Paramilitary militias nominally operating as part of the Iraqi armed forces in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) are using arms from Iraqi military stockpiles, provided by the US, Europe, Russia and Iran, to commit war crimes, revenge attacks and other atrocities, according to an Amnesty International report.

Amnesty International said that field research and detailed expert analysis of photographic and video evidence since June 2014 has found that these paramilitary militias have benefited from transfers of arms manufactured in at least 16 countries, which include tanks and artillery as well as a wide range of small arms.

The predominantly Shi’a militias have used those arms to facilitate the enforced disappearance and abduction of thousands of mainly Sunni men and boys, torture and extrajudicial executions as well as wanton destruction of property, Amnesty International said.

“International arms suppliers, including the USA, European countries, Russia and Iran, must wake up to the fact that all arms transfers to Iraq carry a real risk of ending up in the hands of militia groups with long histories of human rights violations,” said Patrick Wilcken, Researcher on Arms Control and Human Rights at Amnesty International.

“Any state selling arms to Iraq has to show that there are strict measures in place to make sure the weapons will not be used by paramilitary militias to flagrantly violate rights. If they haven’t done that, no transfer should take place.”

The Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) – comprised of as many as 40 or 50 distinct militias – were established in mid-2014 to aid in the fight against IS. In 2016, the PMU formally became part of the Iraqi armed forces, but have enjoyed government support since long before that, Amnesty International said.

The report focuses on four main militias that Amnesty International has documented committing serious human rights violations: Munathamat Badr (Badr Brigades or Badr Organization), ‘Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (League of the Righteous), Kata’ib Hizbullah (Hizbullah Brigades) and the Saraya al-Salam (Peace Brigades).

Amnesty International said its research shows how PMU militias have grown in power and influence since 2014. They receive arms and salaries from the Iraqi authorities, and have increasingly gone into battle or controlled checkpoints together with Iraqi troops. Under this cloak of official approval, some PMUs have been documented carrying out revenge attacks mainly targeting Sunni Arabs, and nobody is holding them to account.

“The Iraqi authorities have helped to arm and equip the PMU militias and pay their salaries – they must stop turning a blind eye to this systematic pattern of serious human rights violations and war crimes,” said Patrick Wilcken.

“Any militiamen fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Iraqi military must be thoroughly and rigorously vetted. Those suspected of committing serious violations must be removed from their ranks, pending judicial investigations and prosecutions. Unaccountable and unruly militias must be either truly brought into the fold and discipline of the armed forces, or disarmed and demobilized completely.”

The Iraqi authorities face tremendous security threats from IS, which continues to commit atrocities in areas under its control and to carry out deadly attacks on civilians elsewhere in Iraq. But measures responding to these threats must respect international human rights and humanitarian law.

By Dr. S. Chandrasekharan

It is more than a year and a half that the new constitution was promulgated. Yet there has been no progress at all in implementation as the parties are still quarreling over reconfiguration of different provinces.

The local body elections that are to precede other regional and national elections before January 2018 are bogged down firstly in the demarcation of the boundaries and secondly by two major groups opposing the conduct of the elections. The Madhesi Groups are insisting on the constitutional amendments before the elections, while the second largest political party- the UML is insisting on going ahead with the elections without the constitutional amendments.

In fact the UML sensing that it has an upper hand in the events, is now calling for Parliamentary polls directly to “remove any possibility of a constitutional vacuum.” What democratic credentials can they boast of when they have been systematically stalling the proceedings in the Parliament since November 29? I will not be surprised if they turn around and say that the same thing had happened in India too!

There has been no progress on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Rehabilitation and Reconstruction for the earthquake victims are moving at a snail’s pace though no politics is involved. Another surprising development is that the Government is unable to spend the bulk of its budget allotment this year so far.

Almost all stake holders in Nepal are responsible for this sorry state of affairs and it is unfortunate that India had also contributed a little to the mess! It is not surprising that former King Gyanendra who had generally kept away from politics should make an open statement that he is concerned with the developments in Nepal.

The blame should first be placed at the door of the Nepali Congress who were in power when the new constitution was promulgated. There was no urgency when many years had already been wasted to produce a constitution that was not inclusive and what was worse, over 30 percent of the population- the Madhesis who were affected by the new constitution were not consulted at all. The explanation that over 90 percent of the members of the interim parliament endorsed the new constitution does not hold water when a large proportion of the populace was ignored.

Too late in the day, the Indian government sent an emissary to delay the promulgation and go for a more inclusive constitution. There were two flaws in this approach. This was an open and active intervention and no country however small it is, would accept such an advice that would be an affront to their sovereignly and self respect. Second, it should have been done quietly behind doors much before the promulgation and people who should know and did know that such a non inclusive constitution coming out in a hurry would adversely affect the Madhesis and the stability of the region!

The Nepali Congress is riven by factions now and their time is spent more on dividing the spoils rather than concentrating on good administration. It was expected that after the exit of “dynastic politics’, the party would do better. On the other hand, it is getting worse with four groups openly declaring their separate identity within the party.

It is important that from a long term point of view for India that the Nepali Congress with it high democratic credentials survives and strengthens itself. For this, it would need a strong leader with charisma and this is lacking. Much hope was placed on younger leaders to take over the party and revive its old glory, but this has not happened. Even a potential charismatic youth leader like Gagan Thapa has not distinguished himself well in running the Health ministry!

One party that gained most at the expense of other parties is the UML led by former Prime Minister K.P. Oli who is riding high on a “nationalist plank” (read anti Indian). If the elections are held now there is no doubt that his party would get through in larger numbers at the expense of the other two parties- the Nepali Congress and the Maoists led by Prachanda. It is believed that Prachanda would not have gone for toppling the UML and its PM Oli, had it not been for the fear that he and his party were steadily losing against the UML. Prachanda’s frantic efforts to reconcile with those who had left him is a pointer. The call to Baburam Bhattarai recently is another case in this point. His efforts to bend backwards to please the Nepali Congress is not his style but he is doing it for his survival!

For many who have been following the developments in Nepal, it was surprising that K.P.Oli

should have turned totally against India. Today, leaving the Terai, anti Indian sentiment is sweeping in a large section of Nepali populace. Oli is being credited for standing up to India during the informal blockade that has caused havoc to the country’s economy. The blockade was conducted in the “No Man’s Land” by the agitating Madhesi groups, but it was widely believed that India had actively supported those groups. People in the valley refused to believe even today that Oli was toppled by the Maoists and the Nepali Congress and not at the behest of India!

The Madhesi leaders have not conducted themselves well in their agitation against the new constitution. After over fifty deaths and scores injured and with economy in shambles they have caused immense harm to the ordinary people. So far they have nothing to show by way of gain to the people and I am sure that many of them cannot go back to their villages without getting the constitution amended to some extent.

The Madhesi groups should have been satisfied when proportional representation in the legislature and in the state apparatus was agreed to by the government soon after the constitution was promulgated. Instead they focussed more on the reconfiguration of the provinces and forced the government to create another controversy by reconfiguring provinces 4 and 5 that were not called for by the people!

Another crisis may soon arise in April when the Nepali Congress should get the chance to take over the Prime Ministership from Prachanda. It was only an informal understanding and it is not clear whether Prachanda would be willing to give up without achieving anything so far!

What needs to be done now? :

1. The Madhesi Groups should for the present give up their demand for reconfiguration of the provinces and leave it to a high-powered Commission to review the boundaries of the provinces. The more they agitate, the more would be the UML gain at the expense of other parties. There is a danger of the country being polarised not by the Madhesi groups but by the UML.

2. Allow the local bodies elections to take place with either the old configuration or the new one recommended by the LBRC. (744 from 507). The latter would have been preferable but it should not at any rate delay the elections.

3. Allow the TRC to function without fear or favour and deal with the cases expeditiously. The country cannot claim to be at peace with itself until the war wounds are settled.

4. Expedite the reconstruction and rehabilitation work. Very little has been done so far though two winters have gone by.

By Brian Eyler, Courtney Weatherby and Richard Cronin*

The Stimson Center’s “Letters from the Mekong” series challenges the assumption that the current rapid pace of dam construction on the Mekong River will continue until the entire river is turned into a series of reservoirs. The construction of even a few large dams risks undermining food security in the world’s most productive freshwater fishery, and dams in China have already sharply reduced the delivery of nutrient-rich sediment needed to the Mekong Delta. However, Stimson’s research strongly suggests that not all of the planned dams will be built. Decreased financing capabilities of foreign investors, drought and climate change, and shifts in regional energy demand indicate reduced profitability and investor interest.

Falling far short of current plans for more than 100 dams on the Mekong mainstream and tributaries will have particular implications for Lao PDR, which has set the export of electricity as its top development priority in its quest to become the “Battery of Southeast Asia.” The lack of a strategic hydropower development plan has created a situation in which Lao PDR is likely to miss its revenue targets while risking severe damage to downstream rice and fish production in Vietnam and Cambodia. Stimson’s most recent report, A Call for Strategic, Basin-wide Energy Planning in Laos, concludes that it is not too late for a new approach that optimizes the tradeoffs among energy, export revenues, and food security, and protects the integrity the Mekong for the benefit of all riparian countries.

