Ramadan is the time of year when religious and historical venues linked to the Prophet, peace be upon him, after his Hijra to Madinah are of particular interest to Madinah visitors.

These places are popular destinations for visitors before they meet for iftar in public squares, enjoying the wide-ranging services the government offers visitors to the Two Holy Mosques throughout the year.

During the holy month of Ramadan, visits are made to the far-off historic sites, even though summer temperatures reach as high as 50 degrees during daytime.

Tourists also head to Quba, Qiblatayn, Al-Khandaq, Al-Ghamama and Al-Ijaba Mosques, as well as the Uhud martyrs square and the King Fahd Complex for Printing the Holy Qur’an.

These famous sites are connected to glorious times dating back 14 centuries.

The journeys are well worth taking, considering that the mosques and the historical sites have been well taken care of by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. This ensures that visitors enjoy modern amenities, such as air conditioning, water, lighting systems in and outside the mosques, particularly during Ramadan and Haj seasons that usually witness a large number of pilgrims and visitors.

The Madinah mayoralty also makes sure that gardens are well tended and that street vendors selling food meet the required hygienic standards, while the security personnel take all measures to ensure safe travel for visitors to these religious and historical sites.

The Quba mosque is the second most popular attraction for pilgrims after the Prophet’s Mosque, being the first mosque built by the Prophet, who used to visit it and pray in it on his first day of Hijra to Madinah. It was rebuilt several times.

Buses and other vehicles converge on the Uhud martyrs square, which becomes every year a large Islamic forum for people of all nationalities.

The Sayyed Al-Shuhada Mosque, considered Madinah’s largest mosque as it can accommodate 15,000 worshippers, was built in this same square.

It is also the place where the tomb of an Uhud martyr from among the companions of the Prophet can be found.

During Ramadan, some people prefer to dedicate themselves to spiritual rituals, while others prefer marketplaces and commercial centers where they shop and buy gifts for families.

Others opt for the tranquility of the Hijaz railway station, 2 km away from the Prophet’s Mosque, where they enjoy the family-friendly setting.

A Baptist Church leader has called for proper investigations into the deaths of three Kachin men allegedly killed by government soldiers in Myanmar’s conflict-torn Kachin State.

“We want truth and justice for the victims and their families so we look to the government to investigate into it according to the rule of law,” Rev. Hkalam Samson, general secretary of the Kachin Baptist Church told ucanews.com.

Government soldiers are accused of killing Nhkum Gan Awng, 31, Maran Brang Seng, 22, and Labya Naw Hkum, 27, from Maihkawng internal displaced persons camp in Mansi township, southern Kachin State.

The three men were returning from collecting firewood 4 kilometers from their camp when they were reportedly arrested by government soldiers on May 25.

Their dead bodies were found three days later, showing signs of torture and gunshot wounds.

Myanmar’s military said May 30 that they would probe whether the soldiers killed the men. Kachin State police are also conducting investigations.

The Kachin Baptist Church and the families of the deceased will hold prayer meetings for the three men in Banmaw Township on June 8.

Dispute resolution is a tricky business. How can mediators draw on religion, which is key to many communities, in training negotiators?

By Simon Mason*

A pastor tells a negotiation expert: “The truth will set you free!” The negotiation expert responds: “What ‘truth’? It all depends on your perception! And anyway, why are you telling me this; what is the interest behind your position?”

It is easy to imagine how this type of conversation can deteriorate. But it can also be taken as a starting point to reflect on how different groups – in this case, religious communities and mediation experts – can interact constructively.

Training workshops focus on providing participants with the necessary skills for constructive dialogue, negotiation and mediation. Such workshops, normally lasting a few days to a week, have become an integral part of many dialogue and conflict transformation processes. The logic behind these training workshops is not only to provide participants with a platform to exchange, but also to provide methodologies to help make this exchange more constructive for all actors involved.

What guiding principles can facilitate this type of training and discussion? Mediating disputes can profitably draw on religious sources, such as the Bible and the Koran, to train negotiators and mediators. But it is important that they are used in the right way.

Why use religious resources?

Why should mediation or negotiation trainers use religious resources in their interactions with a religious community? One obvious reason is to make the principles behind attempted reconciliation more legitimate and digestible. The language is that used by communities themselves. And such terminology can make ideas come alive, mobilise a community’s religious resources, and talk directly to the values and ideas of a group of people.

At the same time, using religious resources is potentially dangerous, and authentic interpretations of religious texts are only possible from within the community in question. The danger is not just of trainers cherry-picking quotes out of context, but who is doing the picking. The more a person is an ‘outsider’ from a religious community, the less interpretative authority she or he has. By nonetheless trying to use a religious text to argue a point, a real or perceived imposition or manipulation of view can result. And in mediation that is not appropriate, because imposing a worldview or a way of framing issues – which is at stake when meddling in a community’s religious narrative – is potentially also a form of violence.

Criteria for using religious resources in mediation

Given these problems, there need to be clear criteria for if, when and how to use religious resources to teach negotiation skills. The following principles are instructive, if not comprehensive.

Mediation trainers should use religious resources to legitimise an idea only if they are familiar with the relevant religious traditions, and if they are perceived as “insiders” with the religious community they are dealing with.

So a mediation trainer with a Christian background can use biblical language to explain and legitimise an idea to fellow Christians, but the trainer should shy away from this approach when talking to other religious groups. Interpretation, in short, is an intra-community activity. Coming from outside a group and claiming some kind of authority based on your interpretation of the group’s religious texts can lead to difficulties.

Outsiders should use religious resources only for accessibility, not to legitimise. If you exist outside a particular religious community, you are much more limited in how you can use a religious text. What outsiders may be able to do, if they can understand and respect another religious tradition, is to refer to a religious saying, item or metaphor (such as “shura” in Islam to refer to a consultation process), or even to quote from its texts, in order to communicate clearly. But this should not be done to legitimise particular ideas.

Making an idea digestible means linking it to resources that can be taken up by the receiving community. Outsiders can do this because they do not claim authority. In contrast, if outsiders seek to legitimise an idea by referring to a religious text, this person will end up meddling with the community’s internal authority and its own legitimisation processes.

A two-way process

Using religion to teach mediation

The way religious resources should be used to teach negotiation skills depends on whether someone is a member of a community or an outsider. This is also relevant for sub-communities. For example, you can be from a religious tradition (Christianity), but not from the sub-community (Catholic or Protestant). This means you will still be considered an outsider.

Insider and outsider are thus relative terms. Even as an insider, the community still needs to be engaged in open dialogue, peer-review and a two-way dialogue of understanding and legitimisation. As an outsider, it is even more important to be careful and humble. All efforts to legitimise ideas should be avoided. Instead, one should simply focus on effective communication and the accessibility of ideas, which can then be accepted or rejected by the religious community in question.

*Simon Mason is a senior researcher and Head of the Mediation Support Team at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) ETH Zurich.

This article was originally published by Insight on Conflict and is available by clicking here. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those in TransConflict.

On January 4, 2017, at 11:11:58 CET, scientists observed gravitational waves–ripples in the fabric of spacetime–for the third time.

The twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors–located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington–detected the gravitational wave event, named GW170104. The LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and the Virgo Collaboration published a report describing the discovery and its implications on June 1, 2017 in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Gravitational waves carry information about their origins and about the nature of gravity that cannot otherwise be obtained. Physicists on the LIGO and Virgo teams concluded that, as with LIGO’s first two historic detections, the final moments of a black hole merger produced the gravitational waves that LIGO observed on January 4, 2017.

LIGO’s first detection, on September 14, 2015, resulted from a merger of two black holes about 36 and 29 times the mass of the sun. In contrast, the black holes that created the second event were relative flyweights, tipping the scales at 14 and eight times the mass of the sun.

The third and most recent detection lies in the middle, resulting from a merger between two black holes, more than 31 and 19 times the mass of the sun, respectively. The merger produced a single, more massive black hole that is slightly less than 49 times the mass of the sun, and transformed the remaining mass into gravitational energy.

“The observation and interpretation of yet another LIGO signal, GW170104, confirms the success of our theoretical program to model binary black holes,” said Alessandra Buonanno, a UMD College Park Professor of Physics and LSC principal investigator who also has an appointment as Director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany. Buonanno has led the effort to develop highly accurate models of gravitational waves that black holes would generate in the final process of orbiting and colliding with each other.

“For the third LIGO signal we could gather some evidence that at least one black hole might be rotating in a direction misaligned with the overall orbital motion–a spin configuration favored by some astrophysical formation scenarios of binary black holes” Buonanno added, noting that her team made substantial improvements to their methodology throughout 2016, in between LIGO’s observing runs.

The newly detected merger occurred approximately 3 billion years ago, making it more than twice as old (and more than twice as distant) as the first two events, which occurred 1.3 and 1.4 billion years ago, respectively. Based on the arrival time of the signals–the Hanford detector measured the waves 3 milliseconds before the Livingston detector–researchers can roughly determine the position of the source in the sky.

The first detection of gravitational waves, announced on February 11, 2016, was a milestone in physics and astronomy. It confirmed a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and marked the beginning of the new field of gravitational wave astronomy.

“The latest detection adds to the diversity of black hole merger events we’ve been able to observe directly,” said Peter Shawhan, an associate professor of physics at UMD and an LSC principal investigator who serves as Data Analysis Committee Chair for the LSC. “We’re conducting a census of black holes in binary systems in our universe and we expect to discover other types of signals too. Besides just counting them, we can learn from their properties how they were born and how they evolved.”

The researchers also looked for an effect called dispersion, which is known to occur when light waves in a physical medium such as glass travel at different speeds depending on their wavelength. This is how a prism creates a rainbow, for example. Einstein’s general theory of relativity forbids dispersion from happening in gravitational waves as they propagate from their source to Earth. LIGO did not find evidence for this effect in GW170104.

“Even for this new event, which is about two times farther away than our first two detections, we could not find any evidence that gravitational waves disperse as they travel in the fabric of space-time,” Buonanno said.

“Einstein still seems to have been right about the true nature of gravity,” Shawhan added.

The new detection occurred during LIGO’s second observing run, which began November 30, 2016, and will continue through August 2017. The LIGO-Virgo team is continuing to search the latest LIGO data for signs of space-time ripples from the far reaches of the cosmos. They are also working on substantial technical upgrades for LIGO’s third run, scheduled to begin in late 2018, with help from the nearly completed Virgo detector in Italy collecting data simultaneously.

College melts down over plan for white people-free day on campus

US based Evergreen State College students said racial tensions have been simmering in recent weeks, but reached a boiling point when a faculty member disagreed with their plans to protest what they say is institutional racism at the Olympia campus, according to The Olympian.

Students were particularly incensed by an email that surfaced on Twitter on May 25 between Professor Bret Weinstein and Rashida Love, director of First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services. Weinstein, who is white, allegedly condemned the “Day of Absence” event that asked white people to leave campus for the day.

He called the day “an act of oppression in and of itself” and said he would visit campus in spite of the demonstration, according to USA Today.

“If there was interest in a public presentation and discussion of race through a scientific/revolutionary lens, I would be quite willing to organize such an event,” Weinstein wrote.

In a YouTube video posted on May 27, a group of students is heard calling for Weinstein to be fired. Demonstrations have involved as many as 200 students pouring into classrooms and the school president’s office.

“Hey-hey, ho-ho, these racist teachers have got to go,” the students chanted in the video, which in itself is quite idiotic considering the students themselves are the racists!

Weinstein told news station KING that he was advised last week not to go to campus for safety reasons.

“I have been told by the Chief of Police it’s not safe for me to be on campus,” Weinstein told KING. The station notes that Weinstein has spoken out in this year against increasing the role race plays in the admissions process.

Multiple protest videos have been picked up by conservative media outlets, but the students disagree with the coverage, calling the footage “edited.”

“We demand that the video created for Day of Absence and Day of Presence that was stolen by white supremacists and edited to expose and ridicule the students and staff be taken down by the administration by this Friday,” students said in a statement to the College Fix.

By Alexia Rauen*

Overview of Mexico’s Political Parties

Recent elections in Mexico have witnessed three political parties assume a prevailing role: The Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI), National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional, PAN), and the Democratic Revolution Party (Partido de la Revolución Democrática, PRD).

The PRI has been the hegemonic party in Mexican electoral politics ever since the advent of the Mexican Revolution when Plutarco Elías Calles and Emilio Portes Gil founded the National Revolution Party (Partido Nacional Revolucionario, PNR) in 1929. The current president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), who was previously governor of the State of Mexico, is the most prominent member of the PRI. While the PAN has held two presidencies before that of Peña Nieto (Vicente Fox, 2000-2006, and Felipe Calderón, 2006-2012) the PRI held power in the nation for a total of 71 years, from 1929 to 2000.[i] PRI representatives still hold the majority of positions as governors, in the state legislature and in local governments, even while corruption scandals have implicated numerous PRI governors.[ii][iii] For some, Mexico’s political system still projects a hegemonic party system, where one political party dominates.[iv]

The PAN was founded in 1939 and has served an oppositional role to the PRI in Mexican politics. Despite holding the presidency from 2000 to 2012 the PAN has had few accomplishments to show for its tenure.[v] During its rule, drug violence in the country peaked and reforms to the PRI’s previous economic policies were insufficient and perceived as a policy failure.[vi] The PAN is pro big business, a conservative organization, and is characteristically associated with the right in Mexico. The party drums up significant support among Catholic Mexicans.[vii]

The PRD arose from a split with the PRI in 1989. This was a response to the presidential election of 1988, in which computer-driven election results that had declared a PRI victory may not have been faithfully tabulated and deserved to be called into question.[viii] The PRD is especially relevant to the country’s Federal District, where it has maintained significant support. The PRD is associated with Mexico’s left, but some of its political clout has decreased with the rise of the National Regeneration Movement (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional), or MORENA, party.[ix]

MORENA is currently led by charismatic and leftist intellectual Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, who was the head of the Mexican Federal District from 2000 to 2005, as well as the PRD official presidential candidate in 2006 and 2012. In 2006 he lost the race by less than one percent, which brought on riots in Mexico’s capital city.[x] In 2012 Lopez Obrador lost again in a contentiously close recount to the PRI’s Peña Nieto.[xi] While MORENA was created before his loss as an extension of the PRD, the PRD chose to ally themselves with the PAN and the PRI in the Pacto México. Lopez Obrador opposed this alliance, and MORENA officially became a political party in 2014 after it was registered with the National Electoral Institute (Instituto Nacional Electoral, INE).

