By Arka Biswas

Indian announcement of having conducted surgical strikes across the de-facto border with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir has major implications for deterrence-stability in South Asia. New Delhi has sought to devise a military strategy to respond to Pakistan’s sub-conventional war that does not lead to escalation of conflict to nuclear levels and collapse of nuclear deterrence. This paper analyses India’s surgical strikes of September 2016, their nature and the objectives with which they were conducted. Given that they meet most of India’s objectives and that their controlled nature renders possibilities of conflict escalation negligible, this paper concludes that surgical strikes strengthen deterrence-stability in South Asia and that they could become New Delhi’s modus operandi in responding to Pakistan’s sub-conventional war.

Introduction

In the early hours of September 28, 2016, the Indian Army conducted a series of stealth attacks on terror launch-pads across the Line of Control (LoC) in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), according to the announcement made by the Indian Army’s Director General of Military Operations (DGMO).[ii] These strikes by India came as a response to the attack on the Indian Army headquarters in Uri on September 18, 2016 by terrorists that led to the death of 19 soldiers.[iii]

Why are these surgical strikes by India important? For the last two decades, India has struggled in devising a military response to Pakistan for the latter’s alleged sub-conventional war against the former. Responding with a conventional military attack has been the preferred choice for planners in New Delhi, owing to a history of India’s successes at conventional military conflicts against Pakistan; India also perceives itself predominant in terms of conventional military strength. But since overt nuclearisation in 1998, India has felt deterred to not cross Pakistan’s nuclear redlines, putting strong restraints on New Delhi’s ability to respond to Pakistan militarily. Factors like deft US diplomacy and India’s own political culture and ideology, among others, have also contributed to that restraint. Nonetheless, New Delhi’s quest to explore space for conventional war below Pakistan’s nuclear threshold—captured in the Indian Army’s reference to devising the Cold Start doctrine of waging low-scale and swift conventional attack in as early as 2004—suggests that Pakistan did succeed in deterring possible Indian full-scale conventional attack.[iv] To further limit India’s military options, Pakistan reduced its nuclear threshold by introducing tactical nuclear weapons, indicating its intent to use these low-yield, short-range nuclear weapons in the event that India considers conducting a low-scale conventional attack.

Having deterred India from responding militarily to its sub-conventional war, Pakistan has been able to effectively create space to continue its proxy war, support militancy in Kashmir and thus repeatedly prod India. This status-quo, as a result of nuclear deterrence existing in South Asia, has been argued to be highly unstable by many international observers and experts. Concerns have been raised on the possibility of a collapse of nuclear deterrence in South Asia if Pakistan continues its policy of making India “bleed through a thousand cuts”—as that will at one point lead New Delhi to take decisive military action against Rawalpindi. With nuclear thresholds as low – use of tactical nuclear weapons by Pakistan against a low-scale conventional attack and massive nuclear retaliation by India against any level of nuclear first use – fears have been flagged that any decisive military action by New Delhi could swiftly lead to the use of nuclear weapons, including an all-out nuclear war.

It is here that an analysis of surgical strikes as possible Indian modus operandi of responding to Pakistan’s sub-conventional war becomes important. What are these strikes and how were they conducted? What were the objectives with which India conducted these strikes and were they met? How do they affect the status-quo under the existing deterrence-stability in South Asia? On the other hand, how do these strikes affect deterrence-stability? Does it directly challenge Pakistan’s commitment to first use of nuclear weapons under full spectrum deterrence policy? Are there possibilities of conflict escalating post-surgical strikes to conventional and nuclear levels? These are some of the questions addressed in the paper.

The first section examines arguments on the existence of deterrence-stability in South Asia, if at all it does. It establishes India’s response(s) to Pakistan’s sub-conventional war as the factor that would determine the future of deterrence-stability in South Asia. The second section makes an assessment of the nature of surgical strikes and the objectives with which India conducted them. This assessment is important and the paper subsequently uses it to gauge the possibility of not only the escalation of conflict but of a breakdown of nuclear deterrence. Identifying India’s objectives in conducting these strikes, meanwhile, allows for an evaluation of whether or not they help New Delhi rebalance the status-quo, which for now permits Pakistan to wage sub-conventional war without fear of an Indian reprisal. The final section analyses the implications of surgical strikes on the status-quo between India and Pakistan, based on whether or not India’s objectives in conducting these strikes were met, and that on deterrence-stability in South Asia, based on the assessment of whether similar surgical strikes in the future could escalate conflict to conventional and nuclear levels. The paper closes with the conclusion that the surgical strikes meet most of India’s objectives in responding to Pakistan’s use of terrorists as proxies and its controlled nature leaves negligible scope for conflict escalation and breakdown of deterrence-stability. Considering the same, surgical strikes could emerge as the military response that India has sought to forge to respond to Pakistan’s sub-conventional war and that strengthens deterrence-stability in South Asia.

Deterrence-Stability in South Asia

Since India and Pakistan crossed the nuclear rubicon in 1998, proliferation pessimists have identified various reasons to argue that deterrence-stability is weak in South Asia and that the region is prone to full-scale war with dangers of conflict escalation to a nuclear level. Organisational theorists like Scott Sagan argue that most professional militaries tend to demonstrate behaviours that are conducive to a collapse of nuclear deterrence and cite the case of Pakistan, where the Army retains complete control over its nuclear weapons, to stress that the propensity to failure of nuclear deterrence is high in South Asia.[v] Empirical analysts like Timothy Hyot, meanwhile, argue that it is in fact the “strategic myopia” of military establishment and leaders in South Asia which leads them to make strategically unsound judgements and that could cause a collapse of nuclear deterrence.[vi] Michael Krepon, for his part, argues that deterrence-stability in South Asia is weak because of the stability-instability paradox and the lack of efficient escalation control mechanisms. In the absence of awareness of each other’s intentions, Krepon contends, India and Pakistan could seriously misjudge each other and possibly stumble into a full-scale war involving the use of nuclear weapons.[vii] Paul Kapur argues that nuclear weapons have allowed Pakistan – a revisionist power – a compelling incentive to provoke India – a status-quo power – with the former secure in the knowledge that the latter will not retaliate owing to the presence of nuclear weapons.[viii]

On the other hand, Sumit Ganguly, in his assessment of nuclear stability in South Asia, contends that deterrence-stability is indeed in place, though the resultant status-quo arguably falls in favour of Pakistan as it gets to continue using terrorists as state proxies to wage sub-conventional war against India, while the latter continues to grapple with the challenge of devising an effective military response to Pakistan’s sub-conventional war.[ix] At this juncture, Kapur and Ganguly appear to disagree as Kapur finds this very status-quo highly unstable and argues that further needling by Pakistan could indeed result in a military retaliation by India with dangers of use of nuclear weapons by Pakistan, or even an all-out nuclear war.[x]

Going beyond all the above assessments based simply on the proliferation of nuclear weapons in South Asia, Vipin Narang introduces the relevance of nuclear postures in effecting differing deterrence among regional nuclear powers and argues that rather than mere acquisition of nuclear weapons, they are nuclear postures of India and Pakistan that go on to establish deterrence-stability or otherwise in South Asia.[xi] He asserts that Pakistan’s shift from the posture of catalytic to asymmetric escalation has rendered India’s assured retaliation posture redundant as India has failed to stop Pakistan’s policy of using terrorists as state-proxies that meets the latter’s revisionist agenda.[xii] Agreeing with Kapur, Narang concludes that the India-Pakistan dyad is deeply unstable, as the current dynamics “allow Pakistan to more aggressively pursue revisionist aims against India with little fear of retaliation, more frequently triggering precisely the crisis scenarios that magnify the risks of intentional or inadvertent use of nuclear weapons.”[xiii]

Arguments made by proliferation pessimists, optimists, and other observers on deterrence-stability in South Asia underline the criticality of an estimation of India’s patience and prediction of what India’s response will be to Pakistan’s sub-conventional war when that patience runs out. Could that response escalate to a full-scale war, resulting in a nuclear exchange and thus failure of nuclear deterrence?

Based on empirical assessment of crises between India and Pakistan since 1998, it is argued that nuclear deterrence has not failed as yet, even as its robustness remains questioned and no matter how precarious the resultant status-quo be. Pakistan has indeed succeeded in deterring a conventional military attack by India and Ganguly substantiates this argument well with an assessment of the crises of 1999 and 2001-02.[xiv] Capturing the controlled nature of India’s operations during the two crises in comparison to the much expansive military conflicts between India and Pakistan prior to 1998, Ganguly concludes that nuclear deterrence did contribute to averting a full-scale conventional war and nuclear exchange. Although calling the resultant status-quo “highly unstable”, Narang too admits that since 1998, Pakistan has succeeded in deterring a conventional attack by India, though he credits this to Pakistan’s shift to asymmetric escalation posture and not simply to overt nuclearisation.[xv]

Narang further adds that the challenge to stability in South Asia will “only be intensified if India – to readdress its current perceived paralysis against persistent Pakistani provocations – progresses toward a Cold Start conventional posture, which might then push the Pakistani Army toward a ready deterrent on effectively hair-trigger alert. Such a combination could spawn intolerable risks of accidental or unauthorized nuclear use.”[xvi] Indeed, in 2013, Pakistan announced a transition to full-spectrum deterrence policy and has since claimed to have introduced battlefield or tactical nuclear weapons to deter possible Indian low-scale conventional aggression.[xvii] While details of Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons and their deployment remains unavailable publicly, it has heightened concerns of their theft and of their accidental or unauthorised use.

It is too early to conclude whether Pakistan has succeeded in deterring India from implementing the Cold Start doctrine through its tactical nuclear weapons and full-spectrum deterrence policy, especially as questions remain on whether India has the requisites for implementing the doctrine in focus, to begin with.[xviii] While one retired senior Indian Army official claimed in an interview with this author that the Indian Army is preparing to launch a low-scale conventional strike swiftly, he refused to associate that preparedness with the Cold Start. Even the recently appointed Chief of Indian Army, Bipin Rawat, while creating international furore by announcing the existence of the Cold Start doctrine, later explained that since “future wars will be short and intense,” requiring the army to “move fast”, his public acknowledgement of the Cold Start was “a signal to the army to be prepared for that eventuality.”[xix]

It, however, brings again to fore the question on what India’s response would be to Pakistan’s sub-conventional war and whether that would lead to a collapse of nuclear deterrence in South Asia. The Cold Start could possibly be an option available to New Delhi in the future, but that could directly challenge Pakistan’s commitment to use tactical nuclear weapons first under its policy of full-spectrum deterrence, thereby threatening deterrence-stability. Surgical strikes that the Indian Army claimed to have conducted in September 2016 captures another military retaliatory option for New Delhi. The following sections examine the nature of these strikes and the objectives with which they were conducted in order to assess if these strikes could offer India the military response it has been seeking and analyse how they would affect deterrence-stability in South Asia.
Indian Surgical Strikes: What and Why

Nature of Strikes

As per the submission of the then Indian Army’s DGMO, Lt. Gen. Ranbir Singh, and the detailed media reports that followed, the surgical strikes were conducted in the early morning of September 28, 2016.[xx] Operations began around 12:30 am as commandos were air-dropped at the LoC – the de facto border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. The commandos crossed the LoC and entered from 500 meters to upto two kilometers into the PoK to conduct strikes in the sectors of Bhimber, Hotspring, Kel, and Lipa. Operations ended approximately by 4:30 am, following which commandos reached the Indian side of the LoC where they would be picked up in helicopters.

Details of operations suggest that these surgical strikes were well below the levels of even a low-scale conventional attack.[xxi] The strikes were essentially stealth operations executed overnight by specially trained commandos of the Indian Army and they did not involve any movement of infantry or armoured divisions of the conventional armed forces. Simultaneously, given the Indian government’s open acknowledgement of having sanctioned the strikes and that Indian Army personnel were involved in conducting the strikes, these surgical strikes are attributable and thus cannot also be labelled as a “sub-conventional attack” – the latter primarily relies on militancy, insurgency, proxy war and terrorism as means of inflicting damage. It is therefore argued that these surgical strikes capture a new space of conflict between India and Pakistan, which could perhaps be labelled as asymmetric conventional conflict.

It must be highlighted here that the Indian Army has reportedly conducted similar strikes in the past.[xxii] However, what makes the surgical strikes of September 2016 unique is the Indian government’s acknowledgement of having sanctioned those strikes. Attribution adds political value to those surgical strikes, without which they remain mere military operations of limited potency. In assessing the implications of Indian surgical strikes of September 2016 in the subsequent sections, this paper makes reference to both military and political values of the strikes.

India’s Objectives

India arguably conducted these surgical strikes with three objectives: eliminate future terrorist infiltration bids from the Pakistani side of the LoC; punish Pakistan for its sub-conventional war; and deter Pakistan’s sub-conventional war.

According to the media briefing given by the DGMO, the primary objective for the surgical strikes was to eliminate an increase in infiltration bids from Pakistan’s side of the LoC. Intelligence reports suggested that terrorists had begun gathering in large numbers along the LoC with the objective of crossing the border and targeting locations in Jammu and Kashmir, as well as other metropolitan cities across India.[xxiii] New Delhi had thus ordered pre-emptive attacks in the form of these surgical strikes to eliminate these terrorist camps and bases. While this was the officially stated objective of the surgical strikes, political claims made over the success of surgical strikes add two more dimensions to India’s objective – to punish Pakistan for its sub-conventional war and to deter this sub-conventional war.

Indian news reports suggest that it was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who, a day after terrorists affiliated with the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed attacked the Indian Army brigade headquarters in Uri, decided to abandon the posture of strategic restraint. The PM authorised then Indian Army Chief, DS Suhag and the National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, to “examine all feasible military options that could deliver an ‘effective response’.”[xxiv] This means that the surgical strikes were as much a response to the Uri terror attack as they were a standalone pre-emptive attack to eliminate future infiltration bids of terrorists based in Pakistan and other territories occupied by it.

That PM Modi had publicly announced after the Uri terror attack that terrorists would not go unpunished further substantiates the argument.[xxv] Following the surgical strikes, during campaign for assembly elections in multiple Indian states, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), ruling at the centre, issued posters claiming that the surgical strikes had successfully avenged the casualties of the Uri terror attack.[xxvi] These political claims suggest that the surgical strikes were also projected as attacks to punish Pakistan for its sub-conventional war against India. The punishment was intended to not only afflict direct damage on Pakistan, but also assuage Indian public anger, which had put tremendous pressure on the Indian government to retaliate against Pakistan and hurt Pakistan’s international reputation.

Derived from the second objective of punishing Pakistan is the third objective of deterring Pakistan’s sub-conventional war. That India seeks to deter Pakistan’s sub-conventional war through conventional means of punishment is not a new argument. Post-1998, when Pakistan too became a de facto nuclear weapons state, military and strategic planners in New Delhi got on to the task of finding space to launch conventional attack of a scale that would not cross Pakistan’s nuclear redlines at that time. Substantiating this argument are discussions on the introduction of the Cold Start doctrine by the Indian Army in 2004, as mentioned earlier, followed by a series of military exercises conducted including Divya Astra (Divine Weapon) 2004, Vajra Shakti (Thunder Power) 2005, Sang-i-Shakti (Joint Power) 2006, and Ashwamedh (Valour and Intellectual Illumination) 2007.[xxvii]

Allegedly to counter India’s Cold Start doctrine of conducting low-scale conventional attacks, Pakistan lowered its nuclear redlines by introducing tactical nuclear weapons and by claiming to have implemented the policy of full-spectrum deterrence. Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who was the head of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division responsible for the country’s nuclear weapons and policy, has been quoted as having remarked, tongue-in-cheek, that the intent of Pakistan tactical nuclear weapons is to “pour cold water on Cold Start.”[xxviii] Surgical Strikes, from this perspective, could arguably be India’s attempt of finding space below Pakistan’s lowered nuclear redlines to launch an attack as a tool of sub-conventional deterrence. The following section will assess if the surgical strikes met India’s objectives and what implications these strikes have for deterrence-stability in South Asia.
Implications of Surgical Strikes

On Status-Quo between India and Pakistan

Based on the claims made by the Indian Army’s DGMO, India succeeded in meeting the first and primary objective of eliminating the identified terrorist cells and bases in PoK near the LoC. Members of the Indian media, apparently briefed by the Indian Prime Minister’s Office, reported the destruction of seven terror launch-pads, killing 38 terrorists and their handlers and two Pakistani soldiers. The Indian government, however, did not officially disclose any of these figures.[xxix] Details of gallantry awards given to Indian Army personnel in January 2017 confirmed details of operations, including accounts of “destruction of terrorists, massive casualties to terrorists and enemy regulars [Pakistani army troops] supporting them.”[xxx] Thus, the surgical strikes had no doubt served the primary objective of eliminating terrorist cells and bases and, consequently, avoiding near-future terrorist infiltration bids and terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and the rest of India, capturing the limited military utility of surgical strikes.