A new approach in Lao PDR would maintain the existing focus on exporting electricity to regional markets but also include setting a realistic target of total electricity production from a mix of sources, notably hydropower, solar, and wind. The portfolio mix would be optimized by (1) incorporating sound political, financial, environmental, and social risk analysis into the decision making process; (2) integrating multiple uses of water such as hydropower, transportation, irrigation, and flood control at a basin-wide scale in ways that addresses the needs of downstream countries; and (3) avoid building unnecessary dams in Lao PDR given the associated social and environmental risks.[i] With this strategy in mind, dams with high exposure to financial risk or the greatest environmental impacts would be replaced by alternative projects and, increasingly, efficiency gains from smart infrastructure systems such as effective power grid management.

The Lao government currently lacks the capacity and resources to implement a strategic, basin-wide energy plan because it depends almost entirely on outside developers to build dams under commercial build-own-operate-transfer or BOOT concessions. Its dams are being built in an uncoordinated, project-by-project manner with no prior input from the intergovernmental Mekong River Commission or neighboring countries. As a result, there is at present little opportunity for synergistic planning to optimize the benefits of water use on a basin-wide scale.

Regional Electricity Demand Dynamics

Laos PDR’s economic development plans are almost entirely premised on exporting most of its 24 GW of hydropower potential to neighboring countries. However, regional energy policy shifts call into question whether the anticipated demand for Lao hydropower will materialize. Thailand is currently the primary purchaser of Lao hydropower, but it has a history of overestimating demand. As Thailand refines its energy projections and starts to actively pursue energy efficiency, demand for Lao electricity is likely to drop substantially. Cambodia and Myanmar are potential export markets as both face significant domestic electricity shortages. But energy security concerns are prioritizing the development of domestic sources to avoid future dependency on imports. Myanmar is already developing its large natural gas, hydropower, and solar potential, which is likely to outstrip its domestic needs. Myanmar is likely to become a net power exporter and a competitor to Lao PDR.

Vietnam stands out as possibly the largest future market for electricity from Lao PDR. Vietnam’s electricity consumption is currently growing by 10-12% per year and is projected to grow at 7-10% per year through 2030. In 2015, Vietnam moved from being a net exporter of energy to a net importer as domestic coal demand sky-rocketed.[ii]

Vietnam included this expected growth in its updated Power Development Plan VII, which projects that it will need 130 GW of electricity by 2030.[iii] The updated plan responds to market and climate change pressures by increasing funding for renewable energy and eliminating some proposed coal power plants. But coal will still play a major role, rising from 28% of national power generation in 2014 to more than 50% in 2030.[iv] Furthermore, PDP VII prioritizes meeting demand growth with domestic resources and fails to fully account for regional trade opportunities. Electricity subsidies currently discourage imports of electricity from Lao PDR, but these will be probably phased out as Vietnam runs out of domestic power options.

PDP VII includes 860 MW of power imports from Lao PDR by 2020.[v] This is negligible given Lao PDR’s hydropower potential and the relative affordability of its electricity. Vietnam recently signed an MOU with Lao PDR to buy 5,000 MW of electricity by 2020 but this still represents less than 3% of Vietnam’s electricity demand. [vi] Vietnam could meet its power needs at low financial and environmental cost by substantially increasing its imports of Lao hydropower. Vietnam could thereby take advantage of its role as a major importer to protect its highly productive Mekong Delta from the impacts of upstream dams.

Recently, the global price of solar and wind energy has declined significantly, with the price of solar panels dropping by more than 40% from 2010 to 2014.^[vii] Prices will continue to fall, making solar and wind competitive with fossil fuels. Vietnam’s energy prices are estimated to rise to $0.092/kWh by 2020 due to the higher cost of imported coal. This would make both Lao hydropower, which sells for $0.06-$0.07/kWh, and domestic or imported solar, which sells for $0.072/kWh, affordable and cleaner alternatives to coal.[viii]

Expanding both renewables and power exports would help Lao PDR meet two of its six mitigation targets in its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to the UNFCC: Target 2 “To increase the share of renewable energy to 30% of energy consumption by 2025” and Target 5 “To build large-scale (>15 MW) hydropower plants to provide clean electricity to neighbouring countries.”

Making the Case for a Lao National Power Grid

A key component of a Lao hydropower strategy is a national grid that ensures reliable electricity exports to regional markets and meets domestic power needs. Despite building over 30 large dams, Lao PDR’s electricity distribution infrastructure is poor. The main barrier to selling significant amounts of electricity to Vietnam is the lack of a national grid that would allow the country to respond flexibly to demand fluctuations from neighboring countries and avoid a possible excess in hydropower supply. This problem is well understood by the Lao government, which seeks greater flexibility but struggles to predict or maximize revenues from power sales.

Lao PDR’s transmission network is fragmented into largely unconnected sub-grids.[ix] As of 2016, these sub-grids sell and buy power over low voltage connections along sections of its international border. A few 500 kV lines link dams in Lao PDR to major markets in Thailand, and several cross-border 220 kV lines from Thailand transmit electricity to high demand areas in Lao PDR. For Lao PDR to efficiently export electricity, these lines need to be upgraded. Without a national grid, its ability to negotiate favorable export prices is limited.

An ADB study found that with a national grid, Lao PDR could sell power from existing and planned dams on Mekong tributaries and receive export revenue equal to what could be earned from building nine mainstream dams. This would require upgrading older tributary dams and linking them to the national grid, but would give Lao PDR the short-term revenue that it needs without further disruption to the Mekong.[x] A grid would also allow solar and wind projects to feed in and complement hydropower.

The weakness of Lao PDR’s existing patchwork of small grids is why the ADB’s top bilateral investment project is the “Design and Funding of a Background Grid for the Lao PDR.” This would involve “completing the north-south 500 kV line in the Lao PDR, to enable the Lao national grid to transmit power across the country and provide high value-added services from its hydropower plants to neighbors in the Greater Mekong Subregion.” The project summary states that the 500 kV line at a cost of $400 million would allow Lao PDR to more efficiently generate power for both export and domestic consumption, while filling a major gap in the regional power grid.[xi]

Recommendations

Many observers think the door has closed on influencing in Lao hydropower development, but Stimson’s conversations with senior government officials reveal a renewed interest in external engagement on a suite of issues, including power generation optimization, power distribution management, and public participation in dam resettlement. While the space for civil society and non-government engagement is limited, there are new opportunities for government-to-government engagement on hydropower development.

Given the growing recognition within the Lao government of the risks in the current hydropower development trajectory, the time is right to present alternatives that would meet its development needs and support the optimization of the Mekong at the regional scale.

Stimson recommends:

1. ADB, US, and other donors should fund a feasibility study and design of a national power grid for Lao PDR. A national grid has been an ADB priority for years and it should consider a broader investment to better connect Lao PDR’s sub-grids, improve linkages with neighboring countries, and provide smart grid technology for most efficient deployment of power. This should happen within the next four years so that Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam can adjust energy development plans accordingly.
2. Vietnam should substantially increase its power purchase agreements with Lao PDR. Vietnam should see this as an opportunity to meet its international climate change commitments and to gain a seat at the table when in deciding which dams get built. Lao hydropower could replace the expensive coal power plants currently in PDP VII. Given that power purchase agreements are a major factor in determining the feasibility of a dam, Vietnam could use these PPAs to ensure that dams that threaten the Mekong Delta are not built.

*About the authors:
Richard P. Cronin is a Distinguished Fellow at Stimson. He works on transboundary and nontraditional security issues in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea, from a political economy perspective.

Courtney Weatherby is a Research Associate with the Southeast Asia program at Stimson. Her research focuses on infrastructure development, climate change, and energy issues in Southeast Asia, particularly the food-water-energy nexus in the Mekong River basin.

Brian Eyler is the Director of Stimson’s Southeast Asia program. Eyler is an expert on transboundary issues in the Mekong region and specializes in China’s economic cooperation with Southeast Asia. He has spent more than 15 years in living and working in China.

Source:
This article was published by the Stimson Center.

Notes:
[i]Costanza, et al. “Planning Approaches for Water Resource Development in the Lower Mekong Basin.” Portland State University, 2011.

By Jayshree Sengupta

South Asian Regional Cooperation (SAARC) seems to have reached its nadir. With Brexit having shaken up the European Union in June 2016, it is not surprising that the least economically integrated region of the world is breaking apart. In general, the rise of nationalism the world over seems to have relegated regional cooperation to a lower rank in the list of a country’s priorities.

The SAARC meeting which was supposed to be held in Islamabad on November 15 to 16th 2016 has been postponed indefinitely because India withdrew from it, protesting against Pakistan’s hand in the Uri terrorist attack. All others except Nepal, the current head of SAARC withdrew. The chances are that the 19th SAARC meeting may not take place in 2017 in case all members are not present. This is a very disturbing development that would hinder the progress of regional cooperation in South Asia. But it signifies that regional cooperation in the midst of two acrimonious neighbours cannot flourish anymore. Only if there is sub-regional cooperation among countries of the region can there be some success in achieving the goals of development and poverty reduction.

Begun in 1987, SAARC is only 30 years old. Today it comprises of eight members—Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. It is a shame that whatever progress has been achieved so far will be wiped out by the recent and indefinite postponement of the 19th Summit.