Pacto México

Lopez Obrador has denounced both the PAN and the PRD as operating under similar ideologies, an accusation that has some justification due to their common backing of the Pacto México, an agreement for fiscal, education, transparency, justice, and energy reforms.[xii] The Pacto México was agreed upon in 2012 by the PRI, the PAN and the PRD, and has always been controversial among the left. The PRD joined this agreement originally, but abandoned the pact in 2013.[xiii] Its opposition lies in its neoliberal constitution, as, for example, the agreement calls for the privatization of national oil resources.[xiv]

When this agreement was first proposed it created an opportunity for MORENA to take advantage of this open space on the left, as the PRD’s adoption was perceived as moving the party closer to center. PRD’s initial adoption allowed MORENA to insist that the three main political parties represented similar political and economic consensus and the same corrupt traditional elite. This provided a significant opportunity for MORENA to distance itself and mark itself clearly as an alternative option for constituents upset with the status quo.

MORENA in Mexico’s Political Sphere

The gains by MORENA have been significant. In Mexico’s Federal District, as a result of the 2015 elections, MORENA gained an impressive number of seats and currently holds the largest number of legislative seats, at 20.[xv] In comparison, the PRD holds 17, the PAN holds 10, and the PRI holds 8.[xvi] Even if the Federal District is an historical stronghold of the left, this shift is significant. It also registered as a shock for the PRD, which had controlled the Federal District since 1997. Evidently, MORENA cannot be ignored as a force in Mexican politics.

A PAN-PRD Coalition

On May 20, 2017, the PAN and the PRD declared that they may present a coalition government to appear on the ballots of the 2018 presidential elections. [xvii] Should they win, this would be the first coalition to seize the Presidency in Mexico.[xviii] Still, there are ample concerns with how a coalition government would work and from which party the presidential candidate would hail from. These two parties have run in coalition for state government positions in the past. However, in multiple cases candidates running in a PAN-PRD coalition had previous associations with the PRI party, leaving some voters unconvinced that either party has distanced itself significantly enough from the PRI’s ideological stance.[xix]

This coalition was proposed from the top, and after a press release issued by PAN leader Ricardo Anaya and PRD leader Alejandra Barrales, many from within both parties have expressed their disappointment.[xx] Each party’s voter base feels it should have been consulted before such an announcement.[xxi] Those who feel abandoned by the PAN or the PRD may choose to support MORENA in the upcoming presidential election.

Presidential and Gubernatorial Elections

The presidential election in Mexico will occur in July 2018. At the moment, things bode well for MORENA’s Lopez Obrador. In a recent poll reported by Bloomberg, MORENA’s Lopez Obrador is the front runner with 29-33 percent of potential votes, while the spouse of former PAN president Felipe Calderon, Zavala, is second at around 27-32 percent and the likely PRI candidate, Osorio Chong (current Interior Minister, a highly powerful position in Mexican government) polls around 20-27 percent.[xxii] The PRI may struggle in this election as voters have expressed discontent with Peña Nieto’s administration, whose approval ratings for May are a meager 19 percent. [xxiii] Under his leadership, 43 students went missing after police violently tried to break up a protest, sending shock waves throughout Mexico as citizens demanded to know what had happened.[xxiv] These students have not yet been found. There were also allegations that Peña Nieto’s wife acquired her new house through government suppliers.[xxv] When the price of gas skyrocketed dramatically under new economic policies, Peña Nieto could no longer maintain face with the Mexican electorate.[xxvi]

Presidential re-election does not exist in Mexico, therefore Peña Nieto may not run again, and so his performance holds ramifications primarily for his party. The ban on re-election is due to the Mexican Revolution, which stemmed from protests against a three-decade long authoritarian regime of Porfirio Díaz. In 2013, Mexico’s government decided to allow re-election for mayors and legislators for 2018 elections, but not for the president.[xxvii] This could cause some legislators to retain power longer, and would increase accountability of legislators to their party. This is because Mexico is a closed-list electoral system, meaning that the order in which seats are assigned is chosen by the party.[xxviii]

In an interview, COHA Research Fellow, Clément Doleac, explained that, “in Mexico, Mexican legislators often fluctuate positions in the legislature, being deputies, then senators, or even from local to federal level, to avoid concurrent re-election but maintain political power. A typical legislator career would be to be elected to a local legislature, then to be elected to the federal Chamber of Deputies, then to the federal Senate, and maybe after that to be elected deputy, and for some of them, Senator again. The nondirect re-election rule has had therefore mixed results in terms of opening legislatures to nonprofessional politics. However, it clearly strengthened the roles of political party, without which these individuals couldn’t pass from one legislature to another.”

This national presidential election will most certainly be a reflection of the results of the upcoming gubernatorial elections in the State of Mexico. This state contains around 14 percent of the Mexican population and is a stronghold of PRI hegemony, having never been governed by another party than the PRI since its creation.[xxix]

Surprisingly, this local race is being fiercely disputed between Alfredo del Mazo of the PRI and Delfina Gómez of MORENA. Alfredo del Mazo is the grandson and son of two former PRI governors (Alfredo del Mazo Vélez 1945-1951, Alfredo del Mazo Gónzalez 1981-1986). Alfredo del Mazo is also the cousin of current president Enrique Peña Nieto. In the most recent polls which asked which party voters would choose, MORENA’s candidate holds the lead, at 31.9 percent, and the PRI’s candidate is at 30.7 percent.[xxx] The PAN and the PRD are 16.8 percent and 14.1 percent, respectively.[xxxi] It is important to note that the PAN and the PRD have not presented a coalition candidate for this gubernatorial election, and could have perhaps polled higher if they had decided to do so. However, when asked who voters would chose if only Delfina Gómez and Alfredo del Mazo were candidates, 44 percent said Gómez, 32 percent said del Mazo, and 16 percent said neither.[xxxii] It will certainly be interesting to see if a PAN-PRD coalition will hold any significant weight with the electorate in the presidential election.

If this PAN-PRD partnership comes to fruition for the 2018 presidential election, it could be a force to beat. At the same time, this would strengthen the MORENA narrative of a unified Mexican elite. Should MORENA win over the PRI for governor of the State of Mexico, this will manifest more support for Lopez Obrador’s presidential bid, and demonstrate that the PRI has lost support with Mexican voters. The implications of the June 4, 2017 gubernatorial elections, whatever the result, will be deeply felt in the presidential race of July 2018.

*Alexia Rauen, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. Additional editorial support provided by Clément Doleac and James Baer, Senior Research Fellows at the Council of Hemispheric Affairs, Mariana Sánchez Ramírez, Extramural Contributor at the Council of Hemispheric Affairs, and Emma Pachon, Alex Rawley, and Laura Schroeder, Research Associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

[i] Tuckman, Jo, “Mexican Democracy’s Lost Years,” NYTimes, June 23, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/opinion/sunday/mexican-democracys-lost-years.html?pagewanted=all.

[ii] Ellingwood, Ken and Tracy Wilkinson, “The fall and rise of Mexico’s PRI,” Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/12/world/la-fg-mexico-pri-comeback-20120612.

[iii] Malkin, Elizabeth, “Corruption at a Level of Audacity ‘Never Seen in Mexico,’” NYTimes, April 19, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/world/americas/in-mexico-mounting-misdeeds-but-governors-escape-justice.html?_r=0.

[iv] Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis, Cambridge Press University, 1976.

[v] Tuckman, Jo, “Mexican Democracy’s Lost Years,” NYTimes, June 23, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/opinion/sunday/mexican-democracys-lost-years.html?pagewanted=all.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Hernandez, Daniel, “Left, Right or Center? Mexican political brand names explained,” Los Angeles Times, February 10, 2012, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/02/pri-pan-prd-mexico-political-outlook.html.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Hernández, Leopoldo and Rubén Torres, “PRD pierde el control del Distrito Federal,” El Economista, June 8, 2015, http://eleconomista.com.mx/sociedad/2015/06/08/prd-pierde-control-distrito-federal.

[x] “Mexico election: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador demands recount,” The Telegraph, July 4, 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/mexico/9374414/Mexico-election-Andres-Manuel-Lopez-Obrador-demands-recount.html.

[xi] “Mexican vote recount confirms Peña Nieto win,” The Guardian, July 6, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/06/mexico-recount-pena-nieto-win.

[xii] “Pacto Por México,” Accessed May 25, 2017, http://pactopormexico.org/PACTO-POR-MEXICO-25.pdf.

[xiii] Martinez, Ana Isabel and Dave Graham, “Mexico leftists exit pact, raising hope for deeper energy reform,” Reuters, November 26, 2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-reforms-idUSBRE9AS00T20131129.

[xiv] “Pacto Por México,” Accessed May 25, 2017, http://pactopormexico.org/PACTO-POR-MEXICO-25.pdf.

[xv] “Conce a tu Diputado,” 2016, http://www.aldf.gob.mx/conoce-tu-diputado-105-1.html.

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii] “La posibilidad de un frente PAN-PRD n 2018 se topa con rerchazos,” Expansion, May 22, 2017, http://expansion.mx/politica/2017/05/22/el-frente-opositor-para-el-2018-divide-opiniones-entre-panistas-y-perredistas?internal_source=PLAYLIST.

[xviii] Webber, Jude, “Right-left alliance announced in Mexico for 2018 election,” Financial Times, May 21, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/19c33f58-3dd3-11e7-9d56-25f963e998b2.

[xix] Graham, Dave, “Mexico’s opposition plots tag team to wrestle government,” Reuters, September 1, 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-election-idUSKCN0R147G20150901.

[xx] “La posibilidad de un frente PAN-PRD n 2018 se topa con rerchazos,” Expansion, May 22, 2017, http://expansion.mx/politica/2017/05/22/el-frente-opositor-para-el-2018-divide-opiniones-entre-panistas-y-perredistas?internal_source=PLAYLIST.

[xxi] Ibid.

[xxii] Martin, Eric, “Mexico Populist Lopez Obrador Support Drops in Presidential Poll,” Bloomberg, April 4, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-04/mexico-populist-lopez-obrador-support-drops-in-presidential-poll.

[xxiii] Riquelme, Rodrigo, “¿Por qué aumentó la aprobación de Peña Nieto?” El Economista, May 26, 2017, http://eleconomista.com.mx/sociedad/2017/05/19/que-aumento-aprobacion-enrique-pena-nieto.

[xxiv] Tillman, Laura, “How Mexico’s president saw his approval rating plummet to 17%,” LATimes, March 1, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-president-20170301-story.html.

[xxv] Ibid.

[xxvi] Ibid.

[xxvii] Shahani, Arjan, “The No Re-Election Taboo is Lifted in Mexico,” Americas Quarterly, December 12, 2013, http://www.americasquarterly.org/content/no-re-election-taboo-lifted-mexico.

[xxviii] “Mexico: Democratization Through Electoral Reform,” The Ace Project, Accessed May 31, 2017, http://aceproject.org/ace-en/topics/es/esy/esy_mx.

[xxix] Semple, Kirk, “A Mexican Governor’s Race Carries Presidential Implications,” NYTimes, May 6, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/06/world/americas/mexico-elections-pri-pena-nieto-lopez-obrador.html?_r=0.

[xxx] “Llegan empatados Morena y PRI en Edomex,” Accessed May 31, 2017, http://www.reforma.com/libre/players/mmplayer.aspx?idm=76448&te=100&ap=1.

[xxxi] Ibid.

[xxxii] Tillman, Laura, “How Mexico’s president saw his approval rating plummet to 17%,” LATimes, March 1, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-president-20170301-story.html.

Many analysts in Russia and the West are now openly talking about how the regime of Vladimir Putin could come to an end, making predictions that in many cases appear to be more an expression of their preferences than of the actual prospects of any one of them coming true.

Igor Eidman, a Russian commentator for Deutsche Welle, suggests that only one of the five predictions now on offer, all based on analogies with events in Russian or European history, has much of a chance of coming true if one examines all of them with any care history (facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1502752253121082&id=100001589654713).

The first prediction about the end of the Putin era is what he calls “the ‘bunker’ scenario” in which Putin is destroyed as Hitler was by “complete international isolation.” However, the West doesn’t seem prepared for such an “uncompromising” stand, and even Putin isn’t “inadequate” enough to launch a suicidal global war.

