy. Both leaders agreed that as secular nations, India and Syria believe in faith equality.

The geopolitics in the Middle East has hit a troubling note post the failed coup attempt in Turkey. A week before Akbar, Chinese Rear Admiral Guan Youfei was in Damascus to meet Syrian Defence Minister Fahd Jassem al-Freij. Guan is head of the Office for International Military Cooperation under the Central Military Commission that oversees China’s 2.3 million-member armed forces. The Chinese military, it appears, wanted to use Guan’s trip to better understand the current state of events in Syria, where over 300,000 people have died and over four million of its citizens have been displaced in the fratricidal many-sided conflict. According to Xinhua News Agency he also met the following day with a Russian general who is coordinating Russia’s military assistance to the Syrian regime.

Xinhua went on to say that Guan expressed China’s willingness to boost military cooperation with Syria, and reportedly the Chinese Defence Ministry said that both sides agreed to expand personnel training and humanitarian aid via the Chinese military. Chinese military advisers are on the ground in Syria helping train soldiers in the use of weapons purchased from China, which include sniper rifles, rocket launchers and machine guns.

The Chinese outreach comes even as Russia, as distinct from its ‘drawdown’ a few months back, is reportedly prepared for a longer stay in Syria. Iran, on the other hand, is pushing the limits of the terms of its nuclear deal by allowing Russian warplanes to use its Hamedan air base in western Iran as a launching pad for strikes in Syria. A top Iranian lawmaker was quoted as saying that Russia would use the base primarily as a refuelling transit point for sorties over Syria. There is also a pending Russian request to launch cruise missiles over Iranian airspace.

Though the Iranians have been quite open regarding the involvement of their Revolutionary Guards in Syria and Iraq, in a recent interview published in the Mashregh News, a retired commander of the Revolutionary Guard was reported as saying that the Iranians are reorganising their militias into a so-called ‘Liberation Army,’ which would include foreign fighters and will be deployed to fight abroad. This is a move sure to rile the Saudis. Iran is backing President Assad in Syria, advising Shia militias in Iraq, and supporting Houthi fighters in Yemen.

The Saudis, after flexing the muscle of their 34-nation Islamic anti-terror coalition, are increasing the intensity of their fight in Yemen for an early closure. They are supported in the conflict by the Gulf emirates. The US, which had being providing material and intelligence support to the Saudis in Yemen, have indicated that they are scaling down their advisors involved in Yemen with the Saudis and the US Congress has been making noises about stopping weapon sales to Saudi Arabia because of the human rights excesses by the Saudis in Yemen.

Post the Putin-Erdogan talks and the fall of Manbij on the Turkey-Syria border to the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, Turkey with a purged military and reeling under Islamic State (IS) orchestrated terror attacks, has just declared that it will play a “more active “ role in Syria. With Turkish Special Forces already operating on Syrian territory and strategically important city of Aleppo surrounded by the Syrian government forces, it remains to be seen if Turkey acts in concert with the Russian plan or has one of its own.

India’s policy on the Middle East has so far served Indian domestic interests well, despite some observers criticising the government for not addressing the humanitarian issues in the region. However fast changing geopolitical developments, falling price of oil, energy security, regional security implications and the impact on Indians working abroad in the Middle East would compel the government to make sure its current policy adapts to these changes.

With an impending visit to Israel and Palestine by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it remains to be seen how M J Akbar’s ongoing assessment of the Middle East geopolitics influences India’s Middle East policy.

*Monish Gulati is the Associate Director (Strategic Affairs) at the Society for Policy Studies, New Delhi. Comments and suggestions on this article can be sent on: editor@spsindia.in. This article was published at South Asia Monitor.

Is Crimea about to explode? The mainstream media reports that Russia has amassed troops on the border with Ukraine and may be spoiling for a fight. The Russians claim to have stopped a Ukrainian sabotage team that snuck into Crimea to attack key infrastructure. The Russian military is holding exercises in Crimea and Russian President Vladimir Putin made a visit to the peninsula at the end of the week.

The Ukrainians have complained to their western supporters that a full-scale Russian invasion is coming, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he may have to rule by martial law due to the Russian threat.

Though the US media pins the blame exclusively on Russia for these tensions, in reality there is plenty of blame to go around. We do know that the US government has been involved with “regime change” in Ukraine repeatedly since the break up of the Soviet Union. The US was deeply involved with the “Orange Revolution” that overthrew elected president Viktor Yanukovych in 2005. And we know that the US government was heavily involved in another coup that overthrew the same elected Yanukovych again in 2014.

How do we know that the US was behind the 2014 coup? For one, we have the intercepted telephone call between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. In the recording, the two US officials are plotting to remove the elected government and discussing which US puppet they will put in place.

You would think such undiplomatic behavior could get diplomats fired, but sadly in today’s State Department it can actually get you promoted! Nuland is widely expected to get a big promotion – perhaps to even Secretary of State – in a Hillary Clinton administration, and Geoffrey Pyatt has just moved up to an Ambassadorship in Athens.

Ambassador Pyatt can’t seem to control himself: Just as tensions were peaking between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea this month, he published a series of Tweets urging Ukraine to take back Crimea. Is this how our diplomats overseas should be acting? Should they be promoting actions they know will lead to war?