Regional cooperation is important for reducing inequality among member countries and promoting people to people contact that can increase tourism and enhance cultural ties. South Asia happens to be the one of the most backward regions of the world containing 23.4 per cent of the world’s population but accounting only for 6.6 percent of the world’s GDP (in terms of Purchasing Power Parity). It contains 40 per cent of the world’s poor surviving on less than $1.25 a day.

The achievements of SAARC have not been spectacular though India has reduced custom duties on most product imports from the region. India has been especially generous to Bangladesh and Nepal with whom it has an open border. There have been cooperation deals signed in the fields of agriculture, energy, SMEs, investment, services and human development at the 18th SAARC meeting in Kathmandu. Compared to the monumental problems all the countries face in the region towards eradicating poverty the achievements have been rather meagre. There are still a lot of barriers to travelling freely between the countries of the region due to lack of connectivity and transportation. Geopolitics has taken over geo-economics in most cases and even when the countries concerned know the clear economic gains, they are reluctant to let down barriers to trade and investment for geopolitical reasons. Pakistan blocked three connectivity agreements proposed in the Kathmandu summit because Pakistan had not completed its “internal process” to endorse them.

Even though there is widespread smuggling going on between Pakistan and India the total quantum of trade between the two countries at $2.6 billion which is meagre as a proportion of India’s total trade with the world. Pakistan has a huge trade deficit with India. Even so more trade and investment could have eased the political impasse as it would have increased the incomes and living standards of people in both countries. Yet there is a tremendous amount of mistrust between the two governments on economic issues. Pakistan is afraid of being swamped by Indian goods, if it allows freer access to Indian goods.

Even though India granted the MFN status in 1995, Pakistan has been reluctant to reciprocate. Though the Pakistan Cabinet approved of it in November 2011, it has continued to delay . Now it has come up with another type of trade facilitation—Non Discriminatory Market Access Agreement which is not the same as MFN which means that Pakistan’s tariffs will continue to be charged at differential rates for Indian products as compared to Pakistan’s other trade partners.

Political problems have stood in the way of cordial economic relations between the two countries. Pakistan however has good relations with Sri Lanka and has a Free Trade Agreement since 2006. China’s role is very important in the region. Out of the two huge countries dominating the region—China and India, China is gaining ground in terms of increasing trade and doling out monetary help for infrastructure building under its One Belt One Road Project. All the SAARC members have forged closer trade ties with China.

Nepal is specially becoming closer and China is investing large amount in it. In March 2016, former Prime Minister of Nepal K.P. Oli, paid a visit to China and signed 10 MOUs to boost economic cooperation that include an agreement to facilitate trade and transit between the two neighbours, concessional loan for constructing Pokhara Regional Airport and an economic and technical cooperation agreement. With India, in 2016 two MOUs were signed worth $2 billion. The first was $1 bn line of credit and second was $1 bn assistance for rebuilding after the earthquake.

Bangladesh is also receiving a huge loan of $21 billion from China making India’s loan of $2 billion look puny. There are 27 agreements and MOUs including 12 loan and mutual agreements in building roads, bridges, capacity building and skill development, BCIM-EC initiative and industrial production. China is number one trade partner of Bangladesh and it imported $9.8 billion worth of goods in 2015-16.

In Pakistan, China is spending $46 billion in infrastructure that includes the building of economic corridor between Kashgar, Xinjiang province of China and Gwadar, a Pakistani port on the Arabian sea. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif recently inaugurated a 340 MW power plant built with Chinese aid and pledged that the menace of blackouts will last only till 2018. It is also giving soft loans of $1 billion for three road projects in the China- Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Chinese President Xi Jinping toured South Asia promoting the Silk Road initiative and became the first Chinese Head of State to visit Maldives where China is upgrading Maldives’ international airport after the cancellation of a deal with an Indian firm in 2012.

In Sri Lanka, China was financing s $1.4 billion “Colombo Port City” project but due to some controversy, President Maithripala Sirisena cancelled it in 2015. But overall since 2005, China has funded or constructed 70 per cent of new infrastructure projects.

Thus SAARC clearly needs to be reorganized because in its current form it is unlikely to work with the souring of relations between Pakistan and India after the Uri attack and Pakistan’s cosying up to China in building its infrastructure, some of it through POK. China is taking a more active role in all the member SAARC countries and they seem to be having strong bilateral relations with China and not with India, the biggest country in the region.

Admitting China in SAARC as a full member instead of being one of the Observers along with Australia, Iran, Republic of Korea, Mauritius, Myanmar EU, US and Japan, was discussed at the Kathmandu summit but it was not supported by India. India’s role will remain important in SAARC in terms of geography and population (occupying 70 per cent of the area and population) and GDP. Since SAARC has faced many hitches in the past, several sub regional initiatives have turned out to be successful like the SASEC (South Asian Sub Regional Economic cooperation comprising of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka and BBIN (involving Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal). BBIN sub region signed a Motor Vehicles agreement to ensure free and unfettered movement of passenger, personal and cargo vehicles. Around $30 billion regional projects have been started under SASEC in areas of transport, energy, trade facilitation, and information, communication technology. Much will depend on how deeply interested Prime Minister Modi is in promoting regional cooperation and what relations India has with its neighbours in 2017. Pakistan’s cooperation is also vital for SAARC to succeed and revived.

The Islamic State’s New Year’s Eve bombing of an upscale nightclub in Istanbul has fuelled culture wars in Turkey and Israel and laid bare aspirations among youth in socially restrictive Muslim societies for more liberal lifestyles.

In doing so, the bombing of Istanbul’s Reina restaurant cum nightclub that killed 39 people, mostly tourists, spotlighted wider societal tensions that underlie the wave of jihadist attacks that have hit Turkey and other Muslim societies in recent years. They spotlight a struggle that more often than not is fought by youth who opt for individual ways of carving out spaces in which they can circumvent restrictive social mores rather than organizing politically.

To be sure, the Islamic State’s multiple attacks in Turkey intend to primarily raise the cost of Turkish intervention in neighbouring Syria’s civil war. They are nevertheless also a violent effort to strengthen those societal forces in Turkey and elsewhere that favour a society based on a puritan interpretation of Islam’s social mores. Praising the attack, the Islamic State (IS) noted that its “heroic Caliphate soldier tore down one of the most famous nightclubs where Christians celebrated their polytheistic feast.”

The funeral of Lian Zaher Nasser, a 19-year-old from the town of Tira in the Galilee gunned down in the Reina attack, provided an anti-dote to IS’s assertion. In doing so, it spotlighted the struggle for Islam’s soul in Israeli Palestinian society. Thousands, including Palestinian members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and representatives of the Palestine Authority attended the funeral.

So, did many young women, bent on defending Ms. Nasser’s and their right to enjoy life in the face of criticism that she had violated Islamic mores by visiting a nightclub and celebrating New Year, a secular feast of the infidels. Their struggle often marks a rejection of the more traditional social mores of their elders.

It is fought not only by defying traditional codes but also by young women seeking higher education in much the same way that soccer has emerged for young Palestinian men in Israel as what football scholar Tamer Sorek calls an “integrative enclave” that allows them to escape Israeli discrimination and Palestinian societal inhibitions. Their ambitions are fuelled by the fact that unlike youth in predominantly Muslim societies elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, they are exposed to Israel’s more open society.

“This attempted slander is another murder of Lian,” Ala’a Abdulahi, a native of Tira who survived the attack on Reina, told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, referring to conservative criticism of their visit to the nightclub. “We arrived in Istanbul as independent young women and it is our right to celebrate the New Year’s in a well-known and exclusive club, and whoever this does not fit can go and break their head,”

Her words were echoed by municipal leaders of Tira. “We are proud of Lian and her friends. We take pride in a young generation that is steadfast against the symbols of darkness and obscurity. We strive for life and young people among us who decide what is good and what is not. No one will force them to do anything. Those who try to impose their views, tell them: your position is unacceptable. These dark forces will not deter the young lovers of life. We represent true Islam. There is no place for those who adopt a false jihad,” Mayor Mamoun Abd El Hai said in a eulogy at Ms. Nasser’s funeral.

The defense of Ms. Nasser’s right to shape her own life reflects the divide aggravated by the Reina attack between secular and religious segments of society in Turkey that like Israel is far more open than most societies in the region. The impact of creeping ultra-conservatism in Turkey was evident in a statement in December by the Turkish government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs or Diyanet declaring the celebration of New Year “alien” to Turkish values.

The statement followed an Islamist campaign seeking to persuade Turkish Muslims not to celebrate Christmas. In one incident, posters pictured Santa Claus being publicly punched by faithful Muslims. In another, ultra-nationalists organized a protest in which they pointed guns at the head of Santa Claus.

To be fair, Islamist groups in Turkey have a long history of opposition to celebrations of Christmas and New Year without resorting to violence. There is moreover no love lost between IS and the Diyanet, which the jihadists view as apostate.

The bombing has nonetheless sharpened the battle lines in Turkey where many secularists feel that the government’s promotion of conservative values and sweeping crackdown on critics in the wake of last July’s failed coup attempt has divided rather than united the country and deepened the social divide.

While Israeli Palestinians and Turks openly challenge conservative mores, Saudis need to be more circumspect even if they embrace the same values. Seven Saudis were among the victims of the attack on Reina.