The second set of predictions involves Putin being pushed aside or even killed by a palace coup, much as Paul I was, Eidman says. But that is unlikely: the Kremlin leader has had the time to select only those most loyal to his person to be in top jobs, and he has made sure that all the members of the elite know that their positions would be at risk if he were overthrown.

The third is perhaps the most hopeful and most unrealistic, involving as it does the notion that Putin and his siloviki will launch a new perestroika and bring reforms. He and they hate that idea more than anything else and they know that their system, like the Soviet one, would “inevitably collapse” if it reformed to the point of not relying on violence.

The fourth prediction, popular now among some Russian political emigres, is that Putin will ultimately “be forced” to take part in a roundtable with the opposition much as Marshal Jaruzelski was in Poland. But who in the Putin regime would sit down as an equal with Navalny or fail to remember that Jaruzelski was simply a half-way house to regime collapse.

And the fifth prediction, the only one that has much chance, Eidman suggests, is a popular explosion on the lines of February 1917. There is growing social discontent and anger about both rising income inequality and the increasingly hereditary nature of power and property in Putin’s Russia.

At some point “as was the case in 1917,” popular discontent will break out and some in the elite will decide that they can’t suppress the demonstrators and that their best chance for survival is to join them. When and how this might happen is far from clear, but the chances that it could are at least in evidence.

And this has one positive consequence, Eidman says. “Under certain circumstances,” a popular revolution in Russia could but not necessarily would set “the country on the European democratic path.” Whether that would be subverted as the February 1917 revolution was, of course, remains to be seen.

(EurActiv) — Dismissed by right-wing commentators as a communist relic early in the campaign, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is staging something of a comeback and winning support in a country still struggling with austerity.

Corbyn’s left-wing message appeared to be resonating among some of the residents of Basildon, a middle-class town near London that voted 68.6 percent in favour of Brexit in last year’s referendum.

“I think he comes up with good plans,” said 22-year-old unemployed Christopher McDonagh, near to where Corbyn was speaking on Thursday (1 June) at a leisure centre on a campaign stop before next week’s election.

“They need to help people. There are a lot of homeless, kids on drugs… I trust Corbyn to do that more,” said McDonagh, whose social welfare payments have been capped by the ruling Conservatives.

Labour was lagging behind the Conservatives by a double-digit margin at the start of the campaign.

But that has narrowed in recent polls to just a few points, although the Conservatives are still ahead.

Dan Kattal said he had voted for leaving the European Union but voiced support for Corbyn, who had campaigned for a vote to stay in the bloc.

“I think that he’s quite honest. At the end of the day, honesty is the best policy,” he said.

Kattal said the issue of Brexit was not important for the election campaign in Basildon: “To be honest, it’s all about distribution of wealth, if there’s distribution of wealth everybody is happy”.

Need to “think about people”

Sarah Dowling, a 57-year-old teacher, said she would be voting Labour despite reservations about Corbyn.

“I still can’t quite see him as prime minister. I am still going to vote for him, because in my heart I vote Labour, as my parents did before and my grandparents,” she said.

Of Prime Minister Theresa May she added: “I don’t really trust her, I don’t like her manners.”

“Basildon used to be a Labour stronghold but it seems to have gone the other way… I hope that we can go back to a Labour MP in Basildon,” she said.

Basildon, a town of 180,000 people in the county of Essex, is held by Conservative MP John Baron who won it from Labour in 2010.

Since 1974, it has always voted for the party that ended up winning the national election.

At the Corbyn event, the Labour leader said he was ready to begin the Brexit negotiations if his party won the election.

He said Labour would be seeking a deal with the EU that would “transform Britain into a country with the strongest rights and protections”.

“We will confirm to the other member states that Britain is leaving the European Union. That issue is not in doubt,” he said.

But he also said that Labour would reject May’s option of leaving the European Union even if there was no deal in place.

“No deal is in fact a bad deal. It is the worst of all deals,” he said.

Betty Jeffrey, a 77-year-old disabled pensioner at the Corbyn event said: “We can’t just think about Brexit. It’s going to happen.

“We still need to think about people. Honestly, things are going from bad to worse,” she said.

By Eyad Abu Shakra*

UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn provoked a storm of criticism when he said of the Manchester suicide bombing: “Many experts, including professionals in our intelligence and security services, have pointed to the connections between wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home.”

The terrorist atrocity committed by Libyan-born Briton Salman Abedi was linked to the US bombing of Syria. It is interesting that it is specifically linked to the US — and British, under the anti-Daesh coalition – attacks against Daesh-held territories in Syria.

This may call the attention of serious analysts to several issues, although people such as Abedi — who murdered 22 innocent people and injured many others while attending a concert — are nothing but brainwashed killing machines.

One issue is related to the aforementioned “justifications” for the atrocity. US-led coalition attacks started quite late in the Syrian war, many years after the Assad regime’s attacks on civilians, then the direct involvement of Iran’s sectarian militias backing the regime, and later Russia’s joining the war against the Syrian people.

It is a well-known fact that Russia’s air force has played a decisive part during the last three years in turning the tide of the war in Syrian President Bashar Assad’s favor. It has provided him with much-needed air cover to systematically destroy cities and carry out sectarian cleansing and population exchange.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, Washington — so keen to befriend Iran — refused to intervene militarily in Syria, encouraging Damascus and Tehran to escalate the war using all kinds of weapons, including chemical ones.

Another issue concerns the concept of intervention. This term on its own does not reflect a comprehensive political vision. It is impossible to morally justify intervention in a stable country governed by broad-based political, social and institutional consensus. But it is morally and politically right to prevent the escalation of a war in which a dictatorship kills its own people, as we have been witnessing in Syria and Yemen.

It is wrong to intervene with the intention of regime-change without having a plan for the day after, and a viable and legitimate alternative. When the 2003 Iraq war was met with wide Arab and international opposition, those opposing the war did not do so because they were admirers of Saddam Hussein and his regime, but because Washington and London had no plan to fill the power vacuum and avoid the post-Saddam chaos in Iraq. Because of that, Iraq was handed to Iran on a platter.

Still, the most preposterous understanding of intervention must be reserved for Obama’s handling of Syria. He and his associates kept justifying their refusal to defend the Syrian people and deter its murderers by pathetically repeating the claim that the intervention in Iraq made matters worse. This shameful, destructive inaction created the Daesh phenomenon as a global problem.

Corbyn is following Obama’s footsteps by last week making the connection between wars the UK supported or fought in other countries, and terrorism on British soil. The Labour leader does not seem interested in the details of these wars, who caused them, who are benefitting from them or the realities they seek to impose.

Corbyn, who rightly opposed the 2003 Iraq war, today ignores the fact that that war brought about an explosive regional reality that all those who opposed it must realize. They need to understand how Iranian extremism has provoked an opposite extremist reaction, and that Tehran is exploiting this reaction to cut deals and make international alliances that would nurture it for years and decades to come.

The third issue is that the current Labour leadership has been too consistently loyal to its opposition to foreign adventures. Like some Labour leaderships before it, it has been too dogmatic and simplistic regarding international affairs, as well as being sometimes childishly anti-Washington. This makes it easy prey to slogans of “progress” and “liberation” uttered by fake nationalists and their mouthpieces. The Labour left has always been idealistic, and quite often naive.

During the thick of the Cold War, the Labour left won control of the party’s leadership, with clear-cut radical leftist political positions bearing all the fingerprints of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) — of which the new leader Michael Foot was an active member — as well as a radical economic agenda.

The left’s ascendancy led the leaders of centrist Labour right to break away with their supporters and found the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. This party merged later with the Liberal Party to form the current Liberal Democratic Party.

In 1983, as the leftist Labour leadership announced its radical electoral manifesto, the late Labour wise man Gerald Kaufman described it as “the longest suicide note in history.” He was right, as Labour was trounced by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives, paving the way for uninterrupted Conservative rule until 1997.

In the early 1980s, Corbyn and some of his associates were young firebrands and spiritual sons and daughters of Foot and his fellow leftist luminary Tony Benn. But while many of them matured and moderated their outlooks, including Benn’s son Hilary — a former Cabinet minister — Corbyn remained an unrepentant radical.

Today, he practically supports Iran and Assad because he believes they are confronting US influence and conspiracies. This is why he promised a change in British foreign policy if Labour wins on June 8.

The fourth issue concerns an anxious period Western societies are going through. Many givens and constants have fallen, causing astounding electoral surprises. Thus it would be ironic if the problems of the Middle East and the Muslim world shape the future of cultural coexistence and democracy in the West.

• Eyad Abu Shakra is managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat, where this article was originally published.

By Ali Morshedizad*

A recent visit to the Middle East by US President Donald Trump and his meetings with officials of a number of countries, including Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, are still a hot topic for political observers and media outlets, and various analytical material has been written on them. During his visit, Trump talked about selling 110 billion dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia, which was allegedly aimed to boost Riyadh’s deterrence power in the face of Iran’s effort to develop its missile technology.

Since fifty Arab and Islamic countries were supposed to come together at the same time in Riyadh, the US government invited heads of fifteen Arab states in addition to leaders of Turkey and Pakistan to take part in meetings with Trump in Riyadh. Iran was the main topic of those meetings. In fact, it seems that the main focus of attention for the United States foreign policy in the Middle East under the new Republican rule is to limit, or as they themselves say, to change Iran’s behavior. Middle East experts and analysts have described this process as the emergence of a so-called Arab NATO in the face of Iran. The question that is raised here is what goal does the United States pursue in the Middle East? Is there a new war in the offing or another goal is being pursued? Our hypothesis is that these measures do not seem to be taken with the goal of planning a new war. If a new war is going to happen in the Persian Gulf region, arming Saudi Arabia will not be of much help to war in this region. However, one can have his own predictions and interpretations in this regard and enumerate certain goals for these measures.

The US government has been always considering three options when it comes to Iran: 1. war and regime change in Iran through direct US military intervention like what happened in Iraq; 2. inciting civil war through intensification of domestic differences; and 3. facilitating collapse of Iran’s government.

The first option does not seem to be imaginable and possible taking into account the geographical, political and even cultural conditions of Iran and even if it takes place, it is not likely to lead to desirable results for the United States. Xenophobia is very strong among the Iranian nation and a foreign assault would serve to solidify unity among domestic forces and cause them to resist any aggression by a foreign force. Therefore, the other two options, especially the third one, seem more possible at this juncture.

It seems that dragging Iran into an arms race is a goal of the recent US weapons deal with Saudi Arabia. This policy has been long used by those governments that produce weapons in order to sell their arms. That is, they encourage a country, which poses a relative threat to another county or other countries in a region, or is even subject to threat from another country or other countries, to buy their weapons. Following that encouragement, other countries in that region embark on selling more arms as well and in this way an arms race gets underway in that region in full swing. The imperialistic economy of the United States has always needed markets far beyond the country’s borders at the four corners of the world. However, in this specific case, marketing of American arms is not the sole goal, though it is of special importance.

However, more important than that is to encourage Iran to enter an arms race in the region. The main goal of this race is the same goal that the West pursued and achieved in its arms race with the former Soviet Union. During the Cold War period, the West managed to direct the Soviet Union’s limited economic capacity toward militarism through the previously mentioned arms race and finally, the government of the Soviet Union collapsed without any need to mount a military aggression. The unproductive and static economic system of the Soviet Union was facing dire problems from the time that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics came into being. A governmental and noncompetitive economy made the Soviet Union so weak and debilitated that Lenin was forced to put his plan, known as the New the Economic Policy (NEP), into action. In fact, economy was the Achilles’ heel of the Soviet Union. In this way, the Soviet Union’s leaders fell into the West’s arms race trap.

It seems that a similar policy is in gears with regard to Iran as well. Intensification of non-nuclear sanctions related to situation of human rights in Iran, its alleged support for terrorism, and also its missile tests, which has been under discussion in past days, aims to help this policy and further weaken Iran’s economy. In fact, the main goal that has been set for this policy is that all the budget and capital that is available to the Iranian economy should be directed toward the military sector instead of being spent on infrastructure as well as development of the country. The final result of this state of affairs would be lack of development, poverty and economic weakness of Iran, which in the long run, will put the government in a position that it would not be able to provide its people with the lowest level of livelihood let alone going ahead with its development drive. Finally and under mounting economic pressure and public dissatisfaction, the Iranian government will collapse. Of course, Iran is not falling into the trap of this arms race, but is trying to spend its energy on removing other forms of unjustified and unjust sanctions against the country.

Another goal is to change the confrontation of Arab and Islamic countries with Israel into a confrontation between Shias and Sunnis. Israelis are very hopeful that this shift will take place, because it would help them heave a sigh of relief and watch what is going on in the region without being affected by it. The United States, on the other hand, hopes that the differences between Palestinians and Israelis would be resolved through the Palestinian self-rule and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, in order to create a security margin for its main ally in the region. American leaders are hopeful that intensification of differences between Shias and Sunnis will divert attention of Arab countries from the issue of Palestine and even pit Palestinians against Iran. Of course, there are signs that show how diligently this policy is being pursued by the United States, but Iran has been smartly monitoring these changes and is trying to increase awareness across the region about this situation and warn leaders of Arab countries against this policy.

It seems that the best way to oppose this policy is not Saudi Arabia’s warmongering positions, but is to reduce tensions with regional countries by laying emphasis on Islamic commonalities and this is the policy that Iran is currently following. A recent message by Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in response to Saudi defense minister’s remarks, who had said that Riyadh would take the war to Iran, was a clear sign of Iran’s diplomatic effort to restore stability to this region.

