(RFE/RL) — North Korea said on August 9 that it is “carefully examining” plans to launch a missile strike on the U.S. Pacific island of Guam hours after U.S. President Donald Trump warned Pyongyang that any threats would be met with “fire and fury.”

North Korea has said its goal is to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the United States and has shrugged off international sanctions aimed at forcing it to halt its nuclear and missile programs.

A strike by a medium-to-long range strategic ballistic missile could be launched toward Guam at any moment once leader Kim Jong Un makes a decision, a spokesman for the Korean People’s Army said in a statement carried by the North’s state-run KCNA news agency.

The spokesman said the strike would aim to “contain the U.S. major military bases on Guam.” Guam is a critical outpost for the United States to launch military missions in the Asia-Pacific region.

North Korea also accused the United States of preparing a “preventive war” which it said would turn into an “all-out war wiping out all the strongholds of enemies, including the U.S. mainland.”

Trump earlier had warned any threat by Pyongyang would be met “with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

By Gabriel Glickman*

It is a general law that every war is fought twice—first on the battlefield, then in the historiographical arena—and so it has been with the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war (or the Six-Day War as it is commonly known). No sooner had the dust settled on the battlefield than the Arabs and their Western partisans began rewriting the conflict’s narrative with aggressors turned into hapless victims and defenders turned into aggressors.

Jerusalem’s weeks-long attempt to prevent the outbreak of hostilities in the face of a rapidly tightening Arab noose is completely ignored or dismissed as a disingenuous ploy; by contrast, the extensive Arab war preparations with the explicit aim of destroying the Jewish state is whitewashed as a demonstrative show of force to deter an imminent Israeli attack on Syria.

It has even been suggested that Jerusalem lured the Arab states into war in order to expand its territory at their expense. So successful has this historiographical rewriting been that, fifty years after the war, these “alternative facts” have effectively become the received dogma, echoed by some of the most widely used college textbooks about the Middle East.[1]

Grandstanding Gone Wrong

The first step to absolving the Arab leaders of culpability for the conflict—especially Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who set in motion the course of events that led to war—was to present them as victims of their fully understandable, if highly unfortunate, overreaction to a Soviet warning of an imminent Israeli attack on Syria. Taking at face value Nasser’s postwar denial of any intention to attack Israel, educated Westerners—intellectuals, Middle East experts, and journalists—excused his dogged drive to war as an inescapable grandstanding aimed at shoring up his position in the face of relentless criticism by the conservative Arab states and the more militant elements within his administration.

“President Nasser had to take spectacular action in order to avert defeat in the struggle for leadership of the Arabs,” argued American historian Ernest Dawn shortly after the war. “If Egypt had not acted, the ‘conservatives’ would have wasted no time in pointing to the hero’s feet of clay.”[2]

This claim was amplified by Charles Yost, U.S. president Lyndon Johnson’s special envoy to the Middle East at the time of the crisis, as well as a string of early popular books on the war. Nasser had no intention of taking on Israel, they argued. The massive deployment of Egyptian troops in Sinai, in flagrant violation of the peninsula’s demilitarization since the 1956 war; the expulsion of the U.N. observers deployed on the Egyptian side of the border with Israel; the closure of the Tiran Strait to Israeli navigation; and the rapid formation of an all-Arab war coalition for what he pledged would be the final battle for Israel’s destruction were just posturing moves geared to deterring an Israeli attack on Syria and enhancing Nasser’s pan-Arab prestige. Unfortunately, goes the narrative, Jerusalem overreacted to these measures, if not exploited them to its self-serving ends, by attacking its peaceable Arab neighbors.[3]

While this thesis clearly does not hold water—Nasser realized within less than a day that no Israeli attack on Syria was in the offing yet continued his reckless escalation[4]—it has quickly become a common historiographical axiom regarding the war’s origin.

Thus, as ideologically divergent commentators as British journalist David Hirst and American military commentator Trevor Dupuy agreed on this view in the late 1970s. According to Dupuy, “it is very clear in retrospect that President Nasser did not in fact have any intention of precipitating war against Israel at that time.”[5] Hirst took this argument a step further: “Not only did Nasser lack the means to take on Israel, he did not have the intention either.”[6]

This assertion was reiterated almost verbatim in the coming decades by countless Middle East observers. Thus, for example, we have British journalist Patrick Seale claiming that “Nasser’s strategy was to attempt to frighten Israel into prudence, while making it clear that he would not attack first,”[7] and Princeton professor L. Carl Brown arguing that “Nasser surely had not intended to seek a showdown with Israel in 1967.”[8] As late as 2013, American legal scholar John Quigley was still voicing this misclaim:

Nasser had reversed Egypt’s 1956 losses with his action on shipping and with the removal of UNEF. If he could avoid an Israeli attack, he would have successfully stood up for the Arab cause, cost-free… Any indication that Egypt might attack was lacking.[9]

Indeed, so prevalent is the belief that Nasser did not intend to use his forces against Israel that anti-Israel extremist Norman Finkelstein confidently concluded that this was one of “only two issues in the otherwise highly contentious literature on the June 1967 war on which a consensus seems to exist.”[10]

Most Israeli academic studies of the war, both traditional and revisionist, have invariably subscribed to this thesis in apparent deference to the prevailing consensus in the Middle Eastern studies milieu.[11] This conformity seems to have paid off as illustrated by the favorable reception of Michael Oren’s Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East—the last decade’s most salient Israeli account of the war. “Had Egypt intended to attack Israel immediately, the army’s advances into Sinai could have been conducted as quietly as possible,” Oren wrote. He continued:

Nasser sent a double message to Israel: Egypt had no aggressive designs, but neither would it suffer any Israeli aggression against Syria.[12]

While writing the book, Oren was a researcher at the conservative Shalem Center and was later appointed Washington ambassador by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So if an Israeli scholar on the right-wing end of the spectrum can portray the Jewish state as equally culpable for the war, rather than as the intended target of an imminent all-Arab aggression, while also vastly understating Nasser’s role in precipitating the conflict, and if this account is warmly endorsed by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, then surely it must be true.^[13]

Who Is to Blame?

Some analysts have gone a step further in substituting victim for aggressor by blaming Jerusalem (rather than Cairo) for triggering the prewar crisis. Even the eminent French intellectual Raymond Aron, by no means an enemy of Israel, wondered during the war whether “General [Yitzhak] Rabin’s threats against Syria [led] President Nasser to fear an American plot of which he would be the next victim.”[14] But Nasser was certainly aware that there was no Israeli threat to Syria, and Rabin made no such threat. Rather, his alleged comments had been mixed up with an off-the-record press briefing by the head of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Yariv, in which Yariv stressed the need for “an operation designed to warn the Syrians [and Egyptians] of the dangers of an all-out confrontation, not an operation that would itself be the confrontation.”[15]

Still, the dogmatic denizens of Middle Eastern studies were not bothered by such factual niceties. Richard Parker, a veteran U.S. career diplomat in the Middle East and editor of the Middle East Journal, interchangeably blamed Israeli security reprisals against Syria for the slide to war, tying them to the false Soviet warning of an imminent Israeli attack against Damascus.[16] In another influential account, William Quandt, a U.S. government official and Middle Eastern studies professor, inexorably leads his readers to the foregone conclusion that Jerusalem, against Washington’s better advice, took the first shots of the war[17]—when, in reality, the road to war had been paved by the Arab states’ ganging up on Israel since mid-May and their vows to destroy it. This absolution of Nasser (and the Arab states more generally) creates the impression that the Israelis wanted war while the Arabs did not. Adding to the high profile and assumed historiographical veracity of these two accounts was the authors’ access to inside information in their past government capacities, something that was readily acknowledged by both authors, as was Quandt’s alleged access (while in government) to documents prior to their release by the U.S. archives.^[18]

Another official who considered Jerusalem mostly culpable for events leading to the war was Gen. Odd Bull, a former chief of staff of the Norwegian Air Force who was later appointed chief of staff of the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), tasked with monitoring the Syrian-Israeli border. Writing in his 1976 memoirs, he

found public opinion [in Norway] regarded the Palestine problem almost entirely from the Israeli point of view … this was a problem with which I had been living for many years, and one which, as I had become very much aware, had at least two sides to it.

Bull, however, proceeded to criticize Israel alone in his account of the tumultuous years preceding the Six-Day War.[19] These accusations are all the more bizarre given that it was Bull who passed some of Israel’s secret messages to Jordan’s King Hussein upon the outbreak of hostilities on the Egyptian front, pleading with him to stay out of the fighting and pledging that in such an eventuality no harm would be visited upon his kingdom.[20]

Some of Israel’s supporters also shifted historical responsibility from Nasser to the Jewish state. Thus, the eminent historian Walter Laqueur agreed with Finkelstein that Israel’s use of reprisal raids against Arab states in response to periodic terror attacks from the latter’s territory ultimately made the Jewish state responsible for Nasser’s actions in May 1967. As he put it:

Israel’s policy of retaliation had lately exacerbated the conflict. But for Samu and the battle of 7 April, there would not have been a war in 1967… Then, in a few years’ time, some Arab governments might be readier to resign themselves to Israel’s existence.^[21]

Andrew and Leslie Cockburn—known for their harsh criticism of Israel—and Winston and Randolph Churchill—labelled as “friendly commentator[s] of the Six Day War” by Abba Eban^[22]—concurred on the likely existence of secret U.S. support for Israel despite President Johnson’s meek public display of support.^[23]

In fact, the Johnson administration was far from resolute in its “secret support” of Israel. To the contrary, it even considered the hypothetical scenario of taking military action against the Jewish state. In the words of the Contingency Coordinating Committee, set up immediately after Nasser moved his troops into Sinai:

We find that there is a vast array of possible contingencies that could develop out of the current situation… The use of our forces against Israel, even under U.N. cover, would certainly arouse domestic protest except in extreme cases of Israeli provocation or aggression.[24]

The eminent historian Bernard Lewis found it reasonable to wonder whether the Israelis were in some ways culpable for the events that led to war:

The wars of 1948 and of 1973 were unmistakably launched by the decision of Arab governments… Responsibility for the war of 1967 is more difficult to allocate. As more information becomes available about the sequence of events leading to the opening of hostilities, it seems that the participants were like characters in a Greek tragedy, in which at every stage the various actors had no choice but to take the next step on the path to war.^[25]

A U.S.-Israeli Conspiracy?

During the run-up to war, the Egyptian state-controlled media repeatedly accused Washington of “seeking excuses for an armed intervention against the Arab nation to support Israel,”^[26] with Nasser himself claiming that “Israel today is the United States”^[27]—effectively equating war against Israel with fighting the United States. Once the extraordinary magnitude of the Arab defeat transpired, the most implausible conspiracy theories were swiftly spawned. Foremost among these was the claim that Israel did not actually win the war; rather the United States won it on its behalf, both by arming the Jewish state to its teeth—although France was Israel’s main arms supplier at the time—and by destroying the Egyptian air force. It has even been argued that in triggering the war, Jerusalem was merely a pawn in Washington’s ploy to divert American public opinion from the unwinnable war in Vietnam.[28]

The notion quickly gained its dedicated subscribers. Thus, the idea was put forward in a biography of Nasser by the veteran British diplomat Anthony Nutting[29] as well as in a collection of essays on the Arab perspective on the war, including an essay, “The Arab Portrayed,” in which Edward Said appears to have set up the prototype for his Orientalism book.[30] As late as 2008, the American historian Douglas Little attributed Nasser’s defeat to the fictional collusion between Washington and Jerusalem, which enabled “Israel’s swift seizure of the Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, with the blessing of Lyndon Johnson.”[31]

Israel’s “Unfinished Business”

But the story does not end here. In the eyes of a growing number of Western observers of the Middle East, the alleged Israeli machinations against Syria, whether or not in cahoots with Washington, were not related to actual developments on the ground (e.g., the all-Arab attempt to divert the headwaters of the Jordan River so as to deny them to Israel). Rather, such maneuvers were a vital link in a long chain of aggressions stemming from the Jewish state’s very existence as a colonial outpost in the midst of the Arab world. David Hirst gave this thesis a name: “Greater Israel.”[32]

The first comprehensive account of the Six-Day War in this vein, by the prominent Marxist French Orientalist Maxime Rodinson, was published as early as 1968. According to Rodinson, the war was all but inevitable since Israel’s very existence was at odds with the greater ebb and flow of the Middle East. Unlike the “accidental war” theory of shared Arab-Israeli culpability, or even those who blamed Jerusalem for sparking the crisis leading to war, Rodinson unabashedly claimed the existence of a secret Israeli plan to trigger a war even as he occasionally showed some sympathy for the historic plight of Jews.^[33] As he put it:

It is difficult not to give some credit to the subsidiary hypothesis: that the situation was stirred up by the Israeli activist clique as part of a manoeuvre to provoke an Arab reaction which would force Israel to assume an “energetic” policy and bring them back into power [i.e., Ben-Gurion].^[34]

Rodinson’s extreme anti-Israel animosity is further revealed in the Jewish state’s denigration as an alien colonial imposition on a hapless native population and his appeal for the removal of Israel’s Jewish identity (i.e., its effective elimination) in favor of a binational state as a means to avoid more wars in the future.^[35] While Rodinson’s thesis of a colonial-settler Jewish state by its very existence impeding the prospects of a peaceful Middle East was hardly original, echoing as it did longstanding Marxist precepts[36] and more recent Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) propaganda,[37] his book resonated over time, helping to plant the seeds of the “postcolonial paradigm” that was to gain preeminence in Middle Eastern studies in future decades.

Following in Rodinson’s footsteps, some historians took it upon themselves to be deliberately subjective in their work in order to correct a historical narrative that they viewed as having been biased in favor of the victor (i.e., Israel), hence harmful to the public’s understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that came to the forefront as a result of the war. Abdullah Schleifer, for example, an American Jewish convert to Islam, journalist, and eyewitness observer of the war, argued in his 1972 book, The Fall of Jerusalem, that the victory of the Jewish state was mistakenly described by early accounts as a “miracle” when it was actually the culmination of long-standing Israeli aggression in the region.[38]

Similarly, it has become commonplace among scholars to depict the 1967 war as a premeditated campaign by Israeli leaders to expand beyond the country’s borders. Thus, for example, one of the most recent book-length histories—Quigley’s 2013 account—contains the following conclusion about Israel’s, not Nasser’s, ultimate culpability for the war: “The June 1967 war, rather than serving as precedent for preventative war, should be the poster child for pretextual invocation of force used in advance [by Israel].”[39] A similar explanation was offered by other scholars.[40]

The Oxford historian Albert Hourani endorsed this conspiracy theory about the war’s origin:

Israel knew itself to be militarily and politically stronger than its Arab neighbours … in the face of threats from those neighbours, the best course was to show its strength. This might lead to a more stable agreement than it had been able to achieve; but behind this there lay the hope of conquering the rest of Palestine and ending the unfinished business of 1948.[41]

This assertion does not even stand a simple scrutiny of the prewar timeline. The West Bank had not been implicated in the evolving Egyptian-Israeli crisis before King Hussein joined Nasser’s bandwagon some two weeks after its flare-up; and even then, had the king heeded Jerusalem’s secret appeals on June 5 to stay out of the war, this territory would have remained under Jordanian control.[42]

Yet, if a leading historian of the Middle East could endorse such an ahistorical travesty, it is hardly surprising that other similarly prominent historians, whose expertise lies outside the Middle East, fell for this conspiracy theory. For example, Tony Judt, a British historian of Europe, wrote that “the war of 1967 is best regarded in the light in which Israel’s generals saw it at the time: as unfinished business left over from the War of Independence.”[43]

Conclusion

They say that history is written by the victor, but the 1967 war has been rewritten by the losers and their international champions. Just as the failed pan-Arab attempt to destroy Israel at birth has been transformed into a “catastrophe” (or Nakba) inflicted on the unfortunate and peaceable Arabs by an aggressive foreign invader, so the stillborn attempt to complete the unfinished business of 1948 has been turned into yet another story of Arab victimhood, though it is unclear to what extent this narrative has been accepted by Western publics at large.

The degree to which Western historiography has increasingly portrayed Israel’s preemptive strike against Egypt as an act of aggression rather than of self-defense leaves one wondering why Western scholars cannot accept that a proud and independent Arab leader was capable of making grand
moves on the global stage. The British historian Elie Kedourie once commented that “the threat to use military force is not, in principle, different from the use of force itself.”[44] Nasser, followed by the heads of most Arab states, not to mention PLO chairman Ahmad Shuqeiri, indulged in weeks of extermination threats vis-à-vis Israel. It is not the job of the historian to play the role of psychologist and attempt to substitute victimhood for malignant incompetence and shortsightedness.

About the author:
*Gabriel Glickman, a California-based researcher, holds a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Studies from King’s College London. He is currently working on a book provisionally entitled Western Historiography of the Six Day War: Rethinking the Road to War.

Source:
This article was published in the Middle East Quarterly’s Summer Edition 2017.

Notes:
[1] See, for example, Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History with Documents, 5th ed. (Boston and New York: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 2004), p. 282; Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), p. 387; Cheryl A. Rubenberg, ed., Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Vol. 3, R-Z (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2010), p. 1572; William L. Cleveland with Martin Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East (Boulder: Westview Press, 2016), pp. 320-5.

[2] Ernest C. Dawn, “The Egyptian Remilitarization of Sinai,” Journal of Contemporary History, July 1968, p. 213.

[3] William Stevenson, Israeli Victory (London: Corgi Books, 1967), p. 28; Charles W. Yost, “How the Arab-Israeli War Began,” Foreign Affairs, Jan. 1968, p. 317-8; Maxime Rodinson, Israel and the Arabs (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), pp. 198-200; Roderick MacLeish, The Sun Stood Still: Perspectives on the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London: Macdonald and Co., 1968), p. 18.

[4] Efraim Karsh, “The Six-Day War: An Inevitable Conflict,” Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2017.

[5] Trevor N. Dupuy, Elusive Victory: The Arab-Israeli Wars, 1947-1974 (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), p. 229-30.

[6] David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East (London: Faber and Faber, 1977), p. 211.

[7] Patrick Seale, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 131.

[8] L. Carl Brown, “Nasser and the June 1967 War,” in S. Seikaly, R. Baalbaki, and P. Dodd, eds., Quest for Understanding: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Memory of Malcolm H. Kerr (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1991), p. 134.

[9] John Quigley, The Six-Day War and Israeli Self-Defense: Questioning the Legal Basis for Preventative War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 44-5. See, also, Donald Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days that Changed the Middle East (New York: Linden Press, 1984), p. 196; Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 139.

[10] Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (London: Verso, 1995), p. 134.

[11] See, for example, Raymond Cohen, “Intercultural Communication between Israel and Egypt: Deterrence Failure before the Six-Day War,” Review of International Studies, Jan. 1988, p. 10; Ben D. Mor, “Nasser’s Decision-making in the 1967 Middle East Crisis: A Rational-Choice Explanation,” Journal of Peace Research, 4 (1991): 368; Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (New York: Norton, 2001), pp. 236-7; Jesse Ferris, Nasser’s Gamble: How Intervention in Yemen Caused the Six-Day War and the Decline of Egyptian Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), pp. 267-8.

[12] Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002), pp. 58-9.

[13] See, for example, David Remnick, “The Seventh Day: Why the Six Day War is still being fought,” The New Yorker, May 28, 2007, review of Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007); Ali Gharib, “Michael Oren and the End of Liberal Zionism,” The Nation, June 25, 2015.

[14] Raymond Aron, De Gaulle, Israel, and the Jews (London: Andre Deutsch, 1969), p. 72.

[15] Richard Parker, ed., The Six Day War: A Retrospective (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), p. 32, emphasis in original.

[16] See, for example, Richard Parker, The Politics of Miscalculation in the Middle East (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 16, 20, 41, 60, 98.

[17] William B. Quandt, Decade of Decisions: American Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967-1976 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), p. 60.

[18] Ibid., pp. vii-viii; Parker, The Politics of Miscalculation, p. xi; Parker, The Six Day War, p. 205.

[19] Odd Bull, War and Peace in the Middle East: The Experience and Views of a UN Observer (London: Leo Cooper, 1976), p. xv.

[20] Oren, Six Days of War, p. 184.

[21] Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, pp. 125-7; Walter Laqueur, The Road to War 1967: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), p. 233.

[22] Abba Eban, An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1977), p. 373.

[23] Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, p. 152; Randolph S. and Winston S. Churchill, The Six Day War (London: Heinemann, 1967), p. 70.

[24] “Contingency Planning on Arab-Israeli Conflict, May 22, 1967,” U.S. National Archives (USNA), College Park, Md., Middle East Crisis Files 1967, Box 2, emphasis in original.

[25] Bernard Lewis, The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (New York: Scribner, 1995), pp. 364-5.

