By Jim Garamone

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Monday for meetings with national security and military officials.

The general and his counterpart, Saudi Army Gen. Abdulrahman bin Salah Al-Banyan, will meet with Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry officials. Before this, the general will meet with U.S. Ambassador Joseph Westphal and his country team at the American Embassy.

Issues of Mutual Concern

Dunford will discuss issues of mutual concern and listen to the Saudis’ take on operations in the region, officials said, and is also expected to discuss Iran’s malign influence in the region and operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Saudi Arabia is a close ally of the United States in a very troubled part of the world. The kingdom has the largest and best-equipped military force in the region, and the U.S. military has excellent military-to-military relations with the Saudi military, Joint Staff officials said.

Although this is his first visit to Saudi Arabia as Joint Chiefs chairman, Dunford has met with Saudi officials during his term, most recently during a meeting of chiefs of defense from 43 nations at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, in October to discuss operations to defeat violent extremism.

The general arrived here following successful talks with Turkish military leaders yesterday in Turkey’s capital of Ankara.

By Kimberley Anne Nazareth*

With the US only just days away from electing its 45th President, it is important to understand and analyse Republican candidate Donald Trump’s stance on the Join Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran deal. Much has been said about his opposition to the Iran deal. However, there will likely be little to no change in US’ official position on the deal even in the event of a Trump presidency. This article looks at the reasons why.

Trump’s Rhetoric

Donald Trump’s anti-Iran deal statements over the course of his election campaign have changed from being purely anti-deal during the primaries to lukewarm opposition after the Republican Convention of July 2016. This is visible from his statements on the issue – from calling it “one of the worst deals ever made by any country in history,” to his statement at a rally in September, where he said, “When I am elected president, I will renegotiate with Iran…and ask Congress to impose new sanctions that stop Iran from having the ability to sponsor terrorism around the world.” In September itself, he spoke about keeping the deal at an MSNBC interview: “We have a horrible contract, but we do have a contract…”

The main aim of the Iran deal was to postpone Iran’s ability to weaponise, rather than completely cutting off Iran’s access to nuclear technology. In many ways Donald Trump’s anti-deal statements simply seem to reinforce the Republican position, which for the most part is against the deal, but the rhetoric has changed over time. So the bigger question is that if he wins, would all this rhetoric be translated into action?

Reality

Even if Trump were to try to renegotiate the deal, a number of factors would have to be considered. Firstly, the deal took more than three years and a great deal of bargaining to come to fruition. Secondly, the deal is multilateral in nature, signed between Iran and the P5+1. Therefore if the US under Trump were to consider withdrawing/renegotiating the deal, the sanctions-wise impact would be minimal on Iran as the strongest sanctions came from the European countries who continue to support the deal.

There is also an economic factor involved. After the deal was implemented earlier this year, some P5 nations, including China and Russia, signed multiple deals with Iran. For instance, a US$800 million dollar defence cooperation deal was signed with Russia and a trade deal approximating US$600 billion was signed with China. Companies have also signed deals with Iran, such as Boeing, to the tune of US$30-40 billion. The linkages established through these economic deals will further strengthen the foundation of the nuclear deal itself.

On the down side, the Republicans are using the ‘regional card’ to their advantage in opposing the deal. US’ regional allies have opposed the deal since negotiations began, fearing a nuclear Iran and the impact of sanctions relief allowing Iran greater leverage in the region, especially over US’ allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Implications

It would be difficult for Trump to bring about major changes in the deal – he would be damned if did and dammed if didn’t. If he keeps the deal, he will be held accountable for the 4 to 8 critical years of the deal when Iran could strengthen its enriching technology. On the other hand, if he takes any action against the deal and consequently, Iran, he will be criticised for destroying the deal and the rapprochement it facilitated with Iran. In terms of legacy, irrespective of what happens, he will be have to answer his support base for a ‘nuclear Iran’ either by acts of commission or by acts omission.

However, in a presidential election year, it is not only the White House that is up for grabs but the House of Representatives and the Senate as well. The Republican Party (though commonly known for its anti-deal stance) is not monolithic; there are those within the party that have supported the deal, which will also have to be considered. If the Democrats take over both houses, bargaining and comprise will be an uphill battle.

Trump really has only one option: that of conducting business as usual. A reason for this is that the very nature of the deal – Trump will have to stick by the JCPOA irrespective of the regional and domestic complications.

* Kimberley Anne Nazareth
Researcher, NSP, IPCS

November 7, the anniversary of the what the communists called the Great October Socialist Revolution that brought Lenin and the Bolsheviks to power and led to the formation of the Soviet Union, used to be the most important state holiday in the USSR and the socialist bloc.

With the collapse of communism, almost everything about it has changed. Most former Soviet republics have made it a day of memory. And Russia too has not celebrated it since 2004, although Vladimir Putin in the best hybrid tradition this year sponsored a march recalling the 1941 event when German forces were at the gates of Moscow (polit.ru/article/2016/11/07/parades/ and stoletie.ru/na_pervuiu_polosu/legendarnomu_paradu_1941-go__75_let_311.htm).

Some communist loyalists nonetheless organized marches and meetings in many places across the Russian Federation and elsewhere, but only in three places – Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and the breakaway republic of Transdniestria – was it marked as a state holiday. The situation in Belarus is especially instructive of current attitudes and the prospects for the holiday.

In a commentary for Russia’s Lenta news agency, Minsk writer Pavel Yurintsev argues that for both officials and the population of Belarus, the November 7 commemorations remain “a holiday by habit” rather than any special commitment to Bolshevism or the glorious Soviet past (lenta.ru/articles/2016/11/07/revolution/).

He quotes Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s observation that “if people are accustomed to mark this holiday, then there is no reason to do away with it.”

But if the holiday continues in much the same form – military parades and so on – as in Soviet times, the messages have been changed. Now the country’s leaders stress that they mark this anniversary because the revolution opened the way to the acquisition of Belarusian statehood rather than to the building of communism.

That shift has its roots in the 1990s, Yurintsev continues, when Belarusians turned to Lukashenka because he promised a return to the stability of Soviet times along as a basis for Belarusian patriotism. He restored soviet symbols and saw no reason not to exploit the holidays of the past to solidify his position.

However, with the passing of the generation that grew up in Soviet times and the rise of a generation that came of age only after the end of the 1980s, that is changing, and Lukashenka and his regime are reacting accordingly, the Lenta journalist says. The rising generation is more Belarusian and less Soviet than its predecessors, and the regime knows that.

As a result, he continues, Lukashenka has made “a transition from demagogy around the common Soviet past to demagogy around the uniqueness of the Belarusian ethnos,” and the issue of the continuation of the November 7 holiday has become ever more openly discussed and debated in Minsk.

This year, one politician allied with the government called for doing away with the event and in its place offering a more Belarusian-centered holiday (interfax.by/news/belarus/1215317). That is likely to happen soon, Yurintssev says, and thus “Belarusians will make yet another step to say farewell” to what had been the common Soviet past.

Another indication of the way the winds are blowing in Belarus also occurred today: opposition figures held a demonstration in front of the Belarusian KGB to demand that the country stop commemorating the Great October Socialist Revolution because of that event’s criminal consequences (regnum.ru/news/polit/2202289.html).

(Civil.Ge) — Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili said that there are no plans to replace Interior and Defense Ministers as a part of “several” possible changes in the cabinet.

He pledged “full support” to Defense Minister Levan Izoria in implementing reforms.

“We are facing serious security challenges and our defense and security system should be ready for such challenges. There are very important plans of implementing defense reforms in order to bring them in compliance with NATO standards,” PM Kvirikashvili told reporters.

He also said that “a very important memorandum” between Georgia and the United States on deepening the defense and security partnership “is already being introduced” and “the entire government should consolidate” around this issue.

By Dusica Tomovic

Montenegro’s main opposition alliance, the Democratic Front, on Monday called on the prosecution to reveal which political structures and politicians collaborated with Russian nationalists in an alleged plot to overthrow Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic.

Nebojsa Medojevic, a leader of the Font, claimed the state prosecution made up both the terrorists and the alleged coup plot because it needed an alibi “to arrest the leaders of the opposition.

“The opposition has a great responsibility to stay together, not to recognize the results of such irregular elections, to boycott the parliament and organize protests,” Medojevic said.

The Front has also demanded the removal of Special Prosecutor Milivoje Katnic to prevent even greater harm from being done to the legal and political system of Montenegro, claiming he was “hired by Prime Minister Djukanovic” to arrest people without evidence and to made the general election on October 16 irregular.

Katnic on Sunday accused two nationalists from Russia – with the help of allies in Montenegro and Serbia – of having planned a coup on election day to overthrow the government and “kill Prime Minister Djukanovic”.

Russian government was not involved into an alleged attempt to kill Montenegro’s Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, the Kremlin spokesman said on Monday, Reuters reported.

“We, obviously, categorically deny a possibility of official involvement into arranging any illegal actions,” Dmitry Peskov said in a response to a question on the investigation into a plot to kill Djukanovic.

The Chief Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime said the prosecution had evidence that a criminal organization was formed in Russia, Serbia, Montenegro to commit “a terrorist attack”.

The prosecution’s dramatic claims on Sunday angered some independent media outlets and rights group after Katnic refused to answer their questions about the alleged inconsistency of the findings of the prosecution.

Prosecutors first claimed that terrorists were planning to “arrest Djukanovic” and later that there was a plan for his assassination.

The Special Prosecutor has also presented contradictory findings about the weapons that were supposedly found related to the alleged terror attack.

The prosecution said nationalists from Russia allegedly took the view that Prime Minister Djukanovic’s pro-Western regime could not be changed in an election, but only by violence.

“Planning to violently to overthrow the legally elected government, they formed a criminal organization to commit a terrorist act,” Katnic said.

“We don’t have any evidence that the state of Russia is involved in any sense … but we have evidence that two nationalists from Russia were organizers,” he said.

The prosecution also presented the evidence it seized during the investigation in a three-minute video, including the equipment used by special police forces, an iron wire used to block roads, handcuffs, bats, Motorola phones, pepper sprays and more.

However, the opposition said it proved nothing as such equipment could be bought anywhere for a couple of euros.

On general election day, on October 16, a group of 2o Serbian citizens, including a former commander of the Serbian Gendarmerie, Bratislav Dikic, were arrested in Montenegro and accused of planning a coup.
On general election day, on October 16, a group of 2o Serbian citizens, including a former commander of the Serbian Gendarmerie, Bratislav Dikic, were arrested in Montenegro and accused of planning a coup.
– See more at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/montenegro-s-prosecution-says-nationalists-from-russia-behind-coup–11-06-2016#sthash.qklYc180.dpuf

The group planned to break into the Montenegro parliament, kill PM Djukanovic and bring a pro-Russian coalition to power, the prosecution said.

Last week, another Serbian national, Aleksandar Sindjelic, was also arrested in Montenegro on suspicion of organizing terrorist attacks.

Montenegrin lawmakers have convened for the first time since last month’s election with opposition parties boycotting the inaugural session amid tensions over alleged foiled coup attempt orchestrated by Russian nationalists.

The session Monday in the historic capital of Cetinje was attended by 42 lawmakers in the 81-seat parliament, including members of the ruling pro-Western DPS party and allied groups.

It was held a day after a Montenegrin prosecutor said unidentified Russian nationalists were behind the election day plot to assassinate the country’s prime minister and take over power because of his government’s NATO membership bid.

The Kremlin has denied involvement.

Opposition parties have rejected the result of the Oct. 16 vote, claiming it was rigged. The DPS won 36 seats, followed by opposition Democratic Front with 18 seats.

By Romy Chevallier and Elizabeth Aardenburg*

Nearly 200 countries are convening in Marrakesh, Morocco to advance progress made on the Paris Agreement on climate change. Signed by 197 countries last December, the Paris Agreement sets out the global expectations for dramatically reducing carbon emissions. The Agreement entered into force on 4 November 2016, signalling a true global effort to tackle the climate challenge.

The 22nd Conference of the Parties meeting (COP22) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change represents a crucial opportunity for member countries to demonstrate their commitments on climate change. From 7-18 November, COP22 must develop rules and processes for implementing the Paris Agreement to clarify and define operational elements for key issues covered in the agreement – such as transparency and the process for taking stock of progress and ramping up ambition. This is crucial to ensure that the global temperature rise is limited to well below 2 degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial levels), the minimum that climate scientists believe is required to prevent serious climate-related consequences.

The Paris Agreement gains momentum

To date, 100 countries — including China, India, South Africa and the US — have ratified the Paris Agreement. Together, these countries represent 67% of global greenhouse gas emissions. South Africa ratified the Agreement just last week, on 2 November.

When a country ratifies the Agreement, it commits to the decisive actions and policies outlined in its own national climate strategy. This ‘Nationally Determined Contribution’ (NDC) lays the foundation for actions and investment pathways towards clean energy, green infrastructure and climate resilience.

Countries that have joined are legally bound to the Agreement. The Agreement’s provisions include the requirement for all countries to report their climate actions transparently, collectively take stock of progress (starting in 2018), and enhance their climate actions every five years, while also scaling up finance.

Countries that have ratified the Paris Agreement become part of the Agreement’s governing body, called the CMA, with authority over all procedural and operational matters. The first meeting of this body (CMA1) will be held in conjunction with COP22, marking the start of decision-making on how to implement the Paris Agreement and adopt its rules. CMA1 must ensure that Parties have adequate time to embed their NDCs in national legislation and policy – especially many developing countries that have complicated internal processes for ratification, such as Nigeria, Angola and Sudan. One option is to extend CMA1 beyond the meeting in Marrakesh, while setting a clear deadline to conclude it.

Heated discussions at COP22

The likely points of contention at COP22 include how exactly national commitments will be monitored and verified, and the global requirements for reporting on climate action. Agreement on the latter is necessary to develop more accurate ways to measure the cost of complex climate impacts and determine what should be supported under climate finance.

