By Angshuman Choudhury*

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) hosted a series of annual multilateral forums between its member states and with other regional partners in Manila, Philippines, from 3-8 August 2017. These included the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (AMM), ASEAN Plus Three (APT) Summit, ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and the East Asia Summit (EAS) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. The forums come at a historic time, with the regional organisation celebrating fifty years of existence.

The 46-page joint communiqué published on 5 August reflects two new trends within ASEAN’s post-2015 agenda: thematic expansion and structural consolidation. Both are significant in the geopolitical landscape of faltering regional alliances and emergent non-traditional, transnational threats.

These two trends suggest that the organisation is looking to broaden its role from a purely security community to one that facilitates people-centered development, and thus project itself as a ‘model of regionalism’. However, geopolitical realities and structural exigencies restrain ASEAN from realising its ambitious agenda.

Thematic Expansion

Post-2015, ASEAN has actively pushed the idea of ‘ASEAN community building’ forward under the following pillars: ASEAN Political Security Community (APSC), ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), and ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC). Within these, five main thrust areas can be identified: regional peace and stability, connectivity, economic integration (including a free-trade regime), maritime security and cooperation, and people-centered development.

In addition, critical issue areas within the non-traditional domain like human rights, environmental protection, transnational crimes, counterterrorism, and rights of refugees and migrant workers have now begun featuring prominently in the core ASEAN agenda after years of passive observance. The organisation has also acknowledged the importance of harmonising regional goals with that of the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Structural Consolidation

In terms of structural consolidation, ASEAN’s attempt has been to deepen its position from within and without, through the dual norm of ‘one ASEAN identity’ and ‘ASEAN centrality’.

While ‘centrality’ denotes the organisation’s pivotal role in setting the Southeast Asian agenda, ‘one identity’ is a top-down design for regional consolidation. These are aimed at establishing regionalism as a durable solution to uncertainty and creating a fresh political imagination of a single Southeast Asian community that could perhaps share similar experiences in the future.

ASEAN has also begun to proactively assert itself as the leading multilateral forum in all of Asia Pacific. With its multiple extra-regional mechanisms, it hopes to engage with a broad set of actors who are key to the geopolitical and economic stability of Southeast Asia. This has put the organisation in a unique position to set the rules of the game for multilateral regionalism in the years to come.

How Feasible is the ASEAN Agenda?

The jury remains out on both ‘centrality’ and ‘one identity’. It may not ever be possible for ASEAN to create (and sustain) a single identity given the stark diversity in not just political and economic systems but also degree and quality of development among member states. The bigger question, however, is: does ASEAN even need a uniform ‘identity’ in order to succeed as a regional organisation?

At the same time, ASEAN’s core autonomy in the region – or ‘centrality’ – remains dubious. This year’s deliberations reflect this. On the one hand, ASEAN held its ground against relentless pressure from the US-Japan-South Korea axis by refusing to completely isolate North Korea over the latter’s expanding nuclear programme. On the other, however, it appears to have capitulated to Beijing’s agenda of preserving Chinese military dominance in the South China Sea (SCS) by delaying consensus on a legally-binding Code of Conduct (COC) for contested waters. This might have been an outcome of certain member states going soft on Beijing in return for greater Chinese investments in the region.

Thus, while ASEAN’s attempt to synchronise its intra-regional agenda with a broader extra-regional network (EAS, ARF, etc) is a pragmatic strategy in the face of shifting alliances, it is also a caveat in the organisation’s push towards geopolitical autonomy. This is because giving platform to bigger strategic actors could render its own agenda vulnerable to overreaching external interests.

ASEAN faces certain structural challenges in realising its agenda of people-centric development. The principle of non-interference in a member state’s ‘internal matters’ often comes in the way of community-oriented, rights-based intervention. The organisation’s incapacity in dealing with the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and the treatment of gender minorities in Indonesia are cases-in-point.

In addition, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission of Human Rights’ (AICHR) limited mandate has permitted certain members to suspend their citizens’ fundamental rights with impunity. The refusal of some states to grant full-spectrum rights to migrant workers has also held the organisation back from finalising a long-pending, legally-binding instrument for the protection of their rights.

Looking Ahead

ASEAN needs to link top-down and bottom-up development. Member states must ensure that the benefits of regional economic integration, particularly a free-trade regime, percolate down to the community-level. This must be done through a model of decentralised and participatory governance, which is agnostic to individual political setups. At the same time, microeconomic agendas – like poverty alleviation and job creation – must be accompanied by a pursuit of social justice and equitable distribution.

Member states must also ensure that national security achieved through regional consolidation translates into individual security. Affirmative attention must be paid to vulnerable communities that are often left out of state-centric discourses on protection. Most importantly, ASEAN needs to recognise its own pluralism, rather than totalising the regional demography through political constructs.

* Angshuman Choudhury
Researcher and Coordinator, SEARP, IPCS
Email: angshuman.choudhury@ipcs.org

Today, anti-Indian dissent in Kashmir is partly indigenous, partly Pakistan sponsored, and a small part of it is radicalised and global, envisioning Kashmir’s future being a part of an Islamic caliphate. The protracted history of Pakistan-sponsored militancy’s attempts to usurp the indigenous movement is being challenged by the newly established third stream that seeks to convert the separatist militancy into a transcendental religious mission with a pan-Islamist goal. Apart from being a part of the large issue of militancy that New Delhi must tackle to stabilise Kashmir, this third stream pose an existential challenge to the pro-Pakistan separatists and militants. In fact, its growth can derail both the moralistic indigenous movement which attempts to highlight the alienation among the Kashmiris as a rasion d’etre for the demand of independence and the Pakistan sponsored separatist struggle that uses a huge array of instruments of violence to outmanoeuvre New Delhi.

In the pipeline

The thought process behind the third stream, which intends Kashmir to be a part of the global Islamic caliphate, has been evolving through small innocuous acts like incidents of waving of the flag of the Islamic State, since 2015. While the government, the separatists, and the strategic community dismissed those incidents as inconsequential, such aspirations have quietly grown to nurture a small band of followers. Despondent with the directions of militancy and its rather gloomy objective of making Kashmir a part of Pakistan, this new stream of militancy aims at providing a new lease pf life to the struggle for independence, although the prospects of its success are as hopeless as the movement supported by the Pakistani agencies.

Hizb ul Mujahideen (HM) commander Zakir Rashid Bhat alias Zakir Musa was the first to renounce merger with Pakistan as the objective of the Kashmiris. In May 2017 he declared, “Our intention should be that, we have to achieve azadi (freedom) to establish Islamic rule and not for secular state. If we are fighting for secular state then my blood won’t be spilled for that purpose.” he said. Subsequently he threatened to publicly behead Hurriyat leaders, who insist that the movement is Kashmir is “political”.

His expulsion from HM notwithstanding, such declaration and public repudiation of the stand by the Pakistan based militant leadership and the separatist Hurriyat formalised the founding of the third stream of militancy in Kashmir. Musa went on to announce the arrival of the al Qaeda in Kashmir and appeared in a video in May 2017 under the al-Qaeda banner, “accusing Indian Muslims of cowardice, and calling on them to engage in jihad against the government”. In the last week of July, the al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent’s new affiliate for Kashmir, Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, designated Musa as its chief. Among many of the quiet developments that are constantly taking place in the militancy landscape in the state, Abu Dujana, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) commander in South Kashmir, too had opted to be a part of the process that resents the corrupt LeT and HM leadership and their close association with the Pakistani state. Dujana’s personal and occupational feud with the LeT leadership may have precipitated his decision. The fact, however, is that the externally sponsored militancy which has tried its best to remain monolithic is facing an existential challenge from Musa and co.

The ‘trap’ of Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind

“Do not fall into the trap of Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind”, warned Raiyaz Naikoo, commander of the HM, at the funeral of two militants in South Kashmir’s Tahab in the last week of July 2017. He rejected the call given by Zakir Musa and the arrival of al Qaeda in Kashmir. “Linking our struggle with Al-Qaeda and ISIS is a strategy to defame our struggle,” he said. “Pakistan flag is our flag,” said Naikoo in his speech. He also sought a louder response to his slogan: “Teri Jan, Meri Jan, Pakistan, Pakistan”.

There is significant support for Naikoo and the HM/LeT brand of militancy. However, their Pakistani masters realise the dangers of taking such support for granted. The arrival of the ‘third stream’ is a source of sorry to the separatists as well as the leadership of the militant outfits and their state sponsors within the Pakistan military. The separatist Hurriyat has described the al Qaeda’s arrival in Kashmir as a handiwork of the Indian agencies. Similarly, the HM leadership in Pakistan and the outfit’s current commander in Kashmir have sworn their loyalty to flag of Pakistan and not that of the al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Zakir Musa is real

The propaganda that al Qaeda in Kashmir is unreal and is a mere creation of Indian agencies would have gone unchallenged without Zakir Musa, who continues to lead a mini revolution of sorts to emphacise the importance of a pan Islamism emanating militant movement and disown any attempt to limit the end game to merely merging Kashmir’s future with Pakistan.

Musa’s support base may not be spectacular. According to a police official, his group “consists of perhaps half-a-dozen people, with few arms and sources of funding. He’s pretty much a dead man walking.” But on occasions he has managed to attract enough attention to trouble the separatists and the Pakistan based terrorists. Musa’s denunciation of Pakistan and his campaign against hoisting its flag during militant funerals in some parts of the valley including Srinagar has borne fruit on few occasions. On 19 July, group of youths tossed away the Pakistan flag during the funeral of Sajad Gilkar, a militant from downtown Srinagar and wrapped the body with a flag resembling that of the Islamic State. According to a report, hundreds of people defied curfew and gathered at Nowhatta for Gilkar’s funeral where they endorsed Bhat’s call.

The fact that Abu Dujana and Arif Lelhari had switched sides to join the al Qaeda and an announcement to that effect was in the offing, was confirmed by Musa and endorsed by a video statement by al Qaeda’s present chief Ayman al Zawahiri. “When Dujana understood the right path and joined our ranks, there were some self-styled leaders of jihad in Pakistan who caused many difficulties in their way. Martyr Arif, also had to go through a number of difficulties, but they both fought till their last breath in the way of Allah”, Musa said. Musa’s growing stature and the line he toes makes him a thorn in the flesh for the LeT and/or the HM.

Counter Insurgency Successes

In the first week of June 2017, the Indian Army released a list of 12 most dreaded terrorists active in the Kashmir Valley. The list included LeT’s Abu Dujana, HM’s Riyaz Naikoo and Zakir Musa. Till the time of writing of this piece, five of these 12 had already been killed in separate encounters. More than 120 terrorists had been killed this year, the highest in the last seven years. Although killing of terrorists alone may not finish militancy, New Delhi believes that making the militant movement headless, even for a while, will allow it the opportunity to undertake other measures. Less militancy would necessarily mean fewer encounters and less dead bodies of militants for the public to rally around.

Reports have indicated that the security forces would continue pursuing a hardline approach on militancy in Kashmir. High-value terrorists like Zakir Musa and LeT’s Abu Ismail would remain primary targets. Abu Ismail (who interestingly did not figure in the list of 12 most wanted terrorists released in June 2017) is believed to be the mastermind behind the 10 July 2017 attack on the pilgrims of the Amarnath Yatra and is the new Kashmir division chief of LeT.

On 9 August a brief afternoon operation by the security forces led to the killing of three militants affiliated to Zakir Musa-led Ansar Ghazwat-ul Hind in Tral area of south Kashmir’s Pulwama district. From a counterinsurgency perspective, however, keeping Zakir Musa alive, at least for the time being, would make sense. While his minimal contribution to the level of militancy would not bother the security establishment, his repeated statements vowing for an Islamic Kashmir and his ability to split and weaken the Pakistani sponsored militancy could be of some use to the security forces.

*Bibhu Prasad Routray is Director, Mantraya. This analysis is published as part of Mantraya.org’s ongoing “Mapping Terror and Insurgent Network” and “China in South Asia” projects.

The facetious answer to the question, what security challenges Pakistan faces is where does one start.

One place to start is with the structural issues that underlie the multiple dangers Pakistan confronts. What that does, is help Pakistan as well as the various external powers involved in Pakistani security understand drivers and formulate policies. It also lays bare some uncomfortable truths, truths many Pakistanis prefer not to acknowledge.

Jumping the gun, one thing a look at Pakistan’s structural issues does, is explain why US policy has failed and why the course President Donald J. Trump intends to chart will fail. It also leads to the suggestion that the approach of China will fail despite its support for Pakistani rejection of US allegations of Pakistani support for militancy.

The most immediate uncomfortable truth is that it is virtually impossible to separate Pakistan’s domestic security concerns from its external ones. Not because they can be dismissed as the result of foreign interference but because they are often the legacy of past policies.

Pakistanis with good reason point to US and Saudi policies dating back to the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, if not earlier. That is beyond doubt. It however is also an argument that conveniently allows its proponents to distract from the fact that Pakistan was and is a full partner in the execution of those policies, not simply either the victim or the poorly acknowledged facilitator. With other words, Pakistan is and was the ultimate arbitrator of its history and shares equal responsibility for the consequences of its decisions.

Similarly, there is no doubt that Pakistan is located in a volatile part of the world. It shares borders with Afghanistan that has been in the throes of war and insurgency for decades, Iran, and an increasingly nationalist India. It is a stone’s throw from the Gulf and is one of two regional nuclear powers. Having said that, Pakistan’s legitimate security concerns are as much a function of its geography as they are problems of its own making.

There is equally no doubt that Pakistan has suffered significantly and continues to suffer from political violence. And indeed, Pakistan has done much to crackdown on militant groups. The political divide emerges over the question whether the Pakistani crackdown is comprehensive, targeting without qualification all militant groups, irrespective of who they are and what their goals are. It doesn’t. Pakistan, to its credit as well as to its detriment, makes no bones about this. In fact, this approach has become so deeply engrained that it is difficult to reverse, will not be changed by US sanctions, and ultimately will come to haunt Pakistan.