[26] Radio Cairo, May 24, 1967, as cited in Foreign Broadcasts Information Service (FBIS), May 24, 1967, B6. See also idem, FBIS, May 24, 1967 (B7), FBIS, May 26, 1967, FBIS, May 26, 1967 (B1).

[27] Ibid., May 26, 1967, FBIS, May 29, 1967 (B2).

[28] See, for example, Muhammad Hassanein Heikal, Nasser: The Cairo Documents (London: New English Library, 1972), ch. 7; idem, Sphinx and Commissar: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Influence in the Middle East (London: Collins, 1978), ch. 10; idem, 1967: Al-Infijar (Cairo: Ahram, 1990), pp. 317-30, 371-80, 419-25, 490-500. For Nasser’s political manipulation of the alleged U.S. machinations vis-à-vis Egypt, see, for example, “President Nasser’s Speech at Cairo University on February 22, 1967,” FCO 39/245, The British National Archives, Kew, London; Minutes by D.J. Speares, Feb. 24, 1967, FCO 39/245, British National Archives; Letter from Fletcher to Unwin, No. 1036/67, Mar. 2, 1967, FCO 39/245, British National Archives.

[29] Anthony Nutting, Nasser (New York: Dutton, 1972), chaps. 19-20.

[30] Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, ed., The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of June 1967: An Arab Perspective (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), pp. 1-2, 5.

[31] Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008), p. 32.

[32] Hirst, “Greater Israel,” The Gun and the Olive Branch, ch. 7.

[33] See, for example, Rodinson, Israel and the Arabs, p. 230.

[34] Ibid., p. 188.

[35] Maxime Rodinson, Israel: A Colonial Settler State? (New York: Monad Press, 1973), pp. 219, 234-5.

[36] Isaac Deutscher, “Interview with Isaac Deutscher: On the Israeli-Arab War,” New Left Review, July-Aug. 1967, pp. 30-45.

[37] Fayez A. Sayegh, “Zionist Colonialism in Palestine,” Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center, Beirut, 1965.

[38] Abdullah Schleifer, The Fall of Jerusalem (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), p. 102.

[39] Quigley, The Six-Day War and Israeli Self-Defense, p. 192.

[40] See, for example, Roland Popp, “Stumbling Decidedly into the Six Day War,” Middle East War, Spring 2006, pp. 281-309; Ersun N. Kurtulus, “The Notion of a ‘Preemptive War’: The Six Day War Revisited,” Middle East Journal, Spring 2007, pp. 220-38.

[41] Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (London: Faber, 1991), p. 413. For criticism of Hourani’s misrepresentation of the 1967 war, see Daniel Pipes’ review of his book in The Wall Street Journal, Apr. 5, 1991.

[42] Oren, Six Days of War, p. 184.

[43] Tony Judt, “After Victory: Review of Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael Oren,” The New Republic, July 29, 2002.

[44] Elie Kedourie, Islam in the Modern World and Other Stories (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1980), p. 187.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan is Manchester United’s European specialist and could emerge as one of the key men in Skopje when the stars from Old Trafford and the Bernabeu come out to play, the English club’s official website says in a fresh article.

While all eyes may be on David De Gea, Paul Pogba, Romelu Lukaku, Luka Modric, Gareth Bale, Karim Benzema, Cristiano Ronaldo and too many others to list, the UEFA Super Cup could be the perfect platform for the Reds’ Armenian to show again why he belongs in such company.

Mkhitaryan was magnificent during last term’s Europa League-winning campaign and looks a good bet to pick up the inaugural individual award for the competition in Monaco later this month. His ability to score vital goals, particularly away from home, illustrated a knack for arriving in the box at the right time. In Stockholm, against Ajax, his wonderfully executed finish meant the celebrations could start early among the United faithful.

“As the manager tweaks his tactics, positions will continue to evolve over time but it is worth pondering if Mkhitaryan will be asked to be a dynamic force in not only showing off his sublime dribbling skills, but also working hard to get into goalscoring positions. It is something he did regularly in the Europa League and any slight change in role will surely make this even more common,” ManUtd.com said.

“So when the spotlight falls on a galaxy of stars at the Philip II Stadium, do not be surprised if the man who is the key to exploiting any deficiencies in Real Madrid’s defence, is United’s leading scorer in Europe last season. If he looks as dangerous as he did in Dublin, the Champions League holders may need to keep him in close check.”

The need for a review of the pro-democracy constitutional scheme was felt during the interregnum that followed the exit of President Nasheed on February 2012 and fresh polls, in late 2013.

By N. Sathiya Moorthy

With the course of politics reaching a point-of-no-return, and the near decade-long experience with the pro-democracy Constitution of 2008 not ensuring cure for the nation’s autocracy ills, there may be an urgent need for reviewing the same without further loss of time. How it should be gone about could become yet another point of contention, but the need for an open-ended national discourse bereft of personality-centric approaches could provide a way out, in the interim at the very least.

The problem with the present Constitution is two-fold, if not more. One, the divided political opposition to then President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, in office for 30 years, drafted a Constitution believing that he would ensure a fake victory in a multiparty democracy. Hence, they provided for ‘safety valves’ by ensuring greater parliamentary oversight than might have been required. When Gayoom played along for most parts, and also lost the presidential polls, the shoe ended up being worn in the wrong foot.

This was also the second part of the problem. Having become President, MDP’s Mohammed ‘Anni’ Nasheed faced a Parliament where he did not have a majority but a House that had superior powers than the Executive. He would not play along. Instead, in the name of democracy, and as the sole saviour of democracy in the country, both President Nasheed and his MDP, provoked Parliament enough, and paid a heavy price for it. Though there were enough listeners to their cry of foul play outside the country, inside Maldives they lost ground possibly faster than inside Parliament, or People’s Majlis.

Today, a situation has arisen when Yameen’s re-election by November 2018 is taken for granted, also because he has ensured that no serious contender could throw the hat into the ring. This should exclude the likes of presidents Nasheed and Gayoom, and also Jumhooree Party leader Gasim Ibrahim — all of them jointly opposed to Yameen. All three have been disqualified under the law, through the proper course, and in connivance with the Yameen leadership, one way or the other.

Individual centric

The question thus arises as the course for Maldives to follow if it had to restore democracy, and if so what kind of democracy would suit the nation, given the experience of the past years. Though claiming to be institutions-centric, the Maldivian experimentation with democracy has remained individual-centric.

It was/is unavoidable still, if one were to consider that the spirit of democracy is centred on popular elections, and whoever wins such an election would gain an upperhand. It is unfortunate that it is in the Maldivian DNA for leaders to be ‘autocratic’ in ways more than in any other democracy, old or new, Islamic or not.

One way is for the existing crop of leaders to reform themselves. It is easier said than done. The other way is to pass on the mantle, and deliberately so, to GenNext through a system that is more representative and more informed, with institutional mechanisms that are as much democratic as are supposed to be and intended to be. It has to be part-voluntary, part-compulsory, mandated by new laws, which could end up becoming anti-democratic to begin with.

Under the existing scheme, ‘independent institutions’ like the Supreme Court, Election Commission and the anti-corruption watch-dog all came under severe strain, the process started by none other than the first ‘democracy President’ in Mohammed Nasheed. If for instance, the Yameen leadership is now being unilaterally criticised for summoning the army to secure Parliament from protesting opposition MPs, it is also true that the Nasheed presidency did not (want to) create a separate Marshals scheme for the People’s Majlis, almost for the same reason.

All party meet?

The list is endless, but it’s all in the past, yet continuing into the present and threatening the Maldivian democratic future, if any left. The nation, starting with the government, should consider convening an all-party conference to discuss and debate constitutional correctives and political initiatives that would ensure restoration of democracy — or institutionalisation of democracy almost from the scratch, to be precise.

The need for a review of the pro-democracy constitutional scheme was indeed felt during the interregnum that followed the (forced) exit of President Nasheed on February 2012 and fresh polls, when due in late 2013. Forgotten is the initial work done by the All Party Conference, with Ahmed Mujtaba as the convenor, and UNDP experts facilitating the talks that never really took off.

Efforts by visiting Indian Foreign Secretary of the time, Ranjan Mathai, to help the all-party talks revived met with resistance from minor parties that played truant, in turn.

As if by conspiracy of convenience, did the MDP and the minor parties sent in responsible leaders to represent them at the talks. Thus for any effort of the kind to succeed now, it has to be preceded by iron-clad guarantees that all political parties need a solution to the present deadlock, and that they are serious and sincere about it, with openended aims and goals. That is a tall order in present-day Maldives.

It would be tempting under the circumstances for the Yameen leadership to try and revive the farcical all-party talks that it had initiated at one time. Starting off as a genuine effort at least in form, soon it degenerated to anything but that as the government insisted on one-on-one negotiations with individual parties rather than keep it all-party, as initially promised.

Worse still, the original chair, then Home Minister, Umar Naseer, is now out of the government. His successor, incumbent Fisheries Minister, Dr. Mohammed Shainee, is seen even less impartial than the predecessor, who is back in the opposition, aspiring to be their common presidential candidate in 2018.

In present day Maldives, any self respecting person with the required qualifications of heart and head would shy away from becoming the chair/ convenor of any future all-party initiative of the kind. If nothing else, they are all well aware of the ease with which rival parties ended up scuttling the genuine efforts of the convenors in the past, and yet end up blaming the latter for the failure of the all-party talks to make any headway at any point in time.

JP’s Gasim Ibrahim was then accepted as the chairperson of the special majlis but today there is again a shortage of an all acceptable persona to don the mantle.

The government by having got six MPs out of 10 defectors disqualified by the Election Commission, there would be additional unwillingness on the part of the combined opposition to take that route, at least until fresh elections are held for those vacant constituencies. Should the opposition win a majority, if not all vacant seats, then the Yameen leadership might lost whatever enthusiasm that it might have had for a fresh look at the Constitution, now or later.

Where from here is the immediate question. It might suit the opposition to keep criticising Yameen by the hour and by the day, and lead the nation to fresh presidential polls in November 2018 — and then, continue crying foul, with no one being any wiser about taking the next logical step to a political solution. It would suit the Yameen leadership fine, as the situation on the ground would not have changed.

Yet, the government could be faced with fresh problems if it were to lose all six parliamentary bypolls and the opposition gains an upperhand inside the House, to be able to challenge the Yameen leadership. The real probability of Speaker Abdulla Maseeh losing in a no-trust vote, followed by the possibility of Yameen too facing an impeachment motion, requiring two-third majority could make the leadership sit up and take notice.

But by then, the opposition could have tasted victory and changed tacks even more. This is thus the time for Maldives and Maldivians to act, in and for a political order that conforms to Maldivian political tastes and preferences but with democracy as the driving force and goal — where individuals are a means to an end and not an end in their own self-serving selves.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif criticized three European countries for issuing a joint statement with the United States against Iran’s recent test-launch of a satellite rocket.

In a meeting with the European Union’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, in Tehran on Saturday, Zarif said the decision by the European states to join the US in putting out the statement last week had been “a move in the wrong direction.”

He told the high-ranking EU official that the administration of US President Donald Trump was attempting to block the Islamic Republic from benefiting from the deal, which he said was a violation of the text of the agreement.

Last month, Iran successfully launched its domestically-manufactured Simorgh satellite carrier, whose mission is to put Iranian satellites into the orbit.

Britain, France, and Germany then joined the US in condemning the test, which they described as having been “inconsistent” with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231.

That resolution was adopted in July 2015 to endorse a nuclear agreement between Iran and six other countries, including the three European states. But the resolution does not prohibit missile or rocket launches by Iran, which is merely “called upon” by the resolution to refrain from activities related to ballistic missiles “designed to be capable of” carrying nuclear warheads.

Iran says it has no such warheads and no such missiles and has put its nuclear program under enhanced international monitoring as part of the nuclear deal. Iran says thus that its missile activities do not breach Resolution 2231.

Iran has been complaining that the US, as another party to the deal, has been seeking to sabotage international — including European — trade with Iran. This is while according to the deal, the US and the EU must “refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalization of trade and economic relations with Iran.”

The US has also imposed sanctions on Iran over the country’s missile activities, which the Islamic Republic says are for defensive purposes and not banned.

In his meeting with Mogherini, Zarif called on the EU to be vigilant in the face of Trump’s attempts to undermine the deal “at Iran’s cost.”

Mogherini, who is the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, said for her part that the international community shared interests with Iran in implementing the deal.

She also stressed that the EU strongly supported the nuclear accord, adding that the bloc was trying to keep the US on board.

Zarif and Mogherini also underlined the need for the boosting of the relations between Iran and Europe in different areas, especially in the economic field.

High Representative Mogherini is in Tehran to attend the inaugural ceremony of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Her participation is interpreted as a signal to the US of the EU’s commitment to relations with Tehran and to the nuclear deal in particular

(Civil.Ge) — Russia’s President Vladimir Putin met the Moscow-backed Abkhaz leader Raul Khajimba in Bichvinta (Pitsunda), a town in the occupied region, on August 8 to discuss Moscow’s ties with Sokhumi in the fields of defense, police, economy and healthcare.

The meeting came on the ninth anniversary of the Russian-Georgian war, a week after Vice President Mike Pence visited Georgia.

“I am happy to be in Abkhazia, on the Abkhaz soil,” Vladimir Putin told Khajimba in his remarks before the meeting. “We have a very special relationship with Abkhazia: we provide a reliable guarantee of security and independence of Abkhazia, and I am sure that this will continue in the future as well.”

Speaking on the meeting agenda, Vladimir Putin said the two would discuss defense cooperation, including the development of the joint Abkhaz-Russian military unit and the joint information-coordination center, a 20-member unit of Russian and local police agencies, the establishment of which caused controversy in the region.

“It, of course, is a very important component [of the Russian-Abkhaz relations]: both the citizens of Abkhazia and the guests, regardless of where they come from, must understand and feel that they are secure,” Putin noted on the joint center, expressing his hopes that the combined work of police agencies “would increase the level of security of tourists” in Abkhazia.

In his remarks before the meeting, Raul Khajimba expressed gratitude to Vladimir Putin for his personal, as well as Russia’s support to Sokhumi and said that “thanks to the Russian Federation, Abkhazia is advancing on its path to social-economic development, infrastructure-building, and is resolving the defense and security questions.”

The Abkhaz leader touched upon the information-coordination center as well, saying that the agreement on its establishment was ratified by the local legislature and that the institution “will be an important instrument in the fight against crime.” “It is crucial for Abkhazia that its residents and guests live in comfortable conditions,” Khajimba also noted, referring to the wide-spread concerns of locals and tourists in Abkhazia over the region’s growing crime rate.

Khajimba also said that August 8 is “a memorable date for the Republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia: on this day, the Georgian army started a large-scale operation, and the decisive actions that were taken by the Russian leadership made it possible to preserve the Republic of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and, of course, enabled the further recognition of our small states, for which we are very grateful.”

Speaking after the meeting, Vladimir Putin said “a lot of work has been done and important results have been achieved in strengthening the statehood of the [two] republics” since Russia’s recognition of Georgia’s two regions nine years ago.

“Abkhazia is an important partner and an ally of Russia, with which we share a common history and a spiritual kinship. Russia will continue to contribute to the socio-economic development of Abkhazia, ensure its security, and provide full political support.”

President Putin spoke on Russia’s financial support in the region, including in tourism, agriculture and food production. “The Republic of Abkhazia has very good opportunities to further increase the supply of products to the Russian market, considering the restrictions [imposed by the Russian Federation] on agricultural products from certain countries,” he added.

Putin also noted that the Abkhaz leader raised the issue of easing the customs clearance procedures and the work of the phytosanitary services, where the two “have certain ideas that will be realized in the near future.”

The issue of the joint information-coordination center resurfaced again, with Vladimir Putin saying that its objective is “to increase the effectiveness of joint [Abkhaz-Russian] efforts in countering crime.” “This is very important, including for ensuring safety of Russian tourists in Abkhazia.”

The Russian President said the two touched upon the security situation in the South Caucasus as well, saying that the Russian military base in Abkhazia “continues to play a key role in ensuring stability in the region.”

The Abkhaz leader spoke on the meeting details as well. He said the meeting “was held in traditionally friendly and constructive atmosphere and was extremely useful in terms of common interests of Abkhazia and Russia.”

On the joint information-coordination center, Khajimba said the new unit “will be a serious and effective tool in helping to address the issue of combating crime.” He also said work continues on establishing “a common framework of defense and security,” and on coordinating external policies of Moscow and Sokhumi.

“The Republic of Abkhazia was, is and will be a steadfast ally and a friend of Russia. I am confident that the productive Abkhaz-Russian cooperation, based on the principles of alliance and strategic partnership, will continue to further develop for the benefit of our peoples.

As part of the visit, Russian Healthcare Minister Veronika Skvortsova and her Abkhaz “counterpart” Tamaz Tsakhnakia signed an agreement extending Russia’s compulsory medical insurance program to Russian citizens living in Abkhazia.

Tbilisi’s Reaction

The Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the “visit” of the Russian President “to the occupied Abkhazia region in violation of the Georgian state border,” saying that it “represents a continuation of Moscow’s deliberate policy against Georgia,” and “blatantly infringes the fundamental norms and principles of international law.”

“Such action at the 9th anniversary of the Russia-Georgia war serves for legitimization of forceful change of borders of the sovereign state through military aggression, ethnic cleansing and occupation,” the Ministry stated and added that “by this step, the Kremlin tries in vain to support and legitimize its occupation regimes.”

The Foreign Ministry called upon the Russian Federation “to cease its provocative actions against the Georgian statehood and respect the territorial integrity of the sovereign state,” and appealed to the international community “to duly assess Moscow’s aggressive steps and take effective measures to ensure that the Russian Federation fulfills its international obligations, including the August 12 2008 Ceasefire Agreement.”

A new study by scientists at Portland State University and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder has found that the effects of climate change, which are apparent in other parts of the Antarctic continent, are not yet observed for glaciers in the western Ross Sea coast.

Published online ahead of print for the journal Geology, the study found that the pattern of glacier advance and retreat has not changed along the western Ross Sea coast, in contrast to the rapidly shrinking glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula.

The western Ross Sea is a key region of Antarctica, home to a complex and diverse ocean ecosystem, and the location of several Antarctic research stations including the U.S. McMurdo Station, the largest on the continent.

The research team compiled historic maps and a variety of satellite images spanning the last half-century to examine glacier activity along more than 700 kilometers of coastline. The NASA-U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat series satellites were particularly useful, including the newest Landsat 8 instrument, launched in 2013.

The scientists examined 34 large glaciers for details of ice flow, extent, and calving events (formation of icebergs). Although each glacier showed advances and retreats, there was no overall pattern over time or with latitude.

The results suggest that changes in the drivers of glacier response to climate — air temperature, snowfall, and ocean temperatures — have been minimal over the past half century in this region.

The study was part of a National Science Foundation and U.S. Geological Survey study and was motivated by previous work documenting significant glacier retreat and ice shelf collapse along the coastline of the Antarctic Peninsula. The region’s ongoing changes were highlighted recently with the cracking and separation of a large iceberg from the Larsen C Ice Shelf.

Earlier studies had documented little change in the western Ross coastline prior to 1995, and the new study both confirmed the earlier work and extended the analysis to the present time.

This work underscores the complexity of Antarctic climate change and glacier response.

Human-computer interactions, such as playing video games, can have a negative impact on the brain, says a new Canadian study published in Molecular Psychiatry. For over 10 years, scientists have told us that action video game players exhibit better visual attention, motor control abilities and short-term memory. But, could these benefits come at a cost?

In a series of studies Dr. Véronique Bohbot (Douglas Mental Health University Institute; CIUSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal) and Dr. Greg West (Université de Montréal) demonstrate that the way that action (first-person shooter) video game players use their brains to navigate changes the impact the games have on their nervous system.

“Thanks to navigation tests and brain scans, our studies show that response learners, those players using their brain’s autopilot and reward system to navigate, experienced grey matter loss in their hippocampus after playing action video games for 90 hours. The hippocampus is the key structure involved in spatial memory (orientation) and episodic memory (autobiographical events) within the brain. On the contrary, spatial learners, those using their hippocampus to navigate, increased their grey matter after playing for the same amount of time,” says first author Dr. Greg West, researcher and associate professor at the Université de Montréal.

“The same amount of screen time with 3D-platform games caused only increases within this system across all participants.”

These new neuroimaging studies confirm the previous work published by Dr. West and Dr. Bohbot in 2015.

“Actually, action video game players are nearly twice more prone to be categorized as response learners (83%) compared to non-video game players (43%). This matters a lot when you know how important the hippocampus is for a healthy cognition,” explains co-author Dr. Véronique Bohbot, researcher at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and associate professor at McGill University.

People with lower amounts of grey matter in the hippocampus are known to be at increased risks of developing neuropsychiatric illnesses such as depression, schizophrenia, PTSD and Alzheimer’s disease. The causal link between human-computer interactions such as action games and actual illness is, however, not known at this time and needs to be determined through further long-term study.