When the mainstream media discusses Crimea they are all lock-step: that’s the peninsula Putin annexed. Never do they mention that there was a referendum in which the vast majority of the population (who are mostly ethnic Russians) voted to join Russia. The US media never reports on this referendum because it produced results that Washington doesn’t like. How arrogant it must sound to the rest of the world that Washington reserves the right to approve or disapprove elections thousands of miles away – meanwhile we find out from the DNC hacked files that we don’t have a lot of room to criticize elections overseas.

What should we do about Ukraine and Russia? We should stop egging Ukraine on, we should stop subsidizing the government in Kiev, we should stop NATO exercises on the Russian border, we should end sanctions, we should return to diplomacy, we should send the policy of “regime change” to the dustbin of history. The idea that we would be facing the prospect of World War III over which flag flies above a tiny finger of land that most US politicians couldn’t find on a map is utterly ridiculous. When are we going to come to our senses?

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

Abu Otaiba, the nom du guerre of a self-taught imam and Islamic State (IS) recruiter in Jordan, uses soccer to attract recruits.

“We take them to farms, or private homes. There we discuss and we organize soccer games to bring them closer to us,” Abu Otaiba told The Wall Street Journal in a recent interview.

Abu Otaiba said he was recruiting outside of mosques because they “are filled with intelligence officials.” Mosques serve him these days as a venue to identify potential recruits whom he approaches elsewhere.

A similar development is evident in Jordanian universities where sports clubs and dormitories have become favoured IS hunting grounds because they so far don’t figure prominently on Jordanian intelligence’s radar.

IS’ use of soccer reflects anthropologist Scott Atran’s observation that suicide bombers often emerge from groups with an action-oriented activity. It also is symptomatic of jihadists’ convoluted relationship to a sport that they on the one hand view as an invention of infidels designed to distract the faithful from their religious obligations and on the other hand see as a useful tool to draw in new recruits.

Attitudes towards soccer are complicated by the fact that many jihadist and militant Islamist leaders are either former players or soccer fans. Islamic State caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was a fervent soccer player while in US prison in Iraq where he earned the nickname Maradona after Argentinian superstar Diego Maradona.

Osama Bin Laden was believed to be an Arsenal FC fan who had his own mini-World Cup during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Teams formed by foreign fighters based on nationality played against one another in downtime. While in exile in Sudan, Mr. Bin Laden had two squads that trained three times a week and play on Fridays after midday prayers.

Hassan Nasrallah’s Hezbollah manages clubs in Lebanon while Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh, a former player has organized tournaments in Gaza.

An online review conducted in 2014 by Vocativ of jihadist and militant Islamist Facebook pages showed that their owners often were soccer fans. However, jihadist empathy for the sport does not stop them from targeting local games in a geography stretching from Iraq to Nigeria as well as big ticket European and World Cup matches whose live broadcasts hold out the promise of a worldwide audience.

A IS suicide bomber blew himself up in March in a soccer stadium south of the Iraqi capital, killing 29 people and wounding 60. The bomber chose a match in a small stadium in the city of Iskanderiya, 30 miles from Baghdad. The London-based Quilliam Foundation reported at about the same time that boys in IS military training were instructed to kick decapitated heads as soccer balls.

Crowds in IS’ Syrian capital of Raqqa were forced in July to attend the public execution of four players of the city’s disbanded Al Shabab SC soccer team — Osama Abu Kuwait, Ihsan Al Shuwaikh, Nehad Al Hussein and Ahmed Ahawakh — on charges that they had been spies for the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian Kurdish militia that is in the frontline of confronting IS on the ground in Syria.

Yet, with IS under increased military pressure in Syria and Iraq, the group, desperate to project a degree of normalcy in areas it still controls, appears to be turning to sports and soccer in particular. Breaking with its past muddled banning of soccer despite its use of the sport as a recruiting tool, IS has urged boys in various towns including Raqqa in Syria and Mosul and Tal Afar in Iraq to participate in what it dubbed the Jihad Olympics.

Boys, despite a ban on soccer jerseys and the execution of 13 kids in early 2015 for watching an Asian Cup match on television, play soccer or tug of war during the events and are awarded sweets and balloons if their team is victorious. The boys’ families are invited to watch the games.

IS appears to have been struggling with the notion of using soccer as a way of placating its population and projecting normalcy for some time. The group authorized the showing of the FC Barcelona and Real Madrid derby a week after the attacks in November 2015 in Paris that targeted a major soccer match among others, but at kick-off rescinded the permission and closed down cafes and venues broadcasting the match because of a minute’s silence at the beginning of the game in the Madrid stadium in honour of the victims of the attacks in the French capital.

A precursor to IS’ Jihad Olympics was an exemption of children from the ban on soccer as well as video clips showing fighters in a town square kicking a ball with kids. Confusion within the group about its policy towards soccer is reflected in the fact that age limits for the exemption vary from town to town. In Manbij, a town near Aleppo recently conquered by US-backed militias, children older than 12 were forbidden to play the game while in Raqqa and Deir-ez-Zor in eastern Syria the age limit is believed to be 15.

Similarly, foreign fighters have been allowed to own decoders for sports channels and watch matches in the privacy of their homes.

“IS policy towards soccer is driven by opportunism and impulse. The group fundamentally despises the game, yet can’t deny that it is popular in its ranks and in territory it governs,” said a former Raqqa resident.