It took some time of muzzling and concealment before the horror, but various Democrats have finally come clean about the Hillary Clinton machine: things were, it seems, rigged, stacked, and doctored. This was the language of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump from opposite sides of the political spectrum, the code of anti-establishment anger, the message for disruptive change.

Such anti-establishment creatures were ultimately reviled by orthodox party priests as futile hopes, misguided and bound to lose. In the great tradition of US presidential politics, they had to be neutralised.

As each less credible than the last figure fell before the Trump juggernaut, Clinton felt she could hold her own on the Democratic wing, keeping Sanders at bay and ultimately convincing a broken Democratic party machine that her famed outfit would steady the ship for an effortless docking in the White House.

Donna Brazile’s revelations, to that end, can hardly be deemed “explosive,” as Politico puts it. (Damp squib, more like.) The Podesta emails available on the WikiLeaks site already showed a picture of concern and application against the Sanders threat, a nursed fear that his message was biting. Tactics are discussed, dirt suggested as to how best to stall and eliminate the Bernie momentum.

In her book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House, the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman reveals collusion and bad smell complicity. She insists, however, that there was nothing “criminal” in it, though it “compromised the party’s integrity”. “If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead.”

Brazile is, as ever, careful with the water: she is always ready to wash her hands vigorously in the anticipation that she might be accused of bad faith and shape changing. She claims to have “promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested.”[1]

The more Brazile goes into the story, the more the story seems old and known. What matters is that she has woken up to it, to Clinton as ruthless and omnivorous. “Right around the time of the convention, the leaked emails revealed Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races.”

Brazile’s revelations stimulated interest among certain Democratic politicians, notably Elizabeth Warren who decided to recapitulate the rigging theme in three of five national television interviews. “We recognize the process was rigged,” explained Warren to Judy Woodruff of PBS, “and now it is up to Democrats to build a new process, a process that really works, and works for everyone.”[2]

Unfortunately for Warren, much of this is fuming after the horse has bolted, the wringing of hands at milk long spilt. She might well have picked another option, glaringly obvious and daring, but decided to fall into line with the DNC machinery when her protest would have counted most. Warren ultimately joined forces to give Clinton ballast on the campaign trail. The ignorance card is only bound to take you so far.

A former Sanders campaign strategist sees the play by Warren for what it is. “There is a Bernie donor base that’s very important if you want to be in national political office. This is a play for that.” To that end, “Repairing that relationship is more important than poisoning the well with the Clintonites.”[3]

That may well do much to continue undermining the reform agenda, which the Democrats have yet to embrace. While Clinton attempts to monetise her abysmal failure to defeat Trump through speeches, publications and interviews, Brazile is now reconsidering her slant.

Did she ever actually say, let alone suggest, that the process had been tampered with, sewn up and manipulated in favour of Clinton? No. On Twitter, she fretted: “Today’s lesson: Being quoted by Donald Trump means being MIS-quoted by Donald Trump. Stop trolling me.”[4]

In another statement, Brazile seemed to have undergone a remarkable transformation, suggesting that the author of Hacks had been abducted and substituted. The problem, as ever, was who was capitalising on her sudden insight. “Trump looks for a daily excuse to distract from his job. No, the primary system wasn’t rigged! States control primary ballots.”[5]

Perhaps this is hardly surprising, when one considers the Russian mania that suffuses her Twitter postings, the usual bellyaching blame game that keeps company with Clinton. “Russia,” she writes in a re-Tweet of a link from The Guardian, “funded Facebook and Twitter investments through Kushner associate.”[6] On November 4, she chirps in smug satisfaction how, “Report shows the complex way Russian hackers went after Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.”[7]

Another re-Tweet features a piece by Joy-Anne Reid in The Daily Beast as another attempt to throw critics off the scent, hoping that attention will not be paid to the atrocious conduct of the Clinton machine: “Donna Brazile’s Bombshell Isn’t that Hillary Clinton rigged the race, but that the Democratic Party Blew it.”[8]

All that is true, but the ugly, grizzled picture of Democratic decline and fabled suicide was epitomised by its poor choice of candidate, the party establishment’s inadvertent admission that ossification had set in. The Warrens fell silent, and Sanders retreated, leaving his supporters to grieve and observe the unfolding calamity. Trump duly scooped up the remains. WikiLeaks was, after the dust had settled, discomfortingly right.

Notes:
[1] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774

[2] https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2017/11/03/elizabeth-warren-charge-that-democratic-primary-was-rigged-says-more-about-than/2L5lOAkxFaI5tulLKi9V6N/story.html

[3] https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2017/11/03/elizabeth-warren-charge-that-democratic-primary-was-rigged-says-more-about-than/2L5lOAkxFaI5tulLKi9V6N/story.html

[4] https://twitter.com/donnabrazile/status/926477310458515457

[5] https://twitter.com/donnabrazile/status/926465631536459777

[6] https://twitter.com/donnabrazile/status/927273936676687872

[7] https://twitter.com/donnabrazile/status/926815655961223168

[8] https://www.thedailybeast.com/donna-braziles-bombshell-isnt-that-hillary-clinton-rigged-the-race-but-that-the-democratic-party-blew-it?source=via

By Pier Francesco Zarcone*

The military breakthrough in the Syrian war appears to be definitive … at least according to Robert S. Ford, former U.S. ambassador to Syria.