Decades of Pakistani support for various groups in support of its approach to Kashmir, its filtering of much of its threat perception through the prism of challenges posed by India, concern about vulnerabilities that arise from ethnic unrest and neglect in Balochistan, and abetting and aiding of Saudi policies, has created demons that lead their own life. To be sure, US policy, including the prescriptions recently laid out by President Trump do little to help Pakistan work through issues, take a step back, and look at alternative ways of enhancing domestic and external security. In fact, Trump’s policies threaten to harden existing differences and exacerbate regional tensions. In short, one is likely to see more of the same even if in some cases, indications are that Pakistan is adopting innovative approaches.

One such approach is evident in the case of Jamaat ud-Dawa, a group that is widely viewed as a front for Lashkar e-Taibe, a globally proscribed organization, and led by Hafez Saeed, who has been designated a terrorist under international law by the United Nations. For much of the past year, Saeed has been under house arrest rather than in prison. Jamaat-ud-Dawa has been allowed to continue operations. Treating Jamaat-ud-Dawa with kid gloves is but one issue that has raised questions about the sincerity and comprehensiveness of the Pakistani crackdown. Yet, a decision by the group to create a political party has sparked debate about how to deal with militancy in Pakistan. Indeed, a successful transition towards pluralistic, political engagement that involves an absolute rejection of violence would significantly contribute to enhancing domestic security and could serve as a model for others.

The chances of Jamaat-ud-Dawa becoming a model case, however, are undermined by the fact that there is little indication that its transition is embedded in broader policies. There is also little indication that Pakistan has the political will to reshape the environment in which, at least tacitly, militancy is allowed to flourish. Decades of Pakistani and Saudi support of various strands of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism has woven that worldview into the fabric of significant segments of government, the military and society. It is a worldview that does not encourage pluralism, tolerance and competitive, political engagement.

Granted, it is easy to look in from the outside and be critical. Similarly, tackling legacies is easier said than done. It is easy to criticize the US for invading Afghanistan in 2001 and having been engaged in a war ever since that has only served to exacerbate threats to regional and Pakistani security and that the United States ultimately cannot win. The problem is, one has to deal with the cards one is dealt. Without going into great depth, one could argue that the US in 2001 had no choice in Afghanistan in contrast to the invasion of Iraq two years later. Diplomatic engagement with the Taliban would have been the preferred route were it not for the fact that US and Taliban officials had been secretly meeting in various world capitals ever since the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-e-Salaam. The negotiations were going nowhere. 9/11 left the US with no choice. The result is a poorly executed war and at best half-hearted attempts to rebuild Afghanistan – a sine qua non for creating the economic, social and political conditions to put an end to the violence. Multiple proxy wars, including the one between Pakistan and India, have only contributed to a situation that progressively deteriorates.

None of this detracts from Pakistan’s inability to project the image of a state that has zero tolerance for political violence and is selective in its confrontation of militancy. Doubts about the comprehensiveness of the Pakistani approach are fed by multiple factors, ranging from the lack of political will to seriously tackle educational reform to failing to even project an image of a state that at the very least goes through the motions of confronting all militancy, to turning a blind eye when it suits the state’s purpose. The risks are huge and could threaten what Pakistan sees as a lifeline, its all-weather friendship with China and China’s multi-billion-dollar investment in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Reports that Saudi Arabia and Iran are about to exchange diplomatic visits justify a degree of optimism that the kingdom may, at least for now, shelve plans to use Balochistan as a spring plank for efforts to destabilize Iran. The reports are bolstered by leaked emails that quote Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as saying that he would favour US engagement with Iran. Time will tell. There is much that calls into question how serious talk of reduced tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran is, something that Pakistani security would greatly benefit from.

Nonetheless, Pakistani policy in dealing with the potential threat of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry playing out in part in a crucial, but already troubled province raises similar doubts. For much of the past year, Pakistan has turned a blind eye to the flow of Saudi funds to militants, some of whom are associated with outlawed groups such as the successors of Sipah-e-Sabaha and madrassas in Balochistan that nurture, violent anti-Iranian, anti-Shiite groups. The funds are often channelled through Saudis of Baloch descent.

Pakistan’s response to the US Treasury’s designation in May of Maulana Ali Muhammad Abu Turab as a specially designated terrorist is a case in point. The response highlighted the murky world of Pakistani militancy in which the lines between various groups are fluid, links to government are evident, and battles in Pakistan and Afghanistan and potentially Iran are inter-linked. To be sure, the US Treasury’s designation is not legally binding on Pakistan. Nonetheless, Pakistan would have gained much from being seen to take note of the designation and publicly look into the Treasury’s allegations. It did nothing of the kind, putting out at best a meek statement.

Abu Turab is a prominent Pakistani Islamic scholar of Afghan descent who serves on a government-appointed religious board, the Council of Islamic Ideology; maintains close ties to Saudi Arabia, runs a string of madrassas attended by thousands of students along Balochistan’s border with Afghanistan and is a major fund raiser for militant groups. A leader of Ahl-i-Hadith, a Saudi-supported Pakistani Wahhabi group, board member of Pakistan’s Saudi-backed Paigham TV, and head of the Saudi-funded Movement for the Protection of the Two Holy Cities, Abu Turab was designated on the very day he was on a fund-raising trip to the kingdom.

The Treasury described Abu Turab as a “facilitator…(who) helped…raise money in the Gulf and supported the movement of tens of thousands of dollars from the Gulf to Pakistan.” The Treasury said funds raised by Abu Turab financed operations of various groups, including Jama’at ul Dawa, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, the Taliban; and the Islamic State’s South Asian wing. A suspension of Abu Turab’s membership of the Council of Islamic Ideology pending the outcome of an independent Pakistani investigation would have done much to enhance Pakistan’s credibility. The failure to do so says much about the structural problems that underlie Pakistan’s security dilemmas.

So does the curious case of Masood Azhar, whose group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, has been proscribed by the United Nations as well as Pakistan. It raises questions about China’s approach that frankly I am at a loss to explain. China, at the behest of Pakistan, has for the second time this year prevented the United Nations from listing Azhar as a globally designated terrorist. It strikes me that various justifications put forward, including China honouring a request by the Pakistani military, and seeing Azhar as a way to needle India, do not cut ice given the threat militancy in Pakistan poses to China’s vast interests in the country.

In the short term, Pakistan, which has rejected Trump’s allegations of Pakistani support for militancy as scapegoating, is likely to see its escape route as closer relations with China and perhaps Russia. Ultimately, however, Pakistan’s relationship to militancy is likely to also complicate its ties to Beijing and Moscow amid escalating violence in Balochistan and no end in sight to the militant insurgency in Afghanistan.

As a result, Pakistan’s refusal to confront its demons could in the final analysis leave it out in the cold: its relationship with the United States severely damaged, India strengthened by closer cooperation with the US, and China and Russia demanding that it do what Washington wanted in the first place. Pakistan is likely to have fewer, if any, options and no escape routes once China and Russia come to the conclusion Trump has already articulated.

Remarks at ISAS Panel Discussion: Pakistan in challenging times, 25 August 2017

By Abdellatif El-Menawy*

The British MP and government minister Alistair Burt visited Cairo last week. In an article published in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, he said the diversionary tactics the Muslim Brotherhood employed to avoid too much scrutiny of its activities before a British report in 2015 were still going on in 2017.

Burt, the foreign office minister of state for the Middle East, continued: “It is time for anyone who defends the Muslim Brotherhood — in London or Cairo — to put an end to this ambiguity.”

This is an important development in the British assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood, and its  opinion on the danger the organisation presents. The 2015 report to which Burt referred was inconclusive and unsatisfactory for those who know the real danger of the Muslim Brotherhood, or those who have suffered from its activities.

The report concluded that the available evidence did not meet the minimum requirement to impose a ban on the organisation. Instead, it opted for strict control of the Brotherhood’s behavior and activities, including tighter vetting of visa applications and monitoring the sources of funding for charities linked with it.

In 2013, Britain was one of the few Western countries to give warning about the Muslim Brotherhood. Since then, as monitoring continued, authorities have banned 110 foreign extremists from entering the UK, and 155 people overseas have been stripped of their British passports so they cannot return. Extremists such as Anjem Chaudhry have been arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned. Others, such as Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza, have been deported.

Burt said in his meetings in Cairo that from monitoring the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK and around the world, it was clear that the organization used ambiguity to conceal its extremist agenda in Egypt.

When Pope Francis visited Egypt in April, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party was described to him as “the door of terrorism.” He was also told that the Brotherhood viewed the Egyptian security personnel assigned to secure him during his visit as “Christian militias.” This was a clear attempt by the Brotherhood to ignite sectarian violence against Christians, and helps to explain  the apparent change in Britain’s position.

I remember when London in the 1990s seemed to be a haven for terrorists whose motives were clear. Britain’s position was strange. Some British politicians and sections of the media even discussed the dangers they were embracing and nurturing. I said at the time that they would pay for this policy of containment, but even I could not have envisioned the horrors that would ensue.

Now is the time to recall the mistakes of the past, and to build on the realities of the new situation. It is a fact that Britain and many other European countries have begun to realize the danger they face, and have begun to take many measures to protect their borders, and their very societies.

This opportunity should be taken advantage of and we should work together to achieve a common goal.

In this regard, the views of John Casson are instructive. Casson, the British ambassador to Cairo for the past three years, is a former deputy ambassador in Jordan and head of the foreign office’s Near East and North Africa department, and one of the UK’s most knowledgeable people on this region.

He met a number of colleagues recently, and talked about a new direction in British policy on its dealings with terrorism and its threat, and a new position on Britain’s view of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In response to a question about whether the status of the Muslim Brotherhood would be reviewed, and whether it would be classified as a terrorist group in Britain, Casson said the UK had laws to ensure “we have all the power to confront those who pose a threat to us, including those who may commit violence. We always want to ensure that we are not complying with the establishment of networks, charities, sites, bank accounts and mosques that support violence and extremism.”

He said the application of these laws related to all groups, including anyone associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, because the UK would not allow and would not tolerate terrorism and extremism, and would face it with full force. “Anyone who publishes poisonous ideas, such as ideas of war between Islam and Britain, or ideas that incite violence, will be dealt with with full force and decisiveness when we find any evidence of a person committing such acts.”

I believe this is a major development in the British vision that I think we should build on.

• Abdellatif El-Menawy is a critically acclaimed multimedia journalist, writer and columnist who has covered war zones and conflicts worldwide. He can be reached on Twitter @ALMenawy

(RFE/RL) — Ebrahim Yazdi, the prominent Iranian dissident and former foreign minister who was close to Ayatollah Khomeini, has died following a long illness, the semiofficial ISNA news agency reports.

ISNA on August 28 said Yazdi died in the western Turkish city of Izmir, where he was being treated for pancreatic cancer. It said his body would be brought back to Iran for burial in his home city of Qazvin.

Yazdi spent several years in exile in the United States, where he fought against the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He eventually became a U.S. citizen in 1971.

He also helped advise Ayatollah Khomeini during his exile in France.

After the 1979 Iranian revolution deposed the shah, Yazdi returned to Iran to become foreign minister in the transitional government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan.

Bazargan, Yazdi, and the entire cabinet resigned in November 1979 to protest the occupation of the U.S. Embassy and the hostage-taking of dozens of American diplomats in Tehran, fearing it would ruin Iran’s reputation internationally and lead to the country’s isolation.

He was a founding member and eventual leader of the secular Freedom Movement of Iran, which was banned by the government in 2002.

In 2011, Yazdi, then 80, was sentenced to eight years in prison after he was tried on security charges, including acting against national security and spreading lies — allegations often brought against political activists in Iran.

Reports at the time said Yazdi refused to defend himself because he said the Revolutionary Court was not qualified to hear the case.

He was later released on bail for health reasons.

Yazdi largely kept a low profile in the years since, telling the New York Times in 2008 that “the political system, basically, is a despotic one.”

The website of the party also announced Yazdi’s death, saying he died late on August 27.

Yazdi, who had a degree in pharmacy from the University of Tehran, and his wife, Sourour, have six children, according to a Facebook page.

London Metropolitan Police could soon introduce extra security measures at the Palace of Westminster after a night-time terror attack simulation revealed serious flaws in the protection of the UK’s parliament building.

The mock terror attack, conducted last month while the country’s MPs were in recess, saw costumed police use a boat to cross the Thames and access the building via a terrace. They then worked their way through the corridors and into the Commons chamber. The operation took around five minutes to complete.

Police sources told the Sunday Telegraph that a similar real-life event would end with the slaughter of more than 100 MPs.

A security review has suggested placing armed guards at the Thames entrances as well as installing a physical barrier in the river to stop boats coming near the building.

A spokeswoman for the Houses of Parliament said: “While we cannot comment on the specifics of our security, we work closely with the police, security services and others to ensure that our security measures are effective and meet whatever level of security risk Parliament faces.

“These measures are always, and will continue to be, under constant review.”

There has been an increased focus on security around the Palace of Westminster in recent times.

In March, a major security review was carried out after a police officer was stabbed to death outside parliament. Terrorist suspect Khalid Masood, who had earlier driven a car into pedestrians on Westminster bridge, was shot dead by police.

Some 15,000 Parliamentary ID cards are also to be reissued to Westminster staff in the wake of an incident in February 2016 in which an intruder gained entry into parliament using a fake ID card. The man was then found drunk in the press gallery a day later.

The new ID cards will include a “distinctive hologram” as well as a name and photograph on both sides.

By Mohammad Reza Moradi*

Moqtada Sadr, the cleric who leads Iraq’s Sadrist Movement, made a recent trip to Saudi Arabia upon an official invitation from officials in Riyadh. The trip came at a time that Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz was on vacation in Morocco and all his powers had been delegated to his son, Mohammad bin Salman.

