An Egyptian criminal court decision on January 12, 2017, designating about 1,500 citizens “terrorists” for their alleged assistance to the Muslim Brotherhood reflects the authorities’ indiscriminate use of broad counterterrorism laws, Human Rights Watch said Monday. Using these laws to impose penalties on people without giving them a chance to defend themselves seriously violates their rights to due process, added HRW.

The designation’s immediate effects include a travel ban, asset freeze, loss of political rights, and passport cancellation. The people involved were not able to contest the designation, and most may not have been informed about it before the court ruled. The decision can be appealed directly to Egypt’s highest appeals court.

“Dumping hundreds of people onto a list of alleged terrorists, with serious ramifications for their freedom and livelihood, and without even telling them, makes a mockery of due process,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

The Cairo criminal court decision, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, added 1,538 people to a national terrorists list based on a request from prosecutors. The court accepted the government’s allegation that the defendants had provided financial assistance to the Muslim Brotherhood and helped it conduct military training and plan attacks on security forces.

Prosecutors should withdraw their request for the designations, and parliament should cancel the relevant law or amend it to ensure due process guarantees a narrower and more specific definition of terrorism.

Among those placed on the list were former President Mohamed Morsy and his sons; senior Brotherhood leaders and their sons and daughters; Safwan Thabet, a businessman; the former soccer star Mohamed Abu Trika; Mostafa Sakr, a newspaper publisher; and Hisham Gaafar, a journalist. At least five deceased individuals were placed on the list by the decision, Human Rights Watch confirmed.

Lawyers for several of the people told Human Rights Watch that the authorities did not inform their clients about any related court sessions and that they first knew about the decision from media outlets that reported it on January 17.

The terrorist designations were based on Law 8 of 2015 for Organizing Lists of Terrorist Entities and Terrorists, issued by a decree by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in February 2015, in the absence of a parliament. The law authorizes the prosecutor general to request designated Cairo criminal courts to name individuals or groups to the list for three-year renewable periods. The court has seven days to consider the request before deciding.

The law violates several legal protections laid out in the Egyptian Constitution, previous decisions of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, and international human rights law.

The consequences for people designated as “terrorists” under this law are similar to those for people convicted at trial, but the law does not require finding them guilty of a crime and makes no provision for them to contest the evidence prosecutors present in their request, violating the individuals’ right to fair trial. Human Rights Watch was able to verify that many people added to the list on January 12 are either currently on trial or in pretrial detention.

The definition of terrorism in the law exceeds even the overly broad language in Egypt’s penal code. The 2015 law defines a “terrorist entity” as a group that practices or advocates infringements on public order or national unity; harm to the environment, antiquities, or public or private property; obstruction of public or private transportation; or impeding the application of the provisions of the constitution, laws, or regulations.

Such a framework criminalizes activities that go far beyond the description of terrorist acts in United Nations Security Council resolution 1566, unanimously adopted in 2004. That resolution described terrorism as acts committed with the intent to kill, cause serious bodily injury, or take hostages with the aim of intimidating or terrorizing a population or compelling a government or international organization to do or abstain from doing something.

The overbroad definition of terrorism in the 2015 law runs counter to a basic principle in international human rights law that requires laws to be precisely drafted and understandable as a safeguard against their arbitrary use and so that people know what actions constitute a crime. Egypt’s constitution endorses this principle, and its Supreme Constitutional Court has previously ruled that ambiguous penal statutes allow authorities to apply the law according to “personal norms” and “subjective inclinations” and preclude courts from applying “strict, definitive rules.”

Furthermore, the court’s January 12 decision to list hundreds of individuals rests on a request from a government committee in charge of seizing Muslim Brotherhood assets whose authority remains legally unclear.

A Cairo urgent matters court, whose jurisdiction is normally temporary civil injunctions, first banned the activities of the Brotherhood in September 2013. Based on that decision, Egypt’s cabinet formed a committee days later to seize and manage all assets connected to the Brotherhood or its members. In February 2014, the urgent matters court ruled that the Brotherhood was a banned terrorist group. That ruling remains on appeal and legal analysts have said that the court most likely exceeded its jurisdiction.

Since the committee’s formation, it has seized tens of millions of Egyptian pounds and hundreds of schools, clinics, and other institutions, but Egyptian administrative courts have repeatedly overturned its decisions, ruling that the committee exceeded its mandate and encroached on judicial prerogatives. The dispute is under review at the Supreme Constitutional Court and the Supreme Administrative Court.

Egypt’s highest appeals court, the Cassation Court – which hears appeals from people named to the terrorist list – in September 2015 overturned a previous decision by prosecutors to add high-ranking Brotherhood leaders to the terrorist list. The court ruled that the prosecutors had not obtained a ruling from a competent court. The Cassation Court has accepted appeals by individuals named to the terrorist list in several other situations.

Like many courts since the military removed former President Morsy in 2013, the criminal court also appeared to rely entirely on evidence from the Interior Ministry’s National Security Agency for its January 12 decision.

Egypt’s parliament should repeal the terrorist entities law or amend it extensively to bring it within international standards, and prosecutors should file requests to repeal the terrorist listings made so far. Assets should be frozen only by judicial decisions that follow due process, Human Rights Watch said.

“Terrorism is a real issue in Egypt, but the authorities are using blunt tools of questionable legality to confront the problem,” Stork said. “Such an approach disregards facts indiscriminately labels opponents as terrorists, and makes no effort to sort the guilty from the innocent.”

The malady, common among political leaders who commit heartless crimes while craving popular adulation as heroes and misunderstood saints, is ‘Political Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy’ (PMSP).

PMSP best explains the pathologic drive of politicians and policy makers who inflict relentless, systematic mass destruction and then intervene in a most theatrical manner to save a few victims – thus drawing gratitude from the victim and public support for their ‘humanitarian intervention’ – ignorant of their fundamental role in creating the mayhem in the first place.

The actions of the outgoing President Barack Obama in the last three days of his administration present an example of PMSP on the domestic front.

Throughout his eight years as President of the United States, Obama exhibited many symptoms of PMSP – both abroad and in the US. For his cynical crimes, he was awarded the ‘Nobel Peace Prize’ among other honors.

PMSP – The Abuser as Savior

Each of Obama’s relentless military interventions, including Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and especially Syria, were characterized by the deliberate and total destruction of the means of normal civilized social existence for defenseless civilians – the bombing of homes, factories, markets, weddings, funerals, schools, hospitals – leading to the deaths of many thousands and the uprooting of millions into desperate flight. In each case, Obama would proclaim that he was saving the victims from imminent genocide by an abusive ruler or ethnic group. He would rush in to provide a few baskets of relief and a few blankets to some bedraggled survivors of his own bombing campaigns and bask in the glowing praise of mass media propagandists and fellow imperialists. Choreographed applause and adulation would seem to follow America’s First Black President everywhere.

Obama’s bombs, arms and mercenaries drove hundreds of thousands of families into the streets, into the mountains and most horrifically onto rickety, overloaded boats on the seas. In each series of destruction and chaos, he would calculate the point at which his ‘humanitarian intervention’ would most effectively reflect on his heroism.

He destroyed the entire nation of Libya, shredded its institutions and infrastructure, bombed its cities and villages, even deliberately sending a deadly missile into the home sheltering a half dozen of President Muammar Gadaffi’s small grandchildren and finally ended up with the public death by torture of the wounded Libyan president sodomized by stakes documented in a imperial-pornographic snuff film that should have revolted the entire world. That the main victims of Obama’s ‘liberation of Libya’ were hundreds of thousands of black Libyan citizens and sub-Saharan African workers did little to detract from his public persona as the first ‘African American’ world hero. The capsized boatloads of fleeing black Libyans and the bloated bodies washing ashore on the beaches of Spain and Italy were never linked to the criminal policies of our Nobel Prize recipient! He even urged Europe to accept the miserable refugees fleeing his war – in a gesture of supreme PMSP. He could do no wrong. This serial political killer had an unquenchable thirst for sympathy and admiration – and a wholly corrupt propaganda machine to polish his halo.

Obama’s PMSP and Chelsea Manning

In his last few days in power, Obama turned his ‘heroic and humanitarian’ attention to individual American victims of grotesque injustice in our bloated and racist prison system – just to prove that the great man could ’set up’ and then save individuals as well as nations.

The cold, calculus of the Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy President finally focused on the fragile form of the imprisoned and tortured Chelsea Manning – hero to millions and condemned traitor to the empire’s ruling elite. For eight years, Barack Obama pursued the arrest, torture, kangaroo court-martial, virtual life sentencing and prison mistreatment of the US soldier who had dared to expose large-scale war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and release thousands of damning documents of systematic political war crime hidden from her compatriots. She released videos of US pilots playing ‘execution games’ against a crowd of defenseless Iraqi civilians, including children, as well as equally egregious war crimes elsewhere.

Obama and his fellow war criminals were furious at Manning’s revelations – and approved of her sentence of 35 years, some of which had been served before her conviction in solitary confinement, often stripped naked – in a condition described by the United Nations as torture and inhumane treatment. After her conviction, she was harassed and driven to multiple attempts to take her life.

After seven years of brutal and degrading treatment, spanning almost the entire Obama Administration, the condition of the frail transgender soldier-hero, almost a martyr to truth and justice, her supporters and the world community were desperate with concern for her safety, survival and sanity. At this point, and in the last three days of her administration on January 17, 2017, Obama ‘commuted Manning’s sentence’ but left it to the incoming Trump Administration to free her five months later in May.

Instead of celebrating the liberation and vindication of the hero Chelsea Manning in May, the media drowned out the plight of the frail tortured whistleblower with its loud tributes to the mercy and heroism of the serial abuser – Barack Obama.

Conclusion

In his last days, Obama played the ‘Merciful Pasha’ commuting Manning’s virtual life sentence – which he still justified. Obama did so in a way that literally begged the incoming rabidly reactionary regime of Donald Trump to rescind the commutation or at least impose such levels of torture and pressure on Manning that her very survival and sanity in prison up to her scheduled release in May will be in grave jeopardy.