Different Games, Different Brains

For these studies, 64 participants aged between 18 and 30, were recruited to play 90 hours of different types of video games: first-person shooters like Call of Duty, Killzone, Medal of Honor and Borderlands 2 or 3D-platform games such as Super Mario 64. All participants had never played before.

But, not all video games are alike! Pay attention to the type of video games that you play. The studies’ results show that video games can be either detrimental or beneficial to the brain’s spatial memory system depending not only on the navigation strategy players use but also on the video game genre they choose. The scientists demonstrate that playing 3D-platform games for 90 hours increase grey matter in the hippocampal memory system for both types of players.

“Remember that the same amount of screen time with first-person shooter video games leads to atrophy within the hippocampus. This suggests that 3D-platform games are safer for consumption and can be beneficial to the brains of all players,” says Dr. West.

Even if the current results show that certain human-computer interactions can decrease grey matter in the brain, the long-term consequences of this loss need to be further studied. Further research is also needed to establish what aspects of video game design cause these changes in the brain.

Could young adults who regularly consume highly caffeinated energy drinks be at risk for future substance use? A new study by University of Maryland School of Public Health researchers, published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, suggests that there is reason for concern.

In a study of young adults across a five-year period (from ages 21-25), Dr. Amelia Arria and colleagues with the Center on Young Adult Health and Development (CYAHD) found evidence that individuals who regularly consumed highly caffeinated energy drinks, and sustained that consumption over time, were significantly more likely to use cocaine, nonmedically use prescription stimulants (NPS), and be at risk for alcohol use disorder (AUD) at age 25. Participants were recruited for the study while enrolled as college students, and were surveyed at regular intervals to track changes in various health and risk-taking behaviors, including energy drink consumption and drug use.

“The results suggest that energy drink users might be at heightened risk for other substance use, particularly stimulants,” said Dr. Arria, associate professor of behavioral and community health and CYAHD director. “Because of the longitudinal design of this study, and the fact that we were able to take into account other factors that would be related to risk for substance use, this study provides evidence of a specific contribution of energy drink consumption to subsequent substance use.”

Previous research by CYAHD researchers has documented the relationship between energy drink (ED) consumption and high-risk drinking behaviors, as well as the likelihood of other accompanying drug use, but this study is the first to examine the unique effect of different trajectories of ED consumption on likelihood of later substance use.

Notably, more than half (51.4%) of the 1099 study participants fell into the group with a “persistent trajectory,” meaning that they sustained their energy drink consumption over time.

Members of this group were significantly more likely to be using stimulant drugs such as cocaine and prescription stimulants non-medically and be at risk for alcohol use disorder at age 25. The research singles out ED consumption as the contributory factor because they controlled for the effects of demographics, sensation-seeking behaviors, other caffeine consumption, and prior substance use at age 21.

Those in the “intermediate trajectory” group (17.4%) were also at increased risk for using cocaine and NPS relative to those in the “non-use trajectory” who never consumed energy drinks (20.6%). Members of the “desisting trajectory” group (those whose consumption declined steadily over time) and the non-use group were not at higher risk for any substance use measures that were tested.

While the biological mechanism that might explain how someone who persistently consumes energy drinks might go on to use other stimulant drugs remains unclear, the research indicates a cause for concern that should be further investigated.

Dr. Arria’s research group has previously examined the health risks from consuming highly caffeinated energy drinks and she has been a leader in efforts to protect adolescents and children from these risks, which include negative impacts on cardiovascular function or even death. She has also joined with other medical and public health experts who urged the FDA to regulate energy drinks. Unlike soft drinks, energy drinks remain unregulated by the FDA and are not subject to federal labeling requirements to list caffeine content or additional ingredients whose interaction with caffeine is not well understood.

“Future studies should focus on younger people, because we know that they too are regularly consuming energy drinks,” Dr. Arria suggested. “We want to know whether or not adolescents are similarly at risk for future substance use.”

A new scholarly study showing that Kazakhs and ethnic Russians are increasingly estranged from each other, with Russians now twice as likely to feel that way as Kazakhs, has so disturbed the Kazakhstan government that Astana has moved to take it down from all Kazakh sites lest it spark more discussions about this most sensitive issue.

Badytzhamal Bekturanova, the president of the Association of Sociologists and Political Scientists of Kazakhstan recently released a report, “Russians and Kazakhs: Why Inter-Ethnic Estrangement is Growing.” Within days, the Kazakhstan government moved to suppress the report by removing it from all websites hosted in the republic.

But the nature of the Internet is such that almost nothing that is posted once ever completely disappears, and Bekturanova’s study is now attracting the attention of sites outside of that republic and almost certainly provoking discussions within Kazakhstan and quite likely within the Russian Federation as well.

An example of this is provided by a lengthy article on an Uzbek site prepared by Russian journalist Aleksandr Shustov who summarizes Bekturanova’s findings and argues that the estrangement she found is the result in his view of “the dangerous games Kazakh nationalism” (vesti.uz/opasnye-igry-kazahskogo-natsionalizma/).

According to the Kazakhstan study, Shustov says, “the level of inter-ethnic alienation” in Kazakhstan has grown from 19.6 percent in 2012 to 26.4 percent in 2016; and it is greatest in the areas where ethnic Russians form a significant part of the population than elsewhere – the north, east, and center of the country and in the old capital of Alma-Ata.

As a result, the ethnic Russians are gradually moving toward “a diaspora-style way of life, worldview and behavior” that precludes close relations with the titular nationality. Ethnic Kazakhs and even Russian-speaking Kazakhs feel such things less intensely because they are confident in the protection of the state.

But there is one thing members of the two groups agree on: 20 percent of Kazakhs and 20 percent of ethnic Russians say that the country will not be able to avoid open inter-ethnic conflict in the future, particularly after Nursultan Nazarbayev passes from the scene and is succeeded by someone who the two groups agree will be more nationalist than the current president.

Russians in the first instance feel discriminated against by measures and practices that put them at a disadvantage with Kazakhs who speak Kazakh. At the same time, however, the Kazakhstan study found that few Russians learn the titular language: At present, only 4.5 percent of Russians in Kazakhstan say they speak Kazakh.

The ethnic Russians who a generation ago formed a plurality of the population in Kazakhstan now form only about 20 percent, Shustov notes, and many of them feel increasingly insecure and are thinking about leaving, although the rate of departures now is relatively small. Only 23,000 ethnic Russians departed last year.

But “after 2014,” when Moscow invaded Ukraine, “concerns about the possible repetition in the northern regions of Kazakhstan of ‘a Crimean scenario’ have only intensified.”

Bekturanova writes in her study that “Kazakh-speaking young people are distinguished by comparably higher indications of a manifestation of ethnophobia, intolerance, and conflict potential on an ethno-religious basis than their Russian-speaking counterparts.” And some are already acting on the basis of these attitudes.

Her research found that “more than half of the ethnic Russians have a negative assessment of the political situation [in Kazakhstan]” with 45.5 percent saying that it is bad. “Each tenth Russian is a supporter of radical means of reforming the political system, and each sixth says he or she is prepared to a radicalization of political views and actions.”

As a result, she continues, “more than a quarter of Kazakhstan’s ethnic Russians expect mass actions of protest and an equal percentage expresses a willingness to participate in them. The main reasons for their dissatisfaction are economic problems and ethno-linguistic ones.” And that points to some dangerous possibilities, Shustov says.

According to him, “the growth of ethnic nationalism among the titular ethnos is creating especially favorable grounds for interference from outside on the model of Ukraine” as well as for a renewal of the massive levels of ethnic Russian flight that were observed during the first decade after independence.

A unanimous vote was passed in the United Nations Security Council to add more sanctions on North Korea’s nuclear program, and this marks the eighth round of sanctions imposed on the Hermit kingdom since 2006. There may have been a consensus on the vote, but there are still differences within the U.N on where to go now.

The latest round of sanctions towards Pyongyang is needed at this particular moment because the DPRK Continues to enhance its nuclear capabilities which have violated previous U.N resolutions. A surprising takeaway from these sanctions was that all the members of the security council including China and Russia jumped on board to vote for these sanctions, and it was very encouraging to see everyone agree on this initiative. The question now becomes, how much of an effect will this have on the DPRK from the previous U.N resolutions? Will the sanctions ramp up the pressure on the North Korean government, or will Pyongyang simply continue to do what they are doing right now? More needs to be done by the global community to achieve the goal of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.

Why Do These Sanctions Work Now?

The unanimous vote at the United Nations does not necessarily reflect the policies of the countries who voted for the sanctions. There are still deep divides between China and Russia on the one hand, and the United States and the western countries on the other. The reason why China and Russia voted for the sanctions was to ease the tensions with the U.S and its western partners, and they want to test U.S foreign policy on the Korean Peninsula because we don’t know what the Trump Administration will do, and this administration seems unpredictable. The differences may not go away, but U.S foreign policy can cause problems because you cannot have a massive military presence in South Korea and in a month, the DPRK will dissolve its nuclear weapons. Russia and China have started creating a new formula, but the U.S and the west simply do not want to respond.

Within the Trump Administration, there seems to be no consensus on a cohesive foreign policy approach towards North Korea. Secretary of State Tillerson says one thing, Trump says another thing, and CIA director Pompeo says something else. If the goal is a denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, then the question still remains, what is a cohesive, effective U.S foreign policy that de-escalates tensions on the Korean Peninsula that avoids a confrontation and enhances diplomacy? We have heard signals from the State Department and the White House that regime change is not the goal, but the goal is to preclude the DPRK from enhancing any nuclear weapons capabilities that are a threat to U.S allies in the region. President Trump did a good job on getting the 15-0 vote in the U.N Security Council and a lot of credit must also go to Russia and China, two countries the U.S has had strained relations with, to send a message that this North Korea issue is a very serious issue that must allow all parties to negotiate on a diplomatic solution.

The goal for everyone in the global community is for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, except the DPRK. The North Koreans want to keep their nuclear deterrent and they have seen around the world that many countries got rid of them, so the DPRK sees getting rid of its nuclear weapons as a threat to their national security, and the Korean War has continued since the 1950’s. Unfortunately, in the case of North Korea, sanctions are not going to work. The DPRK has blown off seven rounds of sanctions by the U.N Security Council since 2006 and it has shown that its population can be paid a heavy price for a long time. Kim Jong Un does not really care about what popular opinion thinks in North Korea. U.S foreign policy needs to face the reality that sanctions will not bring North Korea to the negotiating table. The ICBM’s are a huge concentration, but we have to realize that sanctions are not going to change the DPRK’s behavior, and Seoul is right across the border, so a new formula is desperately needed to solve this problem.

Can a Denuclearized Korean Peninsula be Achieved?

U.S troops, its allies, and all the players in the Asia-Pacific region are in harms way of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. The Chinese, led by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, came out with a reasonable proposal called the ‘freeze for freeze policy’ which allows the U.S and South Korea to stop military exercises in exchange for Pyongyang freezing its ballistic nuclear missile tests.

Philosophically, the proposal by Foreign Minister Yi was very well presented, and if this were accepted by all the parties involved to achieving peace on the Korean Peninsula, tensions could diminish in the region. It remains to be seen if the U.S and South Korea would accept this proposal, but while denuclearization remains to be the main objective, we also need to look at the concerns coming from North Korea and look for ways to address their concerns about security and survival. North Korea does worry about what the U.S can do if Pyongyang got rid of their nuclear weapons, but efforts need to be made by the U.S and its allies to take North Korea’s security concerns into consideration. If they don’t, then the U.S message to the world would seem confusing and incoherent for achieving peace on the Korean Peninsula.

One of the consistencies the U.S has calculated is that China is the key to resolving the Korean Peninsula tensions. China has economic leverage on the DPRK, it has reduced coal exports to North Korea and it has reduced trade, but China alone cannot solve this problem. China also has past political relationships with the DPRK that go back to the Cold War era, but there has been a lot of pushback by China that indicates that the DPRK is a security threat to East Asia, and we all need to deal with it. China has always been an important factor when it boils down to the Korean Peninsula, but we also need to be realistic about how much China can do, and what the ultimate impact would be if China can continue to exercise its influence on the situation.

On the other hand, the United States must stop pointing fingers at China saying that China is the problem, so again, the U.S consistency is flawed, and re-engaging China must be the solution for there to be a diplomatic settlement.

There is this view in Beijing that Donald Trump’s tweets and others in the foreign policy establishment point the finger at China on North Korea and that China alone has to solve this. But at the same time, the U.S has threatened trade sanctions on China, they have sanctioned Chinese banks that have business connections with the DPRK, but again, China cannot solve this problem on their own. Around 90% of North Korea’s exports go to China, so China does play an existential role from an economic perspective, but North Korea’s economy is not an economy that is linked to the global community. North Korea is very self-sufficient, and it will be difficult for the global community to really pressure North Korea with sanctions, so there needs to be a new formula for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.

By Chris Calton*

In the modern legal system, the victim of the crime gets punished twice. In the case of a robbery, for example, the victim gets robbed by the thief and then, if the criminal is actually arrested and imprisoned, the victim gets robbed again by the government to fund the incarceration. This makes the case for a prison industry suspect in a free market legal system. But many libertarians make the case that in a libertarian society, free market prisons would emerge. As with so many things, history is able to offer some insights into the issue.

For most of Anglo-Saxon history, prisons were largely absent from the criminal justice system. The establishment and expansion of prison as a way of punishing criminals came about only as the government encroached further and further into the court system.

After the Norman Conquest of 1066, Anglo-Saxon common law became absorbed into royal law over the course of many centuries. Even as the legal system became more government-controlled, though, punishments for most of English history continued to be restitution-based, rather than punitive. Just as in libertarian legal theory, if a person violated the common law — which typically only ever meant a violation of a person or property — the victim would bring suit against the aggressor, a trial would be quickly conducted, and the culprit would pay restitution to the victim to compensate for the damage caused. Similarly, contracts would govern disputes over wills or between merchants. The use of prisons was limited to holding people awaiting their trial, and since punishments were based on restitution, the incentive for a speedy trial was built into the system.

Within a century of the Norman Conquest, as the crown had already started absorbing some of the courts and employing judges, people were being held longer to await Royal judges. Henry II, who came to power in 1154, created legal innovations which included permanent courts of professional judges and itinerant judges, which centralized parts of the legal system. Because the new system determined that some infractions had to be adjudicated by itinerant judges, prisoners had to be detained until one of these judges passed through their municipality. This meant longer wait times for trials that were monopolized by the crown, and thus the expansion of the use of prison cells. However, incarceration was still not seen as a punishment.

Because certain infractions were now between the crown and the culprit — much like our modern legal system of fiat law, where a criminal dispute is between, say, a marijuana user and the government — the punishment was restitution to the crown, rather than an actual victim of aggression. This form of restitution was called an “amercement,” or a fine.

Henry III, who took the English throne in 1216, oversaw the movement to use prisons as a form of punishment. At this time, though, it was still only for prisoners who refused to pay the fine to the crown. In order to coerce prisoners into paying the fine to the crown — usually because they refused to plead guilty to the crime for which they were convicted — they were piled with chains and stones until they gave in or died. But the prisons were still not a punishment per se, but merely a tool for the coercive extraction of revenues for the crown.

But jails cost money, and now that they were being used to hold prisoners for longer than the wait for a speedy trial, the costs were increasing. The purpose was to raise revenues through this system, so spending tax dollars to maintain prisons was counterproductive. To finance the cost of running a prison, sheriffs — which were originally the government enforcers of royal courts — were granted the license to run a prison, which they obtained by paying a fee to the crown. The sheriffs then made money by levying detainment fees from the prisoners and selling them amenities.

It was not until the 1500s that prisons started looking like the modern penitentiary systems, with the Houses of Corrections that were state-funded and used largely as a way to “reform” the vagrant poor (in reality, the Houses of Corrections were a way to get cheap labor for the government or government cronies). However, this would not remain the exclusive manner of dealing with criminals, after a 1597 law allowed for pardons to be granted to prisoners willing to sign a contract as an indentured servant, supplying many of the early Virginia laborers, among other colonies.

Originally, the transport of indentured servants was paid for by the landowner purchasing the servant (this was subsidized by the headright system that granted the landowner 50 acres of land per indentured servant). The result of this system was that landowners were not paying for the transport of servants — particularly servants who were felons — as quickly as England would like to have shipped them out. So in 1718, the crown passed the Transportation Act, which finally allocated government revenue to the management of prisoners by paying for their transportation to the various British colonies.

By the eighteenth century, the crown was finally funding the prison system through the Houses of Corrections and the Transport Act, and prisons were starting to look much closer to their modern form. Prisoners wore uniforms and performed hard labor, with restitution being largely a thing of the past. With good behavior, inmates might earn an early release, and with bad behavior, they might earn a lashing. By the end of the century, especially with the secession of the American colonies from Britain, imprisonment had become the primary form of punishment for criminals.

In libertarian theory, the question of how prisons would work in a fully private, free market system never quite seems settled. Some people argue that while today’s “private” prisons are not truly private in the free market sense, there would be a profitable and superior system of imprisonment to handle violent criminals without the existence of a tax-funded government. While it is impossible to prove or disprove this argument with theory alone, the history of the Anglo-Saxon legal system offers us some a valuable perspective. And, as the history demonstrates, prisons were never the product of the free market.

For more, see: Bruce Benson’s The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State.

About the author:
*Chris Calton is a Mises University alumnus and an economic historian. See his YouTube channel here.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

By Wang Li *

For four decades since 1949, Chinese government vowed not to send a single soldier abroad during the peacetime. This statement sounds credible because the leadership in Beijing has followed the tenet of “never becoming a superpower”. Yet, China has been changed with the change of time after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. In 1992 Chinese leaders agreed to send its military detachments abroad as peace-keeping mission if it is endorsed by the United Nations. Since then, China has become the largest peace-keeping troops-provider among the P-5 of the UN Security Council.

Twenty years later, China’s armed forces have been actively involved into military diplomacy with a belief in the responsibilities of the armed forces of a major power, referring to Chinese participation in peace-keeping, anti-piracy, humanitarian aid and disaster relief, etc. Clearly, China is eager to project its image as a builder of world peace, a contributor to global prosperity and a defender of the status quo. During the latest military parade in China, President Xi Jinping made it plain that since the world peace must be preserved by force and faith as well, Chinese military will continue international military exchanges and cooperation to cope with global security challenges.

As an emerging power and the second largest economy of the world, it is reasonably argued that Chinese military warships and aircrafts, as those of other militaries, have the same rights to navigate in and overfly non-territorial waters. Considering all this, on July 11 a ceremony was formally held when Chinese military “support base” in Djibouti was operated in the base’s barracks. The ceremony marked the first time that China has opened a military base overseas and it will be conducive to China fulfilling its international commitments such as humanitarianism aid and escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia. Now the question is why China takes Djibouti as its overseas base?

Strategically speaking, Djibouti is situated in the “Horn of Africa”, a key hub connecting Asia to Europe through the Red Sea. In addition, it is historically known as the “oasis in a desert of conflict” for it is stable while the countries around it have been rampant due to poverty, civil war or border disputes. The ruling elites of Djibouti have allowed other countries to establish a military base in their land to protect the Gulf of Aden from piracy. It also provides a sea port for Ethiopia which makes it an important land mark. Djibouti has been surely favored since it provides these bases on a lease. It is reported that China alone pays $20 million per year on rent for its base. The rent paid by foreign countries is crucial for a country which has 42% living below poverty while 48% labor force remains unemployed. As it argues that Djibouti is one of the friends China has made alongside with other African states which have great potentials to China’s development and the world peace.

Internationally, as China has experienced a rapid economic growth over the past decades, its military has supposed to take more responsible role to protect the growing overseas assets and citizen’s lives globally. China’s construction of a naval base in Djibouti may not be surprising as it is one of the major attempts to protect its economic interest in a highly significant sea route. As a matter of fact, the United States, Japan and other EU member states had already established military presence in Djibouti but the same western powers will find China’s presence concerning. Equally, Djibouti plays a key role in China’s vision of Maritime Sea Route, a major part of Belt and Road Initiative. By 2008, 40% of all Chinese import was using this waterway to get to China and at present with new projects emerging these waterways are getting more vital to China’s security, for it is more proactive to be involved into fight against piracy, peace-keeping mission and counter-terrorism that have probably helped China secure a good image in the international society. In practice, China needs its army to be present in around that region to protect its investment in Africa. Djibouti is a perfect place as it is both stable and is in a strategic location. In addition, the military bases created by other great powers make it hard for them to raise direct fingers on China.