Even though the conflict has not yet come to an end, in a recent interview with Foreign Affairs Ford stated that the Syrian army has won the war and the United States must “abandon hopes of supporting a separate Kurdish region” having “no good options in Syria” so that “hopes of getting rid of [Bashar Hafez al-] Assad are far-fetched fantasies.”

The reason for this situation was Russian intervention. An obvious question comes to mind: why and in what way did the Russians succeed? In this regard, it is necessary to clarify a number of points.

First, it must be remembered that one must never enter into a conflict without having a well-defined and delimited political objective: in this case it was solely rescuing the current Syrian government. Secondly, the Kremlin clearly understood that many of the players in the Syrian conflict – moreover fragmented – were the long arm, or substitutes, of external entities such as the United States, Turkey, the Syrian-Kurdish opposition Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Democrat – PYD), Jordan and also Israel. Russia dealt diplomatically with all these subjects, accepting fallout also on the battlefield.

In addition, in order not to be trapped in a swamp with no way out, Moscow used very limited resources wisely and effectively: from 4-5,000 soldiers and 50 to 70 aircraft, for a cost of about 3 million euros per day (in practice no more than one-fifth of U.S. military spending in the Near East). And the losses suffered were more than contained.

From the ratio between means employed and practical results, some have concluded that Russian “military productivity” was greater than that of the United States, also because there was absolutely no lack of achievements in the field. On the other hand, Russia immediately and in its entirety used the presence destined for Syria – in fact without unnecessary warnings – and, unlike what happened in the so-called “US-led coalition”, did not need to implement it significantly.

From a political point of view, Russia intervened itself, that is, without pretending that the further phase of the war effort be supported by the Syrian Armed Forces – which in the Arab world can give good returns. So, no fake “advisers” who officially do not fight, but presence and commitment directly alongside the ally.

It has been said that Moscow was able to adopt the so-called “strategy of the reckless pedestrian”, that is of the person who, in crossing a very busy road with extreme boldness, manages to stop the cars rather than be run over.

A very calculated risk strategy, because currently neither the United States nor Russia seek direct confrontation; consequently, the first of the two that succeeds in “placing itself” on a certain “ground” de facto prevents the other from taking the same initiative.

Instead, the United States – threats aside – hesitated too much. In addition, with the deployment of S-300 missiles – and later S-400s – the Russians imposed a sort of “no-fly zone” on Washington: perhaps not absolute, if it is taken into account that, in violation of an agreement concluded a few hours earlier with the Russians, the United States bombed Syrian troops besieged by ISIS at Deir ez-Zur, killing 62 Syrian soldiers and acting in real terms as support – albeit in vain – for the concomitant ground offensive of the militia of al-Baghdadi’s “caliphate” (the enemy of the United States, in theory). The missile attack on Syria’s Shyrat base ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump came, however, from the sea.

In military terms, the conclusion is that if, on the one hand, Russian power of blocking air space is not total, on the other, U.S. recourse to prudence attests that Syrian skies are substantially controlled by the Russians. Russian President Vladimir Putin certainly took a risk, but the United States did not; and so it did not provide its Syrian allies, pseudo-democrat or “moderate Islamic” allies with, the modern armaments – anti-aircraft and air-ground missiles – they asked for nor did it engage on the ground with its own soldiers.

Finally, the Russians showed the possibility of a negotiation to the non-hardcore enemy sectors; down this road, in agreement with the Syrian government, it created the Reconciliation Centre, which guarantees protected transport for declared defeated enemies and their families – and aid to the civilian population.

In Iraq

In the context of the current confrontation between the Iraqi government and the autonomous one of Erbil following the Kurdish referendum on independence in September, the Iraqi Armed Forces aim to take back the Assyrian city of Faysh Khabur, the border crossing with Turkey. This would mean denying the United States free passage to northern Syria, which instead is guaranteed by the Kurds.

But there is more: Iraqi control over this pass would allow oil exports without having to pay to the Kurds part of the proceeds or bribes; the area of Erbil would remain isolated from northern Syria, and consequently the United States could no longer provide the same facility of military aid to Syrian rebels through Iraq. In theory, the way of Turkey would remain to the United States: but will Ankara allow it, considering the Syrian Kurds as an expression of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in conflict with Turkey?

Moreover, the United States has a specific need in Iraq: freeing the Baghdad government from Iranian influence. However, the undertaking is by no means simple, not so much because of the common Shiite faith – given that the commonality of religion can also, depending on circumstances and interests, prove to be a very fleeting bond – as because of the fact that reconquest of the Iraqi territories occupied by ISIS was essentially the work of the Iraqi Armed Forces, which include Shiite militias, in substance however controlled by Tehran.

Here too, the “U.S.-led coalition” has turned out to be a failure. These Shiite militias are the same ones that largely have taken Kirkuk away from Kurdish occupation.

In October, in talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson attempted to relaunch the U.S. argument on the dangers of such militias and the consequent need to dissolve them, as well as the opportunity to move Iraq’s axis of political gravity towards … Saudi Arabia!

The response received was far from meeting expectations. An al-Abadi spokesman immediately blamed the interference in Iraqi internal affairs, and later the Prime Minister told Tillerson that the popular mobilisation forces of which Shiite militias are part belong to Iraqi institutions and are the hope of the country and the region. Subsequently, in an interview with the U.S. press, al-Abadi textually stated: “We would like to work with the United States […]. But please do not bring your problems to Iraq. You can do it elsewhere”, thus pointing to the opportunity for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the fact that its air support is no longer necessary.