On the second Indian objective of punishing Pakistan for its sub-conventional war, three factors require a more nuanced assessment – inflicting real damage on Pakistan, assuaging domestic public anger, and hurting Pakistan’s international reputation. The controlled nature and low scale of operations suggest negligible material losses to Pakistan, especially in consideration of claims by Indian intelligence sources that an investment of about INR 100 crore (US$ 15 million) was made by Pakistan in fuelling militancy and unrest in the Kashmir Valley in just 2015-16.[xxxi]

The surgical strikes, however, did succeed in assuaging domestic public anger in India due to their political value.[xxxii] In the aftermath of the Uri terror attack, in which militants killed 19 soldiers of the Indian Army, there was tremendous pressure on the Modi government to militarily respond to Pakistan and eliminate terrorist training camps in PoK.[xxxiii] The pressure was particularly stronger because PM Modi himself is known to have criticised the previous Congress-led government for being “weak” on Pakistan and terrorism. Surgical strikes allowed the incumbent government to demonstrate its conviction of being less restrained in responding militarily to Pakistan’s sub-conventional war. While the previous government may also have conducted similar surgical strikes, as being claimed by the Congress party,[xxxiv] the decision to go public about the September 2016 operations came at a political cost and the Modi government exhibited the will to bear that cost—it sent a message not only to Pakistan but also to the international community that it will retaliate and not be restrained as its predecessor had been. Although the surgical strikes of September 2016 were not a potent military tool, they certainly proved to be a potent political tool for the Indian government. Government’s claim of having successfully avenged the Uri terror attack was sold, and was bought convincingly by the Indian media and the public. As mentioned earlier, the BJP would then use this claimed achievement in its campaign for elections in the state assemblies, especially in the most-populous state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). While there were other factors at play in the UP elections that are beyond the scope of this paper, BJP’s dramatic victory (312 of 403 seats won) captures the continuing, if not rising, popularity of Modi and his government in New Delhi. Among the achievements of Modi which were credited for this dramatic victory in UP, one of the top was the successful surgical strikes to punish Pakistan.[xxxv]

India also succeeded in hurting Pakistan’s international reputation. Despite Pakistan calling the surgical strikes an “illusion” and a “fabrication of truth,” responses from the international community suggest that India did succeed in selling its narrative.[xxxvi] Some of these responses were concerns expressed over the possibility of tensions rising between India and Pakistan post-surgical strikes. For instance, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Geng Shuang, was quoted saying that “as shared neighbour and friend to both India and Pakistan, we are concerned about continuous confrontation and tensions between India and Pakistan.”[xxxvii] A spokesperson for the British Foreign Office was also quoted in news reports as saying that “we are monitoring the situation closely following reports of strikes carried out by the Indian Army over the LoC in Kashmir. We call on both sides to exercise restraint and to open dialogue.”[xxxviii]

Responses from other governments, meanwhile, not only acknowledged the surgical strikes but extended support to India for taking action against terrorism emanating from Pakistan. The US government, for instance, while stressing the need for de-escalation of hostilities between India and Pakistan, reiterated its support for India’s fight in combating terrorism.[xxxix] The Russian government too expressed its support to India, stating that it stood for “decisive struggle against terrorism in all its manifestations,” and though given prior to Indian surgical strikes, the statement noted Russian government’s “continued support for the Indian government’s counter-terrorism efforts.”[xl] Following the surgical strikes, the Russian government reiterated its support for India’s counter-terrorism efforts, this time through its ambassador to India. In an interview given to an Indian news network, the Russian Ambassador to India, Alexander Kadakin, said that “the greatest human rights violations take place when terrorists attack military installations and attack peaceful civilians in India. We welcome the surgical strike. Every country has right to defend itself.”[xli] Neighbouring governments in South Asia also backed India. The Bangladesh Prime Minister’s adviser, Iqbal Chowdhury, for one, stated that “India has got all legal, internationally accepted right to make a response to any attack on her sovereignty and her soil.”[xlii] For his part, the Ambassador of Afghanistan to India, Shaida Mohammed Abdali, expressed support for the strikes, stressing that “it is time to take bold action.”[xliii]

As India announced having conducted the surgical strikes, the Pakistani establishment’s immediate response was that of denial. The Pakistani Army accused India of fabricating truth. What Rawalpindi’s press wing was willing to admit was that two Pakistani soldiers were killed; it said though that the deaths happened due to unprovoked cross-border firing, and not surgical strikes. The statement said: “This quest by Indian establishment to create media hype by rebranding cross-border fire as surgical strike is fabrication of truth.”[xliv] But international responses to the incident captures how Pakistan failed in selling its own narrative on the events of September 28, 2016. Thus, despite insignificant material damage inflicted on Pakistan through the surgical strikes, New Delhi managed to hurt Pakistan internationally, while simultaneously pacifying Indian public anger.

Questions remain, however, on whether or not these surgical strikes served the third objective—that of deterring Pakistan’s sub-conventional war. That Pakistan could deny their occurrence is a case in point. This denial could allow India to launch similar pre-emptive attacks against Pakistan in the future without appropriating any retaliation from the latter. The denial, however, will also not affect any popular support for use of terrorists as state-proxies within the Pakistani establishment. For instance, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba and the chief of Jammat-ud-Dawah, Hafiz Saeed, accused by India of having planned the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008, publicly announced a month after the Indian surgical strikes that the Mujahideen will carry out a surgical strike in Jammu and Kashmir and that such a strike “will be long remembered.”[xlv] This, along with negligible material losses to Pakistan, suggests that surgical strikes by India would not significantly disturb the continuation of Pakistan’s policy of making India bleed through a thousand cuts.

This brings to fore the limited military value of surgical strikes against Pakistan. As has been mentioned previously, the Indian Army has conducted similar strikes in the past as well. While those strikes did not have the same political value associated with them, the nature of military operations was similar. None of those strikes conducted by the Indian Army appeared to have had any effect on Pakistan which could suggest their utility as tools of sub-conventional deterrence.

That being noted, there is also a lack of credible evidence to suggest that an Indian low-scale and swift conventional offensive, similar to ones conceived under the proposed Cold Start doctrine, would achieve the desired objective of deterring Pakistan’s sub-conventional war. At this juncture, Ganguly argues that “it is difficult to establish a firm casual connection between the growth of Pakistani boldness [in waging sub-convention war] and its gradual acquisition of a full-fledged nuclear weapons capability,” especially since late 1980s to 1990s, owing to two important and coinciding developments in this period – the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union which “freed up military resources for use in a new jihad in Kashmir”, and the “emergence of an indigenous uprising within the state as a result of Indian political malfeasance.”[xlvi] Even though arguably there is no firm correlation between the emergence of Pakistan’s policy of waging sub-conventional war against India and its gradual acquisition of nuclear weapons capability, the two phenomenon nonetheless occurred together. In the same period, India also did not undertake any conventional attack in response to Pakistan’s sub-conventional war. Whether it is the knowledge of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capability since the late 1980s or instances of veiled nuclear threat by Pakistan, as claimed by scholars and analysts post-Brasstacks crisis of 1987,[xlvii] which explains the lack of conventional military response by India remains subject to debate. However, with lack of any instances to illustrate the efficacy of conventional attacks by India in deterring Pakistan’s sub-conventional war even prior to overt nuclearisation in 1998, it cannot be conclusively argued that an Indian low-scale conventional attack designed under the Cold Start doctrine would succeed in deterring Pakistan’s sub-conventional war. With consideration of high costs and risks associated with such a conventional offensive, collapse of nuclear deterrence being one, the leadership in New Delhi could not possibly assess such a conventional attack a credible sub-conventional deterrent and thus decide to employ it. It is not evident that surgical strikes are then particularly disadvantageous in comparison to a low-scale and swift conventional attack by India as far as the objective of sub-conventional deterrence is concerned.

On Deterrence-Stability in South Asia

Based on the assessment of the Indian surgical strikes conducted on September 28, 2016, this paper argues that they do not directly challenge Pakistan’s commitment to first use of nuclear weapons under the full-spectrum deterrence policy. In interviews conducted by this author with recently retired senior Indian Army officials who refused to be identified, a claim emerged that surgical strikes reflect that space exists for India to launch a conventional attack against Pakistan and that the latter’s threat of using tactical nuclear weapons first is nothing but an attempt to “bluff”.[xlviii]

This claim, however, appears to be misplaced considering that Pakistan has developed and, arguably, deployed its tactical nuclear weapons to specifically deter contingencies where India conducts a low-scale conventional attack, as described under the Cold Start doctrine. Indian surgical strikes, on the other hand, differ strongly from the conventional attack proposed under the Cold Start doctrine. As examined in the earlier section, the scale of surgical strikes conducted in September 2016 are well below that of a conventional military attack and their nature differ strongly. The highly controlled nature of operations was further stressed by the then DGMO of the Indian Army, Lt. Gen. Ranbir Singh. Singh had noted during the press briefing that “the operations aimed at neutralizing terrorists have since ceased. We do not have plans for further continuation. I have been in touch with Pakistan Army DGMO and have informed him of our actions. It is India’s intention to maintain peace and tranquillity in the region.”[xlix] Media reports, claimed to be based on a briefing given by the Indian Prime Minister’s Office, also stressed that the “surgical strikes does not mean war.”[l] Although the following month of October 2016 witnessed heavy cross-border firing at the LoC, with 99 reported instances of ceasefire violations by Pakistan, this has been a phenomenon that occurs periodically for various reasons, including allegedly as a cover to attempts of border infiltration by terrorists.[li]

That being said, it must be stressed that while Indian surgical strikes did not directly challenge the credibility of Pakistan’s full-spectrum deterrence policy, they definitely question the scope of Pakistan’s revised nuclear weapons policy. Pakistan cannot claim to have deterred all modes of attacks by India via its policy of first use of nuclear weapons. Rawalpindi therefore will have the task of devising a response or deterrent to Indian surgical strikes as its tactical nuclear weapons will not have any relevance in so far as these strikes are concerned.

Surgical strikes conducted by the Indian Army in September 2016 perhaps did not inflict significant real damage on Pakistan, given the low scale and controlled nature of operations. They proved, however, to be an efficient tool in assuaging Indian public sentiments that is generally known to put tremendous pressure on the incumbent government in New Delhi to respond to Pakistan’s use of terrorists as proxies. These strikes also gave a credible message to the world, inadvertently hurting Pakistan’s international reputation and prestige. Even on the front of inflicting real damage on Pakistan, New Delhi, in the future, could sanction strikes of similar nature but of larger scale and of greater depths into the Pakistani territories, de facto and de jure. That of course will be subject to availability of intelligence on terrorist bases and training camps across the LoC and the international border with Pakistan.

India has thus been able to devise a response that meets most, if not all, of its objectives in militarily responding to Pakistan, while avoiding any escalation of conflict which could lead to the collapse of nuclear deterrence in South Asia. Indian surgical strikes thus effectively address the concern raised by Kapur – further prodding by Pakistan could result in a military retaliation by India with dangers of use of nuclear weapons by Pakistan and even an all-out nuclear war in the subcontinent.

Narang’s concern on theft and unauthorised use of nuclear weapons by non-state actors, however, remain, especially in consideration of Pakistan’s deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. As Narang and Ladwig argue, statements such as that issued by the Chief of Indian Army Staff, Bipin Rawat on the existence of the Cold Start doctrine are unnecessary as they instigate Pakistan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in ready-state with devolution of launch authorities. This only worsens the fear of their theft by non-state actors and that of nuclear terrorism.[lii] India’s surgical strikes, on the other hand, render Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons irrelevant.

Conclusion

In effect, deterrence-stability continues to hold at nuclear and conventional levels of conflict between India and Pakistan. While Pakistan may continue to use terrorists as state-proxies, India has now tested the option of conducting surgical strikes as a military and political response that would not be detrimental to the aforementioned and existing deterrence-stability in South Asia. Sumit Ganguly, while arguing that deterrence-stability holds in the region, notes that India “has been grappling with an effort to forge a new military doctrine and strategy to enable it to respond to Pakistani needling while containing the possibilities of conflict escalation, especially to the nuclear level.”[liii]

Are surgical strikes the response India has been seeking? The Indian government has for the first time publicly acknowledged having sanctioned and conducted surgical strikes to destroy terror launch-pads in Pakistani (occupied) territories. It is too early to conclude whether New Delhi would establish surgical strikes as modus operandi to respond to Pakistan’s sub-conventional war. It remains to be seen whether India would (claim to) conduct surgical strikes after every instance of a major attack by terrorists based in Pakistan or these strikes would be conducted periodically when pressure on New Delhi to respond once again mounts. But given that these strikes meet most of India’s objectives, such as eliminating future terrorist infiltration bids, punishing Pakistan, assuaging domestic public anger, and hurting Pakistan’s international reputation—surgical strikes could possibly be the military response that New Delhi has been looking to forge over the years. While surgical strikes may not prove to be a credible tool of sub-conventional deterrence, it cannot simultaneously be concluded that a low-scale and swift conventional attack, as proposed under the Cold Start doctrine, would have that desirable effect. With negligible risks of conflict escalation to conventional and nuclear levels, surgical strikes will strengthen the existing deterrence-stability, by re-balancing the status-quo, which was previously tilted in Pakistan’s favour.

[i] Initial assessment of the implications of Indian surgical strikes on deterrence-stability with Pakistan was presented by the author at a closed-door discussion organised by the RAND Corporation and Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. Author is grateful to the organisers of the discussion and participants for their valued feedback.

[ii] For text of Indian Army’s press statement on surgical strikes, see “Surgical strikes: Full text of Indian Army DGMO Lt Gen Ranbir Singh’s press conference,” The Indian Express, September 29, 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/pakistan-infiltration-attempts-indian-army-surgical-strikes-line-of-control-jammu-and-kashmir-uri-poonch-pok-3055874/.

[iii] “Uri terror attack: 17 soldiers killed, 19 injured in strike on Army camp,” The Times of India, September 20, 2016, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Uri-terror-attack-Indian-Army-camp-attacked-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir-17-killed-19-injured/articleshow/54389451.cms.

[iv] For more on the Cold Start doctrine, see Walter C. Ladwig III, “The Indian Army’s New Limited War Doctrine,” International Security, Vol. 32, No. 3, Winter 2007/2008, pp. 158–190.

[v] Scott D. Sagan, “The Perils of Proliferation in South Asia,” Asian Survey, Vol. 41, No. 3, November-December 2001, pp. 1064-86.

[vi] Timothy D. Hoyt, “Pakistani Nuclear Doctrine and the Dangers of Strategic Myopia,” Asian Survey, Vol. 41, No. 6, November-December 2001, pp. 956-77.

[vii] Michael Krepon, “The Stability-Instability Paradox, Misperception, and Escalation-Control in South Asia,” in Rafiq Dossani and Henry S. Rowen, eds., Prospects for Peace in South Asia (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 261-79.

[viii] S. Paul Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2007).

[ix] Sumit Ganguly, “Nuclear Stability in South Asia,” International Security, Vol. 33, No. 2, Fall 2009, pp. 45-70.

[x] For assessment of Paul Kapur’s arguments, see Ganguly, “Nuclear Stability,” pp. 65-66.

[xi] Vipin Narang, “Posturing for Peace? Pakistan’s Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability,” International Security, Vol. 34, No. 3, Winter 2009/2010, pp. 38-78.

[xii] Narang explains catalytic posture as one where the regional nuclear power with ambiguous nuclear capability attempts to catalyse involvement of a third-party, usually a nuclear superpower, for military or diplomatic assistance to defend itself. Asymmetric escalation posture on the other hand is about “rapid (and asymmetric) first use of nuclear weapons against conventional attacks to deter their outbreak, operationalizing nuclear weapons as usable warfighting instruments.” For more see, Narang, “Posturing for Peace?”

[xiii] Narang, “Posturing for Peace?,” p. 77.

[xiv] For Ganguly’s assessment of the crises of 1999 and 2001-02, see Ganguly, “Nuclear Stability.”

[xv] Narang, “Posturing for Peace?,” p. 76.

[xvi] Narang, “Posturing for Peace?,” p. 77.