During his visit, the leader of Iraq’s Sadrist Movement met with Saudi Arabia’ crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, for the first time in the city of Jeddah and discussed bilateral relations and other issues of mutual interest with him. The question is what reason prompted Moqtada Sadr to pay this visit to Saudi Arabia after 11 years and under the present circumstances? A primary answer that can be given to this question is that Saudi Arabia is trying to boost its influence in the post-Daesh Iraq through those political currents that have increased their distance from Iran and the Sadrist movement, in the meantime, has been considered as the best option in this regard.

Saudi Arabia’s strategy in the post-Daesh Iraq

The recent victory gained by the Iraqi army and Popular Mobilization Forces in the northern city of Mosul over the Daesh terrorist group practically ushered the country into the post-Daesh era. This era will naturally have its own specific characteristics and various political actors must choose legitimate ways in order to play a role in Iraq’s affairs.

Under war conditions, pressure tools can be used in crisis-ridden countries to achieve goals, but under circumstances when political solutions are given priority, political and legitimate tools must be used by all groups to achieve their goals.

Along the same line, Saudi Arabia, which had lent its serious support to Sunni groups at a time that Iraq was fighting against terrorism, is currently trying to achieve its goals through those Shia groups that sway high influence in the Arab country. In doing this, Saudi Arabia has chosen the Sadrist Movement as the best option for increasing its influence in Iraq, because this group has already increased its distance with other Shia groups.

During past years, there were occasional differences of viewpoints between Iranian officials and Moqtada Sadr over certain issues, but those differences were not profound enough to draw a wedge between the two sides. However, the increasing political importance and position of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces in the fight against Daesh has practically marginalized the Sadrist Movement. This issue has prompted this movement to try to find a new ally through its leader’s visit to Saudi Arabia. Even Sadr’s subsequent visit to the United Arab Emirates can be viewed along the same line, because he has been trying to obtain necessary tools in bargaining with other political groups in Iraq.

On the other hand, the Sadrist Movement is trying to create some sort of balance in Iraq and enter Saudi Arabia into Iraq’s equations and political environment as a counterweight to Iran’s influence in that country.

The position of Hashd al- Sha’abi (Popular Mobilization Forces)

Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, known by their Arab name as Hashd al-Sha’abi, has managed to come up as the most important military force in Iraq during the country’s war on Daesh. However, the relations that exist between this group and Iraq has prompted Saudi Arabia to seek to undermine Hashd al- Sha’abi disregarding the fact that Iran’s support for various Iraqi groups in their fight against Daesh came upon the request of the Iraqi government.

Saudi Arabia, however, sees itself in an unending competition with Iran and, for this reason, is trying to block any way through which Iran would be able to boost its influence in the region. Therefore, the Sadrist Movement, which has called for the dissolution of Hashd al- Sha’abi time and again, came into the focus of Saudi Arabia’s attention.

In fact, Moqtada Sadr is among few prominent Shia figures in Iraq, who is opposed to continuation of Hashd al- Sha’abi as an independent organization under direct supervision of the Iraqi prime minister after the country is totally liberated from terrorist groups.

Iraq’s parliamentary elections

The political arrangement of Iraq’s political groups is such that Shia groups are sure to win the highest votes during forthcoming parliament elections, which have been scheduled for 2018. This issue can be very important in determining the future conditions in Iraq, because it would be the first parliamentary elections to be held following decisive defeat of the Daesh and, in some way, the first elections to be held in an Iraq free from terrorism.

In the meantime, the Sadrist Movement, which sees itself faced with other Shia groups that enjoy good relations with Iran, is trying to enter a second force into election campaigns. Therefore, through his recent trips to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, this Iraq cleric is trying to use those two countries’ petrodollars to boost his competitive power in the face of other Shia groups. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is trying to take advantage of the votes that the Sadrist Movement will win in order to meet its own interests in Iraq.

Saudi Arabia’s faceoff with Iran in the post-Daesh Iraq

In short, Saudi Arabia’s measures and goals in Iraq are all aimed at reducing Iran’s influence in that country. For this reason, Saudi Arabia has been trying to make a tactical turnaround and unlike what it did in past years, Riyadh is now trying to become more active in political activities and put trans-ethnic and trans-religious measures on its agenda. This is true, because during the past six years, Saudi Arabia had been a main factor for stoking unrest in the region through its support for terrorist groups and under new conditions, it is trying to mend its past image.

Of course, if this was some kind of true change in Saudi Arabia’s large-scale strategy, it could be very positive for regional security, but it seems that this issue is only a new tactic in the face of Iran. The difference, however, is that this time around Saudi Arabia is trying for the first time to take advantage of Shia groups in order to achieve its goals. Saudi Arabia has reached the conclusion that potentialities of a post-Daesh Iraq can increase the power of any actor in that country and, therefore, it is trying to use some political groups as a means to secure a foothold in the future Iraq.

* Mohammad Reza Moradi
West Asia Expert

A quagmire is defined as a complex or unpleasant position that is difficult to escape. President Trump’s recently announced war plans in Afghanistan maintain that quagmire. They come at a time when US Empire is failing and its leadership in the world is weakening. The US will learn what other empires have learned, “Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.”

During the presidential campaign, some became convinced that Trump would not be an interventionist president. His tweets about Afghanistan were one of the reasons. In January of 2013, he tweeted, “Let’s get out of Afghanistan. Our troops are being killed by the Afghanis we train and we waste billions there. Nonsense! Rebuild the USA.” Now, we see a president who carries on the interventionist tradition of US Empire.

While Afghanistan has been a never-ending active war since 9-11, making the 16-year war the longest in US history, the truth is the United States became directly involved with Afghanistan some 38 years ago, on July 3, 1979. As William Rivers Pitts writes “On that day, at the behest of National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter signed the first directive in an operation meant to destabilize the Soviet-controlled government of Afghanistan.” In fact when the US dropped the MOAB bomb, Trump was bombing tunnels built with the assistance of the CIA in the 1980′s for the mujaheddin and Bin Laden.

Trump’s Afghan policy is inaccurately described as a new approach but has only one element that is new – secrecy, as Trump will not tell us how many soldiers he will send to this war. His so-called new strategy is really a continuation of the permanent war quagmire in Afghanistan, which may be an intentional never ending war for the empire’s geopolitical goals. Ralph Nader reviews 16 years of headlines about Afghanistan, calling it a “cruel boomeranging quagmire of human violence and misery… with no end in sight.”

Another Afghan Review Leads To Same Conclusion: More War

During his campaign for president, Trump called for the US to pull out of Afghanistan. Early in his administration, President Trump announced a review of the Afghanistan war. This week when he announced escalation of the war, Trump noted this was his instinct. Unfortunately, the president did not trust his previous instincts and missed an opportunity to end the war.

We have seen how President Trump refuses to admit mistakes, so it is highly unlikely he will change course from this mistaken path. His rationale is so many US soldiers have given their lives that we must stay until the United States wins. This is the quandary – the US must continue the war until we win because soldiers have died but continuing the war means more will die and the US must stay committed to war because more have died.

After we read President Trump’s Afghanistan war speech, we went back and re-read President Obama’s Afghanistan war speech given in March 2009.  It is remarkable how similar the two speeches are. When Russian president Putin was interviewed by filmmaker Oliver Stone as well as when he was interviewed by Megyn Kelly, he made a point proven by US policy in Afghanistan, “Presidents come and go, and even the parties in power change, but the main political direction does not change.”

Both presidents conducted a lengthy review early in their administration and both talked with generals and diplomats who convinced them to escalate rather than end the war. Both presidents put forward what they claimed was a new strategy but in reality, was just doing the same thing over again: more troops, building up Afghanistan’s military by working closely with them, using economic and diplomatic power and putting pressure on Pakistan not to be a safe haven for the Taliban and those fighting against the United States.

To ensure a quagmire both presidents said that decisions would not be based on a timeline but on conditions on the ground. Both promised victory, without clearly defining what it would mean; both raised fears of the Taliban and other anti-US militants using Afghanistan to attack the United States again. Trump had the advantage of knowing that President Obama’s approach had failed despite repeated bombings in Pakistan and working with Afghan troops, but that didn’t alter his course.

Failure To Learn Lessons Ensures Repeating Them

According to Mike Ludwig, since President Obama approved a troop surge in 2009, the war in Afghanistan has claimed at least 26,512 civilian lives and injured nearly 48,931 more. In July, the United Nations reported that at least 5,243 civilians have been killed or injured in 2017 alone, including higher numbers of woman and children than previous in years. Trump seems less concerned than previous presidents with killings of civilians.

Trump noted that the Afghanistan-Pakistan region was now the densest part of the world when it comes to anti-US militants, saying there were 20 terrorist groups in the area. President Obama added tens of thousands of troops to the Afghanistan war, dropped massive numbers of bombs and the result was more terrorism. The US was killing terrorists but the impact was creating more anti-American militants. Trump failed to connect these dots and understand that more US attacks create more hatred against the United States.

After Obama failed to ‘win’ the war by adding tens of thousands of troops, with more than 100,000 fighting in Afghanistan at its peak, Trump should have asked his generals how adding thousands more (reports are between 4,000 and 8,000 soldiers) would change failure to success. Wasn’t there anyone in the room who would tell Trump there is nothing new in the Trump strategy that Obama and Bush had not already tried. Steve Bannon was the most opposed to war in the administration and reportedly fought against more war, but he was not in the room. Did anyone in the room stand up to the hawk-generals?

The policy of working more closely with the Afghan military in order to build them up ended in disaster in the Obama era. The New Yorker wrote in 2012: “We can’t win the war in Afghanistan, so what do we do? We’ll train the Afghans to do it for us, then claim victory and head for the exits.” But, the US discovered that it could not train the Afghans in the ‘American way of war.’ In 2012, the Obama administration ended the program of fighting alongside Afghan soldiers to train them because those soldiers were killing US soldiers. How many US soldiers will die because Trump was ignorant of this lesson?

Trump also took the wrong lesson from the Iraq war and occupation. He inaccurately described the so-called withdrawal from Iraq as hasty. He points to the rise of ISIS as created by the vacuum in Iraq when the US reduced its numbers of troops. Trump said the US “cannot repeat in Afghanistan the mistake our leaders made in Iraq.”

In fact, ISIS rose up because the killing of hundreds of thousands, some reports say more than a million, of Iraqis, displacement of more than a million more, the destruction of a functioning government as well as war crimes like the Abu Gharib torture scandal made it easy to recruit fighters. Furthermore, the training and supply of weapons to Sunnis during the ‘Awakening’ created armed soldiers looking for their next job.

It was US war and occupation that created ISIS. The seeds had been planted, fertilized and were rapidly growing before the US reduced its military footprint. Trump is repeating the mistake of more militarism, and in the end ISIS or some other form of anti-US militancy will thrive.

The US does not want to face an important reality – the government of the United States is hated in the region for very good reasons. Bush lied to us about 9-11 when he claimed they hate us for our freedoms. No, they hate the US because US militarism kills hundreds of thousands of people in the region, destroys functioning governments and creates chaos.

Victory Means Something Different to an Empire

In trying to understand why the US is fighting a war — a war that has been unwinnable for 16 years — it helps to look at a map and consider the resources of an area.

Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former adviser, predicts the US will be in Afghanistan for the next 50 years. Indeed, that may be the ‘victory’ the empire seeks. Afghanistan is of geopolitical importance. It is a place where the US can impact China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ to Europe where China can take the place of Russia and the United States in providing wealthy Europeans with key commodities like oil and gas. Just as the United States has stayed in Germany, Italy and other European states and Japan after WW II,  and in Korea after the Korean war, the empire sees a need to be in Afghanistan to be well positioned for the future of the empire. Terrorism is not the issue, economic competition with China, which is quickly becoming the leading global economic power, is the real issue.

And, competition with Russia and China is at the top of the list of the bi-partisan war party in Washington. Pepe Escobar points out that “Russia-China strategic partnership wants an Afghan solution hatched by Afghans and supervised by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (of which Afghanistan is an observer and future full member). So from the point of view of neocon/neoliberalcon elements of the War Party in Washington, Afghanistan only makes sense as a forward base to harass/stall/thwart China’s Belt and Road Initiative.”

Afghanistan is next to China, India and Pakistan, three nuclear powers that could pose military risks to the United States. Having multiple bases in Afghanistan, to allegedly fight terrorists, will provide the forward deployment needed to combat each of those nations if military action is needed.

Afghanistan also borders on Iran, which could be a near-future war zone for the United States. Positioning the US military along the Afghanistan-Iran border creates a strategic advantage with Iran as well as with the Persian Gulf where approximately 18.2 million barrels of oil per day transit through the Strait of Hormuz in tankers.

Afghanistan’s land contains $3 trillion in rare earth minerals needed for computers and modern technology including rich deposits of gold, silver, platinum, iron ore and copper. The US has spent $700 billion in fighting a failed war and President Trump and empire strategists are looking to make sure US corporations get access to those minerals. Since the US Geological Survey discovered these minerals a decade ago, some see Afghanistan as the future  “Saudi Arabia of lithium”, a raw material used in phone and electric car batteries. US officials have told Reuters that Trump argued at a White House meeting with advisers in July that the United States should demand a share of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth.

Jeffrey St. Clair reminds us not to forget the lucrative opium trade. Afghanistan is the largest source for heroin in the world. He writes:

Since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, opium production has swelled, now accounting for more than one-third of the wrecked Afghan economy. In the last two years alone, opium poppy yields have doubled, a narcotic blowback now hitting the streets of American cities from Amarillo to Pensacola. With every drone strike in the Helmond Province, a thousand more poppies bloom.