Regarding the Kurdish referendum, on account of the convergent interests of Turkey and Iran, Iraq is by no means isolated. Certainly, as far as the Kurdish issue is concerned, the United States is seen with extreme suspicion – to use an euphemism – by Baghdad, Ankara and Tehran; and it is no coincidence that in a recent meeting between U.S. Ambassador Douglas Sliman and Iraqi Vice President Nouri al-Maliki, the latter said that his government would not allow the “creation of a second Israel in northern Iraq”: the existence of an independent Kurdish state is clearly seen in these terms.

Furthermore, the U.S. intention to use its presence in Iraq above all as the basis of a confrontation with Iran, rather than fighting ISIS, is now apparent. For Washington it is a matter of interfering in Iranian military aid to Syria and Lebanon, not being completely left out of Syria’s post-war reorganisation scenario and if possible carry out destabilising actions in Iran, especially since the United States is still present beyond its eastern boundaries, in Afghanistan: at this point, retreat from Iraq would mean removing a jaw of the virtual pincer around Tehran.

In Syria

There is still little talk about it, but soon the question will arise of the city of Raqqa, former capital of the ISI “caliphate” now occupied by the Kurds, supported by the United States in the role of Syrian Democratic Forces (FDS) whose ranks include about two thousand European and North American mercenaries from the Blackwater private military company [now Academi (ed)].

To speak of the “conquest” of Raqqa is rather improper: after being systematically bombarded by U.S. planes, the city was not the scene of heroic fights against jihadists, who instead reached an agreement with the Kurds so that they could safely evacuate with weapons, luggage and families in attendance.

Despite statements from official sources in Washington about the lack of U.S. involvement in the agreement, the BBC has released a video of October 12 in which U.S. General Jim Glynn is seen negotiating the evacuation with ISIS representatives. Say no more.

Soon, unfortunately, we will know where the rescued jihadists have gone to do damage. The malignant think that we will see them again at work on behalf of the strategy of tension put into effect by the United States in some hot areas of the planet (perhaps in northern Africa), where Washington will claim – or is already claiming – to be leading an implacable fight against ISIS and its allies.

In the meantime, there is no doubt that the government of Damascus will not take Raqqa, unless as a result of events that are not yet foreseeable.

* Pier Francesco Zarcone, with a degree in canonical law, is a historian of the labour movement and a scholar of Islam, among others. He is a member of Utopia Red (Red Utopia), an international association working for the unity of revolutionary movements around the world in a new International: La Quinta (The Fifth). This article was originally published in Italian under the title Ulteriori Sviluppi nel Vicino Oriente in Utopia Rossa. Translated by Phil Harris.

By Jordan J. Ballor, PhD*

One of the famous formulas to come out of the Reformation era is that of semper reformanda, which means “always reforming.” This is a particularly appropriate topic for this observance of Reformation Day, now 500 years after Luther’s publication of the 95 Theses. A proper understanding of the imperative to be always reforming requires first, continually seeking integrity in doctrine and church life, and next, seeking fidelity in practice and public life.

The Reformation of Doctrine

The point of departure for the Protestant Reformation was originally a somewhat limited set of topics or doctrines, particularly those related to soteriology the doctrine of salvation. In this sense Luther’s focus on indulgences can be seen as representative. His goal was to reform the abuses of the theology and practice of the sale of indulgences. This led him early on to explore other, related doctrines, including justification and ecclesiology.

The relationship of these early generations of reform and the later generations comes in the more thorough, consistent, detailed, and comprehensive systems of theology developed in the era of Protestant orthodoxy. Contrasting the early and later eras, the eminent Reformation historian Richard A. Muller writes, “The selectivity of the Reformation in its polemic had to be transcended in the direction of a reformed catholicity.”

From the perspective of doctrine, then, we can see the Reformation as an effort initially to clarify and correct those theological teachings that had, from the perspective of the Protestant reformers, been corrupted or otherwise taught falsely. Often this was done polemically or in occasional fashion, as is the case with the pamphlet wars of the early 16th century. From this somewhat narrow starting point the need became clear to develop and articulate comprehensive systems of theology, both for apologetic as well as for institutional and intellectual reasons. This is the era of Protestant orthodoxy, lasting roughly from the third generation of reformers up into the 18th century.

The program of the reformers and the later Protestant orthodox was thus not a complete and total break with everything that had preceded. It was, instead, a selective and prudent pruning of doctrine: correcting, overturning, reinterpreting, and affirming wherever necessary. Where Calvin and Luther often set a polemical edge in disputes with Roman Catholic and Anabaptist theologians, it was often for their more systematic contemporaries and successors to more carefully articulate and develop statements not only for theological dispute but also for theological edification and education.

Doctrine, however, was never the end of the story and in many ways was only the beginning.

The Reformation of Practice

If, as Muller has put it, “right teaching was the goal of the Reformation from its moment of inception,” then similarly right practice was the goal of right teaching from the beginning. The doctrines that came under scrutiny were not random or haphazard. They were those that were understood to be most existentially pressing at the time, both individually as well as communally. Luther’s own personal struggles over the doctrines of grace, merit, and justification are well known. For the reformers, emphasis on salvation by grace alone through faith alone answered the needs of a lived experience engendered by their interaction with late medieval piety and teaching.

