By Abdulrahman Al-Rashed*

Until the current crisis, Qatar’s media, money and effective diplomacy had helped compensate for its small size and population, and its weak army. They had allowed Doha to impose itself and exploit a regional vacuum.

Egypt under former President Hosni Mubarak responded to Qatar’s blatant meddling and incitement with calm diplomacy and limited media coverage. Instead of confronting it directly, Saudi Arabia was busy dousing fires that Doha ignited in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen, and within the Kingdom itself.

I do not mean to undermine Qatar when I speak of its small size and population. Singapore is a great country that is 12 times smaller than Qatar. Lebanon is also smaller. What I am criticizing is Doha’s belief that it is a major force that can change the region and impose its policies without considering its size or respecting other countries. It supports and funds contradictory ideologies, from democracy to Islamist extremism.

This schizophrenia — with liberal domestic policies but extremist foreign policies — has cost Qatar its credibility in the world. It supports and finances extremists in Iraq’s Al-Anbar province, yet hosts Al-Udeid military base that is the launch pad for US jets shelling Falluja and Ramadi daily. Along with Iran, Qatar fuels Palestinian division by supporting Hamas against the Palestinian Authority. It hosted Hamas leaders and an Israeli office in Doha.

For years it sought to back Saudi Arabia’s enemies in Yemen, Houthi extremists and some northern tribal leaders, who fought the Kingdom at the end of the last decade. Qatar funded Saudi opposition figures inside and outside the country, while speaking of brotherly ties and other empty talk. The silence and patience of regional states allowed Doha to go too far, until four of them finally decided to confront the source of the chaos instead of its pawns.

Via media, money and diplomacy, Qatar is getting a taste of its own medicine. It has suddenly found itself a figure of scorn and ridicule. It is isolated and fearful for its security and existence. As time passes and problems increase, Qatar will discover that it is a small country that is worthless and cannot live in peace without its Gulf and Arab brothers.

It has discovered that Al-Udeid base will not protect it. Its rivals will not be intimidated by its threats to turn to Iran, its invitation to the Turks, its Muslim Brotherhood media, its investment of $170 billion in the West and its contacts in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait. None of this will grant Doha peace of mind. It needs to understand a hard truth: It created regional chaos not because it was strong, but because its neighbors have been patient.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt combined have a stronger media, more money, and faster and more vital diplomacy than Qatar. The extent of its crisis and failure can be seen in Doha turning to exiled Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem, who resides in Washington and had to relay a message via CNN to US President Donald Trump.

• Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is a veteran columnist. He is the former general manager of Al Arabiya News Channel, and former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, where this article was originally published.

International soccer governance is tying itself up in knots with football associations grappling with the fallout of the Gulf dispute between Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Qatar that lays bare the contradictions embedded in their insistence that sports and politics do not mingle.

The contradictions were evident in different responses to the Gulf crisis by world soccer body FIFA and its African affiliate, the Cairo-based Confederation of African Football (CAF). In fact, FIFA was seemingly so tied up in knots that it contradicted itself in a 24-hour span.

Asked whether the Saudi-UAE-led diplomatic and economic embargo of 2022 World Cup Qatar would impact the tournament, FIFA president Gianni Infantino insisted that “the essential role of FIFA, as I understand it, is to deal with football and not to interfere in geopolitics.”

Yet, FIFA, on the same day that Mr. Infantino made his statement, waded into the escalating Gulf crisis by removing a Qatari referee from a 2018 World Cup qualifier following a request from the United Arab Emirates.

FIFA, beyond declaring that the decision was taken “in view of the current geopolitical situation,” appeared to be saying by implication that a Qatari by definition of his nationality could not be an honest arbiter of a soccer match involving one of his country’s detractors.

By taking that stand, FIFA in effect was saying that sports and politics were not separate but inextricably intertwined. On an even slipperier slope, the organization also appeared to be judging the referee’s professionalism based on his nationality.

For its part, CAF, in a statement this week warned Egypt’s two top clubs, arch rivals Al Ahli FC and Al Zamalek SC, that they could be penalized if they went through with a declared boycott of BeIN Sports, the Middle East’s prime satellite sports channel that is part of the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera television network.

The two clubs declared their boycott with the support of the Egyptian Football Association (EFA), a CAF member and the host of CAF’s Cairo headquarters.

“The Egyptian FA fully supports the long-awaited decisions of the political administration against an entity that has repeatedly tried to harm our country. In agreement we call on all Egyptian clubs and their personnel to suspend all activities with the Qatari sports channels on all contracts or in programming in rejection of the Qatari attitude,” the EFA said in a statement.

Al Ahli and Zamalek said they were barring BeIN from their premises and news conferences as part of Egypt’s participation in the Saudi-UAE led diplomatic and economic embargo on the Gulf state.

BeIN owns the Middle East broadcasting rights for the CAF Champions League in which the two Egyptian clubs regularly feature. It also holds the region’s rights for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, the Asian Cup, the Africa Cup of Nations, the Champions League, and the AFC Champions League.

CAF warned that neutrality and a separation of sports and politics was “part of the statutory missions of CAF and FIFA, as well as the obligations of member associations.” It said that it would be “particularly vigilant as regards respect for these principles of neutrality and independence in all future games played under its aegis.” The federation warned that its committees would monitor developments and where necessary take punitive action.

The CAF effort to uphold the fiction of a separation of sports and politics maintained almost universally among international and national sports administrators stands a chance of succeeding as long as Egypt does not follow the UAE and Bahrain in criminalizing expressions of support for Qatar. The Egyptian government, unlike the Gulf states, has also refrained from acting against BeIN.

Wearing a jersey of globally popular Spanish soccer giant FC Barcelona can lead to a 15-year prison sentence in the UAE and/or a fine of up to $136,000 because it carries the logo of Qatar Airways, the club’s foremost sponsor.

Not known for its press freedom, Egypt ranks among the world’s top jailers of journalists and has banned dozens of websites in the walk-up to the embargo, including Qatari-sponsored media like Al Jazeera, whose journalists it has long targeted, alleging that the network supported the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Economically dependent on Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Egypt is, however, likely to support a Saudi competitor of BeIN once it is up and running. In another demonstration of the incestuous relationship between sports and politics, Saudi Arabia announced earlier this month that it was launching a sports network to replace BeIN. The initiative is part of Saud Arabia’s effort to force Qatar to adopt policies aligned with those of the kingdom, which include shutting more free-wheeling media, including Al Jazeera, that are funded by the Gulf state.

Saudi Media City chairman Muflih Al-Hafatah said the new network was being establish together with Egypt and that its 11 high definition channels were “Egyptian with a 100 percent Saudi capital.” Mr. Al-Hafatah said the channels would charge a fee only if forced to do so because of encryption, but would ensure that it was affordable. BeIN has suffered in countries like Egypt from the fact that many could not afford its cost.

FIFA will likely be an arbitrator in the battle between BeIN and the new Saudi network. Saudi sports lawyer Majid Garoub said the kingdom was attempting to convince the world soccer body that Qatar could not be allowed to have a monopoly in regional soccer broadcasting rights.

“Due to the political situation in the region Saudi Arabia will have to negotiate with FIFA on the rights issues. We will be submitting a report on the developments and FIFA will have to look into it,” Mr. Garoub said.

With other words, FIFA and various of its regional associations will be dragged into the Gulf crisis by hook or by crook even if the issue of Qatar’s World Cup hosting rights is not directly addressed. The more soccer associations get sucked into the dispute, the tougher it will be for them to maintain that sports and politics have nothing to do with one another.

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 the current al-Nusra Front has been led by Abu Mohammad al-Julani but he was appointed [1] as the emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, in January 2012.

Thus, al-Julani’s 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 and parts of Deir al-Zor in the summer of 2013. 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.

The Baathist Command Structure:

Excluding al-Baghdadi and a handful of his hardline Islamist aides, the rest of Islamic State’s top leadership is comprised of Saddam era military and intelligence officials. According to an informative Associated Press report [2], hundreds of ex-Baathists constitute the top and mid-tier command structure of the Islamic State who plan all the operations and direct its military strategy.

Although al-Baghdadi has not publicly appointed a successor, but two of the closest aides who have emerged as his likely successors over the years are Iyad al-Obaidi, his defense minister, and Ayad al-Jumaili, the in charge of security. The latter had already reportedly been killed in an airstrike in April in al-Qaim region on Iraq’s border with Syria.

Therefore, the most likely successor of al-Baghdadi would be al-Obaidi. Both al-Jumaili and al-Obaidi had previously served as security officers in Iraq’s Baathist army under Saddam Hussein, and al-Obaidi is known to be the de facto deputy of al-Baghdadi.

More to the point, it is an indisputable fact that morale and ideology play an important role in battle, and well informed readers must also be aware that the Takfiri brand of most jihadists these days has directly been inspired by the puritanical Wahhabi-Salafi ideology of Saudi Arabia, but ideology alone is not sufficient to succeed in battle.

Looking at the Islamic State’s astounding gains in Syria and Iraq in 2013-14, a question arises that where does its recruits get all the training and state-of-the-art weapons that are imperative not only for hit-and-run guerrilla warfare but also for capturing and holding large swathes of territory?

The Syria experts of foreign policy think tanks also appeared quite “worried” when the Islamic State overran Mosul that where did the Islamic State’s jihadists get all the sophisticated weapons and especially those fancy Toyota pickup trucks mounted with machine guns at the back, colloquially known as “the Technicals” amongst the jihadists?

According to a revelatory December 2013 news report [3] from a newspaper affiliated with the UAE government which supports the Syrian opposition, it is clearly mentioned that along with AK-47s, RPGs and other military gear, the Saudi regime also provides machine gun-mounted Toyota pick-up trucks to every batch of five jihadists who have completed their training in the training camps located at the border regions of Jordan.

Once those militants cross over to Daraa and Quneitra in southern Syria from the Jordan-Syria border, then those Toyota pickup trucks can easily travel all the way to Raqqa and Deir al-Zor and thence to Mosul and Anbar in Iraq.