* Ali Morshedizad
Assistant Professor of Political Science; Shahed University

The US may back off from South China Sea so that China works on trade imbalances and acts to slow North Korea’s nuclear program.

By Donald K. Emmerson*

The latest American assertion of freedom-of-navigation rights in the South China Sea may have reassured some that new bonhomie between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping won’t lead to abandonment of the region. But questions remain.

On 24 May, the guided missile destroyer USS Dewey transited within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef, a land feature occupied by China in the South China Sea. Analysts who had followed and criticized China’s campaign to control the sea, upon learning of this Freedom of Navigation Operation may have shared the same thought: Finally!  Not since mid-October 2016 had the US been reported to have conducted such operations in the South China Sea.  Since Trump’s inauguration in January, the Pacific Command had repeatedly been denied permission to conduct such a transit.

Speculation abounds. Was the Dewey’s sail-by a one-off?  Or did it augur a resumption of US efforts to forestall Chinese maritime dominion?  Defense Secretary James Mattis will speak at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this week, and perhaps the Dewey’s route is meant to reinforce a message of reassurance for Asian leaders, that the United States is not resigned to Chinese primacy in the South China Sea. News of the Dewey’s trip was not formally announced.  Nor was it accompanied by an official promise to follow up with further freedom-of-navigation operations.  Any assuaging message, if intended, was thereby undercut, all the more so by Trump’s reputation for unpredictability and impulsiveness.

Uncertainty abounds, too, as the region is left to wonder whether the Trump administration will make an ongoing commitment or will it offer, by implication, a transaction in the shorter run: suspension of US willingness to check China in the South China Sea, in return for Chinese willingness to check North Korea.

China’s behavior may have made these questions academic.  For several years, Washington has watched Beijing turn the South China Sea into a Chinese lake.  Impunity has benefited the pace of appropriation, and already some analysts have concluded the game is over.  The stronger, less reversible, China’s maritime position becomes, the less valuable – bargainable – an American offer to accommodate it will be. American indifference has facilitated, or at least not impeded, China’s efforts eventually to establish full-spectrum sway over one of the economically and strategically most crucial waterways in the world.  A million square kilometers larger than the Mediterranean, the South China Sea is vital for the many countries that border or use it – including China, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and, not least, the United States.

Obama-style “strategic patience” not only failed to lessen the missile-tossing truculence of Pyongyang.  It failed to slow Beijing’s drive to dominate the South China Sea. Washington warned Beijing not to build up the land features it controlled; China did so anyway.  Washington warned Beijing not to militarize those properties; China did so anyway despite Xi’s public pledge to the contrary.  Freedom-of-navigation operations were few, intermittent and increasingly far between, despite a promise to conduct them twice every three months.

Meanwhile, ASEAN’s leaders were the objects of vigorous yuan diplomacy by China – attractive gifts and loans repayable in silence and deference.  The Obama administration offered principles instead:  good governance and navigational freedom. The Trans-Pacific Partnership promoted the first; freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea defended the second.

In San Francisco in February 2016, an astute Malaysian asked his American audience to put themselves in Southeast Asian shoes:  The Chinese offer you a stack of cash to spend.  The Americans offer you a stack of principles to follow.  Which offer do you accept?  It was a rhetorical question.

Trump may have abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s provisions for reasons of good economic governance. But why was the principle of navigational freedom neglected?  Why were the freedom-of-navigation operations performed less often under Obama and stopped altogether under Trump?

A one-word answer could be linkage.  Obama’s White House, including the National Security Council, viewed US relations with China as multi-stranded.  Provoking Beijing with such operations risked losing cooperation on other issues that mattered to Washington:  economic discrimination, cybersecurity, global warming, North Korea.  As for Trump, initially, discontinuance of the operations could have been due to the new administration’s internal disarray and lack of staff.  By May, however, it appeared that Washington might not be restarting them for a different reason:  to incentivize Beijing to alleviate American economic concerns and restrain Pyongyang.

It’s become conventional to distinguish Obama’s “strategic patience” from Trump’s “transactional dealing,” but linkage is present in both approaches.  Both subordinate America’s interest in restraining Chinese maritime assertions in East Asia to America’s interest in gaining Chinese cooperation on other matters.  In effect, Obama and Trump alike had bigger fish to fry.  China’s salami-slicing tactic also made its incremental advances too insignificant to pick a fight over.

The Dewey’s voyage past Mischief Reef has broken a string of seven months without freedom-of-navigation operations, raising more policy questions. If operations do resume, does that mean Washington has also broken the linkage to other issues on which China could be helpful?  Is that freedom were worth defending in its own right?  And what if no further operations ensue or follow a haphazard pattern?

Reassurances matter.  In May, during his first trip to Europe, president Trump could have recommitted his country to defense of NATO partners by endorsing Article 5.  He did not.  Europeans now have reason to doubt America’s willingness to defend them against Russia President Vladimir Putin’s desire to destabilize or even retake Russia’s former satellite states.  If the Dewey’s journey was not a resumption, but merely a one-time blip, will ASEAN’s leaders echo Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel in doubting America’s willingness to restrain Xi’s maritime ambitions in its own “near abroad”?

Southeast Asian policy elites may already assume that the Trump administration doesn’t care about their region.  The gap between what these elites want from the US and what they expect to get emerges clearly in an April survey of more than 300 influential officials, businesspeople, scholars, journalists and activists across the 10 ASEAN countries on “How do Southeast Asians View the Trump Administration,” conducted by ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute

Of these respondents, an impressive 70 percent agreed that “Southeast Asia is more stable and secure with active US engagement.”  But 56 percent expected the US to become less engaged in Southeast Asia in future, while 52 percent felt that the Trump administration was “not interested” in the region or considered it “irrelevant.”  As to which country or regional organization was the “most influential” in Southeast Asia, a mere 4 percent of the respondents chose the United States, compared to the 18 percent who cited ASEAN and the whopping 74 percent who chose China.  An even higher proportion, 80 percent, expected China to fill any “strategic vacuum” in the region that American “indifference” might create.

There is one supportive result for Washington in the April survey:  68 percent of the respondents agreed that “the US will uphold freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.”  The Trump administration should live up to that expectation.  The Dewey’s sail-by should be followed by additional trips, performed regularly, publicly acknowledged, and justified by stating and restating strategic conviction:  that no one country – not the United States, China, Japan nor any other state – should exercise exclusive control over the South China Sea. Such commitment, far from a chip to bargain with, is a key interest of the United States itself.

*Donald K. Emmerson heads the Southeast Asia Program at Stanford University. His recent publications include “ASEAN between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia (January 2017), pp. 1-23.

Any concerns over Artificial Intelligence (AI) replacing law enforcement intelligence analysts are presently unfounded. Rather, AI and analysts would share a symbiotic working relationship.

By Muhammad Faizal bin Abdul Rahman*

Techno-pessimists have argued that Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies will eventually displace many jobs. Martin Ford, author of “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future”, opined that jobs that entail computer manipulation of data in routine and predictable ways are vulnerable to automation. For example, the predictive policing system (PredPol) deployed by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) reportedly outperformed experienced LAPD analysts in forecasting crime.

Such zero-sum fears are not entirely unfounded as advances in Machine Learning suggest that AI can emulate and might even surpass human abilities. To manage the expected loss of jobs, a guiding framework for AI adoption was proposed at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in January 2017, recommending approaches to determine and ensure that AI augments rather than replaces human workers. In the same vein, the plausible impact of AI on law enforcement jobs should be anticipated.

AI in Homeland Security

The mission of law enforcement is set to be more challenging given the confluence of burgeoning centrality of cities, evolving transnational crime and security threats. With the use of ubiquitous police CCTV surveillance to counter urban terrorism, for example, police and homeland security functions are increasingly interwoven and data-driven.

Hence, law enforcement intelligence analysts would certainly benefit from employing both human and AI insights in the horizon-scanning and analyses of a multitude of strategic and tactical threats. AI technologies have been trailed in predictive policing and video surveillance, and have shown promise. Their strength is the ability to expeditiously process massive volumes of data, detect patterns even if complex and obscure, and emulate the human brain in learning from human inputs and from trial and error.

However, AI’s ability to self-learn raises the concern that (human) analysts would eventually become obsolete. PredPol, for example, tried to assuage this concern by emphasising that its algorithms do not replace but require analysts’ inputs to perform effectively and adapt to changing needs.

Bad AI

The current state of AI is that its learning capacity still needs to be honed; hence its reliability may not be unlimited. It can for example decipher many but not all aspects of criminal/human behaviour. The misbehaving chat-bot “Tay” that learned to spew racist rants demonstrated the potential risks of AI’s limitations in terms of possible unintended consequences.

Similarly, an underperforming AI could potentially impair intelligence analysis and drive miscalculations in operational strategy and deployment with grave implications on public security. Given the fallibility of AI and that intelligence analysis is too critical a security function to be entrusted totally to it, there should be calculated human oversight of its use.

This requires law enforcement agencies to retain the tacit knowledge and experience of analysts. According to research cited in the book “Critical Knowledge Transfer” (2014) by Harvard Business School, high-level corporate executives remain doubtful that the deep knowledge and experience of human experts could ever be fully codified into algorithms.

Furthermore, society may be ambivalent about delegating machines with the responsibility to solve human (crime and security) issues, as exemplified by concerns over racial discrimination and false positives arising from the reported use of an AI technology (Beware) by Chicago Police to generate a “heat-list” of suspects.

Importance of HUMINT & Manipulation of Big Data

Subject to the nature of threat, AI’s assessments might not be comprehensive if consumed in isolation. AI might not provide all the answers and analysts would find it necessary to question its assessments in certain situations.

For the purposes of corroboration and plugging of information gaps, analysts would have to fuse AI’s assessments with information collected from other sources such as human intelligence (HUMINT). Such information might reside outside databases yet appreciable as it could relate to criminal motivation, unreported incidents and firsttime offenders (clean skins); therefore could shape operational strategies. Adversaries may seek to outsmart law enforcement AI technologies to evade detection and arrest by manipulating the data inputs of big data and open-source information. Hence, the analysts’ judgement and intuition could complement AI as bulwarks against intelligent adversaries.

Transforming the Profession

Analysts could be drivers rather than passengers of change by being co-developers of AI technologies. A study on “Exploring the Potential for using AI Techniques in Police Report Analysis” by the University of Gothenburg, Sweden highlighted the importance of incorporating analysts’ insights to the iterative process of Machine Learning; to improve AI’s ability to discern complex patterns. The prospects of AI learning everything and replacing analysts could be managed with a framework to re-design analysts’ business processes to focus on two higher-value work-streams.

First, given the need for human oversight, analysts could double-hat as “algorithmists” who are internal auditors tasked to promote best practices in the application of AI and review its assessments to ensure standards and accuracy.

Second, analysts could support strategy formulation through qualitative research into the underlying and interrelated factors of threats such as cross-border, demographic, economic and terrain issues which may influence criminal/human behaviour. The insights distilled could enrich AI’s data-driven assessment or develop directions for further analyses by AI. Given finite resources, analysts could support frontline policing by helping to prioritise threats flagged by AI. These tasks would require analysts to foster deeper collaboration with field officers and various stakeholders within security and non-security agencies.

Ultimately, AI would inevitably transform the intelligence analyst’s profession in law enforcement just as how the patrol car and two-way radio revolutionised policing in the early twentieth century. Given the rapid pace of technological advances, analysts should plan forward for the changes.

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

Today is a sad day for the global community, as a key partner turns its back on the fight against climate change. The EU deeply regrets the unilateral decision by the Trump administration to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement brought us together in very challenging times. It is an unprecedented multilateral partnership between nearly 200 countries, supported by companies and communities across the world, to address a problem that threatens us all. It demonstrates our generation’s responsibility towards this and future generations.

The Paris Agreement is fit for purpose. Paris is ambitious yet not prescriptive. The Paris Agreement allows each Party to forge its own path to contributing to the goals of preventing dangerous climate change. So there is room for the US to chart its own course within the Paris Agreement. 195 countries have signed the Paris Agreement, 195 different paths to meeting the Paris goals.

The Paris Agreement will endure. The world can continue to count on Europe for global leadership in the fight against climate change. Europe will lead through ambitious climate policies and through continued support to the poor and vulnerable.

The EU will strengthen its existing partnerships and seek new alliances from the world’s largest economies to the most vulnerable island states. This partnership will of course include the many US businesses, citizens and communities that have voiced their support for Paris and are taking ambitious climate action. Together, we will stand by Paris, we will implement Paris.

We will do this because it is in our common interest. We see the Paris Agreement and the low-carbon transition for what it is, the irreversible growth engine of our economies and the key to protecting our planet.

Today’s announcement has galvanised us rather than weakened us, and this vacuum will be filled by new broad committed leadership. Europe and its strong partners all around the world are ready to lead the way. We will work together to face one of the most compelling challenges of our time.

We will do it, together. We are on the right side of history.

Whatever the truth regarding Deep State and Democratic Party charges of alleged Russian “meddling” in last year’s election (and I’m definitely in the camp that says there has been no hard evidence presented to show Russia hacked DNC emails), Donald Trump and his administration are now ensnared in a serious investigation by an independent prosecutor, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, into obstruction of justice and other crimes that could technically lead to indictments of Trump aides and to Trump’s impeachment.