Is China aware of the potential challenges ahead? Yes, this is one of the reasons for China to prefer calling its base in Djibouti “support facility” rather than a normal base like other powers have. But beyond Djibouti, China has steadily worked on improving its image in the African continent en bloc. To that end, China has invested in Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway ($490 m), Doraleh Multipurpose Port ($390m), Ethiopia-Djibouti water pipeline ($322m) and many other projects from which Djibouti and its neighbors can be easily benefitted. President Omar remarked that China is the only country investing in all areas with al generous terms and is now recognized as the “lender of last resort” in Africa. Due to this, China’s presence in Djibouti acts as a model to display the win-win relationship for both sides. True, China has abode by the tenet of non-intervention into others’ domestic affairs which is opposed to the approach of the United States and its allies demanding the change of regime in the so-called autocratic or “failed” states. For example, some of U.S. Congressmen have required the White House to cease support to Djibouti as long as the current government is still in power.

However, more pressing challenge comes from the ruling power, such as the US, which has perceived the rising power like China with a view to change the status quo. American scholar Graham Allison’s “Thucydides trap” has been widely accepted simply because some people have thought of the rise of China in the way of the rise of Germany one century ago. It is arguable that China could learn the lessons from the case of Germany at the turn of the 20th century when the Kaiser wanted most was international recognition of Germany’s greatness and, above all, of its power. Today China has pursued its centenary dream of being a great and respected power. The dream itself has nothing wrong with it, but China must be aware of defining that term or its relationship to the Chinese core interest.

In foreign affairs, no state should base its foreign policy on an intellectual vacuum, hollow but truculent rhetoric and the lack of any sense of direction. After all, there are no diplomatic shortcuts to greatness, except following mutual benefits, mutual respects and relative security. Given this, China’s base in Djibouti is rooted in its rational and thorough calculation of the power and it indicates that China under the current leadership seems to move on the right route.

About the author:
*Wang Li is Professor of International Relations and Diplomacy at the School of International and Public Affairs, Jilin University China.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

On August 2, 2017, The Nation published an article by Joshua Holland, “Medicare for All isn’t the Solution for Universal Health Care,” chastising Improved Medicare for All supporters because, in his view, the single payer movement has “failed to grapple with the difficulties of transitioning to a single-payer system.” The article, which doesn’t quote anyone involved in the movement for Improved Medicare for All, begs a response because it shows what liberals opposed to single payer believe. Holland dredges up the same arguments used to keep single payer off the table during the creation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). He even dusted off a few that were used to try to stop Medicare from coming into existence in the 1960s. And then he attempts to distract single payer supporters away from supporting Improved Medicare for All and settling for something less, as was done successfully in 2009.

The first error that Holland makes is confusing the term “Medicare for All” as meaning that advocates would simply take the current Medicare system, with both traditional and ‘Advantage’ plans, and expand that. This is why it is important to use the phrase “Improved Medicare for All.” As outlined in HR 676: The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, the new system would be based on the current Medicare system, which is already national, but it would be a single public plan that is comprehensive in coverage and does not have out-of-pocket costs or caps. It would ban investor-owned facilities and ban private insurers from selling policies that duplicate what the system covers. A single system is the simplest for patients and health professionals because there is one transparent set of rules.

Most people who purchase health insurance have no idea which plan is best for them because nobody can anticipate what their healthcare needs will be in the future. A study of the Massachusetts health exchange plans done by the Center for American Progress showed that some plans were best for patients with cancer and other plans were best for people with heart disease or diabetes, but that isn’t something that can be advertised up front. Even if it were, people can’t predict if they will be diagnosed with cancer, heart disease or diabetes in the future. HR 676: The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act solves this problem by creating a single public plan designed to cover whatever our healthcare needs will be.

A second error that Holland makes is saying that HR 676 calls for the new system to start within a single year. The bill will take effect “on the first day of the first year that begins more than [emphasis added]1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act.” This means that if HR 676 were to be signed by the President in July of 2018, then it would take effect in January of 2020. Holland raises the concern that we can’t move the whole country into the new Improved Medicare for All system that quickly. In fact, HR 676 has transition periods for the Veteran’s Administration, the Indian Health Service, displaced workers and buying out for-profit health providers.

When Medicare was enacted in 1965, more than 50% of seniors were uninsured and the rest had some form of health insurance. Without computers and without a national health system in place, all 19 million seniors were enrolled in the first year (almost twice as many as were enrolled in the ACA in the first four years). At present, the United States has Medicare infrastructure in place and all practicing health professionals have a National Provider Identifier issued to them by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). When the new Improved Medicare for All system takes effect, enrollment will be very simple because there is only one plan that is universal and paid for up front though taxes. All health professionals will be in it. Every person could be sent a card, much as CMS does now for people who are turning 65. For those who do not receive a card, HR 676 has a solution – when they present for care at a health facility, they are assumed to be in the system, are treated first and then are enrolled in the system afterwards.

Next, Holland brings up the same arguments used to prevent universal health care attempts in the past. He states that people don’t want to give up what they have. This is called ‘loss aversion.’ It is a task of the single payer movement to build the public support for Improved Medicare for All necessary to overcome any potential loss aversion. Public figures and elected officials can play a role in building support as well.

Holland raises concerns that employers and seniors won’t want to give up their private plans, but that is based on his mistaken belief that Improved Medicare for All will be the same as current Medicare. The reality is that people will be less worried about giving up what they have if they know that it will be replaced with something better and that they will no longer fear losing their doctor as they will all be in the new system. Improved Medicare for All will provide more comprehensive benefits, no out-of-pocket costs and an unrestricted network of health professionals from which to choose. Employers will no longer be burdened with the high costs of health insurance. People with pre-existing health conditions will no longer worry about losing coverage or having to pay more. Unions and employers can offer supplemental plans for extras not covered by the new system, as is done in countries like France, if they choose to do so.

Holland also raises the concern that people will lose their doctor because they will opt out of the system due to low reimbursements. We are already losing doctors because of the current system. Physician burnout was listed as the second biggest concern by the Surgeon General last year. Under Improved Medicare for All, all health professionals will be in the system. There won’t be any place to opt out to. And why would they want to? Health professionals will save tens of thousands of dollars each year on billing and won’t have to worry about whether a patient has insurance or not. They can see anyone who calls for an appointment. And they will have a system with which to negotiate fair reimbursement. Private health insurance doesn’t negotiate with physicians and hospitals. Each year they make an offer and providers can either basically take it or leave it. Doctors in single payer systems that spend much less per capita than the United States are paid well, so the US can certainly afford to reimburse doctors adequately.

Every transformative change has suffered from loss aversion, but that hasn’t stopped them. When Medicare was enacted, it was called socialized medicine, a government intrusion that would take away people’s choices and freedom and become an opening to government control over our lives. The scare tactics didn’t work and Medicare is one of the most popular parts of our current healthcare system. Desegregation, women’s rights, workers’ rights and more were great changes that were successful and we are a better society for them. Why is the right to health care any different?

Finally, Holland dives into the myth that we can’t afford Improved Medicare for All because it will be too expensive. My first response when I hear this is that the same excuse wasn’t made when we spent $16 trillion to bail out the banks in 2008 and is never made when we invade another country, so why is it raised when it comes to one of the most basic necessities a society can have? The United States has the highest wealth and the highest wealth inequality of industrialized nations. The new “Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index” recommends social spending on education, health and other basic social protections as its top priority. Congress can appropriate the funds to do this. This should be a top priority in the United States as well.

The reality is that the United States is already spending the most on health care per person each year because the market has failed to control costs. That is exactly why we need a single payer system like National Improved Medicare for All. It is the only way to simplify the bloated bureaucracy of the current healthcare system, which would save around $500 billion each year, and to control the costs of medical procedures, medical devices and pharmaceuticals by having a single system that can negotiate fair prices. In addition to the bureaucracy created by a multi-payer system, the US subsidized the insurance industry with more than $300 billion last year. A system based on health, rather than profits for investors, can identify and prioritize our greatest health needs and work to address them.

For example, the US is failing when it comes to care for people with chronic diseases. There are numerous reasons why this is occurring – lack of access to consistent care, inability to afford medications, insufficient time for health education when patients see a health professional, cheap and highly processed food, environmental pollutants and more. An actual health system could take meaningful action to address these issues, and keep people healthier. Think about it: people with high blood pressure or diabetes in the US may not be able to see the doctor regularly or stay on their medicines due to cost, but when they suffer a stroke or kidney failure, and need long term care or dialysis, then they can receive disability benefits and Medicare. How much better and less expensive would it be for everyone to prevent strokes and kidney failure in the first place?

Just as many ‘progressive’ groups did during the health reform process that resulted in the ACA, Holland works to convince us that we don’t need a single payer system, and that we can work with the current system. Once again, Jacob Hacker, a leading advocate for the ACA and single payer opponent, is invoked and we are told that we can add a Medicare buy-in or another form of a public option. We are told that other countries use private insurance, so why can’t we? The Democrats, beholden to the medical industrial complex, want us to believe these false non-solutions that protect the insurance industry. It feels like 2009 all over again.

Rather than go through all of the reasons why these approaches will fail, I urge you to read articles on that topic posted on HealthOverProfit.org (Click here for a list of them). Instead, I refer to a saying used by my now-deceased mentor Dr. Quentin Young: “You can’t cross an abyss in two jumps.” The only way we can get to a universal single payer healthcare system in the United States is by creating a universal single payer healthcare system in the United States. Anything less than that will fail because it will not achieve the savings on administration and prices needed to cover everyone and it will not compete with the powerful private insurance industry.

Throughout time, every great social movement has been told that it was asking for too much. Advocates for worker’s rights, women’s rights, civil rights, etc., were labelled as unreasonable radicals wishing for some pie-in-the-sky change that can’t be achieved. Holland is doing the same to the single payer movement. Don’t fall for it. We have the resources in the US to have one of the top healthcare systems in the world. We have health policy experts who have helped to design excellent systems for other countries. Single payer is a proven solution, unlike the plans being proposed by the Democratic leadership.

One thing that Holland and I do agree on is that there is more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. We could have an excellent national debate about which type of single payer healthcare system we support – a fully socialized system like the Veteran’s Health Administration, a national health service, or a socialized payer with multiple types of providers as in the Expanded and Improved Medicare for all Act. At the basis of our discussion must be the principles that every person in the US deserves high quality health care without financial barriers.

In the 1960s and 1970s, insurgents from Nagaland travelled to China for training and also to seek support for their armed struggle.[1]While some of the outfits received training in East Pakistan, till the late 1970s and early 1980s China reportedly provided arms and finances to these outfits. Beijing’s support, however, ended coinciding with the power struggle within the Communist Party. While a minor flow of arms and ammunition did continue from the arms manufacturing units in mainland China to the war chests of various insurgent formations operating in the Northeast, Beijing’s decision to stay clear of the insurgencies in the region continued. Naga and Manipuri insurgents’ attempts to court Beijing in the 1980s was rebuffed.

And when the Assam based insurgent formation United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) appealed to Beijing to let its battered cadres enter China for safety following the 2003 Operation All Clear in Bhutan, it faced immediate rejection. In response, the radical left-wing publication People’s March commented, “Now that China has transformed into a capitalist country no revolutionary can expect any help from it. It is no more Mao’s China.”[2] This, however, could very well change, not because China is reinventing the spirits of internationalism and transforming itself into a safe house of insurgencies seeking self-determination, but because it feels that resuming its assistance to the insurgencies could be an effective instrument to blunt New Delhi’s assertive posture vis-a-vis Beijing.

An Assertive New Delhi

The dispute over Arunachal Pradesh and China’s frequent expression of displeasure over official visits by Indian ministers, politicians, and even foreign diplomats is well known. Frequent violation of the borders by PLA soldiers is common, whereby they have entered several kilometres into Indian territory and stayed put until New Delhi mounted diplomatic pressure. In the past, however, as well as during the initial period of the BJP-led NDA regime, New Delhi chose to take such transgressions in-stride. Its official explanations always attempted to play down the crises and link them to the unsolved boundary demarcation issues.

This policy has changed. In response to Beijing’s recurrent disregard of Indian sensitivities over a range of issues that include attempts to ban Pakistani terrorist leader Masood Azhar at the United Nations and therouting of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project through Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), India has sought to assert its right over Arunachal Pradesh in a more forceful manner.  This has included allowing foreign diplomats liberal access to the state, much to the consternation of Beijing. As an antidote to Chinese claiming Arunachal Pradesh as it own, New Delhi has demonstrated its willingness to play up the Tibet card more than usual, allowing the spiritual leader Dalai Lama to visit Arunachal Pradesh and heightening Beijing’s concerns over the succession issue.

Peaceful Northeast

Taking insurgent violence as a parameter, it can be argued that in recent yearspeace has indeed returned to the Northeastern region.Even though ongoing ceasefire agreements with a number of outfits have not resulted in peace deals, many of the pro-peace insurgent formations have chosen to remain committed to negotiations. Capacity of certain outfits in Assam and Manipur to indulge in occasional violence and the possibility of Islamist outfits from Bangladesh attempting to use the region as a hiding spacenotwithstanding, guns have fallen silent in large expanses of various states of the region. Available data on fatalities support such an assertion.

Between 2012 and 2016, insurgent outfits in the region have lost a significant number of cadres to killings, arrests, and surrenders. Rather than insurgency, ethnic and communal clashes between Bodos and Santhals, and between Bodos and Muslims, that break out in the western part of Assam every few years remain the major source of civilian casualties. Northeast continues to remain a tinderbox, but insurgent capacity to challenge the might of the state has continuously declined.

The active insurgent outfits who have chosen to carry on with their armed struggle have dealt with their state of weakness in two ways: First, by lying low, carrying out occasional attacks on security forces, focusing on recruitment and extortion, and carrying on their activities from Myanmar; and second, by creating umbrella organisations to synergise operations. Today, a number of outfits from Manipur, Assam and Nagaland operate from Myanmar, which arguably is their last bastion. Two umbrella organisations – CORCOM (Co-ordination Committee) by seven Manipur based outfits and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K)-led United Liberation Front of Western Southeast Asia (ULFWSA)– are active. The CORCOM was founded in 2011. It can be described as mostly a defensive organisation built around the key objective of survival. On the other hand, the ULFWSA,which has outfits like the ULFA, KLO, and NDFB as its members, has carried out few major strikes since its formation in 2015.[3]On odd occasions, ULFA has also operated with CORCOM. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, on 19 November 2016, ULFA and CORCOM ambushed a convoy of the Indian Army at Pengree in Assam’s Tinsukia district,killing three army personnel and injuring four others.

The return of peace to the Northeast has opened up economic and investment opportunities. Whereas in the last decade, the public sector owned most of the investment – 92.8 percent in Mizoram, 88.6 percent in Assam, and 82.1 percent in Nagaland[4] – private investment now has started rolling in. According to a report by ASSOCHAM India, insurgency-affected states such as  Manipur did not attract any private investment in the last decade (from 2004-05 to 2013-14). However, that could gradually change. In December 2016, Assam government indicated that over 25 companies have committed cumulative investment of Rupees 5000 crore which will generate 44,000 jobs in the state.[5]

Linked to the prevalence of peacein the region also is New Delhi’s ambitious ‘Act East’ initiative launched in 2015. The Look East policy of the early 1990s talked of connecting the economies of the Northeast with Southeast Asia. The fact that much of that policy remained only on paper could also be ascribed to the insurgency, among other factors. The Act East policy intends to promote “economic cooperation, cultural ties and develop strategic relationship with countries in the Asia-Pacific region”[6]toprovide “enhanced connectivity to the States of North Eastern Region”… through trade, culture, people-to-people contacts, and physical infrastructure (road, airport, telecommunication, power, etc.). Major projects such as the Kaladan Multi-modal Transit Transport Project, the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway Project, Rhi-Tiddim Road Project, Border Haats, etc. hence remain dependant on peace and stability in the Northeast.

Ascending Chinese Interest     

Although Indian intelligence agencies have periodically pointed[7] at the Chinese trying to keep the north-eastern insurgent groups active by acting in collusion with Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the beginning of Chinese renewed interest in the Northeast as a counter to New Delhi’s policy of assertion can be traced to 2014. In February, in the run-up to the parliamentary elections, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi pointed at Beijing’s ‘expansionist’ mindset and asserted that states such as Arunachal Pradesh would always remain an integral part of India. Two months later, just before the polls, Chinese official media zeroed in on the region.  “India’s Northeastern states — which also include Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Nagaland are said to be the country’s most neglected region,” state-run Xinhua news agency said in its report.[8] Through this sudden reference to the Northeast, even though in a report focusing on the elections in the region, Beijing appeared to remind New Delhi that Northeast remains a chink in India’s armour.

In past years, a handful of reports in Indian and Myanmar media quoting unidentified Indian government sources[9] have directed attention to possible Chinese attempts to facilitate a revival of insurgency in the Northeast. These reports elaborate a range of short and long-term objectives that China could be focusing on. These include providing active help to insurgents to carry out attacks on the security forces, setting up a united Northeastinsurgent front,and assisting formation of a Northeast government-in-exile with a mobile capital, which is similar to the Tibetan government-in-exile formed in Dharamsala. The formation of the ULFWSA, these reports further claim, could not have been possible without Chinese assistance.[10] Similarly, the sophistication with which the ULFWSA carried out some of its ambushes on the security forces could not have been possible without Beijing’s active help, they argue.

While some of these claims could be exaggerated, independent analysts[11] do concur that Chinese policies could be much more than turning a blind eye to the arms traffic from places like Ruili in China to the Northeastern insurgent groups.[12] Since a revival of insurgency in the Northeast serves China’s geopolitical interests in the region, Beijing could be causing “frictions and disruptions in Burma’s relations with India.” Insurgent attacks have led to India carrying out anti-insurgency operations within Myanmar and recurrent attacks of this nature without Myanmar’s sanctions could ruin Indo-Myanmar relations. This would please Beijing which has soured its relations with Myanmar.

Partners with Benefits

Among the prominent insurgencies which now operate with diminished fire power is the ULFA. The outfit has suffered a series of setbacks since December 2003 and today operates with a much reduced cadre strength under the leadership of Paresh Baruah. A pro-talk faction continues its negotiations with the government, while the anti-talk faction that calls itself ULFA-Independent remains committed to an armed revolution to liberate Assam from India. Indian intelligence agencies believe that ULFA chief Paresh Baruah is based in China’s Yunnan province and controls his outfit’s activities from there. An independent journalist, Rajeev Bhattacharyya,[13]who made a trip to ULFA camps in Myanmar in 2011, confirmed that Baruah spends much of his time in China. It is also confirmed that apart from sheltering Baruah, Chinese intelligence officers have visited the ULFA camp near Taga in Myanmar on more than one occasion.[14]

Since 2015, such proximity with the Chinese has twice been mentioned prominently in the ULFA’s press statements, thereby putting a halt to mere speculation concerning the probability of such a nexus.

In November 2015,the outfit’s chairman, Abhizeet Asom, who the National Investigation Agency (NIA) believes to be a London-based general practitioner named Mukul Hazarika, said in a statement, “China is our next-door neighbour.”[15]Hazarika went on to add that during the 1962 Sino-China war, the People’s Liberation Army had not set foot on Assamese soil, which was due to China’s respect for Assam. “Since then, I have been observing China closely and, in my best judgment, I have not seen any enmity towards Assam yet. In absence of enmity, building friendship should be easy. But, without taking a first step, there won’t be any progress. The watershed moment has arrived for indigenous Assam to prompt us to build that friendship with China with confidence. We sincerely hope that China will put forward the hand of friendship towards Assam without hesitation.”[16]

It was the most blatant soliciting of Chinese assistance by any insurgent outfit in recent times. This can be interpreted either as compulsion by an outfit that has found shelter in China or a conscious decision to make common cause with the adversary of its adversary. But the fact of the matter is, the proximity has grown,and both could now be willing to exploit such relationship to mutual advantage.

The probability that ULFA-China relations have indeed progressed beyond soliciting was further evident in another statement made by ULFA in March 2017. Days before the Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, ULFA asked the spiritual leader not to speak anything against China during his visit. “The caveat we would like you to honour upon making the trip that nothing against China will be uttered by you in private or public. China has always been a friendly neighbour of ours and the relationship between China and Assam is truly very deep in linguistic and cultural heritage of the two nations,”[17] said a letter by the ULFA to the Dalai Lama.China had also warned India earlier that allowing the Dalai Lama to visit Arunachal Pradesh could “harm” peace and stability along their contested border and cause “serious damage” to bilateral relations. ULFA terming Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang as an “unwise plan” was yet another sign of its open expression of solidarity with Beijing.

Just as ULFA is desperate to receive Chinese assistance to boost its capacities, the same can be said about other active outfits in the region. Nothing would stop the CORCOM and other ULFWSA members aligning their interests with those of the Chinese. A demand-supply relationship could always evolve into an active partnership with mutual benefits. Even the Isak-Muivah faction of the NSCN, which is negotiating with New Delhi since 1997, appears willing to walk the ULFA line as a pressure tactic. In April 2017, NSCN-IM’s chief of army, Punthing Shimrang said exercising the “China option” is probably a better idea to force New Delhi stop its delaying tactic on the Naga issue.[18] NSCN-IM has a fairly long history of dealing with Chinese arms dealers and is known to have procured several consignments of Chinese arms for its cadres. Shimrang’s statement reveals that reviving the old links certainly remains an option for the outfit should the solution proposed by New Delhi is unacceptable.