Moreover, it is clearly spelled out in the report that Syrian militants get arms and training through a secret command center known as the Military Operations Center (MOC) based in the intelligence headquarters’ building in Amman, Jordan that has been staffed by high-ranking military officials from 14 countries, including the US, European nations, Israel and the Gulf Arab States to wage a covert war against the government in Syria.

Notwithstanding, in order to simplify the Syrian theater of proxy wars, it can be divided into three separate and distinct zones: that are, the Syrian government-controlled areas, the regions administered by the Syrian Kurds and the areas that have been occupied by the Syrian opposition.

Excluding Idlib Governorate which has been occupied by the Syrian opposition, all the major population centers along the western Mediterranean coast are controlled by the Syrian government: that include, Damascus, Homs, Hamah, Latakia and Aleppo, while the oil-rich Deir al-Zor has been contested between the regime and the Islamic State.

The regions that are administered by the Syrian Kurds include Qamishli and al-Hasakah in northeastern Syria, Kobani along the Turkish border and a canton in northwestern Syria, Afrin.

Excluding the western Mediterranean coast and the adjoining major urban centers controlled by the Syrian government and the Kurdish-controlled areas in the north of Syria along the borders with Iraq and Turkey, the Syrian opposition-controlled areas can be further subdivided into three separate zones of influence:

Firstly, the northern and northwestern zone along the Syria-Turkey border, in and around Aleppo and Idlib, which is under the influence of Turkey and Qatar. Both these countries share the ideology of Muslim Brotherhood and provide money, training and arms to Sunni Arab militant organizations, such as al-Tawhid Brigade, Zenki Brigade and Ahrar al-Sham in the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey in collaboration with CIA’s MOM (a Turkish acronym for military operations center).

Secondly, the southern zone of influence along the Syria-Jordan border, in Daraa and Quneitra and as far away as Homs and Damascus. It is controlled by the Salafist Saudi-Jordanian camp and they provide money, weapons and training to the Salafi-Wahhabi militant groups, such as al-Nusra Front and the Southern Front of the so-called “moderate” Free Syria Army (FSA) in Daraa and Quneitra, and Jaysh al-Islam in the suburbs of Damascus. Their military strategy is directed by a Military Operations Center (MOC) and training camps located in the border regions of Jordan, as I have already described.

Here, let me clarify that this distinction is overlapping and heuristic, at best, because al-Nusra’s jihadists have taken part in battles as far away as Idlib and Aleppo, and pockets of opposition-held areas can be found even in the regime-controlled cities, including in the capital, Damascus.

And thirdly, the eastern zone of influence along the Syria-Iraq border, in Raqqa and Deir al-Zor, which has been controlled by a relatively maverick Iraq-based jihadist outfit, the Islamic State, though it had received funding and weapons from Turkey and the Gulf Arab States before it turned rogue and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014.

Thus, leaving the Mediterranean coast and Syria’s border with Lebanon, the Baathist and Shi’a-dominated Syrian regime has been surrounded from all three sides by hostile Sunni forces: Turkey and Muslim Brotherhood in the north, Jordan and the Salafists of the Gulf Arab States in the south and the Sunni Arab-majority regions of Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in the east.

The Sectarian, anti-Shi’a Ideology

According to reports, Syria’s pro-Assad militias are comprised of local militiamen as well as Shi’a foreign fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and even the Hazara Shi’as from as far away as Afghanistan and Pakistan. And similarly, Sunni jihadists from all over the region have also been flocking to the Syrian battlefield for the last seven years. A full-scale Sunni-Shi’a war has been going on in Syria, Iraq and Yemen which will obviously have its repercussions all over the Islamic World where Sunni and Shi’a Muslims have coexisted in relative peace for centuries.

Moreover, unlike al Qaeda which is a terrorist organization that generally employs anticolonial and anti-Zionist rhetoric to draw funds and followers, the Islamic State and the majority of Sunni Arab militant groups in Syria are basically anti-Shi’a sectarian outfits. By the designation “terrorism,” it is generally implied and understood that an organization which has the intentions and capability of carrying out acts of terrorism on the Western soil.

Although the Islamic State has carried out a few acts of terrorism against the Western countries, but if we look at the pattern of its subversive activities, especially in the Middle East, it generally targets the Shi’a Muslims in Syria and Iraq. A few acts of terrorism that it has carried out in the Gulf Arab states were also directed against the Shi’a Muslims in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia and Shi’a mosques in Yemen and Kuwait.

Regarding the Syrian opposition, a small fraction of it has been comprised of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army, but the vast majority has been comprised of Sunni Arab jihadists and armed tribesmen who have been generously funded, trained, armed and internationally legitimized by their regional and international patrons.

The Islamic State is nothing more than one of numerous Syrian militant outfits, others being: al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Tawhid brigade, Jaysh al Islam etc. All the Sunni Arab militant groups that are operating in Syria are just as fanatical and brutal as the Islamic State. The only feature that differentiates the Islamic State from the rest is that it is more ideological and independent-minded.

The reason why the US has turned against the Islamic State is that all other Syrian militant outfits only have local ambitions that are limited to fighting the Assad regime in Syria, while the Islamic State has established a global network of transnational terrorists that includes hundreds of Western citizens who have become a national security risk to the Western countries.

More to the point, since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in August 2011 to June 2014 when the Islamic State overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq, an informal pact existed between the Western powers, their regional allies and the Sunni militants of the Middle East against the Shi’a Iranian axis comprised of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Iran’s Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah. In accordance with the pact, Sunni militants were trained and armed in the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan to battle the Shi’a-dominated Syrian government.

This arrangement of an informal pact between the Western powers and the Sunni jihadists of the Middle East against the Shi’a Iranian axis worked well up to August 2014 when the Obama Administration made a volte-face on its previous regime change policy in Syria and began conducting air strikes against one group of Sunni militants battling the Syrian government, the Islamic State, after the latter overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq, from where, the US troops had withdrawn only a couple of years ago in December 2011.

After this reversal of policy in Syria by the Western powers and the subsequent Russian military intervention on the side of the Syrian government in September 2015, the momentum of Sunni militants’ expansion in Syria and Iraq has stalled, and they now feel that their Western patrons have committed a treachery against the Sunni jihadists’ cause, that’s why they are infuriated and once again up in arms to exact revenge for this betrayal.

If we look at the chain of events, the timing of the recent spate of terror attacks against the European targets has been critical: the Islamic State overran Mosul in June 2014, the Obama Administration began conducting air strikes against the Islamic State’s targets in Iraq and Syria in August 2014, and after a lull of almost a decade since the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005, respectively, the first such incident of terrorism took place on the Western soil at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, and then the Islamic State carried out the audacious November 2015 Paris attacks and the March 2016 Brussels bombings, and this year, three horrific terror attacks have taken place in the United Kingdom within a span of less than three months.

Conclusion

A number of Islamic State affiliates have recently sprung up all over the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia regions that have no organizational and operational association, whatsoever, with the Islamic State proper in Syria and Iraq, such as the Islamic State affiliates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and even Boko Haram in Nigeria now falls under the rubric of the Islamic State.

It is understandable for laymen to conflate such local militant outfits for the Islamic State proper, but how come the policy analysts of think tanks and the corporate media’s terrorism experts, who are fully aware of this not-so-subtle distinction, have fallen for such a ruse?

Can we classify any ragtag militant outfit as the Islamic State merely on the basis of ideological affinity and “a letter of accreditation” from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi without the Islamic State’s Baathist command structure and superior weaponry that has been bankrolled by the Gulf’s petro-dollars?

The Western political establishments and their mouthpiece, the mainstream media, deliberately and knowingly fall for such stratagems because it serves the scaremongering agenda of vested interests. Before acknowledging the Islamic State’s affiliates in the region, the Western mainstream media also similarly and “naively” acknowledged al Qaeda’s affiliates in the region, too, merely on the basis of ideological affinity without any organizational and operational association with al Qaeda Central, such as al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda in Iraq and al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb.

Recently, the Islamic State’s purported “terror franchises” in Afghanistan and Pakistan have claimed several terror attacks against the Shi’a and Barelvi Muslims who are regarded as heretics by Takfiris. But to contend that the Islamic State is responsible for suicide blasts in Pakistan and Afghanistan is to declare that the Taliban are responsible for anarchy and militancy in Syria and Iraq.

Both are localized militant outfits and any purported affiliate of the Islamic State without its Baathist command structure and superior weaponry would be just another ragtag, local militant outfit. The distinction between the Taliban and the Islamic State lies in the fact that the Taliban follow Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam which is native to South Asia and the jihadists of the Islamic State mostly belong to the Wahhabi denomination.

Secondly, and more importantly, the insurgency in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan is a Pashtun uprising which is an ethnic group native to Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, while the bulk of the Islamic State’s jihadists is comprised of Arab militants of Syria and Iraq. Conflating the Islamic State either with al-Qaeda or with a breakaway faction of the Taliban is a deliberate deception intended to mislead public opinion in order to exaggerate the security threat posed by the Islamic State.

Sources and links:

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

[2] Islamic State’s top command dominated by ex-officers in Saddam’s army: http://www.dawn.com/news/1199401/is-top-command-dominated-by-ex-officers-in-saddams-army

[3] Syrian rebels get arms and advice through secret command center in Amman: http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/syrian-rebels-get-arms-and-advice-through-secret-command-centre-in-amman

By Mohammed Rasooldeen

With the call of the Supreme Court to sight the Shawwal crescent on Saturday, mosques are making arrangements to accommodate congregations for Eid Al-Fitr prayers.

In an announcement on Thursday, the Supreme Court said that whoever sees the Shawwal crescent moon by the naked eye or binoculars should report to the nearest court and register his testimony, or to the nearest center to facilitate communicating with the court. According to astronomical projections, there is a chance of seeing the moon on the 29 of Ramadan, which falls on Saturday.