The decision on a never ending war — with no timetable for exit — is evidence that the Pentagon and intelligence agencies are in charge of US foreign policy with Trump as a figurehead.  Of course, the war also ensures immense profits for the war industry. St. Clair emphasizes that “in 2016, the Pentagon spent $3.6 million for each US soldier stationed in Afghanistan.  A surge of 4,000 to 10,000 additional troops, either as ‘private military units’ or GIs, will come as a welcome new infusion of cash to the dozens of defense corporations that invested so heavily in his administration.”

The firing of Steve Bannon just before the meeting that decided Afghanistan’s future was not coincidence as he was the opponent of escalation. Glenn Greenwald writes in the Intercept that this permanent power structure has been working since his election to take control of foreign policy. He also points to the appointment of Marine General John Kelly as chief of staff and how National Security Adviser, General McMaster, has successfully fired several national security officials aligned with Steve Bannon and the nationalistic, purportedly non-interventionist foreign policy. The deep state of the permanent national security complex has taken over and the Afghan war decision demonstrates this reality.

With these geopolitical realities, staying Afghanistan may be the victory the Pentagon seeks — winning may just be being there. The Intercept reported this week that the Taliban offered to negotiate peace, but peace on the terms of the Taliban may not be what the US is seeking.

Call for an End to War for Empire

It would be a terrible error for people to blame Trump for the Afghanistan war which began with intervention by Jimmy Carter, became a hot war after 9-11 under George Bush, escalated under Obama and now continues the same polices under Trump. The bi-partisan war hawks in Congress for nearly 40 years have supported these policies. Afghanistan is evidence of the never ending policy of full spectrum dominance sought by the US empire. The bi-partisans warriors span the breadth of both parties, Jeffrey St. Clair highlights the Afghanistan war cheering by Senator John McCain and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Throughout recent decades the United States has failed to show what Kathy Kelly called the courage we need for peace and continues the cowardice of war. In fact, many ask why are we still at war in Afghanistan: Osama bid Laden is dead, other alleged 9-11 attack attackers are caught or killed. This shows that calling Afghanistan the longest running Fake War in US history is right — fake because it was never about terrorism but about business. If terrorism were the issue, Saudi Arabia would be the prime US enemy, but Saudi Arabia is also about business.

We share the conclusion of human rights activist and Green vice presidential candidate in 2016 Ajamu Baraka who wrote for the Black Alliance for Peace that:

In an obscene testament to U.S. vanity and the psychopathological commitment to global white supremacy, billions have already been wasted, almost three thousand U.S. lives lost and over 100,000 dead. It is time to admit defeat in Afghanistan and bring the war to an end. Justice and common sense demand that the bloodletting stop.

When we understand the true motives of US Empire, that conclusion is even worse — to steal resources from a poor nation and put in place permanent bases from which to conduct more war. US hegemony is costly to millions of people around the world and at home it sucks more than 54% of discretionary spending from the federal budget and creates an empire economy that only serves the wealthiest corporate interests that profit from transnational military dominance while creating a record wealth divide where most people in the United States are economic slaves. It is not only time to end the Afghanistan war but to end US Empire.

By J Nastranis

Global warming is expected to have a significant impact on future yields of everything from rice to fish, particularly in countries situated closer to the equator, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has warned, and urged the Asia-Pacific economies to take a leading role in adaptation and mitigation.

“Many APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] economies have already felt the full force of agricultural losses from natural disasters in recent years, with the vast majority of these being climate related,” said Kundhavi Kadiresan, Assistant Director-General and FAO Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific, reported UN News.

Geographically, the negative impact of climate change on agricultural output could result in lower yields of rice, wheat, corn and soybeans in countries with tropical climates, compared with the impacts experienced by those in higher latitudes. Fisheries could also be affected by changes to water temperature, the FAO cautioned.

“The annual tally runs into the billions and billions of dollars in losses. So, the time to act is now. Policy makers need to prepare for changes in supply, shifting trade patterns and a need for greater investment in agriculture, fisheries, land and water management, that will benefit smallholder farmers and others that produce our food,” Kadiresan added.

Many vital agricultural regions in Asia are at risk of crossing key climate thresholds that would cause plant and animal productivity to decline, according to a meeting in Viet Nam of Agriculture Ministers of APEC member economies.

Based on the findings of the global research community, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) anticipates that these trends are expected to worsen in the future with the projected impacts of anthropogenic climate change.

Much can be done to increase the efficiency of agriculture and land-use activities in Asia, according to Kadiresan.

The agriculture sectors account for at least one-fifth of total emissions – mainly from forest to farmland conversions; livestock and paddy production; and application of synthetic fertilizers. Estimates show that 70 per cent of the technical potential to reduce agriculture emissions occurs in tropical developing countries, which characterize much of Asia.

“It is imperative that we start thinking now about the hard decisions and actions that the APEC economies, and others, will need to take. Governments will need to consider greater social protection measures. Industry and trade will need to adapt to shifting supply and demand. There is no quick fix but there is every reason to act,” stressed.

FAO has been working with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in Viet Nam to assess potential emission reductions the System of Rice Intensification and improved livestock management.

In Cambodia, Papua New Guinea and Mongolia, FAO, has partnered in developing programmes to measure, monitor and report emissions and adaptation actions in the agriculture and land-use sectors.

In the forestry sector, avoiding deforestation, increasing the area under forest, and adopting sustainable forest management will create invaluable carbon sinks. FAO has been supporting national programmes for reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

The meeting made clear that more upfront support is essential to increase farmers’ productivity, build capacity to adapt to climate change and reduce the emissions related to production.

A second area requiring financing is also needed to support capacity-building of appropriate institutions and policies. Climate funds could become an important catalyst for climate change adaptation and mitigation if they are used to build the enabling environment essential for climate-smart agricultural development, while ensuring that public agricultural investment is also climate-smart, and to leverage private finance.

Meanwhile, UN News reported that United Nations humanitarian agencies are working with the Government and partners in Nepal to bring in clean water, food, shelter and medical aid for some of the 41 million people affected by flooding and landslides in South Asia.

Nearly a thousand people have been killed, and tens of thousands of homes, schools and hospitals have been destroyed in Bangladesh, India and Nepal.

“There is the possibility that the situation could deteriorate further as rains continue in some flood-affected areas and flood waters move south,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on August 24 said in an updated note.

In Bangladesh, nearly 2,000 local medical teams have been deployed, even as one-third of the country is reportedly underwater. Aid workers are concerned about waterborne diseases, such as diarrhoea and malaria.

“Their most urgent concern is to accessing safe water and sanitation facilities,” OCHA said earlier, citing national authorities. It also warned of dangers to women and children, who are at increased risk for abuse, violence and sexual harassment. In India, rescue operations are ongoing in many flood-affected areas, with those stranded being rescued by helicopter.

Flood relief camps have been established for those displaced by the disaster where they are being provided with food and shelter, OCHA said. The Government recently announced additional funding for relief, rehabilitation, reconstruction and flood mitigation. In addition to people suffering, Indian authorities also reported large parts of a famous wildlife reserve park destroyed, with endangered animals killed.

Corruption comes in different forms. Corruption for money and wealth is a pervasive one. In politics, another kind of corruption is prevalent – the lust for power. Initially, political leaders ask for more power so that they can execute development plans more efficiently. But it does not stop there. Then it is for staying in authority for a longer period. The love and lust for power takes them to a stage that they think they are indispensable for the country. The country cannot prosper without them. Finally, they believe that the country cannot survive without them. There is one word by which they can best be defined – dictators.

Dictators belong to various categories. Some of them are absolute monarchs such as the king of Saudi Arabia. Some of them are military dictators as we had in Myanmar. But the most dangerous are the so-called democratically elected dictators. These dictators come into power through a democratically elected process, but then try to perpetuate their rule. There will be elections, but the dictator will always be the winner.

The first thing they do is to control the freedom of expression by making sure that papers and journals do not publish anything that they would like to see released. They  gradually turn the police and civil service away from their independent and impartial role to that of their political line. They will have several security agencies to detect any deviation from their given guidelines. There will be extra-judicial killings in the name of cross-fire or gun-battle.

In some cases, opposition leaders may be made to disappear without any trace, quietly. They would even exert their influence over the judiciary and armed forces as much as they can. They would try to put most of the opposition politicians behind the bar on fabricated corruption or other charges. They will bring out political rallies, but not allow the same for opposition parties. They arrange for fake degrees/ titles/ awards from such international organizations and agencies that no one knows about and then make wide publicity of the same. They hate those who happen to get the real honor. Instead of making important investments in agriculture or industry they would go for prestigious structures and monuments and name them after their names. The dictators are very fond of naming everything by their name to leave a legacy of their so-called achievements. They also try to groom their children as apparent future leaders. Finally, by publishing and publicizing false propaganda, they even try to alter history so that the younger generations may never know the truth. In this article, we shall discuss a few of them.

Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe): Ever since the independence of the country, he has been their leader. He is now 95 years old. He cannot leave even if he wants to. This is because those in the administration have been so corrupt that they are afraid of any regime change. They would not allow Mugabe to retire.

Bashar Al-Assad (Syria): He came to power after the death of his father. He proved to be a ruthless dictator – far worse than his father. For last ten years, the country has been witnessing the worst civil war. About 10% of the population has already died. More than 30% of the remaining population have left the country and taken refuge in other nations. It does not matter to him. He is still sitting tight on his throne.

Hun Sen (Cambodia): The country has regular elections but there is always one winner, and that is Mr. Hun Sen. There is no freedom of expression or human rights. Political activities are not allowed. Hun Sen awards all contracts directly. Even the ship registry is operated by a foreign businessman from abroad.

Moussavi (Uganda): After the departure of Idi Amin the people of Uganda thought they buried their history. But it was not to be so. Idi Amin was a crude dictator, but Moussavi is a refined dictator in the shape of a democratically elected government. So much time he is alive Uganda is not likely to see any regime change.

Sheikh Hasina (Bangladesh): Her father Sheikh Mujib lost his life trying to establish one party rule in Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasina is much wiser and cleverer. She is trying to achieve the same tactfully. The country has multi-party democracy by name, but it is gagged and controlled. She now presides over a government that was never elected by popular vote. The party had won majority seats even before a single vote was cast.

Nursultan Nazarbayev (Kazakhstan): He has been the president since the country gained full independence in 1989. He and his three daughters are world famous for their corruption. The president built a new capital for the country. The country could afford it because of its oil and gas resources.

Kim Jong-Un (DPRK, North Korea): He is known as the Supreme Leader of DPRK. His late father remains the President of DPRK. Kim Jong is a real threat to world peace. He killed his uncle by putting him in front of the artillery gun and then firing the gun. He is also believed to be behind the mysterious killing of his brother in Malaysia. Despite all the sanctions against his country, he is testing bombs and missiles now and then. DPRK has said to have developed missiles to hit the USA with a nuclear weapon.

Emomali Rahmon (Tajikistan): Another dictator who continues as the president though constitution allows only two terms. The excuse is that his first term was under the previous constitution. He has added a lot of titles to his name, and the newscaster has to read all that every time his name to be broadcast.

Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov (Turkmenistan): The most colorful dictator. He arranges for music competitions, car races and many other events which he always wins.

Alexander Lukashenko (Belarus): Perhaps the last dictator in European soil. He does not tolerate any dissent. He deals with all of them most ruthlessly.

Nicolas Madura (Venezuela): He is determined to consolidate all powers so that he can run Venezuela the way he wants. Quite some people already lost lives protesting against the government. There is hardly anything functioning. Inflation is perhaps highest in the world. Stores are empty.

Recep Erdogan (Turkey): Those responsible for the coup attempt are to blame themselves for giving Erdogan a chance to become a full dictator. Erdogan was waiting for such an opportunity. He has put thousands behind bars. He is concentrating all powers to himself. Military bases have been opened in Somalia and Qatar.

There are several other dictators around the world, but I have mentioned just a few who have become quite famous. One thing is common – they all think of themselves as indispensable as if the country would not survive without them.

*Fazlur Rahman Chowdhury was the Commandant of the Marine Academy and then Director General of Shipping in Bangladesh. He graduated from Juldia Marine Academy and World Maritime University. He pursued a career as a merchant ship cadet. He eventually retired from the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

The Image Of Islam

In this age of globalization, information explosion and the multiplicity of audio-visual media and channels, the issue of image has acquired more weight and urgency in view of the impediments that may hinder the flow of information and its communication capacity.

This has become even more relevant following the international changes to which Islam and Muslims were party, and in the aftermath the image of the Islamic civilization became the subject of a tremendous amount of premeditated and unpremeditated distortion.

There has been talk of the phenomenon of Islamophobia, which has taken many forms of which the most blatant is the discrimination against Muslim immigrants in employment, housing, education and other fields.

Some Western parties have even gone further and began to flaunt their hostility towards Islam, desecrate and denigrate its sanctities and make racist statements that are punishable by law and condemned by international conventions.i

Some Muslim institutions were the victim of vandalism and desecration as were some mosques, graves and cultural centers in the West.

Faced by the escalation of this phenomenon and its progression from a state of dormancy to one of active notoriety, it is necessary for Muslim intellectuals to take charge of the mission of countering this phenomenon and addressing it following a two-tiered and tightly devised plan.

The first part consists of the emergency measure of monitoring and compiling what is written and said about Islam, condemning it and engaging legal action against it in cooperation and coordination with regional and international partners.

The second part is presenting the truthful image of Islam on the ruins of the erroneous misconceptions and stereotypes circulating either in the media or school curricula, history books or biased literary works, which action represents a long-winded and strenuous road.

Paul Findley writing on the image of Islam in the West in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs argues:ii

“When I lecture in the United States, I sometimes begin by asking individuals in the audience what comes immediately to mind when the word Muslim is mentioned. Almost always the answer is terrorism. In public discourse, the words Muslim and terrorism are linked together. The linkage is false and offensive of course, but it recurs nevertheless.

The sad, harsh reality is that most Americans view Islam with concern, if not alarm.