How Could it Evolve?

On 16 May 2017 in New Delhi, at the Northeast Security Review meeting presided over by India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Indian security agencies demanded a greater presence of intelligence and security force personnel in five contiguous districts of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland along the Indo-Myanmar border. A media report quoting an unnamed official who participated in the meeting said that that five districts – Tirap, Changlang, and Longding in Arunachal Pradesh and Mon and Tuensang districts in Nagaland – had emerged as the hub of the last remaining insurgents in the Northeast.”[19]Porous borders with Myanmar and an inadequate security establishment have allowed insurgents to make these five districts their base within the region.

If this assessment is factually correct, New Delhi indeed has reason to worry. Chinese assistance to the Northeastern groups can either follow a path of direct provision of weapons or can use the Myanmar rebels to act as intermediaries in the weapons trade. Well established and intact routes and networks can facilitate such assistance without difficulty.

Compounding concern is the manner in which insurgency in the Northeast has declined.  The success story,to a large extent, is not due to the achievements of the Indian state’s counterinsurgency operations but mostly due to the cooperation extended by Bangladesh, which arrested and handed over a number of top insurgent leaders to India, even when both countries did not have an extradition treaty. A peace that has been achieved mostly due to the good gestures of one neighbour (Dhaka) can indeed be disturbed by another neighbour (Beijing).

Thus New Delhi’s strategic relationship with Myanmar becomes extremely important. A range of treaties between the two countries for counter terrorism cooperation exists. Yet little has been done to implement these on the ground. Indian diplomacy must address this inadequacy and move to a proactive mode. A far stronger Indo-Myanmar tie is needed to counter Beijing’s designs.

End Notes:

[1] Bertil Lintner, Great Game East: India, China and the struggle for Asia’s most volatile frontier, (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2012), p. 253.

[2] “Operation All Clear: Could the bullets suppress the aspirations of nationalities”, People’s March, Vol. 5, no. 2-3, February-March 2004, http://www.bannedthought.net/India/PeoplesMarch/PM1999-2006/archives/2004/feb-mar2k4/bhutan.htm. Accessed 30 June 2017.

[3] These attacks include the killing of 20 personnel of the Indian Army’s Dogra regiment in an ambush in Manipur in June 2015 and the May 2015 ambush in Nagaland’s Mon district that killed seven Assam Rifles and one Territorial Army personnel.

[4] Prabin Kalita, “Manipur draws a blank in pvt investment, Arunachal favourite”, Times of India, 17 June 2015, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/Manipur-draws-a-blank-in-pvt-investment-Arunachal-favourite/articleshow/48103001.cms. Accessed 28 June 2017.

[5] “Over 25 cos to invest Rs 5K cr, create 44K jobs: Assam govt”,  India Today, 28 December 2016, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/over-25-cos-to-invest-rs-5k-cr-create-44k-jobs-assam-govt/1/844776.html. Accessed 30 June 2017.

[6] Act East Policy, Press Information Bureau, Government of India, 23 December 2015, http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=133837. Accessed 23 June 2017.

[7] Abhishek Bhalla,  “RAW note aimed at North-East mayhem says Pakistan, China working together to cause trouble in the area”, India Today, 1 October 2012, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/raw-intelligence-pakistan-china-north-east/1/222902.html. Accessed 30 June 2017.

[8] “China describes northeast India as ‘most neglected’”, Times of India, 7 April 2014, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/China-describes-northeast-India-as-most-neglected/articleshow/33403521.cms. Accessed 30 June 2017.

[9] Rajeev Bhattacharya, “Is China working on a Northeast rebel government-in-exile now?”,Hindustan Times, 19 June 2015, http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/is-china-working-on-a-northeast-rebel-government-in-exile-now/story-IFGm4xoDjkh8WVild87ulL.html. Accessed 30 June 2017.

[10] “According to Indian security and intelligence agencies, the seeds for the formation of ULFSWA were sown at a 2011 meeting in Ruili in China’s Yunan province. ULFA leader Paresh Baruah, NSCN-K leader S S Khaplang and leaders of Manipuri outfits, United National Liberation Front (UNLF) and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) attended the meeting. See Prabin Kalita, “UNLFW: The new name for terror in NE”, Times of India, 5 June 2015, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/UNLFW-The-new-name-for-terror-in-NE/articleshow/47547899.cms. Accessed 24 June 2017.

[11] Also see BertilLintner, “Mysterious Motives: India’s Raids on the Burma border”,  Irrawaddy, 30 June 2015. https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/ethnic-issues/mysterious-motives-indias-raids-on-the-burma-border.html. Accessed 30 June 2017.

[12] The weapons used by the ULFWSA are acquired from arms dealers on China, or they are made in a gun factory at Pangwa, just across the border in Kachin State. See Bibhu Prasad Routray, “Made in Myanmar: Small Arms for North-eastern Insurgents”, Special Report#01, Mantraya, 13 July 2015, http://mantraya.org/made-in-myanmar-small-arms-for-the-north-eastern-insurgents/. Accessed 25 June 2017.

[13] Rajeev Bhattacharyya chronicled his travels in his book Rendezvous With Rebels: Journey to Meet India’s Most Wanted Man, (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2014).

[14] Bertil Lintner, “Mysterious Motives: India’s Raids on the Burma border”, n.11.

[15] Prabin Kalita, “ULFA seeks China help for ‘sovereign’ Assam”, Times of India, 8 November 2015, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/Ulfa-seeks-China-help-for-sovereign-Assam/articleshow/49710303.cms. Accessed 1 July 2017.

[16] ibid.

[17] Rajiv Konwar, “Ulfa-I warns Dalai Lama on China”, Telegraph, 29 March 2017, https://www.telegraphindia.com/1170329/jsp/frontpage/story_143290.jsp.Accessed 23 June 2017.

[18] “Nagas have China option, says NSCN-IM ‘army chief’”, Indian Express, 13 April 2017, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/nagas-have-china-option-says-nscn-im-army-chief-4612167/. Accessed 23 June 2017.

[19] “Khaplang’s demise could be major blow to militancy in NE region”, Assam Tribune, 11 June 2017,  http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/detailsnew.asp?id=jun1117/at052. Accessed 23 June 2017.

By Kenneth Katzman*

Oman is located along the Arabian Sea, on the southern approaches to the Strait of Hormuz, across from Iran. Except for a brief period of Persian rule, Omanis have remained independent since expelling the Portuguese in 1650. The Al Said monarchy began in 1744, extending Omani influence into Zanzibar and other parts of East Africa until 1861.

A long-term rebellion led by the imam of Oman, leader of the Ibadhi sect (neither Sunni nor Shiite and widely considered “moderate conservative”) ended in 1959. Oman’s population is 75% Ibadhi—a moderate form of Islam that is closer in philosophy to Sunni Islam than to Shiism. Sultan Qaboos bin Sa’id Al Said, born in November 1940, is the eighth in the line of the monarchy; he became sultan in July 1970 when, with British support, he forced his father, Sultan Said bin Taymur Al Said, to abdicate.

The United States has had relations with Oman from the early days since American independence. The U.S. merchant ship Ramber made a port visit to Muscat in September 1790. The United States signed a Treaty of Amity and Commerce with Oman in 1833, one of the first of its kind with an Arab state. This treaty was replaced by the Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights signed at Salalah on December 20, 1958. Oman sent an official envoy to the United States in 1840. A U.S. consulate was maintained in Muscat during 1880-1915, a U.S. embassy was opened in 1972, and the first resident U.S. Ambassador arrived in July 1974. Oman opened its embassy in Washington in 1973.

Sultan Qaboos was accorded formal state visits in 1974, by President Gerald Ford, and in 1983, by President Ronald Reagan. President Bill Clinton visited Oman in March 2000. Career diplomat Marc Sievers has been Ambassador to Oman since late 2015.

Democratization, Human Rights, and Unrest

Oman remains a monarchy in which decisionmaking still is largely concentrated with Sultan Qaboos. Throughout his reign, Qaboos has also formally held the position of Prime Minister, as well as the positions of Foreign Minister, Defense Minister, Finance Minister, and Central Bank Governor.

Other officials serve as “Ministers of State” for those portfolios and perform as ministers de-facto. Qaboos’s government, and Omani society, reflects the diverse backgrounds of the Omani population, many of whom have long-standing family connections to parts of East Africa that Oman once controlled, and to the Indian subcontinent.

Some senior Omanis argue that a formal position of Prime Minister is needed to organize the functions of the government and enable the Sultan to focus on larger strategic decisions. Should such a post be established, potential candidates include the deputy prime minister for Cabinet Affairs Fahd bin Mahmud Al Said,1 who is commonly referred to as “Prime Minister,” and the secretary general of the Foreign Ministry, Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Albusaidi, who is said to be efficient and effective2 and has given speeches publicly articulating Omani foreign policy. Another figure considered effective is an economic adviser to the Sultan, Salim bin Nasir al- Ismaily, a businessman and philanthropist who reportedly brokered the 2013 U.S.-Iran meetings discussed below.3 Another potential appointee is Royal Office head General Sultan bin Mohammad al-Naamani.

Along with political reform issues, the question of succession has long been central to observers of Oman. Qaboos’s brief marriage in the 1970s produced no children, and the sultan, who was born in November 1940, has no heir apparent. According to Omani officials, succession would be decided by a “Ruling Family Council” of his relatively small Al Said family (about 50 male members).

If the family council cannot reach agreement within three days, it is to base its succession decision on a sealed Qaboos letter to be opened upon his death; there are no confirmed accounts of whom Qaboos has recommended. The succession issue has come to the fore since mid-2014 when he left Oman to undergo medical treatment in Germany, reportedly for colon cancer.4 Then-Secretary of State John Kerry met with Qaboos in Germany in January 2015, and the Sultan returned to Oman in late March 2015. Since then, he has not left Oman and has appeared in public on only a few major occasions, such as Oman’s national day (November 2015) and the February 15, 2017, visit to Oman of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Potential Successors. The leading contenders to succeed Qaboos include three brothers who are cousins of the Sultan and whose sister was the woman who was briefly married to Qaboos. They are Minister of Heritage and Culture Sayyid Haythim bin Tariq Al Said, whom some assess indecisive; Asad bin Tariq Al Said, a former military officer who has held the title of “Representative of the Sultan” for several years; and Shihab bin Tariq Al Said, the former commander of Oman’s Navy. All are in their 60s. Asad bin Tariq appeared to become a frontrunner as a potential successor in March 2017 when he was appointed deputy prime minister for international relations and cooperation affairs and represented Oman at an Arab League summit in Jordan. Another potential choice is Fahd bin Mahmud,5 who had previously regularly represented Oman at major regional and international meetings.

Expansion of Representative Institutions and Election History

Many Omanis, U.S. officials, and international observers credit Sultan Qaboos for establishing consultative institutions and electoral processes before there was evident public pressure to do so. Under a 1996 “Basic Law,” Qaboos created a bicameral “legislature” called the Oman Council, consisting of the existing Consultative Council (Majlis As Shura) and an appointed State Council (Majlis Ad Dawla), established by the Basic Law.

The Consultative Council was formed in 1991 to replace a 10-year-old all-appointed advisory council. A March 2011 decree expanded the Oman Council’s powers to include questioning ministers, selecting its own leadership, and reviewing government-drafted legislation, but its scope of authority is still not equal to that of a Western-style legislature. It does not have the power to draft legislation or to overturn the Sultan’s decrees or government regulations. As in the other GCC states, formal political parties are not allowed. But, unlike Bahrain or Kuwait, well-defined “political societies” (de-facto parties) that compete within or outside the electoral process have not developed in Oman.

The electoral process has broadened consistently. The Consultative Council was initially chosen through a selection process in which the government had substantial influence over the body’s composition, but this process was gradually altered to a full popular election. When it was formed in 1991, the body had 59 seats, and was gradually expanded to its current 85 seats. Prior to 2011, the Sultan selected the Consultative Council chairman; since then, the chairman and a deputy chairman have been elected by the Council membership. Also in 2011, Qaboos instituted elections for municipal councils. Each province with a population of more than 30,000 elects two members, whereas a province with fewer than that elects one.

The electorate for the Consultative Council has gradually expanded. In the 1994 and 1997 selection cycles for the council, “notables” in each of Oman’s districts nominated three persons and Qaboos selected one of them to occupy that district’s seat. The first direct elections were held in September 2000, but the electorate was limited (25% of all citizens over 21 years old). For the October 4, 2003, election, voting rights were extended to all citizens, male and female, over 21 years of age. About 195,000 Omanis voted in that election (74% turnout). The same two women were elected as happened in the 2000 vote (out of 15 women candidates). In the October 27, 2007, election (after changing to a four-year term), public campaigning was allowed for the first time and about 250,000 people voted (63% turnout). None of the 21 females (out of 631 candidates) won. The more recent Consultative Council elections are discussed below.

Appointed State Council. The government considers the State Council as a counterweight to the Consultative Council, and it remains all-appointed. The Council, which had 53 members at inception, has been expanded to 84 members, nearly the size of the Consultative Council. By law, it cannot have more members than the Consultative Council. Appointees are usually former high- ranking government officials (such as ambassadors), military officials, tribal leaders, and other notables.

2011-2012 Unrest Cast Doubt on Satisfaction with Pace of Political Reform

The expansion of the electoral process did not satisfy those Omanis, particularly those younger and well-educated, who consider the pace of liberalization too slow, or those dissatisfied with the country’s economic performance. In July 2010, 50 prominent Omanis petitioned Sultan Qaboos for a “contractual constitution” that would provide for a fully elected legislature. In February 2011, after protests in Egypt toppled President Hosni Mubarak, protests broke out in the northern industrial town of Sohar, Oman, and later spread to the capital, Muscat. One person was killed in February 2011 by security forces. Although most protesters asserted that their protests were motivated primarily by economic factors, some echoed calls for a fully elected legislature.

Possibly corroborating the assertions of experts that Qaboos is highly popular among the citizenry, many protestors carried posters lauding his rule. Many older Omanis apparently did not support the protests, apparently comparing the existing degree of “political space” favorably with that during the reign of Qaboos’s father, Sultan Said bin Taymur. During his father’s reign, Omanis needed the sultan’s approval even to wear spectacles or to import cement, for example. Some experts argue that Sultan Said kept Oman isolated in an effort to insulate it from leftist extremism that gained strength in the region during the 1960s.

The government calmed some of the unrest through a series of measures, including clearing protesters from Sohar; expanding the powers of the Oman Council; appointments of several members of the Consultative Council as ministers; and the naming of an additional female minister. The Sultan also ordered that 50,000 new public sector jobs be created, that the minimum wage increase by about one-third (to about $520 per month), and that unemployed job seekers be granted $400. Qaboos issued a decree giving the office of the public prosecutor autonomy and consumers additional protections.

Even though protests largely ended by mid-2012, during that year, at least 50 journalists, bloggers, and other activists were jailed for “defaming the Sultan,” “illegal gathering,” or violating the country’s cyber laws. Twenty-four of them went on a hunger strike in February 2013 and the Sultan pardoned virtually all, an action praised by international human rights groups. In addition, Omanis who had been dismissed from public and private sector jobs for participating in unrest were reinstated.

The U.S. reaction to the unrest in Oman was muted, possibly because Oman is a key ally of the United States and perhaps because the unrest appeared relatively minor. On June 1, 2011, then- U.S. Ambassador Richard Schmierer told an Omani paper: “The way in which [Sultan Qaboos] responded to the concerns of the Omani people is a testament to his wise leadership.”6 At her confirmation hearings in July 2012, Ambassador-Designate to Oman Greta Holz said “… I will encourage Oman, our friend and partner, to continue to respond to the hopes and aspirations of its people.”

2011 and 2012 Elections Held Amid Unrest

The October 15, 2011, Consultative Council elections went forward despite the unrest. The enhancement of the Oman Council’s powers raised the stakes for the elections. There were of 1,330 candidates—a 70% increase from the number of candidates in the 2007 vote. A record 77 women filed candidacies. However, voter turnout (about 60%) was not higher than in past elections. The expectation of several female victors was not realized: only one was elected, a candidate from Seeb (suburb of the capital, Muscat).

Some reformists were heartened by the election victory of two political activists—Salim bin Abdullah Al Oufi, and Talib Al Maamari. In the vibrant contest for the speakership of the Consultative Council, Khalid al-Mawali, a relatively young entrepreneur, was selected. In the State Council appointments that followed the Consultative Council elections, the Sultan appointed 15 women, bringing the total female participation in the Oman Council to 16 out of 154 total seats—over 10%. The government did not permit outside election monitoring.

In 2012, the government also initiated elections for 11 municipal councils. Previously, only one such council had been established, for the capital region, and it was all appointed. The elected “councilors” make recommendations to the government on development projects, but do not make final funding decisions. The chairman and deputy chairman of each municipal council are appointed by the government. In the December 22, 2012, municipal elections, there were 192 seats up for election. There were more than 1,600 candidates, including 48 women. About 546,000 citizens voted. Four women were elected.

2015 Consultative Council Elections

Elections to the Consultative Council (expanded by one seat, to 85) were last held on October 25, 2015. The elected Consultative Council was. A total of 674 candidates applied to run, although 75 candidates were barred, apparently based on their participation in the 2011-2012 unrest. There were 20 female candidates. Turnout was estimated at 56% of the 612,000 eligible voters. The one woman on the Council was reelected and no other female was elected. As happened in 2011, only one woman was elected. Khalid al-Mawali was reelected Consultative Council chairman. On November 8, 2015, Qaboos appointed the 84-seat State Council, of whom 13 were women.

December 2016 Municipal Elections

On December 25, 2016, the second municipal elections were held to choose 202 councilors—an expanded number from the 2012 municipal elections. There were 731 candidates, of whom 23 were women. Turnout was about 40% of the 625,000 eligible voters, according to the government. Seven women were elected, more than were elected in 2012 but still a small percentage of the 202 seats up for vote.

Broader Human Rights Issues7

According to the most recent State Department report on human rights, the principal human rights problems in Oman, other than the monarchical political structure, are limits on freedom of speech, assembly, and association, and restrictions on independent civil society. Other U.S. concerns include a lack of independent inspections of prisons and detention centers, arrests of government critics who use social media, insufficient protections from domestic violence, and labor conditions and abuses of foreign workers. U.S. and other reports generally credit the government with holding accountable security personnel and other officials for abuses, including prosecuting multiple corruption cases through the court system.

U.S. funds from the Middle East Partnership Initiative and the Near East Regional Democracy account (both State Department accounts) have been used to fund civil society and political process strengthening, judicial reform, election management, media independence, and women’s empowerment. In 2011, Oman established a scholarship program through which at least 500 Omanis have enrolled in higher education in the United States. Some MEPI funds have also been used in conjunction with the U.S. Commerce Department’s Commercial Law Development Program to improve Oman’s legislative and regulatory frameworks for business activity.

Freedom of Expression, Media, and Association

Omani law provides for limited freedom of speech and press, but the government generally does not respect these rights. Press criticism of the government is tolerated, but criticism of the Sultan (and by extension, government officials) is not. In October 2015, Oman followed the lead of many of the other GCC states in issuing a new royal decree prohibiting disseminating information that targets “the prestige of the State’s authorities or aimed to weaken confidence in them.” The government continues to prosecute dissident bloggers and cyber-activists under that decree and other laws. During July-August 2016, Omani authorities arrested three journalists of the Azamn daily newspaper, and shuttered the paper, for its series of articles accusing senior judicial officials of corruption. However, on December 26, 2016, an appeals court reversed the closing of the paper, overturned the September 2016 conviction of one of the journalists, and reduced the sentences of the other two.8

Private ownership of radio and television stations is not prohibited, but there are few privately owned stations. Satellite dishes have made foreign broadcasts accessible to the public. Still, there are some legal and practical restrictions to Internet usage, and only a minority of the population has subscriptions to Internet service. Many Internet sites are blocked, primarily for sexual content, but many Omanis are able to bypass restrictions by accessing the Internet by cell phone.

Omani law provides for freedom of association for “legitimate objectives and in a proper manner”—language that enables the government to restrict such rights in practice. A 2014 decree by the Sultan imposed a new nationality law that stipulates that citizens who join groups deemed harmful to national interests could be subject to citizenship revocation. Associations must register with the Ministry of Social Development, which is empowered to determine whether a group serves the interests of the country.