The Ministry of Islamic Affairs announced that Eid Al-Fitr prayers will be conducted in mosques, which will be announced by the government.

In Riyadh, there are some 650 mosques designated for that purpose. Arrangements will also be made to conduct Eid prayers in 33 open spaces, including Sulaimaniyah, Deira and Manfuha, with special places allocated for women.

The Department of Mosques at the ministry has instructed prayer leaders (imams) and those responsible for the maintenance of Eid mosques to ensure that all preparations, including adequate supplies of power and water, are made.

Contracting companies that maintain mosques in the city have been asked to clean the entire worshipping area of the Eid mosques and lay carpets for worshippers.

Emergency plans have been put in place for the use of the nearest big mosque in case of rain on the open grounds.

Jeddah municipality has made arrangements in some 280 locations across the city and suburbs. There are 225 Eid mosques and 55 temporary yards in the city for the Eid prayers. Around 1,000 cleaning personnel will be assigned to these sites to ensure adequate supplies of power and water.

Some 300 Christian leaders and pastors gathered in Bhopal, central India, on June 20 to protest against what they called state-sponsored harassment of Christians at the behest of extremist Hindu organizations.

In the last month police in Madhya Pradesh state have registered at least three false cases against Christians, accusing them of trying to convert Hindus, the gathering was told.

Priests, nuns, pastors and lay leaders at the protest reiterated their commitment to evangelization despite challenges, and expressed anger over the government’s “apathy” toward Hindu hardliners and not ensuring religious freedom for all.

In the most recent case, Sister Beena Joseph, a member of the Carmelite Sisters of St Teresa congregation, along with four tribal women were arrested on a train to Bhopal. She was released after being interrogated on June 15, only to be slapped with abduction charges the next day, the gathering was told.

Police said they were responding to complaints from Hindu groups, who critics say are attempting to build a Hindu-only India.

Pastor C.P. Singh, who addressed the gathering said it is not only missionaries “but even police … are facing similar harassment from right-wing Hindu groups if they do not toe their line.”

Other speakers at the gathering said Christian leaders should find ways to use legal provisions to protect and safeguard the interests of the Christian community as the Indian Constitution guarantees the right to “profess and propagate a religion of choice.”

Abu Khattab al Awlaqi, the emir for AQAP’s terrorist stronghold in Shabwah Governorate in Yemen, was killed in a US-led airstrike along with two of his AQAP associates, the US Central Command on Thursday.

According to the US Central Command, US forces conducted on June 16 an airstrike against three al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula militants in Shabwah Governorate, Yemen, to disrupt terrorist compounds, and attack networks in Yemen.

Al Awlaqi was a senior leader responsible for planning and conducting terrorist attacks against civilians. He had significant influence throughout AQAP’s terrorist stronghold, had ties and access to the group’s other senior leaders, and was implicated in planning and leading efforts to exacerbate instability in Southern Yemen.

In coordination with the government of Yemen, US forces are conducting a series of sustained counterterrorism operations in Yemen against AQAP to degrade the group’s ability to hold territory and coordinate external terror attacks.

“Senior AQAP leaders seek safe haven in places like Shabwah Governorate to plot attacks against the U.S., our interests, and our friends and allies across the world. Al Awlaqi’s death removes a trusted and experienced terrorist leader from AQAP’s ranks,” the US Central Command said.

In recent years, AQAP has taken advantage of ungoverned spaces in Yemen to plot, direct and inspire terror attacks against the US, its citizens and allies around the world. The group and its predecessors attacked the US Embassy-Sanaa in 2008, attempted to down Northwest Airlines 253 on Christmas Day 2009, and conspired to send explosive-laden parcels to Chicago in 2010. The group has also used its English-language magazine, Inspire, to encourage attacks against the West, and has been linked to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, 2009 Ft. Hood shooting, and other lone-wolf attacks in the U.S. and Europe. AQAP is a formidable terror group that remains committed and capable of attacking U.S. citizens and the homeland. The Yemeni leadership is working with Arab allies to remove AQAP from its governorates.

“US forces conducted this strike with the full support of the government of Yemen. In conjunction with our Arab allies, the U.S. will continue to support their efforts and fight terrorist organizations like AQAP,” said the US Central Command.

It’s seen as a healthy, fun alternative to more traditional forms of exercise.

It’s also banned in Iran.

The president of the Iranian Sports Federation made the announcement in an open letter. Why? Well, we’re not exactly sure.

Ali Majdara made it clear that any form of physical activity which necessitates “rhythmic movements or dance in any form” was not legal, therefore it required a complete prohibition.

However, this decision has not been met favourably on social media, with users expressing their bemusement and slight disdain for the decision.

No rhytm for you, next…

In the wake of recent mass shootings in Alexandria, Virginia, and elsewhere in the U.S., a new study from two University of Illinois at Chicago political scientists looks at factors that drive support for gun control among whites, Latinos and blacks.

“This is the first study that provides analyses for each of the two minority groups separately,” said Alexandra Filindra, associate professor of political science and lead author of the study. “Previous studies have analyzed aggregate public opinion or white public opinion.”

Filindra and Noah Kaplan, UIC clinical assistant professor of political science, analyzed data from a 2015 survey on gun control conducted by YouGov.com, an online international market research firm.

The researchers found support for all forms of gun control is stronger among Latinos and blacks than whites.

For example, 74 percent of blacks and 61 percent of Latinos, but only 55 percent of whites support an assault weapons ban.

Similarly, 86 percent of blacks and 78 percent of Latinos, but only 62 percent of whites support the creation of a federal database that tracks sales of firearms.

Fear of crime, such as being afraid to walk in the neighborhood after dark, has no effect on gun control preferences for any group, according to the report.

“This suggests that perceptions of danger and concerns about the likelihood of becoming a victim are not a key driver of gun policy preferences,” Filindra said. “There is some evidence that experience with criminal victimization dampens support for gun control among African-Americans, but not the other two groups.”

Similar to findings from earlier research, the study indicates racial resentment, a measure of anti-black attitudes, is a significant predictor of the gun control preferences and related beliefs held by whites, and to a similar extent among Latinos.

“The same is the case for beliefs that blacks are more violent than whites,” Filindra said. “Racial prejudice, even though it is no longer a dominant attitude among whites, still influences their gun control policy attitudes.”

The researchers also found ideology and political partisanship are strong predictors of support for gun control among whites and Latinos, but not blacks.

“Based on the responses measured across all groups, the perception that crime is going up in the country correlates with stronger support for gun control measures,” she said. “This undercuts the argument often made by gun rights activists that fear of crime is what drives individuals to support gun rights.”

A complex network of companies, middlemen and clinics in mainland China and Hong Kong is carrying on a roaring trade in on-the-quiet prenatal testing to determine the gender of fetuses for Chinese couples, a practice that is banned on the mainland because of its association with sex-selective abortion, RFA has learned.

According to government figures for last year, China is home to 34 million more men than women, reflecting the longer-term effects of selective abortion, abandoned baby girls, and the country’s family planning restrictions.

China’s population stood at 1.38 billion at the end of last year, according to official statistics released last month, of whom 708 million are men and 674 million are women.

In 2014, officials described the gender imbalance as the “most serious” problem, outlawing gender testing of unborn babies in a bid to make sex-selective abortions less common.

But an employee surnamed Chan who answered the phone at a medical intermediary company in Hong Kong’s Sheung Shui district confirmed that it supplies gender testing kits to mainland China which could enable parents-to-be to determine the sex of their unborn child.

The company also helps mainland testing firms by importing blood samples to Hong Kong for testing, circumventing Chinese regulations that forbid such tests, she said.

“I think it’s the mainland Chinese intermediary that takes the money, if [the customer] can’t come here [to Hong Kong],” Chan said. “All they have to do is go to the mainland middleman.”

“If they want an ultrasound, then they need to find a doctor over in mainland China who will do it for them, then bring it with them [to Hong Kong],” she said.

An employee surnamed Huang, whose contact details were printed on a leaflet advertising the process and obtained by RFA from a Hong Kong-based intermediary company, said parents-to-be wanting gender testing often mail their own blood samples to Hong Kong, as formally importing the samples is also covered by the ban.

“It works like this: you take the blood sample yourself and mail it to me, and then I will help you to get it into Hong Kong,” Huang said, adding that many pregnant women don’t dare to make the trip to Hong Kong for fear of being caught.

“In the past three months, the border guards have been looking out for pregnant women,” he said. “If you’re not [obviously] pregnant, they’ll let you through, but if you are, they turn you back [at the border].”

‘Pretty big risk’

Huang said his company arranges for the blood samples to be taken to the Sheung Shui company for testing, at a cost of 3,000 yuan each, including transportation costs, testing equipment and results.

He said the middlemen run some risks in smuggling the blood samples across the border, however.

“If you take blood across the border, you can wind up with a fine, so there’s a pretty big risk attached,” Huang said. “But we’re used to it; it’s not too bad.”

There are even more direct methods of getting around regulations banning gender-testing, however.

RFA learned from a fairly large medical clinic in Shenzhen’s Baoan district, across the internal immigration border with Hong Kong, that people wanting such tests are charged 100 yuan for the taking of the blood sample in clinical conditions.

“If you want the blood test done over here, then it’s 100 yuan per sample,” an employee at the clinic said when visited by RFA.

“We have a friend on the Hong Kong side who brings over test tubes for the samples to go in when we take the blood for [the customer],” the employee said. “Then, as soon as the sample is taken, he takes them back to Hong Kong on the subway.”

Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) subway system connects with the Shenzhen Metro at the border town of Lo Wu.

The Hong Kong clinic also offers ultrasound scans of babies as early as seven weeks, the employee said, while the Shenzhen clinic can’t offer them before four months.

“We can carry out an ultrasound on this side of the border on the quiet at four months,” the employee said.

“But that’s not as good as doing it at two months, if you then decide to abort, if it isn’t developing normally, or if you don’t want it, or if it is going to harm your health.”