The reformers excoriated the so-called “doubt doctors” whose teachings were responsible, in their view, for instilling radical uncertainty among Christians as to their status before God. All of this uncertainty and doubt fed in to the indulgence trade and the place of the church hierarchy and its foremost representative, the pope, as a dispenser of comfort and assurance.

This helps us understand, for instance, why the theme of comfort is so pervasive throughout a document like the Heidelberg Catechism, whose famous opening question is, “What is my only comfort in life and in death?” The catechism gives the reassuring answer:

“That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.”

In this short answer we see the themes not only of the catechism itself, but also of the Reformation itself: right teaching that leads to right practice, that is, a life lived in grateful obedience to God. The Heidelberg Catechism was published in 1563, but this emphasis on discipleship throughout the whole life of the Christian goes back to the beginning of the Reformation. Indeed, the very first thesis of Luther’s 95 Theses states that: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said “Repent” [Poenitentiam agite], willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.” In this first statement of reformational intent, Luther thus articulates an emphasis on “the whole life of believers.”

Always Be Reforming

In this way the Reformation era was about reformation of doctrine and practice, not only in the life of the individual, but also in the social order, the “whole life of believers” in every way. This is the sense in which the reformational impulse to “always be reforming” results in a kind of continual furthering of such reformation. Indeed, the language of “further reformation” is related to the movement in the Netherlands known as the Dutch Second or Further Reformation (nadere reformatie), a continental counterpart to English Puritanism. These movements are characterized by efforts to continue and further develop and apply the Reformation and its teachings consistently and rigorously throughout all of individual and communal life. This means not only applying Christian wisdom and insight into social matters, but also using the Christian mind to explore all of God’s creation and all of God’s wonderful truths.

As we seek to prudently live in loving community, we ought to continue to always seek reform according to God’s will, in our individual lives as well as our communities. This conviction is one of the lasting legacies of the Reformation era. And it was an agenda pursued not only by Lutherans and Reformed, but also by Anabaptists, radicals, Roman Catholics, and others, as they sought to have both integrity in doctrine and belief as well as fidelity in practice.

This “always reforming” impulse is, perhaps counterintuitively, thus a kind of ecumenical endeavor, one that each Christian is called to pursue within his or her own context and in relationship with others. The Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck captured this imperative to further reformation well when he observed in the context of disputes about the role of the family in the social order, that “All good, enduring reformation begins with ourselves and takes its starting point in one’s own heart and life.” He goes on to note that “such a reformation immediately has this in its favor, that it would lose no time and would not need to wait for anything. Anyone seeking deliverance from the state must travel the lengthy route of forming a political party, having meetings, referendums, parliamentary debates, and civil legislation, and it is still unknown whether with all that activity he will achieve any success. But reforming from within can be undertaken by each person at every moment, and be advanced without impediment.”

That recognition is a key legacy of the Reformation era and one we would do well to continually recognize and apply in our times as well. There is never a time or place that is without corruption and evil, and thus there is always a need to seek reform and improvement.

This essay is adapted from remarks given at a conference hosted by the Center for Evangelical Catholicism in Greenville, South Carolina, “500 Years Later: Where Do We Go From Here?”

About the author:
*Jordan J. Ballor (Dr. theol., University of Zurich; Ph.D., Calvin Theological Seminary) is a senior research fellow and director of publishing at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty. He is also a postdoctoral researcher in theology and economics at the VU University Amsterdam as part of the “What Good Markets Are Good For” project.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

While the ongoing conflict in Rakhine State means Myanmar’s security concerns remain primarily land-based, it may have varying implications for Myanmar’s maritime security cooperation in the region.

By Rajni Gamage*

Traditional security concerns such as the defence of sovereignty and territorial integrity have driven Myanmar’s naval modernisation ambitions since the turn of the century. Such insecurities peaked in 2008 following a clash with the Bangladesh Navy over disputed maritime borders in the Bay of Bengal. While the amicable resolution of this dispute through arbitration by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea has made Myanmar’s anxieties less acute, this category of threats continues to dominate Myanmar’s strategic calculus on the seas.

In fact, there have been numerous land border clashes between Myanmar and Bangladesh subsequent to the resolution of the maritime border dispute. Such skirmishes have triggered a gradual build-up of forces along the boundary and involved limited forms of bilateral naval posturing. Bangladesh’s submarine acquisitions from China in late 2016 have further added vigour to Myanmar’s naval modernisation efforts. However, it is important to understand that since the overarching national security focus is insular, naval modernisation takes a back seat to the demands of the army.

Emerging Non-traditional Maritime Security Threats

Ongoing domestic instability has exacerbated two key non-traditional maritime security issues for Myanmar: boat refugees and arms smuggling.

Boat refugees

The events unfolding in Rakhine and the mass exodus of asylum seekers via land and sea is foremost a humanitarian issue, but with serious security implications as well. Asylum seekers from Bangladesh and Myanmar who sailed via the Bay of Bengal for refuge in Southeast Asian countries and were stranded in the Andaman Sea first grabbed international headlines in May and June 2015. Late last month at least 46 were killed when a vessel en route to Bangladesh capsized.

Arms smuggling

Myanmar and regional states are well aware of the nexus between vulnerable asylum seekers at sea and the trafficking of humans, arms and drugs. Arms smuggling is a serious problem for Myanmar, as the border area between Bangladesh and Myanmar is a sanctuary for arms smugglers, mainly due to its extensive coastline and weak maritime surveillance capabilities.