Speaking to Al Arabiya, Saudi journalist Mona al-Nasser stressed that Reina’s nightclub was in a separate section from the restaurant and criticised those who had condemned Saudis who frequented the establishment. “I had personally dined at Reina before and like any other restaurant in Europe or in other Western cities, there are alcoholic beverages and music being played. Reina is one of the most elitist restaurants in Istanbul that is visited by many Arabs over the years,” Al-Nasser said.

All in all, IS’s strategy may have backfired by attacking Reina. If anything, it has emboldened Muslim youth, particularly in countries whose nationals were among the victims, to stand up for their right to craft lives that reflect a more liberal, less restrictive interpretation of Islam. They more often than not take a stand individually in the quiet choices they make rather than in efforts to effect change collectively.

By Joy Mitra*

The Line of Control (LoC) between India and Pakistan is witnessing a fresh spiral of violence post the Indian “surgical” strikes of 29 September 2016. The spike in violence seems to suggest that the ceasefire agreement of 2003 between the two countries no longer holds water. Some within and outside government circles have begun speaking in terms of ‘war’ and the general impression created is that the agreement has lost its sanctity. This may however be jumping the gun too soon given that the ‘dialogue of violence’ is not happening along the entire stretch of the LoC and there are more conventional threshold levels to be crossed. The risks to general stability in the region, however, remain entrenched in the dynamics of the conflict and could lead to an uncontrollable conflict trajectory.

Sanctity of the 2003 Ceasefire-Agreement

It must be noted that even before the Uri attack and the Indian strike back, certain sectors along the LoC were witnessing higher concentration of violent incidents. Post the Indian strike back the first repercussions were more an increase in the intensity of violence along those sectors and not a general escalation of the conflict along the LoC. Therefore, the ceasefire accords had value until the first spatial threshold was crossed with the attack at the Indian military base close to the Jammu border, which India refers to as the ‘international border’and Pakistan as the ‘working boundary’. This may still not be a general breach of the geographical threshold on the military escalation ladder given that the current spate of violence is still confined to the state of Jammu and Kashmir and ceasefire violations do not necessarily imply a ceasefire breakdown. The intensity of violations may however go up at a certain spatial and temporal location.

Probable Escalation Dynamics

Additionally, while both sides have resorted to heavy artillery and mortar shelling, neither has vertically escalated in terms of introduction of air assets or other platforms. The pattern of attacks clearly demonstrate that military installations are the prime targets. A qualitative threshold can be breached here in terms of the choice of targets. This will lead to a geographical expansion of the threat-perception and spread the Indian security forces thin.

The prospects for any horizontal escalation could entail attacks south into Punjab. Going by the history of previous such episodes, this escalation should not happen. India and Pakistan seem to have systematised a periodic bout of violence along the LoC into their relationship that ebbs and flows conditional on the political milieu associated with it. In 2013, a similar episode of violence saw the ‘Mutually Hurting Stalemate (MHS)’ reached before any spatial escalation.

Subjective Stalemates

It is not necessary for an objective MHS to be realised. The stalemate could be a dynamic normal with both sides not necessarily sustaining equal measure of losses, albeit it is the perception of this normal that matters. MHS can be reached if both sides believe that neither can escalate to victory and a negotiated solution is possible, i.e. both sides perceive the other to be willing to negotiate. Additionally, the victory condition can also be subjective.

At present, the dynamic normal that exists between India and Pakistan may seem like an objective MHS to neutral observers but the rhetoric on the Indian side suggests that it believes it has established escalation dominance. This seems to be part of the victory condition that India has defined: escalation dominance which goes in conjunction with diplomatic efforts to internationally isolate Pakistan. Without going into the merits/demerits of the policy objective, it is reasonable to assume that the politico-military leadership believes it can achieve this victory condition and this translates into unwillingness to consider a negotiated settlement, when a better outcome can be achieved by coercive bargaining.

In Pakistan, public attention is occupied with events in the domestic polity. The civilian arm has made attempts to negotiate, and this option would not have been pursued without blessings from their security establishment. Even if Pakistan believes that the MHS has been reached, it is then left with the choice of preventing India from achieving its victory condition, only by sustaining the conflict long enough to impress upon India that a negotiated outcome is the only way to avoid the loss-loss scenario of a prisoner’s dilemma.

Unpredictable Conflict Trajectory

The Nagrota attack seems to be a demonstration of Pakistan’s intent to continue the mutual hurt if not in the form of a stalemate. This could also be a consequence of increased risk propensity due to loss perception that Pakistan might have because of cumulative losses it has incurred in diplomatic, military and reputational terms. The existence of loss perception can lead to increased propensity to continue the conflict, perhaps even escalate in the sub-conventional domain. Pakistan’s intent to continue the mutual hurt may however have consequences for public perception in India and not necessarily in favour of restraint because public perception is a double-edged sword. A sustained campaign to inflict losses can generate enough vitriol to bind the government to its rhetoric and could lead to uncontrollable consequences.

In conclusion, periodic bouts of such violence, combined with loss perception in Pakistan and aggressive rhetoric in India despite the existence of an objective MHS, can take a trajectory which may not be in either side’s control.

* Joy Mitra
Research Intern, NSP, IPCS
E-mail: joy.stratcom@outlook.com

A Syria-based Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant leader and facilitator was struck and killed by a coalition precision airstrike Dec. 31, 2016, in Raqqa, Syria, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported Friday.

Mahmud al-Isawi, was a long-standing ISIL member who supported the organization’s media and intelligence structure in Fallujah before relocating to Raqqa, the release said. He controlled the flow of instructions and finances between ISIL-held areas and ISIL leaders, and provided support to propaganda and intelligence outlets.

The release said al-Isawi was also known to have facilitated trans-regional travel with other ISIL external operations coordinators and had a close working and personal relationship with Abd al-Basit al-Iraqi, the emir of ISIL’s Middle East attack network, who was killed in a coalition airstrike, Nov. 2, 2016.

Al-Isawi was the 16th significant member of ISIL’s external operations network to be killed by coalition forces in 2016, the release said. His death, combined with the recent successive deaths of other ISIL leaders plotting terrorist attacks, has degraded ISIL’s trans-regional attack and facilitation network, and is forcing ISIL to increase their focus on internal security, the release noted.

The strike was conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, and the wider international community. The coalition will continue to track and eliminate ISIL terrorists who plot and conduct attacks against member nations and allies, wherever they are hiding, officials said.

The lone suspect in a deadly shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida is reported to be a former National Guard member who was hospitalized for a mental health evaluation last year after hearing voices that urged him to commit acts of violence.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation says it has not ruled out terrorism in the deadly shooting Friday. FBI agent George Piro said at a Friday night news conference the bureau is “pursuing every possible lead,” including terrorism.

Law enforcement officials holding the suspect say he is 26-year-old Esteban Santiago of Alaska who arrived at the airport Friday on a flight from Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska.

He is believed to have opened fire at the airport, killing five people and wounding eight more before being detained. Piro said the gunman had a semi-automatic handgun.

At first, police were not certain whether more than one gunman was involved, so they checked everyone closely before allowing people back into the terminal. Airport operations were shut down for hours, and flights bound for Fort Lauderdale from across the country were grounded in distant cities.

Authorities eventually said there was only one suspect, and that no shots were fired by any of the police agencies at the scene. The suspect was detained after he ran out of ammunition and lay down on the floor of the terminal, spread-eagled.

Suspect served in Iraq

Santiago is reported to be a former National Guard member serving in Puerto Rico. Last year, he voluntarily checked into a hospital for mental health evaluation. He is reported to have said he was hearing imaginary voices, some of them telling him to join the terrorist group Islamic State.

Santiago spent 10 months in Iraq in 2010 and 2011. He later joined the Army National Guard in Alaska, the largest and most remote U.S. state. He is believed to have served in the Guard there from 2014 until August last year when he was discharged for unsatisfactory performance. Law enforcement officials also said Santiago spent some time working for a security company in Anchorage.

Other accounts said Santiago was discharged from the National Guard last year for unsatisfactory performance.

The young man is reported to have checked into a hospital in Alaska voluntarily for a mental-health evaluation last year after telling authorities he had been hearing voices in his head, some of them urging him to commit acts of violence.

He also is said to have told federal agents he received messages that the U.S government was ordering him to join the terrorist group Islamic State, but there was no indication he acted on that in any way.

Law-enforcement officials at the scene of the airport shooting said they believed Santiago had traveled with a handgun in a locked case in his checked luggage — a normal practice for licensed owners of weapons. They said he retrieved the luggage after arriving in Florida and loaded the gun in a restroom before walking toward travelers waiting for their bags, where he opened fire.

‘Senseless act of evil’

Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, spoke to reporters several hours after the shooting, which he called “a senseless act of evil,” and asked for prayers for all the victims.

Scott said his staff has been in touch with airports around the state since the shooting to find out what resources they need.

“My imperative is to keep everybody safe,” he said. “Everybody’s working hard to find out exactly what happened and I don’t want this to ever happen again.”

President Barack Obama spoke by telephone with Scott, offering his condolences to the victims of the shooting and their families, and also pledged federal authorities’ full assistance in investigating the “horrific” shooting.

Scott said he called President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence about the shooting and was assured they would “do everything in their power” to provide whatever assistance is needed.

Obama told ABC News Friday he was “heartbroken” by the shooting, and added: “These kinds of tragedies have happened too often during the years that I’ve been president. … The pain, the grief, the shock that they [victims and witnesses] must be going through is enormous.”