PRC population controls

While the Hong Kong clinic promises an accuracy rate of more than 98 percent, a Hong Kong gynecologist told RFA that there are considerable risks to ultrasound scans as early as seven weeks.

She said first-trimester scans carry a greater risk of a miscarriage soon after the scan, and may result in errors when trying to determine the sex of the fetus.

Hong Kong Democratic Party lawmaker James To, who is also a lawyer, said such practices are the result of long-running population controls in mainland China, alongside traditional preferences for male offspring in China.

“I think that, regardless of the fact that they have relaxed the one-child policy now, there are still some traditional attitudes [in China], and some families might want to make sure they have at least one son,” To told RFA. “They want to make sure they don’t wind up with two daughters, which they would probably find unacceptable.”

“So they get a blood sample and send it to Hong Kong for testing, and if they don’t like the result, they’ll get an abortion,” he said. “Of course, this is very far from ideal.”

He said part of the problem is caused by the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s insistence on limiting the rights of its citizens to give birth, although the one-child policy has now become a two-child limit.

U.S.-based women’s rights activist Reggie Littlejohn in February called for an end to China’s coercive population control regime, saying it makes sex-selective abortions more, not less, likely.

“The Chinese government has been lauded by many for its supposed ‘loosening’ of its one-child policy, yet the coercive nature of the program remains, and it continues to result in the selective abortion of countless girls,” Littlejohn, who heads the Women’s Rights Without Frontiers group, said.

“It is a travesty that most women’s rights organizations remain silent in the face of this attack on women and girls.”

Littlejohn was commenting in February on a January article posted on the state-backed ECNS news service titled “In pursuit of boy babies, families send samples to HK for sex tests, abort girls,” which had been removed when the link was tested by RFA on Thursday.

“We predicted last year that the increasing availability of non-invasive pregnancy tests and the modified two-child policy would result in an increase, not a decrease, in sex-selective abortion,” Littlejohn told the pro-life group National Right to Life.

“In fact, with the two child policy, odds are increased that girls will be selectively aborted. Couples whose first child is a girl will often abort the second child if she is also a girl. Second daughters remain endangered,” she said.

Reported by Wo Miu and Wong Lok-to for RFA’s Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

The convening of the first Ocean Conference by the United Nations earlier this month illustrates the pressing need to curb and reverse marine environmental degradation. This issue is critical for China given its growing challenges from marine environmental degradation. China needs to develop its marine economy sustainably and enhance law enforcement and international cooperation.

By Lina Gong*

The inclusion of the marine environmental agenda in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ‘Goal 14’ — on the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources — is significant. It reflects the recognition that the oceans are crucial for the world’s sustainable development amidst the growing severity of marine environmental concerns.

The degradation of the marine environment has critical implications for China that relies on the seas for a diversity of purposes, from food security to economic development. While China has strengthened its efforts to protect the seas, emphasis on sustainable development of the marine economy, enhanced cooperation and coordination are needed for more effective governance of the marine environment.

Marine Environment and China’s Security

The seas play an important role in China’s economic security, food security and environmental security. Marine economy accounted for 9.5 per cent of China’s national GDP in 2016 and created 35.5 million jobs. According to a paper presented at the “China as a Maritime Power” Conference in 2015, China’s fishery output accounted for one third of the world’s total in 2013, leading to a trade surplus in fishery of US$11.6 billion.

In addition, sea lanes are bloodlines for the economy of the world’s largest trading country, as shipping accounts for 90 per cent of the transport of global trade according to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).

With the world’s largest population living in shrinking areas of arable land, China’s food security is under stress. As the seas are major sources of protein and necessary nutrients for human health, there have been calls by scholars for better exploitation of marine food resources to improve China’s food self-sufficiency.

Environmental security is another concern as the seas are an integral part of China’s overall environment. The oceans regulate the global environment by absorbing 30 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but the volume of absorption declines as the marine system changes. This contributes to climate change and consequently impacts China as a member of the global community.

State of China’s Marine Environment

According to the UN, human activities like pollution, depleted fisheries, and loss of coastal habitats are major causes of marine pollution, affecting 40 per cent of the world’s oceans. As domestic consumption of seafood increases, China’s fishermen tend to overfish. The excessive expansion of fishing has been depleting China’s own fish resources.

It is estimated that fish stocks in China has dropped by 60 per cent compared with the 1980s. The growing consumption and depleting stocks at home have driven Chinese fishing fleets to explore the open oceans, which is criticised by some as threatening global fishery.

Sea water quality is another issue facing China’s marine environment. The percentage of heavily polluted areas in the Yellow Sea and the South China Sea increased 1.8 per cent and 1 percent respectively in 2015, according to China’s State of Environment Report 2015.

Water pollution, climate change and other human activities like poaching, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) pose great risks to the marine biodiversity as coral reef, turtle and other sea creatures are facing an existential threat. The Yellow Sea saw the record-scale algal bloom in July 2013, which can dramatically change the marine ecology of the affected coastal areas.

China in Action

In recognition of the importance of the seas and the threat of marine environment degradation to its security, the Chinese government has committed itself to curbing marine pollution. Beijing has promulgated and amended over 20 sea-related laws and regulations in the past decades, laying the legal basis for stricter law enforcement.

Marine environmental protection is specifically included in China’s 13th Five-Fear Development Plan released in March 2016, which highlights issues like coastal areas protection and restoration, pollution control, and regulation of fishery. In practice, China has notably increased the number of monitoring stations and protected areas across its maritime territory, with 8000 monitoring stations and 40 protected areas established.

Despite the legal and policy instruments in place, there remains much space for improvement in implementation and enforcement. Breaches of fishing moratorium and illegal discharges of pollutants into the seas are not isolated incidents, and this indicates that stricter enforcement of law is needed. Economic interests are primarily behind the breaches of laws and regulations as the market’s thirst for seafood fuels China’s fishing fleets.

While ecological balance has been incorporated in China’s national strategy, the transformation into a more sustainable model is still in progress. The increased attention to the seas from the central leadership has been a relatively recent trend; it thus takes more policy guidance and awareness campaigns for China to develop its marine economy sustainably.

Closer Cooperation and Coordination Needed

Strengthened cooperation and coordination with other countries is essential when it comes to protecting the marine environment. The flow of ocean currents makes it difficult to monitor and control marine pollution within one’s own territory. There have been incidences of Chinese fishermen being arrested by law enforcement forces of other countries like the Philippines, Indonesia and Senegal.

China has been engaging in bilateral and multilateral marine environmental cooperation since the 1990s, such as the North-East Asian Subregional Programme for Environmental Cooperation (NEASPEC) in 1993 and the non-binding Northwest Pacific Action Plan (NOWPAP). It signed a bilateral agreement with Vietnam in 2014 on research cooperation in marine environmental management in the Beibu/Tonki Gulf.

Nevertheless, the multilateral and bilateral mechanisms China has joined are loose arrangements with low-level institutionalisation. Territorial disputes constitute a major barrier to deeper cooperation in marine environmental protection. But it is in the interest of China as well as other related countries to explore ways to initiate and enhance cooperation.

China and the Philippines held the first dialogue on South China Sea last month, which marked the establishment of the bilateral mechanism for consultation on the maritime dispute. Cooperation in marine protection can be a potential item on the agenda of future consultations.

*Lina Gong is a Research Fellow with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS), S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. This is part of a series.

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein*

(FPRI) — The tragic passing of Otto Warmbier on Monday, June 19, says a lot about the North Korean system. His case is highly unusual because North Korea tends not to treat its foreign prisoners with physical brutality such that they sustain any permanent injuries.

We still do not know what exactly happened to the 22-year old college student during his approximately one and a half-year long detention in North Korea, beginning in January last year. After he was returned to America only six days before his death, Warmbier’s doctors said he had lost a severe amount of brain tissue during his time in North Korea and said that MRI scans showed he had most likely suffered a brain injury shortly after he was convicted to 15 years of hard labor in March 2016. They found no clear signs of beatings, torture, or the like. North Korean doctors claimed he contracted botulism, took a sleeping pill and never woke up, but American doctors found no evidence of botulism.

But whatever happened to Warmbier during his time in North Korean captivity, it is not unusual for people to be treated in inhumane ways by the North Korean system. Even though we know nothing about exactly how Warmbier was treated in captivity, the fact that the North Koreans kept him for so long after his state became life-threatening itself shows a lack of care for humane considerations when political ones are at stake.

For all the jokes that people outside the country crack about its leader and cult of personality, some may forget that North Korea remains a harsh police state. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have been subject to treatment equal to, or worse than, what Warmbier was put through. North Korean labor camps are filled with people imprisoned for actions that would never be considered criminal in any Western justice system, but which the North Korean state deems to be politically offensive, such as smuggling in culture from the outside world.

In no other state than a brutally totalitarian one could a young man be sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for attempting to steal a propaganda banner, which is what happened to Warmbier. North Korean authorities claimed that he had conspired together with a church in his home state to overthrow the system of the country, but they offered little evidence.

It is also difficult to discern any strategic logic in the North Korean handling of the case. In the past, North Korea has released several Americans from captivity after high-level visits by American public figures. For example, American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling were freed from North Korean captivity in August 2009 (they were originally captured in March the same year) after former President Bill Clinton made a visit to Pyongyang to bring them home.

When then-U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper visited Pyongyang in 2014, to bring home jailed Americans Kenneth Bae and Todd Miller, he described the disappointment of the North Koreans he interacted with that he was not there to give Pyongyang any diplomatic victories:

“The debate and dialogue started immediately in the car with Mr. Kim,” Mr. Clapper continued. “They were expecting some big breakthrough. I was going to offer some big deal, I don’t know, a recognition, a peace treaty, whatever. Of course, I wasn’t there to do that, so they were disappointed, I’ll put it that way.”