Clarity is also needed on the plan to raise $100 billion in climate finance for developing countries by 2020. Current pledges from developed countries are insufficient. Questions remain around the future of the Adaptation Fund, set to end in 2020. Will the negotiating parties extend the mandate for the Adaptation Fund, or will there be another mechanism established that supports small-scale climate adaptation projects through direct access to funding?

South Africa’s contribution

Last year South Africa submitted its national plan, which included an emissions reductions target of between 398 – 614 MtCO2e (Metric Tonnes of Carbon Dioxide-equivalent) over the period 2025–2030, largely conditional on significant amounts of external assistance.

Despite praise for South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme, questions remain around how South Africa will achieve its climate targets given its continued reliance on coal. Under the country’s Integrated Resource Plan (2010-2030), coal generation will still account for the lion’s share of energy production.

Marrakesh presents an opportunity for South Africa to reiterate its intention to implement the Paris Agreement and do its part to curb climate change. South Africa ratified the Agreement after a process of domestic approval that required a process to ensure public participation and transparency, and a demonstrated commitment to poverty alleviation and green growth. The ratification has legally binding consequences and therefore implications at many levels and across multiple sectors. Even though South Africa has a responsibility to act, based on its historical emissions, it is currently experiencing low economic growth and budgetary restraints. This makes climate change aspirations difficult to prioritise. South Africans are also awaiting the National Treasury’s decision on the draft carbon tax bill.

What now?

Despite the momentum built around the Paris Agreement, international efforts must be coupled with continued progress by countries at home to deliver on their national climate plans. This includes building the capacity for a major increase in ambition, and ramping up support for adaptation finance.

The Moroccan COP President Salaheddine Mezouar must recognise the importance of inclusiveness and accommodate parties, where possible, that are genuinely committed to the process but that are still awaiting the necessary domestic approval. However, he must be careful not to lose the momentum generated by the success of the Paris Agreement.

Also, as an African country there is hope that Morocco will be an advocate for the developing world agenda – pushing a pro-poor, sustainable development agenda.

There is now much work still ahead to turn the transformational promise of the Paris Agreement into reality.

Romy Chevallier and Elizabeth Aardenburg are senior researcher and visiting research assistant respectively at the South African Institute of International Affairs under the Governance and Africa’s Resources programme. This article was first published in the Mail and Guardian and is reprinted with permission.

Source: SAIIA

By Amantha Perera

It is a Tuesday afternoon and only a handful of devotees have flocked to the Meera Grand Mosque in Katankuddi, about 300 kms east of the capital Colombo.

As they prostrate in prayer, the wall in front of them is anything but pious. It is pock-marked with hundreds of holes bored into it when attackers opened fire using automatic weapons on Aug. 3, 1990. Suspected Tamil Tiger separatists attacked the Meera Mosque and another smaller prayer center Husainiya Mosque close by. By the time the attackers fled, 103 people were dead.

The mosque committee and villagers have kept the bullet-riddled wall as a reminder of the regions bloody past. For over 30 years, Katankuddi was in throes of Sri Lanka’s bloody civil strife. A Muslim enclave surrounded by Tamil villages, Katankuddi suffered terribly. Its population felt besieged and was waiting for the first opportunity to flee. As in most of Sri Lanka’s North and East, where the war left over 100,000 dead, millions were displaced and the region suffered billions of dollars in damages and losses.

But the nightmare ended seven years back, when government won its war with the Tamil Tigers. Since then, towns like Katankuddi have adjusted to peace — and with it, to a whole new set of problems.

For starters, not many people want to leave Katankuddi, but hundreds want to somehow find a home there. It was never a village with much open space to spare. Because of its ethnic composition, Katankuddi was always jam-packed. Now it is bursting at the seams.

In a land area of 3.89 sq km, there are 53,000 residents and a population density of 13,664 per sq km, over 20 times the national average of between 300 to 400. According to M.M. Shafi, the secretary of the Katankuddi Urban Council, in the last five years alone, at least 500 families have returned or relocated to Katankuddi.

“People now don’t want to leave,” he said.

Peace has brought with it a huge, stinking garbage problem. Shafi and other public officials have to find ways to dispose of a daily garbage collection as high as 30,000 metric tonnes. They do have a small compost plant, but it is no match for the daily collection.

During wartime, the Urban Council began dumping the garbage in the lagoon. Nowadays, that dump is a massive man-made island extending 75 metres into the lagoon. The landfill has also provided a playground to a nearby school and with its exceptional growth rate, it can easily provide for more.

“The Muslim nature of this town can not be changed, it something that is very important. But we do have a land problem — a big problem,” said Mohamed Zubair, vice president of the Katankuddi Mosque Federation.

It such a massive problem that land value here is equal to some outlying areas near the capital Colombo. “When the war was on, the demand for land was manageable. Now it is going through the roof,” public official Shafi said.

Even in poorer areas of the region, land and resources like water have become scarce. In Welikanda, about 70 kms west of Katankuddi, the villages are much more spread out and the green cover is more conspicuous — but so is the poverty.

Public official Harsha Bandara says that even the Welikanda division is facing a serious shortage of water and agricultural land. In the last six months, it has suffered a major dry spell. By end of October, over 35,000 people were reliant on transported water in the division.

“The problem is that since the war’s end, people are not leaving. They will plant crops throughout the year and look for new land as well. On top of that, the rain patterns have changed, so we have a situation here,” said Bandara, who is the divisional secretary for Welikanda.

For villagers like Wickrama Rajapaksa, the drought means double trouble. “Elephants, they keep coming into villages, because dry earth makes the electric fence faulty and they know that. They also know that there are no firearms in the villages since the end of the war, but that where there are humans, there is food and water.”

He said that thousands of cattle from other parts of the country have been relocated to Welikanda and adjoining areas since the end of the war by large dairy companies.

“During the war, we had less people here. Now there are more people, more cattle and more elephants fighting for the same water and the same land.”

The government is drafting a new constitution that it plans to finalise before the end of the year and put to a public vote in 2017. But Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe recently said that the draft will protect the special place accorded to Buddhism in the existing charter, leading to fears that the Tamil minority will continue to be second-class citizens.

“The political history of modern Sri Lanka is one of missed opportunities by the Tamils and broken promises by the Sinhalese,” Mano Ganesan, Minister of National Co-Existence and Official Languages, told the Indian Express this month.

(EurActiv) — Uganda’s High Court has ordered the closure of a chain of low-cost private schools backed by Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, respectively the founders of Microsoft and Facebook.

Judge Patricia Basaza Wasswa ruled on Friday (4 November) that the 63 Bridge International Academies provided unsanitary learning conditions, used unqualified teachers and were not properly licensed.

The ruling is a blow to Bridge International, which has expanded rapidly since its inception in 2008. The organisation offers cheap, standardised, technology-driven education in countries in Africa and Asia.

Under the Bridge International model, teachers read scripted lessons from a tablet computer that also records student attendance and assessments.

But Bridge International has courted controversy, with Liberian teachers threatening to strike earlier this year over government plans to outsource all primary education to the private US-owned company.

In Uganda, government inspectors said children were being taught in sub-standard facilities and unsanitary conditions.

But James Black, a parent who chose Bridge International for his six children, said he appreciated the low fees of about $28 (£22) a term – one-third of what he used to pay – and disagreed with the decision.

“The government says that the facilities are not clean but when I visit the school I look at the kitchen and latrines and they are fine,” he said.

“Bridge schools are mushrooming and many of the officials in the ministry own private schools, and I think that they are scared that they will lose pupils and their fees.”

Bridge International, which claims to have 12,000 students in Uganda, said it would challenge the high court ruling. “We are extremely disappointed for our pupils and disagree with this ruling,” said liaison officer Matsiko Godwin Muhwezi.

“We plan to appeal, on behalf of the more than 20,000 Ugandans who have decided to send their children to our schools.”

By Jim Miles*

Canada’s Governor-General David Johnston, technically the British Queen’s representative in Canada, has visited Israel/Palestine in order “to road-test a more balanced Canadian approach to the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Part of the trip included a trip to visit with Abbas in the West Bank territories.

Johnston said, “Let me reaffirm Canada’s commitment to work with Israelis, Palestinians and other partners to uphold the prospects of a two-state solution, and achieve a just and lasting peace.”

A CBC online article also indicated, “More than 400,000 Israelis live in settlements in the occupied West Bank, considered illegal under international law by Canada and most of the international community, although Israel disputes this.”

The problems with Canada’s position are several.

In the first instance, while Canada does officially recognize the international legal perspective, its action in spite of its words are fully supportive of Israel: this is especially true domestically where a statement in Parliament was declared “condemning” the BDS movement. Given a bit more push from Israeli sympathisers in Canada and more pressure from the Israeli government, and pretty soon it will be illegal.

Much of Canada’s security/military trade is connected to the Israeli military corporations and security services.  Canada also has the Jewish National Fund registered as a charitable organization for tax purposes, but violating Canadian law that does not allow discrimination for housing.

Another problem is with Abbas himself.  Essentially he is simply Israel’s puppet, dancing to their tune in order to keep the money flowing into his coffers.  He is not a legitimate democratically elected leader as the elections of 2006 were annulled by both the U.S. and Canada in concert with Israeli interests to not have a democratic government to negotiate with – better to have a sidelined terrorist group better to create the necessary fear factor for domestic control.

The biggest problem is simply that the two state solution is simply dead.  Israel will not create an independent state within its own boundaries.  What exists is a de facto series of non-democratic cantons/bantustans controlled by the Israeli military and having no real sovereignty now or in the future.  What exists is one non-democratic state, without a constitution or a Bill of Rights (other than that Israel has signed the UN Charter), continuing to settle on land expropriated/annexed from the Palestinian population.

Israel’s great fear has been and remains the demographic factor – too many Palestinians.  Not the terrorist, not the undemocratic Arab states around them, not even ISIS if reports from the Syria/Goaln Heights border are true – but more simply the Palestinians very existence is the greater fear.  If they could, they would certainly be ethnically cleansed along with the current cultural genocide that is occurring.

Johnston did not visit Gaza for unspecified reasons: afraid to see the destitution caused by the Israeli attacks; not wanting to even acknowledge it is a problem; not wanting to insult his hosts in spite of wanting to be able to criticize Israel?  The CBC noted further, “Trudeau promised a return to Canada’s “traditional approach” to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, adding that his government “won’t hesitate” from criticizing Israel over its settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”  This “traditional approach” has generally recognized Israel’s “proportionate” responses to Gaza attacks but otherwise ignored the conditions that exist there.  As well,

“Israel is a friend, Israel is an ally, Israel is a country that has values and an approach on many, many issues that are very much aligned with Canadians values,” Trudeau said.

“But, at the same time… we won’t hesitate from talking about unhelpful steps like the continued illegal settlements. We will point that out. We will continue to engage in a forthright and open way because that’s what people expect of Canada.”

“There are times we disagree with our friends and we will not hesitate from pointing that out. There are times we agree with our friends and will stand with them,” he said. “And there are times we will disagree with our friends, but we will stand by our friends. We’ve all had that friend we’ve had to do that for.”

In other words not much will change, Canada will continue to use words, but will not do anything or make any actions that changes our relationship.

Canada today, regardless of the change in government, still follows the long standing British tradition of imperial control.  Part of that control in the Middle East is Canada’s support of Israel as a nominal democratic outpost surrounded by hostile and corrupt neighbors.  Another facet is Canada’s willing submission to the policies of the U.S. and its desire for imperial hegemony.  Another aspect is Canada’s domestic policy in relation to its own First Nations people, very similar to what Australia has done to the Aboriginal tribes, and what South Africa attempted with their official apartheid policy.  All read of imperial control for resources and power, without concern for the indigenous populations.

* Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor and columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles’ work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

By Thomas J. Shattuck*

(FPRI) — Over the weekend, the Pentagon announced that Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) Farouq al-Qahtani (also known as Nayf Salam Muhammad Ujaym al Hababi), a senior al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan, had been killed in a drone strike in Kunar, Afghanistan. In a statement, the Pentagon said,

On October 23rd, U.S. forces conducted precision strikes in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, targeting Faruq al-Qatani and Bilal al-Utabi, two of al-Qaeda’s most senior leaders in Afghanistan. We are still assessing the results of the strikes, but their demise would represent a significant blow to the terrorist group’s presence in Afghanistan, which remains committed to facilitating attacks against the United States, our allies, and partners.

What the Pentagon fails to admit—even after years of conducting drone strikes in the region—is that the death of al-Qahtani will have little effect on defeating al Qaeda and winning the “War on Terrorism.” He secured the relocation of some al Qaeda members from Pakistan into Afghanistan, and he planned attacks on the U.S. and the West: “In 2010, [al-Qahtani] participated in two attacks against Coalition Forces convoys, and he led operations in northeast Afghanistan that included attacks against U.S. military bases in 2009.” All signs point to al-Qahtani being an invaluable member of al Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan. Both former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn and former acting director of the CIA Michael Morell characterized him as a great asset for al Qaeda and tough enemy for the U.S. Al-Qahtani worked with the Taliban and was a “true believer” in the cause. Kunar—where the deadly strike occurred—is where U.S. forces have experienced some of the worst fighting. Al-Qahtani forged a strong al Qaeda presence there.

No matter what role al-Qahtani served—alliance forger, fundraiser, attack planner—his death only serves as a symbol similar to Osama bin Laden’s. When bin Laden was killed in 2011, President Barack Obama and his cabinet members pegged al Qaeda as “on the run” and no longer a major threat to the world. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said a month after bin Laden’s death, “I’m convinced that we’re within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda.” Neither declaration proved true. Al Qaeda is resurgent across the Middle East: from regrouping and fundraising in Pakistan to training hundreds in Afghanistan to legitimizing itself in Syria.