VOA’s Pentagon reporter Carla Babb contributed to this report.

Hacking “had absolutely no effect” on the outcome of the 2016 US presidential elections, President-elect Donald Trump has announced following a meeting with intelligence officials.

Having described his meeting with top representatives of the US intelligence community as “constructive,” Trump said on Friday that no cyber hacking from Russia, China or any other country had affected the vote.

“While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election,” Trump said in his statement.

“There was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines,” he added.

The Republican president-elect claimed that there had been “attempts to hack the Republican National Committee (RNC).” However, thanks to the Comittee’s “strong hacking defenses,” they all failed, he said.

Having proclaimed “America’s safety and security” a “number one priority,” Trump announced he would appoint a team to draft plans on how to repel any cyber attacks on the US in the future. However, he added, “the methods, tools and tactics” of enforcing cyber security would not be made public.

“That will benefit those who seek to do us harm,” Trump said.

Having repeatedly questioned the accusations of Russia’s alleged – but not proven – interference in the recent presidential elections, Trump was finally briefed on the allegations on Friday.

Before the briefing by intelligence agencies, details from a classified report on the alleged Russian hacking had been leaked to several media outlets. “Who gave them this report and why?” Trump asked on Twitter, and later demanded a congressional investigation of the leak.

I had a constructive meeting and conversation with the leaders of the Intelligence Community this afternoon. I have tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation.

While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful.

Whether it is our government, organizations, associations or businesses we need to aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks. I will appoint a team to give me a plan within 90 days of taking office. The methods, tools and tactics we use to keep America safe should not be a public discussion that will benefit those who seek to do us harm. Two weeks from today I will take the oath of office and America’s safety and security will be my number one priority.

At the mouth of Algiers’ fabled Casbah sits the decommissioned Serkardji prison. During the struggle to free Algeria from French rule, combatants and militants found themselves housed in this awful jail. “It is hell,” wrote Rabah Bitat, one of the founders of the National Liberation Front (FLN), who had spent time in the prison. “Men are beaten with iron bars, the heat is horrible and they are given salted water to drink.” The prison sits silent now and is being turned into a Museum of National Memory.

Commemoration of the war of independence is everywhere inside Algiers. A short walk from Serkardji, inside the Casbah, is a water tap encased in a beautiful tile overhang. The plaque above says that the water tap is in honour of four militants, each of whom was guillotined in Serkardji in 1957: Touati Said, Radi Hmida, Rahal Boualem and Bellamine Mohand. Certainly, streets are named for the great heroes of the FLN—Larbi Ben Mahdi and Mourad Didouche—and there are statues in the major squares of the great figures of national liberation such as the 19th century rebel Abdelkader. But these are memorials of the state. The little water tap is a more modest, more popular memorial. So too are pictures on the walls of restaurants and shops. A restaurant at the Circle of Martyrs is named for Abderrahmane Taleb, a young chemistry student who was the main bomb-maker for the FLN in Algiers in the 1950s. Taleb was guillotined at Serkaradji in 1958. “For Algerians,” Taleb said at his trial to his French judge, “the guillotine will henceforth have the same significance as the cross in your churches.”

Down the road from the water tap, past many men on crutches, veterans of one war or another, is the workshop of the carpenter Khaled Mahiout. On his wall, he has pictures of old Algeria. In the midst of the gallery is a shrine to Zohra Drif, the woman who had bombed the Milk Bar, a frequent stop for French settlers between trips to the beach and their homes. That bombing deepened the French attack on the Casbah, the heart of the resistance inside Algiers. The bomb blast was in retaliation for the killing of FLN militants at Serkadji. When challenged about the bombings of civilian areas, the FLN leader Abane Ramdane said: “I see hardly any difference between the girl who places a bomb in the Milk Bar and the French aviator who bombards a mechta [village neighbourhood] or drops napalm on a zone interdite [restricted zone].”

The morality of the anti-colonial war was stark. Harsh racism and violence was visited upon Algerians. It was common for the French to refer to the Algerian as sale raton, dirty little rat, which morphed into ratonnade, the rat hunt, which was the French phrase for their massacres of Algerians. “We were not brought up to hate,” said Zohra Drif many years later. She remembered Larbi Ben Mahdi’s interaction with a French journalist, who asked him if it was not cowardly to use “women’s baskets to carry bombs”. He answered, “Doesn’t it seem even more cowardly to attack defenceless villages with napalm bombs that kill thousands of times more? Obviously, planes would make things easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.”

Akram’s caution

A young boy, Akram, runs past me. He is on his way home from school. The Casbah is known as a place of great poverty although what one sees is a great dignity. Corrugated iron roofs are repaired with strips of plastic, held down with bricks. TV dishes sprout like mushrooms beside colourful bedding, which is drying in the winter sun. Old buildings seem perilously close to collapse. Children run through the streets, cheerful. Akram is like them. I ask him innocently: “All good with you?” He bristles at my question. “How can we be good? You know our situation,” he says with his hands gesturing to the area.

A decade ago, Boudina Mustapha, a former death-row prisoner at Serkadji who escaped the guillotine, told the government newspaper El Moudjahid about his concerns for the youth. “It’s a disaster,” he said. “Today we see 20-year-olds throwing themselves into the sea to flee this country. While I, when I was the same age, was sentenced to death.” To commemorate the foundation of the country is one thing; to provide hope to young people in the present is another.

A new report titled “Researching Arab Mediterranean Youth: Towards a New Social Contract” shows that Algeria suffers from a youth unemployment rate of 32 per cent. This is a striking figure. Mustafa Morane, who teaches sociology and population studies at the University of Khemis Miliana, authored the chapter on Algeria. He says that the government’s approach to youth unemployment is to offer grants for entrepreneurship. But the education system, he says, does not “provide the minimum needs of the labour market”, meaning that the youth do not have the skills necessary to take advantage of the loans. Migration, Morane writes in his study, is a “last resort” for the youth. There is a great deal of potential for the youth in Algeria, an oil-rich country, says Morane, but the government does not have a policy for the youth.

Meeting Abdelhakim Bettache, Mayor of Algiers Centre, provides a window into the problems faced by the country. Bettache is sitting across from the old post office, which is closed and which will be renovated into another museum. I ask him about the situation of the unemployed, almost one in three young Algerians. “They are the luxury jobless,” he says with a smirk. “They have a packet of cigarettes, an iPhone and a cup of coffee.” There is, Bettache says, “no problem of the unemployed. There are no protests for jobs.” His certainty is unnerving.

There is no point raising the issues of the Mouvement des Chomeurs (the Movement of the Unemployed) with Bettache. On July 5, 2012, Tahar Belabes, from the provincial town of Ouargla, led a protest in Algiers’ May 1 Square. The protest was the first major action of the National Committee for the Defence of the Rights of Unemployed Workers. The state arrested some of their key activists. They are still in operation, hoping to bring the question of the youth, such as young Akram, to the centre of discussions about Algeria’s future.

War and Oil

The Casbah is marked not only by the Algerian war of independence against the French but also by the “black decade” of the 1990s when the Algerian state plunged into war against extremist elements (formed around the Islamic Salvation Front and the Armed Islamic Group). In 1962, a popular slogan that echoed across Algeria was Seba’a snin, barakat! (Seven years, that’s enough!). The slogan suggested the exhaustion of the Algerian people with the privations and dangers of the war of independence, which lasted from 1954 to 1961. But three decades later, Algeria lurched once more into a terrible war that claimed tens of thousands of lives. There are few monuments to this war. It is not only an embarrassment but also a festering sore.

No stomach for rebellion

The Arab Spring did not come full-throated into Algeria largely because of the experience with civic disorder in the 1990s. What has happened to Libya and to Syria further discourages any kind of rebellion. There is no stomach for it. Extremism was not expelled from Algeria. The army was able to defeat the Armed Islamic Group with ferocious violence, but its hardened fighters lurk on the margins of Algeria (which is a vast country, four times the size of France). One of its allies, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and became the core of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The AQIM operates in the Sahara, across terrain that cuts through southern Algeria to link Libya to Mali. Old veterans of the “black decade” in Algeria and of the Afghan wars—such as Mokhtar Belmokhtar and Abdelhamid Abou Zeid—led the AQIM to victory in northern Mali and then led attacks on Algerian oil installations. Their presence dampens any possibility for protests in Algeria.

In 2013, Belmokhtar’s unit seized the gas fields at Amenas in southern Algeria and took 800 people hostage. The Algerian army fought them off but only after considerable loss of life. Striking the gas and oil fields in the south points a finger at Algeria’s great vulnerability—it relies on oil and gas to maintain its social peace. With energy prices low, Algeria’s state exchequer suffers. Any attack such as this threatens the stability of the country. Foreign investment will dry up and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will downgrade Algeria’s ability to borrow money to cover its fragile balance of payments.

Over the past decade, the Algerian government has hoped to enter into private-public partnerships to reinvigorate its energy sector. Foreign energy companies and the IMF have urged Algeria to liberalise its economy. In 2000, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika selected Chakib Khelil to run the Oil Ministry, Abdul Latif Benachenhou to be the Finance Minister and Abdulhamid al-Tamar to be the Minister of Privatisation. These were the “economic reformers” who would deliver Algeria to globalisation. In 2005, these men, with backing from the army, pushed a new hydrocarbons law that allowed foreign domination of Algeria’s essential sector, energy. The Workers’ Party, led by Louisa Hanoune, and others fought against the sale of oil and gas to foreign companies. A few years later, the government changed its mind. The “reformers” found themselves out of job and Algeria retained its old laws.