Muslims are seen as the most common source of terrorism and senseless violence.

Muslims are almost always portrayed as the bad guys, Jews as the victims.

Muslims are viewed as worshipers of an alien deity, intolerant of other religions and eager to use physical force to expand Islam.

Muslims are often cited as a sinister threat to representative democracy and the U.S. Constitution, and many Americans question their basic loyalty as U.S. citizens.

Islam is considered by many normally well-informed people as anti-Jewish and biased in favor of African Americans.

This is because their impression of Islam is heavily influenced by Minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of the organization called the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan’s primary interest is an understandable focus on the plight of African Americans, and my impression is that Muslims generally, including many of African ancestry, question the legitimacy of his identification with Islam.

But because Farrakhan is the only personality appearing frequently on U.S. network television who presents himself as a Muslim, it is not surprising that many Americans mistakenly identify Islam with his primary focus on the problems of African-Americans. Moreover, Farrakhan is frequently reported as expressing anti-Jewish and bigoted comments. When this happens it is not surprising that poorly informed Americans conclude that these expressions accurately reflect Islam.

Most Americans believe that Islam subjects women to harsh and demeaning discrimination and relegates them to a status inferior to men. Little is being done to counter these false images.

Muslim Americans, although the second largest and fastest growing religious community, have not yet become a significant influence on public policy, and they have only begun to defend Islam from negative stereotyping. No Muslim occupies an elective office or a prominent appointive position in the entire federal government or in any state government.”

One of the major objectives that Muslim thinkers must seek to fulfill is to modify this erroneous image. Their action in this regard consists of many joint programs that they must begin to implement with international partners to cleanse school curricula from these stereotypes, and produce an Islamic Encyclopaedia which will present an alternative and full image on the Islamic world and its civilization, penned by Muslim and fair-minded Western authors.

Universities in the Muslim world must monitor seriously the Islamophobia phenomenon and draw up a database on all the manifestations of animosity towards Muslims and Islam, thus enabling researchers to study them or engage legal action against them, in addition to helping countries build up their cultural policies.

Information society

The attention paid by the international community to information and communication technologies increased at the wake of the new millennium, so much so that they are now regarded as a basis for socioeconomic and cultural sustainable development. Since the last decade of the 20th century, economists and information experts have foreseen a new and gigantic wave of sustainable development for all, fueled by information and communication technologies. These experts have also correctly predicted the capacity of these new technologies to create what is known as the society of knowledge.

The Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, which was adopted by the World Summit on the Information Society (Tunis 2005), stressed out expressly that the challenge of information and communication technologies and the information society is not only an economic one, but include also cultural and social dimensions. Similarly, funding information and communication technologies for developmental purposes must lie within the scope of the increased interest granted to the role of these technologies, not only as mere communication mediums, but also as a key component for development and a tool that allows achieving the universally accepted development objectives, especially the Millennium Development Goals.

Investing in equipment and infrastructure to facilitate access to the communication and information technologies is not sufficient. Carrying out successfully such process would require a minimum access to information and knowledge for populations, as well as designing information and communication plans and legislations, as well as training human resources working in the public sector of information and communication technologies. Furthermore, scientific research must be promoted towards producing infrastructures for information processing and channelling.

ICT companies and institutions in the developed world, which exert a monopoly on the information and communication field, have become key players in the globalization of the economies and trade. These effects of globalization on developing countries need no more be proved. In fact, this monopolization of information and communication technologies involves a cultural model and a uniform vision of a world in which 70% of people are marginalized. Hence, many information experts believe that we are still far from the global village predicted by McLuhan in the 1960s.iii

In fact, the existing gaps in information sources, contents and infrastructures challenge this universality concept that was given to the information society, since information and communication technologies remain under the monopoly of developed countries, consecrating further the North-South disequilibrium.

Today, multinational corporations that are monopolizing the ICT field are operating as giant international news agencies, and they are putting increasing pressure on developing countries to liberalize their information sector. Fear is, however, that the desire of these countries to integrate the world communication network does dissimulate a secret desire to penetrate their markets and their resources, as well as denigrating their moral specificities and cultural diversity.

ICT in the Muslim world

In their bid to attain the Millennium Development Goals, many developed countries have managed to meet the necessary conditions for restructuring the sector of information and communication technologies. This entailed the creation of departments dedicated exclusively to information and communication technologies, restructuring the sector through the reorganization of state-run communication services and liberalizing the sector through the privatization of telecommunications.

This evolution was accompanied by regulatory and legislative measures, laws and legal systems applicable to the services sector of information, communication, and e-commerce. They also encouraged scientific research in ICT, allocating entire budgets that were fed to a large extent by the private sector.

Muslim countries have followed on the same path and most of them have created departments dedicated to managing the ICT sector and strategies and laws that provide for building infrastructure, benefiting from human resources and developing their ICT skills. In these early years of the third millennium, most countries of the Islamic world are witnessing a growing interest for the full liberalization of the ICT sector. However, most of these countries continue to struggle with difficulties as to developing a comprehensive concept of scientific research in ICT, to the financial resources allocated to R&D, as well as to the problem of brain drain of people skilled in ICT and who choose more lucrative careers in the West.

Developing the sector of information and communication technologies requires that relevant parties in Muslim States take the measures necessary to consolidate scientific research in these fields and allocate the necessary funds to prevent the brain drain to countries offering better careers and opportunities. It also entails formulating an all-inclusive conception of scientific research in ICT and defining its levels and the resources that can be allocated to it. These resources should be no lesser than 3% of the GNP as recommended by international institutions specialized in scientific research.

For Muslims, ICT is of vital importance in getting knowledge and making true Islam Known. In this regard, Seyed Ebrahim Hosseini of the Faculty of ICT at the International Islamic University of Malaysia Selangor, Malaysia, Abdollatif Ahmadi Ramchahi, a post-doctoral researcher affiliated at the Center of Quranic Research of the University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Raja Jamilah Raja Yusuf from the Center of Quranic Research of the University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, argue in a paper entitled: “The Impact of Information Technology on Islamic Behaviour”:iv

“Information Technology gives Muslims the opportunity to gain Islamic education from their homes through virtual classes. Islamic games and videos are accessible for children to learn Islam. These interactive softwares motivate Muslim children to learn Islam. Today, every Muslim and non-Muslim can listen not only to Islamic talks by famous researchers of the Muslim world but can take part in online discussions on various Islamic topics. They have the opportunity to ask questions and convey their perceptions. The significance of IT in Islam is duly acknowledged in the Muslim world. From the perspective of the researchers, the Muslim world should generate a concentrated online accessible Islamic library to translate Islamic literature into every language for the global society.”

Digital gap

The information world is developing at a mind-boggling speed. The fast-paced correlation of communication, broadcasting, multimedia and ICTs gives rise to new products and services and to advanced styles in managing public life and economic sectors.

In parallel, commercial, social and professional horizons expand with the opening of new markets to competition, investments and foreign capitals. The modern world is undergoing a radical transformation at a time when the information society is rapidly replacing the industrial one. This dynamic process heralds radical changes in all fields of life including information, social behaviour patterns, economic and commercial practices, the media, education, public health and leisure.v

Information and communication technologies remain monopolized by the North countries as relevant indicators point out, predicting, at the same time more imbalanced relations between the North and the South. Multinationals which hold the reins of ICTs have begun pressurizing the South countries to liberalize their telecommunications sectors and integrate the world communication network, masking a secret plot to infiltrate their markets and even lay claim to their resources, thus threatening their moral values and putting at risk their cultural and linguistic specificities.

The impact of IT on Muslims is tremendous; it is shaping their lives and strengthening their faith and belief. In article entitled: “Islam and technology: The online ummah,”

The Economist writes :vi

“Muslims use their gadgets in much the same way as everyone else: they text, they use social networks, they buy online. But the adoption—and Islamification—of the technology has a deeper meaning, says Bart Barendregt of Leiden University, who has studied South-East Asia’s growing digital culture. “Muslim youngsters are adopting technology to distance themselves from older, traditional practices while also challenging Western models,” he argues. Many smartphone apps cater to religious needs. Some show mosques and halal businesses close to a user’s location. Salah 3D is an iPhone guide to how to pray. Another app, Quran Majeed, includes text and audio versions of the Koran not only in Arabic, but other languages, making the holy book more accessible to Muslims whose first language is not Arabic. It has been downloaded more than 3m times. Websites tailored to Muslims also abound. Artik Kuzmin, a Turkish entrepreneur, will soon launch Salamworld, a Facebook for Muslims. “People told us that they worry about moral standards on the internet. They don’t feel it is safe for them,” he says. Salamworld’s moderators will try to allay such fears by taking down photographs with too much flesh and deleting swear words. Online dating services are multiplying. “Far more is permissible in Islam than people think,” explains Abdelaziz Aouragh, who runs Al Asira, which claims to be a sharia-compliant sex site, from the safety of Amsterdam.”

While most Islamic countries have taken an interest in this new challenge, more efforts are needed if one considers the advantages made possible by the information society, particularly in terms of the attention paid to promising ICT sectors identified by leading international experiences as essential for speeding up the process of comprehensive development. Although some countries have achieved a degree of success in using ICT in the educational, administrative and economic fields, attention to the cultural and intellectual dimension of these technologies is still at the budding stage.

You can follow Professor Mohamed Chtatou on Twitter: @Ayurinu

End notes:
i. https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/05/18/images-of-islam-and-muslims-in-western-media/

ii. https://www.washingtonreport.me/congress-u.s.-aid-to-israel/u.s.-financial-aid-to-israel-figures-facts-and-impact.html

iii. http://www.kanoonline.com/publications/islam_and_the_internet.htm

iv. http://www.jmest.org/wp-content/uploads/JMESTN42350200.pdf

v. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195390155/obo-9780195390155-0116.xml

Turning now to the study of Islam and the Internet, it is clear that individuals and groups that emphasized their “Muslimness” were among the earliest users of the new media. According to studies by Jon W. Anderson in Eickelman and Anderson 2003, this has to do with the fact that Muslim guest students in the United States had enrolled in technological programs at universities that were to become leading departments in the development and promotion of the Internet. As Bunt 2009 and Roy 2004 have documented, Muslims from a large variety of ethnic, linguistic, religious, and political backgrounds are using the Internet for discussing Islam and Muslim affairs and for apologetic or polemical reasons. A growing number of Muslim scholars (ulama) as well as established Islamic institutions (for example, the Sunni Muslim Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt) have also started to use the Internet and satellite television to promote their interpretations of Islam (for example, Skovgaard-Petersen 2004, which deals with the Egyptian theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s use of new media). It has also become more important to reach out to Muslims in the West, that is, individuals of Muslim cultural background who live in Europe or the United States. The transnational dimension has also been highlighted in several studies, such as Mandaville 2001, that directly or indirectly discuss Islam, Muslims, and the Internet. As noted in the Introduction, the Internet provides new opportunities to explore and find alternative interpretations of Islam or to ask questions about Islam (for example, to ask for a fatwa), but it is also clear that this possibility can be perceived as a problem by religious authorities and political leaders, since the Internet is an arena for a large number of different groups ranging in interests from sexual orientations to various political and ideological tendencies. The tension and complexity of the new media are highlighted in Eickelman and Anderson 2003, Brückner and Pink 2009, and Larsson 2006, which deal with Islam, the Internet, and the new media in local, global, and transnational contexts. It is also evident that a growing number of Muslim preachers (for example, the popular Egyptian lay preacher Amr Khaled) are using the Internet to promote their specific interpretations of Islam.

vi. http://www.economist.com/node/21560541

Selective bibliography:

1. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195390155/obo-9780195390155-0116.xml
Brückner, Matthias, and Johanna Pink. Von Chatraum bis Cyberjihad: Muslimische Internetnutzung in lokaler und globaler Perspektive. Würzburg, Germany: Ergon Verlag, 2009.
This book covers both the social and the political functions of the Internet in the Middle East and the use of the Internet by German-speaking Muslims.

2. Bunt, Gary R. iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam. London: Hurst, 2009.
This is an informative and detailed description and overview that provides information about how various Muslim groups are using the Internet and how the development of the new information and communication technologies has influenced and affected the discussion of Islam and Muslims in contemporary society.
3. Eickelman, Dale F., and Jon W. Anderson, eds. New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.
This is an excellent volume that deals with a large number of aspects of the Internet and the new media in the wider Muslim world. The chapters include examples from the Middle East to Indonesia, and the editors bring in new theoretical discussions by applying the theories of the German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas about the public sphere.
4. Larsson, Göran, ed. Religious Communities on the Internet: Proceedings from a Conference. Uppsala: Swedish Science, 2006.
This conference volume includes, among other things, both empirical papers describing how Muslim groups use the Internet and theoretical papers that discuss the differences between online and offline communities.
5. Mandaville, Peter G. Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.
This books deals with how Muslims are influenced by the new information and communication technologies, globalization processes, migration, and transnationalism.
6. Roy, Olivier. Globalised Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. London: Hurst, 2004.
This book explores how globalization processes, migration, and the new information and communication technologies have affected the Muslim community (especially in the West, where Muslim live as minorities). According to Roy, it is obvious that these processes have delocalized Islam and made room for interpretations arguing that it is necessary to free Islam from cultural traits and return to a so-called pure form of Islam.
7. Skovgaard-Petersen, Jakob. “The Global Mufti.” In Globalization and the Muslim World: Culture, Religion, and Modernity. Edited by Birgit Schäbler and Leif Stenberg, 153–165. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004.
This chapter deals with the Egyptian theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi and his use of the latest information and communication technologies (that is, the Internet and satellite television).

The World Economic Forum launched Monday the third edition of the world’s most geographically diverse survey of millennials, the Global Shapers Annual Survey 2017.

Over 31,000 people aged between 18 and 35 responded, giving insights into their views on society, business, politics, the economy and technology as well as their workplace and career aspirations.