Despite these pronouncements of impending victory, U.S. counterterrorism strategy is inherently flawed. The U.S. relies on a tactic known as decapitation, which states that eliminating the leaders of an organization will lead to its destruction. This tactic has been used since the Bush administration, yet consecutive administrations have said the same thing in variety of ways: “killing so-and-so was a great victory for the U.S. and its allies because this death removes a skilled and talented leader from al Qaeda’s ranks.” Killing any leader of al Qaeda—or the leader of any organization or state—will not cause its ultimate collapse. Since the start of the U.S. targeted killing program, approximately 58 leaders have been killed in Pakistan, 22 in Somalia, and 35 in Yemen. Yet, the U.S. incorrectly keeps saying that this particular death is paving the way for the destruction of al Qaeda. Taking away from its message and ideology is what will lead to its demise. Without a strong and meaningful message, potential donors and members will have no reason to help al Qaeda. Killings its leaders (and potentially civilians) will only embolden the organization and create another martyr to the cause.

With the U.S. celebrating another step towards victory against al Qaeda, here is what to expect in the coming weeks or months. In response to the death of al-Qahtani, al Qaeda will retaliate in some form. Al Qaeda has the infrastructure, imbedded bureaucracy, and community support to survive continual decapitation strikes. Due to its increasingly franchised nature, this death will do nothing to damage al Qaeda groups operating outside of Afghanistan.

It has survived 15 years of strikes and in the unlikely event that the next administration changes course away from reliance on drone strikes, al Qaeda will continue to operate across the Middle East and orchestrate attacks. The U.S. should not necessarily abandon the use of signature strikes, but increasing restraint is needed. Killing leaders has not been successful, so come January 2017 when the next administration takes office, one of its first priorities should be to evaluate the failure of drones under the Bush and Obama administrations. Such an evaluation would help to determine if scaling back of drone use is required or if drones should be used in a support role before and after ground engagements. Conducting drone strikes is the safest way to attack an enemy, but it has proven not to be most the effective. This latest strike against Farouq al-Qahtani is no different.

About the author:
*Thomas J. Shattuck is the Assistant Editor and a Research Associate at FPRI. He received his BA in History and English from La Salle University in 2013 and his MA in International Studies from National Chengchi University in 2016.

Source:
This article was published at FPRI

This week Jakarta saw a clash between the Islamic fundamentalists and the government in a protest seeking the removal of the governor, a Chinese Catholic.

It is important to look at the cultural logic of the protest as it exists within the context of regional and global politics. The protest is against an Indonesian-born Chinese governor said to have uttered blasphemy re: the falsehood of Surah Al Maidah, said to be used against him to legitimize the ouster. The governor has clarified that he was wrongly quoted and that clarification was also supported by the country’s head of religious affairs. Still, the radical Islamists did not want to accept the explanation. The sentiment is, and perhaps has always been this: non-Muslims should not be allowed to govern Muslims. This is a similar stand in Malaysia, taken by the Malaysian Islamic party (PAS/Partai Islam SeMalaya) and perhaps the sentiment of those in other majority-Muslim countries. Here is the cultural logic, framed as a global issue:

How does this logic translate into the complexity of Islamism in Southeast Asia?

The continuing rise of Islamic Fundamentalism ala ISIS in Southeast Asia? This is what the region will be seeing as a complex and continuing interplay of ideologies. Indonesia will be growing as an area of political-contestation calling for an Islamic State, perhaps making alliances with similar forces in Malaysia (PAS), radical Islam in Mindanao, and Southern Thailand.

How will Australia react being seen as pro-America and anti-Muslim?

How will Singapore brace itself — being predominantly Chinese and viewed as pro-Israel?

How will Malaysia play the game of globalization and its consequences, given Prime Minister Najib’s new alliance with Communist China — a world power that has always been out to crush Islamic fundamentalism?

The Islamists want the Catholic Chinese “Ahok” out. It is an age-old racial clash between the “non-syncretist” Indonesian/Javanese-Muslims and the Christian Chinese. It is a similar situation in Malaysia; one that lead to the bloody racial riots on May 13, 1969 that led to the crafting of political-economic policies consolidation the power of the Malay-Muslims. How will this scenario, sign, symbol, significance of the Jakarta protest play in race-religious relations in Malaysia given the emerging interest of the Najib regime in making Malaysia wide open to Communist Chinese.

This is might be century of the “Asian Pivot’ as President Obama might say of the importance of the regions of East Asia and Southeast Asia — of the Spratly Islands and the need for American bases there to make the world “safe for American democracy”. But there is a sense of a vacuum developing, Of the USA losing its appeal and later military and of course now economic influence to China. Yes, China, not only is rising but hegemonizing and flooding the region with cheap goods the world doesn’t need. But a filling in of a power — political-economic and gradually military — nonetheless. These are developments that might contribute the failure of the America global-economic-corporate driven agenda called The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – that “NAFTA on Steroids Grand Obama Plan – whose objective is to stop China from economically controlling the region, and the world as well.

That’s the political-economic and strategic aspect of the context of the rise of counter-hegemonic forces: the playing with anti-authority of the American hegemony. The Jakarta riot and the fire that came with it is another indicator of major global challenge in the region: counter-hegemony of Westernism inspired by the growth of an American creation called ISIS. That Frankenstein of the post-modern realpolitikal world-gangland-warfare moving from one theatre to another: From Middle East to Asia and into the Southeast Asian region of the Malay world called aesthetically, the Nusantara.

There will be a contest though: the rushing in of a more powerful force ala’ Islamic State (wherever the ‘seat of global government’ is.) Indonesia has the largest population of Muslims in the world. Next, China. Muslim, though vary in the degree of “piousness” and political identity, share a similar view” the Ummah is larger than the nationality, and the Islamic State is larger than the nation state, and most importantly Islamic Law is more supreme than the state Constitution. Death for Islam is better than being alive for Secularism, The Afterlife is better than this World.

The Muslim population in Southeast Asia is now 250 million. Think of how radicalization will impact regional politics. In a few decades, when dynamics continue to shift, and when Islamism will spread like wildfire, albeit certain issues are of national-character, and when the elusive yet globalizing ISIS fight using newer strategies targeting Southeast Asia, what will happen? With China and Russia — twin Marxist-Maoist-Leninist global millenaristic-suparnationalistic movements-albeit atheistic — step into the Islamically radicalized Southeast Asia-Nusantara region to stop the rise of Islam? Will Russia do a Chechnya? Will China do a Uighur” Will both, China and Russia do a Syria on the Islamic State in Asia? Will the new USA perhaps under a hawkish Hillary do a World War III?

Complex. Perplexing. The Butterfly Effect is here again. Keep looking at flapping wings and the ripples produced. Like motifs on a Persian carpet and like the nature of god, there is no beginning there is no end to the tsunami created by that lone butterfly.

What do you political analysts out there think?

Not all of the comments made by President Barack Obama in his interview with Bill Maher were aired on Maher’s Nov. 4 HBO show. Fortunately, the ones that were cut are available on You Tube. Here are some statements made by Obama that were not aired:

“I think we should foster a culture in which people’s private religious beliefs, including atheists and agnostics, are respected and that’s the kind of culture that I think allows all of us to believe in what we want. That’s freedom of conscience. It’s what the Constitution guarantees and where we get into problems typically is when our personal religious faith or the community of faith that we participate in tips the fundamentalist extremism in which it’s not enough for us to believe what we believe but we start feeling obligated to hit you over the head because you don’t believe the same thing or to treat you as somebody who’s less than I am.”

This is remarkable for several reasons. The man Obama is talking to is a raging anti-Catholic bigot; he has relentlessly used his show to portray all priests as predators. Maher obviously does not respect people of faith, especially Catholics, yet Obama speaks to him as if he were a Boy Scout. This demonstrates how utterly vacuous his comments are.

Obama’s embrace of conscience rights is also phony. In 2009, he told the graduating class at the University of Notre Dame that when considering healthcare policies, we need to “honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause.” If he had made good on his pledge, the Little Sisters of the Poor wouldn’t have been forced to sue him.

When Obama talks about “fundamentalist extremism,” he only notes religious extremists (even then he is careful when speaking about radical Islamists), never acknowledging the role that secular fundamentalists have played. Who does he think was responsible for the totalitarian carnage of the 20th century? Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were not animated by religious extremism—they committed genocide in the name of atheism.

The biggest mistake Obama made was giving legitimacy to a hater. That he did so speaks volumes about his alleged sensitivity to bashing people of faith.

Last week the Myanmar Police Force announced a plan to recruit and arm ethnic Rakhine and other non-Muslim civilians in restive Maungdaw Township, a predominantly Muslim township in Buddhist-majority Rakhine State. The township has recently witnessed widespread abuse of human rights against the minority Rohingya and other Muslims by the police and military forces. Weeks earlier, military moved into the territory to flush out the attackers – reportedly Rohingyas – who had raided 3 police posts.

Rakhine State Police Chief Colonel Sein Lwin told Reuters that the new “regional police” would include non-Muslim residents who would not otherwise meet educational or physical requirements to join the Myanmar Police Force, adding that recruits would serve in their own villages. More than 100 recruits between the ages of 18 and 35 are to receive a 16-week “accelerated” training program, beginning in the state capital of Sittwe on November 7. The police intend to provide the recruits with weapons and “other equipment” as well as compensation.

It is worth noting here that the creation of such a force violates international law, as articulated by the United Nations Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and the U.N. Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials. According to the Principles, “internal political instability or any other public emergency may not be invoked to justify any departure from these basic principles.”

“Arming civilians based on their ethnic and religious identity in this racially-charged context is profoundly irresponsible and could turn deadly,” said Matthew Smith of Fortify Rights. “We fully expect the government to put a stop to this plan and to immediately provide aid groups with free and unfettered access to all in need. The best way to prevent violent extremism is to promote and protect human rights, not equip people to potentially commit abuses.”

Fortify Rights has called on the Government of Myanmar to immediately scrap the plan.

Nor should we fail to see a sinister link. Truly, Rakhine police chief’s fascist plan is like a page taken out of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Our readers may recall that Schutzstaffel (SS, literally “Protection Squadron”) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP; Nazi Party) in Nazi Germany. Under Heinrich Himmler (1929–45), SS grew from a small paramilitary formation to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the regime’s collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of surveillance and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe. [Note: Sturmabteilung (or SA, literally Storm Detachment), which functioned as the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), was a precursor to the SS. The SA played a significant role in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Their primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties, especially the Red Front Fighters League (Rotfrontkämpferbund) of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and intimidating Slavic and Romani citizens, unionists, and Jews – for instance, during the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. The SA have been known in contemporary times as “Brown Shirts” (Braunhemden) from the color of their uniform shirts, similar to Benito Mussolini’s Black Shirts.]

The Rakhine Buddhists have long been fighting, unsuccessfully, for liberating Arakan (Rakhine) state from the clutches of the Myanmar government. They have their own militias fighting government forces. So, one cannot but question the real intent behind the creation of another SS-type para-military fascist force under the pretext of protecting the Rakhine lives.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) is equally concerned about the development. According to the ICJ, if a new security authority is contemplated, it must be a professional police force, whose members are recruited and trained in accordance with principles of non-discrimination and respect for human rights. “In a country where the regular police and military are notorious for grave human rights violations,” said Sam Zarifi, ICJ’s Asia Director, “establishing an armed, untrained, unaccountable force drawn from only one community in the midst of serious ethnic tensions and violence is a recipe for disaster.”

Since 2012, we have already witnessed a series of genocidal pogroms directed against the Rohingya and other Muslims, who are ethnically, racially and religiously different, by the Rakhine and other Buddhist fascists that came from all walks of life, including the government security forces and the Buddhist monks. Some 150,000 Rohingyas continue to live in IDP concentration camps as a result of such ethnic cleansing drives against them.

The border security force NaSaKa in Arakan terrorized the Rohingya population for many years by following the footsteps of the SA before it was unilaterally disbanded in 2013 by Myanmar President Thein Sein. Everyone welcomed the move hoping that Myanmar would not revisit its troubled fascist past. Obviously, in Suu Kyi’s Myanmar such lessons from the past have lost their meanings.

As a result of the latest ethnic cleansing drives by the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) some 15,000 Rohingya men, women, and children and a number of aid workers remain displaced and isolated in Maungdaw Township.

It is important to highlight the fact that outside the propaganda fed from the government and a new Rohingya group (Faith Movement) that claimed to strive for the rights of all the minorities in Myanmar, including the Rohingya, we don’t know how serious was the threat posed by this group. What we know for fact is that the apartheid government in Myanmar has long been trying to bring about a ‘final solution’ to the Rohingya problem one way or another. However, unlike the other minorities, insurrecting against the central government, the worst persecuted Rohingyas have long been a very peaceful, unarmed civilian population. Thus, a highly sinister ploy had to be devised by the government.

Unless the Rohingya group could be presented as a real threat – a ‘thorn’ – with hundreds of militant recruits, with affiliations of – as you guessed it – ‘known terrorist’ outfits like the ISIS (Daesh), such an evil ploy to carry out the ‘final solution’ (i.e., elimination) against their entire community was deemed highly risky or damaging to Myanmar’s international image, esp. with a new civilian government whose de facto leader is a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Thus, from the very beginning without any evidence the small local band of alleged attackers who were armed with knives were presented as a large group of 400 Jihadists who had planned launching attacks on six locations simultaneously. It was all part of a very sinister plan to use the alleged raid by the Rohingya militants as an excuse to finish the unfinished eliminationist task. The war crimes perpetrated by the Tatmadaw since October 9 once again underscore that criminal blueprint.

It was no accident that the government rhetoric surrounding the situation in Rakhine State was increasingly alarming. On October 31, Rakhine State Member of Parliament Aung Win declared, “All Bengali villages are like military strongholds.” On November 1, state-run media appeared to refer to Rohingya as a “thorn” that “has to be removed as it pierces,” and on November 3, state-run media alleged that international media “intentionally fabricated” allegations of human rights violations “in collusion with terrorist groups.”

Fortify Rights received eyewitness reports of extrajudicial killings of unarmed Rohingya men in Maungdaw Township by Myanmar Army soldiers on October 10. Numerous reports subsequently alleged that Myanmar Army soldiers and security forces raped women and girls, killed unarmed civilians, and carried out arbitrary arrests and detentions. Several Rohingya Muslim villages were razed.

On October 24, five U.N. Special Rapporteurs issued a joint statement urging the Government of Myanmar to “address the growing reports of human rights violations in northern Rakhine State.”