Smugglers ship various types of small arms from Thailand and other Southeast Asian states and transit through these waters to sell them to insurgents in India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. The ongoing Rakhine crisis has provided an opening for Islamist militant groups to rally support for their cause. Against a backdrop of a fast-growing ISIS presence in South and Southeast Asia, arms trafficking has become a greater threat to Myanmar’s national security.

Implications for Maritime Security Cooperation

Myanmar’s maritime security outreach has been mostly at the bilateral level, although it does participate in multilateral maritime security initiatives with ASEAN such as through the BIMSTEC, IONS and the MILAN naval exercises. This outreach was initially met with enthusiasm by regional and extra-regional powers, who see enormous economic and strategic significance in a ‘normalised’ Myanmar, given the growing geoeconomic importance of the Indo-Pacific.

For Myanmar, this engagement is more reflective of a desire to be recognised as a constructive player in regional security rather than a conscious policy of securing regional waters and associated Sealines of Communication (SLOCs).

India, which has a long maritime boundary with Myanmar, is among its major maritime security partners. The Bay of Bengal is a key geostrategic area, especially in response to China’s increasing inroads, and this is reflected in India’s recent ‘Act East’ policy. Among India’s topmost security concerns is Pakistani intelligence agencies recruiting fighters from the persecuted Rohingya population in Myanmar and Bangladeshi refugee camps and attacking Indian targets.

India’s attitude has been to engage Myanmar during the Rohingya crisis – in September 2017, Prime Minister Modi made his first bilateral visit to Myanmar, where 11 agreements were signed, including on maritime security cooperation.

China’s Interest in Myanmar

China too has high stakes in Myanmar’s strategic location, having invested significantly in Myanmar’s maritime infrastructure development. In May, it was reported that China’s CITIC Group proposed taking a stake worth up to 85% in the US$7.3 billion deep sea port in Kyaukpyu, in Rakhine state. In September, Foreign Minister Wang Yi emphasised China’s support for Myanmar’s efforts to protect its national security.

Given Myanmar’s strategic importance to these two rising Asian powers, it is expected that they will continue to engage Myanmar in the maritime security realm, regardless of the Rohingya crisis. This is likely to provide Myanmar some cushion against international backlash on the Rohingya issue, as well as ensure its continued inclusion in the slate of regional maritime security exercises.

Internal instability, however, could yet damage Myanmar’s maritime security prospects with key ASEAN partners. An Informal ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting (IAMM) was held in September, but no concrete action plan was set with regard to the ongoing situation or potential influx of asylum seekers. While ASEAN is coming under fire for its inaction on the Rohingya crisis, it is unlikely this will damage Myanmar’s participation in regional maritime security exercises.

In August, for instance, Myanmar participated for the first time in the Southeast Asia Cooperation and Training (Seacat) exercises co-hosted by Singapore and the United States. However, with ASEAN being criticised openly on its non-interventionist stance by some of its Muslim members (notably Malaysia), it seems likely that Myanmar’s maritime security relations with certain ASEAN states will be damaged.

The ongoing crisis has perhaps impacted prospects for maritime security cooperation with key Western states the most. The United Kingdom has suspended its fledgling officer training programme, and the US too dropped plans to expand training for Myanmar’s military in areas like maritime security and combating human trafficking.

For decision-makers in Myanmar, the perceived danger of international pressure over the Rohingya crisis leading to a seaborne military intervention by foreign powers is very real. Similar deep-seated worries over external aggression were all too evident following Cyclone Nargis, when the French government threatened to push for a UN Resolution and intervene militarily on humanitarian grounds following Yangon inhibiting the delivery of external aid to affected communities. All these concerns are likely to factor into Myanmar’s maritime strategic planning.

*Rajni Gamage is a Senior Analyst in the Maritime Security Programme at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS), S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. A longer version of this commentary was published in the Lowy Interpreter (click here).

Officers from Spain’s Provincial Intelligence Brigade in Valencia and the Local Brigade of the National Police in Sagunto, coordinated by the General Commissariat for Intelligence of the National Police, arrested an individual in Sagunto (Valencia) on Monday, November 6 for his alleged membership of the recruitment structure of DAESH (Islamic State).

Through his indoctrination activities, the detainee – a 47-year old male, of Moroccan nationality and illegally residing in Spain – acted as a sounding board for messages and instructions that the terrorist group DAESH sends out to its members to spread and achieve their goals. Furthermore, he was a powerful instigator in the creation of the ideal spawning ground to effectively forge the idea of committing terrorist attacks in the minds of new followers.

The police investigations showed that the detainee was the main element responsible for recruiting and sending a young Moroccan, 26 years old, to Iraq back in November 2014. This young recruit had lived with his family in Sagunto and committed a suicide attack that took the lives of 33 Iraqi soldiers and left dozens of others injured in a lorry explosion just a month and a half after his arrival, which indicates his profound conviction and allegiance to the terrorist cause.

During the time the two individuals were together in Sagunto, the young recruit habitually slept in the domicile of the individual arrested on Monday, whom the latter incessantly provided with content and propaganda in support of the goals of the terrorist group DAESH.

After spearheading comments exalting the person of the terrorist following his death, the individual arrested on Monday in Sagunto continued with his work to recruit and indoctrinate people in his immediate circle with whom he met under strict security measures. Furthermore, he acted as their reference on the Internet, teaching them not only how to access the most reserved pro-DAESH content, but also how to eliminate any tracks on the Internet that might lead to their detection by the law enforcement agencies.