The survey, which was available in 14 languages, surveyed young people from 186 countries and territories.

Climate Change Major Concern

Young people selected Climate Change and the Destruction of Nature as the most serious global issue.

This is the top global issue for the third year in a row. A new and related insight this year is that 91% of respondents agree or strongly agree that science has proven that humans are responsible for climate change.

The other issues that make up the top three global issues according to young people are: Large-Scale Conflicts/Wars in second place, and Inequality in third place.

According to the survey, 79% of young respondents say that technology is creating jobs rather than destroying jobs. This is consistent with the 2016 results, albeit with a much larger sample in 2017. And this result remains strong across regions and income levels of countries.

Artificial intelligence is voted as the “next big technology trend”. And the top three sectors that could benefit from technology disruption are: education (20%), health (15%) and manufacturing (14%).

However the results show that young people’s enthusiasm for technology has limits: 44% rejected the idea of having an implant in their skin to increase their capabilities.

When asked if they would trust decisions made by a robot on their behalf, 51% of young respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed.

When asked about whether they would support rights for humanoid robots, the most popular response was “No” (48%). The “Yes” answer choice had only 14%, while 36% chose “Maybe”.

When looking across sub-regions, respondents were still opposed to the idea, except in North America where 44% chose “Maybe”, just ahead of “No” (41%). Regionally, the strongest opposition comes from sub-Saharan Africa, with 59.0% answering “No”.
More than half (56%) of millennials believe that young people’s views are ignored before important decisions are taken in their country.

Young respondents voted that the top three ways to empower young people in a society are through entrepreneurship or start-ups, access to the internet and free media or social media.

A large majority of young people are willing to live outside their country of residence in order to find a job or advance their career (81%). For the third year in a row, the United States remains the top choice for all young people willing to advance their career abroad, followed by Canada (12%), United Kingdom (10%), Germany (8%) and Australia (5%).

However, not all millennials feel the same. While the leading response was “Yes” to move across all regions, more than a third of respondents from sub-Saharan Africa would not be willing to move (37%), far more than in any other region, and Eurasia also had a large number of respondents who answered “No” (25%).

It is worth noting that just over a fifth of millennials from North America also said they would not be willing to live outside their country to find a job or advance their career.

Perhaps an identity-related distinction rather than a geographical one could resolve the dispute more swiftly and on a permanent basis?

By Katerina Kolozova*

“Western Balkans’ potential new crisis in Europe – Macedonia,” “Macedonia on the brink of war,” “Macedonian stability shaken – threat to the stability of southeastern Europe”, a paraphrase of numerous titles that have appeared in media outlets of international standing in the past year or so. Conversely, the same fears and concerns could not be registered internally. Any local public would treat any such statement as conspiracy theory or, more likely, through their own conspiracy theory counter-thesis: “the political opponent is using it as a threat to gain power at any cost,” or “the political opponent is using it as an argument to stay in power.” In short, locally, in the period of the so-called political crisis (2015-2016), a threat to the stability and the very existence of the state has never been considered a serious possibility but rather the spin of the political opponent and “the international powers backing them.”

Hallucinogenic reason dominates the local discourse in the small, claustrophobic, xenophobic, parochially self-sufficient country: truth is never evident and the evident never true, “there is always something behind” that everyone is capable of guessing at according to his political preferences. One can only infer that paranoia is unavoidable. And indeed it is. However, “the fact that you’re paranoid does not exclude the possibility they are after you,” as Joseph Heller used to say.

Macedonia has the following issues with its neighbors: a name of the state contested by Greece, an Orthodox Church unrecognized by Serbia (and, consequently, by the rest of the Orthodox world), an official language and indistinct national identity – or rather “history” – unrecognized by Bulgaria. As the bizarre and seemingly incongruent mass of Macedonia’s problems with its neighbours surfaces in its totality, one is tempted to look for a single unifying trait in that heterogeneous sum of problems. Most of them are linked to history and the recognition of a distinct nation, whether through nation-state formation or identity claim. But given that a national identity or nationality normally derives from a nation-state and considering the fact that statehood or the very existence of the state at issue is not contested by any of its neighbors, the question remains –  what in fact is being denied recognition in Macedonia and its history?

The name of the state, according to Greece, is an expression of “irredentist pretensions,” which refer to the possibility of a secession taking place on its territory. The population that might secede is one that might identify with the “Macedonian nation.” That population is called Slavophone in Greece but their specific identification among the Slavic ethnicities and nationalities is not identified. Or when it is, it is referred to as Bulgarian. Bulgaria claims similarly that the national identity of those who identify as ethnic Macedonians in the Republic of Macedonia and in Greek Macedonia is in fact Bulgarian or at least Bulgarian in its origin. Recently, the statements of the Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić seem to imply positions on the issue of identity or at least on “the name issue” (of the state) that are not that different from those expressed by the officials of the other two neighboring countries. There appears to be an agreement among the neighbors that the “Macedonian nation” is a “fabrication,” falsehood and an “artificial creation of Tito’s Yugoslavia.” Such general agreement was demonstrated in the trilateral meeting of the heads of the Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian states that took place on July 13, 2017 in Thessaloniki at which they debated the issue of Macedonia (in the absence of any representative of the Macedonian state). The recurrent arguments of the agreement at issue revolve around the historical truth of “who or what the Macedonians really are,” an almost century long debate about history, nation building and, consequently, identity and what is a true identity. The “name dispute” between Greece and Macedonia is about this complex mess called “identity.”

Less than a year ago, a US politician by the name of Dana Rohrbacher, Chair of the House of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats, in an interview given for an Albanian TV station stated publicly that “Macedonia is not a country.” In his statement he implied, like many before him, that it was an “artificial creation” or, to quote him, “configuration that came out of the dismantling of Yugoslavia” and that it should be divided between its Albanian minority (which, evidently, has an identity) and Bulgaria or whoever the Slavic majority (with no specific identity designation) prefers to be annexed to. The majority is therefore nameless – not just the state itself – and, due to its absence of definition, the country itself lacks a raison d’être. The State Department refused to comment on Mr. Rohrbacher’s statement, restating its support for the country and its Euro-Atlantic future.

Similarly, the criticism of “artificiality” has been a recurrent argument in the objections of Greece to the country’s constitutional name. Bulgaria, on the other hand, has insisted on the Bulgarian character of Macedonian nationality and/or ethnicity prior to the foundation of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, as well as that of the language. Then, according to many if not virtually all of the contemporary Bulgarian political authorities, public intellectuals and historians, the “artificial creation” was installed.

It is remarkable that the most influential discourses of the previous century have not had much influence over the political discussion around identities taking place in the Balkans and how its arguments serve the foundation of official state policies. For example, on the official website of the Greek Foreign Ministry, we read that FYROM’s use of the “name Macedonia” represents a threat to Greek history and cultural heritage. Isn’t it bizarre that the existence of a state in the 21st century could endanger a history more than 25 centuries old, and that this might be a “political issue leading to irredentism” ?

Going back to the objection of “artificiality”: it looks as if both the objectors (Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs) and those who defend themselves (Macedonians) are unaware that nations, like all other forms of collective belonging, organized sociality and identity, are in fact “constructs.” There is nothing “natural” about them. This argument is not necessarily poststructuralist or constructivist. In fact, practically all authoritative methods in contemporary political science suppose that these phenomena are subject to historical change, transformation and are de facto “creations.” So, they all have a production and expiry date.  However, if one takes the historical and identitary tensions between Greece and Macedonia, one notices that both sides act as if history was static and that an unchanged identity essence remains fixed since time perennial, that there is a definition in the last instance of who they as nationalities “essentially, since always and forever” are. To the Greeks, Macedonians are (an undefined group of) Slavs who are stealing Greek history. The Macedonian nationalists, on the other hand, see themselves as the same people as the ancient Macedonians intact and unchanged since the times of Alexander the Great with some influence from the Slavic migrations which gave them their language and the Cyrillic alphabet. Indeed, in the Balkans, history is politics and politics is history.

Leaving this atavistic logic behind, let us go back to the time of the “artificial creation” of the Macedonian nation – in 1945, Yugoslavia. I have to agree this must have been the time of the creation of the nation, the time when part of the geographic region of Macedonia acquired the status of a nation-state. That was 72 years ago. Before that there was a revolutionary movement that appeared toward the end of the nineteenth century campaigning and fighting by means of terrorism for the foundation of a Macedonian state. That movement was led by an organization called Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and, according to it, the “nature” of the Slavic majority of the nation to be was Bulgarian. It seems that the official historiography and politics of Bulgaria is right when arguing that Macedonia must admit an important part of its national history is in fact Bulgarian or at least indistinguishable from that of Bulgaria.

Therefore, the Agreement on Good Neighborly Relations between Macedonia and Bulgaria signed on August 2, 2017 is, I argue, good news: it relieves Macedonia from its static position of being always and since time perennial purely Macedonian, untinged by the presence of any other ethnicity, history or ambiguity of any sorts. On the other hand, if the view of identity as static and fixed through eternity remains the underpinning logic on the Bulgarian side, they will fail to recognize the fact that even if the Macedonian nation is “only” 72 years old and communist in its origin, it is in place now. It is a reality and a distinct ethnic and also national identity in its own right. The Macedonians, those identifying with the part of their history we share with Bulgaria and those who are Slavophone, in short, those who identify as Macedonians ethnically, inhabit a certain national identity into which they have been born. In other words, the “Titoist artificial construction” has been in place for more than seven decades and many have no other option but, by being born into it, to identify with it.

The fact that Macedonia has signed an agreement with Bulgaria which admits shared history and in particular that relates to nation-building attempts since the nineteenth century, while yet insisting on its distinctness, indicates a presumption about its identity that is dynamic, that, for the first time, does not assume a fixed and frozen essence of the “Macedonian self.” This is the revolutionary new possibility this agreement provides, not only for the improvement of relations between Macedonia and Bulgaria, but as an impetus in the right direction for the development of good neighborly relations with Greece and Serbia as well. Perhaps the model installed by Bulgaria and Macedonia can indeed serve as a foundation for resolving the decades long dispute between Macedonia and Greece.

If we depart from the thesis that the problem is in fact more historical, more identity-based than merely “technical” (a geographical distinction between a region and a state), perhaps a solution to the historical-cultural tensions similar to that reached with Bulgaria will resolve the matter? Perhaps an identity-related distinction rather than a geographical one could resolve the dispute more swiftly and on a permanent basis?

Is it possible that Slavic-Macedonians or Slavo-Macedonians will be a name that will assuage Greek fears and yet do justice to the historical accuracy related to Macedonian national identity (including the part to which Bulgaria has its claims too)? In order for such discussions to begin, it is necessary that the Macedonians accept that indeed there is no frozen essence of identity and that the only constant is dynamism and transformation. Therefore, a contemporary rather than ancient specification of the identifier (“Macedonian”) will serve its future and that of its neighbours better, and hopefully lead to the resolution of the name dispute with Greece.

*Katerina Kolozova, PhD. is the director and a professor at the Institute in Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje. She is also a visiting professor at several universities in Former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. In 2009, Kolozova was a visiting scholar at the Department of Rhetoric (Program of Critical Theory) at the University of California-Berkeley. She is is the author of “The Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststucturalist Philosophy,” NY: Columbia University Press: 2014. Her forthcoming publication is “Toward a Radical Metaphysics of Socialism: Marx and Laruelle” (Brooklyn NY: Summer 2015).

This article was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is available by clicking here. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of TransConflict.

Over the next few decades, global warming-related rises in winter temperatures could significantly extend the range of the southern pine beetle–one of the world’s most aggressive tree-killing insects–through much of the northern United States and southern Canada, says a new study. The beetle’s range is sharply limited by annual extreme temperature lows, but these lows are rising much faster than average temperatures–a trend that will probably drive the beetles’ spread, say the authors. The study was published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The study points to “huge vulnerability across a vast ecosystem,” said lead author Corey Lesk, a graduate student at Columbia University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. “We could see loss of biodiversity and iconic regional forests. There would be damage to tourism and forestry industries in already struggling rural areas.”

Coauthor Radley Horton, a researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said infested forests could also dry out and burn, endangering property and emitting large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

Until recently, southern pine beetles lived from Central America up into the southeastern United States, but in the past decade or so they have also begun appearing in parts of the Northeast and New England. Substantial outbreaks began occurring in New Jersey in 2001. The beetles were first found on New York’s Long Island in New York in 2014 and Connecticut in 2015.

Lesk and Horton project that by 2020, the beetles will establish themselves along the Atlantic coast up to Nova Scotia. They say that by 2050, 78 percent of the 48,000 square miles now occupied by pitch pine forests from southern Maine to eastern Ohio will have climates newly suitable to the beetles. By 2060, they expect the beetle will further establish itself from southern New England through Wisconsin, and by 2080, climates suitable for the beetle should reach 71 percent of red pines and 48 percent of jack pines, which extend across more than 270,000 square miles of the northeastern United States and southern Canada.

The research is part of a larger body of work in which Lesk and Horton aim to identify risks to species and ecosystems related to changes in extreme temperatures. Many species are sensitive to highs and lows, which are expected to see wide swings in frequency and intensity as the climate warms.

The researchers chose to focus on the southern pine beetle because it has a huge impact on forest ecosystems, and the influence of cold thresholds on its range has been well documented going back to the early 20th century. Pine beetle infestations in the southeastern United States cost an estimated $100 million a year in timber losses from 1990 through 2004 alone, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Past such analyses have looked mainly at average July temperatures or average January temperatures, said Matthew Ayres, a professor of ecological science at Dartmouth College who has studied the beetles. This may seem sensible, he said, but “that variable, the coldest night of the winter, is very important for all kinds of things.”

The coldest night of the winter has warmed by approximately 6 or 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 50 years at weather stations in many parts of the United States, compared with just 1 degree Fahrenheit for average annual temperatures. Horton and Lesk project additional increases in annual minimum air temperatures of 6.3 to 13.5 degrees Fahrenheit across the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada by 2050 to 2070.