The Office of the President of Myanmar repeatedly denied all allegations of abuses or wrongdoing, dismissing allegations as false propaganda. It has retained an old guard – Zaw Htay – who acts as Goebbels serving the President. As he has always done in the past, e.g., with Thein Sein government, he rejected the allegations of rape, saying, “There’s no logical way of committing rape in the middle of a big village of 800 homes, where insurgents are hiding.”

One wonders if there is no truth to such allegations, why would Myanmar authorities block journalists and human rights monitors from accessing areas of northern Rakhine State.

What’s really happening inside Suu Kyi’s Myanmar cannot be hidden under Zaw Htay’s filthy rug. The images of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims are written all over it. Anyone doubting or contesting the Goebbels-type narratives fed by the government is not welcome in this den of hatred and intolerance called Myanmar. As such, on November 3, the Myanmar Times, the country’s oldest English-language daily, fired journalist Fiona MacGregor for writing a widely read article published by the newspaper on October 27, which included allegations that Myanmar Army soldiers raped dozens of Rohingya women in a single village in Maungdaw Township on October 19. Fiona, by the way, was not alone in stating that in Suu Kyi’s Myanmar today her military was committing heinous crimes against the unarmed Rohingyas. For instance, Reuters also reported on the rape allegations, interviewing eight women who said they were raped by troops.

“It’s extremely concerning and unacceptable that representatives of the democratically elected government would use social media and bullying tactics to suppress stories about important issues like gender-based violence in conflict,” said MacGregor.

According to an internal memo seen by AFP, Myanmar Times management ordered editors “not to analyze, comment, report or have opinion pieces on the following subjects until further notice: Rakhine State; Rohingya; and military actions in Rakhine state.”

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Asia, said the case marked “a new low” for the government. “Rather than trying to shut down reports that it doesn’t like, the government should respect press freedom and permit journalists to do their jobs by investigating what is really happening on the ground,” said Robertson.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said reporters trying to cover the unrest in Rakhine faced obstruction and harassment. Suu Kyi’s government should “assert civilian control over its security forces”, Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative, said in a statement. “The best way to prove or disprove allegations of rights abuses is to allow independent media to probe the accusations.”

Authorities have not allowed foreign journalists to visit the area and the international media was not invited to travel with senior diplomats who visited this week, even as the state media obtained full access.
Still, the Myanmar government could not hide its crimes against the Rohingyas. Renata Lok-Dessallien, the U.N.’s resident and humanitarian coordinator and the United Nations Development Programme’s resident representative in Myanmar, said during a press conference in Rakhine’s capital Sittwe, “We have urged that the government pull together an independent, credible investigation team quickly and send the team into the area to address these allegations.” She and several foreign ambassadors to Myanmar conducted a two-day visit to Maungdaw to survey the situation on the ground and talk to residents and security forces. Many of those Rohingyas interviewed have later been questioned by the authorities and detained for speaking to the foreign delegates.

“We all know that underneath this incident are many items of concern and it’s now more important than ever for the government to promote lasting solutions to the interlocking challenges that face Rakhine state at this moment,” Lok-Dessallien said. “So, we’ve urged that these root causes and underlying issues be addressed as soon as possible.”

Obviously, Myanmar government is trying to stonewall the press, as it has also tried to avoid launching an independent probe, hoping that its latest pogrom will be forgotten. It should know that as much as the crimes of the SS – that was most responsible for the genocidal killing of millions of Jews in the Holocaust – were neither nor forgiven, as they were tried for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II (1939–45) the world community will neither forget nor forgive the perpetrators of the genocidal crimes against the Rohingyas of Myanmar.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has claimed that his government has brought back Rs. One lakh crore of black money . It is reported that this, Rs. 36000 cr. was by preventing the siphoning of funds by the intermediaries, by the introduction of direct benefit transfer scheme. The other Rs. 65000 cr. of black money was by launching tax amnesty scheme and other measures.

The Prime Minister has further said in his inimitable style that this has been done “without launching surgical strikes”.

While the Prime Minister makes such claims, the common man still feels that there is no visible and effective fight against corruption in the country, as there is no visible reduction in the level of corruption at various levels in the government machinery , amidst the business houses and even educational institutions and hospitals.

Mr. Modi’s promise on corruption

Mr. Modi was voted to power as Prime Minister of India largely on the expectation that he would fulfill his promise to root out corruption in the country at all levels within a stipulated period. The fact is that this has not been done it yet ,though he is making efforts in variety of ways. It does not look that corruption in India would be rooted any time sooner.

One cannot see any fear of law generated amongst the government employees and business houses and even among educational institutions and hospitals about indulging in corruption and tax evasion.

While some raids take place in the premises of the suspected corrupt persons and some arrests are made , they are very very few and far between compared to the level of corruption prevailing in the country. Similar raids and arrests were taking place even during the years before Mr. Modi took over as Prime Minister.

While we hear “sensational news” about the raids being carried out and seizure of currency, gold and documents , very little is heard after such raids. Nobody see most of such persons on whose premises raids have been made, suffering or going to prison. Some do but it is only for brief period and the whole exercise appear to be cosmetic.

Corruption in government machinery

It is true that incidents of corruption at the top level of the Central government has come down. But, this is not so in the case of middle and lower level of administration in the central government. The corruption in the states continues to remain very high and the BJP ruled states are no exception. While Mr. Modi led central government cannot be held responsible for the corruption in the state administration, the fact is that one rarely hears the Prime Minister criticizing the state governments for the high level of corruption prevailing in the states or asking them to improve matters.

There are massive corruption that are continued to be reported in the media and discussed by common men.. Most of the corruption incident stem from the acts of politicians belonging to various political parties including Mr. Modi’s party. Every political party including Mr. Modi’s party collect huge sum of money from business houses and various other sources by threat or coercion or showing favouritism. Mr. Modi has not so far attacked this basic route and cause for the corruption. This is becoming increasingly conspicuous.

Vijay Mallya episode

When Vijay Mallya ,who is facing tax evasion charges and allegations of corrupt dealings, flew away from India to avoid facing the court proceedings, the question that was raised by everyone was as to why Modi government allowed him to fly away.

Now, with scant regard for Indian judiciary and rule of law, Vijay Mallya is refusing to return back to India to face the court proceedings. Modi government appears to feel helpless in dealing with this man. This single episode has created considerable doubt about Modi government’s commitment to put down corruption in the country and punish those indulging in corrupt dealings.

Little time to lose

As Modi government is in the second half of the five year term, it has little time to lose and has to convincingly prove to the country men that it’s commitment to root out corruption is real. It should ensure that the fear of law would be effectively driven into the mind of the corrupt politicians , bureaucrats, government servants, business houses and others.

This is the biggest challenge facing Mr. Narendra Modi. It remains to be seen as to whether he can successfully fulfill his promise to root out corruption in the second half of his term, which he was not able to do in the first half.

By Afifeh Abedi*

After a ceasefire deal for Syria, reached by the United States and Russia, ground to failure in the heat of the United States’ presidential election, it seems that the European Union (EU) is bent on getting more seriously involved in the Syria crisis. As a result, leaders of such European countries like France, Britain, and Germany have been leveling sharp verbal attacks against Russia using recent developments in the Syrian city of Aleppo as excuse, and have threatened Moscow with increasing sanctions on ground of what is going on in Syria.

Even the October 19 meeting of the Normandy Group in Berlin, which was expected to focus on the crisis in Ukraine, practically turned into a trilateral meeting among Germany, France and Russia with the main topic being the situation in Syria. After that, the heads of the European states took part in a summit on Syria in Brussels and also discussed how to deal with Russia with regard to its actions in Syria. In fact, actions taken and statements made by the European officials clearly show that they are bent on playing a more serious part in Syria, and given Russia’s approach to Europe, it seems that this issue is going to be used as a new leverage in addition to already existing leverages in order to mount pressure on Russia in Syria.

Europe’s approach to the issue of Syria

The rising tide of immigration from the Middle East to Europe and the role played by the Syrian crisis in this regard have generally highlighted the issue of Syria for the European Union. However, in their recent positions, most emphasis has been put by the European officials on the issue of the Aleppo. Aleppo was also the main axis of a resolution drafted by France and submitted to the United Nations Security Council in early October, which was of course vetoed by Russia. In the meantime, the name of Aleppo has been the keyword frequently used by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French President Francois Hollande in their sharp rhetoric against Russia. Aleppo was also the main topic of discussion in the trilateral meeting among Russia, France and Germany in Berlin.

One day after the meeting in Berlin and in a summit session of the EU heads of state, the issue of Aleppo was highlighted even more. Europe’s demands of Russia have been also focused on Aleppo and do not take into account the totality of the Syrian crisis. In fact, the European Union has been putting a meaningful focus on the settlement of the conflict in Aleppo.

The EU’s demands from Russia include the following points, which are in line with the Security Council resolution drafted by France:

• Ending military flights over Aleppo
• Establishment of immediate ceasefire, and
• Ending the government forces’ siege on the Syrian opposition forces and paving the way for the provision of humanitarian aid to them.

If must, of course, be noted that in parallel with these developments, news services reported that the British military had restarted training and arming the Syrian opposition. It seems that this strategy can be also chosen as an option by other European countries, including Germany and France.

Russia’s position

Up to the present time, and while taking into account all governmental and nongovernmental actors involved in the Syria crisis, Russia considered the United States as its main side in this conflict. Therefore, and based on logical grounds, there were two main reasons according to which Moscow was not willing for the European countries to get involved in this issue, and especially did not want them to take sides with the United States. The first reason was that Russia is not willing for the Syrian crisis to turn into another reason for tension in Russia’s relations with Europe on top of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. The second reason is that at the end of the day, Moscow believes that the case of Syria is an issue between Russia and the United States.

But to the same extent that the United States is willing to pit Europe against Russia in the case of Syria, Russia is willing to use Europe’s capacity for mediation between Moscow and Washington. Therefore, at a juncture when tensions have been escalating between the United States and Russia over the issue of Syria, Moscow is trying to prevent Europe’s capacity from turning into a threat.

As a result, following sharp remarks made by Francois Hollande, the president of France, and subsequent cancellation of a visit to Paris by Russian President Vladimir Putin, he made a trip to Germany to take part in the Berlin meeting on Ukraine despite the fact that the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had initially refrained from taking part in that meeting. This measure by Putin was an important sign that Russia was not willing to close the door to dialogue with the European Union. This was followed by further signs of Russia’s attention to Europe’s warnings and threats. The halt on Russia’s air strikes on Aleppo from the second half of October cannot be unrelated to Europe’s warnings.

In the meantime, Russia’s permanent representative to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, has been emphasizing that continued dialogue is going on between Moscow and Brussels in order to shed more light on Russia’s positions with regard to Syria. As a result, he added, after Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, pays a visit to the EU on October 16, the next round of talks between the two sides will be held in Moscow in November.

The noteworthy point is that holding a trilateral meeting among Iran, Russia and Syria in Moscow in parallel to the aforesaid developments shows that while discussing a possible solution with the European side, Russia is still trying to have the trust of Syrian and Iranian sides with regard to its pioneering role in negotiations with the West over the crisis in Syria.

General assessment

Developments that have taken place in the relations between Russia and the European Union over the issue of Syria can lead us to a number of conclusions:

• The higher emphasis put by the European countries on the need to resolve the Aleppo crisis must be considered as a sign of the fact that Europe is playing a complementary role to the United States in the case of Syria and perhaps their higher emphasis on the issue of Aleppo is meant to prevent full control of the Syrian army over this city.
• General remarks and statements made by Russians show that they have opened the door to dialogue with the European side on Syria and this is another evidence attesting to the conclusion that Russians are, in fact, trying to find a political solution for the settlement of the Syria crisis.
• Europe, however, has turned into a new pressure tool against Russia in the case of Syria and this issue can further make conditions more difficult for Moscow. However, just in the same way that pressures exerted by the United States caused Russians to finally get closer to the Syrian government, exerting more pressure by Europe on Russia will lead to no different result and can only increase Moscow’s capacity to accept more risks.

* Afifeh Abedi
Researcher of Eurasia Studies at The Center for Strategic Research (CSR), Tehran

Americans are voting today the 8 November to decide who will be the country’s next president to lead the nation to a peaceful path without wars and bloodbaths. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have presented a crude irony to the poll that American people have been provided with a choice between not only the two most unpopular candidates, but also the two most reactionary candidates in modern history.

The 2016 presidential poll to elect the most suited person to guide the nation and world at large, is taking place as Americans, fed up with terror wars and erratic climatic disorders, have begun to think about a possible political systemic change rather than regime change and a new world order to move away from militarism, unilateralism, unipolarity and exploitation towards real democracy and collective work for freedom and happiness – unheard of in any capitalist nation.

At the outset, neither Trump nor Hillary is capable of making a new reformed and enlightened America and they would only continue with Bush-Obama policies of invasions and militarism. In that sense Americans are unlucky lot.

The final 2016 presidential debate took place on October 19 night, and expectations were not high either. Apparently, both leaders debated only those issues that seemed agreed upon in advance. That has been the practice of US politics cutting across the two-party system. The presidential candidates, therefore, have not been asked questions on some of the critical issues facing the nation that is fighting illegal wars abroad in Middle East on fake pretexts.

Hillary Clinton has long been the frontrunner in this contest, but there have been times where she has looked far from comfortable. The most recent examples came back-to-back in early September. First, she made headlines by labeling half of Donald Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorable”, allowing her rival to conclude it was evidence of her disdain for “hardworking people”. Mrs. Clinton had been suffering from pneumonia fuelling further rumours about her health – rumours that some of her critics have been pushing for months. The news about her “sudden illness” helps Hillary in poll rating. Her poll numbers took a noticeable hit in the days that followed, but they appeared to recover towards the end of September.

Most US leaders think Hillary can bring more resources to the nation than Trump by terror wars. That is not the strength but weakness.

Presidential debates are mere gimmicks?