But don’t forget: Trump has one unassailable power as president — the power to pardon — and I predict he will wield it.

The US Constitution gives a president the almost absolute power to pardon, including to pardon someone before he or she has been convicted of a crime or even indicted. As President Gerald Ford proved, such pardon power can even be used to pardon someone — in his case the disgraced and resigned ex-President Richard Nixon — before he had even been charged with a crime.

The only limitation on that presidential pardon power is that it cannot be used if the president is impeached, or to interfere with the impeachment process.

What this means is that as long as there has not been an impeachment of the president, or at least the launching of impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives, there is no constraint on President Trump’s use of his pardon power. He can, according to many legal experts, even pardon himself, though in that case he could still be impeached and removed from office, just not prosecuted for any crimes (impeachment is not a criminal proceeding, but is simply a process for removing a person from office).

I believe it is likely therefore, that Trump, for whom appearances, tradition, propriety, and the good of the country are all meaningless notions, will use his pardon power to block investigations into, and block indictments of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and his top advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and anyone else who gets caught up in the investigation into crimes committed by him and his administration, his transition team and his campaign.

While such actions — even more shocking than Nixon’s abrupt firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Watergate scandal — would likely stun the public and would, by most Americans, be viewed an admission of Trump’s guilt, it would effectively eliminate any chance for Mueller to prosecute or even to investigate anyone in the Trump administration. People who are pardoned cannot be pressured by fear of indictment and a promise of immunity into turning state’s evidence.

Trump would no doubt present his pardons as being an appropriate action to kill an investigation that he is already characterizing as a “witch hunt’ based upon lies and “fake news” — a view shared by most of his ardent backers around the country.

How such a bold stroke would play out at that point is hard to say. Establishment Democrats would likely be encouraged by Trump pardons to push harder for his impeachment, but this approach could work to their own detriment. We’ve already seen in the last election how disenchanted much of white, working-class America is with the Congressional Democrats and their focus on inside-the-beltway fighting as well as their lack of interest in the daily struggles of ordinary people, white and non-white. This sentiment will be all the stronger because most of Americans really aren’t really concerned about Russia as any kind of threat these days.

At the same time, Republicans, who have shown a shameless lack of concern with ethics, morals and basic decency in supporting Trump no matter how obscene, selfish, brutish or narcissistic he behaves, could lose support, particularly among independent voters and erstwhile Democrats, if they were to go along with Trump’s use of pardons to protect his own ass.

It is really a no-win situation for both parties, which benefits Trump, who doesn’t really seem to care much about his place in history.

On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump didn’t beat around the bush when he bluntly alleged that his predecessor President Barack Obama’s minions were electronically eavesdropping on American civilians. His tweet comes after the issuance on Wednesday of Congressional subpoenas for records from U.S. spy agencies about Obama officials’ requests such as former CIA chief John Brennan, Obama’s national security adviser Susan “Benghazi” Rice and the ex-U.N. ambassador Samantha Power.

The subpoenas, which were processed and signed by the House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-California, directly referred to the suspicious “unmasking” of U.S. citizens.

In his Twitter posting on Thursday, President Trump stated: “The big story is the ‘unmasking and surveillance’ of people that took place during the Obama Administration.”

Many news reporters were a bit surprised that Amb. Powers is included on Nunes’ list, but according to one Washington insider, Steven Kaufman a former criminal investigations commander, “People will be surprised at the extent Obama’s close associate Susan Powers was involved in unauthorized activities that had the feds involved in questionable activities. She may even have run this surveillance operation.”

Meanwhile, according to the Democrat-friendly MSNBC, Rice continues to claim she did nothing wrong in her use of unmasking. “The allegation is somehow Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes, that’s absolutely false,” Rice told MSNBC in an interview in April.

President Trump said in April that Susan Rice — who has gained the reputation of being dishonest — had indeed committed a serious criminal act.

Fox News Channel’s James Rosen reported Thursday that Congressman Nunes stated: “I went and looked at what I knew existed on the unmaskings, but what I found was a treasure trove of stuff that’s really bad in terms of surveillance on Americans and that is critical to the job that I have as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. It’s really horrible because it endangers America, because the work that our intelligence professionals do is so critical to our safety, to have an administration, a past administration, abuse these powers and put our country in jeopardy, there’s nothing, there’s no words that can explain the damage they’ve done and the damage that they’ve created.”

This isn’t the first time the Obama administration played loose and fancy free with the confidential information of American citizens. The Internal Revenue Service under Obama may have actually broken the law by “unmasking” taxpayers.

Obama’s and Staff’s History of Unmasking

During the probe of the Internal Revenue Service, it was discovered that emails sent between the Internal Revenue Service’s Lois Lerner and attorneys at the Federal Election Commission revealed that the IRS gave the FEC confidential information regarding conservative groups, especially those calling themselves Tea Party organizations were released on Halloween by a Washington, D.C., public-interest group that investigates government corruption.

According to officials at the nonpartisan government watchdog Judicial Watch, included with the Lois Lerner-FEC emails were the IRS questionnaires submitted to a conservative organization, which legally sought tax-exempt status, that contained “questions of a hostile nature.”

The emails were turned over to Judicial Watch by the FEC as a result of an Aug. 9, 2013, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) application that sought access to the following documents and records for the timeframe Jan. 1, 2009, to the present:

According to Judicial Watch, before her becoming the IRS’s Director of Exempt Organizations, Lois Lerner worked at the FEC where she developed a reputation for wielding her power against a conservative candidate and Christian-based political groups.

The revealing email chain shows a redacted FEC attorney asking Lerner if the IRS had issued an exemption letter for American Future Fund (AFF). The writer of the letter notes, “When we spoke last July, you told us that the American Future Fund had not received an exemption letter from the IRS.”

In the same email, the FEC attorney asked Lerner if she could also advise him if the IRS had granted an exemption letter to American Issues Project (AIP) as well as to AIP’s predecessor organizations, Citizens for the Republic (CFTR) and Avenger, Inc.

In her response email sent to the FEC, Lerner stated that she would make it mandatory for her underlings to cooperate fully, something that smacks of an anti-conservative conspiracy, according to political strategist Mike Baker.

Lerner stated in her responding email: “I have sent your email out to some of my staff. Will get back to you as soon as I have heard from them.”

The majority of documents obtained by Judicial Watch analysts consists of extensive materials from IRS files sent from Lerner to the FEC containing detailed, confidential information about the conservative or vilified Tea Party organizations.

The items include annual tax returns and request for exempt recognition forms, Articles of Organization and other corporate documents, as well as correspondence between the conservative organizations and the IRS.

Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code stipulates that it’s a felony for an Internal Revenue Service official to disclose either “return information” or “taxpayer return information” to any individuals or organizations including government agencies.

Initial news reports, such as a story in the Washington Post, when word of some of these IRS-FEC emails first surfaced, raised a variety of legal issues. One legal issue was the fact that Lerner was supplying confidential information concerning the tax exempt application status of conservative organizations to an agency that had no right to receive such information.

Another was the fact that the inquiries regarding AFF made by the FEC attorneys in February 2009 to Lerner occurred before the FEC commissioners had voted on whether to investigate AFF (the FEC later voted not to investigate AFF). A third legal issue was the appearance of political collusion between government agencies with a seemingly anti-conservative bias.

Lerner resigned her position at the IRS in early October. In May, she invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in her, some say, arrogant appearance before Chairman Darrell Issa’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, according to Caroline May, political reporter for the Daily Caller.

China, the only veto power of Asia and major global power, is seen trying to take a larger role in global affairs by promoting its economic ventures across continents of Asia, Africa and Europe by joint efforts.

China has come out with a fast forward idea of working together for greater benefits for all nations involved. The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road or One Belt, One Road (OBOR) is a development strategy, proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping that focuses on connectivity and cooperation among countries primarily between the People’s Republic of China and the rest of Eurasia, which consists of two main components, the land-based “Silk Road Economic Belt” (SREB) and oceangoing “Maritime Silk Road” (MSR).

The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor are officially classified as “closely related to the Belt and Road Initiative”. The strategy underlines China’s push to take a bigger role in global affairs, and its need for priority capacity cooperation in collective economic affairs in areas such as steel manufacturing.

The One Belt One Road initiative is geographically structured along 6 corridors, and the maritime Silk Road; New Eurasian Land Bridge, running from Western China to Western Russia; China – Mongolia – Russia Corridor, running from Northern China to Eastern Russia; China – Central Asia – West Asia Corridor, running from Western China to Turkey; China – Indochina Peninsula Corridor, running from Southern China to Singapore; China – Pakistan Corridor, running from South-Western China to Pakistan; Bangladesh – China – India – Myanmar Corridor, running from Southern China to India; Maritime Silk Road, running from the Chinese Coast over Singapore and India to the Mediterranean.
Essentially, the ‘Belt’ includes countries situated on the original Silk Road through Central Asia, West Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. It goes through Central Asia, Russia to Europe.

The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative offers enormous opportunities for all the countries involved and Greek business community warmly supports all the efforts to deepen the two countries’ cooperation under this context, President of the Greek-Chinese Economic Council Fotis Provatas said recently.

One Belt, One Road has been contrasted with the two US-centric trading arrangements, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

OBOR Summit 2017

Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres before the Leaders’ Roundtable Summit at the Belt and Road Forum (BRF) for International Cooperation at Yanqi Lake International Convention Center in Beijing, capital of China, May 14-15, 2017. Around 30 state and government heads as well as delegates from more than 100 countries – including the USA and North Korea – discussed the Belt and Road initiative, one of the world’s biggest economic diplomacy programs led by China.

In a keynote speech delivered at the opening ceremony of the two day Initiative called Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation held in Beijing on May 14 President Xi Jinping said that China would launch Belt and Road cooperation initiative on trade connectivity together with some 60 countries and international organizations. Xi said that the Belt and Road Initiative embodies the aspiration for inter-civilization exchanges, the yearning for peace and stability, the pursuit of common development and the shared dream for a better life. President Jinping called for renewing the Silk Road spirit. Noting that “we are at a fresh starting point, ready to embark on a new journey together,” Xi said, “so long as we press ahead with a common vision without backpedaling or standing still, we will achieve greater connectivity and benefit from each other’s development.” Before the banquet, Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan greeted the guests at the Great Hall of the People.

Apart from this zone, which is largely analogous to the historical Silk Road, another area that is said to be included in the extension of this ‘belt’ is South Asia and Southeast Asia. Many of the countries that are part of this belt are also members of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

North, central and south belts are proposed. The Central belt goes through Central Asia, West Asia to the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. The South belt starts from China to Southeast Asia, South Asia, to the Indian Ocean through Pakistan. The Chinese One Belt strategy will integrate with Central Asia through Kazakhstan’s Nurly Zhol infrastructure program. The coverage area of the initiative, however, is primarily Asia and Europe, encompassing around 60 countries. Oceania and East Africa are also included.

The summit was aimed to map out China’s ambitious new Silk Road project, of which the OBOR is an integral part. The scheme was proposed in 2013 by Xi to promote a vision of expanding links between Asia, Africa and Europe. China has earmarked US$40 billion for a special fund for the scheme, on top of the US$100 billion capitalization for the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, many of whose projects will likely be part of the initiative. The OBOR’s wingspan is expected to include 68 nations from China through Southeast and South Asia to Africa and Europe.

The UK’s Chancellor Philip Hammond described the UK as a “natural partner” for the Belt and Road Initiative, while Mexico’s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo touted China as a possible alternative trading partner in the face of US protectionism

Italian PM Paolo Gentiloni has said that Italy and China had a lot to give each another in terms of tourism and cultural cooperation because they are both ancient civilizations “that strike the popular imagination.” The year 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Italy and China, a milestone target that could be a good objective to multiply cultural cooperation as well as tourism. Gentiloni said the culture ministries of both countries were working together on a number of projects, for example “the fact that Italy and China are the two countries in the world with the highest number of UNESCO World Heritage sites.”Ours are two civilizations that strike the popular imagination,” he said, citing ancient Rome, the Renaissance, and the appeal of contemporary Italian culture, food, fashion, and design.

The conspicuous absence of the heads of state from the major Western economic powers and Japan at the belt and road summit this month in Beijing is a big mistake and a missed opportunity for enhancing dynamic and cooperative globalization. India, also seeking wide stage to promote its own interests, chose to ignore the China initiate.

Cost and Benefits

The initiative, unveiled in ¬September 2013 by President Xi Jinping, aims to connect China by a network of overland corridors and sea routes to the rest of Asia, Africa and beyond, linking the dozens of countries through infrastructure and financial and trade ties. The economies along the routes account for about 63 per cent of the world’s population and 29 per cent of global GDP.

Anticipated cumulative investment over an indefinite timescale is variously put at US$4 trillion or US$8 trillion. President Xi said in his speech at the opening of the forum that China will contribute an additional 100 billion yuan (about 14.5 billion US dollars) to the Silk Road Fund. Xi certainly looked keen to begin exercising a leadership role, offering to help tackle the economic and security problems faced by Greece and Turkey, issues the EU has struggled to deal with.

The Belt and Road Initiative is expected to bridge the ‘infrastructure gap’ and thus accelerate economic growth across the Asia Pacific area and Central and Eastern Europe: World Pensions Council (WPC) experts estimate that “Asia alone (excluding China) will need up to $900 billion in infrastructure investments annually in the next 10 years, mostly in debt instruments. This means there’s a 50 percent shortfall in infra spending on the continent.” The gaping need for long term capital explains why many Asian and Eastern European heads of state “gladly expressed their interest to join this new Chinese-led initiative focusing solely on ‘real assets’ and infrastructure-driven economic growth.