By contrast, North Korea’s mistreatment of Otto Warmbier served the regime no discernable purpose. On the contrary, the impression now is that North Korea did not at all release him on humanitarian grounds, like it claimed, but that the regime simply did not want him to die on their soil. It is difficult to see any North Korean gain in what happened, and meanwhile, the losses are clear. Tourism, a small industry that Kim Jong-un has wanted to nurture, will probably suffer a drop, not least in American visitors. About 5,000 Westerners visit North Korea each year, and around 1,000 of them come from the United States. Since the two aforementioned American journalists were imprisoned in 2009, a total of 14 Americans have been jailed in North Korea. Currently, three remain. Young Pioneer Tours, which brought Otto Warmbier to North Korea, has already announced that they will not take Americans on their tours in the future. It is not inconceivable that the U.S. government will introduce measures to further discourage or outright ban travel to North Korea, like it long did with travel to Cuba (a measure that may soon be reinstated). Each tourist that spends money on a trip to North Korea by extension (since all tour operators inside North Korea are tied to the state) helps fund the regime’s activities, including its nuclear and missiles programs. Some argue that tourism to North Korea can build cultural bridges and foster mutual respect: as an interesting aside, in a show of support of South Korean policies of rapprochement, the U.S. government said in 1988 it would strive to make group travel and exchanges to North Korea by Americans easier.

To this day, however, it is unclear what positive impacts tourism and engagement with North Korea has brought. For long, talks have periodically been held between North Korean and U.S. envoys and both current and former government officials, in unofficial settings. In recent times, they have focused on issues such as American detainees in North Korea, while North Korea has continued its nuclear and missile tests, reaching increasingly high levels of sophistication. American advocates of talks and negotiations with North Korea will face an even more difficult environment after Warmbier’s passing. There has been scattered chatter about the possibilities of a summit meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. Most of it has been founded in naïve hope and mere speculation. Prospects for U.S. government engagement with North Korea seem even more dire now since the White House would be unlikely to want to grant favors to a regime whose treatment of one of its citizens caused the latter’s death.

Perhaps some in the North Korean power apparatus argued for his release far earlier, while more hardline forces refused until his health deteriorated to a point of no return. The North Korean healthcare system is far from any Western standards. At this point, however, all reasoning about the causes for North Korea’s actions are purely speculative. Perhaps, we will only know about the decisions that led to Warmbier’s death if the North Korean secret police archives are opened one day in the future.

About the author:
*Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein is an Associate Scholar with FPRI, focusing primarily on the Korean Peninsula and East Asian region. He is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he researches the history of surveillance and social control in North Korea, and a co-editor of North Korean Economy Watch. He publishes regularly on Korean affairs in publications such as IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review and The Diplomat, and has previously worked as a journalist, and has been a special advisor to the Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

By Col. Robert E. Hamilton*

(FPRI) — The recent NATO Heads of State and Government Meeting in Brussels highlighted NATO’s declining relevance in the South Caucasus and the declining relevance of the region to NATO. The reasons for this lie both within NATO and within the South Caucasus. In NATO, the focus on the Russian threat to the Alliance’s eastern flank, the debate over burden-sharing, uncertainty over the U.S. commitment to Article 5, and members’ concerns over terrorism leave little room for NATO to think seriously about its role in the South Caucasus. This change in relevance was evident in Brussels, where NATO leaders agreed the Alliance would sustain its mission in Afghanistan, join the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, and continue its mission to train Iraqi security forces. They also agreed that each Alliance member would develop an annual plan setting out how it intends to meet its commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defense, with 20% of that budget invested in equipment. Finally, they agreed that NATO would maintain its dual-track approach toward Russia, combining deterrence with dialogue. Absent was any meaningful discussion of NATO’s role in the South Caucasus.

For its part, the South Caucasus presents an unfortunate combination of fractionalization and susceptibility to Russian pressure, which helps explain NATO’s recalcitrance toward the region. Unlike the Baltics, where a high level of unity and cooperation among the three regional states helped them resist Russian pressure and enter NATO together; and the Balkans, where despite the geopolitical fractures in the region, its distance from Russia tempers Moscow’s ability to apply direct military pressure to those states wishing to join NATO; the South Caucasus possesses both of these disadvantages in abundance. Armenia and Azerbaijan remain in conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, making regional cooperation impossible, and Russia retains leverage over all three regional states. For Armenia, Russia is its only true ally; for Azerbaijan, Russia retains the ability to play the spoiler to its hopes of regaining control over Nagorno-Karabakh; and for Georgia, Russia presents a clear military threat. All of these factors have combined to prevent NATO cooperation with South Caucasus countries.

How to Engage a Fractured Region?

The lack of unity and cooperation in the South Caucasus extends to the attitudes of regional states toward NATO. Whereas Georgia’s entire foreign and security policy is oriented on Euro-Atlantic integration, with NATO membership as the natural culmination of this policy, neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan is interested in joining the alliance. The fractionalization of the region presents NATO with the problem of how to engage a region with little regional identity or cooperation.

One method might be to use engagement and assistance as inducements for regional countries to increase cooperation. But this method has little chance of working in the South Caucasus, as the divisions between Armenia and Azerbaijan—still technically at war over the breakaway Azerbaijani province of Nagorno-Karabakh—are too deep to be bridged by any inducement NATO could provide. Another possibility would be to disengage from the region until it stabilizes, presumably under the weight of Russia’s geopolitical presence. But given the proximity of the South Caucasus to Europe, its role as an energy corridor and commercial bridge between Europe and Asia, and the potential for conflict within the region to destabilize the broader Black Sea region, which includes several NATO members, the alliance had historically deemed the South Caucasus too important to ignore. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, then, the South Caucasus had presented NATO with a dilemma. On one hand, the region’s fractionalization made engagement on the regional level impossible, while on the other hand, NATO had important interests in the region.

NATO’s answer to this dilemma had been to focus its engagement on Georgia, while maintaining communication Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Alliance’s engagement of Georgia, led by the U.S., paid off in the form of deployments of Georgian troops to NATO missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan, and to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. Georgia’s deployments were significant for both the numbers of troops deployed and the missions they undertook. In Iraq, the Georgian contingent eventually numbered some 2,000 soldiers, and was tasked with patrolling and interdicting the insurgent supply routes running from the Iranian border to Baghdad. In Afghanistan, the Georgian contingent numbered some 1,600 soldiers at the height of its strength, and was deployed to volatile Helmand Province. Some 800 Georgian soldiers remain in Afghanistan today. In all, over 8,000 Georgian soldiers have deployed to Iraq, and over 13,000 have deployed to Afghanistan so far. The Georgian contingents in Iraq and Afghanistan were the largest non-NATO contingents and dwarfed those of most NATO members.

Aside from its military deployments, Georgia’s desire for Euro-Atlantic integration was a key factor in the impressive political and economic reforms the country has undertaken over the last fifteen years. Georgia transitioned from a failing state with a kleptocratic government to a messy but vibrant parliamentary democracy that has conducted one of the few peaceful constitutional changes of power in the former Soviet Union, outside of the Baltics. It also includes an economic transformation and fight against corruption that moved Georgia from near the bottom of global indices of economic freedom and transparency to near the top.

But NATO’s current preoccupation with other issues threatens to undo much of what went right with its past policy toward the South Caucasus. One of these issues is the strained relationship between the United States and many European alliance members. Fabrice Pouthier and Alexander Vershbow called for a “concrete renewal of vows between the United States and Europe” at the 25-26 May NATO Heads of State and Government Meeting, warning that if doubts about the U.S. commitment to NATO persisted, the U.S. might “assume a posture of transactional unilateralism” and Europe might turn inward. Unfortunately no such renewal of vows occurred. While NATO joined the coalition against ISIS and member states agreed to take concrete steps toward meeting their defense spending commitments, reciprocal U.S. steps were not forthcoming. Indeed, President Trump’s failure to explicitly affirm his support for NATO Article 5 at the meeting will increase uncertainty about the U.S. commitment to the Alliance, despite the attempts of several of his advisors to assure members that it remains ironclad. Pouthier and Vershbow’s warning seemed dismally prophetic when, shortly after the meeting, German Chancellor Angela Merkel remarked that Europe could no longer “rely fully on others.”

Where NATO Can—and Should—Help

None of the above bodes well for a sustained NATO role in the South Caucasus. An alliance uncertain about the commitment of its most important member, straining to meet its commitments to Afghanistan, and faced with a renewed Russian threat to its eastern flank is unlikely to be able to think strategically about a region its members currently see as important but not vital to their security. But inattention to the South Caucasus could have serious long-term negative effects, and a continuing—and even expanded—NATO role in the region would not be difficult to realize. The following three steps could help to stabilize the region and protect NATO’s interests there at little cost to alliance members.

First, NATO should continue its policy of prioritizing relations with Georgia while keeping channels open to Armenia and Azerbaijan. Georgia’s path toward Euro-Atlantic integration has not been risk-free or cost-free. Many of the reforms its governments have undertaken involved painful adjustments that, while they will pay off over the long-term, involved short-term costs that the Georgian people were asked to bear. Georgians were and remain willing to tolerate these costs at least partly because they see them as requirements for integration into the Euro-Atlantic community.

Aside from the economic and social costs involved in pursuing a Euro-Atlantic course, Georgia also incurred military costs. By keeping large numbers of its military deployed to U.S. and NATO-led military operations while facing a clear Russian military threat, Georgia incurred significant risk to its security. This risk was made manifest in August 2008, when Russia and Georgia went to war over the separatist Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and some 20% of the Georgian Army was unavailable to defend the country because it was deployed to Iraq.

NATO made clear in the final communique from its April 2008 Summit that Georgia and Ukraine would become members of the Alliance. Both Georgia and Ukraine subsequently suffered Russian military interventions that left significant portions of their territory under Russian military occupation. NATO’s failure to move forward on the pledge to accept Georgia and Ukraine into the Alliance, especially when combined with statements from the U.S. administration that leave the U.S. commitment to Article 5 in question, erode NATO’s credibility as a collective security organization and contribute to instability and insecurity along NATO’s eastern flank. NATO should continue to reaffirm the 2008 commitment at every major meeting, and should publish a clear list of tasks Georgia needs to accomplish to gain Alliance membership.