The detainee displayed an anti-social personality, which can be deduced from his isolation and lack of social integration which led him to avoid all forms of contact with those people who did not profess his religion in the same terms as he did.

The operation, which remains ongoing, was developed under the supervision of Central Investigation Court Number 1 in coordination with the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the National High Court.

Since 26 June 2015, the date on which the Ministry of Home Affairs raised the Counter-Terrorism Alert Level to level 4 (Spanish acronym: NAA-4), law enforcement agencies have arrested a total of 206 Jihadi terrorists in operations carried out in Spain and abroad and a total of 251 since the start of 2015.

The Kashmiri insurgency is now nearly three decades old, having taken the lives of some 45,000 people, roughly half of them militants, 14,000 civilians and some 6,000 security personnel.

By Manoj Joshi

After a year of hammering the separatists in Jammu and Kashmir — killing more than 160 militants in targeted operations in 2017 alone and arresting at least 10 overground separatist leaders for their role in suspicious financial transactions — the Indian government is seeking to apply a balm. These are fairly standard tactics, but will they work?

The answer depends on many factors, primarily the character of the movement.

As of now, it is not clear what exactly Dineshwar Sharma’s role is in Jammu and Kashmir. Union minister Jitendra Singh pointedly said Sharma was not an interlocutor but merely “a special representative” of the government. Indeed, the 24 October notification appointing him described Sharma as a “representative of the government of India” whose task was to “carry forward the dialogue” with elected representatives, various organisations and individuals. The day before, Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke of Sharma as a “special representative” who would “have full freedom to engage in talks with anyone he likes.”

At one level, it doesn’t really matter. “Interlocutor” was a word of convenience that fitted in the diverse collection of individuals and groups who have sought to work outside formal government structures to suggest solutions for the Kashmir problem. The way the government works, it does not really have to listen to anything such interlocutors tell it. Their role is strictly recommendatory and facilitative.

For the record, there has been no dearth of interlocutors who were interested in promoting a political solution to the issues roiling Kashmir and who had access to the highest levels of government. Some were self-appointed well meaning folk, others informally asked to do the needful, yet others who were formally appointed and laid out their recommendations in formal reports. The Jammu and Kashmir legislature, too, added its bit by examining the issue of autonomy and sending its recommendations to Delhi in 2000, only to have them rejected peremptorily.

All had one thing in common — they were not the Government of India. At the end of the day, only the central government has the authority to take decisions on such matters. Yet, despite years and decades of reports, recommendations, cogitation, the government has not spelt out what it is willing to offer. True, there have been statements by prime ministers that the “sky is the limit” when it comes to autonomy, or that the issue needs to resolved within the ambit of insaniyat, or humanity. Most recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that Kashmir’s problems could not be resolved by bullets but “only by embracing its people.” But these are rhetorical statements that give no clues as to the Union Government’s bottom line.

Emphasise reconciliation

So what can we expect now? A great deal depends on what Modi wants. If the government has appointed Sharma to arrange the surrender of the separatist movement, nothing will happen. The Kashmiri insurgency is now nearly three decades old, having taken the lives of some 45,000 people, roughly half of them militants, 14,000 civilians and some 6,000 security personnel. The way the government sees it probably is that its policy of relentless police action and attrition has brought the militancy to its knees, and this is the best moment to step in with an offer of political dialogue. It is possible that the movement can be brought to a point of exhaustion by relentless police action. But it is like a fire where even embers can give life to a dying blaze if there is sufficient combustible material around.

So, parse that another way and one could argue that having been willing to shed so much blood, Kashmiris will not accept a settlement that offers them nothing more than status quo ante as of 1 January 1990.

In the government’s reckoning, it is really unemployed youth and the internet that is causing the problem and so if jobs can be assured and the internet kept in check, things will work out. Things are not that simple. Historically, Kashmiris buttressed by geography, have had a sense of their uniqueness. The circumstances of their accession and the commitment of a plebiscite made by India and endorsed by the United Nations remain. No country in the world recognises Jammu and Kashmir to be a part of India; all see it as disputed territory, including our big friend the United States.

Not many in India realise that the counter-insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir has been brutal. Extra-judicial killings, torture and intimidation have been its constant features. And this for the last 30 years. So, on one hand, you have a hardened population and, on the other, an embittered one. Therefore, the political effort that you initiate must be thought through. Empty gestures are not going to mean much. Neither will they achieve the end you have in mind — the normalisation of the situation.

What needs to be adopted is a perspective that emphasises reconciliation. That’s a carefully chosen word. A brutal struggle has gone on in Kashmir for the past 30 years. To wish it away or to pretend it did not happen is to live in an imaginary world. The more honourable and pragmatic path is to accept that things happened and are happening, and that there is a need to overcome them through the process of dialogue, negotiation and compromise. The alternative is repeated cycles of violence and alienation, with fits of political intervention that will not really get you anywhere.

This article originally appeared in Scroll.in.

The U.S. Coalition has sent a large number of armored vehicles to the Deir ez-Zor Governorate in order to aid the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in their ongoing operation, Sputnik Turkiye reported on Monday, November 6, according to Al-Masdar News.

“The US has supplied us with Hummer armored vehicles and heavy armament for the Deir ez-Zor operation, including missiles, infra-red guidance missiles, machine guns, mine throwers, Kalashnikov assault rifles and other ammunition,” the SDF source told Sputnik Turkiye on condition of anonymity.