Xi told his audience that he had proposed an additional RMB780 billion (approximately US$113 billion) to be disbursed through multiple sources. These include the Silk Road Fund; the China Development Bank; the Export and Import Bank of China and also overseas capital provided by Chinese banks. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is not part – at least not yet – of this proposed package.

Out of this amount, RMB250 billion will be provided in loans from China Development Bank, and RMB130 billion from Export-Import Bank of China. This funding is not direct investment but loans, as in the case of China-Pakistan-Economic Corridor, which the Chinese sources will provide to the participant countries. That would put Beijing in a position to steer the course of each country’s development to a direction it deems fit for its own interests. China, as the primary financer of loans, therefore stands to gain the most and it stands atop the list of potential beneficiaries.

The whopping trade imbalance that China has vis-à-vis almost all the OBOR countries and the way the OBOR initiative is solidifying, through various agreements, worries New Delhi.

Less-developed countries along the new Silk Road stand are among the big winners of investment as China revives ancient land and maritime trade routes, according to estimates by a top bank. The potential benefits of the belt and road, if the dream were even only partly realized, could be enormous. The inclusion of the Middle East and Central Asia could contribute to peace and prosperity in these currently dramatically turbulent regions.

Credit Suisse forecasts that China’s massive inflow of investment over the next five years as part of Beijing’s “Belt and Road Initiative” could amount to as much as US$502 billion, or equivalent to 4 per cent of the total gross domestic product of the 62 countries along the routes in 2015. Credit Suisse estimates that China’s overseas investment in the initiative over the next five years will range between US$313 billion to US$502 billion, depending on how much investment the countries need and how much China is willing to put in.

According to an HSBC estimate, the “Belt and Road Initiative” will generate roughly 300 billion yuan to 500 billion yuan in railway investment, financing more than 15,000km in high-speed rail links along the route. The Credit Suisse report said the initiative could become even more promising as a more “isolationist” administration in the United States created windows of opportunity. “With the new US government pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it is unavoidably sending a message to the world that US government policy is turning more ‘isolationist’,” the report said. At the same, China was striving for greater global influence, it said. Chinese investment could also help make up for any capital outflows in the region. If the dollar strengthens, especially as the US moves along the path of rate normalization, emerging market countries also have to face the risks of capital outflow.

The biggest recipients of the investment dollars were expected to be India, Russia, Indonesia, Iran and Egypt, the bank said in a report released earlier this month. India stands to be the biggest gainer overall, according to the report, with China putting in ¬between US$84 billion and US$126 billion. Russia is next with US$53 billion to US$80 billion; ¬Indonesia third on US$35 billion-US$52 billion; Iran fourth attracting US$17 billion-US$26 billion; and Egypt fifth with US$13 billion to US$20 billion. The report also says China could invest between US$52 billion and US$79 billion in 13 African countries. “Africa is rich in resources, and an important destination for Chinese investment over the past decade,” it said.

A successful, inclusive, globally collective effort to make the belt and road a reality could be a harbinger of peace and prosperity. It is a pity that myopia and prejudice prevent Western and Japanese leaders from being present at this potentially seminal event.

Pakistan

Pakistan where the Sino-Pakistani joint projects succeeded is the corner stone of China’s economic project. India is opposed to it.

The project OBOR was first unveiled in September and October when Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited Central Asia and Southeast Asia in September and October 2013 he raised the initiative of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road and announced two major projects revealing the SREB and MSR, respectively. It was also promoted by Premier Li Keqiang during the State visit in Asia and Europe. The initiative calls for the integration of the region into a cohesive economic area through building infrastructure, increasing cultural exchanges, and broadening trade.

China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (also known by the acronym CPEC) is a collection of infrastructure projects currently under construction throughout CPEC is intended to rapidly modernize Pakistani infrastructure and strengthen its economy by the construction. On 13 November 2016, CPEC became partly operational when Chinese cargo was transported overland to Gwadar Port for onward maritime shipment to Africa and West Asia. The CPEC in particular is often regarded as the link between China’s maritime and overland Silk Road, with the port of Gwadar forming the crux of the CPEC project.

The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China provides opportunities for the whole world to promote peace and prosperity, experts in Bangladesh said China’s peaceful development is a blessing and opportunity for countries which face extreme difficulties given the rising protectionism in some countries. Bangladeshi experts highly lauded China’s contribution to socioeconomic development of the world and said the initiative of reviving the ancient Silk Road through a network of roads and maritime waterways will surely be a boon for cooperation between China and the rest of the world.
According to the experts, countries on the Belt and Road, especially those with underdeveloped infrastructure, low investment rates and per-capita income, could experience a boost in trade flow and benefit from infrastructure development.

South Asia

The OBOR project, designed to span 65 countries covering 65 percent of the world population, would enable China to not only champion as the primary engine of one third of global economic output, but also accumulate vast amounts of capital as repayments, and through its own direct trade from Central Asia to Europe.

Plagued by territorial conflicts, poor governance and limping economies, the SA region has drawn inspiration from China’s plan and unleashed an effort to join a shared destiny. South Asia is marred by corruption that is undermining its growth trajectory. The World Economic Forum, in its 2015 Global Competitiveness Index, pointed to corruption as the primary reason for the region’s poor global competitiveness. As China puts conditions on every beneficiary of the trade plan to get rid of corruption, Pakistan and other South Asian countries must gear up to liberate themselves from vicious chains of corruption.

Unemployment is a daunting challenge for South Asia. In order to increase socio-economic viability, it has to create one million jobs every month till 2020. According to the International Labour Organisation, global unemployment will go up by 3.4 million in 2017. With the belt plan a catalyst for transformational change in the economic profile of South Asia, CPEC has started showing its productivity by opening up thousands of jobs for local people. China’s ambassador to Islamabad, Sun Weidong, told reporters that so far the initiative has generated 13,000 local jobs. Experts claim that CPEC projects are likely to create more than one million jobs in various sectors of Pakistan by 2030.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), a critical regional alliance in South Asia accounting for 21 per cent of the world’s population and 7 per cent of its economy, will receive a new lease of life after staying dysfunctional due to a long decade of differences among member countries, especially Pakistan and India. To help SAARC benefit from regional connectivity, China has already stepped up its endeavor to become a full member of the association.

South Asia’s emergence as a leading economic power is in the making, and credit goes to China’s “Belt and Road Initiative”. The grand plan has set into motion game-changing strategies that will lead to free trade agreements, economic integration, physical infrastructure plans, shared growth and structural reforms, all in tune with future demands.

Since this epic plan was announced, South Asia – weighed down by a reputation for regional conflicts, security threats, bad governance, impaired transparency, an energy crisis, poor infrastructure, fragile institutions and limping economies – has unleashed its effort to be part of a shared destiny.

Pakistan foreign affairs expert Muhammad Mehdi says that the trade plan is not solely a Chinese enterprise. “China sees annual trade volume with Silk Road countries from US$1 trillion to US$2.5 trillion within a decade. It reflects 9.6 per cent of annual growth. If South Asia taps this opportunity, it can change the fate of its poor people,” he says. An example of convergence of interests is clearly visible in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a multilateral development bank which India joined as the second largest shareholder after China. Similarly, the New Development Bank, where Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (the BRICS) are equal partners, is headquartered in Shanghai, and is not envisaged as a Belt and Road initiative by them.

India and China are part of the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM-EC), a sub-regional economic cooperation initiative involving the four countries which are engaged in talks for developing cooperation through a joint study group. This group had its latest meeting in Kolkata, India in late April. The BCIM-EC is now being projected as a component of the BRI by China.

However, this initiative was conceived well before the Belt and Road Initiative was formulated, and it should not be subsumed within that strategy but instead pursued as a separate grouping for sub-regional cooperation. It involves full and equal ownership of all four countries involved, rather than a subsidiary position as a loop of the Belt and Road.

Like China, India has its own agenda of connectivity and cooperation within Asia and beyond. For instance, India’s “Act East” strategy is aimed at developing close economic synergies with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and East Asia. Two great nations and civilizations such as India and China need not endorse or sign on to each other’s strategies. A more pragmatic approach will be to explore synergies and look at projects they can work on together, without insisting on artificial labeling.

In the view of MP Lohani, former Nepalese ambassador to Bangladesh, China’s ambitious plan for regional connectivity will revitalize SAARC. So China’s induction into the regional body on the basis of its geographical, historical, cultural and economic features will be a breath of fresh air.

The trade plan’s impacts will make China’s free trade agreements with Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and India more lucrative, triggering an economic boost. Though Pakistan and China are yet to finalize the second phase of a free trade deal, trade between the countries was valued at US$4 billion in 2006-07 and reached US$13.77 billion in 2015-16.

The potential benefits of the belt and road, if the dream were even only partly realized, could be enormous. The inclusion of the Middle East and Central Asia could contribute to peace and prosperity in these currently dramatically turbulent regions. The trade plan undoubtedly will have a deep impact in alleviating poverty plaguing South Asia, home to 1.7 billion people. As per the World Bank’s latest poverty calculation, about 570 million people in South Asia still survive on less than US$1.25 a day.

Peace is another dividend that will come to fruition with the new Silk Road initiative. India, with a fast-growing economy, has many disputes with China and Pakistan. It opposes the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a pilot project of the trade initiative, due to its route passing through Gilgit Baltistan, which India considers a disputed area between Pakistan and India. However, Indian lobbyists in collaboration with their Chinese counterparts have been brainstorming to build a peaceful neighborhood for relishing joint economic benefits.

Indian worry

The Belt and Road plan, according to Beijing, is a practical economic strategy for China’s objectives to connect the region, seek new growth engines for its slowing economy, utilize its surplus capacity, and develop and stabilize its western regions. It would also bring benefits to partner countries.

There is room for closer consultations between China and India on the objectives, contours and future directions of the Belt and Road. However, India has considered synergy-based cooperation on a case-by-case basis, where its interests for regional development converge with that of other countries, including China. This pragmatic approach is formulated on India’s stance that as the two major powers in Asia, there is bound to be common understanding on many global and regional issues between India and China. They have cooperated on international platforms with similar positions on climate change and global trade, for instance.

India is keen not to lose out Jammu Kashmir under any new project in South Asia. India opposes and ignores the OBOR. China’s relations with India are not as smooth as its Pakistani ties, although all these nations occupy parts of Jammu Kashmir. India is suspicious of Chinese moves. Plans are being hammered out for a free trade agreement between India and China. That effort comes amid India-China trade volume hitting US$70 billion in 2016 as India sought to increase exports to US$30 billion. Meanwhile, joint feasibility studies for a FTA linking Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are on the fast track.

Sandwiched between China and Pakistan and facing a strong freedom movement in occupied Jammu Kashmir, India took an uncharacteristically bold foreign policy stance by turning down China’s invite. India’s objections are rooted on the fundamental issue of its own sovereignty and territorial integrity, which it says have been violated due to the project. India feels the OBOR will basically further interests of Chinese banks and Chinese companies while ignoring Indian sensitivities. It appears to be a rapacious penetration of Pakistan’s economy and territory, including that of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan to which India lays claim, by Chinese enterprises and agencies.

It is difficult to say whether India hated more China or Pakistan. India has repeatedly conveyed its strong objections regarding the CPEC to China. A flagship program and the most advanced component of the initiative, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, a region that is under the control of Pakistan and India now claims to be its own as a ploy to force Pakistan to stop fighting for India occupied Kashmir. As a country acutely conscious of its own sovereignty-related claims, it wants China to appreciate India’s “sensitivities” in this regard.

The Belt and Road plan is a Chinese initiative rather than a multilateral enterprise undertaken after prior consultation with potential partner countries, and India has not endorsed it. It is one of the most imaginative and ambitious programs ever to be rolled out by a government. It represents a broad strategy for China’s economic cooperation and expanded presence in Asia, Africa and Europe, and has been presented as a win-win initiative for all participating nations. But for India seeking not to lose out Kashmir by any developmental projects in the region, the connotations of China’s Belt and Road Initiative” for New Delhi are somewhat different. By joining, India could benefit from Chinese investment in infrastructure projects, and fast-track its economic development through trade connectivity.

Critics also feel that India’s underwhelming response to China’s grand scheme stems in part from the latter consistently squashing its neighbor’s ambitions to augment its influence at the global high table.
Whenever India, ignoring the freedom struggle being waged by Kashmiris who have been fighting for their lost sovereignty, has lobbied at international forums for entry to the Nuclear Suppliers Group, permanent membership of the UN Security Council and push for UN sanctions against Pakistan, Beijing has always opposed i. Beijing thus offers New Delhi little incentive to be ebullient about bolstering its own causes and crusades especially at the international level.

Linked to this is the compulsion of protecting Chinese maritime commerce, particularly oil, in the IOR. India risks being systematically frozen out of business opportunities in an enlarging area that is integrating with the Chinese economy around the world.

Chinese scholars have been issuing dire warnings on how India would be isolated as most Asian nations as well as the USA and Russia are on board. India’s non-cooperation is also being linked to Sino-Indian ties, which have hit a new low lately. The unresolved decades-old border dispute, Chinese support for India’s arch-rival Pakistan and New Delhi’s backing of the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama which rankles China, have affected bilateral relations.