The next step NATO should take is to include the South Caucasus into its campaign against ISIS. As the only region in the world that shares borders with NATO, Russia, and the Middle East, the South Caucasus is uniquely positioned to play a role in NATO’s campaign against the terrorist group. Integrating the region into its campaign would improve regional stability and enhance NATO’s credibility in several ways. Because Russia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan all have citizens that have left the Caucasus to fight for ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and all share a concern about the return of these fighters to their home countries, NATO assistance in this area would help to stabilize the region and provide a rare opportunity for these three states to cooperate. Because the defeat of ISIS is the current security priority of the United States, American support for this initiative should not be difficult to gain. NATO assistance in this area could focus in the areas of intelligence-sharing and border security, neither of which are overly expensive or complex undertakings.

Finally, NATO should create a separate Special Representative for the South Caucasus. The current Special Representative handles both the South Caucasus and Central Asia, despite the fact that the two regions matter to NATO in very different ways. The South Caucasus borders a NATO member (Turkey) and contains a country designated as a future member (Georgia). While the Central Asian States are important to NATO’s assistance mission in Afghanistan, they are geographically far from NATO and none of them are candidates for membership. Naming a Special Representative for the South Caucasus would send a signal that NATO is serious about its role in the region.

None of these steps would be significantly costly for NATO to accomplish but, taken together, they would signal a renewed NATO interest in the security and stability of the South Caucasus and lend renewed legitimacy to NATO’s Open Door policy. Failing to invigorate its presence in the South Caucasus and to take concrete steps to reaffirm the Open Door policy could significantly damage NATO’s credibility. As Tracy German noted in a recent article on the issue, “If NATO ultimately rejects any prospect of membership for states in the post-Soviet space, they could be abandoned to Russian influence, indicating that Moscow has a de facto veto over membership of the alliance and conceding spheres of influence to Russia.” This outcome would undermine NATO’s entire purpose as a political and military alliance dedicated to democratic values and the peaceful resolution of disputes, but possessed of the military power and the will to collectively defend its members if required.

The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army War College, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

About the author:
*U.S. Army Colonel Robert E. Hamilton is a Black Sea Fellow at FPRI.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

By Dr Bawa Singh*

Before he became US President and even after assuming office, Donald Trump has taken very hard stances against Islamic radicalization and Islamic states/people. He even tried to impose a ban on people visiting from seven Islamic nations.

However, for his first overseas visit, Trump not only chose an Islamic country, Saudi Arabia, he even attended an America-Arab Islamic Summit in which 55 countries from the Arabic world participated. Moreover, Saudi Arabia, which he used to hold responsible for 9/11, was applauded during his visit while Iran was held up as a destabilizer and terrorist state. These stances during the America-Arab Islamic Summit are likely to further divide the West Asian region into sectarian groups.

Making Saudi Arabia and Israel his first ports of call, Trump has indicated a continuity of ‘special relationships.’ These special bonds include energy geopolitics, strategic alliances, arms sales and, of course, hostility and cordiality with Iran and Saudi Arabia respectively.

Are geopolitical, geostrategic and geo-economic motivations responsible for this U-turn? For Saudi Arabia, which Trump used to slam for human rights violations, enslavement of women and support to Sunni Jihadists, how did they receive Trump with such royal honour?

Notwithstanding this tough rhetoric from Trump, given the vested interests of both Saudi Arabia and the US, bilateral relations have been improving since Trump took office. Saudi monarch Salman had sent his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is also defence minister, to engage Trump in March 2017. King Salman not only engaged the US, he fully supported Trump’s Middle East policy, including launching missile strikes on a Syrian military base.

Trump’s inaugural address to the Arab Islamic America Summit (May 22, 2017) was placatory and tried to conciliate the Islamic world, urging the leadership of 55 countries to unite with the US to combat terrorism and radicalization.

In the context of terrorism Trump said, “This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life and decent people of all religions who try to protect it. This is a battle between good and evil.” Trump and King Salman indicated their commitment to root out ISIS, Al Qaeda, and several other terrorist organizations. Trump softened his rhetoric on Islamic radicalization by acknowledging that Islam itself was not the enemy. It was the first time he delinked terrorism from a particular religion which he always used to castigate.

The US President and the Saudi King agreed on a strategic partnership for the 21st century and issued a Joint Strategic Vision statement charting a new path towards peace in the Middle East. Both countries committed to heighten the regional and global cooperation focussing on the trade, economic development, and diplomacy. Apart from economic diplomacy, the strategic partnership has emerged as the lynchpin of the bilateral as well as the regional cooperation.

In pursuance of the strategic partnership, an arms deal of US $ 110 billion has been signed between Trump and the Saudi King, probably the most significant deal in recent history. Trump agreed to provide tanks, combat ships, radar, missile defence systems, communications and cyber-security technology to Riyadh. Many reports called it a “significant” and “historic” expansion of US relations with Saudi Arabia. The arms deal in general and new strategic partnership, in particular, have been presumed as a counterbalance and check to the expanding influence of Iran and Russia in the region.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have been entwined in the Middle East’s proxy war for regional influence, divergence in oil export policy, and sectarian divisions. Both countries have been providing moral, financial and strategic support to the opposite sides in conflicts and the civil wars not only in West Asia, like Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen but also in Central Asia and Pakistan.

Trump asked all the participant 55 countries at the AIA to unite against Iran. Before Trump’s visit, Defence Secretary James Mattis had also visited Saudi Arabia on 19 April.

Trump had two main objectives for his Middle East visit; the first to check and reverse Iran’s nuclear programme which, even as a presidential candidate, he had slammed. The second part of his strategy was to build a coalition against Iran and its Shiite proxies with the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia.

During his visit to Saudi Arabia, he indicated his strong support for Riyadh’s virulent anti-Iran stance and urged the Gulf States not only to normalize their relationship with Israel, but also to put pressure on Iran to conform.

Iran and Israel are pitted against each other in the present geopolitical milieu. Even in Israel, Trump did not forget to slam Iran.

In a meeting with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Trump said, “The United States and Israel can declare with one voice that Iran must never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon – never, ever – and must cease its deadly funding, training and equipping of terrorists and militias, and it must cease immediately.”

In Tehran, meanwhile, President Hasan Rouhani also cautioned Trump, saying, “Who can say regional stability can be restored without Iran? Who can say the region will experience total stability without Iran?”

West Asia has been passing through a high degree of turbulence as it has been divided into Sunni and Shia groups. But with the visit of President Trump, the division between Iran on the one hand and Arab countries on the other hand widened further as he asked these countries to unite against the former.

Analysts wonder whether the $110 billion Saudi-US arms deal will not be as destabilizing for the region as Iran’s nuclear programme.

To maintain peace and stability, countries in West Asia and the Gulf will have to learn how to accommodate their neighbouring countries, despite existing divergences, and avoid the geopolitical intervention of major powers. Otherwise, such visits, selling of arms, exploitation of sectarian divisions, power play games, will keep these countries embroiled in a seemingly endless regional war.

*The author is teaching at the Centre for South and Central Asian Studies, School of Global Relations, Central University of Punjab, Bathinda, India. Comments and suggestions on this article can be sent to editor@spsindia.in

By Saroj Mohanty*

Joe Biden, former US vice-president, spoke in an address to the BSE stock exchange in Mumbai four years ago, of certain basic principles in the way ahead for the US-India partnership. One of these is that the partnership would be “defined not by what it promises, but defined by what it delivers.”

This could be in the mind of Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he meets President Donald Trump in Washington on June 26 and holds a conversation, seeking a “new direction” for deeper bilateral engagement.

This will be Modi’s first meeting with the new Republican president. Expectations are that it would go well and both leaders would have the opportunity to review and refurbish bilateral ties. Personal relations between leaders do make a difference in the conduct of foreign policy. Both have spoken twice.

However, Trump’s critical comments on India while justifying the US pullout from the Paris climate agreement and earlier on immigration, outsourcing and tariff regimes have already struck a discordant note in the “symphony in play” that Modi only last year described in an address to the US Congress as the India-US “jugalbandi” (duet).

The one-on-one meeting has aroused a lot of interest, precisely because what many observers say is Trump’s “unpredictability” and his disruptive policies and flip-flops concerning China and West Asia.

Also, Modi would be in an America that is quite different from the America he has seen during his previous four visits. It has become inward-looking and isolationist. Under Trump, US interests are being redefined. It is withdrawing from an international system it helped to create over seven decades ago, with its belief in open borders and global trade, and multilateralism. What is seen now is economic nationalism which is being used as a bargaining chip in the name “fair trade,” that has threatened vital sectors of Indian economy.

Ahead of the visit, a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs said discussions would be aimed at consolidation of the multi-dimensional strategic partnership. There are indications that the talks would cover defence cooperation, energy and the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific, to which the US rebalance has already been deprived of its commercial component with the scrapping of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Defence Secretary James Mattis recently reaffirmed India’s status as a “major defence partner”. The designation paves the way for India to access sensitive defence and dual-use technologies on a par with US allies.

This would prove helpful to the Modi government’s plan to develop an indigenous defence and technology platform, necessary for India to become a comprehensive power. It is likely that the two sides would look into co-production, aligning with New Delhi’s “Make in India” programme with Trump’s “America First” policy. Last month, India unveiled a “strategic partnership” in defence production policy under which joint ventures between global majors and Indian private companies would be allowed under the “Make in India” framework.

The other area of synergy is counter-terrorism. Reports quoted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as saying that the Trump administration has ordered an inter-agency policy review towards Pakistan. The two sides would like to find common ground on the fight against terrorism and ways and means of stabilising the situation in Afghanistan.