Debates in US presidential poll campaign are just a formality and what the candidates say would not have any relevance for the presidency as the presidents are controlled by capitalist-imperialist lobbyists, war monger intelligence-Pentagon, and mainly regulated for pro-Israel policies by the Jewish members of Neocons.

Particularly the final presidential debate, meant to make the presidential candidates to come to terms with the rising demands on USA, did not discuss anything about some of the most pressing concerns Americans as well as the world face, like climate change, terror wars as permanent war feature, poverty and corruption and campaign finance.

The final debate moderated by Fox News’ Chris Wallace, faced questions on debt and entitlements, immigration, the economy, the Supreme Court, foreign hot spots and the candidates’ genuinity and fitness to be president. These topics have already been widely covered in previous debates. According to an analysis of the first two presidential debates and the vice presidential debate, there has been a “significant emphasis on Russia, terrorism and taxes.” So far, those topics have received a whopping 409 mentions combined, with 77 of those dedicated to Trump’s own taxes.

The presidential candidates, if they sincere about future of Americans and humanity, should have concentrated on the following issues:

1. How to end terror wars, essentially on Islam?
2. How to recast a normal foreign policy for promoting world peace and genuine democracy?
3. How to put an end to media Islamophobia trends?
4. How to solve the dangerous climate change?
5. How to attack poverty and save the poor and under privileged? Much more, of course!

Climate change, poverty and campaign finance reform are just three issues the mainstream media has refused to raise questions about in the debates. Also, both the candidates and media are silent on issues like China, gun control, education, student debt, voting rights, drugs, abortion, and reproductive health, NSA/privacy/surveillance, Native Americans.

Global warming directly threatens economy and capitalism. According to a World Economic Forum survey of global experts in 2016 global warming tops the list of potential threats to the global economy. But this issue has been mentioned three times in the debates (by Hillary Clinton, in passing. According to Pew Research the people are concerned about climate change, with 73 percent of all registered US voters saying they care either “a great deal” or “some” about the issue. Fifty-two percent of registered voters say the environment is “very important” to their voting decision in 2016.

Donald Trump is a climate denier and has said on his medium of choice that global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive. Trump has pledged to undo the Obama’s climate initiatives, including the Paris climate agreement and the Clean Power Plan, which would require power plants to clean up their emissions. Trump has also vowed to expand fossil-fuel exploration. Clinton just has a detailed plan for combating climate change, with the promise of “taking on the threat of climate change and making America the world’s clean energy superpower.” But ways and means are not discussed by her. While she has gained a number of endorsements from leading climate groups, her acceptance of natural gas as a so-called bridge fuel disturbs some, including 350.org, which says it’s “just a fast lane to more climate destruction.”

Speaking for the first time in his entire campaign with some seriousness, Trump touched a number of ultra-right talking points calling for the appointment of Supreme Court justices, for a wall along the US-Mexico border and to deport millions of undocumented workers, and pointing out, correctly, that President Obama has deported many millions already. Trump appealed to the economic grievances of working people, declaring that expelling immigrant workers, renegotiating trade agreements to bar foreign imports and slashing taxes on the wealthy and the corporations would generate an unprecedented economic boom, with annual GDP growth of six or seven percent. He declared that “millions of people are registered to vote that should not be allowed to vote,” then added that Clinton herself “should never have been allowed to run for president because of what she did with emails and so many other things.”

For the first time in any of the debates, the question of a US-Russian conflict in Syria was broached when Wallace asked Clinton directly about her support for a no-fly zone over Aleppo and other contested Syrian cities. A no-fly zone meant war with Syria and Russia, and if a Russian plane violates the no-fly zone, does President Clinton shoot it down? Clinton simply ducked the question, claiming that the no-fly zone, an act of war against Syria and its allies, Russia and Iran, would be the subject of “negotiation.”

Treacherous politics of poverty

It is not just the third world but even the developed nations have poverty, both known and covert. Despite over 45 million Americans currently living in poverty, not a single question has been asked about that either, and the issue has barely been mentioned. In fact, Democrats had no questions on poverty in any of their primary debates. That is because Democrats have taken, along with terror wars, the burden of poverty as well prompted by Republicans as well as their own. Child poverty rates in the United States, at 21.6 percent, are nearly double the OECD average of 12.4 percent. Before running for president, Jewish leader Bernie Sanders, who still claims to be a socialist, called poverty one of the “great moral and economic issues” that Americans face. The Census revealed that the number of Americans living in poverty had increased to over 46 million, the highest number ever. “Poverty in America today leads not only to anxiety, unhappiness, discomfort and a lack of material goods. It leads to death,” Sanders said.

The latest hacked Clinton emails show that in the 2016 primary Clinton’s aides were wary of ideas that could alienate centrist and conservative voters who are skeptical of welfare. Despite the fact that nearly 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 60 will someday themselves experience the official poverty line.

People would love to see the presidential candidates discuss their plans for combating poverty. Trump talks about poverty, about creating more jobs, which he aims to achieve by cutting taxes and government regulations and renegotiating trade deals to bring more jobs back to America. He’s also called for a new tax plan to help defray child care costs for working parents. Clinton has detailed plans to fight poverty on her website, including: expanding the tax credit for children; providing universal preschool for 4-year-olds; subsidizing child care; increasing the minimum wage to $12 an hour; and investing tens of billions of dollars in poor communities, including for housing and job training. To pay for her proposals, she would increase taxes on the wealthy, but she won’t do it. .

Campaign finance and fundraising

USA promotes lobbyists to make money from foreign nations and companies.’ This is the root cause of rampant corruption and nepotism in America. Since the common folk and the poor certainly don’t make large campaign contributions, they don’t have powerful lobbyists in Congress and Senate representing their interests. Everything is planned and executed in USA for the rich and those who “generously” give money to the candidates during the immoral fund raising. Eighty-four percent of Americans think money has too much influence in their political campaigns. But moderators have asked not one question about it, and there’s only been one mention so far in the debates.

Therefore, USA clearly cannot overcome the phenomenon of rampant corruption in all domains.Clinton and Trump have raised a jaw-dropping $911 million and $423 million respectively, including money from super PACs. In state and local races across the country, donors have poured more than $1 billion so far this year
Trump said he supports campaign finance reform that would keep registered foreign lobbyists from raising money in US elections. The one campaign finance mention in the debates Hillary Clinton said, perhaps without any serious intent that she wants to “see the Supreme Court reverse Citizens United and get dark, unaccountable money out of our politics.” The Hacked emails prove coordination between Clinton Campaign and Super PACs” shows consistent, repeated efforts by the Clinton campaign to collaborate with Super PACs on strategy, research, attacks on political adversaries and fundraising.” That’s against the rules of the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision. The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center announced earlier this month that it had filed two sets of complaints with the Federal Election Commission, charging that both the Trump and Clinton campaigns have improperly coordinated with super PACs.

US/NATO unilateralism vs. Multilateralism

Unilateralism, represented by USA is challenged by multilateralism of Russia, backed by China and a few others has landed Americans in perpetual troubles. Americans are unhappy. The 2016 presidential election has left a strong impression of the USA as a fractured, gloomy nation. According to the latest American Values Survey, nearly two-thirds of Americans say neither major party represents them, while 74 percent are pessimistic about the country’s direction – up from 57 percent just four years ago. Nearly three-fourths say the country is either stagnating or falling behind, according to a Time magazine poll. The American-led Western order of governance and economics is on the wane. Even among young adults under 30, more than half are fearful for the future. This mood of pessimism requires that the winners of the election listen to the views of people who think differently from them.

Within Western so-called democracies – from Britain to the US itself – people are disillusioned with the their systems that promotes only capitalism and colonialism, care only for the rich and corporate interests, resulting in reactionary populist movements are pushing back against the rotten rules and systems that have stayed for decades. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is feeling betrayal by USA. In “autocratic” countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, leaders feeling badgered by the USA over human rights are turning to China and Russia, too. When the Philippines’ tough-guy President Rodrigo Duterte announced in Beijing last week that “America has lost” and that he was “separating” from the USA to align with a rising China, it could only send a clear message to the world about the current weak status of superpower. Yet, US leaders cannot leave out Israel – the major cause of its decline.

Americans are in a period of struggle between democratic governance and a more authoritarian vision of rule both nationally and internationally. People feel that their culture and identity are under threat; they sense that governing systems are no longer working, and they want some strong response to that. As America has become a less-dominant presence in the world, the countries that have risen to play a larger role are broadly “democratic” and adhering to free-market norms and multilateralism – from Turkey to Japan to India, South Africa, and Australia. Moreover, China and Russia have been seeking to expand their influence for years as America has been forced to withdraw somewhat from its leading role. But the “authoritarian market state” has not drawn many converts.

The world order launched following the end of a disastrous World War Two, making USA the richest nation on earth and the current US picture, can be seen as the birth pangs of a new world order – less Western-centric and still retaining the old order’s foundation of democracy and liberal economics. Organized movements like the tea party or Black Lives Matter don’t fade away.

Post WW-II world has been fully controlled and regulated by the USA. Now the Western-built system of international order is no longer serving the world’s needs. The USA and Europe are less willing to intervene when other parts of the world are unable to respond effectively to conflicts and other global challenges. That has meant a decline in Western influence. Indeed, 500 years of the West ordering the world is at an end, and that sounds terrible. And, broadly speaking, the emerging multipolar global order is largely based on the principles that the West espoused. And, a decline of dependence on the part of independent nations!

Americans have seen these alternative means of civic engagement show up on the margins of politics. New communities have formed, often on the internet, around local food, alternative energy, home-schooling, or work sharing. Americans don’t simply stew in political resentment. They create new paths, outside official democracy, to find people of similar interests and values. The Digital Age has accelerated this trend to redefine what is public. It can also mean understanding how Americans are turning their disappointment with politics into new forms of civic activity. If they are not finding the social goods they seek through elections, they must be looking for them elsewhere.

These alternative civic bonds do not merely fill the gaps of government services. They can create whole new communities, cutting across the traditional political divisions. Yes, Americans “must always believe that they can write their own destiny.” These are based on hope, not gloom. The 2016 election winners does indeed have work to do in listening to the currents of American society that are moving ahead on their own. A good leader tries to run ahead of the people in the direction they are going. This shift is happening as the global systems established by the West face unusual headwinds.

Frustrated populations are increasingly tempted by strong alternatives to the status quo, the diplomat says. Internationally, a breakdown of the long-reigning Western order is prompting the Russians and Chinese to promote multilateralism- a new version of international relations on their side. But China and Russia have made little headway. Already at the time of the international financial crisis, the Chinese were putting out that their system was better than the American democratic system. The financial crisis saw the emergence of the multipolar G20 where once the all-Western G7 had reigned.

Observations

In the name of democracy and regime change, USA has promoted only authoritarians. And it’s not just countries that are more or less new to the club of Western principles. For instance, more than a quarter of French citizens are prepared to accept a more authoritarian state, according to a recent survey. In the USA, critics see a war mongering and arrogant Clinton, the rise of Donald Trump – who has spoken openly of reining in press freedoms, intimidated judges, and taken a generally bellicose tone – as a turn toward a strongman-like figure.

World wars and the so-called cold war with Soviet Russia made USA what it is today, the super power that can bully any nation that does not obey its instructions, follows its footsteps. Perhaps for this reason USA does not want to stop criticizing and attacking Russia. As the effective boss of UN and UNSC, NATO, G-7, World Bank and IMF, etc, strangest and loudest campaigner of so-called democracy, USA has been able to retain its control over the world and press its global prowess into action to weaken any nation.

Far more rapidly than most people are aware, the quarter-century of war waged by the US since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the fifteen years of the “war on terror,” are metastasizing into a direct confrontation with the larger geopolitical rivals of the United States. This immense war danger has been virtually excluded from the presidential election campaign and all but ignored by what presents itself as the political “left” in the United States. After a quarter-century of unending war, including eight years under Obama–the first president to serve two full terms with the country continuously at war–there is no functioning antiwar movement.

The US poll looks like an establishment conspiracy against Trump and hence questions on Trump’s unwanted sexual advances scandal. To date, the controversies have appeared to hurt Trump more than Clinton, who has gradually expanded her lead over the GOP nominee in recent polls. Several women, supporting Hillary, have since accused him of making unwanted sexual advances in separate incidents from the early 1980s to 2007. Trump has denied the allegations, calling them “totally and absolutely false.” Why has Hillary and her party have resorted to cheap politics? The usual battle for the White House by two-party system is nearing the end point. World is damn sure that irrespective of who win the battle would continue the Bushdom agenda of permanent war on Islam by using many Muslim rulers like Syrian leader Assad.

The usual battle for the White House by two-party system is nearing the end point. World is damn sure that irrespective of who win the battle would continue the Bushdom agenda of permanent war on Islam by using many Muslim rulers like Syrian leader Assad.

WikiLeaks has embarrassed the Clinton campaign by releasing thousands of hacked emails purportedly from her campaign chairman’s account. FBI files alleging a State Department official sought a “quid pro quo” to alter the classification on a Clinton server email added to the campaign’s – and Obama government’s – woes.

Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week. Clinton, the Democratic former secretary of state, led Trump 44 percent to 40 percent, according to the Oct. 14-20 poll, a 4-point lead, with the Nov. 8 election fast approaching. That compared with 44 percent for Clinton and 37 percent for Trump in the Oct. 7-13 poll released last week. But today the trend has again changed favoring Trump by one percent. If the upward swings and shifts continue Trump would land in White House to control the world.

The routine US presidential poll campaign formality is over. The third and final debate is finished! The candidates go their separate ways without a handshake. Clinton walks off stage first. Of course, no love lost there, that’s for sure. What would be the fate of Americans?

In order to overcome the high level expectations and manipulations, Trump and his advisers should be prudent enough to understand the under current in the campaigns trying to wean away the votes from Trump camp.
The high light of the final debate is that it has witnessed a reformed Trump performing. USA would wait for some more years to have their first ever woman president who is honest and sincere, unlike hawkish warmongering Hillary who over exposed as a terror inspired US leader. Hillary is surely unfit to lead Americans and world.