The Kurdish-led forces were able to seize a large portion of territory along the eastern bank of the Euphrates River Monday, following a fierce battle with the Islamic State (ISIS).

“We are advancing, our forces need to operate in the areas of combat and we do need armored vehicles. We have lost many fighters who were killed in mortar shelling by Daesh terrorists because they did not have armor protection,” a SDF source explained to Sputnik.

In 2013, 87 percent of Americans believed that powerful established companies held sway over court rulings. Such beliefs are not unfounded, say Raffaele Conti and IESE’s Giovanni Valentini, in a paper that examines the effects of judicial independence on U.S. states’ business environments, published in Management Science.

When a new business tries to establish itself, it faces strong competition from incumbents in that state. And when the incumbents have connections to the judiciary system, barriers to entry are greatly increased.

Incumbents with influence over court proceedings may be less likely to comply with costly laws, such as pollution-reduction or product-safety measures, as they expect not to be sanctioned in court. Likewise, they feel more confident suing new entries, secure that the judge will rule in their favor. Ultimately, such environments dissuade new businesses from entering, limiting the founding of new companies and thus competition.

Such findings should send an important message to business leaders and policy makers. When considering where to locate a nascent business, entrepreneurs may wish to steer clear of states where incumbent firms exert more influence over the judiciary. On the other hand, large powerful firms could ostensibly strengthen their competitive position in those very same states. Policy makers should take note of how shifting to greater judicial independence in court systems may positively impact social welfare.

Keep Your Friends Close and Their Money Closer

“It’s pretty hard in big-money races not to take care of your friends,” admits Richard Neely, a retired chief justice of West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. In fact, established business groups account for nearly half of all donations to judicial campaigns. They also tend to be the largest contributors in state supreme court races. The second largest contributors are law firms, which are also traditionally tied to influential incumbent firms.

That money buys influence. As former Texas Supreme Court Justice Bob Gammage says, “People don’t go pour money into campaigns because they want fair and impartial treatment. They pump money into campaigns because they want things to go their way.”

This sentiment underscores what the authors set out to prove: that the manner of selecting judges — whether through partisan or non-partisan elections on the one hand, or appointment on the other — has a significant impact on upholding or limiting entry barriers for new businesses.

Ostensibly, laws and regulations apply to all businesses equally. However, whether or not an incumbent ends up winning a dispute with a former employee or incurring fines for breach of environmental regulation has more to do, in practice, with whether the state selects its judiciary through appointment or elections.

Elect or Appoint?

Collecting data form Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) for the period 1977-2011, the authors analyze many factors, including the litigiousness of particular states and industries, election versus appointment systems, and reform in the institutional environment shifting between one and another system.

Judges can be selected in a number of ways: through partisan elections with the support of a political party, by non-partisan elections, or by appointment by a bipartisan or independent commission. Judges need money to win elections, and parties back judges who they expect will protect their interests.

The study confirmed that when selection shifted from partisan to non-partisan elections, incumbents’ ability to connect with and influence judges was reduced, while appointed judges were the most independent of all.

“Judges who must win partisan elections to gain and remain on the bench are those most likely to be influenced by pressure from business interest groups which, in fact, are the largest contributors to judicial campaigns. Parties naturally select candidates prone to protect the interests of their financial supporters and exclude them from the next race if they have not done so once on the bench,” write Valentini and Conti.

As states moved away from partisan selection systems, the authors observed a reduction in barriers to entry for entrepreneurs, which resulted in a 14 percent increase in firm entry following the changes.

Independent judges are a clear plus for new business startups, but Conti and Valentini argue that they are a positive influence all around: money not spent influencing elections can be funneled into innovation by incumbent firms, while the economy as a whole is likely to become more competitive with fairer judicial representation.

Methodology, Very Briefly

The authors assess longitudinal variations in firms’ ability to establish influential connections with judges and measure this against judicial selection systems in different states, with particular attention paid to those states whose judicial selection systems have changed over time. To measure new business entry, they analyze data from the Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) for the period 1977-2011, providing data on annual employment for almost every private-sector U.S. establishment with a payroll.

As Saudi Arabia reels from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s frontal assault on the kingdom’s elite, indications are that the Saudi-Iranian proxy war is heating up. The arrests occurred as Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned in what many saw as a Saudi-engineered move aimed at stymying Lebanon’s powerful, pro-Iranian Hezbollah militias and Saudi defences intercepted a ballistic missile attack by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

While the wave of dismissals and arrests of members of the ruling family, senior officials and prominent businessmen clouds prospects for Prince Mohammed’s economic reform plans, prospects of an escalation of Saudi-Iranian tensions bode ill for the rest of the region.

A Saudi-backed military alliance that includes the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt and Sudan appeared to open the door to a more direct confrontation between Saudi Arabia by denouncing the missile strike as “a blatant and direct military aggression by the Iranian regime, which may amount to an act of war against Saudi Arabia.”

“Saudi Arabia also has a right to respond to Iran at the appropriate time and manner, supported by international law and in accordance with its inherent right to defend its territory, its people and its interests protected by all international conventions,” the alliance said in a statement.

Aware that a military confrontation with Iran could prove disastrous, Saudi Arabia signalled that it was more likely to strike at Iranian proxies. In response to the missile attack, it imposed a temporary air, land and sea embargo on Yemen, a country that is struggling with a humanitarian catastrophe as a result of the kingdom-led 2.5 year old military intervention.