Samia Zennadi, who runs the publishing house APIC Editions, told me about the role played by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in this struggle. When Chavez heard that Algeria, a crucial country in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), was going to privatise its oil, he made an unscheduled visit to meet Bouteflika. Chavez made the case that selling the oil would weaken Algeria and open it up to colonial intervention. Bouteflika, who had not taken the protests as seriously as he should have, listened intently to Chavez. The oil and natural gas reserves are located in the south of the country. Chavez warned that foreign interference would push for the partition of the country, just as in Sudan, with the oil wealth in the hands of a weak pro-Western government and poverty to be managed in the other half. Bouteflika reversed his decision.

There is no Chavez to counsel Bouteflika now. Khelil, who was sacked in the middle of a corruption scandal in 2013, is back at the helm of the Oil Ministry. He will once more push to liberalise the oil industry. None of these “reformers” will take seriously the Mouvement Anti-Gaz de Schiste (Movement against Fracking of Natural Gas). Samia Zennadi believes that the political contest within the ruling bloc is not settled. Many people still believe that Algeria should not sell off its oil and gas reserves. Whether they will prevail is to be seen.

Small Voices of History

In a basement in Algiers is the office of the Democratic and Social Movement (MDS), the former Communist Party of Algeria. The party’s leader, Hamid Ferhi, and a young activist of the party, Fahem Dahi, tell me about their aspirations for Algeria. In January 2011, during the high point of the Arab Spring, the MDS joined other parties to form the National Coordination for Change and Democracy. Yacine Teguia of the MDS told journalists at that time: “We are sick of seeing young people having no prospect but to kill themselves. Today, we have workers who are threatening to commit collective suicide. We can either get together and express ourselves democratically and develop collective solutions, or we can leave people facing a wall, facing death.” The pressure by the organisation moved Bouteflika to end the state of emergency that had been ongoing for two decades. But Bouteflika did not allow any demonstrations to take place.

The MDS, nonetheless, has been involved, says Ferhi, in a number of initiatives on a consistent basis. The shadow of the “black decade” hangs over our conversation. Fahem shows me around the MDS office, which is being converted into a people’s art gallery with a coffee shop and a performance space. One room has bundles of clothes and a washing machine. Fahem tells me that this is for homeless people. The party has to do something for the social crisis. Fahem has a warm smile. These small gestures pave the road for something grander. He has great hope for Algeria.

This essay originally appeared in Frontline (India).

Austria’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration Sebastian Kurz said on Friday he wanted to ban public servants, including school teachers, from wearing the headscarf.

Kurz, of the Christian Conservative People’s Party (OVP), is working on a draft law with Muna Duzdar, a junior minister from the OVP’s senior Social Democrat coalition partner who has an Arab family background and is Muslim.

If passed by Parliament, the nationwide ban would be stricter than laws in France, where only the full body veil is illegal, or Germany, where the highest court in 2015 restricted lawmakers’ scope to ban teachers from wearing the headscarf.

“Because there (schools), it’s about the effect of role models and the influence on young people. Austria is religion-friendly but also a secular state,” Kurz said, according to a spokesman.

Christian crosses, widespread in staunchly Catholic Austria, should be allowed in classrooms, Kurz said, referring to the country’s “historically grown culture.”

An adviser to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said in March companies should be allowed to prohibit staff from wearing the headscarf but only as part of a general ban on religious and political symbols.

Kurz is revamping Austria’s integration laws and would also like to include a ban on full body veils and restrictions on the distribution of the Qur’an, Kurz’s spokesman said.

A spokeswoman for Austria’s most prominent Muslim group, IGGIO, noted that discrimination in the workplace on religious grounds was illegal in Austria and said: “After such a statement, trust is badly shaken.”

She said such a ban would send the wrong signal, not least because working women wearing the headscarf could help overcome deep “patriarchal prejudices.”

Duzdar also told Reuters a person cannot be discriminated against in the workplace on the grounds of their religion and said she wanted to wait for a final ECJ ruling on the issue before sending the law to Parliament.

“I’m open to discussions about this but in reality one cannot pick individual religions. If you discuss religious dress and symbols, you have to speak about all religions. We work on a dialogue with all religious communities,” she said.

The coalition has not set a deadline for the draft to be finished.

In a hardening of her stance on migrants’ integration in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel last month called for a ban on full face veils “wherever legally possible.”

By Tamar Friedman*

(FPRI) — Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry gave an extensive speech about the U.S. decision not to veto a U.N. Security Council Resolution 2234 condemning settlements in the West Bank, sparking a number of strong reactions. One portion of the speech draws attention to what has long been a topic of discussion within Israel, prior to the U.N. Security Council resolution.

In his speech, Kerry said: “The Israeli Prime Minister publicly supports a two state solution, but his current coalition is the most right wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by its most extreme elements. The result is that policies of this government – which the Prime Minister himself just described as ‘more committed to settlements than any in Israel’s history’ – are leading in the opposite direction, towards one state.”

Over the past month, the Israeli media and public have been preoccupied with a dispute surrounding the Jewish outpost of Amona in the West Bank, which was built twenty years ago. Amona is an outpost of about 330 people that Israel’s Supreme Court ruled was built on private Palestinian land.

The Supreme Court has ruled the Amona outpost to be unconstitutional multiple times over the past several years but, each time, the government petitions for the evacuation and demolition of Amona to be delayed. This past December, the Supreme Court set a deadline of December 25,^, 2016 for the complete evacuation of Amona.

In response, the Jewish Home party (Bayit Hayehudi), led by MK Naftali Bennett, pushed forward the “Regulation Bill” (“חוק ההסדרה” in Hebrew) – a bill that would currently and retroactively legalize Amona and dozens of other outposts in the West Bank.

Though seemingly opposed to defying the Israeli Supreme Court’s direct order to evacuate Amona, Netanyahu voted for the Regulation Bill in its preliminary reading after Bennett and other Jewish Home Members of Knesset, who attract many voters from the settlements, threatened to dissolve Netanyahu’s coalition.

To attempt to solve the dispute between Netanyahu and Bennett, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit stepped in and proposed a compromise deal to temporarily move the people of Amona to nearby plots of land while trying to figure out where to move them more permanently.

In the end, just a few days before the original deadline, Israel’s Supreme Court granted an extension of 45 days to evacuate Amona, bringing the new deadline to February 8, 2017.

The standoff exposes the power of the smaller right-wing parties, which make up Netanyahu’s narrow coalition, to push policies related to the settlements more to the right, even when in direct conflict with institutions that check the power of the Knesset – in this case, the Supreme Court.

The ramifications, though, extend far beyond Israel’s borders. One of the reasons Netanyahu expressed hesitation about the “Regulation Bill” was fear that the bill might lead to Israel being prosecuted in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Though it wasn’t through the ICC, the international community made a strong statement last week about Israel and the settlements in the West Bank with the passage of the U.N. Security Council resolution. The U.S. made an even bolder statement, by choosing not to veto such a resolution as it has done in the past, but rather to abstain.

While most headlines about the U.N. Security Council resolution have highlighted the pressure that the world, now including the U.S., is putting on Netanyahu to move in one direction on settlements in the West Bank, a few barely noticed lines in Kerry’s speech hint at a phenomenon that is also worth paying attention to: the way Netanyahu’s own coalition is pulling the Israeli prime minister in the complete opposite direction.

About the author:
* Tamar Friedman is an Associate Scholar in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Program on the Middle East. Her research focuses on electoral politics in the Middle East. She is currently working as the Marketing Associate at the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

(Civil.Ge) — Ex-mayor of Tbilisi and one of the leaders of the United National Movement, Gigi Ugulava, was released from prison on January 6, following Tbilisi Court of Appeal’s ruling, which shortened his sentence by three years and three months.

After his release, Ugulava, who was met by his friends and party members with ovations, called for releasing “other political prisoners” through amnesty or presidential pardon. He also emphasized that he has not admitted guilt. In his first remarks, Ugulava also stated that he would direct his efforts to settle the internal confrontation in the United National Movement in a civilized manner.

Gigi Ugulava was sentenced in September 2015 to four years and six months in prison after being found guilty of misspending of public funds while serving as the mayor of the capital city – charges, which he has denied as politically motivated. The prosecution claimed that Ugulava siphoned off GEL 4.1 million of public funds by creating over 760 fictitious job positions in the capital city’s municipal service through which funds were funneled to pay salaries of UNM party activists.

The Court of Appeals re-qualified the misspending charges and found him guilty of exceeding official powers. The court sentenced him to one year, three months and 22 days in prison, taking into account the December 2012 amnesty act.

Beka Basilaia, Ugulava’s defense lawyer, said that Ugulava’s jail term was expiring on Monday, January 9, but added that the legislation allows pre-term release of an inmate, if the due date for the prisoner’s release falls immediately after weekend.

Earlier, on January 4, Ugulava said at the court hearing, that it is “clearly wrong” when public servants work as party activists and added, that he failed to deal with the issue.

“This was not meant like that, but it turned out so,” Ugulava said in his final word. “I am not distancing from this; unfortunately, this is my problem.”