America and the West must withdraw from being world policemen and a new breed of global strongmen are trying to take over leadership, Russia and China topping the list. Many countries now rising to prominence claim they do share America’s core values. American ally seemingly eschew the long-dominant Western order of democratic principles and free-market economics to embrace a more authoritarian and state-driven vision of economic and political rule.

Americans can no longer leave the electoral process to the two parties or the media conglomerates with who they’re in cahoots. The stakes are too high. But Americans do not have more than just two candidate choices and have to abide by the conventions. The American political mood is dark and pessimistic just now. This will force those elected in November to listen even more to those they oppose. What they find may surprise them.
In the name of democracy and regime change, USA has promoted only authoritarians. And it’s not just countries that are more or less new to the club of Western principles. For instance, more than a quarter of French citizens are prepared to accept a more authoritarian state, according to a recent survey. In the USA, critics see a war mongering and arrogant Clinton, the rise of Donald Trump – who has spoken openly of reining in press freedoms, intimidated judges, and taken a generally bellicose tone – as a turn toward a strongman-like figure.

After 70 years of a world order that has been built by the West on the architecture of Western values, it is certainly striking how much liberalism is on the retreat. Now the new president could, if he wants and has the will, can play a lead role in reforming a new world order of multilateralism and genuine justice.

In the first part this paper, it was sought to analyse Chinese perceptions, possibilities of a new world order centred on China, and its military and naval aspirations. In the second part of the analysis, the role of the Chinese in the growth of communist regimes and how the secret service in China aided that was examined. Successful cyber warfare as a key ingredient of their strategic play formed a part of the analysis. Finally the correlation of spreading Islamic fundamentalism and China and its impact on India was looked at.

China’s ascendance as an economic powerhouse and military superpower has started altering the cultural, political, social, and ethnic balance of global power and is in the process of creating a whole new world. According to conservative estimates, China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2027 and will ascend to the position of world economic leader by 2050. But the full repercussions of China’s ascendancy have been little understood. Answers to some of the most pressing questions about China’s growing place on the world stage can be understood by looking at how China will seek to shape the world in its own image.

The Chinese have a rich and long history as a civilization-state. Ninety-four percent of the population still believes they are one race, the Han Chinese. The strong sense of superiority finds a resurrection in twenty-first century China. This is also used to strengthen and further unify the country. A culturally self-confident Asian giant with a billion-plus population, China will resist globalization as we know it. This exceptionalism will have powerful ramifications for its neighbours. As China is already cementing its position as the new centre of the East Asian economy, the mantle of economic and, therefore, cultural relevance will pass from Manhattan and Paris to Beijing and Shanghai. The relationship and attitude toward China will affect India’s peace. Therefore an attempt has been made to explain the upheaval that China’s ascendance will cause and the realigned global power structure it will create directly affecting India’s policies on economy, oil and its relations with the US.

China and Global Oil Play

According to former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, the short supply of energy resources is a “soft rib” in China’s economic and social development. Wen Jiabao’s statement reflects the importance China’s leaders place on the energy issue. This issue is considered a matter of national strategic significance and one that has considerable impact on whether or not China can sustain its development. It is perceived as an issue over which the Chinese have little control, given their reliance on foreign imports and foreign security of their lines of transportation. These dependencies on foreign supply (the “reliance problem”) and security (“the Malacca dilemma”, so named because of the vast quantities of oil that must pass through the Malacca Straits, which is secured by other countries’ navies) are the main threats to China’s energy security. Based on these dependencies, it is important to understand what China is doing to minimize these threats and why, despite such efforts, the lack of effective governmental mechanisms to respond in a crisis may still leave China’s energy market insecure and vulnerable.

China was a self-sufficient energy-producing country until 1993. But while its oil consumption grew by more than 55 percent from 1994 to 2000, its oil production increased by only 11 percent. Its imports grew more than twenty fold as it became the world’s second highest oil importer after Japan, and in the decade that followed, the highest importer. Foreign oil imports now account for 40 percent of China’s energy market with the gap between supply and demand continuing to widen. According to a report by China’s Academy of Geological Sciences, by 2020, China will need to import 500 million tons of crude oil and 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually, which is 70 percent and 50 percent of its domestic consumption respectively. The huge extent to which China’s energy market depends on foreign imports is thus a key indicator of China’s lack of energy security. Perhaps even more significant is the rate at which the country has moved from self-sufficient exporter to over dependent importer. To a country that is seemingly still to come to terms with the free-flowing dynamics of market economics and globalized trade, such newly emergent dependence on the unpredictable and uncontrollable free market is unnerving.

Energy supply disruptions and unpredictable surge in prices could undermine China’s rapid economic growth and job creation, and in turn raise the real spectre of social instability and impaired national security. There is no denying the adverse impact that problematic energy supplies can have on China’s national security. What possibly worries the Chinese policymakers more than reliance on foreign imports is the extent to which the reliance is confined to the Middle East. Not only is this region the most volatile part of the world, it is embroiled in geopolitics and is the centrepiece of American foreign policy. While 18 percent of U.S. oil comes from the Gulf, 60 percent of China’s oil comes from there; this too mostly from just three countries namely Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. Because import sources are limited and the United States and Japan have a lock on much of the oil market, China is forced to find alternate suppliers.

The result is a Chinese energy policy that directly competes with energy demands of other countries. The reliance on oil from the Middle East and Africa leads to an excessive reliance on the Malacca Straits for passage of the oil tanker ships. This has always been considered highly susceptible to blockade. Without pipelines to route its oil through and only a small portion of oil coming from Venezuela (crossing the Pacific Ocean from the east), almost 85 percent of China’s oil passes through the Indian Ocean, Malacca Straits, and the South China Sea. Any interference in this strategic passageway by nations trying to contain China or by pirates or terrorists intent on disrupting the global market could halt nearly all of China’s energy supply. Thus the Chinese see the Malacca dilemma threatening their normal oil imports which in turn jeopardizes China’s economy and may imperil even its defence.

Though India has been emphatic about not letting such an eventuality come to pass, assurances do not seem to cut ice with the Chinese. China’s inability in securing its energy requirements has so far been attributed to its lack of naval power to patrol sea lanes and the presence of the Indian navy in the Indian Ocean. While China can boast of growing global influence, when it comes to energy security, the extent of China’s military and diplomatic influence is much more sober. With that factor in mind, China is now exploring both the security of its interests (the deployment of its naval vessels in the Indian Ocean region) as well as alternate means of passage (such as the Gwadar pipeline and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC). At some point therefore, it ceases to matter what the monetary cost of the project is; instead it is simply a question of the guarantee.

Relevance for India: The Chinese are both critical of their country’s ability to secure sea lanes and wary of developing new markets in contrast to India. To this end, a steep rise has been seen in (ostensibly) patrolling activities by the Chinese PLA Navy. It has also in recent years put the entire weight of its financial power behind acquisitions of oil fields in Africa and Central Asia. Most of these contests are a direct confrontation between the Chinese and Indian oil companies. India has usually lost to its competitors from the Middle Kingdom. This is a potential flash point between interests of both economies. The presence of the Chinese navy has also been seen with some trepidation by India, and not without reason; as was seen in the first part of the analysis, Chinese naval presence is growing at a much faster pace than India and in the years to come will be in a position to directly threaten interests, including in the traditional military/ naval sense. Simultaneously, China’s energy diplomacy aims at posturing as a partner for joint stability, prosperity, and development with concerned energy supply countries, regions, and companies. It is trying to diversify sources internally as well to include investments in wind, solar, and nuclear energy, build a strategic reserve and build naval and air capacity so it has the capability to project power in distant seas.

The world consumes a cubic mile of oil per year. This is growing by just over one percent per year and is forecast to accelerate. A third of this is used by China. By 2025 its cars alone would need another Saudi Arabia or two. Indian growth also gives similar prognosis. Oil is the world’s biggest business and economy driver and as a source of energy is indispensable, at least in the foreseeable future. The diplomatic, military or functional costs of acquiring oil are justified by the necessity of sustaining development and prosperity. Possible substitutes are either too small or slow or immature or unattractive or all of these. It is also premature to speculate about life after oil; imperative for the foreseeable future is to design realistic and practical measures to cater to this threat and align long term policies to this exigent and strident demand.

Clash and Confluence of Economies

Indians live in a world affected by domestic economic change and greater integration into the global economy. Gains from economic growth and reform mean rising commercial farm income and increased business and employment opportunities in the cities. Globalisation has meant an intersection of interests beyond electronics, academics, business, medicine, and journalism across borders.

In India, two million English-speaking college students graduate yearly, and most work for one tenth the salary that a comparable U.S. worker receives. Low cost and high quality telecommunications have opened up Business and Knowledge Processing Outsourcing options. Other outsourcing spans the technology spectrum, including software code writing, chip design, product development, accounting, Web site designing, animation art, stock market research, radiology, airline reservations, tax preparation and advice, transcribing, consulting, prayers for the deceased, and other support services, especially in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Emerging technically talented Indian diaspora provides the skills for India to play a major role in the global information technology industry. In the late 1990s, Indian immigrants ran one third of the technology firms in Silicon Valley, California. Indian and Indian-American-owned companies in the US have become suppliers to U.S. corporates. Indian software firms raise capital in the US to acquire US companies, set up offices to interact with clients, and undertake research and innovation. India’s software sector represents a skill-based, high value export oriented sector. The sector has also attracted considerable foreign direct investment by multinationals. Indian manufacturing sector too, though still in nascent stages, has increasingly taken the world by storm. Essentially, Indian strengths lie in a young work force, increasing levels of education, cheap labour and low costs of setting up businesses.

In Mao’s China, the ideology stressed upon prices determined by the state, state ownership of the means of production, international and regional trade and technological self sufficiency, non-economic (moral) incentives, egalitarianism, socializing the population toward selflessness, continuing revolution and development of a holistic communist person. From 1952 to 1966, pragmatists, primarily managers of state organizations and enterprises vied with Maoists for control of economic decision making. But during this period, Mao and his allies won out, purging moderates from the Central Communist Party (for example, Deng Xiaoping) to workplace committees.

After Mao’s death in 1976, the Chinese, under Deng recognized that despite the rapid industrial growth under Mao, imbalances remained from the Cultural Revolution, such as substantial waste in the midst of high investment, too little emphasis on consumer goods, the lack of wage incentives, insufficient technological innovation, too tight control on economic management, the taxing of enterprise profits and too little international economic trade and relations. Economic reform, which began in late 1979, included price decontrol, decentralization, agricultural household responsibility, management responsibility among state-owned enterprises (SOEs), small entrepreneurial activity, and township and village enterprises (TVEs).

Since 1980, China has had virtually the fastest growth in the world. Chinese growth rates are overstated as they are heavily based on growth in physical output figures rather than deflated expenditure series and managers understate capacity and over report production to superiors to receive the greater reward received by those who meet or exceed plan fulfilment. But the fact remains that despite over reporting and continuing market distortions China’s growth under market reforms has been rapid (albeit uneven in some parts). China’s step-by-step approach during the last two decades of the 20th century contrasted sharply with Russia’s more abrupt changes in strategy in the early 1990s. China’s reform started as socialism with Chinese characteristics and gradually evolved to a socialist market economy. China’s weaknesses are its inability to fully integrate with the global economy, an aging work force and blatant disregard for intellectual property rights. Its continued communist hangover also contributes in no small measure to restricting growth.

Relevance for India: Despite the challenges that it faces in its transition, the Chinese economy has grown at a phenomenal rate and indeed the state apparatus is faced with a problem that it needs to sustain this high trajectory to maintain its internal cohesion. This naturally brings it into a direct conflict with the equally fast growing Indian economy, with the competition for resources, capital and captive enterprise heating up. India is also perceived as a better option for investments owing to its democratic government, stability of its capital markets and emphasis on innovation and free enterprise. Equally irrefutable is the trade equation of the two countries. Therefore it is a paradoxical situation in that there is both a confluence and a clash of the two economies. Future strategy related to China’s equation with India could be heavily influenced due to this reason and must be factored in to India’s policy decisions to obviate conflict while continuing protection of Indian interests.

Conclusion: Strategic Interests and Policies

In a peculiar situation, India finds itself increasingly at cross roads in a bid to decide the sway of its foreign policies. Traditionally non-aligned, it is now of greater importance to, and exerting greater influence on decisions both in the US and in China. The Joint Declaration signed in 2005 by US President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is seen akin to President Nixon’s opening to China.

America agreed to recognize India as a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology and pledged to support its civilian nuclear program and urge others to do the same. This agreement caught observers in the strategic community by surprise. It was difficult to understand why the US made a large concession on non-proliferation rules in exchange for a vague exchange of Indian support to help the US combat AIDS, support countries seeking a Global Democracy Initiative and otherwise support India’s economic development in a number of areas.

The scenario has been repeated during the tenure of President Obama, and of late, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s overtures, the equation seems to have turned positively convivial. This may be a possible counter to China; American policymakers feel a rich, strong, yet still authoritarian China will pose security challenges to Washington. Simply put, the US now views China as a long term strategic competitor. The move towards cooperation with India can be explained as a form of hedging against China, as the only country that competes militarily with the US. Since the end of the Cold War the US has been helping Beijing become richer and stronger, hoping to see it become democratic and rise peacefully. However, uncertain about China’s strategic intentions, the US now feels the need to create a strategic competitor and the choice narrows down to India for obvious reasons.

As the US rethinks its India policy, it finds itself confronting a host of geopolitical challenges. It is engaged in a long global counterinsurgency against radical Islamic terrorism. Simultaneously, a rising China poses a long term challenge. Hence, America must enlist allies to secure its interests and sustain the US led world order that has been the basis for economic development and relative peace. India may prove a partner in confronting both these challenges. As a liberal democratic country, New Delhi accepts that the more democracy spreads, the safer Indians will be. India has been one of the foremost targets of jihadi terrorist attacks and shares an interest with Washington in bringing them to an end. China has been a historic rival to India, and China’s growing power is viewed in New Delhi with apprehension. India too shares an interest in maintaining a balance of power in Asia ensuring that China does not predominate. Although India is a rising power with its own aspirations, it is unlikely to challenge US predominance in Asia in the short term. (Neither will it accept a hegemonic America in perpetuity).