The most virulent militarists in the US Congress, including the war criminal John McCain, are howling for Manning’s head. While they will torture Manning during the next 5 months behind thick prison walls, the press will compare the vindictive Trump with the benevolent Obama. This is a cynical ’set-up’ for our hero, Chelsea Manning to be driven to suicide by Trump while her ultimate persecutor, the ’saintly’ Barack Obama will ’shine’ for having issue the belated commutation. Obama could easily have released Manning earlier and spared her this mortal danger – but he chose to tie the poor prisoner to a stake – under the blood-lusting noses of our most sadistic militarists – and invite their public display of savagery.

In one very self-glorifying pronouncement, three days before leaving office, Obama has sanctified himself at Manning’s expense and insured Chelsea’s destruction. This is virtuosic Political Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy by a true master!

Non-indigenous species (NIS) are harming indigenous species and habitats in the Mediterranean Sea, impairing potentially exploitable marine resources and raising concern about human health issues, according to a new Tel Aviv University study.

The 2015 expansion of the Suez Canal, one of the world’s most important corridors of commerce, facilitated an influx of non-indigenous species into the Mediterranean Sea, according to Prof. Bella Galil of the Israel National Center for Biodiversity Studies at TAU’s Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, the lead author of a study published last month in Management of Biological Invasions.

“The Mediterranean Sea is the most invaded marine basin in the world,” said Prof. Galil. “The number of NIS greatly increased between 1970 and 2015. 750 multicellular non-indigenous species were recorded in the Mediterranean Sea, far more than in other European seas, because of the ever-increasing number of Red Sea species introduced through the Suez Canal. This raises concerns about the increasing introductions of additional NIS and associated degradation and loss of native populations, habitats and ecosystem services.”

A slow reaction

The development and implementation of a management policy have been slow, despite a century of scientific documentation of marine bioinvasions in the Mediterranean Sea. The Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Coastal Region of the Mediterranean, part of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Regional Seas Programme, adopted an “Action Plan concerning species introductions and invasive species in the Mediterranean Sea” in 2003. But the UNEP has “shied away from discussing, let alone managing, the influx of tropical non-indigenous biota introduced through the Suez Canal. So far no prevention and management measures have been implemented,” according to Prof. Galil and her associates.

In their new study, the authors present data that marine-protected areas in the eastern Mediterranean, from Turkey to Libya, have been overwhelmed by non-indigenous species and serve as veritable “hot spots” of bioinvasion. Biotic communities are already fragile, suffering from manmade stressors such as pollution and overfishing. The colonization of these communities by NIS redistributes nutritional resources, removes important actors and renders them more susceptible to extinction.

Eastern Mediterranean algae-dominated rocky habitats have been decimated by large populations of herbivorous fish introduced through the Suez Canal. The two voracious grazers, Siganus luridus and S. rivulatus, have transformed lush rocky reefs into “barrens,” dramatically reducing habitat complexity and altering the community structure and food web. Within 30 years, a small Red Sea mussel has replaced the native mytilid along the entire Mediterranean coast of Israel, forming dense nearly mono-specific species “carpets.”

A hope for effective intervention

The authors of the study led a discussion on effective management of non-indigenous species introductions into the Mediterranean Sea at a EuroMarine workshop that took place in Ischia, Italy, in 2016. The discussion resulted in the “Ischia Declaration” that laid down principles for an effective, science-based, transboundary management. The declaration was approved by the general assembly of EuroMarine, a network of 73 research institutions and universities, funded by the European Union.

“We hope that this new research will be used to construct a science-based effective management of marine bioinvasions, and prevent, or at least minimize, the influx of additional non-indigenous species into the Mediterranean,” said Prof. Galil. “Time will tell whether these aims are achieved or legislators and management continue to put off confronting this difficult issue and pass the environmental, economic and social burden to future generations.”

The researchers are currently investigating pollution and other NIS-related factors.

A train accident killed 39 people in a southern Indian state on Jan. 22 and Archbishop Anil Couto of Delhi has demanded that both the Indian federal and state governments focus on the safety of travelers.

“It is high time that the governments put the safety and security of its citizens above short-term political and other gains,” the archbishop said in a statement following a train derailment in Vizianagram district of Andhra Pradesh state that killed 39 people on Jan. 22.

Expressing anguish at the frequent rail accidents, Archbishop Couto, based in the national capital, said that the government and railway officials seem to ignore and brush aside safety recommendations for train passengers.

The Indian government is pushing hard to introduce high-speed bullet trains spending millions of rupees but “is reluctant to strengthen the existing railway tracks and failing to implement the recommendations on safety and security of passengers.”

This is not the first such incident. Since last year, the country has witnessed several big and small train accidents.

In November, in northern Uttar Pradesh state, 147 people died when an express train derailed. In December in the same state, another 63 people died when 14 coaches of another express train derailed.

Pope Francis on Monday named Mgr Fernando Ocáriz Braña prelate of Opus Dei. The Holy Father confirmed the election of the third elective congress of the prelature in the same day.

With this appointment, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz, who until now has been Auxiliary Vicar of Opus Dei, becomes the third successor of Saint Josemaria at the head of the prelature, following the death of Mgr Javier Echevarría, this past December 12th.

Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz was born in Paris on October 27, 1944, to a Spanish family exiled in France due to the Civil War (1936-1939). He is the youngest of 8 children.

He graduated from the University of Barcelona with a degree in Physical Sciences in 1966. He received a licentiate in Theology from the Pontifical Lateran University in 1969 and a doctorate in Theology from the University of Navarre in 1971, the year he was ordained a priest. In his first years as a priest he was especially involved in ministry to young people and to university students.

He is a consultor for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (since 1986), as well as other departments of the Roman Curia: the Congregation for the Clergy (since 2003) and the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization (since 2011). He has been a member of the Pontifical Theological Academy since 1989. In the 1980’s, he was among the professors who began the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (Rome), where he was a tenured professor (now emeritus) in Fundamental Theology.

Among his theological publications, his books on Christology are especially noteworthy, like The Mystery of Jesus Christ: a Christology and Soteriology Textbook and Hijos de Dios en Cristo. Introducción a una teología de la participación sobrenatural. His publications have dealt largely with theological and philosophical themes, like Amar con obras: a Dios y a los hombres and Naturaleza, gracia y gloria, with a preface by Cardinal Ratzinger. In 2013, Rafael Serrano’s extensive interview with him was published under the title Sobre Dios, la Iglesia y el mundo. He has also published two philosophical works: El marxismo: teoría y práctica de una revolución and Voltaire: tratado sobre la tolerancia. In addition, he is co-author of several monographs, as well as many theological and philosophical articles.

Since 1994 he has been the Vicar General of Opus Dei, and in 2014 he was named Auxiliary Vicar of the Prelature. Over the past 22 years he has accompanied the previous Prelate, Mons. Javier Echevarría, in his pastoral trips to more than 70 countries. In the 1960’s, as a theology student, he lived in Rome alongside Saint Josemaría, the Founder of Opus Dei. From a young age he has been an avid fan of tennis, which he continues to play.

Using the largest set of radiocarbon dates ever obtained from a single Maya site, archaeologists have developed a high-precision chronology that sheds new light on patterns leading up to the two major collapses of the ancient civilization.

Archaeologists have long puzzled over what caused what is known as the Classic Maya collapse in the ninth century A.D., when many of the ancient civilization’s cities were abandoned. More recent investigations have revealed that the Maya also experienced an earlier collapse in the second century A.D. — now called the Preclassic collapse — that is even more poorly understood.

University of Arizona archaeologist Takeshi Inomata and his colleagues suggest in a new paper, to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that both collapses followed similar trajectories, with multiple waves of social instability, warfare and political crises leading to the rapid fall of many city centers.

The findings are based on a highly refined chronology developed by Inomata and his colleagues using an unprecedented 154 radiocarbon dates from the archaeological site of Ceibal in Guatemala, where the team has worked for over a decade.

While more general chronologies might suggest that the Maya collapses occurred gradually, this new, more precise chronology indicates more complex patterns of political crises and recoveries leading up to each collapse.

“What we found out is that those two cases of collapse (Classic and Preclassic) follow similar patterns,” said Inomata, the paper’s lead author and a professor in the School of Anthropology in the UA College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. “It’s not just a simple collapse, but there are waves of collapse. First, there are smaller waves, tied to warfare and some political instability, then comes the major collapse, in which many centers got abandoned. Then there was some recovery in some places, then another collapse.”

Using radiocarbon dating and data from ceramics and highly controlled archaeological excavations, the researchers were able to establish the refined chronology of when population sizes and building construction increased and decreased at Ceibal.

While the findings may not solve the mystery of why exactly the Maya collapses occurred, they are an important step toward better understanding how they unfolded.

“It’s really, really interesting that these collapses both look very similar, at very different time periods,” said Melissa Burham, one of three UA anthropology graduate students who co-authored the paper. “We now have a good understanding of what the process looked like, that potentially can serve as a template for other people to try to see if they have a similar pattern at their (archaeological) sites in the same area.”

Inomata and his UA colleagues — anthropology professor Daniela Triadan and students Burham, Jessica MacLellan and Juan Manuel Palomo — worked with collaborators at Ibaraki University, Naruto University of Education and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Japan, and with Guatemalan archaeologists and students.

Radiocarbon dating was done at Paleo Laboratory Company in Japan and at the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory in the UA Department of Physics.

“Radiocarbon dating has been used for a long time, but now we’re getting to an interesting period because it’s getting more and more precise,” said Inomata, who also is an Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in Environment and Social Justice at the UA. “We’re getting to the point where we can get to the interesting social patterns because the chronology is refined enough, and the dating is precise enough.”

African-Americans are more likely than whites to experience the loss of a parent during childhood and more likely to be exposed to multiple family member deaths by mid-life, according to a study by the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

It’s a trend that is likely to be damaging to the health of black Americans in the long run, the researchers said. Racial disparities in life expectancy and mortality risk in the United States also suggest that blacks are exposed to more family member deaths earlier and throughout their life than whites.

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, UT Austin researchers examined racial disparities in exposure and timing of family member deaths to uncover an underappreciated layer of racial inequality, which results from reoccurring bereavement that may lead to the intergenerational transmission of black health disadvantages.

“The potentially substantial damage to surviving family members is a largely overlooked area of racial disadvantage,” said Debra Umberson, a sociology professor who is the director of the Population Research Center. “By calling attention to this heightened vulnerability of black Americans, our findings underscore the need to address the potential impact of more frequent and earlier exposure to family member deaths in the process of cumulative disadvantage.”