Also, there is the prospect of a mutually rewarding energy partnership. The energy industry in US is the largest in the world. The US, which is selling oil directly to China, can be reliable supplier of oil and gas to India. In fact, the US Department of Energy had commissioned, a few years ago, a report on the domestic economic impact of LNG export to India and found that it would reap rich benefits. Relevant in this context is the Trump administration’s decision to go in for more exploration and use of fossil fuel.

However, despite growing two-way trade and investments, economic ties remain and could prove problematic. Differences persist on both bilateral and multilateral trade issues, Intellectual Property Rights and visa restrictions on professionals.

The Trump administration’s policy measures have accentuated the vulnerability of sectors like IT and pharmaceuticals. Indian technology major Wipro has named Trump as a risk factor in its annual filing with the US Security and Exchange Commission. Similarly, business prospects of Indian drug-makers would be affected adversely as the Trump administration has begun moves to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act, better known as ObamaCare.

India’s trade surplus of $24.3 billion has come under the scanner after Trump passed an executive order in March seeking an “Omnibus Report” on the trade deficit the US has with other countries. India would also be under pressure as the US National Trade Policy Agenda for 2017 stresses opening of markets for US agricultural products and intellectual properties. Also, the US International Trade Commission has initiated a study on restrictions and policy measures in major markets abroad that restrict digital trade.

The US is the country Modi has visited the most, signifying the importance his government attaches to the partnership. The relationship has flagged in recent months and it is no more a state of “comfort, candour and convergence” as he once described it. Trump’s protectionist policies also do not exactly place him in an ideal negotiating position.

However, a hallmark of Modi’s foreign policy has been an assertion of India’s national interests. He would seek more clarity and impress on the other side that the trade and investment partnership remain open and fair to benefit both the economies, particularly at a time when China is pushing a new geopolitical order with its Belt and Road Initiative.

Ever since the strategic shift in Indian foreign policy began after the end of the Cold War, the India-US relationship has developed and expanded on several fronts, adjusting to altered contexts, new realities. It may be worth waiting for Modi’s next tweet.

*The author is a veteran journalist and commentator on strategic issues. Comments and suggestions on this article can be sent to editor@spsindia.in

By Zoran Radosavljevic

(EurActiv) — EU leaders have agreed to extend sanctions against Moscow for another six months because of Russia’s failure to implement a peace deal for Ukraine, European Council President Donald Tusk said in a tweet on the first day of the 22-23 June EU Summit.

The EU’s sanctions against Moscow, first introduced in 2014, restrict the Russian banking sector’s access to international money markets and ban most arms trading with Russia, as well as the sale of some energy-related equipment and technology.

“This has yet to be formally approved but the political decision has been taken. There are no indications that any member state was strongly opposed today, so it will go through,” an EU diplomat told EURACTIV.

Earlier on Thursday (22 June), Tusk met Ukrainian President Pedro Poroshenko in Brussels. The two discussed the situation in Ukraine and the violations of the Minsk peace deal, which was agreed in 2015 to stop fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Italy, Greece and Hungary are among the EU countries that are softer on Russia. They have criticised sanctions, arguing that they are ineffective and cause harm to European businesses. Poland, Sweden and Baltic countries have pushed for a tougher stance.

The rise of news consumption through social media and the ‘fake news’ phenomenon has raised doubt over the value of original news production. This column uses a comprehensive dataset of French news content produced in 2013 to assess the commercial returns to original news production. It finds that media outlets with a larger fraction of original content do tend to receive greater audiences.

By Julia Cagé, Nicolas Hervé and Marie-Luce Viaud*

The modern media industry is in a state of crisis. While social media seems to swallow the news, many argue that the effectiveness of the media as a check on power is significantly compromised, buffeting Western democracies. Following Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election, the growing importance of ‘fake news’ and the decreasing trust in traditional media have become prominent concerns (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017). According to Boczkowski et al. (2017), young users mainly consume news on social media ‘incidentally’ – rather than engaging with the news content, they no longer differentiate between it and the rest of the social and entertainment information they consume.

Furthermore, not only is the internet era characterised by a new regime of news consumption, but we also observe a new regime of news production. The switch to digital media has indeed affected news production technology. In today’s online world, reproducing competitors’ content has become instantaneous. Is there still a ‘commercial value’ of news in this online world? In a recent working paper, we document the extent of copying online and estimate the returns to originality in online news production (Cagé et al. 2017).

We use a unique dataset covering the entire news content provided online by the universe of French news media during an entire year (2013). Our dataset covers 86 general information media outlets in France: 1 news agency, 59 newspapers (35 local dailies, 7 national dailies, 12 national weeklies, 2 national monthlies, and 3 free newspapers), 10 pure online media (i.e. online-only media outlets), 9 television channels, and 7 radio stations. The news agency is the Agence France Presse (AFP), the third largest news agency in the world (after the Associated Press and Reuters).  We track every piece of content these outlets produced online in 2013. Our dataset contains 2.5 million documents.

Using the content produced by news media, we perform a topic detection algorithm to construct the set of news stories. Each document is placed within the most appropriate cluster, i.e. the one that discusses the same event-based story. We obtain a total number of 25,000 stories, comprised of 850,000 documents (about 35 documents per news story). Nearly one third of the news events are about politics, 30% about the economy and less than one quarter about crime, law, and justice. We then study the timeline of each story. In particular, for each story, we determine first the media outlet that breaks the story, and then analyse the propagation of the story, second by second. We investigate the speed of news dissemination and the length of the stories, depending on the topic and other story characteristics.

We show that, on average, news is delivered to readers of different media outlets 172 minutes after having been published first on the website of the news breaker – but in less than 224 seconds in 25% of the cases. The reaction time is shortest when the news breaker is a news agency, and longest when it is a pure online media, most likely because of the need for verification.

High reactivity comes with verbatim copying. We develop a state-of-the-art plagiarism detection algorithm and find that only 32.6% of the online content is original. This finding is illustrated in Figure 1, which plots the distribution of the originality rate. The distribution is bimodal, with one peak for the article with less than 1% original content (nearly 17% of the documents) and one peak for the 100% original articles (nearly 22% of the documents). The median is 14%. In other words, with the exception of the documents that are entirely original, the articles published within events consist mainly of verbatim copying – more than 55% of the articles classified in events have less than 20% originality.

Figure 1 Distribution of the ‘originality rate’ of media content

Obviously, copy can take different forms. First of all, we distinguish external (copying from another media outlets) from internal (copying from a previous article you published) copy. Second, we distinguish content copied from the AFP (the news agency) and content copied from other media outlets. All the media outlets that are clients of the AFP are indeed allowed to reproduce the AFP content in its entirety, and the business model of the news agency is based on the reproduction of its content by other media outlets.

But in effect, every time an original piece of content is published on the internet, it is actually published three times – once by the original producer, and twice by media outlets who simply copy-and-paste this original content. (Obviously, in practice, we often observe large numbers of media outlets copying part of the content of an original article. But in terms of numbers of original characters copied, this is equivalent to a situation where each piece of original content is published three times.) Moreover, despite the substantiality of copying, media outlets hardly name the sources they copy. Once we exclude copy from the news agency, we show that only 3.5% of the documents mention competing news organisations they copy as the source of the information, as illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Share of documents crediting the copied media as a function of the copy rate

Do original news producers nonetheless benefit from their investment in newsgathering? In instances where the online audience was distributed randomly across the different websites and regardless of the originality of the articles, our results would imply that the original news producer captures only 33% of the audience and of the economic returns to original news production (which, as a first approximation, can be assumed to be proportional to audience, for example via online advertising revenues). However, we show that reputation mechanisms and the behaviour of Internet viewers allow the mitigation of a significant part of this copyright violation problem.

First, using article-level variations (with event, day, and media fixed effects), we show that a 50% increase in the originality rate of an article leads to a 35% increase in the number of times it is shared on Facebook. This finding is illustrated in Figure 3, which plots the estimates of the coefficients from the estimation of the number of times an article is shared on Facebook, as a function of the originality of the article.

Figure 3 Facebook shares and originality rate

Second, by using media-level daily audience data and article-level Facebook shares, we investigate to which extent readers ‘reward’ originality. To do so, we compute audience-weighted measures of the importance of originality. As a first ‘naïve’ approach, we assume that all the articles published on the website of an outlet on a given day are ‘equally successful’. Doing so, we find that the average audience-weighted original content is above 46%. This reflects the facts that media outlets with a larger fraction of original content tend to receive more audience.

More importantly, if we weight content by media-level audience shares and article-level Facebook shares, we show that the original content represents up to 58% of online news consumption, i.e. much more than its relative production (33%). This means that within a given media outlet, the articles that get more views (as approximated by the number of Facebook shares) are those with more original content. In effect, reputation mechanisms actually appear to solve about 40% of the copyright violation problem, as long as the media outlets realise this and allocate their effort and journalist time accordingly. The observed collapse in the number of journalists in all developed countries (Cagé 2016) may reflect the fact that some outlets have not.

Of course, greater intellectual property protection could also play a role in solving the copyright violation problem and raising the incentives for original news production, and we certainly do not mean to downplay the extent of this problem. Other factors may help rationalise the observed drop in the number of journalists, the decline of advertising revenues, and the increasing use of ad-blockers to begin with (Angelucci and Cagé 2016, Shiller et al. 2017). However, our results suggest that in order to effectively address this issue, it is important to study reputation effects and how viewers react to the newsgathering investment strategies of media outlets.

*About the authors:
Julia Cagé, Assistant Professor in Economics, Sciences Po; CEPR Research Fellow

Nicolas Hervé, Research Engineer, Institut National de l’Audiovisuel

Marie-Luce Viaud, VIF team leader, Institut national audiovisue

References:
Allcott, H, and M Gentzkow (2017), “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31 (2).

Angelucci, C, and J Cagé (2016), “Newspapers in Times of Low Advertising Revenues”, CEPR Discussion Paper 11414.