[xvii] Full spectrum deterrence was officially registered in a 2013 ISPR press release following an NCA meeting. In that press release, Pakistan maintained that its full spectrum deterrence continues to be a part of its policy of credible minimum deterrence. While credible minimum deterrence remains an ambiguous phrase, thus allowing states to pursue modifications within this policy, there are some basic tenets of credible minimum deterrence that appear to be missing in the case of Pakistan’s full spectrum deterrence. This is why the term ‘transition’ is used herewith. See “Inter Services Public Relations Press Release No. PR-133/2013-ISPR,” September 05, 2013, accessed April 01, 2017, https://www.ispr.gov.pk/front/t-press_release.asp?id=2361&print=1. The relevance of tactical nuclear weapons and the policy of full spectrum deterrence for Pakistan was reiterated by Khalid Kidwai at the 2015 Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington DC on March 23, 2015. Kidwai, who has been the head of Pakistani army’s Strategic Plans Division from 2000 to 2013, made this announcement while serving as an advisor to Pakistan’s National Command Authority. For Khalid Kidwai’s speech, see “A Conversation with Gen. Khalid Kidwai,” March 23, 2015, accessed April 01, 2017, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/03-230315carnegieKIDWAI.pdf.

[xviii] Vipin Narang and Walter C. Ladwig III, “Taking ‘Cold Start’ out of the freezer?,” The Hindu, January 11, 2017.

[xix] Ajai Shukla, “Why General Bipin Rawat Acknowledged the Cold Start Doctrine,” The Wire, January 20, 2017, https://thewire.in/101586/cold-start-pakistan-doctrine/, emphasis added.

[xx] “Full text Singh’s press conference,” The Indian Express. For details of the surgical strike as reported in the media, see “4 hours, choppers and 38 kills: How India avenged the Uri attack,” The Economic Times, September 29, 2016, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/army-conducted-surgical-strikes-on-terror-launch-pads-on-loc-significant-casualties-caused-dgmo/articleshow/54579855.cms.

[xxi] For more on how conventional forces will engage in sub-conventional conflicts, see K C Dixit, “Sub-Conventional Warfare: Requirements, Impact and Way Ahead,” Journal of Defence Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2010, pp. 120-34.

[xxii] Kritika Banerjee, “4 times Indian commandos crossed the LoC for surgical strikes: All you need to know,” India Today, October 09, 2016, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/four-times-india-carried-out-surgical-strikes/1/783633.html.

[xxiii] “Full text Singh’s press conference,” The Indian Express.

[xxiv] Rajiv Kumar, “Surgical strikes: Here’s when PM Narendra Modi decided to avenge Uri attack,” The Financial Express, September 30, 2016, http://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/surgical-strikes-when-pm-narendra-modi-decided-to-avenge-uri-attack-teach-pakistan-lesson-indian-army-loc/398739/.

[xxv] Sheela Bhatt and Anand Mishra, “Uri attack: PM Narendra Modi says attack will not go unpunished, Rajnath Singh calls Pak a terror state,” The Indian Express, September 19, 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/pm-narendra-modi-says-attack-will-not-go-unpunished-rajnath-singh-calls-pak-a-terror-state-3037864/.

[xxvi] Ajai Shukla, “Army Mute as BJP Election Posters Feature Soldier, Surgical Strikes,” The Wire, October 09, 2016, https://thewire.in/71973/army-silent-surgical-strikes-bjp-election-posters/.

[xxvii] Ladwig, “Limited War Doctrine.”

[xxviii] David O Smith, “The US Experience with Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Lessons for South Asia,” in Michael Krepon and Julia Thompson eds. Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia (Washington D.C.: The Stimson Center, 2013), p. 80.

[xxix] Personal interviews conducted with senior journalists revealed that soon after the Indian army’s DGMO’s announcement of India having conducted surgical strikes, a closed-door meeting was called at the PMO where limited details of the surgical strikes were provided to a selected senior journalists and strategic experts. These details were later published by print and electronic media. See, for instance, “4 hours, choppers and 38 kills: How India avenged the Uri attack,” The Economic Times, September 29, 2016, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/army-conducted-surgical-strikes-on-terror-launch-pads-on-loc-significant-casualties-caused-dgmo/articleshow/54579855.cms.

[xxx] Manu Pubby, “Surgical strikes: First official details on how Indian soldiers targeted Pakistani bunkers,” The Economic Times, January 31, 2017, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/validated-army-records-give-blow-by-blow-account-of-surgical-strikes/articleshow/56881303.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst.

[xxxi] Abhishek Bhalla, “Pakistan spent Rs 100 crore funding terror in J&K over the past year, Indian intelligence sources say,” Mail Today, July 15, 2016, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/pakistan-funds-terror-jammu-and-kashmir-isi-hafiz-saeed/1/715355.html.

[xxxii] This political motivation of assuaging domestic public anger for India having (claimed to have) conducted surgical strikes emerged during the closed-door discussion co-hosted by RAND Corporation and IDSA where the author presented his initial assessment, as well as during a conversation with Manoj Joshi, noted senior Indian defence and national security journalist and distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.

[xxxiii] Iain Marlow, “Modi govt under pressure to strike Pakistan after Uri attack, Live Mint, September 20, 2016, http://www.livemint.com/Politics/2ZNSsS2pGYkp65lYsAE3CM/Modi-govt-under-pressure-to-strike-Pakistan-after-Uri-attack.html.

[xxxiv] “Surgical strikes were conducted thrice during UPA rule: Congress,” The Times of India, October 04, 2016, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Surgical-strikes-were-conducted-thrice-during-UPA-rule-Congress/articleshow/54681797.cms.

[xxxv] Sharat Pradhan, “How surgical strikes and demonetisation actually helped Modi win Uttar Pradesh,” Daily O, March 12, 2017, http://www.dailyo.in/politics/election-results-uttar-pradesh-akhilesh-yadav-demonetisation/story/1/16151.html.

[xxxvi] For Pakistan’s reaction to Indian claims of having conducted surgical strikes, see “Surgical strikes: Pakistan rejects India’s claims,” Al Jazeera, September 30, 2016, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/pakistan-denies-india-carried-surgical-strikes-160929165646369.html. Meanwhile, for a gist of international responses, see Prasun Sonwalkar, Sutirtho Patranobis and Yashwant Raj, “How world powers reacted to Indian Army’s strikes across LoC,” Hindustan Times, September 29, 2016, http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/how-world-powers-reacted-to-indian-army-s-strikes-against-militants-across-loc/story-ZYYJL2KO0t2Rokz3u6qWqO.html. For assessment of these responses, see Vivek Chadha et al., “Uri, Surgical Strikes and International Reactions,” Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, October 04, 2016, http://www.idsa.in/issuebrief/uri-surgical-strikes-and-international-reactions_041016.

[xxxvii] Sutirtho Patranobis, “China concerned about tension, asks India, Pakistan to be restrained,” Hindustan Times, September 30, 2016, http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/china-concerned-about-tension-asks-india-pakistan-to-be-restrained/story-Qx2uaLRMDMZyXfjfYKnivI.html.

[xxxviii] Prasun Sonwalkar, Sutirtho Patranobis and Yashwant Raj, “How world powers reacted to Indian Army’s strikes across LoC,” Hindustan Times, September 29, 2016, http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/how-world-powers-reacted-to-indian-army-s-strikes-against-militants-across-loc/story-ZYYJL2KO0t2Rokz3u6qWqO.html.

[xxxix] “US seeks de-escalation of tensions, calls Uri attack ‘horrific’,” Business Standard, September 30, 2016, http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/us-seeks-de-escalation-of-tensions-calls-uri-attack-horrific-116093000908_1.html.

[xl] “Russia condemns Uri attack, confirms its support to India’s counter-terrorism efforts,” First Post, September 19, 2016, http://www.firstpost.com/world/russia-condemns-uri-attack-confirms-its-support-to-indias-counter-terrorism-efforts-3011486.html.

[xli] “Russia Backs Surgical Strikes, Asks Pakistan to Stop Terror Activities,” Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Republic of India, October 03, 2016, http://rusembindia.com/russia-india-dialogue-en/press-on-bilateral-relations/102-pressonbilateralrelation/8089-russia-backs-surgical-strikes-asks-pakistan-to-stop-terror-activities.

[xlii] “Bangladesh backs India’s surgical strikes across LoC,” Live Mint, September 29, 2016, http://www.livemint.com/Politics/Ac6hLYJF3vns4gQTmCTRvK/India-has-right-to-respond-to-attack-on-sovereignty-Banglad.html.

[xliii] “Time To Take Bold Action: Afghanistan Backs India On Surgical Strikes,” NDTV, September 30, 2016, http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/time-to-take-bold-action-afghanistan-backs-india-on-surgical-strikes-1468463.

[xliv] “Surgical strikes: Pakistan rejects India’s claims,” Al Jazeera, September 30, 2016, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/pakistan-denies-india-carried-surgical-strikes-160929165646369.html.

[xlv] “Hafiz Saeed threatens India with ‘surgical strike’ in Kashmir,” The Times of India, November 07, 2016, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Hafiz-Saeed-threatens-India-with-surgical-strike-in-Kashmir/articleshow/55293062.cms.

[xlvi] Ganguly, “Nuclear Stability,” p. 66.

[xlvii] For more on claims of veiled Pakistani nuclear threat during the Brasstacks crisis in 1987, see Devin T. Hagerty, The Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation: Lessons from South Asia (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998). Quoted by Ganguly, “Nuclear Stability,” p. 51.

[xlviii] This claim also emerged during the closed-door discussion organised by the RAND Corporation and Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, where the author presented his initial assessment on the subject.

[xlix] “Full text Singh’s press conference,” The Indian Express.

[l] “How India avenged the Uri attack,” The Economic Times.

[li] “Pakistan violates ceasefire 99 times on LoC post-surgical strike,” The Times of India, November 04, 2016, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Pak-violates-ceasefire-99-times-on-LoC-post-surgical-strike/articleshow/55245898.cms.

[lii] Narang and Ladwig, “out of the freezer?”

[liii] Ganguly, “Nuclear Stability,” p. 65.

The Rif has, in spite of itself, has become involved in a peaceful revolt since the death of the fishmonger Mohcine Fikri at the end of October 2016,i a dramatic situation that seems to have no outcome at the moment. Worse, there is an escalation of tension from both the Hirak (uprising) and the government: Nasser Zafzafi, the icon of the popular Rifi protest movement, clumsily attacked the sacredness and the sanctity of the Muslim religion in a very conservative country, and the government automatically and hastily proceeded to arrest him along with his circle of lieutenants and decision-makers.

In this regard, Kenza Oulmlil, an assistant Professor in Communication and Gender at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, argues in Al Jazeera electronic portal publication on June 6, 2017:ii

“As well as being accused of “obstructing the freedom of worship”, Zefzafi was also criticised for the lack of structure and eloquence in his intervention at the mosque. The protest leader, who is not a highly educated person, was accused of being a misogynist after making comparisons between the political corruption in the country and the “corrupt mores of women”, criticising the way women dress and even using language that implies men’s “ownership” of women. This is indeed a worrying discourse, especially for women who are concerned about not losing control over their bodies. But the Hirak Movement recently sent out a more egalitarian message by including a woman, Nawel Ben Aissa, among the leaders of a protest following Zefzafi’s arrest.”

It seems that on both sides impulsiveness has largely prevailed over wisdom and common sense and as a result the gap will expand further, yet a peaceful and responsible dialogue could have readily resolved the conflict bearing in mind that the government has promised to put $1 billion on the table, a tremendous amount, for the much-needed development of the city and its surroundings. In short, no city or region of Morocco has had the chance of such governmental generosity at once and as quickly. It is a boon for the Rif if the promise is respected, of course.

But, however, it must be said openly that the Rif has been suffering stoically and in silence for over a century. Indeed, since the beginning of the last century, it has suffered greatly from the yoke of harsh French and Spanish colonialism and since the independence in 1956 of the contempt of the central state without forgetting the harshness of nature and all this can seen on the face of the Rifi people, who are victims of abject poverty and horrendous injustice.

Structural Handicaps

The Rif as a region and as a cultural entity has been confronted, for a long period of timen with a range of handicaps both natural and human:iii

Geographic Handicap

The Rif is a predominantly mountainous region and very steep and therefore generally rugged. It has few plains. The slopes of the soil are often very strong and with an inclination of more than 50%. The soils are not very permeable and are, thus, very sensitive to erosion. Although it has access to an important rainfall, in a wet year, however it is arid and badly lacking water most of the time. The Rif in its entirety is subject to devastating and continuous erosion.

Cultural Handicap

In the popular imagination of the Moroccans, the Rifis are at the same time very brave and very honest people, responsible heads of families and loyal spouses. They are known by the name of shluH al-‘azz, the valorous Amazighs / Berbers.

That said, however the Rifi is seen and stereotyped as a shady and unfaithful being who can change his mind and camp quickly:

• Rifi gheddar u qattal (the Rifi is sanguinary and incapable of fidelity);
• Rifi diru guddamek u ma-tidiru urak (The Rifi is not trustworthy);
• Rifi ighadrek, ighadrek (the Rifi will be unfaithful to you sooner or later), etc.

These strange stereotypes about the Rifi individual are the result of his pugnacity and innate sense of survival in an inhospitable geographical and human environment. His face, cicatrized by the hardships life, gives him the impression of being a patient sufferer and untrustworthy man with a natural propensity to fight and aggression.

Economic handicap

The Rif is a basically poor region; mountainous and arid and therefore unable to feed its own people. In the thirties of the last century the Rifis immigrated seasonally, en masse, to French Algeria to work in agriculture. They called this movement shareq “migration to the east”. In the 1950s, they crossed, this time, the Mediterranean to go to Europe which was in full reconstruction after the Second World War, thanks to the American generosity of the Marshall Plan. They settled mainly in Holland and Belgium but also in Spain, France, Germany and the countries of Scandinavia. Thanks to the hard earned money they fed their families, built beautiful houses and invested in businesses and real estate in their area tribal areas and elsewhere in Morocco.

But in the 1980s, the Europeans closed their borders and the sons of the Rif turned to education with the hope of getting a job to take care of their families and make their living. Once the diploma in hand they were confronted to the harsh reality of the labor market: selective and not generous, in the least. Their survival hopes were bashed on the rocks of ferocious liberalism. On the chairs of the cafes they meditated at length on better days while organizing themselves in associations of defense of the Amazigh/Berber culture and human rights. Soon Alhoceima became the Moroccan capital of human rights and contestation.

To calm the region, the Makhzen proceeded clumsily to the co-optation of some local elites, but soon these elites lost their political “virginity” and credibility were disavowed by the Rifi people, not to say socially banished.

The Rif Bruised By Official Morocco

The armed uprising of the Rif of 1958-59 was not directed against the monarchy but rather against the Istiqlal Party, which wanted to seize power to establish the single party political system, as was the case in several Arab countries. The would be king Hassan II, who was crown prince Moulay Hassan, anxious to become king in the place of the king, saw in this uprising a golden opportunity to assert his political and military authority and get rid of both the disturbing Rif and the usurper Istiqlal political party. Against the advice of his father Mohammed V, rather inclined to political dialogue and social intermediation. Moulay Hassan crushed the Rif uprising militarily in blood.

At the end of January 1959, the uprising was suppressed by a military force of 30,000 men commanded by crown prince Moulay Hassan and placed under the orders of General Oufkir. After the end of the uprising, the Rif was subjected to a military regime for several years and the most ruinous legacy of this uprising was the complete neglect and marginalization of the region by the Moroccan authorities in the following decades.

This marginalization was to become even more pronounced after the popular uprising of 1984, which was also repressed in blood because, for Hassan II, the Rif was still militarized and the region still openly opposed to the monarchy and the state.

On his accession to the throne in 1999, Mohammed VI begun a process of reconciliation with the Rif, making several trips to Alhoceima and Nador and inaugurating a number of large-scale projects, but not sufficiently meeting the urgent needs of the population: employment and dignity. The good intentions of King Mohammed VI for the development of the Rif were totally exasperated by administrative delays, bureaucratic sluggishness, corruption of elected officials and poor choice of local elites.

Morocco In Despair

During the 1912-1956 colonial protectorate, France, for the purpose of domination, had divided Morocco into two parts: Useful Morocco (Maroc Utile), made of coastal commercial centers, rich agricultural plains and areas with mineral wealth, and Unnecessary Morocco (Maroc Unutile) that of rugged mountains, rural plateaus and scorching desert territories. This subdivision coincided greatly with an older one: bled l-makhzen “land under government control” and bled siba “land of dissidence” or rather the poor regions of the Amazigh/Berbers who refused to pay taxes to the central government, because of poverty but recognized his religious mantle as the “Commander of the Faithful,” Amir al Mu’minin.