Apart from that, Tbilisi Court of Appeals, upheld the verdict of Tbilisi City Court, which found Gigi Ugulava not guilty in a separate case, which involved charges of money laundering. Davit Kezerashvili, former Defense Minister, was also found not guilty in the same case.

The Prosecutor’s Office stated that it would appeal the decision.

Ugulava’s release comes ahead of the United National Movement’s disputed party congress on January 20. Gigi Ugulava is allegedly backing the Bokeria-Bakradze’s group, which opposes ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili and his sympathizers.

Ugulava said that he “feels regret” at “the shameful” processes ongoing in the party and plans to meet with Mikheil Saakashvili and his sympathizers, so that “we do our utmost” and “overcome the crisis … if there is at least half a percent likelihood of that.”

“The forms of past relations are unlikely to be restored, but if we find a common platform, which will be focused on the present and the future, it may work. It requires willingness and talking to each other on all these problems,” Ugulava said.

“If we fail to reach [an agreement] in future… it is our obligation to ensure that it happens in a civilized manner and not in the terrible form that is regretfully taking place now,” he noted.

Mikheil Saakashvili, who now is in the opposition in Ukraine, welcomed Ugulava’s release on his Facebook page saying that “we are dealing not with legal [decisions], but with Ivanishvili’s personal decisions, both on arrests and releases.”

“I am glad that he will celebrate Christmas together with his children and friends. Gigi has not committed a crime, nor has he done any incorrect acts (despite what he said during the last trial) in respect to those issues, which were pushed forth by Ivanishvili’s pocket prosecutors during this entire period. Therefore, this imprisonment was nothing but the oligarch’s personal revenge and part of an intimidation campaign,” Saakashvili wrote in his Facebook post.

In the same post, he called on ex-PM Bidzina Ivanishvili to allow him to return to Georgia and attend the January 20 congress.

“We should demand from him to release other political prisoners and enable me to enter in Georgia without any obstacles in order to meet with our people and participate in the congress of the United National Movement on January 20,” writes ex-President Saakashvili, who is wanted in Georgia for various charges, which he denies as politically motivated.

By Dr Subhash Kapila*

Russia and United States détente’ is a geopolitical imperative in 2017 for global stability and security when placed in context of China’s unbridled provocative military rise.

Russia and the United States in the post-Cold War era have failed to establish cooperative security management, both regionally and globally, chiefly because of the ‘China Factor’ that plagued both Russia and United States policy perspectives and formulations.

United States despite emerging as the unipolar Superpower persisted with Cold War apprehensions that Russia was still the potent threat to United States and that needed to be manged by American strategic and political reach-out to China.

Russia strategically down and out then perceived that it needed China for its resurgence and return to its global equivalence with United States. Thus emerged the Russia-China Strategic Nexus as a marriage of convenience dictated by prevailing geopolitical compulsions upto well past of the first decade of the 21st Century. It was a poor attempt to balance United States strategic predominance.

Russia’s and United States stood frozen in their respective threat perceptions for a decade and a half. Resultantly, China as the beneficiary of strategic munificence of both United States and Russia zoomed fast forward to emerge in 2017 with pretensions of being the second pole in what China perceives as a bipolar world comprising United States and China.

The bipolar template of United States and Russia during the Cold War period was predictably stable despite pronounced military confrontation. Russia was then an equal power to the United States with no ‘revisionist power’ impulses.

The bipolar template perceived by China in the second decade of the 2ist Century of United States and China is inherently strategically unstable, unpredictable and dominated by China’s provocative military confrontation and brinkmanship markedly visible in Indo Pacific Asia.

China perceives that Russia’s resurgence is still dependant on China’s economic infusions and that with United States power on decline the ‘China Moment’ has arrived for China to assert its Superpower credentials.

China’s emergence as the potential second Superpower is not a zero-sum game. Such Chinese emergence will extract heavy strategic and political costs from both United States and Russia too. Geopolitical and strategic imperatives for a Russia-United States détente’ in 2017 therefore exist as a pressing need for global stability and security.

Prospects of a Russia-United States détente’ in 2017 following President Trump’s election as US President need analysis going by recent developments both in USA and Russia. The initial indicators by President-elect Trump during his electoral campaign suggest that as President Trump he would seriously reset US relations with Russia leading to a détente’.

Russian President Putin too has sent warming signals to President-elect Trump that Russia too desires for a newer relationship with the United States devoid of confrontation and retaliatory stances. The same has been visible when last week President Putin declined to expel 35 US diplomats in retaliation for President Obama’s expulsion orders of 35 Russian diplomats and sanctions against Russian involvement in the US Election hacking charges episode.

Despite the positive indicators from both Russia and the incoming Trump Administration in USA minefields exist both in USA and Russia towards an eventual and much-needed Russia-United States détente’.

In the United States both on Capitol Hill and the Republican Party, Cold War mindsets still persist on Russia. This mindset would impede the US policy establishment from a realistic reassessment that in 2017 it is China which is the more potent threat to United States national security interests than Russia and this could be reflected in their foreign policy advisories to President Trump.

In Russia, President Putin despite his 17 years in power and having managed relations with two earlier US Presidents in the past even in crisis situations could still be susceptible to pressures from China not to fall for President Trump’s political reach-outs to Russia in 2017. China still has considerable leverages over Russia which would require considerable audaciousness for President Putin to shake-off.

China is seriously impacted and concerned by the prospects of a possible Russia-United States détente’. This stands reflected in commentaries in official Chinese media organs. China can be expected to resort to even generate crisis-situations where any positive movements in Russia-United States détente ‘process are stymied.

Therefore, a lot would depend on the statesman-like qualities of President Putin and President Trump in2017 to navigate skilfully through Chinese minefields of stumbling-blocks to impede a possible Russia-United States détente’.

A greater strategic call devolves on President Trump to extricate Russia from China’s strategic clutches and crutches besides from the innumerable China-apologists in Russia within. This is a vital US National Security Interest for 2017 which should dawn on the new in-coming US policy establishment and thereby strengthen the new US President’s resolve to establish a new American relationship with Russia Concluding, one could suggest that if President Trump really wants to make headway towards a Russia-United States détente’ in 2017, then his first official visit overseas after assuming office should be to Russia and not China, in a reverse of the Nixonian-Kissinger tilt to China in 1972.

*Dr Subhash Kapila is a graduate of the Royal British Army Staff College, Camberley and combines a rich experience of Indian Army, Cabinet Secretariat, and diplomatic assignments in Bhutan, Japan, South Korea and USA. Currently, Consultant International Relations & Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. He can be reached at drsubhashkapila.007@gmail.com

By Sinisa Jakov Marusic

As air pollution in capital, Skopje, and other towns remains at an alarming level, prompting fresh calls from environmentalists for action, the ruling VMRO DPMNE party has tried to shift the blame for the deadly smog to local authorities run by the opposition.

The opposition Social Democrats, SDSM, have meanwhile demanded a more thorough approach to curb air pollution, accusing the ruling VMRO DPMNE of doing nothing in the past ten years to address this issue.

“The new responsible Macedonian government will seriously approach this problem at its first session,” the SDSM said in a press release, adding that should it form the new government, for which unofficial negotiations with other parties are underway, it has a set of concrete measures in mind.

These include free public transport to get people out of their cars and stopping all construction activities in towns over winter.

“We will also increase the legally required level of greenery in towns, provide subsidies and favourable credits so companies can install modern filters, gasify [provide natural gas] for 32 towns in Macedonia following the example of [opposition run] Kumanovo and Strumica and facilitate the adoption of solar energy in households,” the SDSM said.

For several years, air pollution levels in Skopje and in the towns of Bitola, Kicevo, Tetovo Kumanovo and Kavadarci have reached record highs in the winter months.

Particularly problematic is the high level of deadly PM10 particles, small breathable specks that are considered one of the worst air polluters. Due to their small size they can penetrate the lungs and are known to cause cancers and other diseases.

During winter, they occasionally reach 360 index points. According to European air quality standards this is seven times higher than the normal level and enough to warrant declaring a health warning.

The VMRO DPMNE party, which also hopes to lead the new government after the close general election results on December 11, has focused its attention solely on the two opposition run towns of Kumanovo and Strumica.

It says that while the opposition is tough on words when it comes to air pollution, it has done nothing in either of the two towns to bring pollution levels down.

“Strumica has no air pollution measuring station while [opposition leader and Strumica mayor, Zoran] Zaev enjoys fresh air in Halkidiki [in Greece],” was the headline published on Tuesday by the pro-government news portal Kurir.

Kurir and similar media outlets on Wednesday also turned their attention to the town of Kumanovo, claiming that it topped the air pollution charts in Europe.

“The SDSM has failed to act for 26 years” to curb this problem, Kurir said.

At the same time, VMRO DPMNE has demanded an emergency municipal session in Kumanovo to discuss air pollution levels while snubbing calls for similar sessions in Skopje, which it runs.

The city of Skopje in the past few years has tried sprinkling the streets with a calcium-magnesium-acetate agent to capture air pollutants. It also announced a study to determine whether and how it could reduce the use of wood for heating, a major polluting factor, which has yet to come out.

Annual progress reports by the European Commission have for several years noted the serious levels of pollution from PM10 particles in Macedonia.