Trafficking in Persons and Labor Rights

Oman is a destination and transit country for men and women primarily from South Asia and East Africa who are subjected to forced labor and, to a lesser extent, sex trafficking. In October 2008, President George W. Bush directed that Oman be moved from a “Tier 3” ranking on trafficking in persons (worst level) by the State Department Trafficking in Persons report for 2008 to “Tier 2/Watch List.” The President’s upgrade was based on Omani pledges to increase efforts to counter trafficking in persons (Presidential Determination 2009-5). Oman was rated Tier 2 in the 2009- 2015 Trafficking in Persons reports. However, the report for 2016 downgraded Oman to Tier 2: Watch List on the grounds that the government did not demonstrate increasing efforts to address human trafficking during the previous reporting period. Similarly, the Trafficking in Persons report for 2017 kept Oman at Tier 2: Watch List, on the basis that, in the aggregate, it did not increase its anti-trafficking efforts compared to the previous reporting period.9 According to the report, Oman did identify more victims than the previous year, but conducted fewer investigations of traffickers compared to the prior year.

On broader labor rights, Omani workers have the right to form unions and to strike. However, only one federation of trade unions is allowed, and the calling of a strike requires an absolute majority of workers in an enterprise. The labor laws permit collective bargaining and prohibit employers from firing or penalizing workers for union activity. Labor rights are regulated by the Ministry of Manpower. The minimum wage for citizens is $845 per month, but minimum wage regulations do not apply to a variety of occupations and businesses.

Religious Freedom10

The 1996 Basic Law affirmed Islam as the state religion, but provides for freedom to practice religious rites as long as doing so does not disrupt public order. Civil courts replaced Sharia (Islamic law) courts in 1999. Recent State Department religious freedom reports have noted no reports of societal abuses or discrimination based on religious affiliation, belief, or practice. Non- Muslims are free to worship at temples and churches built on land donated by the government, but there are some limitations on non-Muslims’ proselytizing and on religious gatherings in other than government-approved houses of worship.

All religious organizations must be registered with the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs (MERA). Among non-Muslim sponsors recognized by MERA are the Protestant Church of Oman; the Catholic Diocese of Oman; the al Amana Center (interdenominational Christian); the Hindu Mahajan Temple; and the Anwar al-Ghubairia Trading Co. Muscat (for the Sikh community). The government agrees in principle to allow Buddhists to hold meetings if they can find a corporate sponsor. Members of all religions and sects are free to maintain links with coreligionists abroad and travel outside Oman for religious purposes. Private media have occasionally published anti-Semitic editorial cartoons. In 2015-2016, to address crowded conditions in some non-Muslim places of worship, MERA is planning to use land donated by Sultan Qaboos for construction of a new building for Orthodox Christians, with separate halls for Syrian, Coptic, and Greek Orthodox Christians. The government has also approved new worship space for Baptists.

Advancement of Women

Sultan Qaboos has publicly emphasized that he considers Omani women vital to national development. Women now constitute over 30% of the workforce. The first woman of ministerial rank in Oman was appointed in March 2003, and, since then, there have been several female ministers in each cabinet. Oman’s ambassadors to the United States and to the United Nations are women. The number of women in Oman’s elected institutions was discussed above, but campaigns to establish a minimum number of women elected to the Consultative Council.

Below the elite level, however, Omani women continue to face social discrimination, often as a result of the interpretation of Islamic law. Allegations of spousal abuse and domestic violence are fairly common, with women finding protection primarily through their families. Omani nationality can be passed on only by a male Omani parent.

Foreign Policy/Regional Issues

Under Sultan Qaboos, Oman has pursued a relatively independent foreign policy, including sometimes diverging markedly from at least some of its GCC allies. Oman has generally avoided direct military involvement in regional conflicts and has maintained consistent high-level ties to Iran. Oman backed the deployment of the GCC’s joint “Peninsula Shield” unit to Bahrain in 2011 to help the Al Khalifa regime counter the Shiite uprising there, but Oman did not deploy its own forces to that mission. Similarly, Oman joined the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, but did not conduct any airstrikes against that group. Nor did Oman join the Saudi-led Arab coalition fighting the Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen.

At a GCC leadership meeting in 2012, Saudi Arabia first advanced a plan for political unity among the GCC states as a signal of GCC solidarity against Iran. Oman vociferously opposed the plan,11 even going so far as to threaten to withdraw from the GCC entirely if the plan were adopted. Other GCC leaders are similarly concerned about surrendering any of their sovereignty, and, although the proposal was again referenced at the annual GCC summit in December 2016, the plan still has not been adopted. Some opinion leaders in Oman have publicly raised the possibility that the country might at some point hold a referendum on whether to stay in the GCC alliance.12 Again demonstrating its unwillingness to reflexively follow a Saudi lead, Oman did not join the Saudi-led move in June 2017 to isolate Qatar over a number of policy disagreements.

Oman supported Kuwait’s efforts to mediate a resolution of the dispute—efforts that are in concert with mediation by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. As part of its role to support a diplomatic resolution, Oman’s top diplomat Yusuf Alawi visited Washington, DC, to meet with Secretary Tillerson on July 21, 2017, the visit coming one week after Secretary Tillerson’s Kuwait-based “shuttle diplomacy” effort to resolve the rift.

In 2007, Oman was virtually alone within the GCC in balking at a plan to form a monetary union. Lingering border disputes also have plagued Oman-UAE relations; the two finalized their borders in 2008, nearly a decade after a tentative border settlement in 1999.

Iran

Omani leaders differ sharply with many of their GCC allies in asserting that engagement with Iran better mitigates the potential threat from that country than does confrontation. This stance has positioned Oman as a mediator on several regional issues in which most of the GCC states are working against Iran’s allies or proxies. There are residual positive sentiments among the Omani leadership for the Shah of Iran’s support for Qaboos’s 1970 takeover and its provision of troops to help Oman end the leftist revolt in Oman’s Dhofar Province during 1962-1975, a conflict in which Iran lost 700 troops.

Oman has no sizable Shiite Muslim community with which Iran could meddle in Oman. Others attribute Oman’s position on Iran to its larger concerns that Saudi Arabia has sought to spread its Wahhabi form of Islam into Oman, whose citizens tend to practice the moderate Ibadhism.

Sultan Qaboos bucked U.S. and GCC criticism by visiting Tehran in August 2009 at the time of protests in Iran over alleged governmental fraud in declaring the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the June 2009 election. He visited again in August 2013, after Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani took office. Rouhani visited Oman in 2014 and again on February 15, 2017, as part of an Iranian effort to begin a political dialogue with the GCC—an initiative that Oman has been central to, along with Kuwait. Sultan Qaboos made a rare public appearance to receive Rouhani. Following the Rouhani visit, Oman welcomed Kuwait’s Amir on a three-day visit to jointly plan efforts to enlist the other GCC countries in a dialogue with Iran.

In part to retain its ties to Tehran, Oman has not joined the Saudi-led coalition that is combatting the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Nor did Oman immediately join a Saudi announcement in December 2015 of a Muslim-nation “counterterrorism coalition” that excludes Iran and Iran’s allies, although Oman finally did join that initiative in December 2016, becoming the 41st member of the group. Oman was the only GCC state not to downgrade relations with Iran in January 2016 in solidarity with Saudi Arabia when the Kingdom broke relations with Iran in connection with the dispute over the Saudi execution of dissident Shiite cleric Nimr Al Nimr. Oman’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs did condemn the Iranian attacks on the Saudi facilities.

In February 2016, Oman joined the other GCC states in declaring Lebanese Hezbollah to be a terrorist organization—an action that signaled that Oman opposes Iran’s nonstate allies. Oman did not join the other GCC states in taking the additional step of restricting travel by its citizens to Lebanon— an effort to restrict Hezbollah’s income.

Some experts and GCC officials argue that Oman-Iran relations, particularly their security cooperation, are undermining GCC defense solidarity. In 2009, Iran and Oman agreed to cooperate against smuggling across the Gulf of Oman, which separates the two countries. On August 4, 2010, Oman signed a security pact with Iran to cooperate in patrolling the Strait of Hormuz, an agreement that reportedly committed the two to hold joint military exercises.13 The two countries expanded that agreement by signing a Memorandum of Understanding on military cooperation in 2013. The two countries have held five joint exercises under these agreements, most recently a December 2015 joint naval exercise.14 In addition, in late 2016 U.S. officials reportedly expressed concern to their Omani counterparts that Iran might be taking advantage of its relationship with Oman, and of Oman’s porous border with Yemen, to smuggle weapons to the Houthi rebels in Yemen via Omani territory.15

Oman has benefitted from economic ties with Iran—ties that might further expand now that international sanctions on Iran’s economy have been lifted.16 Iran and Oman have jointly developed the Hengham oilfield in the Persian Gulf, with a total estimated investment value of $450 million. The field came on stream on July 11, 2013, and is producing about 30,000 barrels per day. The investment is estimated at $450 million, although the exact share of the costs between Iran and Oman is not known. The field can also produce a maximum of 80 million cubic feet per day of natural gas. The two countries have also discussed potential investments to further develop Iranian offshore natural gas fields that adjoin Oman’s West Bukha oil and gas field in the Strait of Hormuz. The Omani field began producing oil and gas in February 2009. During Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s 2014 visit to Oman, the two countries signed a deal to build a $1 billion undersea pipeline to bring Iranian natural gas from Iran’s Hormuzegan Province to Sohar in Oman, where it will be converted to Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) and then exported.17 The Korea Gas Corporation is reportedly nearing agreement to build the pipeline.18

Iran reportedly envisions the joint expansion of Oman’s port of Duqm as providing Tehran with a major trading hub to interact with the global economy. Iran and Oman are conducting a feasibility study to construct a $200 million car production plant at Duqm, a joint venture between Oman and Iran’s Khodro Industrial Group.

Even during the period of maximum sanctions (2010-2015), the two countries conducted normal civilian trade, supplemented by the informal trading relations that have long characterized the Gulf region. Oman’s government is said to have long turned a blind eye to the smuggling of a wide variety of goods to Iran from Oman’s Musandam Peninsula territory. The trade is illegal in Iran because the smugglers avoid paying taxes in Iran, but Oman’s local government collects taxes on the goods shipped.19

Oman as a Go-Between for the United States and Iran

Far from criticizing Oman for its ties to Iran, U.S. officials have used the Oman-Iran relationship to develop ties to Iranian officials. Oman’s intermediation facilitated the November 24, 2013, interim nuclear deal (Joint Plan of Action) between Iran and the “P5+1” countries (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany). Press reports indicate that then-Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and other U.S. officials began secretly meeting with Iranian officials in early 2013—before the June 2013 election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s president—to explore the possibility of a nuclear deal. The meetings accelerated after Sultan Qaboos’s August 25-27, 2013, visit to Iran. Omani banks, some of which operate in Iran, were used to implement some of the financial arrangements of the JPA, such as the transfer to Iran of $700 million per month in hard currency proceeds from oil sales.20

Oman’s pivotal role continued during talks to achieve the July 14, 2015, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and the P5+1. During November 9-10, 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Muscat to try to accelerate progress in the negotiations, followed one day later by a meeting in Muscat between the entire P5+1 and Iranian negotiators. Secretary Kerry’s meeting with the ailing Qaboos in Germany in January 2015 reportedly focused on the nuclear talks with Iran.21 An additional round of P5+1-Iran talks was held in Oman subsequently, and the JCPOA was finalized in July 2015. In December 2015, Oman hosted a meeting between two key negotiators of the JCPOA, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi, to discuss implementing the JCPOA. In November 2016, Iran exported 11 tons of heavy water to Oman in order to reduce its stockpile below the amount allowed in the JCPOA and remain in compliance with the terms of the agreement. The heavy water will likely eventually be sold to other buyers that use that product.

Oman also has been an intermediary through which the United States and Iran have exchanged captives. Oman brokered a U.S. hand-over of Iranians captured during U.S.-Iran skirmishes in the Persian Gulf in 1987-1988. In 2007, Oman helped broker Iran’s release of 15 sailors from close U.S. ally the United Kingdom, who Iran had captured in the Shatt al Arab waterway. U.S. State Department officials publicly confirmed that Oman helped broker the 2010-2011 releases from Iran of U.S. hikers Sara Shourd, Josh Fattal, and Shane Bauer, who allegedly strayed over the border from Iraq. Oman reportedly paid their $500,000 per person bail to Iranian authorities.22 In April 2013, Omani mediation obtained the release to Iran of an Iranian scientist, Mojtaba Atarodi, imprisoned in the United States in 2011 for procuring nuclear equipment for Iran. During a May 2013 visit to Oman, then-Secretary of State Kerry reportedly discussed with Qaboos possible Omani help in obtaining the release of U.S.-Iran nationals held by Iran and determining the fate of retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared after visiting Iran’s Kish Island in 2007.

Cooperation Against the Islamic State Organization and on Syria and Iraq

Omani leaders, as do those of the other GCC states, assert that the Islamic State constitutes a major threat to the region. At a meeting in Saudi Arabia on September 11, 2014, all the GCC states joined the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition. However, unlike several GCC states, Oman has not conducted airstrikes against the Islamic State. Oman offered the use of its air bases for the coalition, but Oman’s bases are far from Syria and Iraq and have not been used much for strikes.

In the Syria internal conflict, possibly because of its relations with Iran, Oman has refrained from intervening against Iran’s close ally, Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, and instead focused on mediation. Oman is not reported to have provided funds or arms to anti-Assad rebel groups in Syria. Oman did joint other Arab states in 2011 in suspending Syria’s membership in the Arab League and closing its embassy in Damascus.23 In August 2015, Oman hosted Syria’s foreign minister for talks on possible political solutions to the Syria conflict, and in October 2015, Omani Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Yusuf Alawi visited Damascus to convey a message from then-Secretary of State John Kerry to Assad.24 Oman attended the multilateral meetings in Vienna on the Syria conflict in late 2015, which included most of the GCC states, major European powers, Russia, China, the United States, and Iran. On November 6, 2015, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir visited Muscat to discuss the conflicts in Syria and Yemen (a conflict in which Oman also has mediated). During February 2-3, 2016, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited Muscat to discuss Syria and other regional issues.

On Iraq, no GCC state has undertaken air strikes against the Islamic State fighters there. The GCC states have tended to resist helping the Shiite-dominated government in post-Saddam Iraq. Oman opened an embassy in Iraq after the 2003 ousting of Saddam but then closed it for several years following a shooting outside it in November 2005 that wounded four, including an embassy employee. The embassy reopened in 2007 but Oman’s Ambassador to Iraq, appointed in March 2012, is resident in Jordan, where he serves concurrently. Oman provided modest funds for Iraq’s post-Saddam reconstruction, a relatively small amount.

Yemen

Oman’s relations with neighboring Yemen have historically been troubled, and Oman’s concerns have increased as Yemen has again lapsed into conflict. A GCC-wide initiative helped organize a peaceful transition from the rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011-2012. However, Saleh’s successor, Abdu Rabu Mansur Al Hadi, was driven out of Sanaa in 2015 by Zaidi Shiite Houthi rebels and central authority disintegrated. The Yemeni affiliate of Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), also continues to operate there. Oman has largely closed its border with Yemen since early 2016 and has built some refugee camps near the border.

Oman is the only GCC state that has not joined the Saudi-led Arab coalition which has fought since March 2015 to try to restore the Hadi government. Oman’s relative neutrality, coupled with Oman’s ties to Iran, has enabled Oman to host talks between U.S. diplomats and Houthi representatives and to broker the release of several Western captives from Yemen. In November 2016, a U.S. Marine veteran who was detained by the Houthis in April 2015 was released through Omani assistance, according to then-Secretary of State Kerry.25 Formal mediation talks between the Hadi government and the Houthis that took place from April to August 2016 were held in Kuwait, which is part of the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen; Saudi officials apparently trust Kuwait as a mediator more than they do Oman. Oman’s reported inability or unwillingness to prevent Iran’s smuggling of weapons to the Houthis via Omani territory, discussed above, probably has increased Saudi doubts about Oman’s neutrality as a Yemen mediator, although Omani officials reportedly have pledged to try to prevent such illicit activity.

The current instability in Yemen builds on a long record of difficulty in Oman-Yemen relations. The former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), considered Marxist and pro-Soviet, supported Oman’s Dhofar rebellion. Oman-PDRY relations were normalized in 1983, but the two engaged in occasional border clashes later in that decade. Relations improved after 1990, when PDRY merged with North Yemen to form the Republic of Yemen. In May 2009, Oman signaled support for Yemen’s integrity and the government of then-President Saleh by withdrawing the Omani citizenship of southern Yemeni politician Ali Salim Al Bidh, an advocate of separatism in south Yemen.

Policies on Other Conflicts

Libya. Oman did not play an active a role in supporting the 2011 Libyan uprising that overthrew Mu’ammar Al Qadhafi. Oman did not supply weapons or advice to rebel forces or fly any strike missions against Qadhafi forces. Oman did recognize the opposition Transitional National Council as the government of Libya after Tripoli fell on August 21, 2011. In March 2013, Oman granted asylum to Qadhafi’s widow and her and Qadhafi’s daughter, Aisha, and sons Mohammad and Hannibal,26 who reportedly had entered Oman in October 2012. Aisha and Hannibal are wanted by Interpol pursuant to a request from the recognized Libyan government, but Libya has not asked for their extradition. Omani officials said they were granted asylum on the grounds that they not engage in any political activities.

Egypt. The GCC has been divided on post-Mubarak Egypt. Qatar supported the 2012 election of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammad Morsi as the first elected post-Mubarak president, but Saudi Arabia and the UAE oppose the Brotherhood and supported the Egyptian military’s ouster of Morsi in July 2013. Oman did not take a distinct side in this rift, although it did criticize a postcoup crackdown on Brotherhood supporters. Oman has joined most of the other GCC states in building ties to the government of former military leader/elected President Abdel Fatah El Sisi.

Israeli-Palestinian Dispute and Related Issues

Taking a stand supportive of U.S. policy, Oman was the one of the few Arab countries not to break relations with Egypt after the signing of the U.S.-brokered Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979. All the GCC states participated in the multilateral peace talks established by the 1991 U.S.- sponsored Madrid peace process, but only Oman, Bahrain, and Qatar hosted working group sessions of the multilaterals.

Oman hosted an April 1994 session of the working group on water that resulted in the establishment of a Middle East Desalination Research Center in Oman. Participants in the Desalination Center include Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the United States, Japan, Jordan, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Qatar.

In September 1994, Oman and the other GCC states renounced the secondary and tertiary Arab boycott of Israel. In December 1994, it became the first Gulf state to officially host a visit by an Israeli prime minister (Yitzhak Rabin), and it hosted then Prime Minister Shimon Peres in April 1996. In October 1995, Oman exchanged trade offices with Israel, essentially renouncing the primary boycott of Israel. However, there was no move to establish diplomatic relations. The trade offices closed following the September 2000 Palestinian uprising. In an April 2008 meeting in Qatar, de-facto Foreign Minister Alawi informed his then Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni, that the Israeli trade office in Oman would remain closed until agreement was reached on a Palestinian state. Several Israeli officials reportedly visited Oman in November 2009 to attend the annual conference of the Desalination Center, and the Israeli delegation held talks with Omani officials on the margins of the conference.27 Oman offered to resume trade contacts with Israel if Israel agrees to at least a temporary halt in Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. Israel has not consistently maintained such a suspension and Israel and Oman have not reopened trade offices. Oman publicly supports the Palestinian Authority (PA) drive for full U.N. recognition.

Defense and Security Issues

Sultan Qaboos, who is Sandhurst-educated and is respected by his fellow Gulf rulers as a defense strategist, has long seen the United States as the key security guarantor of the region. Oman’s approximately 45,000-person armed force is the third largest of the GCC states and widely considered one of the best trained. However, in large part because of Oman’s limited funds, it is one of the least well equipped of the GCC countries.

Because of his historic ties to the British military, Qaboos early on relied on seconded British officers to command Omani military services, and Oman bought British weaponry. Over the past two decades, British officers have become mostly advisory and Oman has shifted its arsenal mostly to U.S.-made major combat systems. Still, as a signal of the continuing close defense relationship, in April 2016 Britain and Oman signed a memorandum of understanding to build a base near Oman’s Duqm port, at a cost of about $110 million, to support the stationing of British naval and other forces in Oman on a permanent basis.28 Britain agreed to that arrangement even though, as noted above, Iran is involved in helping Oman develop Duqm.

Qaboos has consistently advocated expanding intra-GCC defense cooperation and for the GCC to cooperate with the United States. Oman was the first Gulf state to formalize defense relations with the United States after the Persian Gulf region was shaken by Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. Oman and the United States signed a “facilities access agreement” that allows U.S. forces access to Omani military facilities on April 21, 1980. Days after the signing, the United States used Oman’s Masirah Island air base to launch the failed attempt to rescue the U.S. Embassy hostages in Iran—although Omani officials complained that they were not informed of that operation in advance. Under the agreement, which was renewed in 1985, 1990, 2000, and 2010, the United States reportedly can use—with advance notice and for specified purposes—Oman’s military airfields in Muscat (the capital), Thumrait, Masirah Island, and Musnanah. Some U.S. Air Force equipment, including lethal munitions, is reportedly stored at these bases.29 The U.S. Marines and Royal Army of Oman annually (each winter) hold a two-week bilateral exercise (“Sea Soldier”) to enhance coordination between the forces.