The fact that India is a liberal democracy will help the two countries develop necessary relations with less suspicion and tension than characterizes the Sino-American relationship. India’s non-aligned foreign policy and fiercely independent strategic culture will however make the prospects for strategic partnership more difficult. In Central Asia too, the US finds its continued support to Pakistan growing untenable. Instead of accepting a Communist China led Central Asia, the US deems fit to help India posture in the region to make it compatible with the move towards democratisation. It is axiomatic that Afghanistan cannot be pacified if the border with Pakistan is unpoliced, and insurgents have free rein to come and go as they please. Yet that is what is happening. Since 9/11, Pakistan has been forced to accept formally the fall of the Taliban. But of late, evidence suggests that it is assisting the Taliban to regroup in and around the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas. It seems a matter of time that Pakistan with its history of proliferation and support to Islamic jehadis comes a cropper as far as US support is concerned. Then the tilt would be in favour of India and it would become all the more important for India to decide its biases.

Indian policy framework would necessarily have to explore these issues with intent to providing long term solutions to them. The Chinese perspective may be different than the Indian, but may not have a different view of the future. Threats of containment based on diplomatic, political, and economic imperatives are a matter of concern to India as much as they are to China; what is required is to obviate these spiralling out of control, becoming flash points and resulting in possible military conflicts. Threats as India perceives them also affect China in similar (or slightly modified) forms; it would be incumbent on policy makers to mould the framework in such a manner that more synergies are obtained and both nations move towards mutual cooperation rather than ominous conflicts.

By Kristy Siegfried

Immigration has dominated the US presidential campaign like never before. Donald Trump’s oft-repeated promise that, if elected, he will build a “big, beautiful” wall at the US-Mexico border helped secure him the Republican nomination and his rhetoric about illegal immigration appears to have struck a chord with many working-class Americans.

But how many of his election promises on immigration are implementable? And what threats does a Trump presidency pose to migrant and refugee rights in the US and beyond?

The Wall

Top of Trump’s 10-point plan “to put America first” is, on day one of his presidency, to begin work on “an impenetrable physical wall” that will run the entire 3,200-kilometre length of the US border with Mexico. Numerous commentators have pointed out the near impossibility of such a project. Fences and walls have already been erected along 1,126 kilometres of the border. The topography of much of the remainder is extremely rugged and includes large tracts of privately-owned land.

“A wall along the entire southwest border sounds like an attractive policy option to a lot of people, but on a practical level it would be nearly impossible to do,” Faye Hipsman, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington DC-based independent think tank, told IRIN.

“Getting the money for it is another story too,” she added. “It would cost tens of billions of dollars, and it’s hard to imagine Congress approving that.”

Trump insists that Mexico will pay for the wall, but Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has made it clear that will not happen.

The irony of Trump’s insistence that America needs a wall is that ramped-up border enforcement over the past decade has already reduced illegal border crossings to an all-time low. A significant proportion of those still crossing the border illegally these days are not Mexicans but Central Americans fleeing gang violence and seeking asylum in the US. A wall would not remove their right to claim asylum, points out Allegra Love, a New Mexico-based immigration lawyer. They could simply go to an official point of entry and apply.

Deportations

There are an estimated 11.3 million undocumented migrants living in the United States. Trump has said that he will seek to deport them all, although he has softened his stance recently, saying that he would target up to 6.5 million for swift removal.

Donald Kerwin, executive director of the Center for Migration Studies, has noted that deporting 11 million people would require “the law enforcement tactics of a police state”, in addition to costing up to $600 billion over 20 years to actually accomplish, according to one study. It would also reduce the US labour force by 6.4 percent at an enormous cost to the economy.

Deporting economic migrants who have just crossed the border from Mexico is relatively straightforward, but most undocumented migrants in the US entered the country legally and then overstayed their visas. Others are waiting for asylum claims to be heard. Backlogged immigration courts mean that deporting someone can take several years.

“Our immigration system is deeply complicated,” said Love. “We have some undocumented migrants who have been in the country for decades, some who are just arriving, and the national debate about [deportation] makes it into an easy moral question.”

While it’s probably far-fetched to imagine that a Trump administration would deport all 11 million undocumented migrants, he could significantly scale up current levels of deportations, which number about 400,000 a year. He has said he would triple the number of immigration enforcement agents and create a new “special deportation task force”.

Trump has also promised to rescind President Barack Obama’s executive order that exempts undocumented migrants who arrived in the US when they were children from deportation. Hipsman said the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy has had “a huge impact on a large number of peoples’ lives” since it was introduced in 2012. Reversing it would be “an easy thing [Trump] could do in his first week in office”.

Refugees

The United States has traditionally offered more resettlement spots for refugees than any other country, but that would likely change under a Trump presidency.

“The president sets annual refugee resettlement admissions each year, so it’s something the next president would have a big impact on,” said Hipsman.

Trump has lambasted Democratic rival Hilary Clinton’s promise to increase admissions of refugees from Syria and said he would suspend admissions of refugees from places where “adequate screening cannot occur”; such places would include Syria and Libya. He would also introduce new screening tests that would include an ideological component “to make sure that those we are admitting to our country share our values and love our people”.

“The vast majority of refugees coming from these places are women and children, [and] it’s misinformation to say that they’re not screened adequately or we don’t know how to screen them,” Hipsman told IRIN. “But unfortunately the executive branch does have significant control over refugee admissions.”

Fear

If elected, Trump will struggle to get many of his immigration policies through Congress, “but there are a lot of things he can do with executive orders”, said Hipsman.

She added that the possibility of a Trump presidency has immigrant communities around the country worried, not just because of his hard-line policies, but because of the threat of “heightened anti-immigrant sentiment”.

Love agreed. “[If Trump wins] there’s going to be a lot of fear and hateful people who suddenly have the force of the presidency behind them, and that’s going to cause violence against the people in my community,” she told IRIN.

“My clients are very worried. The whole debate is validating and normalising hate speech against migrants.”

In an increasingly polarised America, with Clinton promising to follow through on Obama’s “progressive” reforms, that debate may happen regardless of who emerges victorious after the polls on Tuesday.

About the author:
*Kristy Siegfried, Migration Editor for IRIN.

Source:
This article was published at IRIN

By Tam Hussein for Syria Comment*

Recently, Anjem Choudhary, 49, and Mizanur Rahman, 33, were imprisoned for their active support of the Islamic State. Choudhary’s imprisonment ends, for a small period at least, his decade plus history of agitation in the UK. Whilst the British press lapped up his colourful and extreme pronouncements, his influence amongst the majority of UK Muslims was minimal. At best he is seen by most British Muslims as a rabble-rouser and a demagogue. However, Choudhary’s influence outside of the UK has been greatly underestimated. The East London solicitor was considered a Mufti by some of his followers. He was seen as a man who spoke the Truth to power like a modern day Moses to the secular Pharaoh. He is the founding father of Shariah4UK, an organisation which gave birth to other franchises like Shariah4Belgium whose members became linked to the attacks in Brussels.

The judge, whilst sentencing, was fully aware of Choudhary’s influence and the impact he could have on the prison population. One prison staff member who wanted to remain anonymous told me most inmates are “poor, vulnerable and aggrieved” and ripe for radicalisation. He added that “if there is a confident personality he can turn them. I mean some of these guys actually believe in David Icke!” Thus charismatic prisoners who question authority, whether that be by Far-Right activists, Salafi-Jihadists, Irish Republicans or conspiracy theorists for that matter, can influence prisoners. And it seems plausible that the magic of Choudhary can have the same effect in prison. Choudhary himself has boasted that he will radicalise prison inmates.

On the face of it, it seems sensible that he spends most of his time in prison isolated. Especially as there is growing evidence that there is a link between criminality and ISIS, as has been shown by the likes of Callimachi and others. According to Robert Verkaik, Aine Davies was radicalised in prison, Jafar Turay, another fighter, is believed to have been radicalised by a Ladbroke Grove jihadist and so on. Martin Chulov has also shown how networks develop within prisons. Indeed many of the links of Syrian Islamists and Jihadists were forged in Saydnaya prison in Syria. However, whilst acknowledging that prisons can be incubators of extremist ideologies of all sorts, does it warrant a response that exceptionalises Muslim prisoners and shows them to be different from the rest of the prison population? Might that not be counter-productive? Prison experiences after all can contribute to an individual’s radicalisation, as Lawrence Wright writes in the Looming Tower:

“America’s tragedy on September 11 was born in the Prisons of Egypt. Human-Rights advocates in Cairo argue that torture created an appetite for revenge, first in Syed Qutb and later in his acolytes, including Ayman al-Zawahiri.”

Admittedly, UK prisons are relatively humane in comparison to the brutal prisons of Syria, Egypt and Iraq, but a misstep can have disastrous consequences. It is therefore absolutely crucial to get the balance right and understand how and to what extent radicalisation occurs in prisons.

It is with this in mind that I interviewed former UK Terror charge inmates to explore the idea. The sample is qualitative and hopes to add to our understanding of how radicalisation occurs in prison.

Case study: Ahmed* [name changed]

I met Ahmed in an Italian Gelateria in Westbourne Grove, West London. The convicted terrorist could be a boxer or a doorman standing outside a seedy nightclub in Leicester Square. His thick fingers, thick neck, thick arms should be throwing out some punter who has had one too many. But he is what he has always claimed to be; at best an intellectual at worst an Ossipon like figure from Conrad’s The Secret Agent, a propagandist disseminator. The man devours books; bookshops to him are like cameras to the Kardashians; he just can’t resist them. In Prison he read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Hallaq’s the Impossible State and his favourite-the Count of Monte Cristo. He has this enigmatic smile that doesn’t care what you do to him. It is as if he was challenging the authorities: what could you possible do to me here in the UK that you haven’t done already? He’s done six years of prison, two years were spent in the High Security Unit, Belmarsh or as it is known by its inmates, the Unit. He has shared his association time with some of Britain’s most notorious killers and Terror-Charge prisoners from Kenny Noye, Colin Gunn to Dhiren Barot, the man who plotted to take down the New York Stock exchange and others like Muktar Said Ibrahim responsible for the 21 July plot of 2005.

Belmarsh prison

Belmarsh became operational in 1992. It was intended to be the securest prison in the country and designed to house IRA prisoners. By its critics it was dubbed the UK’s Guantanamo but in fairness Guantanamo doesn’t offer counselling, therapy sessions and podiatry like Belmarsh. To Ahmed, though,  Belmarsh wasn’t a holiday camp. He recalls an anecdote that Brian Wright told him:

“The nuttiest person is the person who designed this unit, you can’t hide anything you can’t kill anyone or even kill yourself he told me. The whole place is made of metal and the guards check on you every hour making a note on whether you are still there. The sound of the little window opening drives you nuts at first.”

The Unit, he recalls “was designed to break you down.” Everything is bad. In the morning you are given a small box of cereals, lunch is merely one of those shadows of reality that Plato talks about and dinner need not be discussed. But UK prisons are not the ones experienced by Dostoyevsky nor Solzhenitsyn’s Ivan Denisovich. Ahmed knows very well that Belmarsh is a far cry from Chateaux D’if or Assad’s Tadmor prison. It is twenty two or three hour lock up, with a small square where you can do some exercise. But the twenty yards to the exercise area takes a full twenty minutes to get to, the prisoner is escorted, buzzed through thirteen doors and patted down thirteen doors. Ahmed finds it absurd but then again, considering the company he keeps, it is understandable. The gym is “a shambles designed in a way so that the weights can’t be used as a weapon”. The library consists of a set of shelves on wheels which is called without irony, a mobile library. At the Unit, according to Ahmed, the wardens or ‘screws’ don’t punish you, they just behave vindictively. In the summer they make the water scalding hot so it peals your skin off and in the winter it is ice cold and the wardens always blame the maintenance crews. “We all knew” says Ahmed, “that this was just a game, because the other spurs had nice temperate water to shower in during association.”

Cerie Bullivant who spent 2007-2008 in Belmarsh and Wandsworth on remand seemed to confirm Ahmed’s view:

“I would be praying during Ramadan with another brother in my cell and they would kick off about it. Whilst in the other cell there would be four non-Muslim inmates playing music and it would be absolutely fine. It goes both ways though, during Ramadan Muslim inmates would get special food packs to break their fasts and the non-Muslim inmates would complain. There was a lot of tension between the Muslim and the non-Muslim inmates.”

If they do want to punish an inmate then they send in the DST, Detailed Search Team. Ahmed’s face changes into one of contempt and laughter as he recalled them:

“They come in dressed from top to bottom in black, they are often in riot gear, usually at some odd hour, three in the morning. As soon as they enter, they step up to you. They rip up your cell, I have been raided many times, they pour shampoo on your clothes, they took my Quran CD given to me by the Prison chaplain and they scratched it. Why? What did the CD ever do to you? I can’t forget the Quran CD given to me by the prison imam. They steal your papers. They check your arse…you bend over and they stick their heads down and look into your arse [laughs]…sometimes with a mirror what sort of human does that looking for a phone in your arse!? If they want to beat you up they will take you to the segregation unit, and over there they will beat you up because it’s isolated.”

Prison life is not all boredom though, there are things you can do in prison. Ahmed read and worked on his case. A lot of T-Charge prisoners work on their case or their appeals. “As long as they are in prison there is hope” he says because one day they can get out. Many of the T-Charge prisoners keep their spirits up by worshipping because in here you needed God the most. Here T-Charge prisoners see themselves and are viewed by the rest, not as common criminals but political prisoners. They are kings without crowns.

Bullivant recalls a story in Wandsworth:

“There used to be these Algerians who used to bring in drugs into the prisons and do lines [taking Cocaine]. Because I was a convert and a T-Charge they would tell me that if anyone messes with me I should tell them because they would kill them…there’s always been a hierarchy in prison.”

The T-Charge prisoners see themselves as different. They don’t hustle, they don’t carry on like “low life crims”.