To show it took the fight against this pollution seriously, the government in 2013 threatened prison terms for bosses of factories that violated regulations on pollution.

In 2014, the government also refused industry demands to postpone the legal deadline to equip big pollutants with filters from 2014 to 2019.

Later it deemed the campaign a success. However, the new factory filters have not decreased air pollution levels, either.
– See more at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/macedonians-trade-blame-over-deadly-smog-01-05-2017#sthash.FGzBSF2j.dpuf

The frequency of large-scale tornado outbreaks is increasing in the United States, particularly when it comes to the most extreme events, according to research recently published in Science.

The study by researchers including Joel E. Cohen, a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago, finds the increase in tornado outbreaks does not appear to be the result of a warming climate as earlier models suggested. Instead, their findings tie the growth in frequency to trends in the vertical wind shear found in certain supercells–a change not so far associated with a warmer climate.

“What’s pushing this rise in extreme outbreaks, during which the vast majority of tornado-related fatalities occur, is far from obvious in the present state of climate science,” said Cohen, the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor at Rockefeller University and Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, who conducted the research while a visiting scholar in UChicago’s Department of Statistics.

Tornado outbreaks are large-scale weather events that last one to three days, featuring several thunderstorms and six or more tornadoes in close succession. In the study, published in the Dec. 16 issue of Science, the researchers used new statistical tools, including extreme value analysis–a branch of statistics dealing with deviations–to analyze observation-based meteorological estimates associated with tornado outbreaks together with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration datasets.

The researchers estimated that the number of tornadoes in the most extreme outbreak in a five-year interval doubled over the last half-century. This means that in 1965 the worst outbreak expected over five years would have had about 40 tornadoes, while in 2015 the worst outbreak expected over five years would have had about 80 tornadoes.

“Viewing the data on thousands of tornadoes that have been reliably recorded in the United States over the past half-century as a population has permitted us to ask new questions and discover new, important changes in outbreaks of these tornadoes,” Cohen said.

To understand the increased frequency in tornado outbreaks, the researchers looked at two factors: convective available potential energy, or CAPE, and storm relative helicity, which is a measure of vertical wind shear.

Earlier studies had projected a warming climate would increase CAPE, creating conditions favorable to a rise in severe thunderstorms–and potentially tornado outbreaks. But Cohen and his colleagues found the increases in outbreaks were driven instead by storm relative helicity, which has not been projected to increase under a warming climate.

“Our study raises new questions about what climate change will do to severe thunderstorms and what is responsible for recent trends,” said co-author Michael K. Tippett, an associate professor at Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. “The fact that we didn’t see the presently understood meteorological signature of global warming in changing outbreak statistics for tornadoes leaves two possibilities: Either the recent increases are not due to a warming climate, or a warming climate has implications for tornado activity that we don’t understand.”

The latest sign that ethnic Muslim Uyghurs from the Chinese province are being radicalized has emerged with reports that Turkish police are on the hunt for one as the chief suspect in the New Year’s Eve nightclub massacre in Istanbul.

Chinese authorities have stepped up repression of the group of about 10 million people from the far flung province of Xinjiang that borders central Asian nations as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan since ethnocentric violence in July 2009 ripped apart the provincial capital Urumqi resulting in about 200 deaths.

This has lead to radical groups, including the group that calls itself the Islamic State, into recruiting disaffected Uyghurs.

According to The Guardian, most Uyghur fighters in Syria joined a faction effectively embedded within Jabah al Fateh al Sham (JFS), al-Qaeda’s principal proxy in the region and a bitter rival of the so called Islamic State.

China has accused radical groups of recruiting among Uyghur communities in central Asia, especially in Kyrgyzstan and Turkey and the issue is straining Chinese-Turkish relations.

The massacre at the Istanbul nightclub left 39 dead and many more injured.

By Matt Hadro

Christian survivors of the ISIS genocide have serious humanitarian needs, but their faith remains strong, one congressman said after his visit to displaced Christians in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

The faith of Christians, “every one of them,” has grown “stronger” since ISIS militants forced them from their homes in Northern Iraq and in and around Erbil where they have been living for over two years, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) told CNA in an interview.

Rep. Smith, chair of the House global human rights subcommittee, recently traveled to Erbil, Iraq to visit with survivors of the ISIS genocide there, most of them Christian. He also met with religious leaders and U.S. and United Nations officials.

The faith of the Christians, he said, “has been tested in fire, and they are not capitulating, just the opposite. They love the Lord, and they love the Blessed Mother.”

Currently around 70,000 displaced Christians are living in and around Erbil in the Kurdistan Region, some of them waiting to return to their homes in Mosul or the Nineveh Plain but others looking to depart the region.

Rep. Smith said the “biggest takeaway” from his trip to Iraq just before Christmas was “the unmet need” for humanitarian aid of the tens of thousands of Christians who are relying largely upon charities like the Knights of Columbus for their needs, which include food, blankets, and medical care.

In March of 2016, the U.S. had declared that ISIS was committing genocide in Iraq and Syria against Yazidis, Christians, and Shi’a Muslims.

Despite Christians being recognized as genocide victims, which should provide them with special humanitarian relief and refugee status, that has not happened, Rep. Smith said.

Displaced Christians in the region had not received any aid from U.S. aid agencies or the United Nations in two years, said Steve Rasche, the legal counsel and director of IDP resettlement programs for the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil. Rasche gave a testimony before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe in September of 2016.

“Humanitarian aid has not flowed to these individuals,” Rep. Smith said, and neither do they have “access to an asylum interview, so if they can’t go back, they can come here.”

“It is winter. It is cold,” he warned of the situation the refugees face, in danger of sickness during the wet winter. “Disease has been mitigated to a large extent, but that can change.”

During his visit, Smith said, he saw the camp of about 6,000 displaced persons was “clean” and “run by selfless Christian leaders” including Archbishop Bashar Wada of the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil.

The leaders, who serve displaced persons of all faiths – including Yazidis and Muslims – “want nothing more than to help those who have been hurt by this genocide. It is absolutely Matthew 25.”

“The diocese is doing an unbelievable job with almost nothing,” he added, but the U.S. needs to step up its humanitarian assistance. Poland and Hungary already have, he pointed out, with the Hungarian government opening an office with a budget of over $3 million euros to aid persecuted Christians.

Rep. Smith related how displaced persons and one bishop – the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Mosul Nicodemus Daoud Sharaf – told him they felt abandoned by the U.S. “No one’s come to any of these places and just asking, ‘How are the Christians doing?’” Smith noted, saying his delegation “did just that.”

Furthermore, he added that the UN Office on the Prevention of Genocide is reportedly considering leaving Christians out of their list of recognized victims of genocide by ISIS.

And yet the faith of the Christians and their leaders remains strong.

The bishops in the region are “true leaders of the faith,” Rep. Smith said, with each bishop acting not only as the “spiritual leader” of the people but also obtaining “the material support to help people live.”

Smith related one instance where he met with a group of internally-displaced families and asked the priest present to lead a group prayer. The priest prayed the “Our Father” in Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

“It was moving, and I think all of us were moved by that when he prayed,” he said.

To deal with the pressing humanitarian problem and better ensure that genocide perpetrators are punished, Smith and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) have introduced the Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act in Congress.

Among other things, the bill would ensure that the genocide victims receive what is due them – humanitarian relief, asylum interviews if they wish to leave the country, and punishment for the perpetrators of genocide so that people feel secure enough to return to their homes.

It would provide a “P-2” designation for the victims of ISIS genocide, expediting their refugee resettlement process if they wished to leave the region.

It would also strengthen the “prosecutorial” case against the genocide perpetrators, broadening the ability of the U.S. to prosecute genocide perpetrators living in the country. The bill has been endorsed by all former U.S. Ambassadors-at-Large for War Crimes, Smith said.

He has also sponsored a resolution to set up an ad hoc war crimes tribunal in the region, which he says could be far more effective than the International Criminal Court which has made only two convictions in over a dozen years, both of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

Two Iraqi Christian leaders, Sister Diana Momeka and Fr. Benham Benoka, told CNA previously that some Christian homes in the Nineveh Plain region were liberated from ISIS control, but when Christian residents returned to their homes, they found destruction, vandalism, booby traps, betrayal by their neighbors, and threats telling them they had no place anymore in the region.

Rep. Smith said that in Erbil, the bishops told him many Christians have not yet returned home because they are not convinced that it is secure yet.

“And I think that dashed a ‘maybe we return in a year, in half a year,’” he said of the previous optimism that Christians could return home soon.

A new analysis has found that although the risk of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the Arctic environment is low for seals, it is 2 orders of magnitude higher than the safety threshold for adult polar bears and even more (3 orders of magnitude above the threshold) for bear cubs fed with contaminated milk.

Relative to the 1980s, a decrease in risk from legacy POPs is evident for bear cubs, mainly because of international control measures; however, the composition of POPs substantially changes, and the contribution of new POPs (particularly perfluorooctane sulfonate) is increasing.

“This work is the first attempt to quantify the overall risk of POPs for the Arctic ecosystem and to define a ranking in order to highlight the most dangerous chemicals in the mixture,” said Sara Villa co-lead author of the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry study.

“The results demonstrate that international control measures are effective at reducing the risk to ecosystems. Nevertheless it is fundamental to continuously implement the control of new and emerging contaminants,” added co-lead author Marco Vighi.