After independence, this subdivision persisted; indeed, today one can distinguish between two Moroccos that are cruising at two different speeds: A Morocco of the “golden triangle” and a Morocco of the “triangle of despair.” The golden triangle extends from Laayoune in the south to Tangier in the north and Fez in the east and all the territories that are situated outside this triangle is the world of despair, generally the Amazigh/Berber lands, lacking badly resources and infrastructure.

Since independence the government has clumsily and irresponsibly directed all investments, national or international, towards the golden triangle creating multiple possibilities of work, therefore much wealth and well-being. On the other hand, outside of this triangle, the idle youth is in total despair and families are crushed by poverty and lack of means and are full of anger and hate towards the establishment for their lot which they consider a form of humiliation (Hogra) resulting from lack of interest in them and in their plight.

The Drop That Overflowed The Vase

The emotional earthquake that Morocco experienced on October 30, 2016 following the death of Mohcine Fikri was undoubtedly a very dangerous event for the future of the country. The political class and the establishment must have drawn the necessary lessons for the future of the country, then. Today, it must be said that the future is very bleak and the so-called “Moroccan exception,” if any, is in great danger of extinction.

The Hirak of the Rif is the natural outcome of the discontent of the Moroccan “triangle of despair” in its totality. The events of Alhoceima are maybe, to be clear, the Moroccan spring in the making, unless the demands of the population are met at once. This popular movement has undoubtedly exposed the precariousness of the Amazigh/Berbers and the reality of the political game in Morocco. The political parties have all been co-opted by the Makhzen and, as a result, have lost their political “virginity” in the eyes of the population and the people themselves have, thus, become the legitimate and real opposition on the ground because nature does not like void, and so they went down to the streets to defend their dignity and safeguard their interests and shout out their doldrums and voice their discontent.

The Hirak of the Rif is peaceful and legitimate, the state must imperatively take charge of it: listening, dialogue, intermediation and reactivity and mute the calls of security sirens who want to demonize the protesters and push Morocco into uncertainty. Morocco is a country of dialogue and the middle ground, but it is going very badly now and the monarchy, as in the past, has to put itself at the bedside of the sick poor to nurse them back to good health.

In Morocco today there are two distinct classes: the rich, which is made up of politicians, industrialists, financiers, rentiers, bourgeoisie, etc., rich as Croesus and the ordinary people, the grassroots and the destitute who live from day to day in total poverty. As a reminder, the middle class that serves as a “shock absorber” between the rich and the poor disappeared from the Moroccan social scene a long time ago.

PJD, A “Paracetamol” That No Longer Calms Pain

In 2011, at the height of the Arab Spring, the king, as a good and loyal firefighter, proposed to the Moroccan people a constitution for a future true constitutional monarchy. This document opened the door wide for the arrival of the Islamists to power, which materialized soon after with great pomp.

For 5 years, from 2011 to 2016, the Islamist “paracetamol” calmed the multiple pains of Moroccan society without having succeeded in any way in diagnosing the real ailment. To justify their inability to solve the major problems and evils of the country, as they approached the end of their term in October 2016, they evoked the concept of ta7akkoum (remote control power), which, in plain terms, means that the major political decisions remain in the hands of the shadow cabinet (entourage of the monarch), not to say, of course, the hands of the sovereign himself.

But, according to Intissar Fakir, writing in Sada on Novemner3, 2016, the real center of power is the monarchy and its entourage:iv

“The dichotomy of Moroccan politics is such that political actors and elected officials are traditionally held accountable in public rhetoric, but they wield the least authority when it comes to governing and decision-making. The powers that are firmly in control—the monarchy and its vast circle of advisors, administrators, and officials—remain above accountability and questioning.”

The Islamists wanted badly to justify their political failure to clear themselves from the wrath of their electors. It is true that certain decisions can be influenced by the royal entourage but their intrusion is, definitely, very minimal. However, to the astonishment of many, they were re-elected with more seats in parliament but less political bite, on a purely religious and non-economic agenda, of course.

The Fear Haunting The People Is Unemployment And Humiliation (7ogra)

During their many electoral campaigns, the PJD and the rest of the political parties make hollow promises to the common people, to provide ample employment for them synonymous with dignity.
Generally all Moroccan political parties make promises without basing themselves on previous planning, scientific studies or academic research. In short, Moroccan political parties have no economic strategy or other program and cannot create the jobs so much needed and desired by people to survive in a savage and inhuman liberal economic system. These parties have only political literature that they are updating in the run-up to the electoral deadlines, hence their popular strident failure in recent years.

Disappointed of the performance of Moroccan political parties, the people do not even deign to vote: October 7, 2016 general elections: 57% of abstention. The abstention, however, does not arrange in any case the perpetual complaints of the Moroccan people who suffer of poverty and lack of opportunity.

What To Do?

The Hirak is a social and economic protest movement brandishing a legitimate list of grievances of an Amazigh/Berber region battered by political and economic marginalization, but it is, also, a time bomb that can explode at any moment and destabilize the country, If not the whole region and initiate the second wave of the MENA spring.

The people of the Rif are unionists and not separatists. They are proud of their Moroccan identity, no doubt about that. The Ait Ouriaghel tribe defeated Spain under Ben Abdelkrim al-Khattabi over the years 1921-1926, for the greatness of Morocco and the Gzennaya tribe defeated France in the “Triangle of Death” in October 1955, for the country’s independence and the end of the protectorate.

Unfortunately, in spite of the great services rendered to the nation by the Rif region, Rabat marginalized it because it apparently had wounded Hassan II in his ego and his own self love, so much so that he had forgotten that he was the king of all Morocco before being the citizen Hassan Ben Mohammed.

To avoid the general explosion and the domino effect of the Alhoceima movement, it is essential to undertake the following steps urgently:

Short term:

1. Urgent Royal intervention to defuse the Hirak time bomb;
2. All-out dialogue with the Hirak and the Rif in its totality;
3. Adopt a Marshall Plan like economic package for the Rif;
4. Establish a think tank of researchers and intellectuals from the Rif to provide the necessary studies on the region (sociology, anthropology, culture, economy, tribal identity, etc.), which is poorly understood by the central government;
5. Create much-needed university campuses in Alhoceima and Nador;
6. Repatriate the remains of Ben Abdelkrm al-Khattabi from Cairo and give him an official burial and insert his epic into the textbooks;
7. Celebrate annually the battles of Anoual and Dhar Aberran.

Long-term:

1. Create “Mountain Provinces” in the mountainous regions of the country, with special budget, to undertake equitable regional development;
2. Create a research center for the development of deep Morocco;
3. Make deep Morocco known at the national level;
4. Adopt dynamic federalism instead of static regionalism.

Endnotes:
i. http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/opinion/a-fish-vendors-death-almost-triggered-a-moroccan-spring_43922
ii. http://allafrica.com/stories/201706050738.html
iii. http://www.amadalpresse.com/fr/?p=1239
iv. http://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/65019

The shocking election result in the United Kingdom – the Conservatives losing their majority and the creation of a hung Parliament; and Jeremy Corbyn being more successful than any recent Labor candidate – cutting a 20 point Theresa May lead down to a near tie – gives hope to many that the global shift to the right, fueled by the failures of governments to meet the basic needs of their population and growing economic insecurity, may be ending.

Corbyn is a lifelong activist whose message and actions have been consistent. He presented a platform directed at ending austerity and the wealth divide and was openly anti-war.

There are a lot of lessons for the Labor Party in the UK from this election but there are also lessons for people in the United States. We review what happened and consider the possibilities for creating transformative change in the United States.

The Corbyn Campaign Results

The Corbyn campaign showed that a political leader urging a radical progressive transformative agenda can succeed. Many in his own party, the neo-liberal pro-war Blairites, claimed Corbyn could not win, tried to remove him from leadership, and sabotaged and refused to assist his campaign.

Corbyn showed he could win the leadership of the UK in the future, maybe sooner than later. While Theresa May is in the process of forming a minority government with a small radical conservative party from Northern Ireland, there has already been a backlash, mass petitions and protests against it and UK history has shown in similar circumstances that the second place finisher, may, in the end form the government.

Corbyn is taking bold and radical actions. He is preparing to present a Queen’s speech in which he will say that he and his party are “ready to serve” and will continue to push his program through Parliament. He is calling on other parties to defeat the government in Parliament.

Corbyn did better than any recent Labor leader. Jonathan Cook, a British political commentator, writes in “The Facts Proving Corbyn’s Election Triumph” that Corbyn received 41 percent of the vote against May’s 44 percent.

This was a big improvement in Labor’s share of seats, the largest increase since 1945. Cook points out that Corbyn won more votes than “Ed Miliband, Gordon Brown and Neil Kinnock, who were among those that, sometimes noisily, opposed his leadership of the party.”

Even Tony Blair does not look all that good compared to Corbyn, Cook recounts:

“Here are the figures for Blair’s three wins. He got a 36 per cent share of the vote in 2005 – much less than Corbyn. He received a 41 per cent of the vote – about the same as Corbyn – in 2001. And Blair’s landslide victory in 1997 was secured on 43 per cent of the vote, just two percentage points ahead of Corbyn last night.

“In short, Corbyn has proved himself the most popular Labour leader with the electorate in more than 40 years, apart from Blair’s landslide victory in 1997.”

Bhaskar Sunkara, the founding editor of Jacobin, writes that Corbyn was not only campaigning against the Tories and Theresa May, but battling his own party – yet he still “won”:

“This is the first election Labour has won seats in since 1997, and the party got its largest share of the vote since 2005 — all while closing a twenty-four point deficit. Since Corbyn assumed leadership in late 2015, he has survived attack after attack from his own party, culminating in a failed coup attempt against him. As Labour leader he was unable to rely on his parliamentary colleagues or his party staff. The small team around him was bombarded with hostile internal leaks and misinformation, and an unprecedented media smear campaign.

“Every elite interest in the United Kingdom tried to knock down Jeremy Corbyn, but still he stands.”

The Blairites were taught a lesson by Corbyn. Many of his harshest critics are now changing their tune and embracing Corbyn. Hopefully they will join in creating a party in Corbyn’s image – a party for the many, not the few. Corbyn has rebuilt the mass base of Labor. The party is now the largest in Europe with half a million members. It is time for the “leaders” of Labor to follow the lead of the people and of Jeremy Corbyn.

What can we learn regarding US politics?

Sunkara argues Corbyn demonstrated that a winning campaign strategy is “to offer hopes and dreams to people, not just fear and diminished expectations.” In current US terms that means it is insufficient just to oppose Trump, a positive vision for the future that shows what a candidate and party stand for is needed, e.g. it is not just enough to defend the failing Affordable Care Act and oppose the Republican’s American Health Care Act, you must stand for something positive: National Improved Medicare for All. This is one example of many.

Sunkara provides more detail:

“Labour’s surge confirms what the Left has long argued: people like an honest defense of public goods. Labour’s manifesto was sweeping — its most socialist in decades. It was a straightforward document, calling for nationalization of key utilities, access to education, housing, and health services for all, and measures to redistribute income from corporations and the rich to ordinary people.

“£6.3 billion into primary schools, the protection of pensions, free tuition, public housing construction — it was clear what Labour would do for British workers. The plan was attacked in the press for its old-fashioned simplicity — “for the many, not the few” — but it resonated with popular desires, with a view of fairness that seemed elementary to millions.

“The Labour left remembered that you don’t win by tacking to an imaginary center — you win by letting people know you feel their anger and giving them a constructive end to channel it towards. ‘We demand the full fruits of our labor,’ the party’s election video said it all.”

Corbyn showed how important it is to have the correct analysis on foreign policy. Twice during the campaign, the UK was hit by a terrorist attack. Corbyn responded by telling the truth: part of the reason for terrorism is the UK foreign policy, especially in Libya. He also opposed the use of nuclear weapons. The Conservatives thought these anti-war positions would hurt Corbyn, instead they helped.

This is even more true in the United States with the never ending wars the country is fighting. But, the unspeakable in the United States, as Paul Street calls it, is acknowledging that terrorism is conducted by the US. This taboo subject makes it hard for people to understand that the US is constantly committing acts of terrorism around the world, which lead to predictable blow back from US militarism, regime change and war. No elected official will tell these obvious truths, which the people of the United States would instinctively understand if they were voiced.

Although the U.S. is often portrayed as a ‘center-right’ nation and progressives are called extremists, the reality is that there is majority support for a progressive agenda. There is a developing national consensus in the United States for transformational change, and Bernie Sanders articulated some of that consensus, at least on domestic issues, in his run for president, but the problem is that U.S. elections are manipulated by the elites in power who make sure that their interests are represented by the winner

Sunkara ends his article on Corbyn saying “Also, Bernie Sanders would have won.” We do not know what would have happened in a Trump-Sanders election. The closest example may be McGovern’s 1972 campaign against Nixon which he lost in a landslide. In that campaign, the Democrats deserted their candidate, even the AFL-CIO and big unions did not support McGovern and Nixon demonized him in the media. Would Clinton-Democrats have stood with Sanders or would they have sabotaged him like the party did to McGovern?

A key to Corbyn’s success was retail politics.  The population of the UK is 65 million, compared to the US population of 321 million. Retail politics can work in the UK, while in the US paid media advertising drives the campaign, which means money often determines the outcome. This gives great power to big business interests, and while it can be overcome, it is a steep hill to climb.

Despite their significant losses, the Democrats are still controlled by Clinton-Obama Wall Street and war neo-liberals as we saw in the recent DNC chair election where Clinton protégé, Tom Perez, was elected. We are not optimistic that the US can apply the Corbyn model within the Democratic Party because it has been a party representing the oligarchs from its origins as the party of plantation slave-owners.

The duopoly parties that represent Wall Street, war and empire will not allow voices that represent “the many, not the few” to participate in US elections. They shut them out whether they run as an insurgent inside a party, as people learned from the mistreatment of Bernie Sanders by the DNC, or if they run outside of the two parties. The bi-partisans make independent party runs nearly impossible with unfair ballot access laws, barriers to voter registration, secret vote counting on unverifiable election machines, exclusion from the debates and exclusion by the corporate media, who are in cahoots with the bi-partisans.

It Comes Down to Building An Independent Mass Political Movement

We live in a mirage democracy with managed elections, as we describe in the article “Fighting for A Legitimate Democracy By and For the People,” on the long history of wealth dominating politics in the U.S.

Historically, transformations have occurred because of mass social movements demanding change and participating in elections through independent parties that have grown out of a movement with candidates from the movement (Corbyn has been involved in every anti-war movement, anti-apartheid, anti-austerity, pro-peace and human rights movements among others). Showing mass electoral support, even without winning, has resulted in significant changes – union rights, women’s voting rights, the eight-hour workday – indeed the New Deal came out of third party platforms. It is important to resist the duopoly parties in order to get to the root of the problems we face; as Patrick Walker explains, the “grassroots resistance must oppose Democrats as well as Trump.”

A broad and diverse social movement whose demands are articulated by an independent party platform has forced one of the two parties to capitulate to the movement or disappear. That still seems to be the most likely path to real change for the US.

Corbyn teaches that we should embrace the radical transformational change that is needed, whether in elections or as a movement, to inspire people to take action and shift the realm of the possible. The people thirst for change as their economic situation becomes more insecure. There needs to be a movement that addresses that insecurity through a human rights lens, or else the insecurity will be channeled towards hatred and violence.

The key first step is to show the many, we are with them; that we are listening and acting consistent with their beliefs. Taking this correct first step, lights the path ahead of us.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance.

While it has been more than six decades since China forcibly occupied Tibet, the Tibetans living around the world as refugees have not lost their hopes of regaining their motherland.

With its huge economic and military power, China has so far succeeded in silencing world opinion about its misdeeds in Tibet and its unethical act in driving many thousands of Tibetans out of their own country. Not wanting to lose the trading and investment opportunities in China, almost all countries around the world have chosen to ignore the plight of Tibetans and the gross injustice done to their cause. However, while governments around the world remain unconcerned about China’s forcible occupation and violations of human rights in Tibet, many people worldwide are aware that injustice has been done by China, and there is desire that the cause of Tibetans should win ultimately.

People everywhere, particularly the younger generations who may not know the history of Tibet and how Tibet’s spirit and culture have been violated by China, should be told about this clearly. While there is no way that Tibetans can get back their motherland and freedom by appealing to China to see reason and observe fair play, Tibetans still have enormous moral force at their command that can impel China to see reason and vacate Tibet — if this moral force can be applied in an appropriate manner. There are elegant, peaceful, and civilized ways of doing this.

China’s economy is almost totally dependent on its capability to trade its products across the world.

China makes a variety of products, from toys and play books for children, zip fasteners for garments, and hundreds of similar items that are used by individuals in day-to-day life. In most shops in many countries, such Chinese goods are exhibited prominently and sold in huge quantity.