The researchers took a close look at New Jersey, where the beetles’ spread occurred amid a warming trend in cold extremes. The temperature of the pine bark on which the beetles feed, which is warmer than the air, is apparently the critical factor. The northernmost sightings were highly correlated with latitudes at which winter bark temperatures reached a minimum of 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Since 1980, 14-degree winter minimum bark temperatures have migrated northward in New Jersey by about 40 miles per decade. The northernmost sightings of the beetles have drifted north by about 53 miles per decade since 2002.

To account for uncertainties in their projections, Lesk and Horton incorporated 27 different global climate models and two-greenhouse gas emissions models. They also factored in the possibility that the beetles would not be able to travel through pine-sparse hardwood forests in the northern United States. However, the beetles have already managed this feat in many areas. In all, the researchers found that the uncertainties resulted in a 43-year range between the earliest and latest year a climate suitable to the beetles would be expected to emerge on average across the study region.

The paper did not address some uncertainties, such as the possibility that cold extremes could change more dramatically than climate models suggest, if atmospheric circulation patterns or snow cover shift in unpredicted ways. There are also questions about how the beetles might respond to droughts or heat waves; how vulnerable northern pine species will be to beetle attacks; and how warming temperatures may affect the beetles’ natural predators, such as the checkered beetle.

Land managers further south have used adaptive strategies with limited success, mainly thinning of forests where tree density is high, or cutting out infested trees. The question is whether these strategies will work in the north.

An acid zone of water is increasing in acidity in the Chesapeake Bay.

These are the findings of a research team, led by University of Delaware professor Wei-Jun Cai. The team analyzed little studied factors that play a role in ocean acidification (OA)–changes in water chemistry that threaten the ability of shellfish such as oysters, clams and scallops to create and maintain their shells, among other impacts.

The U.S. Geological Survey defines pH as “a measure of how acidic or basic water is.” The pH scale ranges from 0-14, with 7 considered neutral. A pH less than 7 is acidic, while a pH greater than 7 is alkaline (basic). Battery acid, for example, might have a pH of 1, while Milk of Magnesia might have a pH of 10.

Changes in pH can tell scientists something about how the water chemistry is changing.

In their research, Cai and his colleagues discovered a “pH minimum zone” that occurs at a depth of approximately 10-15 meters (~30-50 feet) in the Chesapeake Bay. The pH in this zone is roughly 7.4, nearly 10 times higher in acidity (or a unit lower in pH) than what is found in surface waters, which have an average pH of 8.2.

This zone is suspected to be due to a combination of factors, most importantly, from acids produced when bottom water rich in toxic hydrogen sulfide gets mixed upward. The team reported the findings in a paper in Nature Communications on August 28, 2017.

“This study shows for the first time that the oxidation of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia from the bottom waters could be a major contributor to lower pH in coastal oceans and may lead to more rapid acidification in coastal waters compared to the open ocean,” said Cai, the paper’s lead author and an expert in marine chemistry and carbon’s movement through coastal waters.

Previous studies, including work by Cai, have shown that acidification can be particularly serious in nutrient-rich coastal waters which often contain areas with too little oxygen and high levels of carbon dioxide near the bottom.

However, scientists don’t know exactly how much OA is occurring in a large bay like the Chesapeake Bay, though it is well-documented that agricultural nutrients entering the water have had a progressive impact on the Bay’s bottom water’s becoming anoxic, or oxygen depleted, during the summer months over the past 50 years.

Quantitative model provides new clues

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. In addition to providing a thriving marine environment for tourism and outdoor recreation along the East Coast, the Bay plays an important role in the nation’s economy through the harvesting of seafood including shellfish, like blue crab and oysters, and finfish such as striped bass.

During research cruises aboard UD’s 146-foot research vessel Hugh R. Sharp in August 2013 and 2014, UD researchers Cai and George Luther and colleagues collected water samples repeatedly from a deep basin of the main Chesapeake Bay. The researchers measured oxygen, hydrogen sulfide, pH, dissolved inorganic carbon and total alkalinity.

As Cai analyzed the data from these cruises and another in April 2015, he noticed that the Bay’s pH seemed to reach a minimum at depths between 10-15 meters. To explain this, Cai built a biogeochemical model to simulate the way oxygen is consumed and inorganic carbon and acids are produced to match the observations measured in the Chesapeake Bay. Using direct hydrogen sulfide measurements collected in the bottom waters by Luther, Cai calculated how much acid would need to be produced to explain this minimum zone.

Cai explained that in the coastal ocean, in general, there is a synergistic effect on OA when excess nutrients introduced into the ecosystem from land cause plant overgrowth, a process known as eutrophication that upsets the water’s natural chemistry and causes the death of marine species. When that organic matter sinks to the bottom sediment it is consumed by bacteria that respire, creating excess carbon dioxide that mixes upward into the water column.

“The water is already lower in pH and when you add just a little more carbon dioxide and other acids, it creates a tipping point that leads to a decrease in pH” said Cai.

He compared the results of his Chesapeake Bay model to data from the Gulf of Mexico, which is considered a well-buffered system that is able to counteract the changes from OA and keep itself in balance. But in large eutrophic estuaries like the Chesapeake Bay, the combined environmental and climate change stressors make the Bay more vulnerable, and the excess nutrients and increase in acidity may take a larger toll.

“Given how widespread low-oxygen zones are in coastal waters worldwide, understanding these processes will allow us to predict the acidification of estuaries under expected increases in carbon dioxide and ongoing mitigation of nutrient inputs by management actions,” said Jeremy Testa, assistant professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “These results will allow us to identify where and when shell-forming organisms like oysters will thrive or suffer in the future.”

The team’s research shows that currently the dissolving of living shells and non-living aragonite and calcite minerals has provided a self-regulating mechanism to buffer or prevent the Chesapeake Bay’s bottom waters from becoming acidic.

But what will it mean for economically important species like oysters and clams if the overall ecosystem is pushed further out of balance?

This is a question the research team would like to explore further.

“There is a limit to Mother Nature’s ability to self-regulate these systems,” Cai said.

Times have changed on the oil market, which has seen one of its lowest levels. Shale oil producers are a new force on the market. Discourse about the oil industry is often gloomy and its future is seen as unsecure, most likely because we think in the old fashioned, simplistic economic terms.

Reality in one of the most representative energy markets, the Gulf countries, shows that concerned are misplaced. Despite OPEC restrictions on production and the apparent quarrel with Qatar, the Gulf countries are cleverly considering diversification strategies to ensure them consistent revenues.

Gulf oil companies are contemplating a diversification of their portfolio to enhance value. Aramco is looking to list 5 % of its stock on an international exchange. Kuwait Petroleum Corporation is considering selling some shares in its subsidiaries. Or it may very well buy.

In January 2014, Petrochemical Industries Co., a subsidiary of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, entered into a preliminary cooperation agreement with Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) from India, which owns the biggest stake in OPaL India, but the negotiations stopped in 2016. An investment of $1 billion is being planned by Oman Oil Company and its subsidiaries for various projects, including Salalah LPG project, an ammonia project (expansion of Salalah Methanol unit), Duqm gas pipeline, Sohar-Wadi Al Jissi gas pipeline, a mega crude storage facility at Ras Al Markaz (near Duqm) and several other projects in Duqm free zone.

One intricate and innovative master plan has been designed by ADNOC, the 12th largest oil producer in the world, with 3.1 million barrels a day, operating along the entire hydrocarbon chain, from exploration, production storage, refining and distribution, to a full range of petrochemical products. ADNOC shows a high level of resilience and it turns out to be very resourceful in designing new elaborate schemes and partnerships, and new ways to boost its turnover.

In doing so, ADNOC may set an example in innovative asset management. Economic schemes such as reduction of bad debt risk and vertical integration materialize in mergers, award of shares, splitting of concessions, optimization of the capital structure, and attraction of new partners with finance, markets and new skills. It also turns out to be an example of pragmatism and open-mindedness. It treats international oil companies as peers and competitors at the same time, and any possibility is taken into account. International oil companies, traders, private equity investors and global infrastructure specialists, key customers such as China, Japan and South Korea, financial institutions and pension funds are all possible players along the multiple chains of its business.

A quick glance at the latest developments reveals that, for the first time, ADNOC changes its business methods, by opening the way for new partnerships and co-investments in all areas – from oil & gas concessions and petrochemicals to drilling, pipelines, storage and refining, and by turning to the market for loans to expand operations.

In October 2016, its two key offshore operating subsidiaries, ADMA-OPCO and ZADCO merged.

In December 2016,  ADNOC announced an agreement with international oil major BP, under which the company was to take a 10 % share in the onshore oil concession operated by the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Petroleum Operations, ADCO, an ADNOC subsidiary in which ADNOC has 60%, in exchange for issuing BP shares worth around US$ 2.2 billion.

In February 2017, ADNOC awarded an 8% onshore oilfield concession to the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) in a US$1.77 billion deal. The 40-year onshore concession includes 15 oilfields -the Bab, Asab and Bu Hasa, collectively responsible for more than 50% of the emirate’s production of 3.1 million barrels of oil per day. ADCO will be the concession operator. By this deal, CNPC joins partners such as France’s Total, BP, Inpex of Japan and South Korea’s GS Energy.
Discussions for drilling and petrochemical partnerships took place in July.

When ADNOC was also in discussions with banks for a syndicated loan of approximately US$5 billion to expand its operations. To note that before oil prices went down in 2014, state energy companies in the Gulf were relying on their governments for funds. Now, they are turning to the markets for loans. In July, there was talk about Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, First Abu Dhabi Bank, HSBC, and JPMorgan, and loans between $500 million and $750 million, but the banks refused to make comments. ADNOC avoided to take the topic to the media, too.

At the beginning of August, ADNOC announced that it would split its offshore existing ADMA-OPCO concession into two or more parts next year, and it is negotiating with several potential partners. The concession will include a mix of the Lower Zakum field, Umm Shaif, Nasr, Umm Lulu and Satah Al Razboot (SARB) fields. ADNOC, on behalf of the Abu Dhabi government, will retain a 60% shareholding in the new concession areas.
ADNOC is dreaming of growing its production capacity from the current 3.1 to 3.5 million barrels per day by next year. In January 2017, the UAE Energy Minister, Suhail al-Mazrouei,  was optimistic, saying that “it is premature to consider extending an OPEC deal to cut oil output and lift low prices”, but constrains on oil production are operating due to the OPEC limits, so, if production cannot increase, diversity is the solution.

Apart from innovative management and pragmatism, visionary leadership may be the third explanation for the revisited strategy. ADNOC’s unprecedented remade may have to do with Sultan Al Jaber’s personality, as he is often present when it comes to energy talks in the UAE.

Sultan Al Jaber, a minister of state, was appointed the director general of ADNOC in February 2016. He is also the chairman of the renewable energy company MASDAR. In 2009, Al Jaber was invited by the United Nations’ Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to serve as a member of the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change (AGECC). He coordinated and led MASDAR’s participation in the UAE’s successful bid to host the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in Abu Dhabi.

“In this new energy era, we need more creative strategies and more flexible business models to capture growth,” Al Jaber says.

And so he does.

*Marcela Ganea is an academic and international journalist. She holds a BA in Foreign Languages, an MA in Security Studies and a PhD in American Studies. She writes on the geopolitics, foreign policy, economy, security, Space, media, education, and culture.

President Donald J. Trump today declared that an emergency exists in the state of Louisiana and ordered federal assistance to supplement state, tribal, and local response efforts due to the emergency conditions resulting from Tropical Storm Harvey beginning on Aug. 27, 2017, and continuing, according to a White House news release.

The president’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate all disaster relief efforts, the release said.

This action will help alleviate the hardship and suffering that the emergency has inflicted on the local population, and provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the Louisiana parishes of Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron, Jefferson Davis and Vermillion.

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Emergency protective measures, including direct federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent federal funding, the release said.

FEMA Administrator Brock Long named William J. Doran III as the Federal Coordinating Officer for federal recovery operations in the affected areas.

By Liz Fuller

(RFE/RL) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Georgia’s breakaway Republic of Abkhazia in early August served to highlight once again Moscow’s uneasy and difficult relationship with that particular client.

Nine years after Russia (and virtually no one else) formally recognized Abkhazia as an independent state, rising crime there could pose a potential threat both to Moscow’s long-term interests in that republic and to the nearby Russian town of Sochi, one of the venues for next year’s FIFA World Cup.

Russia’s primary interests in Abkhazia are threefold.

The first is military-strategic and centers on the recent formation of the Russian-Abkhaz Joint Group of Military Forces based in Gudauta. The stated rationale for that Russian military presence is to protect Abkhazia against possible aggression from the rest of Georgia. The international community regards it as a violation of the terms of the agreement that ended the war of August 2008.

The second, related objective appears to be geopolitical: to demonstrate, first, that Abkhazia is part of Russia’s sphere of interest, and, second, that it is a politically stable and economically viable polity whose population of approximately 243,000 has no valid reason even to consider again becoming de facto part of Georgia. As Putin commented on his recent meeting with Abkhazia’s de facto leader, Raul Khajimba, “particular emphasis was laid on Abkhazia’s transformation into a modern state with an effective and self-sufficient economy.”

To that end, as commentator Anton Krivenyuk points out, Moscow has provided the maximum political support for successive Abkhaz leaders as long as their position was tenable, and then switched overnight to supporting the successor. That support is not, Krivenyuk says, based on the merits of the man in question but on his status as head of state, insofar as Russia has a vested interested in the political process in Abkhazia being perceived as legitimate.

Uphill Struggle

The process of transformation into a modern, economically viable state is proving an uphill struggle, however. The generous financial aid Moscow has provided over the past nine years has failed to kick-start Abkhazia’s moribund economy or substantially reduce unemployment, currently estimated at 70 percent.