Oman’s facilities contributed to U.S. major combat operations in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom, OEF) and, to a lesser extent, Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom, OIF). According to the Defense Department, during major combat operations of OEF (late 2001) there were about 4,300 U.S. personnel in Oman, mostly Air Force, and U.S. B-1 bombers, indicating that the Omani facilities were used extensively for strikes during OEF. The U.S. military presence in Oman fell to 3,750 during OIF (which began in March 2003) because facilities in GCC states that are closer to Iraq were used more extensively. During 2004-2011, Omani facilities reportedly were not used for air support operations in either Afghanistan or Iraq, and the numbers of U.S. military personnel in Oman were reduced to a few hundred, mostly Air Force.30 No GCC state contributed forces to OIF or to subsequent stabilization efforts in Iraq. Unlike Bahrain or UAE, Oman did not send military or police forces to Afghanistan.
For 2017, Oman has earmarked $8.6 billion for defense and security. That amount comes from estimated total 2017 government expenditures of $30 billion.

U.S. Arms Sales and other Security Assistance to Oman31

Using U.S. assistance and national funds, Oman is trying to expand and modernize its arsenal primarily with purchases from the United States. However, Oman is one of the least wealthy GCC states and cannot buy U.S. arms as readily as the wealthier GCC states can. Oman has received small amounts of Foreign Military Financing (FMF) that have been used to purchase equipment that helps Oman operate alongside U.S. forces, secure its borders, and combat terrorism. Oman is eligible for grant U.S. excess defense articles (EDA) under Section 516 of the Foreign Assistance Act. For the first time in any recent year, the Administration has not requested any FMF for Oman for FY2017, perhaps representing a shift toward emphasis on counterterrorism and border security assistance.

• F-16s: In October 2001, Oman purchased (with its own funds) 12 U.S.-made F- 16 C/D aircraft. Along with associated weapons (Harpoon and AIM missiles), a podded reconnaissance system, and training, the sale was valued at about $825 million; deliveries were completed in 2006. Oman made the purchase in part to keep pace with the other GCC states that bought U.S.-made combat aircraft. In 2010, the United States approved a sale to Oman of 18 additional F-16s, with a value (including associated support) of up to $3.5 billion.32 Oman signed a contract with Lockheed Martin for 12 of the aircraft in December 2011, with the purchase of an additional 6 possible. The first of the aircraft was delivered in July 2014 and the deliveries are to be completed by December 2016. Oman has also bought associated weapons systems, including “AIM” advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles (AIM-120C-7, AIM-9X Sidewinder), 162 GBU laser-guided bombs, and other equipment. Oman’s Air Force also possesses 12 Eurofighter “Typhoon” fighter aircraft.
• Countermeasures for Head of State Aircraft. In November 2010, DSCA notified Congress of a possible sale of up to $76 million worth of countermeasures equipment and training to protect the C-130J that Oman bought under a June 2009 commercial contract. The prime manufacturer of the equipment is Northrop Grumman. Another sale of $100 million worth of countermeasures equipment— in this case for aircraft that fly Sultan Qaboos—was notified on May 15, 2013.
• Surface-to-Air and Air-to-Air Missiles. On October 19, 2011, DSCA notified Congress of a potential sale to Oman of AVENGER and Stinger air defense systems, asserted as helping Oman develop a layered air defense system.
• Missile Defense. On May 21, 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry visited Oman reportedly in part to help finalize a sale to Oman of the THAAD (Theater High Altitude Area Defense system), the most sophisticated land-based missile defense system the United States exports. A tentative agreement by Oman to purchase the system, made by Raytheon, was announced on May 27, 2013, with an estimated value of $2.1 billion. However, a sale has not been announced. Several other GCC states have bought or are in discussions to buy the THAAD as part of an effort to establish a Gulf-wide missile defense network.
• Tanks as Excess Defense Articles. Oman received 30 U.S.-made M-60A3 tanks in September 1996 on a “no rent” lease basis (later receiving title outright). In 2004, it turned down a U.S. offer of EDA U.S.-made M1A1 tanks, but Oman asserts that it still requires armor to supplement the 38 British-made Challenger 2 tanks and 80 British-made Piranha armored personnel carriers it bought in the mid- 1990s. Oman has also bought some Chinese-made armored personnel carriers and other gear, and it reportedly is considering buying 70 Leopard tanks from Germany with a value of $2.2 billion.
• Patrol Boats/Maritime Security. Some FMF has been used to help Oman buy U.S.-made coastal patrol boats (“Mark V”) for antinarcotics, antismuggling, and antipiracy missions, as well as aircraft munitions, night-vision goggles, upgrades to coastal surveillance systems, communications equipment, and de-mining equipment. EDA grants since 2000 have gone primarily to help Oman monitor its borders and waters and to improve interoperability with U.S. forces. Oman has bought some British-made patrol boats. The United States also has sold Oman the AGM-84 Harpoon antiship missile.
• Anti-tank Weaponry. The United States has sold Oman anti-tank weaponry to help it protect from ground attack and to protect critical infrastructure. In December 2015, DSCA notified a potential sale to Oman of more than 400 TOW (tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided) anti-tank systems. The sale has an estimated value of $51 million. The United States also has provided to Oman 400 “Javelin” anti-tank guided missiles.33

Professionalizing Oman’s Forces: IMET Program and Other Programs

The International Military Education and Training program (IMET) program is used to promote U.S. standards of human rights and civilian control of military and security forces, as well as to fund English language instruction, and promote interoperability with U.S. forces. About 100 Omani military students participate in the program each year, studying at 29 different U.S. military institutions. For FY2016, some FMF was used to build Oman’s ability to address emerging threats to the anti-Islamic State coalition.34 The Obama Administration requested funds to continue those programs in FY2017.

Cooperation against Terrorism35

Since September 11, 2001, Oman has cooperated with U.S. legal, intelligence, and financial efforts against terrorist groups including Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP, headquartered in neighboring Yemen), and more recently the Islamic State organization. No Omani nationals were part of the September 11, 2001, attacks and no Omanis have been publicly identified as senior members of the Al Qaeda organization.

According to the State Department report on global terrorism for 2015 (latest available), Oman is assessed as actively involved in preventing members of these and other terrorist groups from conducting attacks and using the country for safe haven or transport.

”NADR” and Related Counterterrorism Funding. The United States provides funding— Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, Demining, and Related (NADR) and other funds—to help Oman counter terrorist and related activity. NADR funding falls into three categories: Export Control and Related Border Security (EXBS) funds, Anti-Terrorism Assistance (ATA) funds, and Terrorism Interdiction Program funding. The U.S. Export Control and Related Border Security program (EXBS) has been used in recent years to train the Royal Oman Police (ROP), the ROP Coast Guard, the Directorate General of Customs, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the Ministry of Transportation and Communication, and the Royal Army of Oman to enhance their capabilities to interdict weapons of mass destruction (WMD), advanced conventional weapons, or illegal drugs at official Ports of Entry on land and at sea ports and along land and maritime borders. ATA funds are used to train the Royal Army of Oman and several Omani civilian law enforcement agencies on investigative techniques, maritime border security, cybersecurity, and to enhance their ability to detect and respond to the entry of terrorists into Oman. For FY2017, the United States is providing Oman $1 million in NADR funds for counterterrorism programs (ATA) and $1 million to combat trafficking of WMD.

In 2005, Oman joined the U.S. “Container Security Initiative,” agreeing to prescreening of U.S.- bound cargo from its port of Salalah to prevent smuggling of nuclear material, terrorists, and weapons. However, the effect of some U.S. programs on Omani performance is sometimes hindered by the lack of clear delineation between the roles and responsibilities of Oman’s armed forces and law enforcement agencies.

There are no Omani nationals held in the U.S. prison for suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In January 2015, Oman accepted the transfer of three non-Omani nationals from Guantanamo Bay as part of an effort to support U.S. efforts to close the facility. On January 15, 2016, the Defense Department announced a transfer to Oman of 10 Yemeni nationals from the facility. In January 2017, Oman accepted another 10 Guantanamo prisoners.

Anti-Money Laundering. Oman is a member of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force (MENA-FATF). Recent State Department terrorism reports credit Oman with transparency regarding its anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing enforcement efforts and say that it has the lowest risk for terrorism financing or money laundering of any of the GCC countries. Oman does not permit the use of hawalas, or traditional money exchanges, in the financial services sector, and Oman has on some occasions shuttered hawala operations entirely. A 2010 Royal Decree was Oman’s main legislation on anti-money laundering and combatting terrorism financing but, in 2016, Royal Decree 30/2016 increased efforts to counter terrorism financing by requiring financial institutions to screen transactions for money laundering or terrorist financing. In 2015, Oman signed an agreement with India to improve cooperation on investigations, prosecutions, and counterterrorism efforts.

Countering Violent Extremism. According to the State Department report on terrorism for 2015, referenced earlier, “The nature and scope of Oman’s initiatives to address domestic radicalization and recruitment to violence are unknown, but it is suspected that Oman maintains tightly controlled and non-public CVE [countering violent extremism] initiatives in this area.” The department’s International Religious Freedom report, cited earlier, notes that the government continues to promote an advocacy campaign entitled “Islam in Oman,” that the government says is designed to encourage tolerant, inclusive Islamic practices.

Economic and Trade Issues36

Despite Oman’s efforts to diversify its economy, oil exports still generate over 50% of government revenues. Oman has a relatively small 5.5 billion barrels (maximum estimate) of proven oil reserves, enough for about 15 years at current production rates. In part because it is a relatively small producer, Oman is not a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Recognizing that its crude oil fields are aging, Oman is trying to privatize its economy, diversify its sources of revenue, and develop its liquid natural gas (LNG) sector, for which Oman has identified large markets in Asia and elsewhere. Oman is part of the “Dolphin project,” operating since 2007, under which Qatar is exporting natural gas to UAE and Oman through undersea pipelines, freeing up Oman’s own natural gas supplies for sale to other customers. In December 2013, Oman signed a $16 billion agreement for energy major BP to develop Oman’s natural gas reserves. Gas revenues are estimated to account for about 20% of government revenues in Oman’s 2016 budget. Some of the joint ventures that Oman is engaged in with Iran in the oil and gas sector are discussed in the “Iran” section, above.

The downturn in energy prices since mid-2014 has affected Oman significantly. It ran a budget deficit well in excess of $12 billion in 2016—much wider than the $6.6 billion deficit for 2015. A deficit of about $7.7 billion is projected for 2017. Recognizing its budgetary limitations, the government is cutting subsidies substantially and it continues to try to increase private-sector and shrink government-sector employment. In February 2014, even before the oil price decline, the Omani government took further steps to address citizen unemployment by requiring that more than 100,000 jobs now performed by expatriates be transferred to Omani nationals, with the intention of reducing the proportion of expatriate private sector employment from 39% to 33%.

Oman is also trying to position itself as a trading hub, asserting that ships that offload in its Salalah port pay lower insurance rates than those that have to transit the Persian Gulf to offload in Dubai or Bahrain.37 The government reportedly is implementing a $60 billion project, with some funding coming from Iran and other countries as discussed above, to build up the port at Duqm (see Figure 1) as a transportation, energy, and military hub. Oman’s plans for the port include a refinery ($6 billion alone), a container port, a dry dock, and other facilities for transportation of petrochemicals. A planned transit hub would link to the other GCC states by rail and enable them to access the Indian Ocean directly, bypassing the Persian Gulf.38

U.S.-Oman Economic Relations

The United States is Oman’s fourth-largest trading partner, and there was nearly $3 billion in bilateral trade in 2016, down slightly from the $3.25 billion in trade in 2015. In 2016, the United States exported $1.78 billion in goods to Oman, and imported $1.1 billion in goods from Oman. Of U.S. exports to Oman, the largest product categories are automobiles, aircraft (including military) and related parts, drilling and other oilfield equipment, and other machinery. Of the imports, the largest product categories are fertilizers, industrial supplies, and oil by-products such as plastics. In part because of expanded U.S. oil production, over the past few years the United States has imported almost no Omani oil.39

Oman was admitted to the WTO in September 2000. The U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement was signed on January 19, 2006, and ratified by Congress (P.L. 109-283, signed September 26, 2006). According to the U.S. Embassy in Muscat, the FTA has led to increased partnerships between Omani and U.S. companies. General Cables and Dura-Line Middle East are two successful examples of joint ventures between American and Omani firms. These ventures are not focused on hydrocarbons, suggesting the U.S.-Oman trade relationship is not focused only on oil.

The United States phased out development assistance to Oman in 1996. At the height of that development assistance program in the 1980s, the United States was giving Oman about $15 million per year in Economic Support Funds (ESF) in loans and grants, mostly for conservation and management of Omani fisheries and water resources.

On January 23, 2016, the United States and Oman signed an agreement on cooperation in science and technology. The agreement paves the way for exchanges of scientists, joint workshops, and U.S. training of Omani personnel in those fields.

About the author:
*Kenneth Katzman, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs

Source:
This article was published by the Congressional Research Service (PDF)

Notes:
1 Author conversations with Omani officials in Washington, DC, June 2013.
2 Author conversation with Omani Foreign Ministry consultant and unofficial envoy. May 5, 2011. Sayyid Badr’s name is nearly identical to that of the Minister of State for Defense, but they are two different persons.
3 “Oman Stands in U.S.’s Corner on Iran Deal.” Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2013.
4 Simon Henderson. “Oman Ruler’s Failing Health Could Affect U.S. Iran Policy.” Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, November 7, 2014.
5 Author conversations with Omani officials in Washington, DC, June 2013.
6 http://oman.usembassy.gov/pr-06012011.html.
7 Much of this section is from the State Department’s country report on human rights practices for 2016 and other State Department reports on international religious freedom and on trafficking in persons. Human rights report for 2016: https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/265726.pdf.
8 http://www.gdnonline.com/Details/151483/Omani-court-overturns-ban-on-Al-Zaman-newspaper.
9 https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/271344.pdf.
10 For text of the section on Oman in the latest State Department report on International Religious Freedom (2015), see http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/258040.pdf.
11 Comments to the author by a visiting GCC official. May 2012.
12 “Oman ‘Not Leaving the GCC,’ Official.” Gulf News Report, June 27, 2016.
13 Iran, Oman Ink Agreement of Defensive Cooperation. Tehran Fars News Agency, August 4, 2010.
14 Giorgio Cafiero and Adam Yefet. “Oman and the GCC: A Solid Relationship?” Middle East Policy, 2016.
15 “Exclusive: Iran Steps up Weapons Supply to Yemen’s Houthis via Oman – Officials.” Reuters, October 20, 2016.
16 See CRS Report RS20871, Iran Sanctions, by Kenneth Katzman, for a discussion of U.S. sanctions on Iran.
17 Dana El Baltaji. “Oman Fights Saudi Bid for Gulf Hegemony with Iran Pipeline Plan.” Bloomberg News, April 21, 2014.
18 Oman: Iran’s Best Friend in the Gulf. Financial Times, April 11, 2017. 19 Ibid.
20 Omani banks had a waiver from U.S. sanctions laws to permit transferring those funds to Iran’s Central Bank, in accordance with Section 1245(d)(5) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (P.L. 112-81). For text of the waiver, see a June 17, 2015, letter from Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Julia Frifield to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, containing text of the “determination of waiver.”
21 Carol Morello. “Kerry Meets with Oman’s Ailing Sultan at His Estate in Germany.” Washington Post, January 11, 2015.
22 Dennis Hevesi. “Philo Dibble, Diplomat and Iran Expert, Dies At 60.” New York Times, October 13, 2011.
23 http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/oman/oman-ready-to-mediate-between-syrian-parties-1.1617551.
24 Sigurd Neubauer. “Oman: the Gulf’s Go-Between” The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. February 4, 2016. 25 Adam Goldman. “Marine Veteran, Held a Year by Yemeni Rebels, is Freed.” New York Times, November 7, 2016.
26 “Muammar Gaddafi’s Family Granted Asylum in Oman.” Reuters, March 25, 2013.
27 Ravid, Barak. “Top Israeli Diplomat Holds Secret Talks in Oman.” Haaretz, November 25, 2009. http://www.haaretz.com/top-israeli-diplomat-holds-secret-talks-in-oman-1.3558.
28 “UK to Have Permanent Naval Base in Oman, MoU Signed.” Middle East Confidential. April 1, 2016. http://me- confidential.com/12289-uk-to-have-permanent-naval-base-in-oman-mou-signed.html.
29 Hajjar, Sami. U.S. Military Presence in the Gulf: Challenges and Prospects. U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, p. 27. The State and Defense Departments have not released public information recently on the duration of the 2010 renewal of the agreements or modifications to the agreements, if any. The Khasab base, 50 miles from Muscat, was upgraded with $120 million in U.S. funds—assistance agreed in conjunction with the year 2000 renewal of the facilities access agreement. Finnegan, Philip. “Oman Seeks U.S. Base Upgrades.” Defense News, April 12, 1999.
30 Contingency Tracking System Deployment File, provided to CRS by the Department of Defense.
31 Section 564 of Title V, Part C of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for FY1994 and FY1995 (P.L. 103-236) banned U.S. arms transfers to countries that maintain the Arab boycott of Israel during those fiscal years. As applied to the GCC states, this provision was waived on the grounds that doing so was in the national interest.
32 Andrea Shalal-Esa. “Lockheed Hopes to Finalize F-16 Sales to Iraq, Oman.” Reuters, May 16, 2011.
33 https://www.state.gov/t/pm/rls/fs/2016/253850.htm.
34 State Department Congressional Budget Justification for FY2016; and for FY2017.
35 Much of the information in this section is derived from the State Department Country Reports on Terrorism 2016, which can be found at https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2016/272232.htm.
36 For more information on Oman’s economy and U.S.-Oman trade, see CRS Report RL33328, U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement, by Mary Jane Bolle.
37 Author conversation with Omani officials. September 2013.
38 Hugh Eakin. “In the Heart of Mysterious Oman.” New York Review of Books, August 14, 2014. 39 http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/product/enduse/imports/c5230.html.

The United States and its allies have the demonstrated capabilities and unquestionable commitment to defend themselves from an attack, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Wednesday in a statement.

“Kim Jong Un should take heed of the United Nations Security Council’s unified voice, and statements from governments the world over, who agree [North Korea] poses a threat to global security and stability,” he said.

North Korea must choose to stop isolating itself and stand down its pursuit of nuclear weapons, Mattis said, and should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.

President Donald J. Trump was informed of the growing threat last December, the defense secretary said, “and on taking office his first orders to me emphasized the readiness of our ballistic missile defense and nuclear deterrent forces.”

“While our State Department is making every effort to resolve this global threat through diplomatic means, it must be noted that the combined allied militaries now possess the most precise, rehearsed and robust defensive and offensive capabilities on Earth,” Mattis said. North Korea will continue to be grossly overmatched by the U.S. and its allies, he said “and would lose any arms race or conflict it initiates.”

In pre-election mandate, MR Narendra Modi committed 10 million jobs to youth. But the momentum of job creation faltered, after BJP came in power. Three years period of Modi administration witnessed a reverse gear in employment generation. During July 2014 to December 2016, only 641,000 jobs were created. In comparison, during UPA period of July 2011 – December 2013, 1,280,000 jobs were created.

Media and political analysts, who were euphoric over Modi’s Make in India initiative as the trigger for job creation , are now abuzz in blaming Modi’s Make in India a jobless initiative. His several schemes to generate employment opportunities are being mocked . They argued that his Make in India –committed for job creation through manufacturing – had failed. It lagged to stimulate domestic investors. Though foreign investment increased. But job creation was not palpable, given the simmering role of foreign investment in the total manufacturing landscape.

Under the Make in India initiative, Modi administration acted swiftly to Ease of Doing Business, cutting down several procedural hassles, curbing bureaucracy and red tape through enlarging E- systems. Several growth oriented schemes, such as Start-up, Digitization and Smart city concepts, were introduced. But, all failed to impact and show the desired results for employment generation, the media said.

Why didn’t domestic investors respond to Make in India initiative, while the foreign investors were upbeat? Despite big flow of foreign investment during Modi regime, why it failed to generate more employment? Why did the schemes for development and modernization could not catalyze more employment? These are the some of the questions which were thrown for public debate to figure out Modi’s leadership for employment generation.

India achieved a sustainable and highest global growth in GDP during Modi regime. But, it succumbed to catchphrase of “jobless growth”. Why have all the development schemes proved palliative to employment generation? Where lies the fallacy?