Using nationally representative datasets of more than 42,000 people, Umberson and her colleagues compared non-Hispanic black and non-Hispanic white Americans on their exposure to death of biological parents, siblings, children and spouses, as well as the total number of deaths experienced at different ages.

Umberson emphasizes that bereavement following the death of even one close family member has lasting adverse consequences for health. Premature losses are especially devastating.

“If losing a family member is a disadvantage in the present in ways that disrupt the future, racial disparities in these losses over the life course is a tangible manifestation of racial inequality that needs to be systematically documented,” she said.

The study showed that blacks experienced more family member deaths overall than whites. They were twice as likely to experience the death of two or more family members by age 30 and 90 percent more likely to experience four or more deaths by age 65. In stark contrast, whites were 50 percent more likely to never experience a family member death by age 65.

The researchers found overall that blacks were at greater risk of losing a mother from early childhood through young adulthood, a father through their mid-teens, a sibling in their teens and a child by the age of 30. The race-gap diminishes only slightly at ages 70 and up when whites begin to experience more loss, the researchers said.

Specific findings include:

• In a cohort born in the 1980s,
  • Blacks were three times more likely to lose a mother, more than twice as likely to lose a father and 20 percent more likely to lose a sibling by age 10.
  • Blacks were two and a half times more likely to lose a child by age 30
• Among several older cohorts born in the 1900s to the 1960s,
  • Blacks were nearly twice as likely as whites to lose a spouse by age 60.
  • Blacks were 50 percent more likely to lose a sibling between the ages of 50 and 70.
  • Between the ages of 50 and 70 Blacks were three times more likely than whites to lose a child.

“This is the first population-based documentation of earlier and repeated bereavement experiences for Black Americans,” Umberson said. “Death of family members is highly likely to disrupt and strain other family relationships as well as the formation, duration and quality of relationships across the life course, further contributing to a broad range of adverse life outcomes including poor health and lower life expectancy.”

A Republican-proposed House Resolution has quietly slipped past the public radar – proposing that the United States withdraw its membership from the United Nations, just as another bill was being concocted to cut US funding to the body.

The bill, proposed by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), entitled American Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2017, seeks a complete US withdrawal from the UN, that the international body remove its headquarters from New York and that all participation be ceased with the World Health Organization as well.

Rogers and other prominent Republicans have repeatedly voiced the idea that US taxpayer money should not go to an organization that does not promote US interests – especially one that does not stick up for Israel together with the US. The new document is merely the latest manifestation of sentiment that has been brewing for some time.

The bill was quietly introduced on January 3 and was passed on to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. If approved, the bill would take two years to take effect. It would also repeal the United Nations Participation Act of 1945, signed in the aftermath of WWII.

“The President shall terminate all membership by the United States in the United Nations in any organ, specialized agency, commission, or other formally affiliated body of the United Nations…The United States Mission to the United Nations is closed. Any remaining functions of such office shall not be carried out,”according to the text of HR 193.

The bill would also prohibit “the authorization of funds for the US assessed or voluntary contribution to the UN,” which would also include any military or peacekeeping expenditures, the use of the US military by the UN, and the loss of “diplomatic immunity for UN officers or employees” on US soil.

Rogers had tried to pass the same bill in 2015, albeit unsuccessfully.

“Why should the American taxpayer bankroll an international organization that works against America’s interests around the world?” Rogers asked at the time in defense of his idea.

“The time is now to restore and protect American sovereignty and get out of the United Nations.”

Another supporter of HR 193, Rend Paul (R-KY) also put it like this in January 2015: “I dislike paying for something that two-bit Third World countries with no freedom attack us and complain about the United States… There’s a lot of reasons why I don’t like the UN, and I think I’d be happy to dissolve it,” added the Kentucky senator.

Later, in June 2015, Rogers had introduced his document – then named HR 1205, but essentially the same USExit idea he’s proposing now.

“The UN continues to prove it’s an inefficient bureaucracy and a complete waste of American tax dollars.” Rogers went on to name treaties and actions he believes “attack our rights as US citizens.” These included gun provisions, the imposition of international regulations on American fossil fuels – but more importantly, the UN attack on Israel, by voting to grant Palestine the non-member state ‘permanent observer’ status.

“Anyone who is not a friend to our ally Israel is not a friend to the United States.”

That same logic was used this January when House Republicans prepared a legislation that would decrease – even potentially eliminate – US funding to the UN. According to calculations by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the US provides over 22 percent of all UN funding.

The bill to cut the funding was introduced shortly after the UNSC voted 14-0 to condemn the continued construction of illegal Israeli settlements – the resolution Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considered a backstab from the US, which declined to veto it, as per former President Barack Obama’s suddenly critical attitude to Israel at the end of his presidency.

Still, the resolution vote came the same year the Obama administration awarded Israel with its largest military aid package ever, signing a memorandum of understanding in September that would give it $38 billion over 10 years.

However, with Donald Trump now in power, many Republicans seem to be attacking the idea of participating in the UN or cutting funding with renewed fervor.

Each year, the US gives approximately $8 billion in mandatory payments and voluntary contributions to the international peace agency and its affiliated organizations. About $3 billion of that sum goes the UN’s regular peacekeeping budgets.

The appointment of director Roman Polanski as the head of the jury for France’s César Awards – the country’s equivalent of the Oscars – has sparked outrage, NME reports.

The César awards, which is organised by the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma, will take place at the Salle Pleyel in Paris on February 24. The position as head judge of the jury is seen as a prestigious role, and was previously held by the two-time Oscar winner Claude Lelouch.

However, Polanski’s appointment on Thursday (January 19) as head of the jury has been met by fierce criticism, with the French minister for women’s rights, Laurence Rossignol, branding the decision as “shocking.” Polanski is notoriously wanted in the US for admitting to sex with a minor, with the director fleeing the country in 1978 ahead of his sentencing for statutory rape.

Rossignol said that she found it “surprising and shocking that a rape case counts for little in the life of a man,” while a number of women’s right groups have expressed their outrage at the decision. “We are extremely angry,” said Claire Serre-Combe of Osez le Féminisme (Dare Feminism). “We cannot let this pass. Making Polanski president is a snub to rape and sexual assault victims. The quality of his work counts for nothing when confronted with the crime he committed, his escape from justice and his refusal to face up to his responsibilities.”

The Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma, however, were defiant in praising the Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby and The Pianist director, with its president Alain Terzian stating: “Artist, filmmaker, producer, writer, actor, director, there are many words to define Roman Polanski but only one to express our admiration and enchantment: thank you, Mr President.”

A request by Poland’s justice minister to have Polanski extradited to the US to face charges was rejected by the country’s Supreme Court in December. Polanski holds both French and Polish citizenship.

An Egyptian government decision to designate soccer icon Mohammed Aboutreika as a terrorist coupled with the recent arrest of more than 30 militant football fans puts to bed any hopes that general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi sees the game’s supporters as a way to reach out to his opponents.

Mr. Al Sisi’s intent to maintain his brutal crackdown on dissidents was likely bolstered by a perceived change of attitude of the United States with the rise of President Donald J. Trump, who is expected to prioritize counter-terrorism over respect for human rights.

In a telephone conversation this week, Mr. Trump promised Mr. Al-Sisi, who met the president in New York in September and was the first Muslim head of state to congratulate him on his election victory, that the United States was committed to supporting Egypt in its fight against political violence.

“The U.S. President also expressed during the call his looking forward to the President’s awaited visit to Washington which is being prepared for through diplomatic channels,” Mr. Al-Sisi’s spokesman, Alaa Youssef, said in a statement.

The designation of Mr. Aboutreika, a retired four-time African Footballer of the Year nicknamed The Magician, the arrest of the 20 fans of storied Cairo club Al Zamalek SC for attempting to force their way into a training session of their team, and clashes with supporters of Zamalek arch rival Al Ahli SC in which two policemen were injured after authorities detained 13 Ahli fans for attempting to force their way into a training session of their team, came as part of a wider crackdown.

The 20 Zamalek fans were detained for demanding during an Egypt-Tunisia match the prosecution of club president Mortada Mansour. The fans raised a banner saying “311 days since the massacre at the Air Defense stadium, prosecute Mortada Mansour,” a reference to clashes with security forces in February last year in which some 20 Zamalek fans were killed.

A larger than life member of parliament, Mr. Mansour, who unsuccessfully campaigned for the banning of militant soccer fan groups as terrorist organizations, justified the deaths, claiming that he had requested security forces to act against what he termed members of the Brotherhood.

Egyptian stadia have been closed to the public with the exception of controlled and limited access to international matches for much of the last six years in a bid to prevent them from again becoming platforms for anti-government protest.

Mr. Aboutreika, a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood whose assets were frozen last year on charges that he had funded the outlawed group, was one of 1,500 public figures designated last week by a Cairo court.

Mr. Aboutreika drew the ire of authorities for supporting militant fans in the wake of suspected tacit military and security force association with a brawl in a Port Said stadium in 2012 in which 72 Ahli supporters died.

The former midfielder who captained Egypt’s nation team during a decade in which won three African titles also expressed support for Brotherhood demonstrators, hundreds of whom were killed in a brutal crackdown on Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square following the 2013 military coup in which Mr. Al-Sisi toppled Mohammed Morsi, a Brother and Egypt’s first and only democratically elected president.

Mr. Aboutreika, who is based in Qatar, has denied being a member of the Brotherhood and has said he would appeal his designation.

Egypt has listed the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation and jailed thousands of its supporters since Mr. Al-Sisi removed Mr. Morsi from office following mass protests against his rule. A 1986 research paper by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) cautioned that “a weakened Brotherhood…is likely to strengthen Islamic extremists who are even less accommodating to the United States,” an expression of concern that a repressive regime’s suppression of the Brotherhood would fuel radicalization.

The designation of the 1,500 and the arrests coincided with the detention of nine alleged leaders of the Brotherhood on charges of planning to “disrupt order and security” on tomorrow’s anniversary of the 2011 popular revolt that forced president Hosni Mubarak to resign after 30 years in office. Militant, highly politicized soccer fans played a key role in the revolt.