Tibetans and their sympathisers around the world need a way to register their protest against the injustice done to Tibetans by China. The best way to enable them to register their protest is by starting a worldwide campaign to boycott the products and goods sold across the world under the name “Made in China”.

Such a soft campaign of boycotting Chinese goods would immediately spread far and wide if it could be launched effectively, as the cause is genuine and the objective is right.

Everyone knows that China is a dictatorial country and that there is a deep communication gap between Chinese citizens and the Chinese government. People just obey the dictates of the government unquestioningly, and in most cases they may not be aware of the particular reason behind any action of the government. It is quite possible that Chinese citizens themselves may not be aware of the harm done to Tibet by China.

The campaign to boycott Chinese goods and services around the world will send a clear message not only to the Chinese government but also to the citizens in China who sell their products in thousands of shops, about the prevalent hard feelings towards the present Tibet scenario. This will bring worldwide focus on the plight of Tibetans and the injustice done to them by China.

While such a boycott will certainly not result in an immediate change in the attitude and approach of the Chinese government to the Tibetan issue, the moral force that such a boycott would unleash on China would remain conspicuous, which the government in China and Chinese citizens cannot ignore.

Such a soft campaign would reflect the spirit that Mahatma Gandhi introduced during the freedom movement in India, when the mighty British empire could not face the protest by millions of impoverished Indians. Such a campaign, non-violent and peaceful, would also be in tune with the philosophy that Lord Buddha espoused and gave to the world.

The ball is clearly in the court of Tibetans and their sympathisers, and they should launch this soft campaign to boycott Chinese products, to achieve their target of liberating Tibet, by conducting the campaign in a sustained way through media, forum discussions, and lecture programmes all over the world.

Burma has now had its third peace conference. The first, in January 2016, was organized by former President Thein Sein, who to this day is also a top general in the country’s military dictatorship. The second and third were held in August and then this year, although the latest was postponed from February. These were arranged by Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counselor, who – formerly at least – had opposed the military.

Following the conference, Democratic Voice of Burma reported Suu Kyi’s “upbeat closing remarks,” where she said peace “is starting to take tangible form for the first time.”

Not nationwide, not for peace

Such an assertion is absurd. It is time for a reality check.

First, all of the conferences have been described as Union, meaning nationwide. Therefore, nominally at least, this was the third Union Peace Conference, or UPC.

As a peace conference, it was presumably about this subject: finding a way to end the hostilities between the dictatorship’s Burma Army and the country’s Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs). Burma in fact has dozens of different armed groups, and it is essential to distinguish them. They can be sorted into the following categories:

• The Burma Army itself, or Tatmadaw.
• Its allies who signed ceasefires starting in the 1990s, thereby abandoning revolutionary struggle. Many of these groups, or their leaders, subsequently focused on making money, ranging from resource exploitation to the narcotics trade. A number in recent years also willingly transformed into regime Border Guard Forces.
• Its allies among the different local militia that are spread around the country, and which also typically profit from resources or narcotics.
• Its newest allies, the KNU and the SSA-S (even though for the first the goals of the Karen Revolution have not been achieved). Both groups rejoined the “legal fold” by signing the “Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement” before the first UPC. (The other groups which signed the NCA were either already dictatorship allies or inconsequential.)
• And, the groups which remain true to their people and who refused to sign the NCA.

Interestingly, the last includes some of the regime’s former allies in the north such as the KIA, who resumed their revolutions when the Burma Army unilaterally reversed their ceasefires. Also, long-standing ally the UWSA seems to have changed sides as well, since it is now openly assisting these groups.

In summary, the current revolutionary pro-democracy resistance includes the following: members of the UNFC (KIA, SSA-N, KNPP, NMSP, ANC, LDU, and WNO, although the KIA and WNO have signaled their intention to resign from the group); the Northern Alliance (UWSA – and with which the WNO intends to unite, KIA, SSA-N – it will apparently remain in both alliances, TNLA, MNDAA, AA, and NDAA); and the Naga – NSCN-K – whose goal is to establish a unified Nagaland nation together with communities in Northeast India.

Of all these groups, however, only nine are estimated to have at least 500 troops: the UWSA, KIA, SSA-N, TNLA, NDAA, MNDAA, NMSP, KNPP, and NSCN-K. The real peace negotiation in Burma therefore comprises the dictatorship and its allies, and these groups. And, since the Northern Alliance’s participation at the latest conference was superficial – just a combined committee, not full individual EAO delegations, and the remaining UNFC members boycotted it, what took place was in no way a real Union Peace Conference, as it was not nationwide. There has yet to be a true UPC, since groups have been absent from all three meetings. (Nonetheless, for ease of description I will continue to use the abbreviation “UPC.”)

(Also, while formally under the KNU top leadership, the northern brigades of the KNLA, and the KNDO, remain true to the Karen Revolution. It is unclear how they would act were a widespread offensive for freedom to be launched.)

The NCA and Anti-Panglong

Thein Sein based the first conference on the NCA, which is a complex document focused more on political issues (such as the formation of a federal structure for Burma), than peace. Indeed, it does not even oblige its signatories to stop fighting. This lack of an on-the-ground ceasefire is at the insistence of the dictatorship, which clearly does not want any legal hindrance (other than international law) to get in the way of its continuing attacks against the EAOs. The pro- democracy resistance itself has called repeatedly for the first step to be a real ceasefire.

Because of this, the EAOs view the NCA with extreme suspicion. They recall that the dictatorship pushed through its 2008 Constitution following years of stage-managed meetings, and a fraudulent referendum. The NCA is considered to be a similar regime tactic, a new means to delay real peace and which will also put Burma’s ethnic nationalities at a permanent disadvantage.

On the other hand, UNFC members are still trying to work with the document, by pushing for additional changes. They are continuing to negotiate in good faith. The dictatorship has responded though that alterations are forbidden.

Surprisingly, Suu Kyi also decided to have the NCA as the basis for the second and third meetings. (The third UPC was postponed because no additional groups were willing to sign.) She even rebranded the meetings as “21st Century Panglong.” This implies that they were successors to the 1947 conference held by her father and which led to the signing of the Panglong Agreement, through which treaty ethnic equality – on paper at least – was enshrined.

By doing this, Suu Kyi joined forces with the dictatorship. Both she and the top generals are members of the Burman ethnic group. She has repeatedly demanded that the EAOs sign the NCA in its current form as a precondition to participate in the conferences. She held to this position even though, as just mentioned, the NCA does not have as its goal actual peace, and since it does not ensure that ethnic interests are satisfied.

At the latest session, General Min Aung Hlaing dictated the exact opposite of the Panglong Agreement. Suu Kyi herself has implied that the ethnic nationalities should accept repudiation of the Agreement’s legal provisions, and instead settle for a lukewarm and ultimately meaningless “Panglong Spirit.” This argument, which is a subterfuge – it hasn’t been debated openly, is so contemptible that the UPC should now be named the 21st Century Anti-Panglong Conference.

What happened at the meeting

In contrast to her optimistic words, this is what really happened at the latest UPC.

The UNFC members said that they would not attend unless they were given full rights of participation. Suu Kyi had demanded that they accept “observer” status, and when they refused this was adjusted to “special guest.” But since nothing had really changed – only the label, they stayed away.

Surprisingly, the Northern Alliance did attend, including its members the KIA and the SSA-N, who also – for the moment at least – still belong to the UNFC. (The KIA has received a public backlash from the Kachin community for going.) This was arranged following intense pressure from China.

As described in the Irrawaddy interview with the Wa’s Zhao Guo An, the regime did many dirty tricks. First, the invitation to the Alliance was only given at the last moment, so they had little time to prepare. Secondly, when they went to pick up their visas in Kunming, the three groups that had been denied participation at the first two UPCs, the TNLA, MNDAA and AA, were told that they would only be “observers.” On the spot the full Alliance decided not to go, until Chinese diplomats guaranteed that all the representatives would comprise an official delegation. Finally, when they arrived at the meeting their seating cards said “special guest. “ They got up to leave, and Suu Kyi’s staff removed the cards. That night, China negotiated for hours with the regime, and the next day the cards said “official delegates.”

Even with this, the Northern Alliance returned home early. They did not stay the extra day that was added to sign a conference agreement. Because of this, and the absence of the UNFC, the agreement that was signed, even though it had many general “points,” was essentially meaningless. It did not cover the major outstanding issues for Burma, and it included no signatories from among the groups that are actually fighting for freedom. In fact, even NCA signatories the SSA-S and ALP refused to sign, since they had not been allowed to hold community forums. They said they would not commit their groups without receiving public input. The only armed group signature on the agreement was that of KNU turncoat Kwe Htoo Win, and who fraudulently signed on behalf of all the EAOs. Similarly, the signature on behalf of the political parties (by a representative of the Democratic Party Myanmar) was done without all of their consent.

Following this outcome, and in contrast to Suu Kyi’s rosy summary, the first appraisals were – accurately – negative. In damage control, and as reported in The Star Online, Suu Kyi’s spokesperson blamed the EAOs for the failure because of their demand for greater autonomy. The spokesperson made no mention at all of the true core issues – the Burma Army’s obstinacy and its continuing war of colonial aggression against the ethnic nationalities.

The “issues”

The main disputes at the conference involved the ethnic nationalities’ right of secession from the Union of Burma, and the issue of how to restructure the military if the day ever comes that real peace is achieved.

For the first, both the Burma Army, in Min Aung Hlaing’s speech, and Suu Kyi, through many different statements, have been demanding that the ethnic groups give this up. The right of secession is established law in Burma. It was initially agreed at the Panglong conference and then formally included in the 1947 Union of Burma Constitution. So, and once again, a major point of contention at the latest UPC arose from the military and Suu Kyi’s efforts to get the ethnic nationalities to renounce Panglong.

The second dispute involved the nature of a post-peace national army, with the regime insisting that it, meaning Burman generals, must retain full command including over absorbed ethnic nationality forces. This in turn is simply a restatement of its long-standing insistence on DDR – Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration, which for the EAOs is tantamount to surrender.

Clearly, Burma’s military dictatorship, and now with the open and unwavering support of Suu Kyi, has no intention of yielding on any of its basic demands. Because of this, the UPC was not even a real negotiation. Instead, it was a hoax, carried out to benefit various parties and to deceive both the EAOs and the entire general public of the country.

No peace, freedom, democracy, or justice for Burma

The question, then, is where does this leave the people, particularly for their long-denied dream of peace? The answer – in a hopeless position. Burma Army attacks against the Northern Alliance continued throughout the UPC, including with a significant escalation, which is still underway, once it ended.

Peace requires the Burma Army to declare an actual ceasefire (to which the EAOs would immediately agree), followed by a pullback of its troops from ethnic nationality areas, starting with its bases next to local villages. But, at the present there is no prospect that the regime will ever willingly do this.

For freedom and democracy, were peace to be achieved nationwide, there is then the question of the 2008 Constitution. To be democratic, the Burma Army and the ethnic armies must be integrated through SSR – Security Sector Reform – and in a fair way (with the EAOs having responsibility for security in ethnic areas); the entire national army must be put under the direct control of – made subordinate to – democratically-elected leadership; the military must relinquish control of its three ministries to this government; and, a new Rule of Law must be established, which ends the impunity for crimes now enjoyed by Burma Army soldiers, police, and other pro- regime groups and parties.

Ultimately, for Burma to be free, power in the country must be transferred from the military, and Suu Kyi – who has also been acting like a dictator, to the people. However, and just as with the issue of peace, none of this is likely to be achieved. Indeed, Suu Kyi now backs the dictatorship’s Constitution, saying that she will not address changing it until after all the EAOs have signed the NCA, which she of course understands will never occur.

Finally, and most unfortunately, the people of the country will not receive justice for the dictatorship’s crimes of which they have been – and continue to be – victims. There will be no end to the impunity. The justice system including the courts; the legal code, such as Telecommunications Act clause 66(d), which is now being used to imprison an entirely new generation of dissidents; and the actual conditions in the prisons, will never change.

The problem of course is that talk – a negotiated peace – cannot succeed if one of the parties, in this case the Burma Army, is not sincere. In fact, since Suu Kyi is not only an intermediary – she is a full participant in the negotiation as well – we can say that two of the parties are insincere. Suu Kyi autocratically represents both the government and the political parties, of which the NLD is dominant. And, she is on the side of the generals. She has even opened a second front in their overall divide and conquer strategy. The regime had divided the EAOs by enticing some to sign individual ceasefires. She has expanded this by demanding that all the groups sign the NCA to be able to participate in the “peace process.” This has created the new split between NCA signatories and non-signatories.

(One other attribute of the divide and conquer strategy is that the dictatorship purposely commits as wide a variety of abuses as possible. Different pro-democracy groups then focus on the distinct abuse classes. This too has the effect of splitting the opposition, distracting it from the need to unify and to press for freedom above all.)

Fortunately, Suu Kyi and Min Aung Hlaing’s two-on-one strategy to force the EAOs to surrender was not successful. It turns out that they are not all corrupt, and also that they cannot be defeated. They have determined armies, and with the country’s rough terrain can draw out asymmetrical guerrilla warfare forever.

The solution to Burma’s problems has not changed since Ne Win seized power in 1962. The dictatorship must be defeated, by popular uprising or armed revolution, or a combination of both.

Who won

Clearly, the people of the country are the losers in the UPC process. But for some parties it didn’t fail at all. They got exactly what they wanted.

The UPC is a carefully staged mirage – a magician’s trick. All that is happening, with the dictatorship, Suu Kyi, and also the U.S., Europe, and China, is a well-orchestrated effort to distract the people of Burma and to condition them to accept the fact that they will never truly be free. For such “power-players,” the conference was an important step in a larger criminal conspiracy. There will be another talk fest in six or so months, and then another after that, etc. Meanwhile, nothing fundamental will change.

In other words, by following the UPC there will never be real democracy, just a fake “disciplined democracy” – i.e., a dictatorship. All of this is essentially applying the model that has already been established for China.

As a closing note, China’s role is worth highlighting. Some analysts say that the Burma regime’s relationship with its neighbor has changed materially over the years, in particular in response to the U.S. ending its sanctions. I believe this view is dubious.

China backs the military dictatorship. It always has, and it always will. They are blood brother tyrants. The last thing China wants is for Burma to be a real democracy. It seems that China intervened in the UPC to save Suu Kyi an embarrassing loss of face. Why? Because the Burma regime has been using her quite effectively as its apologist, and China knows that having the ability to continue to exploit her weakness is an effective strategy against real change. This is very clever. China backs the Northern Alliance militarily, and which kills Tatmadaw soldiers. But the Burma dictatorship doesn’t really care about such losses. Regime soldiers are cannon fodder after all. (Neither does China care about its own villagers who are killed by stray bombs.) It is better for both if there is no peace – if the war continues for years and years in a low grade way, with periodic but controllable flare-ups. China will help with this, but at the same time try to prevent the Northern Alliance from ever pursuing a real war of liberation.

Ultimately, nothing will change. Suu Kyi will become decrepit and then die. The rule of Burma’s generals will get more and more entrenched, as they make deals with international corporations. Indeed, many of these corporations will be Chinese. Continuing warfare and accompanying human rights atrocities will dissuade all but a few truly horrible Western companies from making the leap.

It’s amazing how people tend to believe only the things that they can actually see. But, there is always much more going on that meets the eye. There are obviously meetings – secret meetings – between Chinese representatives and the military dictatorship. I would be shocked if there wasn’t a well-trodden path to Min Aung Hlaing office – and Than Shwe’s mansion. That’s right: Than Shwe is absolutely still calling the shots. He’s healthy, and he’s pulling the most important strings. That’s part of the reason why he is rarely seen in public. He doesn’t want to call attention to himself. The so-called changes in the Burma-China relationship, including the former’s public embrace of the West, are a fiction. Than Shwe and the Chinese autocrats are playing the West, and the people of Burma, and Suu Kyi, in a real world game of Go.

The Northern Alliance needs to resist China’s influence. It should fight to win, and recruit the other UNFC members and the loyal KNU units to the battle. Everyone else should take to the streets.

This article appeared at Dictator Watch (PDF)

India and Pakistan’s adversarial relations are locked in a classic military security dilemma that is characterized by the production and development of sophisticated nuclear and conventional technologies, leading towards an arms race. After going overtly nuclear, the development of nuclear and missile capabilities of India and Pakistan has been intensified to ensure their security. However, India’s rising missile ambitions has forced Pakistan to build up its nuclear capabilities to maintain credible nuclear deterrence in region.