The moot point for assessing the lackluster growth of job creation was the time period taken to assess the impact. The first three years of Modi administration is too short to assess the impact on job creation. These are the preparation stages for setting up new manufacturing factories. These three year periods were not potent to generate new employment opportunities.

For example, about 85 percent of the foreign direct investment, which boomed during Modi administration, are in the greenfield areas . It takes about 2 to 3 years or more as gestation period for the new factories to commence production. Employment is generated in the post manufacturing commencement period. Resultantly, the green shoots of employment generation in the foreign invested plants will be visible only after 3 to 4 years. Hence, the rise in the employment generation in foreign invested firms will be visible from 2018-19 onwards.

Domestic investors were shying away. Excepting in investment in 2014-15, domestic investment in new projects dipped to almost zero growth in 2016-17. Ease of doing businesses failed to impact the domestic investors. The factors turning headwinds to their investment initiatives were high rate of interests and easy availability of land due to tough land acquisition regulations.

Start-up is not the major creator of mass employment generation. Digital India and Smart cities are the long term projects to generate employment opportunities. All these schemes are at the native stages in terms of policy formations and implementations. Under the Smart-city initiatives, so far 60 out 100 cities could determine the projects costs. Of these, only 16 projects are in the implementations and the remaining 45 are at various stages of tendering.

Digitization is not the springboard for volume employment opportunities. It is the turf for opportunity for IT sectors and the process for modernization to keep every citizen, especially in urban areas , in the loop through internet-enabled services.

The year 2018 will be the turning point of Indian manufacturing sector under Make in India initiative. With BJP and its allies making a big stakeholders in Rajya Sabha after one-third of the members retire, the two major pending reforms, which are amenable to trigger manufacturing, will find easy access for Parliamentary approval. They are land acquisition bill and labour reform.

Pending land acquisition amendment bill has become the major obstacle for land availability and gear up the new investment in manufacturing. The new Land Acquisition bill under Modi administration, which overturned the mandatory obligations of farmers’ consent of 80 percent and Social Impact Assessment ( SIA) , will now find an easy passage for Parliamentary approval to become the Act. Till now, few State government have enacted their own land acquisition laws, which are effective within the periphery their own state boundaries. These restricted the new investors to invest in the state of their own preferences.

Labour reform is a long pending issue since it was pondered in the first term of BJP at the Centre in between 1999 to 2004. Labour reform in the form of ‘hire and fire’ is a long pending demand of investors. Under the Industrial Disputes Act, a company employing more than 100 workers, is not free to adopt ‘hire and fire’ system. With the fast growth in industrialization and greater participation of bigger houses , this law has become obsolete. A new thinking was brewed to relax the workers’ cap and provide more power to the investors for industrial harmony and growth.

With sustainable growth in the economy, which waned supply constraint , the country has entered into a comfortable zone of inflation. Resultantly, RBI relaxed its tight monetary policy. More easing in the rate of interests are in the offing. These will have positive impact on the domestic investors, who have long been yearning for easing of monetary policies.

Many new challenges are afoot to generate employment opportunities. One such is setting up of Coastal Employment Zones ( CEZs), proposed in Three Year Action Agenda by NITI Aayug. It is a first time challenge to generate more employment in the coastal areas. Presumably, the main motor is to link employment with global growth, based on the Chinese model. Hitherto, coastal areas were neglected because of their peripheral nature to play role in the economy. A large part of these areas are occupied by traditional industries like fisheries and cottage industries.

Therefore, the time has not ripen to assess the impact of Make in India on job opportunities. Will Modi have the last laugh after 2018?

(Views are personal)

North Korea is threatening to emerge as the casus belli for an impending US-China conflict. President Donald Trump’s accusation that Beijing is not doing enough to rein in its prodigal younger cousin, North Korea, from its pursuance of nuclear and missile development programs and the Chinese rejection to such an accusation could be the trigger.

Trump’s pressure on China is precipitated by the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile, second within a month in July, by North Korea with the potential to bring many cities of the US such as Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago within the missile’s range. For Pyongyang, its sole objective is to gain international legitimacy as a nuclear power with no immediate intention to strike the US. It wants to retain the right to strike in retaliation if threatened but is unlikely to strike first for clear knowledge of its own destruction. Possession of nuclear weapon is seen as the ultimate deterrence for its survival. No compromise on that.

This creates an uncomfortable situation for the US. Such a scenario does not assure the US about its security, which is why Trump expects Beijing to exercise its influence to prevail upon Pyongyang to abandon the nuclear and missile program. Trump had criticised China for its trade policy and accused it of raping the US economy. He had vowed to correct the trade imbalance but soon shifted focus on the North Korean threat. Viewed from a larger perspective, neither the US nor China finds easy to escape from this Thucydides’s trap, a deadly pattern of structural stress that results in a rising power challenges a ruling one. Neither is willing to yield space. Things get complicated as a result.

In a recent book titled Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap, Graham Allison argues that US-China relations at present are following similar historical pattern where a war could look imminent. Such a premise rests on examples in history when the Peloponnesian War devastated ancient Greece, the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable. Allison notes that over the past 500 years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times.

War broke out in twelve of them. Today with an unstoppable China and immovable America locking horns with two strong leaders Trump and Xi Jinping in either side of the spectrum spitting venom with the goal to make their countries “great again”, the seventeenth case look grim. Unless China scales back its ambitions or Washington shows greater willingness to accommodate in the power structure of the region and the world, any of the issues such as trade differences, cyberattack, or accident at sea or North Korea could provide adequate fodder to escalate a potential conflict into a major war. That clashing powers have kept peace in the past should give some solace that both should be willing to take some painful steps to avoid a disaster.

That possibility does not look easy. The situation in the 21st century world is quite different and looks messy. Any historical parallel could look inappropriate to analyse a potential war scenario today. And yet, historical lesson cannot be summarily dismissed either, which is why all windows must be kept open to explore a possible solution.

The present problem is how to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear and missile path. Trump feels that Beijing has the real leverage to influence North Korea. Beijing is unwilling to accept such a charge. Trump remains unconvinced. Earlier, the Beijing-brokered Six-Party talks did not lead anywhere; it is virtually dead after Pyongyang walked out of it in 2008. Imposing economic sanctions in order to strangulate North’s economy and isolate the country internationally have yielded little result.

Beijing has rejected Trump’s intentions to link North Korea’s nuclear program and US-China trade. China’s reaction was in response to Trump’s tweet when he said America’s “foolish past leaders” had allowed China to make billions of dollars a year in trade and that he was disappointed in Beijing for not solving the problem. Beijing says these are two issues in completely different domains and unrelated and therefore should not be discussed together. Beijing has repeatedly said it is not its responsibility to resolve the North Korean issue, and that both Washington and Pyongyang need to take steps to calm tensions and address each other’s concerns. At the same time, Beijing has condemned unilateral sanctions imposed by the US on Chinese companies. Both failed to agree on major new steps to reduce the US trade deficit with China, casting doubt over Trump’s economic and security relations with Beijing.

Both have toughened stances so much that there seems to be little scope for arriving at a mutual agreed solution. While Beijing continues to urge for talks, the US and its allies stress on the need to increase sanctions, both unilaterally and through the UN. Urging both the US and North Korea to ease tensions, China’s UN ambassador Liu Jieyi accused “relevant countries” of violating Security Council resolutions by heightening tensions and failing to resume negotiations. Earlier, the Chinese proposal for ‘freeze-for-freeze” – suspension of joint military drills by the US and South Korea and suspension of nuclear and missile program – proved to be non-starter, with neither agreeing to it. Some hawkish Senators such as Lindsey Graham are fuelling fire to the tensions by saying that Trump is ready to launch a devastating military strike if diplomacy fails to stop the nuclear missile threat. On the other hand, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson calmed the situation by saying that the Trump administration is not seeking a regime change and not seeking an accelerated reunification of the peninsula.

In the meantime, though some American and South Korean experts have cast doubt about North Korea’s ICBM re-entry capability, Trump is not expected to loosen his preparedness to cope with the North Korean challenge. These experts though concede that North Korea after decades of effort has a missile potentially capable of reaching the continental US, they hold the view that Pyongyang has yet to show the ICBM can inflict serious damage once it gets there. Though doubts remain if North Korea can arm the missile with a nuclear warhead and protect it throughout the flight, there are enough indications that North Korea would conduct more tests to perfect its capability to hit the US target with a nuclear tipped missile. In such a circumstance, can Trump prevail over China to check North Korea’s nuclear menace? If Beijing remains obdurate and uncooperative, then the US and China would find themselves in a collision course. The world would then witness the seventeenth time when conditions are ripe for a major conflagration. Of the two options, negotiation or declare war, the latter would have come to play. Can diplomacy still triumph and avert a potential war?

By Dr. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen*

Kuwait has expelled fifteen Iranian diplomats and submitted a formal letter of protest to the Lebanese government as the fallout from the ‘Abdali affair’ reverberates around the state. Fourteen members of the suspected terror cell, charged with stockpiling large quantities of weaponry in Kuwait and receiving training from Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), disappeared in mid-July. The supreme court in Kuwait had overturned an earlier acquittal and sentenced them to between five and fifteen years’ imprisonment. The diplomatic rift marks a turnaround from Emir Sabah al-Ahmad Al Sabah’s early 2017 outreach to Iranian President Rouhani, when the Emir sought to identify the parameters of a possible strategic dialogue that could dial down tensions in the Gulf. In addition to impacting the bilateral relationship between Kuwait and Iran, the affair underscores Kuwait’s vulnerability to external fissures that connect domestic Kuwaiti politics with broader regional upheaval.

Periodic Tensions in Bilateral Relations

The bilateral relationship between Kuwaiti and Iran has had fewer flashpoints in recent years, owing to the greater integration of Kuwait’s Shi’ite communities into political and economic structures (comparable to those in other GCC states) and to the pragmatism and moderation of Kuwaiti foreign policy under Sheikh Sabah, who served forty years as Kuwait’s Foreign Minister before becoming Prime Minister in 2003 and Emir in 2006. Some of the most prominent Shi’ite merchant families in Kuwait, such as the Behbehani and Dashti families, trace their ancestral roots to Iran and constitute an important source of soft commercial power linking Kuwait and Iran. (The origins of other large Shi’ite families in Kuwait, such as the Bukhamseen and Mazidi, lie respectively in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province and Iraq.)

It was not always thus, however, and ties between Kuwait and Iran reached a low point in the years immediately following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. During that period, the main focal point of Iranian-backed transnational Shi’ite activism in the Gulf was the Shiraziyyun movement, comprised of followers of Iraqi cleric Mohammed Mahdi al-Shirazi. Members of the Shiraziyyun were particularly active in Kuwait, where al-Shirazi had settled with his family and entourage in 1971 following his exile from Najaf. From Kuwait, al-Shirazi built up a network of followers in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and parts of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), utilizing connections among transnational Shi’ite merchants whose commercial interests spanned the Gulf. Al-Shirazi moved to Iran after the revolution and his Movement of Vanguard Missionaries was at the forefront of the Khomeini regime’s initial attempts to export the revolutionary upheaval across the region.

During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), a series of major terrorist attacks in Kuwait were traced back to Iran, including the bombings of the French and U.S. Embassies in Kuwait City in 1983 and the attempted assassination of Emir Jabir al-Ahmad Al Sabah in 1985. These incidents highlighted the interlocking trans-national threats to Kuwaiti domestic security, as the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility while the majority of those arrested were Iraqi Shi’ites. Later in the war, at the GCC annual summit in Abu Dhabi in November 1986, Kuwaiti officials requested the GCC provide maritime protection to Kuwait’s oil and merchant fleet and station a contingent of Peninsula Shield troops on Bubiyan Island to counteract Iran’s seizure of the nearby Faw Peninsula from Iraq the previous February. Yet their request was declined, owing to a lack of GCC consensus on whether to confront Iran politically or militarily. This left Kuwaiti officials with little option but to reluctantly turn to external powers to provide the maritime protection for its fleet, leading to the re-flagging and chartering of Kuwaiti vessels during the ‘Tanker War’ of 1987-88.

Kuwaiti Shi’ites, both of Arabian and Iranian origin, later played prominent roles during the resistance to the Iraqi occupation in 1990-91 when their associational infrastructure provided the backbone of an organized resistance movement against the Iraqi occupation forces. Sectarian tensions that had been inflamed by the terrorist incidents of the 1980s were blunted by this affirmation of loyalty to the state and to the ruling Al Sabah family at this most existential period for Kuwait. However, in 2004, the formation of Kitaeb Hezbollah as a Shi’ite militia and vehicle through which Iran’s elite Qods Force could deploy its most experienced operators and sensitive equipment to Iraq again, raised alarms in Kuwait at the destabilizing threat from Iranian-backed regional militias.

During the height of Iraq’s civil war between 2006 and 2008, the IRGC channeled considerable resources to Kitaeb Hezbollah and, by 2010, the group was in receipt of equipment commensurate with the IRGC in Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Particularly worrisome to Kuwait was the reappearance in Kitaeb Hezbollah of its leader, Basra-born Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (real name Jamal al-Ibrahimi). Al-Muhandis had been persecuted by the Ba’ath regime of Saddam Hussein and fled to Iran in the early-1980s, where he became a senior Badr Corps commander and subsequently rose to become the most senior Iraqi active duty member of the IRGC’s Qods Force. Al-Muhandis was directly implicated in the Iranian-backed terrorist attacks in Kuwait in the 1980s, and had, in fact, been sentenced in absentia to death in Kuwait for his role in them.

Sectarian tensions in Kuwait again threatened to escalate in February 2008 when members of the Kuwaiti offshoot of Hezbollah, al-Tahaluf al-Islami al-Watani (the Islamic National Alliance), gathered in Kuwait City to commemorate the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, one of the leading figures of Hezbollah in Lebanon killed in a massive car bomb in Damascus. The gathering, during which participants chanted ‘death to America, death to Israel’, drew immediate controversy and anger from Kuwait’s majority Sunni population, as Mughniyeh was widely believed to be the mastermind of the above-mentioned terrorist attacks in Kuwait the early 1980s. Vocal accusations in the Kuwaiti media, notably from more extreme Sunni Islamists, threatened to disrupt the delicate equilibrium in Kuwaiti society. The Speaker of the National Assembly, Jassim al-Kharafi, was instrumental in reaching out to the leaders of Kuwait’s Shi’ite communities (which range across the political and religious spectrum) and calming tensions. The incident triggered a realignment of Kuwaiti Shi’ite MPs who became solidly pro-government in the face of the societal backlash from the Sunni majority in the country.

It is against this backdrop of the periodic reminders of past attacks that reiterate Kuwait’s vulnerability to regional volatility that the Abdali affair has been unfolding since 2015. The affair began with the discovery in August 2015 of an enormous cache of weapons hidden on a farm in Abdali that reportedly contained enough munitions ‘for a small army’. The size of the find and the intense media speculation linking it to Iran, whether directly or indirectly through Hezbollah, led the Kuwaiti Public Prosecutor to issue a gag order barring further discussion of the issue lest it inflame domestic political and sectarian tension. Less than two months earlier, an Islamic State suicide bombing had killed 27 people at the (Shi’ite) Imam al-Sadiq mosque in Kuwait City. Twenty-five Kuwaitis – all Shi’ite – and one Iranian were charged with working for the IRGC and Hezbollah and with smuggling explosives from Iran with the intent of carrying out ‘hostile acts’ against Kuwait. Twenty-three of the 26 were convicted and sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment in January 2016 and the Iranian member was sentenced to death in absentia. Fifteen of the men were subsequently acquitted by the Court of Appeal in July 2016, only for the Supreme Court to reverse the acquittal in June 2017 and confirm their original sentences, prompting them to flee, presumably to Iran.

What Next for Kuwait-Iran Ties?

The fallout from the Abdali affair considerably complicates the progress that had been made in Kuwait-Iran ties over the past five years. Following the frostiness of bilateral ties with Iran during the Ahmedinejad era, Kuwait had been quick off the mark to revive political and commercial relations at the highest level following Iranian President Hasan Rowhani’s election in June 2013 and the subsequent interim nuclear deal that November. In June 2014, the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al Sabah, paid his first official visit to Iran since assuming power in January 2006, alongside a Kuwaiti delegation that included the Ministers of Oil, Finance, Foreign Affairs, and Commerce and Industry. That visit – the first by any Kuwaiti Emir since the 1979 Iranian revolution – was significant as it came during Kuwait’s rotating presidency of the GCC, and represented an attempt to contribute to a thaw in Iran-GCC relations.

Comments attributed in February 2014 to Khalid al-Jarallah, the Undersecretary at Kuwait’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that described the relationship with Iran as ‘excellent, historical, and developing’, illustrated the difference between Kuwait’s approach to Iran and the far more confrontational stance taken by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Abu Dhabi in the UAE. Kuwait noticeably did not join Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in cutting off diplomatic relations with Iran after tensions surged following the execution of the Saudi cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, and the subsequent targeting of Saudi diplomatic sites in Iran in January 2016. Kuwait also has not been as heavily involved in the Saudi-led military operation in Yemen, and headed up ultimately unsuccessful efforts in 2016 to try to reach a diplomatic settlement to the conflict between government-backed forces and Houthi rebels.

It was therefore not a surprise when Kuwait emerged at the forefront of an initiative to try and defuse tensions in the Gulf at the start of 2017. On January 25, Kuwait’s Foreign Minister, Sheikh Sabah al-Khaled Al Sabah, visited Teheran and carried with him a letter from Emir Sabah to President Rouhani that sought to establish the ‘basis for dialogue’ between the GCC and Iran. At the time of his visit, Sheikh Sabah commented, ‘There is a genuine willingness and desire to have normal and fair relations with Iran,’ and added that ‘opening a channel of communication will…bring benefit to both sides.’

The choice of Kuwait to send the message – and potential olive branch – from the GCC to Iran was no surprise. At 87, Emir Sabah was not only the elder statesman among GCC rulers, but also a respected veteran of regional affairs from his forty-year tenure as foreign minister between 1963 and 2003. During his time both as foreign minister and Emir, Kuwait sought to avoid being drawn into battles that would require it to take sides and undermine the careful balancing of regional relationships. In addition to acting as a bridge between the GCC and Iran, Emir Sabah had also drawn upon his stature and experience as a regional mediator in the dispute between Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the UAE in 2014, and has done so, again, in the most recent standoff between the same states and Qatar that began on June 5.

On February 7, Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, responded positively to the meeting with Kuwait’s Foreign Minister and to the Emir’s letter, and stated that Iran was ready for dialogue and that ‘we should aim together for a future that looks different.’ President Rouhani then visited Kuwait (and Oman) on February 15, and Emir Sabah travelled to Muscat from February 20-22 to meet with Sultan Qaboos to discuss ways to dial down the tensions in the Gulf and build bridges between Iran and Saudi Arabia. During his time in Kuwait, Rouhani had waxed lyrical about the bilateral possibilities, stating, ‘There are vast potentials for deepening and cementing relations between Iran and Kuwait in different aspects that can be tapped for the two nations and the region to benefit from.’

Although the initial responses to the Kuwaiti initiative were positive in tone, there was little substantive follow-up in the five months between February and the downgrading of diplomatic ties in July. One reason was the lack of buy-in from Saudi leaders, given the depth of their involvement in Yemen and their unwillingness to support a policy that might imply a retreat in an increasingly zero-sum regional struggle with Iran. Coming so soon after the fall of Aleppo, symbolic of the defeat of GCC-backed policy in Syria, it was perhaps unsurprising that the Saudi leadership did not support any thaw that would have acknowledged, even legitimized, Iran’s regional role. Another was the harder-line approach of the incoming Trump administration toward Iran’s role in the Middle East, with the White House siding on the issue with regional hawks rather than doves.

Kuwaiti officials therefore confront a very different regional landscape than they did in January. While the crisis between Qatar and its GCC neighbors has exposed rifts in the Sunni Arab bloc that President Trump sought to mobilize against Iran during the Riyadh Summit in May 2017, the Iranian issue has not disappeared.

Iran’s intervention in regional conflicts across the Middle East, through its political and military support of proxies such as Hezbollah and (to a lesser extent) the Houthi movement in Yemen, is perceived by GCC officials to pose the greatest and most direct threat to security and stability in the Gulf. For this reason, the flight of the Abdali fifteen has resonated strongly in Kuwait and its neighbors, with Bahrain synchronously accusing members of a Shi’ite cell detained in the Kingdom of maintaining links with Hezbollah in Lebanon and militants in Iran, including the al-Ashtar Brigade. Both the Abdali case and the emergence of the al-Ashtar Brigade in Bahrain (after 2011) will have fueled GCC officials’ concern for the possible infiltration and militarization of elements of political and religious opposition to ruling families by movements with a growing sophistication and scale of operational intent and capability, and with clearer indications of external support from the IRGC and Hezbollah.

*Dr. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen is an advisor at Gulf State Analytics. Gulf State Analytics originally published this article on August 9, 2017