The interior ministry asserted that the men had “aimed at provoking public opinion by exploiting the economic situation the country is going through and coordinating with extremist entities.” Mr. Al-Sisi has seen his popularity drop in recent months amid intermittent protests against the pain of a deteriorating economy, sharply rising prices and commodity shortages, and austerity measures designed to rein in unsustainable spending on subsidies and allow Egypt’s currency to float freely.

The designation of Mr. Aboutreika and the arrests signals an end to intermittent attempts by Mr. Al-Sisi to reach out the fans and through them to frustrated Egyptian youth.

In an unprecedented gesture, Mr. Al-Sisi reached out last year to Ultras Ahlawy, the militant, street-battle hardened support group of Al Ahli. In a first recognition of the potential power of the fans, Mr. Al-Sisi phoned in to a television programme on the fourth anniversary of the Port Said incident to invite militant fans to appoint ten of their members to independently investigate the incident.

It was the first time Mr. Al-Sisi had reached out to his opponents, many of whom have been killed by the interior ministry’s security forces, forced underground or into exile, or are lingering in prisons where they risk abuse and torture. Ultras Ahlawy declined the invitation saying it could not be accuser and judge at the same time but kept the door to a dialogue open.

With soccer fans having been at the core of mass student protests against Mr. Al-Sisi in 2013 and 2014 that were brutally crushed by security forces who turned universities into fortresses, the government accelerated the move of government offices, including the prosecutor-general’s office, state security, judicial bodies and a new police academy.

“The security situation is connected to the targeting of these institutions by a number of protesters centred in downtown Cairo. They seek to spread chaos throughout the country… And they’re attempting to break the aura of authority around state institutions by putting them under siege, covering their walls with graffiti of vulgar images and language degrading to those who work there… The security challenges the country is going through have forced the ministry to accelerate its construction plans,” said General Ahmad al-Badry, the former head of the Police Academy, at last year’s inauguration of the new academy.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Monday it is alarmed by the new US administration’s repeated attacks on the media and blatant disregard for facts in the first three days of Donald Trump’s presidency. RSF is calling on Trump and his team to stop undermining the First Amendment and start defending it.

In the first 72 hours since the 45th President of the United States took his oath of office, his administration has executed a coordinated attack on the media and demonstrated a clear disregard for facts, according to RSF.

“It is clear that Trump views the media as his number one enemy and is taking every single opportunity to try to weaken their credibility, said Margaux Ewen, Advocacy and Communications Director for RSF North America. Any reporting he deems unfavorable to him, any reporting that does not jibe with his administration’s message of self-aggrandizement, is called false and irresponsible. RSF said it reminds Trump’s administration that the press does not provide public relations for the President, but reports the truth in order to hold government officials accountable, despite statements to the contrary from White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. What’s equally alarming is the repeated lies that Spicer and Trump’s advisors are feeding to the press, despite irrefutable photographic evidence to the contrary.”

Alternative facts

On Saturday, President Trump made use of his first full day in office vigorously attacking the media, referring to them as “among the most dishonest human beings on earth” during a speech he made at C.I.A. headquarters.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer towed the same line at his first press conference since the inauguration, harshly scolding journalists for “deliberately false reporting” regarding the presence of a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in the oval office and the size of inauguration crowds. He claimed “photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the national mall.” He then claimed “this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration period. Both in person and around the globe.” He proceeded to make several other statements during the press conference and proclaimed that the media’s “attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong…We’re gonna hold the press accountable.” Spicer then refused to take any questions from reporters.

During an interview with CNN’s Chuck Todd, Senior Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway claimed that Spicer had presented “alternative facts” and after being pressed to answer Todd’s question on why Spicer repeatedly stated falsehoods at Saturday’s press conference Conway said that the Trump administration might have to “rethink their relationship” with the press.

“In fact, the simultaneous attacks on the press for so called ‘inaccurate’ reporting and the use of what the administration calls ‘alternative facts’ to counter this reporting are reminiscent of an authoritarian government’s tactics, said Delphine Halgand, Director of RSF North America. The press freedom predators of the world are watching Trump and taking notes. It’s terrifying to think how much more brazen they will be in their attacks on journalists around the world now that the leader of the United States of America is setting a terrible example.”

Inaugural incidents

On Inauguration day, the U.S. Department of the Interior was banned from Twitter after its account retweeted photographs comparing this year’s inauguration attendance with that of Obama’s 2009 inauguration.

In a statement from Jeffrey Ballou, President of the National Press Club, it was alleged that several credentialed reporters were denied access to cover inaugural events. RSF said it is aware of one such incident which barred CNN from covering the Deploraball on the eve of Inauguration.

As riots broke out in Washington, DC on Inauguration day, Washington Post video reporter Dalton Bennett was thrown to the ground by police while covering the arrests of dozens of anti-Trump protesters and rioters. AJC photographer Hyosub Shin was pepper sprayed in the face while covering the same riots in DC. Two journalists were reportedly arrested along with rioters and protestors: Alexander Rubinstein from RT and another journalist for Vocativ.

The US currently ranks 41 out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2016 World Press Freedom Index.

Threats to international liberal order and democratic nations, both external and internal, shape new forms of globalization.

By Amitav Acharya*

The liberal order is imploding. The ascent of Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States is the consequence, not the cause, of the crisis in the liberal international order led by the United States. That crisis and decline has been forewarned for some time, including this author’s 2014 book, The End of American World Order, and in the pages of YaleGlobal, although many of the liberal order’s proponents were slow to acknowledge it.

Until now, it was generally assumed that the main challenge to liberal order or what may be called liberal globalism would come from external factors, especially from the rising powers led by China. Trump’s victory and Brexit suggest that the challenge to the liberal international order is from both within and without.

Exit polls show that the states Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was expected to carry – such as Wisconsin, which had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1984, as well as Pennsylvania and Michigan, which had not done so since 1988, as well as Ohio and North Carolina – voted for Trump because of sentiments against economic globalization underpinning the liberal order. Trump’s electoral platform on trade carried such elements as: “Negotiate fair trade deals that create American jobs, increase American wages, and reduce America’s trade deficit.” Point 1 of his “7 Point Plan to Rebuild the American Economy by Fighting for Free Trade” is to “Withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has not yet been ratified,” a threat he has lost no time in affirming. Point 6 is to “Instruct the U.S. Trade Representative to bring trade cases against China, both in this country and at the WTO. China’s unfair subsidy behavior is prohibited by the terms of its entrance to the WTO.” The Trump team has indicated that it will place greater stress on bilateral deals based on a strict and direct reciprocity rather than multilateralism.

Although alliances should be viewed as instruments of power politics, American liberal internationalists have viewed them as key instruments of the liberal order and for the US ability to dominate the world. Trump is not the first American leader to call for allies to do more for their own defense. But his approach is much more than the usual “burden-sharing” talk of past presidents such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Trump seems to betray a fundamental lack of faith in the strategic and normative utility of alliances. He is also the first US president who has explicitly warned about the withdrawal of US protection should the allies not comply with his demand. Trump’s sympathy for Russia means his stance on alliances cannot be easily brushed off as another attempt at burden-sharing, but motivated by a fundamentally different geopolitical calculus.

A major question about the future of the liberal order is whether Trump’s victory might encourage authoritarianism around the world. As many commentators have pointed out, Trump’s victory is encouraging to anti-democratic leaders not only outside the West such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, but also far-right movements in the West, such as those led by the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, Italy’s Salvini, Britain’s Nigel Farage and France’s Marine Le Pen.

Such an authoritarian wave may not materialize or last long. But there is little question that Trump’s victory has given democracy’s foes a reason to pounce. “Democracy is the loser in U.S. Vote,” declared China Daily while criticizing the level of personal attacks and “nasty aspects” of American-style democracy during the long and brutal presidential campaign. And as argued by Richard Javad Heydarian, a political science professor at Manila’s De La Salle University, Trump’s election has raised questions about the maturity of American democracy.

Trump’s victory has already eroded the country’s claim to leadership in projecting liberal values, a key element of American primacy and the US-led liberal order. Volker Perthes, the director of the German Institute of International and Security Affairs, says that Trump’s victory “represents a hard knock for the West’s normative bedrock of liberalism.” It has also dented America’s soft power, which rests largely on the attractiveness of its domestic politics, culture and institutions. People around the world are unlikely to forget Trump’s attack on the Hispanic judge in California, which fellow Republican and House Speaker Paul Ryan described as a “textbook case of racism,” or his attack on Mexican immigrants and the parents of a Muslim US soldier who died from a car bomb in Iraq after ordering subordinates to stand back while he inspected the vehicle. Few elected leaders of a major liberal power could express such distinctly illiberal views on race and women as Trump did during the campaign.

The emerging powers can only wait. Some analysts argue that emerging powers, Russia and China in particular, may profit from the political crisis. But when it comes to the liberal order, Russia and China have different interests. Putin, who tried to help put Trump in the White House, according to US intelligence agencies, stands to gain if Trump carries out his stance on alliances and reduces global engagement. Unlike China, Russia has been a loser in the post–Cold War shift in power and wealth. Russia has little interest in preserving the liberal order and stands to gain geopolitically if Trump and Brexit weaken NATO and the European Union.

But China is another case and, as the main beneficiary of the liberal order, has much to lose from its collapse. The country will protest a precipitate collapse of the liberal order, but also gains wider leeway to shape and lead a new kind of globalization. This is the message of President Xi Jinping’s unprecedented presence at the annual World Economic Forum at Davos. Unlike many others, this author does not think that globalism or globalization is over. Instead, we may see a different form of globalization. The new globalization will be led more by the East, especially China and India, and other emerging countries than by the West. Globalization may be based more on South-South than North-South linkages. Moreover, the new globalization may see greater emphasis on development, such as infrastructure development, than trade liberalization. Due to the prominence of China and other emerging powers, globalization will be more respectful of sovereignty, more economic, and less political or ideological.

All these trends will affect the global governance architecture. The election of Trump casts a shadow over the future of global governance. Many of his stated policy platforms suggest a nationalist, inward-looking US foreign policy. While his demand for US allies to pay more for their own defense need not affect global governance, the policies on trade, environment and security will influence global institutions, such as the World Trade Organization and the United Nations as well as global climate change negotiations.