Boczkowski, P, E Mitchelstein, and M Matassi (2017), “Incidental News: How Young People Consume News on Social Media”, Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Cagé, J (20160, Saving the Media: Capitalism, Crowdfunding, and Democracy, Harvard University Press.

Cagé, J, N Hervé, and M-L Viaud (2017), “The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right?” CEPR Discussion Paper 12066.

Shiller, B, J Waldfogel, and J Ryan (2017), “Will Ad Blocking Break the Internet?” NBER Working Paper 23058.

Putting your money in the hands of an investment fund manager, you might expect a higher return than what you could get on your own. And in exchange, you probably pay a commission — which might amount to more than 2 percent of your investment per year.

However, according to research led by Professor Pablo Fernández on the profitability of investment funds in Spain from 2001 to 2016, very few fund managers earn or deserve the commissions they charge for their expertise.

Subpar Returns

Between 2001 and 2016, the average return for the Spanish investment funds studied was just 2.32 percent. That’s considerably lower than the returns for 15 year Spanish government bonds (5.27 percent) and the benchmark index for Spanish stocks, the IBEX 35 (5.24 percent).

In fact, of the 632 investment funds tracked from 2001 to 2016, only 29 outperformed government bonds and the IBEX 35 over the same period. And, more alarmingly, 28 of the funds lost value.

Of the group, the most profitable fund brought a total return of 491 percent to investors over 15 years (i.e., an average annual return of 12.6 percent). The least profitable lost 61 percent of its value over the same period (losing an average of 6.1 percent each year). This means that one euro invested in 2001 in the best performing fund became 5.91 euros in 2016, whereas one euro invested in the worst was reduced to just 39 cents.

As an experiment, a member of the research team asked 248 students, aged 6-17, to pick their own investments. The result? The students won! They had higher average returns than investment funds over the period tracked (2002 to 2012), albeit with a wider range. In fact, 72 students outperformed even the best-performing fund, while only 17 fell below the worst-performer.

Are Tax Incentives Justified?

Consider it no surprise that Fernández et al. question the tax incentives meant to encourage investments in Spain’s professionally managed funds. (They make a similar argument in their report on Spanish pension funds’ performances.)

They conclude that “the government should not encourage investment in investment funds.” It is also unfair, they say, that an individual investor not only pays more in taxes for market transactions, but also has to pay those taxes sooner.

If they circumvent fund managers, individual investors save on the explicit commissions — and nearly all of the hidden ones, they contend. However, individual investors incur additional costs for holding and for trading securities and, consequently, end up paying higher taxes.

How investment funds are doing and what the alternatives are is a significant issue in Spain. As of December 31, 2016, 7.39 million participants held 211.4 billion euros in 2,179 Spanish investment funds.

Methodology, Very Briefly

The research analyzes the average annual profitability of 2,179 investment funds between December 2001 and December 2016 based on data from INVERCO, a Spanish association representing investment and pension funds.

People at risk for Alzheimer’s disease who do more moderate-intensity physical activity, but not light-intensity physical activity, are more likely to have healthy patterns of glucose metabolism in their brain, according to a new UW-Madison study.

Results of the research were published today online in Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. Senior author Dr. Ozioma Okonkwo, assistant professor of medicine, is a researcher at the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. First author Ryan Dougherty is a graduate student studying under the direction of Dr. Dane B. Cook, professor of kinesiology and a co-author of the study, and Dr. Okonkwo. The research involved 93 members of the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention (WRAP), which with more than 1,500 registrants is the largest parental history Alzheimer’s risk study group in the world.

Researchers used accelerometers to measure the daily physical activity of participants, all of whom are in late middle-age and at high genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease, but presently show no cognitive impairment. Activity levels were measured for one week, quantified, and analyzed. This approach allowed scientists to determine the amount of time each subject spent engaged in light, moderate, and vigorous levels of physical activity. Light physical activity is equivalent to walking slowly, while moderate is equivalent to a brisk walk and vigorous a strenuous run. Data on the intensities of physical activity were then statistically analyzed to determine how they corresponded with glucose metabolism—a measure of neuronal health and activity—in areas of the brain known to have depressed glucose metabolism in people with Alzheimer’s disease. To measure brain glucose metabolism, researchers used a specialized imaging technique called 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET).

Moderate physical activity was associated with healthier (greater levels of) glucose metabolism in all brain regions analyzed. Researchers noted a step-wise benefit: subjects who spent at least 68 minutes per day engaged in moderate physical activity showed better glucose metabolism profiles than those who spent less time.

“This study has implications for guiding exercise ‘prescriptions’ that could help protect the brain from Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dougherty. “While many people become discouraged about Alzheimer’s disease because they feel there’s little they can do to protect against it, these results suggest that engaging in moderate physical activity may slow down the progression of the disease.”

“Seeing a quantifiable connection between moderate physical activity and brain health is an exciting first step,” said Okonkwo. He explained that ongoing research is focusing on better elucidating the neuroprotective effect of exercise against Alzheimer’s disease. To investigate this further, the team is recruiting individuals with concerns about their memory for a national clinical trial called EXERT to test whether physical exercise can slow the progression of early memory problems caused by Alzheimer’s disease.

In Umeå, Sweden on June 20–22, international experts on mosquito-borne diseases from WHO and Umeå University and elsewhere met with software developers from Microsoft to further advance early warnings and response systems for mosquito-borne epidemics. The goal of the three-day meetup was to develop a decision-making dashboard solution that helps health organisations to proactively meet the threat of future outbreaks of Zika, Dengue and Chikungunya.

“We have invited public health experts, epidemiologists, climate researchers, programmers and experts on data streaming to further develop an early warnings and response system for outbreaks of viral diseases spread by Aedes mosquitos. By gathering this group of leading experts, we hope to develop an integrated platform and a tailored dashboard,” said Joacim Rocklöv, research leader at the Unit of Epidemiology and Global Health, and the Umeå Centre for Global Health Research at Umeå University.

The objective with the meeting was to create a tool that, by presenting information in an easily comprehensible way, supports and informs decision-makers in healthcare to make the correct decisions on measures, at the right time. The dashboard tool will analyze streaming data on a number of disease transmission indicators based upon social media data, human mobility, weather and climate data, mosquito data and health data. Users of the tool should also be able to adjust algorithms and add datasets depending on variable or place-specific conditions.

“We would like to develop a user-friendly forecasting tool with a dashboard that in an accessible way predict epidemic risk in an area even before an outbreak materializes. Most of all, we’d like the tool to help change measures from being reactive into being proactive. In the long-term, we hope that this kind of forecasting tool can be useful for epidemic risk assessment around other diseases as well,” said Joacim Rocklöv.

At Umeå University, the Umeå Center for Global Health Research, Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS) and Umeå Center for Microbial Research (UCMR) were also involved in this cooperation with WHO/TDR and Microsoft.

There is a great deal of excitement around virtual reality (VR) headsets that display a computer-simulated world and augmented reality (AR) glasses that overlay computer-generated elements with the real world. Although AR and VR devices are starting to hit the market, they remain mostly a novelty because eye fatigue makes them uncomfortable to use for extended periods. A new type of 3D display could solve this long-standing problem by greatly improving the viewing comfort of these wearable devices.

“We want to replace currently used AR and VR optical display modules with our 3D display to get rid of eye fatigue problems,” said Liang Gao, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Our method could lead to a new generation of 3D displays that can be integrated into any type of AR glasses or VR headset.”

Gao and Wei Cui report their new optical mapping 3D display in The Optical Society (OSA) journal Optics Letters. Measuring only 1 x 2 inches, the new display module increases viewing comfort by producing depth cues that are perceived in much the same way we see depth in the real-world.

Overcoming eye fatigue

Today’s VR headsets and AR glasses present two 2D images in a way that cues the viewer’s brain to combine the images into the impression of a 3D scene. This type of stereoscopic display causes what is known as a vergence-accommodation conflict, which over time makes it harder for the viewer to fuse the images and causes discomfort and eye fatigue.

The new display presents actual 3D images using an approach called optical mapping. This is done by dividing a digital display into subpanels that each create a 2D picture. The subpanel images are shifted to different depths while the centers of all the images are aligned with one another. This makes it appear as if each image is at a different depth when a user looks through the eyepiece. The researchers also created an algorithm that blends the images, so that the depths appear continuous, creating a unified 3D image.

The key component for the new system is a spatial multiplexing unit that axially shifts sub-panel images to the designated depths while laterally shifting the centers of sub-panel images to the viewing axis. In the current setup, the spatial multiplexing unit is made of spatial light modulators that modify the light according to a specific algorithm developed by the researchers.

Although the approach would work with any modern display technology, the researchers used an organic light emitting diode (OLEDs) display, one of the newest display technologies to be used on commercial televisions and mobile devices. The extremely high resolution available from the OLED display ensured that each subpanel contained enough pixels to create a clear image.

“People have tried methods similar to ours to create multiple plane depths, but instead of creating multiple depth images simultaneously, they changed the images very quickly,” said Gao. “However, this approach comes with a trade-off in dynamic range, or level of contrast, because the duration each image is shown is very short.”

Creating depth cues

The researchers tested the device by using it to display a complex scene of parked cars and placing a camera in front of the eyepiece to record what the human eye would see. They showed that the camera could focus on cars that appeared far away while the foreground remained out of focus. Similarly, the camera could be focused on the closer cars while the background appeared blurry. This test confirmed that the new display produces focal cues that create depth perception much like the way humans perceive depth in a scene. This demonstration was performed in black and white, but the researchers say the technique could also be used to produce color images, although with a reduced lateral resolution.

The researchers are now working to further reduce the system’s size, weight and power consumption. “In the future, we want to replace the spatial light modulators with another optical component such as a volume holography grating,” said Gao. “In addition to being smaller, these gratings don’t actively consume power, which would make our device even more compact and increase its suitability for VR headsets or AR glasses.”

Although the researchers don’t currently have any commercial partners, they are in discussions with companies to see if the new display could be integrated into future AR and VR products.