India started its ballistic missile program in the mid 1980s and pursued it in more systematic manners. Recent trends have revealed that India is developing numerous nuclear delivery systems, trends of missile development includes Shorter and Longer range missiles, MIRVing, and a shift from liquid to solid fuel missiles or ready arsenals. Such advancements and a higher level of readiness by India has challenged the vary basics of strategic and deterrence stability in South Asia.

At the end of 2016, India’s successful test of sea-based ballistic and cruise missile system, Agni V, with a strike range of 5,500- 5,800 Km, capable of carrying payload of 1,500 kg. India claims that Agni V is to provide deterrence against China. Consequently, after this test India test fired various missiles such as the Agni III and successful test of interceptor missile to develop a two-layered Ballistic Missile Defence system. India’s intentions and nuclear capabilities has increased the chances that a bilateral crisis could escalate in a more dangerous way.

Recently, India tested the nuclear capable ballistic missile Prithvi II with a strike range of 350 km, capable of carrying 500 kg to 1,000 kg of warheads. The missile is indigenously developed and undergoing developmental trial and said to capable to hit the major cities of Pakistan from Indian Territory. This factor rejects the Indian claim that its conventional and nuclear programs are China specific as Prithvi II has direct relevance to Pakistan.

India’s missile proliferation has forced Pakistan to response India to maintain its security and regional stability. Principle drive for Pakistan’s missile program is “security” and it is totally Indian specific. It has been repeatedly mentioned by Pakistan’s officials that India’s conventional and nuclear capabilities have forced Pakistan to enhance its nuclear competencies to counter the Indian threat. In order to maintain credible deterrence against Indian threat, Pakistan possesses an adequate number of nuclear capable missiles including Abdali (Hatf-2), Ghaznavi (Hatf-3), Shaheen I (Hatf-4), Ghauri (Hatf-5), Shaheen II (Hatf-6) and Nasr (Hatf-9) that have ability to counter-value the targets in India. Most importantly successful test of Ababeel with the introduction of a missile with multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRV) has proved that despite facing defence production gap in conventional forces has successfully maintained technological and deterrent capability by developing effective ballistic missile program.

Hence, the dynamics of ballistic missile development in South Asia present that although India’s ballistic missile defense capabilities are at its full pace of development, at the same time the fact cannot be ignored that India is also dictated by a lack of strategic depth and Pakistan’s full spectrum credible deterrence is capable to deter all forms of Indian aggression.

Subsequently, talking about regional security landscape, it is imperative to mention that regional security outlook is complex such as; Pakistan’s threat perception revolves around India, whereas India’s threat perception comes from China. Under this complex security outlook, India’s quest for missile program has broad regional and global implications. First, India’s expanding missile capabilities marked by improvement in range, payload and accuracy not only indicate that India is heading towards higher level of readiness but also pushing the region towards the destabilizing arms race. Secondly, It has reduces the chances of any bilateral arms control arrangement in South Asia. Third, Pakistan as well as China’s centric missile program of India will further complicate the security dilemma in South Asia. Therefore, India’s increased level of readiness and destabilizing ballistic missile program is a dangerous combination for deterrence and strategic stability in region.

Therefore, India’s expanding fissile material production, nuclear capable ballistic missiles including MIRVs and recent test of Prithvi II is a wakeup calls for major powers and global non-proliferation regime as it is not only disturbing the deterrence stability in region but also raises the international apprehension of regional states regarding India’s growing missile capabilities.

*Asma Khalid is a Research Associate at Strategic Vision Institute, a think-tank based in Islamabad. Email: asmaakhalid_90@hotmail.com.

According to a recent report [1] by CBC Canada, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, which was formerly known as al-Nusra Front and then Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) since July 2016, has been removed from the terror watch-lists of the US and Canada after it merged with fighters from Zenki Brigade and hardline jihadists from Ahrar al-Sham and rebranded itself as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in January this year.

The US State Department is hesitant to label Tahrir al-Sham a terror group, despite the group’s link to al-Qaeda, as the US government has directly funded and armed the Zenki Brigade, one of the constituents of Tahrir al-Sham, with sophisticated weaponry including the US-made antitank TOW missiles.

The overall military commander of Tahrir al-Sham continues to be Abu Mohammad al-Julani, whom the US has branded a Specially Designated Global Terrorist with a $10 million bounty. But for the US to designate Tahrir al-Sham as a terrorist organization now would mean acknowledging that it supplied sophisticated weapons to terrorists, and draw attention to the fact that the US continues to arm Islamic jihadists in Syria.

In order to understand the bloody history of al-Nusra Front during the Syrian civil war, bear in mind that since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in August 2011 to April 2013, the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front were a single organization that chose the banner of “Jabhat al-Nusra.” Although al-Nusra Front has been led by Abu Mohammad al-Julani but he was appointed [2] as the emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, in January 2012.

Thus, al-Julani’s al-Nusra Front is only a splinter group of the Islamic State, which split from its parent organization in April 2013 over a leadership dispute between the two organizations.

In March 2011, protests began in Syria against the government of Bashar al-Assad. In the following months, violence between demonstrators and security forces led to a gradual militarization of the conflict. In August 2011, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was based in Iraq, began sending Syrian and Iraqi jihadists experienced in guerilla warfare across the border into Syria to establish an organization inside the country.

Led by a Syrian known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the group began to recruit fighters and establish cells throughout the country. On 23 January 2012, the group announced its formation as Jabhat al-Nusra.

In April 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released an audio statement in which he announced that al-Nusra Front had been established, financed and supported by the Islamic State of Iraq. Al-Baghdadi declared that the two groups were merging under the name “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.” The leader of al-Nusra Front, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, issued a statement denying the merger and complaining that neither he nor anyone else in al-Nusra’s leadership had been consulted about it.

Al-Qaeda Central’s leader, Ayman al Zawahiri, tried to mediate the dispute between al-Baghdadi and al-Julani but eventually, in October 2013, he endorsed al-Nusra Front as the official franchise of al-Qaeda Central in Syria. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, however, defied the nominal authority of al-Qaeda Central and declared himself as the caliph of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Keeping this background in mind, it becomes amply clear that a single militant organization operated in Syria and Iraq under the leadership of al-Baghdadi until April 2013, which chose the banner of al-Nusra Front, and that the current emir of the subsequent breakaway faction of al-Nusra Front, al-Julani, was actually al-Baghdadi’s deputy in Syria.

Thus, the Islamic State operated in Syria since August 2011 under the designation of al-Nusra Front and it subsequently changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in April 2013, after which, it overran Raqqa in the summer of 2013, then it seized parts of Deir al-Zor and fought battles against the alliance of Kurds and the Syrian regime in al-Hasakah. And in January 2014 it overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in Iraq and reached the zenith of its power when it captured Mosul in June 2014.

Regarding the rebranding of al-Julani’s Nusra Front to “Jabhat Fateh al-Sham” in July 2016 and purported severing of ties with al-Qaeda Central, it was only a nominal difference because al-Nusra Front never had any organizational and operational ties with al-Qaeda Central and even their ideologies are poles apart.

Al-Qaeda Central is basically a transnational terrorist organization, while al-Nusra Front mainly has regional ambitions that are limited only to fighting the Assad regime in Syria and its ideology is anti-Shi’a and sectarian. In fact, al-Nusra Front has not only received medical aid and material support from Israel, but some of its operations against the Shi’a-dominated Assad regime in southern Syria were fully coordinated with Israel’s air force.

The purpose behind the rebranding of al-Nusra Front to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and purported severing of ties with al-Qaeda Central was to legitimize itself and to make it easier for its patrons to send money and arms. The US blacklisted al-Nusra Front in December 2012 and pressurized Saudi Arabia and Turkey to ban it too. Although al-Nusra Front’s name has been in the list of proscribed organizations of Saudi Arabia and Turkey since 2014, but it has kept receiving money and arms from the Gulf Arab States.

It should be remembered that in a May 2015 interview [3] with al-Jazeera, Abu Mohammad al-Julani took a public pledge on the behest of his Gulf-based patrons that his organization only has local ambitions limited to fighting the Assad regime in Syria and that it does not intends to strike targets in the Western countries.

Thus, this rebranding exercise has been going on for quite some time. Al-Julani announced the split from al-Qaeda in a video statement last year. But the persistent efforts of al-Julani’s Gulf-based patrons have only borne fruit in January this year, when al-Nusra Front once again rebranded itself from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which also includes “moderate” jihadists from Zenki Brigade, Ahrar al-Sham and several other militant groups, and thus, the US State Department has finally given a clean chit to the jihadist conglomerate that goes by the name of Tahrir al-Sham to pursue its ambitions of toppling the Assad regime in Syria.

Sources and links:

[1] Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate escapes from terror list: http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/terror-list-omission-1.4114621

[2] Al-Julani was appointed as the emir of al-Nusra Front by al-Baghdadi: http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/16689

[3] Al-Julani’s interview to Al-Jazeera: “Our mission is to defeat the Syrian regime”: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/nusra-front-golani-assad-syria-hezbollah-isil-150528044857528.html

A Saudi and UAE-led campaign to force Qatar to halt its support for Islamists and militants is little else than a struggle to establish a Saudi-dominated regional order in the Middle East and North Africa that suppresses any challenge to the kingdom’s religiously cloaked form of autocratic monarchy.

The Saudi and UAE effort goes to the heart of key issues with which the international community has been grappling for years: the definition of what and who is a terrorist and what are the limits of sovereignty and the right of states to chart their own course.

It’s a battle that has pockmarked the Middle East and North Africa since World War Two, but kicked into high gear with the 2011 popular Arab revolts. Saudi Arabia and Little Sparta, a term used by some US officials to describe the UAE, waged a concerted campaign to roll back achievements of the uprisings.

The two states’ effort has projected Saudi Arabia and the UAE as leaders in the fight against extremism. Yet, if successful, their campaign could empower a strand of supremacist Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism that advocates absolutist, non-democratic forms of governance, and threatens to perpetuate environments that potentially enable radicalism.

While Saudi Arabia and the UAE differ in their view of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism, they agree on defining political Islam as terrorist because it advocates an alternative worldview or form of governance.

The outcome of the crisis in the Gulf, these differences notwithstanding, is impacting the larger Muslim world rather than only the Middle East and North Africa. A Saudi defeat of Qatar would cement the kingdom with its advocacy of ultra-conservatism, efforts to impose globally its anti-democratic values that make a mockery of basic human rights, and exploitation of the moral authority it derives as the custodian of Islam’s two most holy cities, Mecca and Medina, as an almost unchallenged force in the Muslim world.

The irony of the Saudi-led campaign against Qatar is that it pits against one another two autocratic monarchies that both adhere to different strands of Wahhabism, the ultra-conservative worldview that legitimizes the rule of Saudi Arabia’s governing Al Saud family.

Qatar, like Saudi Arabia, governed by an absolute ruler, who keeps a tight rein on politics and freedoms of expression and the media, is an unlikely candidate for advocacy of greater openness and pluralism.

Yet, in many ways, the two countries are mirror images of one another. Both see strands of Islam as crucial to their national security and the survival of their regimes. Qatar, sandwiched between the Islamic republic of Iran and the Islamic kingdom of Saudi Arabia, both of which it views as potential threats, sees political Islam, the force that emerged strongest from the 2011 revolts, as the future of a region that is in transition, albeit one that is mired in brutal violence, civil war, debilitating geopolitical rivalry, and Saudi and UAE-led counterrevolution.

Saudi Arabia, struggling with the fact that its four decade-long public diplomacy campaign, the largest in history, has let an ultra-conservative, often militant, inward-looking, intolerant genie out of the bottle that it no longer controls, sees Madkhalism, a strand of ultra-conservatism that advocates absolute obedience to the ruler, as the solution.

In doing so, Saudi Arabia is perpetuating the fallout of its public diplomacy that has been a key factor in Muslim societies such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh becoming more conservative, more intolerant towards Muslim and non-Muslim minorities, less pluralistic and less democratic.

It is a strategy that risks nurturing the kind of anti-Shiite sectarianism that serves the kingdom’s purpose in its power struggle with Iran as well as creating an environment that potentially fosters radicalism. Libya, a landscape of rival militias and governments, is an example of the Saudi strategy at work.

Much of the world’s focus on post-revolt Libya, torn apart by armed militias and ruled by rival governments, has focused on the rise of the Islamic State (IS) in the country. Yet, equally devastating for the country has been the proxy war between Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt that depends on handouts from the two Gulf states for its economic survival on the one hand and Qatar on the other. Libya’s travails that created opportunity for IS are in many ways the product of battling Gulf states that support groups representing the rival strands of Islam they back.

As a result, Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s darling, General Khalifa Belqasim Haftar, rather than being a beacon of struggle against militant or jihadist Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism heads a force that is populated by Madkhalists, Saudi-backed ultra-conservatives that advocate a form of governance that in many ways is not dissimilar to that of the kingdom or IS.

Led by Saudi Salafi leader, Sheikh Rabi Ibn Hadi Umair al-Madkhali, a former dean of the study of the Prophet Mohammed’s deeds and sayings at the Islamic University of Medina, Madkhalists seek to marginalize more political Salafists critical of Saudi Arabia by projecting themselves as preachers of the authentic message in a world of false prophets and moral decay. They propagate absolute obedience to the ruler and abstention from politics, the reason why toppled Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi tolerated them during his rule.

Madkhalists often are a divisive force in Muslim communities. They frequently black list and seek to isolate or repress those they accuse of deviating from the true faith. Sheikh Al-Madkhali and his followers position Saudi Arabi as the ideal place for those who seek a pure Islam that has not been compromised by non-Muslim cultural practices and secularism.

General Haftar integrated the Madkhalists into his fighting force after Sheikh Al-Madkhali called on his followers in Libya grouped in the Tawhid Brigade to join the renegade military commander in the fight against the Qatar-backed Muslim Brotherhood. The integration of the two forces gave the Madkhalists control of key military positions in the port city of Benghazi and elsewhere in eastern Libya, according to scholar and NGO activist Ahmed Salah El-Din Ali.

Madkhalist influence in the region illustrates the kind of society Saudi-backed ultra-conservatives envision. The alliance with General Haftar has allowed them to gain control of the body that governs religion as well as mosques in areas administered by the internationally recognized government of Libya.

Madkhalist fighters, in their bid to enforce Saudi-backed Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism, have destroyed Sufi shrines and restricted Sufi religious activity in eastern Libya, Mr. Ali reported. Widely viewed as the mystical strand of Islam, Sufism is widespread in Libya.

Like in Saudi Arabia, Abd al-Razzaq al-Nazury, a military governor in the region associated with General Haftar and the Madkhalists, banned women from travelling without a mail guardian. Mr. Al-Nazury imposed the ban following a visit by Usamah al-Utaybi, a Jordanian-born Saudi Islamic scholar who was a fighter in the US and Saudi-backed jihad in the 1980s against the Soviets in Afghanistan. An outcry on social media forced the governor to cancel the ban.

Similarly, protest on social media, according to Mr. Ali, forced authorities to release three men detained in March by General Haftar’s Madkhalist fighters for planning a public celebration of Earth Day. The fighters charged that the celebration would have been a form of un-Islamic Freemasonry that would have been immoral, indecent and disrespectful of those who had died for the cause.

Ironically, General Haftar’s association with the Madkhalists spotlights the contradictions in the Saudi-UAE-Egyptian alliance against Qatar. The UAE and Egypt share opposition to political Islam with the kingdom but see Saudi-inspired Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism as an equally potent threat.

The long and short of this is that there are no truly good guys in the battle between Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. Nonetheless, at the core of their high-stakes battle is a struggle over what Islam-inspired worldview will be most prominent in the Muslim world as well as the ability of Muslim nations, especially those in Saudi Arabia’s orbit, to chart a course of their own.

Iran sent five planes of food to Qatar, Iran’s national carrier confirmed on Sunday, days after Gulf countries cut off air and other transport links to the emirate amid an escalating diplomatic crisis.

Some 90 tonnes of food was sent to Doha, Iran Air spokesman Shahrokh Noushabadi said.

“So far five planes carrying perishable food items such as fruit and vegetables have been sent to Qatar, each carrying around 90 tonnes of cargo, while another plane will be sent today,” Noushabadi said.

“We will continue deliveries as long as there is demand” from Qatar, Noushabadi added, without mentioning if these deliveries were exports or aid.

Three ships loaded with 350 tonnes of food were also set to leave an Iranian port for Qatar, the Tasnim news agency quoted a local official as saying.

The port of Dayyer is Iran’s closest port to Qatar.

In the biggest diplomatic crisis in the region in years, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, plus Egypt and Yemen, on Monday announced they were cutting all ties with Qatar, accusing it of allegedly supporting extremism and having good ties with Saudi Arabia’s regional-rival Iran.