At the same time, Initiatives such as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank may be joined by new ones led by emerging and regional powers. Regional arrangements will continue to proliferate. Civil society actors may organize against populist regimes in the West to create new avenues for protest and offer alternative pathways to global governance. While demand for global governance will remain, the architecture will continue to fragment and decenter, confirming the onset of what this author has called a multiplex world.

*Amitav Acharya is the Boeing Chair in International Relations at Tsinghua University and author of The End of American World Order (Polity 2014, Chinese translation by Shanghai People’s Press, 2016). Read an excerpt.

No, it was not just “another Middle East peace conference,” as a columnist for Israel’s Jerusalem Post newspaper depicted the Paris peace conference, held on Jan. 15 with top official representation from 70 countries. If it was just another peace conference, representatives from the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority (PA) would have attended as well.

Instead, it was a defining moment that we are likely to remember, the one that officially ended the peace process charade after 25 years. If the Madrid conference of October 1991 was the vibrant official start of peace talks between Israel and its Arab — including Palestinian — neighbors, the Paris talks of January 2016 were the sad termination of it.

As soon as the Madrid talks began, the positive energy and expectations that accompanied them began to fade. Even before the talks began, Israel had set political traps and erected obstacles. For example, it refused to deal directly with the Palestinian negotiating team led by the late Haidar Abdul Shafi (since, as far as Israel was concerned, Palestinians did not exist), and even protested that negotiator Saeb Erekat wore the traditional Palestinian headscarf.

It has been 25 years since that initial meeting. Since then, several of the original Palestinian delegation members have passed away; others have aged while talking about peace, but with no peace in sight. The then-young Erekat became “chief negotiator” of the PA, again, yet with nothing to talk about.

What is left to be negotiated when Israel has doubled its illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, when the number of Israeli settlers has grown from a negligible 250,000 in 1993 to over 600,000, when the rate of Palestinian loss of land has accelerated like never before since the war and occupation of 1967, and when Gaza has been under lock and key for over 10 years, suffering from war, polluted water and malnourishment?

Yet the Americans have persisted. They needed the peace process. It is an American investment, first and foremost, because American reputation and leadership depended on it. “We are joined at the hip with Israel,” said Professor John Mearsheimer, co-author of “The Israeli Lobby,” in a recent interview.

“What Israel does and how Israel evolves matters greatly for America’s reputation. This is why President (Barack) Obama — and President George W. Bush before him, and President Bill Clinton before him — went to great lengths to get a two-state solution.” Precisely. They persisted and failed, again and again, until the two-state solution (which was never a serious endeavor to
begin with) became a distant and eventually impossible quest.

As Israel’s political center moved sharply to the right under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US maintained its position, as if oblivious to the fact that “facts on the ground” have altered the political landscape beyond recognition.

Obama began his presidency in what some saw as an earnest push for renewed talks, which were halted or stalled during the Bush administration. Obama dispatched Sen. George Mitchell, whose negotiating skills in 2010-2011 could not move Israel from its obstinate position on settlement expansion, and dispatched his Secretary of State John Kerry, who tried unsuccessfully to revitalize talks between 2013 and 2014.

Obama must have, at one point, realized that these efforts were futile. For a start, Netanyahu seemed to have greater influence on the US Congress than the president himself. This is not an exaggeration.

When Netanyahu clashed with Obama over the Iran nuclear deal, he snubbed the US president and gave a talk to a joint Congress in March 2015, in which he chastised Obama and the “bad deal” with Iran. Obama appeared forlorn and irrelevant, as the representatives of the American people gave numerous standing ovations to a foreign leader who boasted, yelled, assigned blame and praise.

Kerry’s nostalgic last speech in late December was an indication of that epic failure, the gist of his plea being that it was all over. However, both Kerry and Obama have no one to blame but themselves. Their administration had the political clout and popular mandate to push Israel and exact concessions that could have served as the basis of something substantial. They chose not to.

Now Donald Trump is US president. He comes with an eerie agenda that looks identical to that of the current Israeli government of right-wingers and ultra-nationalists.

“We have now reached the point where envoys from one country to the other could almost switch places,” wrote Palestinian Professor Rashid Khalidi in The New Yorker. “The Israeli Ambassador in Washington, Ron Dermer, who grew up in Florida, could just as easily be the US ambassador to Israel, while Donald Trump’s Ambassador-designate to Israel, David Friedman, who has intimate ties to the Israeli settler movement, would make a fine ambassador in Washington for the pro-settler government of Benjamin Netanyahu.”

So that is it folks, the show is over. The era of the peace process is behind us, and early signs indicate that Palestinians are now realizing it as they are clearly seeking alternatives to the various overbearing US administrations.
Several administrations have contributed to the idea that peace was at hand, that Israel was willing to compromise, that pressure had to be applied (mostly on Palestinians) to end the seemingly equal “conflict,” and that the US was a neutral party and even-handed “honest broker.”

The Israelis did not mind playing along as long as the game did not jeopardize their colonialization of the occupied territories. The largely unelected Palestinian leadership joined in, seeking funds and meaningless political recognition. The rest of the world, including the UN, watched from afar or played their assigned, marginal role.

But now Israel does not need to accommodate the rules of the game anymore, simply because the American “broker” has lost interest. Trump understands that his country can no longer maintain policing a unipolar world, and has no interest in picking fights with regional power Israel.

Trump began his presidential campaign promising to keep an equal distance from Israelis and Palestinians, only to head in an extremely alarming direction with the promise to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thus possibly igniting another Palestinian uprising.

Knowing that the US is no longer an ally, so-called Palestinian “moderates” are now seeking alternatives. On the day of Trump’s inauguration in a lavish party seen as the most expensive in history, Palestinian factions were meeting not in Washington, London or Paris but in Moscow.

The news of an agreement that will see the admission of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) received little media coverage, but it was consequential nonetheless. The timing (Trump’s inauguration) and the place (Moscow) were very telling of a changing political reality in the Middle East.

What are we to make of the Paris conference? It was a sad display of a final French-European-American attempt at showing relevance in a region that has vastly changed, in a “process” that existed on paper only, and in a political landscape that has become too complicated and diverse for the likes of President Francois Hollande (an ardent supporter of Israel to begin with) to matter in the least.

It was not just “another Middle East peace conference,” but the end of the American era in the Middle East.

By Chris Miller*

(FPRI) — When Americans think about the world, they divide it into discrete regions: Europe, spanning from Norway to Greece; the Middle East, stretching from Morocco to Iran; and the Asia-Pacific, covering Japan through Indonesia, or sometimes even to India. This mental map of the world is profoundly powerful and entirely imaginary. Powerful, because where we place countries affects how we treat them. Imaginary, because our mental geographies are not the only way of seeing the world. Often, they are not even the best way.

No region of the world is more divided in Americans’ mental map than the Black Sea. We place the countries that surround the Black Sea coast into three different categories. Romania and Bulgaria are in Europe, members of NATO and the European Union. Russia, Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia are the former Soviet Union; for better or for worse, they are still defined by the historical legacy of Soviet rule. And Turkey, embroiled by Kurdish insurgency and at war in Syria and Iraq, is increasingly seen as one of the main powers of the Middle East.

There is much sense, of course, in this tripartite division of the region, since it accurately describes at least some of these countries’ current domestic politics and international orientation. But thinking only in terms of Europe, the Middle East, and the former USSR misses many, perhaps most, of the dynamics that unite the region. Only several hundred miles separate Turkey’s great Black Sea port of Trabzon from Tiraspol, the border city serving as capital of Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region. Burgas, Bulgaria’s biggest port and an oil-refining hub, is a one-day sail from Georgia’s Batumi, formerly the greatest oil port of Tsarist Russia. Sochi, the host of Russia’s 2014 winter Olympics, is located due north of Rize, the home province of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The geography of the Black Sea matters not only because the region is increasingly at the center of the United States’ foreign policy, but we continue to wrongly see the region as divided into unconnected chunks. Beyond geographic proximity and historical connections, however, there are three main reasons to look at the Black Sea as a coherent region, rather than merely as a medium-sized body of water:  security, energy, and European and Eurasian integration. Each of these themes is shared across the Black Sea region. Unless we recognize the interconnections—and treat the Black Sea as a whole—we cannot fully understand the region. Why the Black Sea? We may see it as a body of water that separates Europe from Asia, or that divides the Middle East from the former USSR. But all sides of the Black Sea’s shores share many of the factors driving political and economic change in the region.

Black Sea Security

Take security. A ring of smoldering conflicts surrounds the Black Sea. In Moldova, a 25-year-old frozen conflict divides the country into two pieces. Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula was annexed by Russia, and the Donbass region remains occupied by Russian-backed separatist forces. Russia’s main supply route to its forces in Syria runs through the Black Sea via the Bosphorus and Dardanelles to the Eastern Mediterranean. In the Caucasus, ongoing conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh and between Georgia and the breakaway regions South Ossetia and Abkhazia continue to attract the interest of outside powers, Russia chief among them.

All of these conflicts—frozen to various degrees—are usually seen as the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, remnants of the retreating Russian Empire. This is true, but it misses their Black Sea context. It is not a coincidence that all the ongoing post-Soviet conflicts (including, it is worth noting, Russia’s ongoing struggle to pacify and integrate its own North Caucasus) occur around the Black Sea.

Why is this case? Primarily because the Black Sea area is where Russia and the West failed to agree on post-Cold War “rules of the game.” In Central Asia, the West never seriously expected to wield dominant influence or to transform local governance. The civil war in Tajikistan, therefore, was resolved in the 1990s along Russian lines, with relatively little Western input. Similarly, Moscow has recognized the Baltic states—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—as part of the European system, and disagreements between these countries’ ethnic majorities and Russian-speaking minorities have been managed along the West’s preferred methods.

Russia and the West never agreed about the Black Sea. Are Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia in Russia’s sphere of control, or are they on track to join Western institutions? Such disagreement exists, largely because in the 1990s, neither the West nor Russia seriously imagined that these countries would want or could be prepared to join Western institutions. (In the 1990s, the debate was whether Poland would join NATO.) At the same time, Turkey had long sought to join the European Union, but was held at bay by Western European voters who feared a wave of Turkish immigrants. This confusion added an additional level of geopolitical complication. Lacking a clear set of rules, the Black Sea region’s existing conflicts continued to smolder. The wars in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine in 2014 were sparked by local disputes, but they only occurred because of this larger disagreement about how the Black Sea region should be governed.