Bullivant says:

“They have manners and are generous: One brother would save up all his money and buy sauces, sweets and food for Ramadan and then give them out to non-Muslims and Muslims during the month. He won a lot of friends that way.”

They also have examples to emulate, these men are fully aware that many of the Prophets spent time in prison, Joseph in the dungeons of the Pharaoh, Jonah in the belly of the Leviathan and so their situation relatively speaking doesn’t seem that bad. Moreover Syed Qutb, Omar Mokhtar, Malcolm X, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Zarqawi and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; Muslims from all over the spectrum whether that be freedom fighters, radicals, extremists and terrorists have all done bird. So for some inmates it reconfirmed the very rightness of their cause. They were following in the right footsteps. Especially as there is a well known Prophetic tradition that says when God loves someone, He afflicts them with tribulation, and so their incarceration is interpreted as such.

Osama bin Laden sits with Ayman al-Zawahiri in November 2001 photo taken by Hamid Mir. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

In fact for the likes of Ahmed, prison merely reinforced the view that he was right otherwise why would the system try to imprison him and put him in the Unit? “Even Dhiren Bharot” he says “told me: Why are you in here? You are so young?” The harsh sentence he received, whether correct or not, he believes is a reflection of this politically motivated witch-hunt against his politics. Thus the prison to him was a confirmation of the righteousness of his chosen path rather than punishment. “If I was a terrorist” he says eating his crepe, “why don’t they kill me?” Any other state would. The Islamic State certainly would. Ahmed accepts his own extinction as fair game. It is the bargain that he made from the time Iraq was invaded in 2003. In fact, this softness, this woolliness, this dare I say it, half-way house of not dealing with his likes makes him disrespect the UK. One wonders whether the UK knows how to deal with prisoners with such grand ideas anymore.

So are prisons places of radicalisation- that catch all ill defined term that seems to apply mostly to Muslims? The fact that Muslim prisoners should resort to their faith is hardly surprising; it is part of the human condition but how it occurs has mystified analysts. Ahmed recalls a far right white inmate who adopted the name Omar Jones simply because he read everything and anything he could get his paws on. He grabbed some Islamic literature from a Muslim inmate who was throwing them away. The Muslim inmate even tried to dissuade Jones, it wasn’t his type of literature. But Omar insisted on reading the material and within a week he had converted to Islam.

When an inmate converts the first priority are the basics, how to pray, how to make ablution, how to recite verses of the Quran. And so the convert would go to the T-Charge inmates during Association, the hour when inmates get to socialise. According to Ahmed, he never witnessed any radicalisation of new converts. The most these T-Charge prisoners did was to teach the new convert the basics. As Bullivant puts it: “That’s not radicalisation, that’s brotherhood.”

A convert like Omar would search out the most ‘righteous’ T-Charge prisoner because they were different in the same way the Protagonist from Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead admired the Chechens for their political principles and upright characters. He like Omar Jones, recognised that those prisoners were there due to their beliefs, not because they were lowlife criminals that had murdered, raped and looted for the sake of criminal gain. Their manners were usually better, they didn’t swear, they offered hospitality for three days whenever a new ‘brother’ came in to the ward as is Muslim custom.

They looked after you like Abbè Faria did to Edmond Dantes in the Count of Monte Cristo. And perhaps the most important point here is that Omar Jones instinctively recognised that T-Charge prisoners were on the right side of the fence. In other words, they were not employees like prison wardens or chaplains and imams. One should not underestimate the role of the charismatic personality, as Haroro Ingram has pointed out. Islamic tradition fosters charismatic leadership and the idea of transformative charisma. Zarqawi inspired intense loyalty in prison precisely because he took the punishment on behalf of his group whenever the group would receive one. It was not his learning but his loyalty to his men. It didn’t matter if you were the most knowledgable prison imam, the simple fact was you were on the wrong side. It’s not that the imams didn’t do their jobs, they started off on the wrong side of the fence in the first place. It takes a special type of Prison chaplain to get through to inmates. How they could even influence Muslims, converts and others was beyond Ahmed. All they were good for it seems was for official matters, you registered your conversion with him so you got on the Halal list.

As Bullivant says:

“No one trusted the prison imams. You were polite and respectful and you went to him when you needed a Quran or a prayer carpet. On Fridays you didn’t go to listen to the Friday Khutba [Sermon] but to catch up with the rest of the brothers from the other wards. It was the only day you could see each other.”

Ahmed doesn’t deny that radicalisation does happen but questions the way it has been portrayed in the media. According to him, T-Charge prisoners become symbols and reference points for the convert prisoners. These men would be their example and guide for their time in prison, not the prison chaplain who according to Ahmed, was well meaning but was “mostly hit and miss”.

Bullivant, speaking about remand prisons, explains it in a different way. “The Brother’s talked about dīnī [religious] stuff but they rarely talked about politics. Everyone was paranoid that the cell was bugged.” In any case, he adds, “in remand you had hope of getting out…politics didn’t come into it. Most inmates will do dawah [proselytise Islam] because what else can you do? You have nothing else. But of course everyone was aware of the injustices outside. It was unspoken, no need to say it.” Religious proselytisation might be seen as radicalisation by the authorities, but proselytisation happened in Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead and will continue for as long as prison exists. For Muslim inmates, it wasn’t a case of directly recruiting inmates to a cause, rather it was viewed within a religious architecture: souls needed saving even in prison, perhaps even more so. Ahmed recalls one of the inmates:

“An Afro-Caribbean brother, the nicest guy in the world. The brother had beautiful akhlāq [manners]. He used to be a hitman, bodies turned up all over Europe wherever he went. After his conversion he became the most pious brother I knew.”

But saving souls comes with baggage.  According to Bullivant, the inmate who had a hand in another’s inmate’s conversion could be blamed by the Prison service for radicalising inmates.  It might count against him in upcoming parole hearings or he might be moved to another prison.

This is confirmed by Ahmed too, if an inmate converts to Islam he is immediately viewed as radicalised. But sometimes they become devout purely on their own as he recalls:

“There was one young brother, he was half-Pakistani, half-English, killed a man because he put his hands on his sister’s thighs. He stabbed people left right and centre and ended up in the Whitemore unit, he offered to deal with anyone who threatened T-charge prisoners, ‘do you want me to stab him up?’ he used to ask me and I would calm the brother down. But then I received letters from him in perfect written Arabic, he had become fluent in written Arabic in eight months, he had taught himself.”

Of course some converted to Islam because they wanted to be part of the gang that had the most clout, the ones who could protect you. But usually you could spot those ones. Ahmed had little respect for those kinds of prisoners. According to him it showed on their faces, in their eyes they were low life scums who used Islam as veil. No one bought the argument that their drug dealing and criminal activities was a tool to harm the infidel enemy. There was no conviction in these men and he didn’t respect it.

Neither Ahmed nor Bullivant deny that T-Charge prisoners ran things in prison. Cream rises to the top and there are emirs, albeit unofficial ones in British prisons just as much as there are capos, dons, bosses in prisons all around the world. Networks do exist. Word spreads pretty quickly amongst prisoners, who is coming through to which wing and why. During Association, even if a murder or a robbery had occurred on the outside, the prisoners would know about it and sometimes they even knew who did it before the police.

If an emir didn’t want a certain prisoner in their wing they could make it such that the prisoner would be segregated or moved to a different wing. If there’s an inmate who attacked a ‘brother‘ and is being transferred to his wing,  the emir would ensure that the inmate gets beaten up, stabbed or smashed with a contraption that resembles a morning star made out of two cans of tuna in a sock as punishment for that transgression. They might wait for the prisoner to get settled in and one day pour boiling sugar syrup on him. The syrup behaves a bit like napalm and sticks your skin scalding it permanently. Ahmed remembers a story in Long Lartin prison:

“Some Australian guy messed around with Sheikh Abu Qatada in the gym, he was saying something about his beard in Long Lartin, he was mocking it, a brother saw it, that evening he had several litres of boiled butter over his head and face and his whole face was melted and he was about to be released as well- that sort of reinforced the hierarchy”

Abu Qatada al-Filistini was held in Belmarsh and Long Lartin prisons on immigration charges.

It is not done with malice just sheer ingenuity. It would have been better if the inmate had been sensible and asked to be put into the segregation unit immediately. The consequences? Ahmed laughs “some get taken to segregation and the rest of us get a few days lock up and privileges get taken away and then life moves on. Nothing changes. Usually there’s little evidence to charge the inmate.” It is no wonder one former disgruntled prison warden told me: “We don’t run the ward the prisoners let us run it”.

If you were a warden than you might get ‘shitted’ on- a technical term referring to a prison warden getting human faeces on their heads, usually the offending turd is disguised in a prison sock and smashed on to his head or put into a bottle and poured on him from above.

On the other hand, if you are a new T-Charge prisoner or just a normal prisoner, nervous about what prison life is like, the emir and the ‘brothers’ get together to cook and host the prisoner for three days to make him feel at ease with his surroundings. An intense loyalty towards the emir and the senior ‘brother’ is built up as a consequence.

Moreover, the T-Charge prisoners are also seen as mediators because they are not involved in the bitter disputes between rival criminal gangs. They are seen as neutral arbitrators and are often brought in to resolve disputes. This again gives them added status and importance amongst inmates. This is not un-similar to the way the young Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi behaved when he was incarcerated in Camp Bucca, Iraq.

When Ahmed was released he was asked if he wanted to become an informer. He was scornful of such a proposition: “you wasted the best years of my life for nothing and now I am going to do you a favour and turn grass?” It just didn’t make sense.

He was unrepentant and it seems that he would have preferred to have been martyred. “You would have saved yourself a whole lot of money and time.” Now he is older and wiser he still watches events in and around the Middle East with interest. His views remain radical perhaps a bit more tempered, and he is still aggrieved by what the British state has done to him. “Even killers told me I shouldn’t be here in the Unit.” Prison, it seems, hasn’t broken him, it hasn’t made him repent, far from it, he is even more confident. Sometimes as the Russian writer Dostoyevsky points out the worst punishment is not the crime itself but living with what you have done. Ahmed lives with it quite well because in his view, he has done nothing wrong. For Ahmed, Syed Qutb’s Milestones which he read at the tender age of fifteen and Malcolm X Autobiography at the age of twenty, both had a profound impact on his life, Belmarsh didn’t remove his grand idea.

I ask Ahmed about the current worry about prison radicalisation. He thinks for a while and replies casually “maybe a stake in society might work for some. Prison will definitely not work for others.” He overheard a T-Charge brother as he was being deported saying “the game isn’t over yet”.

Solutions

After Choudhary and Mizanur Rahman’s conviction, I met up with Ahmed for a coffee not too far from Ladbroke Grove. I asked him about throwing Choudhary into isolation units like the Acheson report has recommended. I asked him whether that would stop radicalisation. He laughs and says:

“It’s not like the US, he’s not going to be like Babar Ahmed! Isolation units have already been done. Long Lartin was like that. We loved it. We kept it clean. Had circles [Islamic study circles], even the screws liked it. No drugs or crime. I see both perspectives but it’s a drain on resources to be honest.”

Bullivant says of the those like Anjem Choudhary:

“I’m sure in theory he could [radicalise], but he’s in solitary because he’s a name, nothing else. Many people inside are better placed to ‘radicalise’. Thing is, there’s as much chance inside that he’d get convinced by brothers to leave his silly ideas. Also there’s the basic injustice of solitary, people need people… so to put him in solitary for no measurable benefit isn’t the right way to go.”

As far as exceptionalising Muslim prisoners, Bullivant added that it fed into this ‘War on Islam’ narrative that Choudhary’s followers feed off. Choudhary will be seen as a martyr for the cause, victimised solely because of his uncompromising stance towards his faith. It sends a message as Bullivant puts it, that the British state “can’t handle the ideas of these people.” In fact, Bullivant’s view is that isolation is the wrong approach:

“I really think that in my time in prison most of the Mojo’s [Muhajiroon] realised they had made errors from being in prison and actually being forced to mix for once. They couldn’t isolate like they do on the outside…no one took Mojo Dawah [proselitisation] seriously, and they ended up all… becoming much more mainstream”

Bullivant seems to be echoing the ideas proposed by a former prison governor, Peter Dawson, who argues that these isolation units will not work. Partly, because they tried it in Northern Ireland and it failed. And partly because with an increase in prison numbers and a reduction in prison staff, it will be unsustainable. Instead Dawson argues that if prison is about punishment and rehabilitation then the best way is to have well funded prisons where well trained and motivated prison staff build long term relationships with inmates of any radical persuasion.

Tam Hussein is an award winning investigative journalist and writer. This article was published by Syria Comment

Fortum said Tuesday it has signed an agreement to acquire three wind power projects from the Norwegian company Nordkraft. The transaction consists of the Nygårdsfjellet wind farm, which is already operational, as well as the fully-permitted Ånstadblåheia and Sørfjord projects. Fortum and Nordkraft have also agreed on co-operating on the construction and operation of the wind farms.

Fortum said it expects the transaction to be concluded in the first quarter of 2017. The value of the arrangement will not be disclosed, Fortum said.

Additionally, Fortum said it is preparing for the construction of the Ånstadblåheia and Sørfjord projects, expected to be commissioned in 2018 and 2019. When built the total installed capacity of the three wind farms would be approximately 170 MW.

“The purchase of these three excellent wind power projects is completely in line with our strategy to expand in solar and wind power. The fact that all the wind farms are situated in the same area in Norway enables high efficiency in operations and maintenance. I am also very pleased with the co-operation agreement with Nordkraft on the construction and operation of the wind farms,” said Kari Kautinen, Senior Vice President, M&A and Solar & Wind Development at Fortum.

“This is an important and strategic step for Nordkraft, securing the development of the Ånstadblåheia and Sørfjord wind projects and in addition reducing the financial risk for the Nordkraft Group. The transaction marks the beginning of a long-term partnership with Fortum and we believe that this co-operation will become a «win-win» for both parties,” said Eirik Frantzen, Nordkraft’s CEO.