It is wrong today to presume that the he One Belt-One Road in Beijing is fundamentally the elaboration of a Chinese dream wherein participant countries appear only as facilitators and fade away China would make maximum out of it. India opposes China to be on top of the hierarchy of the states participating in it and it does not approve Chinese leadership and seeks USA to contain China. .

Observation: Prospects and Problems

The origin of the belt and road idea is to open up China’s landlocked western provinces towards Central Asia in a sense it is exporting China’s internal needs to find external solutions.

President Xi’s project was intended to present the world with a view of statecraft different from what the West espoused. But so far Beijing had failed to find a rhetoric that would appeal to Westerners. China invites the world to join its “project of the century. The president’s vision, however, is winning supporters from across the globe. Xi told the conference: “Swan geese are able to fly far and safely through winds and storms because they move in flocks and help each other as a team,” The message is: the best way to meet challenges and achieve better development is through cooperation.”

Enthusiasm for Chinese money, however, does not equate to enthusiasm for Chinese leadership. OBOR revealed eye-catching figures including the Chinese government’s pledge to invest $124 billion into the scheme and provide $78 billion of financing for OBOR projects.

Both the Belt and Road are clearly intended to enhance connectivity not just across Eurasia but between China and Europe. However, the EU, which holds reservations over OBOR, can put the brakes on China’s plans, demonstrated by its ongoing investigation into the Belgrade-Budapest high-speed rail funded by Beijing.

China is by no means an angel. Nor, however, as Western and Japanese rhetoric tends to proclaim, is it a devil; or certainly no more so than previous rising great powers. Furthermore, while for much of modern history China was subjugated and marginalized, it’s quite staggering re-emergence will continue to mark the first decades of the 21st century.

Skeptics are, however, questioning the lack of details and multilateral stewardship of the initiative. The strategy spearheaded by President Xi Jinping seemed to be incompatible with China’s preference for “one-way” globalization and assertive policies in Southeast Asia, particularly on maritime routes in the South China Sea, experts said at the Oxford China Forum held in the University of Oxford.

It is a plan that is going to allow a Chinese penetration in the “host” countries on an unprecedented scale which India opposes. Again, at least this is what the CPEC master plan tells us in terms of the presence that China will come to establish through its “flagship” project in Pakistan, putting it yet again on top of the vertical order China is building. The pledges China has so far made have been far from sufficient to complete the projects its leadership claims to have already put in motion, or meet Asia’s growing infrastructural requirements, which will be needing, according to ADB, a whopping US$26 trillion up to 2030.

While Xi could not call a spade a spade, the OBOR is far from a gateway to “win-win co-operation,” it is a project saddled with loans, allowing China to invest and re-invest its surplus capital, money that it will use to further boost its international standing to potentially alter the global order to its own advantage in the coming decades, if not years.

What OBOR is therefore doing is not simply a Chinese push towards development, it is equally raising a multitude of problems for the host countries. A clear absence of enough resources to repay loans perhaps tops the list.

However, China seems to have a strategic and political agenda which remains opaque. Apart from the CPEC that directly connects China and Pakistan, India also has misgivings about the manner in which the Belt and Road Initiative is being pursued in its neighborhood. For instance, the development of ports under Chinese operational control as part of the Maritime Silk Road strategy has raised concerns in India. While investment in the Gwadar port, roads and energy projects is reported to have increased from US$46 billion to US$55 billion, CPEC lacks economic justification.

Apart from general resistance to China’s efforts to make its economy stronger, some have expressed concerns that OBOR projects will be overly tailored to China’s needs, favoring projects designed to export Chinese overcapacity in industries such as steel and make use of surplus savings. If these projects do not generate the expected returns for the host countries, it could leave them burdened with debt.

Besides Indian objections, a document acquired by leading Pakistani daily Dawn lays out Beijing’s plans for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which includes installing 24-hour surveillance in major cities and the dissemination of Chinese culture. Such designs could give fuel to those who frame OBOR as 21st-century Chinese colonialism.

China clearly wants a horizontal, non-vertical integration and it always clarifies that there is no hegemonic plan inherent in the Two Silk Roads. Indeed, the issue lies in putting an end to the US “hegemony”, not in creating others. Some observers argue, there is no reason why OBOR cannot be as mutually beneficial as President Xi claims. Building infrastructure in other countries with Beijing’s financial support “should benefit trade and economic development in those places, while of course bringing new business opportunities to Chinese companies

Of course, at this stage, the belt and road represents a vision, a dream, that will face innumerable obstacles – financial, environmental, technological, logistical, social and geopolitical – to translate into reality. It is also without doubt motivated primarily by Chinese interests. But what country ever undertook a major international initiative that wasn’t primarily motivated by its own interests? The post-war Marshall Plan was not an act of pure American altruism, but rather one of enlightened self-interest.

It is especially important that China be engaged in the institutional framework of global governance, and that initiatives for enhancing trade and investment, such as the belt and road, be welcomed rather than rebuffed. Yet the opposite has been happening, while the EU must engage with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), “the decision to launch the AIIB came as a direct result of China’s growing frustration … over only playing a marginal role within the existing international financial system”. This is true of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

A successful, inclusive, globally collective effort to make the Belt and Road a reality could be a harbinger of peace and prosperity. It is a pity that myopia and prejudice prevent Western and Japanese leaders from being present at this potentially seminal event.

China’s push to create new trade and infrastructure links through its “One Belt, One Road” initiative will be hampered by Beijing’s reluctance to open up investment for foreign companies, according to experts.

China plan can boost one aspect. Asia is fast getting old and the harsh reality is that it could do so before it gets rich. Although Asia remains the growth champion of the world, the highly populated continent is ‘shifting from being the biggest contributor to the global working-age population to subtracting hundreds of millions of people from it, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) East Asia, in particular, is projected to be the world’s fastest-ageing region in the coming decades, with its old-age dependency ratio roughly tripling by 2050.

By Sinisa Jakov Marusic

Macedonian police have arrested a man aged 67 in relation to Thursday’s failed assassination attempt on the former health minister, Nikola Todorov.

Macedonia’s ministry of interior said police had arrested a 67-year-old named as Lj. S., from the village of Dolno Kalaslari, near the town of Veles, shortly after he was believed to have fired two gun shots in the direction of former health minister Nikola Todorov.

Police confirmed that Todorov, a senior official in the former ruling VMRO DPMNE party, survived the attack uninjured and that no one suffered any injuries. The attack took place around 12pm in front of the health ministry in Skopje.

The man under arrest is reportedly the grandfather of a nine-year-old who died in 2015 while waiting for the Health Fund to decide whether to pay for her treatment in Turkey, her mother Zaklina Dimovski told Fokus weekly.

“I am shocked … Nothing suggested he was planning such a thing. I don’t know where he found a gun. There is revulsion in the family [over the child’s death] but nobody thought of such a thing … I condemn the violence, even though he was my father,” Zaklina Dimovska said.

The girl’s death in February 2015 from a severe curvature of her spine sparked protests and calls for Todorov to resign. Protesters dubbed him “The Minister of Death”. However, Todorov denied responsibility and did not resign.

The attempt on his life happened as the former health minister was preparing to enter the ministry where he was supposed to hand over his post to his successor, Arben Taravari, from the new Social Democrat-led government.

The attacker reportedly reached at Todorov from relatively close proximity as he was standing at the entrance of the ministry, pointing the gun towards his head and trying to say something to the former minister.

The incident took place at a sensitive time, one day after the election of the new Social Democrat-led government under Zoran Zaev.

The previous government, led by the VMRO-DPMNE party, to which Todorov belongs, is accused of mass wiretapping and corruption.

Macedonia’s new Prime Minister, Zaev, condemned the attack just minutes after formally entering the government building to assume office.

“I am glad the former minister is safe and sound because we are people and we need to help each other,” Zaev said, adding that he still does not know all the details.

The attack on Todorov also comes just days after he announced plans to quit politics and start working as a lawyer. During his political career, Todorov was regarded as one of the closest associates of former Prime Minister and VMRO DPMNE leader Nikola Gruevski.

A new study combining European ice core data and historical records of the infamous Black Death pandemic of 1349-1353 shows metal mining and smelting have polluted the environment for thousands of years, challenging the widespread belief that environmental pollution began with the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s and 1800s.

The new study, accepted for publication in GeoHealth, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, provides evidence that the natural level of lead in the air is essentially zero, contrary to common assumptions. The research shows lead pollution from mining and smelting was detectable well before the Industrial Revolution and only when the Black Death pandemic halted those activities did lead in the air return to natural levels.

“These new data show that human activity has polluted European air almost uninterruptedly for the last ca. 2000 years,” the study’s authors write. “Only a devastating collapse in population and economic activity caused by pandemic disease reduced atmospheric pollution to what can now more accurately be termed ‘background’ or natural levels.”

The new findings could affect the current standards for lead pollution. Current public health and environmental policy deem pre-industrial lead pollution levels to be “natural” and thus presumably “safe,” but this assumption may need to be re-examined, according to the study’s authors.

Lead is one of the most dangerous environmental pollutants and is toxic to the brain at extremely low levels. No levels of lead can be considered safe in children, according to Philip Landrigan, Dean of Global Health for the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, who was not connected to the new study.

“It’s clear that lead has lasting effects on children’s lives,” said Landrigan, who has researched lead poisoning in children and was instrumental in the implementation of abatement policies in past years.

Reconstructing past lead levels

In the new study, historians at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, collaborated with climate scientists at the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine in Orono. The team chose to examine past lead levels in the air because it is a dangerous pollutant and serves as a proxy for economic activity, ramping up when economies grow and tailing off when they decline.

The researchers matched new, high-resolution measurements of lead in an ice core taken from a glacier in the Swiss/Italian Alps with highly detailed historical records showing that lead mining and smelting activity plummeted to nearly zero during the plague pandemic years of 1349 to 1353.

The researchers found that lead levels declined suddenly in a section of the ice core corresponding to that four-year window of time. That decline is unique in the last 2,000 years of European history, according to Alexander More, a historian at Harvard and lead author of the new study.

“When we saw the extent of the decline in lead levels, and only saw it once, during the years of the pandemic, we were intrigued,” More said. “In different parts of Europe, the Black Death wiped out as much as half of the population. It radically changed society in multiple ways. In terms of the labor force, the mining of lead essentially stopped in major areas of production. You see this reflected in the ice core in a large drop in atmospheric lead levels, and you see it in historical records for an extended period of time.”

The researchers also found other, lesser, drops in lead accumulation in the ice core. One occurred in 1460, which the authors show may have also been due to an epidemic-related downturn. Other drops occurred during an economic slowdown in 1885 and most recently in the 1970s when abatement policies phased out leaded gasoline and other sources of lead air pollution.

More said the ice core holds much additional data, accessible due to the precision of the Climate Change Institute’s next generation laser facility and the expertise of climate scientists on the research team. Combining that data with historical sources can lead to new discoveries in the fields of climate science, the history of human and planetary health, environmental and economic history, he said.

“This research represents the convergence of two very different disciplines, history and ice core glaciology, that together provide the perspective needed to understand how a toxic substance like lead has varied in the atmosphere and, more importantly, to understand that the true natural level is in fact very close to zero,” said Paul Mayewski, Director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine and co-author of the new study. “Using the ultra-high resolution ice core sampling offered through our W. M. Keck Laser Ice Facility, we expect to be able to offer new insights, previously unattainable with lower-resolution sampling, into the links between climate change and the course of civilization.”

By Adam Dempsey and Theodore Karasik*

Not so long ago Médecins Sans Frontières made a shocking discovery in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hundreds of patients had unwittingly taken Haloperidol instead of Diazepam to treat malaria-induced seizures, meningitis and other illnesses. The side effects caused by this powerful antipsychotic were horrific. Many victims suffered facial cramps, contorted upper bodies and other equally bizarre symptoms.

It’s the type of backyard horror story that’s inspired the governments of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to regularly remind citizens of the dangers of counterfeit medicines. Warnings are often attached to media coverage of seizures, as well as updates on state-led initiatives to combat a trade worth an estimated $200 billion a year. And with good reason. While the scourge of fake pharmaceuticals affects all parts of the world, the problem is growing in the MENA region, where healthcare can be in short supply but high demand.

Changing Demographics, Changing Priorities

According to the United Nations Development Program, the MENA region’s population is expected to increase from approximately 360 million in 2011 to almost 500 million by 2030. However, rather than being driven by a consistently high birthrate, the region’s demographic changes will be more attributable to life expectancy, which the World Bank estimates increased from 46 to 72 years between 1960 and 2014. As a result, MENA states will increasingly face the type of health problems associated with the ageing populations of Germany, Japan and other advanced high-income countries.

MENA’s growing diabetes burden certainly warrants close attention. The International Diabetes Federation predicts that disease rates throughout MENA states will increase from 35.4 million in 2015 to 72.1 million by 2040. Countries with high diabetes prevalence include Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, especially when it comes annual incident rates of Type 1 diabetes in children. Other key triggers, such as obesity and tobacco use, are also increasing, particularly among more affluent and female populations. Consequently, in the upcoming decades the region’s health services are likely to encounter more cases of hypertension, heart problems, and other chronic diseases.