Today, the situation is as confused as a decade ago, but far more tense. Both Russia and Ukraine are building up their military power in the Black Sea. NATO has stationed additional forces in Romania and has considered adding to its naval presence. Over the past year, Turkey and Russia have swung between tentative friendship and near-open conflict. Ankara relies on NATO defense commitments even as it seeks to maintain its privileged position in the Black Sea itself. And Russia’s expansion of its military role in Syria adds to the importance the Kremlin attaches to Black Sea naval supply routes. The Black Sea is more militarized and less stable than at any point since the Cold War’s end—and perhaps since the late 1940s.

Black Sea Energy

The question of security and insecurity in the Black Sea overlaps with other areas of conflict and cooperation. One key and contested theme is energy. A significant share of Russia’s gas exports run via the Black Sea region, primarily through Ukraine. Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned gas monopoly, says it wants to cut off gas transit through Ukraine, a move in part designed to place pressure on Kyiv’s Western-oriented government. To make such a switch possible, Russia is looking to build new gas pipelines: some further north, but some also located in the Black Sea region. For years, Russia promoted the South Stream pipeline, which would have shipped gas via an underwater pipeline intersecting the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria, and then on to other European countries. Despite some support for the project in Bulgaria and elsewhere, it was scrapped in 2014 under pressure from Western leaders who wanted to punish Russia for annexing Crimea.

Since the cancellation of South Stream, the Kremlin has turned its attention to a new pipeline, Turk Stream. This pipeline would also bypass Ukraine via an underwater, trans-Black Sea link, distributing gas from Russia via Turkey and onward to European customers. This pipeline, too, is partly a geopolitical game. Russia froze the project after tensions with Turkey spiked in late 2015, only to restart it when ties improved in 2016. Many experts, however, consider the project economically unjustified given low energy prices and ample existing pipeline capacity. It remains unclear if the pipeline will be built.

Other countries also view the Black Sea as a strategic energy corridor. Just as the Kremlin seeks to bypass Ukraine by using other Black Sea routes, so too do Western governments look to the Black Sea as a route for transporting energy from the gas-rich Caspian Sea region to Western markets. Already, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline transports oil from Azerbaijani oil fields to global markets, bypassing Russia.

Potentially more significant are efforts to construct gas pipelines originating in Azerbaijan or even Turkmenistan, transiting through Turkey and supplying gas to Western consumers. The Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), for example, is intended to give Azerbaijan a means of breaking Russia’s monopoly on gas exports from the former USSR to the West. If Iranian gas ever reaches Europe, it too will transit the Black Sea. So long as Europe relies on natural gas for energy, the Black Sea will remain a crucial energy transit corridor.

European and Eurasian Integration in the Black Sea

Energy is not Europe’s only interest in the Black Sea. The region is one of three areas of instability positioned along Europe’s southern border. Coupled with the Eastern Mediterranean (Syria, Lebanon, Israel) and the countries of North Africa, political and economic chaos in the Black Sea risks spilling into the European Union. The threat of instability along its border is a major reason why the European Union involves itself so much in the Black Sea region. Indeed, except for the Balkans, all potential members of the European Union ring the Black Sea, including Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and (for true optimists) Turkey.

The European Union has already signed Association Agreements with Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. These agreements do not guarantee these countries future membership in the European Union, but they do provide wide access to European markets as well as aid and technical assistance. Moldovan and Georgian citizens have received the right to travel to the European Union without needing to apply for a visa, a right that Ukrainians may receive in 2017.

Major political groups in each of these countries describe accession to the European Union as a long-term goal. Amid Brexit and a continent-wide populist backlash, further EU expansion looks unlikely in the short term. But it is worth remembering that in 1989, as communist regimes crumbled across Central and Eastern Europe, the idea that Poland or Romania would join the European Union also seemed like a long-term prospect at best. As it happened, the long term came sooner than many expected.

Turkey has been a candidate for EU accession since before the Cold War ended, yet its membership, while still in theory under negotiation, looks unlikely. Unlike tiny Moldova and Georgia, Turkey’s population is the size of Germany’s, so its accession would drastically shift the balance of power within Europe. It would also likely lead to a flood of unwelcome economic migrants to wealthier European countries. That means full EU membership is unlikely, even if current political disagreements between Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and other European leaders are overcome. Nonetheless, geographic and economic realities mean that ties between Turkey and Europe are likely to persist. The migration deal struck earlier this year by Erdoğan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is a good example for why cooperation between Turkey and the European Union will continue.

For this reason, Europe’s foreign policy is likely to remain focused on the Black Sea for some time to come. Yet, the Black Sea is also one of two regions that Russia hopes will participate in its own Eurasian Union. Armenia has already signed up, and Russia is pushing hard for Moldova to join. Moscow would also like Ukraine to join its Eurasian project, though this looks unlikely given how strongly Ukrainian public opinion turned against Moscow thanks to the war in the Donbass.

Even if Europe and Russia manage to agree on Ukraine—a prospect that does not look likely—the broader question of Europe’s relations with the other countries of the Black Sea is unlikely to go away. The door to European Union membership formally remains open, particularly for Moldova, a small country on the EU’s border. And the EU has no model for stabilizing European countries on its border that does not involve expanding its own institutions. The Association Agreement that Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia signed with the European Union is unlikely to be the final step of their integration with Europe.

Why the Black Sea Matters

Rarely has a region figured so prominently in American foreign policy without our even realizing it. We treat Turkey as separate from Ukraine, Romania as wholly distinct from Georgia, and Russia as an aggressive “lone wolf” in the region. These are different countries, of course, with diverse historical traditions and political structures. But from security to energy to the future of Europe, the Black Sea operates as a united region far more than Americans usually realize. We underestimate regional connections and fail to understand the linkages that drive regional politics.

The Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Black Sea Initiative, launching this month, will cover these issues in depth. Each month, we will publish an essay on a key Black Sea region issue, looking both at how specific Black Sea countries view the region and examining themes that cut across national borders. These essays will be written by top American and European analysts and by leading experts from the Black Sea region. Our aim is to show that from energy to economics, from security to geopolitics, the region’s relevance is far broader than most people realize. The future of Europe and Eurasia is being contested in the Black Sea.

About the author:
*Chris Miller is Research Director of the FPRI Eurasia Program where he serves as the editor of the Baltic Bulletin and our Black Sea Initiative publications. He is also the Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Two years after it was first introduced, the Islam Nusantara theology of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest Indonesian Islamic organisation, continues to face opposition from more conservative factions. This is casting a shadow over NU’s effort to promote the middle ground and toleration in Indonesia.

By Alexander R Arifianto*

Two years after the idea of Islam Nusantara was first introduced as a reinterpretation of the Nahdhlatul Ulama’s basic theological tenets, it continues to face opposition from conservative factions. Backing the resistance are theological critiques from younger clerics who seek to eradicate liberal influences from the organisation, the largest in Indonesia.

The rift between the factions of NU current chairman Said Aqil Siradj and former general chairman Hasyim Muzadi can be seen in the East Java strongholds of NU. The opposition by NU Garis Lurus (NU True Path), consisting of influential young clerics, constitutes a serious challenge to NU’s theological frame that had been instituted by former President Abdurrahman Wahid and his followers over three decades. These popular young clerics argue that Islam Nusantara is an invention of “liberal” thinkers while there is only one universal Islam for all Muslims that does not require “localised” intepretations such as Islam Nusantara.

Reinterpretation of NU theology

Introduced during NU’s national congress in Jombang, East Java two years ago, Chairman Said Aqil Siradj, said Islam Nusantara is the reinterpretation of NU’s basic theological tenets, which combines classical Islamic theology (aqidah), jurisprudence (fiqh) and localised practices, such as offering prayers to the deceased (tahlilan).

It emphasises the understanding that Indonesian Muslims do not necessarily have to forgo their national and local identities. Instead, these values can coexist with their Islamic identities and together, they can lead one to be a devout Muslim and an Indonesian nationalist at the same time.

This reinvention of NU theology has two purposes. Firstly, it is to respond to radical interpretation of Islam such as those expressed by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS), which has gained attraction among some young Muslims worldwide, including those living in Indonesia. Secondly, it is to distinguish NU theology from more conservative organisations such as Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) and other similar groups. NU leaders believe these groups are actively seeking new supporters from the ranks of NU followers, mainly those under 30.

Critiques of Islam Nusantara Idea

NU has held multiple seminars and conferences promoting Islam Nusantara for Indonesian as well as international audiences. It held two international conferences of Islamic scholars in November 2015 and May 2016. Its Research and Human Resources Development Institute (Lakpesdam), and affiliated NU faculty at the State Islamic Universities (UIN) system, have regularly sponsored workshops on Islam Nusantara in numerous localities throughout Indonesia.

However, despite these numerous activities, opposition against Islam Nusantara remains strong, not just from outside of the organisation, but also from numerous clerics and activists among NU’s followers. Some of this opposition can be attributed to factional rivalries within NU, especially between current chairman Said Aqil and the previous chairman Hasyim Muzadi.

The previous chairman unsuccessfully challenged Said Aqil’s re-election bid as NU chairman during the 2015 muktamar. The failed attempt created a feud between the two factions that has not been fully resolved to this day.

The rift can be seen clearly in East Java province, which historically is one of NU’s most important strongholds. As Hasyim Muzadi was the head of the organisation’s East Java branch before he was elected NU chairman in 2000, he commands significant following from senior clerics (kyai) and activists from the province. These clerics in turn order their boarding schools (pesantren) and students (santri) to oppose Islam Nusantara to reject Said Aqil’s legitimacy as NU chairman.

Influential NU pesantrens such as Lirboyo in Jombang district and Sidogiri in Pasuruan district have announced their rejection of Islam Nusantara, causing a blow to Said Aqil’s effort to promote the theology among NU followers living in East Java.

Rise of NU Garis Lurus

Critiques of the idea of Islam Nusantara also come from the theological ground. A group of young NU kyai have formed a new organisation called the ‘True Path NU’ (NU Garis Lurus) in 2015. Kyai Muhammad Idrus Ramli, the organisation’s founder and chairman, states that it wishes to eradicate ‘liberal’ theological influence from the NU, as he argues that they have corrupted the organisation’s original aim as an Islamic organisation adhering to Sunni principles (Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah).