While Iran has urged Qatar and neighbouring Gulf countries to engage in dialogue to resolve their dispute, the Islamic republic has also opened its airspace to about 100 more Qatari flights a day, after Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates banned Qatari planes from their airspace.

The new flights have increased Iranian air traffic by 17 percent, the official state news agency has reported.

On Saturday, Amnesty International warned of the “heartbreak and fear” being suffered by potentially thousands of ordinary individuals because of the political dispute in the Gulf that has isolated Doha.

“Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are toying with the lives of thousands of Gulf residents as part of their dispute with Qatar, splitting up families and destroying people’s livelihoods and education,” the London-based human rights watchdog said.

“For potentially thousands of people across the Gulf, the effect of the steps imposed in the wake of this political dispute is suffering, heartbreak and fear,” said James Lynch, deputy director of Amnesty’s Global Issues Programme, who was in Doha last week.

“These drastic measures are already having a brutal effect, splitting children from parents and husbands from wives,” said Amnesty after its researchers interviewed dozens of people affected by the crisis.

“People from across the region… risk losing jobs and having their education disrupted.”

Amnesty, quoting Qatar’s National Human Rights Committee, said more than 11,000 nationals of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE live in Qatar, while many Qataris are residents of the three other Gulf states.

Amnesty also pointed out that Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had warned of harsh punishments, including up to 15 years in jail, “if they dare to criticise these measures” against Qatar.

“Prosecuting anyone on this basis would be a clear violation of the right to freedom of expression. No one should be punished for peacefully expressing their views or criticising a government decision,” said Lynch.

Original source

An Israeli journalist has been ordered to pay 100,000 Israeli shekels (28,000 dollars) to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife over libel charges, a court statement said Sunday.

The Netanyahus had filed the suit over Facebook posts by Yedioth Ahronoth journalist Igal Sarna, one of which claimed that Netanyahu’s wife had thrown him out of the car on the side of the road after a domestic dispute.

In his ruling, judge Azaria Alcalay rejected the argument that Facebook posts should not be held to the same standards as works published by a newspaper and criticized the posts’ inflammatory tone.

Sarna said the ruling by the court in Tel Aviv should “be expected in these dark times” and vowed to continue fighting against Netanyahu’s attempts to silence the media, the Haaretz newspaper reported.

Israeli police questioned Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes in January as part of a probe into allegations against Netanyahu that he tried to influence a newspaper publisher in exchange for favourable coverage. The Israeli leader has called the accusations groundless.

Original source

The drug overdose epidemic is largely driven by opioids, which continue to be prescribed for chronic pain despite recommendations to use non-opioids for most cases. A new review published in the British Journal of Pharmacology examines the interaction between pain and the abuse of opioids, and investigates the circuits in the brain that may be behind this link. The review is part of a special theme issue on Emergent Areas of Opioid Pharmacology.

“We have shown that the brain’s natural opioid system is drastically changed by the presence of pain, and these changes may very well contribute to the difficulty of treating chronic pain with opioids,” said first author Adrianne Wilson-Poe, PhD of the Washington University in Saint Louis School of Medicine. “We have just glimpsed the tip of the iceberg when it comes to pain’s effect on the brain, however, and we need a lot more research and grant funding to get to the bottom of the extremely complex interaction between drug abuse and pain.”

She and senior author Jose Moron-Concepcion, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at Washington University, note that without a fundamental understanding of pain-induced changes in the brain and how these adaptations interact with subsequent drug exposure, investigators are merely fishing for solutions to the opioid crisis.

“Our work is attacking this problem head-on by diligently characterizing the mechanisms involved in pain, addiction, and the interaction between them,” said Dr. Wilson-Poe. “We envision a future where chronic pain is considered a disease in its own right, not merely a symptom of some other biological process.”

The review stresses that opioids are the most powerful analgesics known to man, and their continued use in the treatment of severe pain is inevitable; however, opioid therapy of the future must look very different from how it does today. Efforts to address this issue include a 2016 guideline by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that recommends using non-opioids for most cases of chronic pain, using the lowest effective dose when prescribing opioids, and ensuring that patients who are treated with opioids are closely monitored.

The review is part of a larger themed issue, ‘Emergent Areas of Opioid Pharmacology,’ that will publish at a later time.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse notes that the emergence of illicitly manufactured synthetic opioids including fentanyl, carfentanil, and their analogues represents an escalation of the ongoing opioid overdose epidemic. Also, prescription opioid misuse is a significant risk factor for heroin use, and 80% of heroin users first misuse prescription opioids.

By Diana Moukalled

The FBI arrested two Americans of Lebanese origin for providing financial aid to Hezbollah and participating in preparations for terrorist attacks. This is not the first time Lebanese individuals involved in financial or combat support for Hezbollah have been arrested. Throughout the past two decades similar arrests have occurred, but the latest happened at the height of the most recent escalation by the US administration against Iran and Hezbollah.

The latest arrests shed light on fears among the Lebanese-American community in Michigan, particularly Shiites, who comprise the largest segment of Arab immigrants in that state and in the US generally. This group suffers an unspoken division between bias toward Hezbollah on the one hand, and fear that their security will be threatened or that they will be stigmatized due to this support on the other.

It is no secret that despite Hezbollah being on the US terror list, Lebanese Americans sympathize with the party, particularly Shiites who mostly live in Dearborn, Michigan. A majority of this community perceives Hezbollah as a resistance movement.

Shiite religious beliefs were Hezbollah’s tool of finding a way into many of the community’s hearts and minds. Some might refrain from declaring their support in public, fearing legal consequences as it is a banned party in the US, yet they boast that support in private. That is why some community members fear arrest and more surveillance as a result of such support.

Hezbollah is an organization with many currents, not all of which are related to terrorism. This allows it to inject itself into the Lebanese-American community via religion and religious lectures by religious figures.

Why is the focus on the idea of linking religion to Hezbollah? A conference held a few weeks ago in Detroit featured the highest religious figures in the city. The conference stressed the need to address the “danger of some parties’ attempts to separate society from religious authorities.”

There is an undeniable effort — felt by any Michigan visitor, especially in Dearborn — to intensify the presence of religion and religious discourse among the Shiite community. This was how Iran managed to infiltrate Lebanon and increase its popularity. This is what Hezbollah is trying to do in Lebanese communities in the US.

It is obviously unfair to accuse the community, and it is illogical to believe that religiosity inevitably leads to violent choices under jihadist slogans. But linking an armed organization that has international political goals, such as Hezbollah, with a system of faith and doctrine is slowly and indirectly happening. This is the danger of directly linking the political objectives of one party with believers among the Lebanese Shiite community in the US.

• Diana Moukalled is a veteran journalist with extensive experience in both traditional and new media. She is also a columnist and freelance documentary producer. She can be reached on Twitter @dianamoukalled.

(RFE/RL) — Final results from the first round of the French parliamentary elections indicate President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party will capture an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly.

Election officials on June 12 said that with nearly all ballots counted, Macron’s Republique en Marche party (Republic on the Move) had 28 percent of the vote in an election marked by a historically low turnout. Together with allies, the party won 32.3 percent of the vote.

The conservative Republicans had 16 percent, while the far-right National Front took 14 percent.

Jean-Luc Melenchon’s far-left party had 11 percent, while the Socialists of former President Francois Hollande tumbled to 7 percent.

According to pollsters, the results likely will translate into Macron’s centrist party and its center-right MoDem allies eventually capturing 390 to 455 votes in the 577-seat National Assembly.

Election officials said turnout was less than 49 percent, a record low for modern France.

Some 7,882 candidates are competing for the lower house of parliament’s 577 seats.

If no candidate wins more than 50 percent in the first round, all candidates who secure at least 12.5 percent will go into the second-round runoff on June 18. Only three candidates won seats outright in the first round, officials said.

If forecasts hold up after the second round, the pro-Europe Macron — France’s youngest leader since Napoleon at age 39 – would hold a solid mandate to govern.

The former investment banker said he looks to push through economic and social reforms, including an easing of tough labor laws and reform of the pension system

“France is back,” Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told French TV. “Next Sunday, the National Assembly will embody the new face of our republic.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office tweeted her congratulations to Macron for his party’s victory.

“Chancellor Merkel: My sincere congratulations to Emmanuel Macron for the great success of his party in the first round. A vote for reforms,” spokesman Steffen Seibert tweeted.

Macron’s rivals decried the dangers of having so much power in one party’s hands.

“It is neither healthy nor desirable for a president who gathered only 24 percent of the vote in the first round…and who was elected in the second round only by the rejection of the extreme right should benefit from a monopoly of national representation,” Socialist party leader Jean-Christophe Cambadelis said.

Francois Baroin of the conservative Republicans said political power should not be concentrated in the hands of one party, and he urged backers to turn out for the second round.

“Today fewer than half of French people expressed a preference,” he said. “This record level of abstention… bears witness to the continuing fractures in French society… They are neither forgotten nor wiped away.”

The spate of terrorist attacks in Manchester, Jakarta, Egypt and London highlights the heightening threat of IS in the month of Ramadan. IS fighters have distorted the true meaning of Ramadan to justify more attacks in this blessed month.

By Mohamed Bin Ali*

When the fasting month of Ramadan came late last month, it marked the beginning of intense devotion by Muslims to spiritual activities and acts of kindness and charity. However, the sanctity of this blessed month has been tarnished by IS fighters who took the opportunity to launch more terror attacks. At least 149 people have reportedly been killed during Ramadan from three separate attacks this year alone.

IS fighters claim that Ramadan is a month of Jihad and martyrdom. Hence, they justify these attacks by twisting the true meaning and spirit of Ramadan: rather than emphasising the lofty ideals of Ramadan, these IS fighters chose to focus on war and the offensive spirit. Their focus on violence in the month of Ramadan stirs revulsion among many Muslims who consider it as a time of intensified spirituality and increased religious activity.

IS Attacks in Ramadan

On 22 May 2017, IS launched a suicide attack in Manchester Arena in Manchester, England, following a concert by American singer Ariana Grande. The suicide bomber identified as Salman Ramadan Abedi, a 22-year-old British Muslim, detonated a shrapnel-laden homemade bomb at the exit of the arena after the show.

In a video message entitled “Where are the lions of war?” which was broadcast after the Manchester attack, IS called for ‘all-out war’ to mark the start of Ramadan by attacking innocents and civilians in their homes, markets and streets. The message said: “Do not despise the work. Your targeting of the so-called innocents and civilians is beloved by us and the most effective, so go forth and may you get a great reward or martyrdom in Ramadan.”

Two days after, two suicide bombers attacked a bus station in East Jakarta. IS news agency known as Amaq confirmed that the executor of the Jakarta attack was an IS fighter. On 26 May, the eve of Ramadan, IS fighters attacked a bus carrying Coptic Christians in central Egypt. The bus was travelling to the Monastery of St Samuel from Minya province when it came under fire. All these attacks were linked to IS fighters.

On the ninth day of Ramadan this year, IS fighters killed seven people using knives near London Bridge. The attackers came out from a van at London Bridge shouting “This is For Allah”. Earlier, they had sent out a call on instant messaging service Telegram urging its followers to carry out attacks with trucks, knives and guns against “Crusaders” during Ramadan.

IS attacks in Ramadan are not new. Last year IS launched attacks in many places making it the worst Ramadan ever on record. The attacks in Medina, Dhaka and Baghdad last year occurred in the last ten days of Ramadan. According to Islamic traditions, the Night of Destiny or Lailatul Qadar, when sins are forgiven will occur in the last ten nights of Ramadan.

Muslims are encouraged to perform more devotional acts such as night prayers and seeking forgiveness from God. IS holds that killing their enemies in the last ten days of Ramadan is one of the most preferred forms of devotional acts and a way to gain martyrdom.

Justification for Attacks

IS claim that Ramadan is historically a month of armed struggle for Muslims. They believe that it is a month of conquest and jihad. While Muslims use the month of Ramadan to perform jihad against their temptations and desires, IS claim that Muslims must also perform the physical jihad or armed struggle in this holy month.

The attacks in Ramadan are based on their interpretation of the Battle of Badr, the first battle in Islam which occurred in the month of Ramadan. In this battle that took place in 624 CE, Muslims were granted victory against their opponents, the Quraish of Mecca.

These fallacious claims by IS are another misuse of the notion of Jihad in the Islamic legal tradition. While the Battle of Badr was justified as a legitimate physical struggle, IS attacks are random and indiscriminate killings, which do not adhere to the classical prescriptions for jihad and war. Their ideology largely rests upon the centrality of armed jihad without considering the ethics of war.

Hence, armed jihad becomes the means to expand the territories of Islam. To justify their resort to violence, they define jihad as fighting alone.

In Ramadan, Muslims believe in the abundance of spiritual rewards as the benefits of their actions will be multiplied during this month. However, IS fighters have twisted this concept of spiritual rewards for their own corrupted beliefs. They believe that they will receive more rewards from God should they unleash terror in the month of Ramadan.

IS uses propaganda extensively to brainwash their supporters to launch more attacks in Ramadan. In one of their propaganda posters, IS urge their supporters in the West to “gain benefit” from carrying out attacks during Ramadan using pistols, knives and trucks. Nashir News Service (NNS), another IS-linked media outlet, dispensed a black propaganda poster of a handgun, hunting knife and large truck. Using English instead of Arabic, NNS called on IS supporters to “kill the civilians of the crusaders”.

A Great Perversion

The attacks by IS in Ramadan is a clear indication of IS’ perverse interpretation of Ramadan and its objectives. These attacks are against the true spirit of Ramadan when Muslims are motivated to perform good deeds and be compassionate towards all mankind.

The Quran highlights that the ultimate objective of fasting in the month of Ramadan is to gain piety (taqwa) or the sense of God fearing. How can Muslims gain taqwa by killing innocent lives and causing destruction? IS’ focus on violence in the month of Ramadan stirs revulsion among most Muslims who condemn this as a fundamental contradiction not just of the spirit of Ramadan but the very essence of Islam.

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

US forces conducted a strike operation against al-Shabab in Somalia on Sunday, approximately 185 miles southwest of Mogadishu, according to a statement issued by chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. White.

The United States conducted this operation in coordination with its regional partners as a direct response to al-Shabab actions, including recent attacks on Somali forces, the Pentagon spokesperson said.

This strike was conducted with the authorities approved by the president in March, which allows the Defense Department to conduct legal action against al-Shabab within a geographically-defined area of active hostilities in support of partner forces in Somalia, White said in the statement.

“We remain committed to working with our Somali partners and allies to systematically dismantle al-Shabab, and help achieve stability and security throughout the region,” White said.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino said on Sunday he does not believe the diplomatic crisis that involves 2022 World Cup host nation Qatar will threaten its hosting of the tournament.

In an interview published in Swiss newspapers Le Matin Dimanche and Sonntagszeitung, Infantino said he expects the diplomatic situation to be back to normal by the time the tournament is played in five and a half years time.

Infantino said that FIFA was watching the situation and was in regular contact with the Qatari authorities.

“The essential role of FIFA, as I understand it, is to deal with football and not to interfere in geopolitics,” he said.

“I am confident that the region will return to a normalized situation,” Infantino added.

Many may refer to India’s northeastern region as one of the troubled territories generating violence on and off, but the Northeast has maintained its track record of no scribe-killing in the last consecutive three and half years. Even though cases of misbehaving, assault and threatening media persons continue in the alienated region, it has not reported any murder of scribes since 2014 — contrary to that the central Indian States that have reported the killing of over 20 working journalists in this period and thus earning a bad name for the country in the international arena.

As the year 2017 roles on, the populous country stands at an awkward position over the journo-murder index, as it has witnessed the murder of at least four professional journalists in last six months. Shockingly, the largest democracy in the globe has also earned a bad name in bringing the culprits to justice, prompting the media fraternity to continue its old demand for a special protection law for the journalists on duty.

The year started with the sad news as the dead body of a Jharkhand based scribe was recovered on Hazaribag locality in the first week of the year. Hari Prakash, 31, whose body was found on 2 January on a roadside, was missing for some days. The family members of Hari, who was a law graduate and used to work for a Hindi daily, alleged that he was kidnapped by miscreants who killed the reporter.

Another bad news was waiting for media families as a Bihar based journalist was shot dead at Samastipur locality on 3 January by some unidentified goons. Brajesh Kumar Singh, 28, received serious injuries on his head and died on the spot. It was the third assassination of journalists in Bihar within a year after Rajdeo Ranjan and Dharmendra Kumar Singh killed last year.