An altogether different concern is the MENA region’s high level of HIV infection, which, according to Harm Reduction International, has increased by 31 percent since 2001. Of an estimated 240,000 people living with HIV across the region, over 50 percent of new cases are attributable to intravenous drug use. HIV prevalence among users that inject drugs ranges from 0-1 percent in Kuwait and Lebanon to 87 percent in Libya. Access to Opioid Substitution Therapy also varies with only the likes of Iran, Israel and Morocco offering a credible package of treatment options.

While medicines used to treat diabetes, drug addiction, and other conditions are, in theory, easily accessible, chronic underfunding and patchy health services have hampered efforts to introduce them en masse in the MENA region. Between 2006 and 2011, MENA countries spent 8.2 percent of their budgets on healthcare; the global average was approximately 10 percent. There are also obvious disparities, with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states relatively free to spend more on health than conflict-affected Iraq and Syria. For MENA’s poorer states the implications are twofold. First, specific healthcare functions must compete for scant government resources. Second, many households face the choice of paying for up to 40 percent of their treatment or foregoing it altogether.

Unhelpful Solutions, Unhelpful Sources

It’s hardly surprising then that the MENA region is susceptible to overtures from a highly-lucrative trade in counterfeit medicines that fall well below accepted standards of efficacy and quality. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that approximately 35 percent of the pharmaceutical market in the Middle East could be illicit. If so, then the region is potentially awash with medicines that contain no active pharmaceuticals and harmful additional substances such as rat poison and cartridge ink. The consequences of taking these drugs can be devastating with brain damage and cardiovascular problems among the side effects regularly cited by healthcare professionals.

Fortunately, WHO monitoring for the Eastern Mediterranean region indicates that seizures of counterfeit Diabetes and HIV drugs across MENA remain low. But that’s no reason for complacency. In late 2016, two Indian pharmaceutical companies were charged with hiding fake medicines in legitimate commercial transactions. Customers included near-neighbors Bangladesh and Pakistan. Michael Deats, a Group Lead with the WHO’s Safety and Vigilance (SAV) Team, also warns of a growing trade in HIV medicines with falsified packaging between Southern Europe and East Africa. This bucks a common trend of sending this counterfeit product to markets in Northern Europe where medicine prices are often higher.

Recent seizures in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of erectile dysfunction treatments and the painkiller Tramadol also suggest that manufacturers are increasingly in tune with the ‘modern’ health concerns of local populations. The same might also be said of Captagon, an amphetamine-based stimulant that remains widely available across the MENA region despite being banned since the 1980s. Usage now stretches beyond the nightclubs of the Middle East to Syria’s civil war, where all sides use it to remain sharp and focused on the battlefield. Some veterans claim that Captagon makes combatants ‘unafraid of anything’ and full of ‘great courage and power.’ A former Free Syrian Army fighter also told the BBC that others would stop providing families with food in order to feed their habit.

Not that any of this will influence the traffickers and suppliers, a nebulous criminal network attracted to the low risks and high rewards offered by counterfeit medicines. Paul Newton, a Professor of Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford, attributes this to the relatively weak penalties for manufacturing and distributing fake drugs compared to those for human and narcotics trafficking. Despite being a worldwide problem, building a global consensus on what exactly constitutes an illegally-manufactured counterfeit medicine remains notoriously difficult. Worse still, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warns that the lack of analytical studies on organized criminal groups is undermining efforts to coordinate responses to illicit medicines.

At least governments and international organizations have a better idea of how traffickers saturate the MENA region with fake pharmaceuticals. The journey usually begins somewhere in Asia, with the UNODC labelling China as the ‘departure point’ for 60 percent of global counterfeit seizures between 2008 and 2010. Poor regulatory frameworks and oversight also make India a major production hub for fake medicines. To make matters worse, Beijing’s and New Delhi’s efforts to stem the flow of fake medicines have been offset by the moving of production to other parts of the continent, particularly Southeast Asia.

From Asia, fake pharmaceuticals tend to make their way to consumers via well-established trading routes, including the Internet and, increasingly, the Dark Web, where anonymity and encryption help counterfeiters of all persuasions to hide in plain sight. Circuitous and time-consuming journeys along sea routes are also used, with the UAE’s free-trade zones prime locations for the ‘sanitizing’ of illicit goods. Not surprisingly, traffickers have turned the MENA region’s war zones into distribution routes. None more so than Iraq, where conflict, porous borders, and the collapse of regulatory frameworks have facilitated illicit smuggling, sales, and distribution.

Fighting Back

Although the overwhelming majority of MENA states participate in the WHO’s Global Surveillance and Monitoring System, it is perhaps unsurprising that the GCC has stolen the march in local efforts to combat fake pharmaceuticals. Not only is it home to some of MENA’s largest markets for medical products, member states are also building pharmaceutical industries that they eventually hope will compete with more established manufacturers. One of the best ways to demonstrate that the region has a handle on this sector is to target the influx of counterfeit medicines.

In the build-up to the Second Emirates International Conference on Combating Medicinal Products Counterfeiting, the UAE announced that it is planning to use a device that detects fake medicines within seven seconds. It’s possible that this is a Raman mobile spectroscopy instrument which relies on non-destructive tests to identify chemical compounds. In addition, the Emirates are determined to update Federal Law N°4 of 1983 on the pharmaceutical profession and industry by the end of this year. This should result in tighter procedures for seizing suspected shipments and harsher penalties against individuals and companies dealing in counterfeit drugs.

These are the type of initiatives that the UAE hopes will keep its health service free of counterfeit medicines and deter traffickers from using its ports to transport fake products. However, success will also depend on like-minded efforts made elsewhere, particularly in Saudi Arabia and other MENA states. The Kingdom is home to an estimated 3,000-3,500 pharmacies and nearly 200 companies registered under the Saudi Health Ministry. Saudi Arabia also accounts for over 60 percent of the GCC market and has recorded over 4,000 patented and generic drugs. Under Saudi Vision 2030, the Kingdom’s pharmaceutical sector is also slated for rapid growth through foreign investment.

Like the UAE, Saudi Arabia is also looking to advanced technology to assist in the detection of counterfeit medicines entering ports and leaving manufacturing plants. On the policy front, Riyadh hopes to strengthen its bar code regulations by serializing pharmaceutical products by the end of year. Saudi Arabia is also coordinating its efforts to combat illicit pharmaceuticals with industry giants such as Pfizer. The Kingdom’s Food and Drug Agency has been conducting market surveys on behalf of such companies, collecting samples from pharmacies and sending them for analysis.

Cooperation with established pharmaceutical companies will also help to allay concerns over Saudi Arabia’s close ties with Chinese manufacturers. With the encouragement of Saudi Basic Industries Corp. and Saudi Food and Drug Administration, companies have formed partnerships with Chinese counterparts to enhance grains for large-scale husbandry. Mastering such techniques will enhance the Kingdom’s efforts to turn its pharmaceutical industry into a major producer of generic drugs. However, as US Federal Drug Agency operatives will confirm, mixing knowledge and knowhow from Chinese manufacturers risks getting closer to fake pharmaceutical products than most companies dare to imagine.

Future’s Bright…For Some

No embryonic industry can risk the type of Public Relations fiasco that comes with the distribution and use of counterfeit medicines by health services and humanitarian operations. That’s why the likes of Saudi Arabia and UAE have adopted a tech-savvy approach to tracing fake drugs, tighter regulatory frameworks and a careful approach to procurement. The WHO’s Michael Deats also praises the GCC’s efforts to improve the quality of information it shares with the Global Surveillance and Monitoring System.

Yet there’s always room for improvement. Deats highlights the need for more joined-up cooperation between MENA states. Greater coordination and knowledge sharing will only benefit the WHO’s monitoring activities and promote a culture of reporting illicit products to regulatory authorities. However, MENA’s most fragile states will continue to provide significant obstacles to region-wide efforts to combat counterfeit medicines. These include Egypt, where seizures of fake Hepatitis C treatments are common. Contrasting economic fortunes, scarce government resources, and protracted conflict will ensure that MENA’s attempts to tackle counterfeit medicines remain the preserve of its richer and more secure states for the foreseeable future.

*About the authors:
Adam Dempsey is an Advisor at Gulf State Analytics (@GulfStateAnalyt), a Washington, DC-based geopolitical risk consultancy.

Dr. Theodore Karasik is the Senior Advisor at Gulf State Analytics.

Source:
This article was published by GSA at International Policy Digest, and is reprinted with permission.

Mohammad Hanif Atmar, Afghanistan’s national security advisor attended the eighth international high-level security meeting in the Russian region of Tver. The meeting was devoted to international information security and how to fight organized crime globally. The initiative was taken by Russia’s Security Council and high-ranking security officials from more than 30 states took part in this meeting.
The Afghan National Security Advisor’s agenda was to convince the Russian and Central Asian nations that defeating terrorist groups by individual capacity is difficult, therefore, a joint combat strategy should be developed to fight these groups across the Central Asia.

Afghanistan’s NSA has visited Russia a dozen times during the last two and half years to bolster and cement state level relations with Moscow. Meanwhile, American generals such as Josef Votel and Curtis Scaparrotti separately, and some low-level Afghan security officials as well, accuse Russia of helping supply the Taliban militants in the country. Moscow has always denied the accusations. Hence, Afghanistan’s NSA was encouraging Russia to denounce relations with the Taliban and run for a state-level cooperation while he met his counterpart Nikolai Patrushev.

If allegations are proved right, it seems that the Kremlin is on the threshold of committing a second mistake in its Afghanistan policy in last 38 years — unless it rethinks this possibility. First, during the Cold War era while the erstwhile Soviet occupied Afghanistan in 1979, and now, by siding with the enemy of Afghan people; the Taliban.

During the occupation of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union was faced with the Afghans’ resistance and left the country according to Geneva Accords 1988 in frustration, thus putting an end to a nine-year-long occupation of the country. By backstopping the Taliban, Kremlin is walking an old road leading to a second frustration and dejection. Public antipathy and hostility are roaring up against the Taliban and other terror networks. Siding with them directly enlists Moscow as an enemy of Afghanistan.

It is an aberration and fallacious belief that one must support one terrorist group to get rid of another. Morphologically both, the Taliban and the Islamic State are from the same fiber and have the same contexture. For the Afghan people, the Islamic State and Taliban are both terrorist groups that threaten the stability of their country, kill and torture their citizens, destroy their country’s infrastructures and challenge the sovereignty of their legitimate state.

Afghan National Defense and Security Forces are sacrificing themselves in an excruciating war against the Taliban and the Islamic State, including twenty other terrorist networks that have a similar nature and mindset and function under the umbrella of extremism in the country. Hence, Afghans are asking the Kremlin not to cut off its nose to spite its face, as there is no dichotomy between the Afghan Taliban and the Islamic State.

Instead, the Russians should benefit from their relations with the Taliban and bring them to the negotiation table with the Afghan government to end the protracted war in the country, as it is much better for the interests of both Kabul and Moscow.

Notwithstanding, Zamir Kabulov, the head of the Russian foreign ministry’s department responsible for Afghanistan and the Kremlin’s special envoy in the country has punctually emphasized that Kremlin’s contact with the Taliban is for exchanging information with the group and sees a shared interest with them when it comes to fighting the so-called Islamic State. At the same time, the Taliban have acknowledged the authentication of reports and maintained that Russia supports the group “politically and morally”, but providing political and moral support, leave aside the military support as it is widely claimed inside Afghanistan, to a terrorist group is neither in the interests of Russia nor the region.

Instead, as said in an old African proverb, “only the owner can free his house from mice,” so the Russian government should envisage a state-to-state cooperation to address the contemporary and mutual challenges whether it is the Islamic State, drugs or instability in Afghanistan.

The menace of terror and its destructive mindset isl not bound to a particular geography, i.e. Afghanistan. It is epidemic and spreads beyond borders. As a Talib militant, standing on the main intersection of Kunduz city in the Northeast of the country flattering the white flag of the group during the brief capture of the city on 29th September 2015 cried in front of a smartphone camera,  the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will prevail and dominate all Central Asian countries and the whole world one day, if God’s willing.” Therefore, it requires joint efforts to contain terrorism.

Now, it is upon the officials in Kremlin to understand the long-term vision of Taliban. One with knowledge of the Taliban’s ideology and background will not refuse to confess that the group has a plan beyond the boundaries of Afghanistan. The cornerstone of their rebellion is to establish a worldwide Emirate — that is why they sheltered Osama bin Laden, his companions and Al Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan during their rule in the country from 1994 to 2001.

On the other hand, the mindset and civil code of the Taliban are the same as Daesh (Islamic State) with only a difference in the name. They both behead opposition groups, deny the fundamental rights of women and minorities and believe in a radical reform of the society. Therefore, the Kremlin should be well warned.

Nurturing terrorist groups has always proved disastrous for self-interests, as such Pakistan could be a perfect example. The ISI, the country’s intelligence apparatus,  masterminded and created terrorist groups to fight against India and Afghanistan during the Cold War and beyond, but this policy  has backfired horribly.  Currently there are 31 active non-state actors that have the power to destabilize the country, establish international terror networks and worse, defame Pakistan’s democracy that would subsequently lead to international isolation.

Afghanistan understands that the presence of Russian-speaking fighters in the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq can expand as a potential destructive network in Central Asia that is considered as Russia’s backyard. As such, it is for both Kabul and Moscow to come to a common understanding to fight the menace in mutual terms.

*Nassir Ahmad Taraki lives in Kabul. He is a university lecturer and writes on current affairs. He can be followed on Twitter @NassirTara