These ‘liberal’ influences are not just limited to the ideas articulated by progressive NU activists such as Ulil Abshar Abdalla, but also those articulated by the late Abdurrahman Wahid, NU’s long-time chairman (1984-1999) and Indonesia’s fourth president (1999-2001). Wahid successfully led NU to embrace values such as democracy and religious tolerance; NU Garis Lurus serves as the most serious challenge towards NU’s theological frame that Wahid and his successors have instituted within the organisation over the past three decades.

A number of young NU clerics with significant popular following have affiliated themselves with NU Garis Lurus. This includes Buya Yahya, a charismatic preacher who is widely considered to be a future leader of the NU. He has become a strong critic of Islam Nusantara, arguing that it is invented by ‘liberal’ thinkers such as Ulil Abshar Abdalla and Azyumardi Azra. Buya Yahya believes that there is only one universal Islam for all Muslims and thus, there is no need for ‘localised’ Islamic interpretations, whether they are Islam Nusantara, Middle Eastern Islam, or others.

NU Garis Lurus activists are also known for their close alliance with activists from conservative Islamist groups, including Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI), bypassing the theological divide that sharply distinguishes NU from these groups. Its activists participated in the 4 November and 2 December 2016 rallies in Jakarta, calling for the trial of the city’s governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama for allegedly committing a blasphemous act against Islam.

NU Garis Lurus Not To Be Ignored

The NU leadership tends to dismiss NU Garis Lurus as a fringe group that does not represent the organisation and does not attract many followers. However, it would be a mistake for them to continue dismissing it, given its prominent role during the Jakarta rallies and given that propagation (dakwah) seminars organised by its affiliated ulama have attracted tens of thousands followers throughout Indonesia.

NU already faces criticisms for losing its moral authority in the aftermath of the 4 November and 2 December rallies. It should pay more attention to the challenge from NU Garis Lurus and its activists, as the group could one day change its outlook and worldview. If this happens, NU would be a completely different organisation from the one that is widely-known today.

*Alexander R Arifianto PhD is a Research Fellow with the Indonesia Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. This is part of a series.

By Sven Milekic

The coordinating body for all the Jewish communities in Croatia said it will not take part in the state-organised commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day this Friday in protest against the government’s lack of action to deal with right-wingers putting up plaques that display WWII fascist slogans, among other recent incidents.

Sara Tabakovic Zoricic, a representative of the Jewish community in Zagreb and the director of the Shoah Academy, told BIRN that the boycott will go ahead “because of all the things that piled up; the Jasenovac plaque issue and other things”.

Tabakovic Zoricic was referring to an incident when former members of the 1990s-era Croatian Defence Forces and right-wing politicians installed a memorial plaque with the Croatian World War II fascist Ustasa slogan ‘Za dom spremni’ (‘Ready for the Home(land)’) near the site of the former Ustasa concentration camp at Jasenovac last year.

According to research by the Jasenovac Memorial Site, 83,145 Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascists have been identified on a name-by-name list as having died at the concentration camp during the war, a figure which is not yet final.

“We cancelled our presence at their events due to the whole situation regarding these mild reactions regarding the plaques and other issues,” Tabakovic Zoricic said.

Tabakovic Zoricic also pointed to the case of an exhibition on Holocaust victim and diarist Anne Frank that was removed from a high school in the coastal town of Sibenik on Thursday.

The exhibition was taken down because since the school’s director complained that it portrayed the Ustasa negatively while showing Communist-led anti-fascist Partisans as “innocents”.

“This is actually a consequence of the whole situation. I think that this is something so outrageous on an international level. This level of denial of everything that happened in Croatia in WWII is unbelievable,” Tabakovic Zoricic said.

She argued that the current centre-right government had persisted with the same policies as the previous administration that collapsed last June, which caused both the Jewish and Serbian communities to boycott last year’s official state commemoration of the victims of Jasenovac.

Information about this year’s boycott was first reported by daily newspaper Novi list on Saturday, quoting the head of the Jewish community in Zagreb, Ognjen Kraus, as saying that the brutality of the Ustasa movement was increasingly being downplayed in Croatia.

“If the red star [the insignia of the Partisans] and the Ustasa’s ‘U’ [insignia] are the same, then there’s nothing more to talk about,” he said, pointing to announcements that the government plans to ban all totalitarian symbols, including the red star, which one expert said would have risky constitutional implications.

During the Ustasa-led Independent State of Croatia – which included the majority of present-day Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of Serbia – between 1941 and 1945, some 31,000 out of approximately 40,000 Jews were killed or sent to German death camps.

Holocaust Remembrance Day has been marked since 2005 on January 27, the anniversary of the day when Soviet troops entered the Auschwitz death camp in Poland 1945, finding some 7,500 prisoners still alive.

The Croatian parliament has a special sitting each year to mark the occasion, while the government organises a seminar at the Croatian Education and Teacher Training Agency.

US-Sudan relations have ranged from outright hostility to limited diplomatic engagement since Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir ascended to power in 1989, yet the Obama administration spent the past two years seeking to improve bilateral relations.

The Obama administration announced plans to ease some sanctions against Sudan earlier this month. That decision was made in recognition of Sudan’s counterterrorism cooperation with the United States against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Additionally, the sanctions were a reward for Sudan’s reduction in offensive military activity and its pledge to maintain a cessation of hostilities in Darfur, southern Kordofan and Blue Nile.

Now, for the first time since the 1990s, the country can trade with the United States while attracting badly needed foreign investment. In exchange, Khartoum must sever support for rebel factions in South Sudan, permit international aid groups entry into Sudan and cooperate with U.S. intelligence agencies going forward.

The Obama administration’s overtures toward Bashir’s regime came amid important geopolitical developments in Sudan’s foreign policy, which have made closer allies of Khartoum and Washington, DC. Over the past three years, Sudan has pivoted away from Iran and aligned with Gulf Cooperation Council members against Tehran. Sudan’s military role in the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led campaign in Yemen, and Khartoum’s decision to sever diplomatic relations with Tehran a year ago, highlight Sudan’s strategic shift toward Washington’s Arab Gulf allies.

Israeli officials have urged their American counterparts to make positive gestures toward Sudan and increase Washington’s dialogue with Khartoum as a reward for the country’s pivot to the GCC, and for breaking off ties with Iran. Also, late last year European Union officials enhanced cooperation with their Sudanese counterparts in dealing with migration flows, human trafficking and refugee crises. The enhanced cooperation was implemented despite an outcry from many Western human rights groups. Now, the key question going forward is whether the Trump administration will enhance Obama’s overture toward Khartoum or maintain Washington’s two-decade-old policy aimed at isolating and punishing Sudan.

A Sponsor of Terrorism or a Partner Against It?

The State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 concluded that Washington, DC and Khartoum “worked cooperatively in countering the threat posed by al-Qa’ida and ISIL.” The department made this declaration despite the fact that Khartoum still permitted Hamas members to raise money, travel and reside in Sudan as late as 2015. The report also noted that the country’s use for “Palestinian designated terrorist groups appeared to have declined” as did its support for other terrorist organizations, such as Abu Nidal Organization. Also, although Al Qaeda and ISIS remained active in Sudan in 2015, the government’s support for Al Qaeda had ceased.

A 2014 State Department report found that the Central Bank of Sudan and its Financial Information Unit had provided all Sudanese financial institutions with a list of UN-recognized terrorists (as well as one provided by the U.S. government), and praised Sudan for continued cooperation with the Financial Action Task Force. Additionally, the report recognized that Khartoum had taken measures to comply with international standards to counter the financing of global terrorism while adopting an Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Terrorism Finance Act.

If Khartoum has essentially severed support for armed groups, which the U.S. government classifies as terrorist organizations, and is helping Washington counter others, then is it justifiable to maintain Sudan’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism? In truth, the State Department’s reasons for adding or removing countries from the list are not always about governmental ties to terrorist organizations. Other diplomatic, political and security issues influence such decisionmaking.

For example, the Bush administration removed North Korea from the list to reward Pyongyang for reasons pertaining to the country’s nuclear program. Also, the Obama administration delisted Cuba after Washington and Havana restored relations. Today, Sudan remains on the list primarily due to its unresolved domestic conflicts, although the official reason is that Khartoum has fading ties with armed Palestinian factions.

The Future of U.S.-Sudan Relations

The Trump administration should ask itself whether Washington’s efforts to isolate the Khartoum regime have improved the humanitarian crisis in Darfur or advanced any other U.S. interests. Also, Washington’s policies against Sudan benefited China by pushing Khartoum closer to Beijing. Although the White House announced no plans to remove Sudan from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, the decision to ease sanctions appears to indicate that the Obama administration viewed the past two decades of sanctions as a failed effort to alter Bashir’s style of rule that forced the average Sudanese citizen to pay the price for the government’s conduct.

In all likelihood, Sudan will not be one of Trump’s top-tier priorities at the outset of his presidency. Furthermore, the current political climate in the United States makes it difficult to imagine the State Department removing Sudan from the list in the near term.

There is a strong Darfur lobby in Washington, DC and an array of civil society groups that pressure American officials to continue applying international pressure on Bashir on human rights grounds. As long as the International Criminal Court maintains its warrant for Bashir’s arrest on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, any push for a U.S.-Sudan rapprochement would undoubtedly meet opposition from Democrats. Some of Trump’s Republican allies and activists in the United States and elsewhere would also be opposed to such rapprochement.

In his confirmation hearings, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, answered a question from Sen. Bob Menendez regarding ExxonMobil’s European subsidiary, Infineum, doing business with Sudan. Infineum reportedly made $600,000 from sales to Sudan between 2003 and 2006, when Tillerson was its CEO and served in other high-ranking positions at ExxonMobil. That was after the United States had imposed sanctions on Khartoum. Menendez suggested that Tillerson had put “profit” above “patriotism” by implying that Tillerson’s business dealings with Sudan had undermined Washington’s foreign policy, even if they were legal (Infineum had no American employees and the entity met all legal requirements).