The third and fourth incidents involving the murder of working journalists were reported from Madhya Pradesh. Shyam Sharma, 40, who was engaged with a local evening newspaper was stabbed to death by miscreants at Anshul locality of Indore on 15 May. Shyam received multiple injuries and died on the spot. Meanwhile, the local police have arrested two individuals suspecting their primary role in the murder case.

On the other hand, Kamlesh Jain, 42, was shot dead in his office at Pipliyamandi locality of Mandsaur on the evening of 31 May. Kamlesh was rushed to a nearby hospital, where the attending doctors declared him brought dead. According to the police on duty, two miscreants entered into Kamlesh’s office and one of them shot him. The culprits quickly fled from the location with their motorcycle.
Engaged with a Hindi daily (Nai Dunia), the journalist lately exposed few local people involved in illegal liquor trades through a number roadside Dhabas (restaurants). He was also threatened by those criminals with dire consequences few days back. The police as usual took prompt actions and arrested two individuals suspecting their role in the crime.

Various media organizations like Madhya Pradesh Journalist Union (MPJU), Journalists’ Forum Assam (JFA), National Federation of Newspaper Employees (NFNE), International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) etc have expressed serious concern over the murder of the journalists and asked the responsible authorities to book the culprits under the law of the land.

Condemning the assassinations of Shyam and Kamlesh, the IFJ commented ‘two murders in nearly two weeks illustrate the dangerous conditions that journalists in India are facing’. The global media forum called on Indian authorities to immediately and thoroughly investigate these murders and bring those responsible to justice.

In a recent statement, the IFJ disclosed that 93 journalists were killed last year around the world, where India contributed 6 victims to the list. Iraq witnessed the highest number of journo-killings (15), followed by Afghanistan (13), Mexico (11), Yemen (8), Guatemala, Syria, India (all 6), Pakistan (5) etc, added the forum representing over 6,00,000 journalists in 140 countries.

India’s tiny neighbor Maldives drew the attention of international media this year with the sensational murder of a prominent journalist and human rights defender. Yameen Rasheed, 29, who remained an outspoken critic of corruption & human rights violations in the island nation, was stabbed to death by miscreants on 23 April in the capital Malé and thus putting the small country in the list of risky nations with growing intolerance toward free information flow.

Relatively peaceful Myanmar (also known as Burma or Brahmadesh) reported one murder in the first half of 2017. Wai Yan Heinn, 27, a Rangoon based weekly editor was killed on 16 April. He reportedly published a number of articles narrating the corruption of former military personnel turned businessmen. Besides local media units, the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urged the Myanmar authorities to identify and bring the culprits to justice at the earliest.

Mentioning about the case of Soe Moe Tun, who was killed on 13 December 2016 allegedly for reporting on illegal loggings, the Paris-based rights body expressed resentment that the concerned investigation had gone slow. Benjamin Ismaïl, the former head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk, recently commented that Soe’s family was still waiting for justice, but in vein.

Pakistan lost two professional journalists and a media student to assailants in the last six months. Muhammad Jan who was working for an Urdu newspaper in Baluchistan province, faced bullets from miscreants on 12 January and died accordingly. Later a student of journalism Mashal Khan was killed by a mob of angry students in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on 22 April over the alleged blasphemy charge against him. Television reporter Abdul Razzaque was gunned down by miscreants on 17 May in Punjab province.

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on Pakistani authorities to investigate all the killings related to media persons and book the culprits urgently. The New York based media rights body also expressed concern over the situation in Afghanistan, where four media workers namely Mohamad Amir Khan, Zinullah Khan, Abdul Latif and Ghani were killed in a suicide attack on 17 May at Jalalabad locality. Later two more media persons namely Mohammed Nazir and Aziz Navin died in a Kabul blast on 31 May.

Infamous for many atheist bloggers’ killings, Bangladesh witnessed the murder of one rural reporter at Sirajganj locality. Abdul Hakim Shimul, who used to work for Dainik Samakal, was shot dead on 2 February, when he was covering the clashes between two factions of the ruling party (Awami League). Bangladesh Manobadhikaar Sangbadik Forum strongly condemned the assassination, which was first in 2017.

India’s other neighbors including Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Tibet (under China) etc have not reported any incident of journo-killings in the last six months. In contrast, the land of Mahatma-Buddha has emerged as one of the worst places for working journalists, where they are attacked deliberately and justices were rarely delivered to their bereaved families.

India’s far eastern region comprising of eight States, which lost over 30 journalists to perpetrators in the last three decades, witnessed the last incident relating to journo-murder in 2013. The killing of Sujit Bhattacharya (proof reader), Ranjit Chowdhury (manager) and Balaram Ghosh (driver) at the premises of Dainik Ganadoot in Agartala broke as sensational news, as Tripura had no recent record of journalist-murders.

After a lot of hue and cry, the Tripura police arrested Sushil Choudhury, the Dainik Ganadoot proprietor and editor. He was also convicted by the west Tripura district and session court for the triple murders. But soon Choudhury received the respite from the higher court and the Tripura government decided to forward an appeal to the Supreme Court against his acquittal in the sensational case.

Manipur and Assam, where over 30 separatist armed militant outfits are still running their disruptive activities, witnessed the previous incidents of journo-murder (Dwijamani Nanao Singh in Imphal & Raihanul Nayum in Dhubri during 2012, Anil Mazumdar in Guwahati during 2009, Konsam Rishikanta in Imphal and Jagajit Saikia in Kokrajhar during 2008 etc). Assam alone had lost 15 newsmen to armed militants in the last three decades, but shockingly none has been convicted.

The US Navy guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Erie arrived Sunday at the Port of Colombo on a post relief mission.

Upon its arrival the ship was ceremonially welcomed by the Sri Lanka Navy in accordance with naval traditions. Captain Operations Department (COD-West) Captain MSK Mahawatte was also present on the occasion. Captain Darren McPherson is at the wheel of ‘Lake Erie’ as its Commanding Officer.

During its 14 day visit in the country, over 360 crew of USS Lake Erie is expected to engage in a number of post relief mission in flood and landslide affected regions in the country.

Accordingly, several training engagements and HA/DR drills are scheduled to be executed in a bid to withstand a disaster situation. The ship is due to set sail from the Colombo harbour on June 25, on completion of a series of post relief missions.

None can predict as to how long the dirty war in Syria sponsored by foreign powers led by the USA and Russia will continue and how many more thousands of Syrians will be slaughtered.

The Americans, focusing on advantages, may not be interested in ending the war. Yet, apparently, there are talks going on behind the scenes over the increased fighting in Syria by the USA and British Special Ops troops and the militant proxies they have been using to control as much of the Syrian-Jordanian-Iraqi border as possible.

Russia and the USA have been engaged in a series of confidential meetings to establish a ‘safe zone’ in Syria. Russian and US officials have met repeatedly in recent weeks, according to an anonymous source. The talks reportedly included a meeting between officials in Jordan in late May.

Last week, the Americans and Russians met with the Jordanians to discuss these safe zones. The source said: “The meeting in Jordan was one part where the United States and Russia, Israel and Jordan can work together to have a de-escalation zone in the south of Syria.”

Six rounds of UN-backed negotiations in Geneva have so far failed to bring about a political solution to the Syrian conflict. The war, now in its seventh year, has claimed 400,000 lives and created 5 million refugees.

Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed on the establishment of ‘de-escalation zones’ throughout Syria in rival talks hosted by Russian in the Kazakh capital Astana in May. The establishment of the zones is an effort to halt hostilities between armed opposition groups and the government of Bashar Al-Assad.
Russia’s intervention in the Syrian war since September 2015 has been marred by allegations its airstrikes targeted civilian infrastructure, including mosques, schools, and air convoys.

An agreement to set up the safe zones in Syria came into effect more than a month ago, at midnight May 6. Russia, Turkey, and Iran, the guarantors of the initiative, who authorized the memo creating the safe zones during Syria talks in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana on May 4, have to complete the final geographic division of the four areas within a month.

According to the memorandum, the preparation of the maps of the de-escalation areas and security zones should have been completed by June 4, 2017. By the same date, the Guarantors were to separate the armed opposition groups from the terrorist groups the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front and all other individuals, groups, undertakings and entities associated with Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.

The zones are located in the Idlib Governorate and parts of neighboring Latakia, Aleppo and Hama provinces; in the northern part of Homs province; in the Damascus neighborhood of Eastern Ghouta, and in parts of southern Deraa and Quneitra provinces bordering Jordan.

Meanwhile, by May 22, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, the guarantors of the Syrian ceasefire, were to have completed the final geographic division of the four safe zones in Syria, also referred to as “de-escalation zones”. Sputnik has delved into the details of the suggested plan and its difference from the similar initiatives of the USA and Turkey.

The plan suggests that within the lines of the de-escalation areas hostilities between the conflicting parties, the government of the Syrian Arab Republic and the armed opposition groups will join the ceasefire regime with the use of any kinds of weapons, including aerial assets, should be ceased.

Checkpoints and observation posts are to be positioned along the de-escalation lines within the safe zones, according to the document. They will provide free movement of unarmed civilians and humanitarian access to the areas, under guarantor states’ control. Russian delegation head at Astana talks and Special Presidential Representative for Syria Alexander Lavrentyev said that Russia was ready to send its observers to the safe zones in Syria and did not rule out other countries taking part in monitoring de-escalation. Chief of the Russian General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy said that the work of checkpoints and observation posts will be under control of Russia, Turkey and Iran. Under mutual agreement of the three countries, they can draw in units of other countries.

The memorandum stated that the creation of the de-escalation areas and security zones is a temporary measure, the duration of which will initially be 6 months and will be automatically extended on the basis of consensus of the Guarantors.

The steps outlined in the Astana agreement for the “de-escalation zones” in Syria are not clear, but it is clearly spelled out that the attacks on ISIS and al-Nusra will continue. But al-Nusra is not waiting for any clarification, having already announced it would be confiscating the ammo depots of the opposition groups in Idlib and arresting their leaders to preempt them going over to the SAA. This might start up new infighting among the anti-Damascus groups, as al-Nusra has said it will attack any group that supports the ceasefire. Missing so far is how they plan to deal with the membership roulette game the “jihadis” and officially designated terrorists have been playing by flowing their members back and forth as needed to suit their combat and political tactical needs.

Thus by May 22, the working group of the representatives of the guarantor states was to define the areas within the above safe zones that are still under control of “terrorists” and exclude them from the ceasefire agreement. So far, it is only known for certain that Eastern Ghouta municipality of Qaboun, in the neighborhood of Damascus, which is still controlled by al-Nusra and from where they are shelling on the dwelling areas of Damascus, will be excluded from this safe zone.

While Israel is making efforts to further complicate the crisis in Syria, both the USA and Europe now think along Moscow way that Assad must stay for the “stabilization” of Syria as they are under the impression that once Assad is killed or driven out of Syria, Syria would, like Afghanistan, become totally disoriented, although Syria is already destabilized with many war fronts on the inside.

The US Coalition does not want the Syrian people to have anti-terrorism partners unless it approves them, and they are using the Russians to get this deal done, similar to their wanting Assad out. The USA wants the situation to eventually assure a weak and more easily destabilized Syria even after any kind of a “settlement” which it can manipulate further. One of the reasons for this development for talks, therefore, is only to block the Damascus-Baghdad highway from being the critical link for the Syrian coalition for logistical support from both Iran and Iraq Including blocking military hardware and troops – in effect, imposing a situation that would benefit the foreign forces, as the USA has not won the war even after five long years.

Sources in Syria say that many are wary of what the Americans and Russians might do, as one can assume that Moscow does presumably not want to be involved permanently at the current level of combat for years and years. The US Coalition obviously does not want to submit Assad’s future to the Syrian people, as he would win devastatingly, which would show that he ruled his own people only by military oppression.

Peace after ceasefire will by no means be an easy feat to accomplish, as there are many enemies of peace still on the battlefield and in the capitals of the world. But at this stage of the game, maintaining momentum toward peace has to be visible to increase the hope and interest in a political settlement

It could be argued, however, that the USA does not want the crisis in Syria to end because that could lead to a Mideast peace as well.

The USA cannot win war in Syria, but it can hope to win the talks. When the peace talks began the US Coalition could string the process along, looking for openings to win in the talks what they could not on the battlefield — and that is exactly what is rolling out here.

The USA and Europe slapped sanctions on Iran in order to weaken that country. The Western claims of Iran having a secret nuclear weapons program were a complete hoax, done partially to justify the Iranian sanctions to cripple its economy, and also for the deployment of a US anti-missile screen in Eastern Europe.

What is at stake is that countries like the USA and Israel, who have aggressive secret intentions and a mindset that paints their selected targets as aggressors, are cloaking their motives in the often-used robe of “defensive measures” and “counter terror” measures. Both want to make Arab world destabilized even while looting their resources in arms deals.

Syria’s President Bashar Assad has recently said that he believes that the internationally agreed de-escalation zones are a real opportunity to finally achieve peace in his war-torn country, saying, all previous initiatives have failed due to some states hindering peace by pursuing own political goals. The “foremost” aim of the de-escalation or safe zones is to protect peaceful civilians, but Assad said they also provide armed militants with an opening “to enter into a truce with the government.”

“This is a chance for a person with weapons in hand to pause to think. In other words, if they lay down arms, amnesty would follow,” the Syrian president said.

The agreement between Moscow, Tehran and Ankara presumes the cessation of airstrikes in Syria. However the US State Department has said the US military won’t join this moratorium. Israel seems to have a similar position on the issue. Recently the Israeli authorities informed Moscow that Israel will strike on Syrian territory “in case of necessity.” The Saudi authorities however have fully supported the document signed in Astana. They probably did not like Trump’s idea to pay for the safe zones in Syria and rushed to support the alternative project.

Back in January, US President Donald Trump promised to “do safe zones in Syria” for refugees fleeing violence in the war-torn country. He was then expected to sign a draft order to the Pentagon and the State Department to produce a plan to provide safe areas in Syria and in the surrounding region in which Syrian nationals displaced from their homeland can await firm settlement, such as repatriation or potential third-country resettlement. On the campaign trail, Trump gave no details as to how he might go about creating such havens, except to say that he would ask Gulf states to help pay. In February, the US leader reiterated that the Gulf States should pay for these safe zones. “We do owe $20 trillion. Okay. So we’re going to have the Gulf States pay for those safe zones. They’ve got nothing, but money,” he then said.

The Turkish government had long pressed Obama, without success, for the creation of a no-fly zone in Syria on its border with Turkey. US military officials had long warned that the creation of no-fly zones inside Syria would require a large number of additional resources beyond the fight against Islamic State (Daesh).

It should be noted however that the idea of the safe zones in Syria is not new. It was earlier voiced by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. However Ankara’s major tasks initially were not the settlement of the Syrian conflict, but the setup of control over the border territories and control the Kurds. With this very purpose it launched its Operation Euphrates Shield in August 2016, planning to squeeze Kurdish units out of northern Syrian territories. This task however has been fulfilled only partially.

Hence the main difference of the document signed by Russia, Iran and Turkey in Astana is that it is aimed at a complex settlement of the situation in Syria. Washington’s effort was aimed at tacking only one problem — the refugee influx into Europe and the USA. The USA is now studying the terms of the memorandum. US Secretary of Defense James Mattis has recently questioned the Russian-sponsored plan saying that it “poses many unanswered questions, including whether it would be effective.” “The devil is always in the details, right? So we have to look at the details, see if we can work them out, see if we think they’re going to be effective,” the Pentagon head told journalists.

With a fluid situation in Arab world after Qatar was ousted by Saudi Led Arab world blaming it on behalf of USA for “sponsoring terrorism”, there is no possibility Syria would be safe in the near future.

Aiming at a dangerous Sunni-Shiite war in the long run that would further slash Islamic populations and faith, President Donald Trump, declared that the action taken by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain was “hard but necessary.” He denounced Qatar for having been a “funder of terrorism at a very high level”. Trump’s remarks make clear that following Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia last month, during which he sought to form a Sunni bloc to confront Iran, Riyadh felt emboldened to strengthen its regional position under the pretext of combating terrorism.

Qatar has long attempted to maintain a somewhat more independent foreign policy, including through economic ties and joint exploration of energy resources with Iran and through its support for groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. This stance has infuriated Riyadh. Until Riyadh broke diplomatic ties, Qatar was also part of the coalition conducting the brutal war in Yemen that has killed tens of thousands of civilians over the past two years.

In Syria, the USA has over recent weeks with air strikes effectively begun to partition the country. The USA has justified these attacks on the grounds that the pro-government forces have allegedly violated a “deconfliction zone” proclaimed unilaterally by Washington in Syria’s south near the borders with Jordan and Iraq.