Moreover, Abkhazia’s ambiguous status (only three countries in addition to Russia have formally recognized it as an independent state) deters foreign investment, as do widespread crime and corruption. Some experts estimate that the shadow economy accounts for up to 50 percent of all economic activity. (The corresponding figure for Russia is 40 percent.)

The Abkhaz government, while aware of the urgent need for further investment, is wary of the possible negative effects of an influx of Russian money, and steadfastly refuses to enact legislation that would enable foreigners to purchase real estate.

At the same time, violent crime, such as armed assault and robbery, has risen steadily, fueled by unemployment and also reportedly by widespread drug-addiction among unemployed and disadvantaged young males.

The police force is variously perceived as either powerless to cope with that upsurge in crime or more interested in augmenting their meager salaries by fines from motorists for nonexistent infringements of traffic regulations. Former Interior Minister Raul Lolua, now an opposition parliament deputy, said recently that of every 400 crimes committed, only 20 ever result in a trial.

Even Khajimba was forced to concede last year that despite a reported increase in the number of crimes solved, the situation was by no means as rosy as official statistics suggested.

That upsurge in crime has begun to affect tourism from Russia, traditionally a major source of income and on which Khajimba pins hopes for an economic upswing. Russia’s rapprochement with Turkey means that country is again the destination of choice for many Russian tourists; consequently the number of Russians visiting Abkhazia in May-July 2017 was 30 percent lower than last year, when the number had reached 1.1 million by early September.

What is more, many Russians who had planned to travel to Abkhazia this summer have canceled their vacations following the murder last month of one Russian tourist and an attack on a second visiting Russian family. Two Russian tourists were also killed earlier this month, and some 30 injured in an explosion at an arms depot in Gudauta.

Following his talks with Khajimba, Putin announced that Moscow will invest 6 billion rubles ($101 million) in Abkhazia between now and 2019. He did not, however, give any indication whether there will be any increase in direct financial aid, which was cut this year to 2.58 billion rubles from 7.7 billion in 2016. At the same time, Russia will contribute to funding the planned joint “Information-Coordination Center” to spearhead the fight against organized cross-border crime, in particular drug trafficking.

By Gregory Bresiger*

The Republicans failed on health care, but now they are offering a new plan for tax and spending cuts, with a promise of smaller government.

But the GOP, with few exceptions, seems about as creditable as the Democrats and their flawed, small-business killer, Obamacare. Many of the Democrats are people who subscribe to a socialism without doctrines; a kind of backdoor collectivism. So now, as they expect the Republicans to fail and lose control of Congress, naturally many of them are waiting for their chance to ram a single payer health care system down the throats of already overtaxed Americans.

Many Americans thought they were voting for less government in 2016, but they have been disappointed again and again by a party that doesn’t seem interested in rolling back government.

Sir, Could You Just Give Us One More Chance?

Still, Republicans, in their recent budget document say they will get taxes and spending right this time. This is reminiscent of the character Hoover in the 1970s movie Animal House. In the wreckage of a college homecoming parade that he and his fellow expelled hooligans have just destroyed, he pleads with the college dean, “This may seem an inappropriate time to bring this up, but could you just give us one more chance?”

Republicans want just “one more chance” to roll back an out of control government that they helped to build. So now they have offered their proposals in their economic game plan, “Building a Better America,” the GOP’s “Plan for Fiscal Responsibility” coming out of the House Budget Committee. It calls for cutting taxes and details the outrageous overreach of government.

And while the GOP budget statement does a good job of documenting the spending problems of too much government, the plan has several flaws: It doesn’t go far enough in cutting back government, of course, but the main problem is that it is offered to us by many of the same people who created a lot of the problem over the past generations.

The Fox Guarding the Henhouse?

Indeed, these are some of the same lawmakers who gave us big, intrusive and deficit laden government for generations. In reading over this document and its warnings that government deficits now threaten to destroy our nation, one gets the impression that these Republicans were a bunch of Mr. Smiths who just arrived in Washington. However, the truth is quite different.

One example of the legacy of fiscal disasters outlined in “Building a Better America,” but which we can trace back to the GOP, is Republican stalwart Dick Cheney.

The former republican vice president and defense secretary is often quoted as dismissing deficits.

“Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter,” Cheney famously said.

Yet deficits do matter — at least that’s what “Building a Better America” tells me. Not surprisingly, the GOP plan doesn’t mention Dick Cheney.

Another example of the GOP’s selective memory is the issue of bureaucracy and red tape.

For many Americans — especially business owners — red tape continues to be a problem.

How do I know?

Again “Building a Better America” — given to us by a party that has controlled all or parts of Congress for over a decade — tells me so. The report states the obvious: entitlement spending promises will eat up much of the earnings of an unborn generation. Here is an example:

“Under current law, the Congressional Budget Office [CBO] estimates that the annual budget deficit will balloon to over $1.4 trillion by 2027 — driven mostly by an increase in mandatory spending programs — absent swift and decisive action to rein in federal spending,” according to the Republican document. However, it doesn’t mention that many Republicans have voted for these programs and their perpetual expansion.

But if this pattern of red ink continues over the next generation or so government spending will be bigger than the economy, the Republicans say, pointing to CBO numbers.

“Deficits will continue to rise over the coming decades, with federal debt held by the public reaching 150 percent of the size of our economy in 30 years. Taxes will eat up more and more of American work. Again, it is the CBO, often maligned by some Republicans, to which the Republicans refer. … The policy problem facing the United States is that spending rises above any reasonable metric of taxation for the indefinite future,” according to former CBO Director Doug Holtz-Eakin in a recent House Budget Committee hearing.

“Our fiscal path,” added Gene Dodaro, the Comptroller General of the United States, is on the road to disaster. He said the pace of spending “is unsustainable, and if we fail to get control of debt and deficits, we are putting our country at risk of a fiscal and economic crisis.”

This is an old story. Some 17 years ago, the Kerrey-Danforth Entitlement Commission came to the same conclusion.

Indeed, the GOP study now finds that two-thirds of the nation’s annual budget funds government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. They are not subject to annual review by Congress. Here we see the GOP hedging its acknowledgement of a serious economic/philosophical threat to economic liberty and a reluctance to do something of substance.

“While these programs are vital to the people they serve, their spending rates are unsustainable and the key drivers of our nation’s fiscal challenge,” the GOP document says.

The Republican Anomaly

However, are these right-wing critics of the welfare state really the ones to end or dramatically reduce it?

The anomaly of the “Building a Better America” document is the GOP will identify the sins of too much government, but really are proposing very little to correct them. Take the discussion of Amtrak, the government’s ramshackle passenger railroad system. It was created by a Republican administration in the 1970s. That’s something omitted from “Building a Better America.” Amtrak has been a subject of almost constant discussion here in New York over the last few months. Amtrak’s close to half century of disaster has been highlighted as its poorly maintained Penn Station has been falling apart.

In this section of “Building a Better America” some part of the GOP, despite all the criticism of the federal government in this document, reveals itself as wanting to put a human face on socialism; attempting to save some parts of big government even as it crumbles. Despite hundreds of billions of dollars sunk into Amtrak since the 1970s, the GOP only proposes “to reduce” subsidies for Amtrak. It doesn’t propose to get rid of it. And here is how the supposed party of small government phrases it.

The budget assumes reduced federal subsidies for Amtrak’s operations. Federal subsidies have insulated the National Railroad Passenger Corporation [Amtrak] from becoming self-sufficient, and they commit taxpayers nationwide to underwriting the commutes, recreation, and other trips for a fraction of the traveling public. The 1997 Amtrak authorization law required Amtrak to operate free of subsidies by 2002. Yet taxpayers continue subsidizing Amtrak tickets.

Again, the GOP is correct in its analysis, although its history is incomplete. Actually, the Republican Nixon administration, started this mess. Back in the 1970s it began the ill-fated Amtrak. Then the Nixon administration, promised “the greatest turnaround in business history.” (From the book End of the Line: The Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America’s Passenger Trains).

Amtrak was going to make money? Almost a half century later, that’s a comical comment except that the joke has been on American taxpayers.

So how will Republicans fix the trains? They promise to “reduce” the Amtrak subsidy.

Reduce it?

What happened to the days of ending the national railroad that has literally and figuratively gone off the tracks. And here is the basic problem with “Building a Better America.”

George Explains It All

Most Republicans here aren’t proposing to dismantle the warfare/welfare state, they are actually saying they can manage it better than Democrats. This was clearly explained to me by Republican columnist George Will at a Security Traders Association conference I attended about 15 years ago while working for Traders Magazine.

“Republicans are doing a better job at running the welfare state than Democrats,” said Will in his speech to the traders.

As Will hurried out, I couldn’t resist stopping him.

“Great speech, Mr. Will,” I said as he started puff up and I thought he expected me to ask him for an autograph, but nevertheless I unleashed my ambush.

“Yes, sir, now I know why I’m a libertarian,” I said.

He grumbled, shook his head and hurried away as fast as he could. Maybe that’s what we should do with the ideas of the GOP’s “Building a Better America.”

About the author:
*Gregory Bresiger (GregoryBresiger.com) is an independent business journalist who lives in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York. He is the author of MoneySense, a forthcoming book of basic of money management with a libertarian point of view.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute.

Currently the South China Sea (SCS) question has reached a precarious situation. Over the course of social antiquity, territorial differences have often stemmed from historic and cultural claims; ultimately resulting in to geopolitical vicissitudes. Chinese maritime jaunts towards the Southeast Asia and the Middle East have existed for centuries. Trade routes have been sailed since the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AC) and exchanges made with the Roman Empire. After Zheng He, voyages were forbidden by the Emperor and China closed its frontiers for a while.

The Scarborough Shoal standoff in 2012, the HYSY 981 drilling rig crisis in 2014, the US navigation incident in 2015, and the scheme on shelving territorial disputes all relate to the prevailing clashes in the South China Sea. The South China Sea is a decisive sea transport lane, full with seafood, considerable oil and gas assets and an extensive bio diverse coral reef ecological unit, surrounding continental shelf i.e. 5,000 meters deep containing rocks and small islands; namely Paracel, Spratly and Scarborough Shoal.

China repeatedly claims her sovereignty upon all these land topographies lying within the dash line and “sovereign rights in the waters and sea bed” within the dash-line limit.

Presently SCS disputes have reached a critical situation. Most of the islands and reefs in the South China Sea have been occupied by China, Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Malaysia. In the face of these disagreements and uncertainty over South China Sea, by the above claimants have entangled energy corporations for the purpose of investigation and exploitation in their corresponding claims. China‘s mounting energy requirements, deteriorating aptitude to meet expected growth rate with internal energy sources, and unrelenting oil necessities have driven China’s quest for substitute energy cradles, fabricating dependence and susceptibility on the maritime trade means while contesting the liberty of the oceans and maritime competition in Asia.

Therefore, to meet their energy requirements China’s President Xi Jinping in 2013, presented his Vision of “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR). The venture is a trade and infrastructure complex, encompassing the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road, together networking China with nations in Asia, Africa, Middle East and Europe. OBOR intends to upturn connectivity thus developing trade streams to spur enduring pecuniary expansion and progress for the participants. The initiative is noteworthy for China’s intentions of domestic and regional economic enlargement.

China’s vision of domestic and regional economic integration, is leading to a nasty returning pattern in South China Sea; not only including claimants, but also extra-regional stakeholders. An increase in actors to a substantial degree, have rendered the clash further obstinate, as a sole concession among two parties, this may have spill-over effects upon third countries. The China-Philippine arbitration of January 2013 continues to highlight this dilemma. Inter alia, a trend of territorialization in China’s dash-line claim and island-reclamation works.

However, previous collaborative measures, without settlement of the maritime borders, have been grounded on a flimsy symmetry of authorities. The claimants of South China Sea are ignoring the parameters i.e. necessary for a sustainable and mutually-beneficial resolution. The subject outshines two perceptions. On one side, there advances an unconcealed belief on international law when ASEAN appellants (Vietnam and the Philippines), proclaim their prerogatives, while highlighting their point of view under the umbrella of historic facts and accentuating the status of global law of sea.

Secondly claimants are politicizing their descriptions thus providing more inspiration for fueling the patriotic thoughts and overloading these claims. Under this dilemma, how would a suggestion of constructing a maritime trade route and the Road plan, interrelate the rankling with regard to South China Sea disputes?

Consequently Chinese officials’ reactions to the ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague (PCA) on the South China Sea could have wide-ranging implications for China’s Silk Road, the economic initiative. China’s standing for the rule of law at stake and her supervision of worldwide tribunal’s presiding, appears shortsighted at best. Ignoring the ruling of the court completely may introduce misgiving, deteriorate the disagreements, and fetch in additional actors which otherwise should not be involved.

If a consensus on the initiative could not have been achieved lacking the mutual understanding then it may be perceived as a “geopolitical conspiracy”. Hence, China needs to promote essentially required political and strategic confidence with the Southeast Asian countries.

To diminish the safety apprehensions of the ASEAN countries and the surging shared belief, China should verify her persistence on the nine-dash line and come up with her own roadmap for resolution of this clash. The likelihood of collaboration depends on acute precondition that there become an agreement on parts that may be focus of collective advancement. Yet, for the claimant nations, the sovereignty and security concerns may well be above joint development, as China had specified that, “Beijing would only concede to joint cooperative activities if the other claimants first acknowledge Chinese sovereignty over the South China Sea.”

*Qura tul ain Hafeez has a M Phil in International Relations from Quaid-I Azam University Islamabad. She is currently working as a researcher at Strategic Vision Institute Islamabad. Her domain of work includes China as an emerging global power, Sino-Pakistan strategic and civil nuclear relations, South Asian strategic issues, regional integration, nuclear issues including nuclear non-proliferation and NSG, Foreign Policy analysis, and international politics.