Could the prospect of opening up Sudan to U.S. businesses ultimately propel the Trump administration to pursue a rapprochement with Khartoum? Given that Trump’s foreign-policy rhetoric has always steered clear of human rights, it is not hard to imagine. As is the case with other Arab League members, such as Bahrain and Egypt, where human-rights issues created problems with the Obama administration, the leadership in Sudan appears to welcome a new administration, which is expected to de-emphasize the promotion of democracy and human rights issues. Instead, the Trump administration will focus on completing business deals and counterterrorism cooperation. In Bashir’s words, “it will be much easier to deal with Trump than with others because he is a straightforward person and a businessman who considers the interests of those who deal with him.”

With Bashir having initiated such an overture to Trump, an improvement in Washington-Khartoum relations should be possible. It remains unclear, however, whether Trump will address Sudan differently than his predecessors, or what political risks the forty-fifth president would be willing to accept by pursuing a rapprochement with a regime led by a president who remains wanted by the ICC on war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide charges. Officials in the new administration should ask themselves whether maintaining Sudan’s terrorist designation and continuing to impose economic sanctions on Khartoum will help the United States and the international community find realistic solutions to the human suffering in Darfur and other parts of the country.

Trump should, at a minimum, pursue an open dialogue between the United States and Sudan that is aimed at reaching out to the Khartoum regime as well as the country’s political opposition, private-sector businessmen, influential religious and tribal figures, and other members of society. If Bashir genuinely desires an improved relationship with the United States as his country’s economic health continues to suffer from the sanctions, then Khartoum may well continue demonstrating good will to Washington and key U.S. allies. The Trump administration could begin a new chapter in U.S.-Sudan relations by offering new opportunities to the people and businesses of both countries and giving the Sudanese people hope for a better future.

The National Interest originally published this article on January 23, 2016

Giorgio Cafiero is the Founder and CEO of Gulf State Analytics and an Adjunct Fellow at the American Security Project. Daniel Wagner is Managing Director of Risk Cooperative and coauthor of the new book Global Risk Ability and Decision Making.

Officially invited by the Afghan Foreign Minister Mr. Salahuddin Rabbani, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Mr. Abdul Aziz Kamilov visited Kabul on January 23-24, 2017.

During the visit, Kamilov met the Afghan President H.E. Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and the Afghan Chief Executive H.E. Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and expressed the highest compliments of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan for the comprehensive cooperation between the two countries.

The Foreign Ministers emphasized the expansion of cooperation between the two countries in the fields of energy, infrastructure, health services, and agriculture and counted them as beneficial for the betterment of the livelihood of the citizens of the two countries.

Taking into consideration the transit capacity of the two countries to be used for the transit of goods and energy to the south Asian countries, China, Kazakhstan, and Russia in the territories of each other, the two sides considered significant the preparation of Transit-Trade Agreement between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.

The officials voiced support for joint efforts aimed at strengthening peace and stability in the region.

The two sides mentioned the Afghan led and owned peace process progress and asked for the support of the regional countries and international partners of Afghanistan in this regard.

According to the Afghanistan Foreign Ministry, officials expressed interest for the continuation of visits of the senior officials of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and Republic of Uzbekistan to each other’s countries for the expansion of political, economic, and cultural relations of the two friendly and neighboring countries.

By Dusica Tomovic

Montenegrin police have launched night-time patrols, raids and security checks on the streets of Podgorica after a series of car bombs and attempted murders in the capital as a result of clashes between rival drug gangs.

The raids began late on Monday after the heads of police in the towns of Bar and Kotor, both known for altercations between drug gangs, were sacked and a new chief of the state Criminal Police was appointed, former prosecutor Enis Bakovic.

Police have been under pressure from the public for days after the mafia violence in Kotor and Bar moved to the streets of Podgorica.

In the latest incident on Friday, a car bomb that killed a young man went off near the largest elementary school in the capital.

There have been a total of three car bomb blasts in Podgorica in the past month which have killed two people and left two others with severe injuries.

Interior Minister Melvudin Nuhodzic said that people are justifiably concerned but the personnel changes within the police department will create a new energy that will provide better results in the fight against organised crime.

“We are aware that citizens expect the relevant institutions to use all their capacities to enter into a bitter battle with organized crime,” Nuhodzic told Vijesti TV.

While the debate about whether some police officers in Montenegro are on the mafia’s payroll has been heating up in recent days.

Over the past year, several Montenegrin towns and Podgorica have been hit by a series of bomb blasts, but police have caught just a few of the perpetrators so far.

Concerns were raised by Montenegro’s civil sector, the opposition and security experts in December about the deteriorating security situation in the country.

The attacks have targeted people who are believed to be members of the drug gangs, but also the cars or flats of senior police officers and bars and restaurants owned by businessmen reportedly close to former Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic.

In late November, police reported four powerful explosions in a residential part of Podgorica and in the towns of Bar and Cetinje, which caused no injuries but alarmed locals and caused significant damage.

Security experts warned that the situation was deteriorating and it was only matter of time before innocent people would be injured or killed.

According to the police, clashes between rival drug gangs were behind most of the bomb attacks across the country, but the opposition parties claimed that some of the cases have a deeper political background, alleging links between organised crime groups and parts of the security sector.

The situation was at its worst in the Montenegrin resort of Kotor, where five people have been killed since early 2015 in apparent clashes between the rival Skaljari and Kavac clans, named after neighbourhoods in Kotor, and a bomb blast killed two alleged members of drug gangs in September.

The opposition and the NGO sector has warned for years about what they claim is the police and prosecution’s inadequate response in Kotor, alleging that criminal groups have their own people in security institutions in Montenegro.

By Chayanika Saxena*

It is both a theoretical first step and the foremost practical demand to try and achieve peace in a society or state that is said to have left behind its violent past. While such transitions from a conflict to a post-conflict society/state are never so clean and clear, certain features such as cessation of overt violence, desire for negotiations and the like are taken as indicators that signal progress towards such a transition.

Afghanistan was declared a ‘post-conflict’ nation with the ouster of the Taliban by the US-led forces in 2001 but it appears that the international forces had hurried into making such a faulty declaration. While violence has hardly receded in Afghanistan — in fact, it has increased in intensity in the last two years — the negotiation process between the two major players — the Afghan state and Taliban — has hardly materialised. In fact, the process of negotiations in Afghanistan has followed a meandering pattern, involving many U-turns and branching out that ended nowhere.

Peace negotiations in Afghanistan are once again back in international focus, especially as a different set of actors have decided to take the bull by its horns — all in the name of ensuring peace in Afghanistan. The most recent grouping to have emerged on this front is that of Russia, China and Pakistan. Although they had met twice in the past, but during their third meeting in Moscow to discuss peace in Afghanistan (without Afghanistan), they seem to have decided what is the best in Afghanistan’s interest and how to go about achieving it. The solution lies in becoming flexible about the ‘red lines’ and discuss peace with Taliban which, in Russia’s opinion, is a ‘political and social movement’.

While it is undeniable that for peace to come and stay in Afghanistan would require the Taliban to be on the same page, there is still lack of clarity on the ‘who’ and ‘how’ of re-integration, that is, if at all the Taliban are seen as legitimate partner in progress towards peace. Differing and often contradictory opinions have emerged in dealing with this ‘who and how’, with the stances changing as quickly as lines in the sand. For instance, where the Bonn Conference of 2001 did not include members from the Taliban to discuss the way ahead for Afghanistan, the idea of talking to the ‘moderate’ Taliban gradually came to be favoured by the American administration and their ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’.

With the change of administration in the US, the then President Barack Obama came to the conclusion that ‘there will be no peace without reconciliation’, and consequently, Taliban as a group was divided by external actors between the ‘good and the bad’ elements — a distinction that continues to be held by different actors, with different terminologies and to different effect.

In all this, it appears that India has stuck to its guns more than any other regional power involved (indirectly) in the peace process as it has steadfastly opposed the idea of drawing a distinction between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban. While this refusal to accept such distinction and the Indian resistance to the idea of integrating the ‘good’ Taliban (or any Taliban for that matter) into mainstream Afghan politics emerges from its own strategic concerns, it is undeniable that this approach — which was aimed to ‘divide-and-rule’ — has some inherent follies and is affected by external shortcomings. These include lack of clear recognition of the structural and ideological strength of Taliban, an ineffective DDR (Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration) policy, regional differences and meddling, and the like.

Pakistan, unlike India, has been a devout follower of this distinction. In fact, it was in 2001 that then Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf got the US Administration to concede to his idea of reaching out to the ‘moderate’ Taliban. This was done to ensure that if some elements from the Taliban indeed manage to make it into the mainstream, the Pakistani deep-state, which is known to have its ‘influence’ on this group, would continue to have a lever to pull in the Afghan state.

As part of its larger need of creating ‘strategic depth’ vis-à-vis India, the Pakistani deep-state has extended the (imagined) schism between the good and bad within Taliban to those between Taliban, whereby the Afghan Taliban becomes good and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (which conducts attacks on Pakistani soil) becomes bad.

Another regional power which seems to be cultivating this distinction is Iran. Although Iran was opposed to the Taliban throughout the years it was in power in Afghanistan, it has been reported that this Shia state has stepped up its support to this group. Where Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is reportedly equipping the Taliban, the city of Zahedan in Iran has become another centre for Taliban’s operations.

In fact, in the name of establishing ‘diplomatic cooperation’ with the Taliban, Zahedan — which sits at the border between Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan; houses Iran’s Sunni population; and is also believed to be a hub of al-Qaeda and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan — has come to be designed as another ‘Taliban Shura’, similar to the one that is known to exist in Quetta, Pakistan.

Iran, which has also prominently taken side in the Syrian conflict, has also established a 15,000-plus local militia, Liwa Fatemiyoun, composed of Afghanistan’s Shia Hazaras, and which reportedly has also been redirected towards Afghanistan to ‘protect’ Iran’s interests there.

Overall, the situation as it stands today is a real-world extension of the old adage ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’. Peace in Afghanistan continues to appear distant not only as a result of the new challenges that have emerged, but also for the lack of coherence among the actors who have assumed for themselves the role of restoring peace in the country.

*Chayanika Saxena is Research Associate at the Society for Policy Studies, New Delhi. Comments and suggestions on this article can be sent to editor@spsindia.in