Some 10,000 people have been killed in the war that, according to the United Nations, has left half a million Yemenis infected with cholera and some seven million on the brink of famine in the Arab world’s poorest nation.

Yemen, however, is not the only place that is likely to see escalation because of the increasing Saudi-Iranian tensions.

Lebanon, a collection of religious and ethnic minorities that has yet to cement an overriding national identity but has miraculously maintained stability despite the Syrian civil war on its doorstep and a massive influx of refugees, is teetering following Mr. Hariri’s resignation.

While there is only circumstantial evidence for Saudi Arabia’s role in persuading Mr. Hariri, who said he feared for his life amid rumours of a foiled assassination attempt, to resign, he was unequivocal in towing the Saudi line in the announcement of his stepping down.

Iran, Mr. Hariri said, “has a desire to destroy the Arab world and has boasted of its control of the decisions in all the Arab capitals. Hezbollah imposed a reality in Lebanon through force of arms, and their intervention causes us big problems with all our Arab allies.”

The impression of Saudi influence was fuelled by the fact that Mr. Hariri made his announcement not on his Future TV network but in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on the kingdom’s Al Arabiya station, whose owner, Waleed bin Ibrahim al-Ibrahim, was ironically among the businessmen detained on Prince Mohammed’s instructions.

Beyond holding dual Lebanese-Saudi citizenship, Mr. Hariri long headed Saudi Oger, the conglomerate owned by his family, that went bankrupt earlier this year, becoming one of the first victims of the economic downturn in the kingdom as a result of decreased oil revenues.

While there is little doubt that Saudi Arabia is seeking to weaken Hezbollah’s strong position in Lebanon, it was also not clear whether that was sole reason for Saudi enthusiasm about Mr. Hariri’s resignation. The former prime minister was widely seen as Lebanon’s most accommodating Sunni Muslim politician, willing to acknowledge that Hezbollah, widely believed to be responsible for the 2005 killing of his father, Rafik Hariri, was a part of the country’s political infrastructure.

By throwing a monkey wrench into Lebanese politics, Mr. Hariri has opened the door to Saudi attempts to generate pressure on Hezbollah to choose between being a political party that is subject to government decisions like that not to interfere in the Syrian war or an Iranian proxy that engages in regional conflicts. The problem is that in the face of a weak Lebanese state and military, past attempts to cut Hezbollah’s fangs have failed.

While Hezbollah has made clear that it did not want Mr. Hariri to resign nor did it want to see an escalation of tensions in Lebanon and is seeking a peaceful resolution of the crisis, it may not have control of events. The crisis could lead to the demise of President Michel Aoun, a close ally of Hezbollah, and even worse be part of a Saudi effort to provoke a Hezbollah-Israel war.

An international group of former generals, the High Level Military Group, warned earlier this month that a bloody war was inevitable, even if not necessarily imminent.

“Hezbollah doesn’t want a conflict to break out at present, given it is still seeking to consolidate its gains in Syria and continue preparations in Lebanon. However, its actions and propaganda suggest that it considers its ability to fight a war with Israel as a given. The timing of such a conflict is likely to be determined by miscalculation as much as decision-making in Iran and Lebanon,” the group said in a 76-page report.

Yemen and Lebanon may be the most immediate theatres of Saudi-Iranian confrontation based on recent events, but they are certainly not the only ones. The two regional powers are on opposite sides of the fence in the Syrian conflict, vying for influence in Iraq, and looming in the background is the Pakistani province of Balochistan that Saudi Arabia sees as a potential launching pad should it want to stir ethnic unrest in Iran.

Fuelling tensions, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu described Mr. Hariri’s resignation as a clarion call for confrontation with Iran. Mr. Netanyahu said the resignation was “a wake-up call to the international community to take action against Iranian aggression” and warned that “the international community needs to unite and confront this aggression.”

None of this bodes well for the Middle East. Not only does it risk escalation in those countries in which Saudi Arabia and Iran are battling it out through proxies, it also risks fuelling sectarianism in a part of the world in which minorities are on the defensive, relations between Sunni and Shiite Muslims are frayed, and the cost of conflict and war is taking its toll on civilian populations.

The recurring shootings and violent attacks in USA resulting in loss of innocent lives and injuries to many is a cause for huge concern. With all its mighty economic and military strength and huge network of intelligence agencies, US government seems to be clueless and appears to be facing a helpless situation in preventing such shootings.

There seem to be some pattern in such shootings ,as an individual chooses his time of attack totally unchecked and unnoticed and cause havoc. Of course, the police either catch him or shoot him down but this has not been enough to act as a deterrent against anyone indulging in such motivated violent acts.

There is increasing suspicion not only among the people in US,but all over the world that some extremist terrorist groups are organizing such attacks, choosing own time and place. The US government has not really come out so far with any credible investigation report as to which are the forces behind such attacks. President Trump routinely expresses his shock and condemnation and express his sympathy for the victims but nothing seems to be happening beyond this.

Obviously, such terrorist attacks are becoming a new form of warfare in different parts of the world, particularly in USA, India and several European countries.

It appears that Europe is now more vulnerable to such terrorist attacks , as Germany has thoughtlessly opened the door of Europe for thousands of refugees to enter Europe, with the German government considering their entry as a humanitarian issue.

Canada is also adopting similar policy of entertaining the refugees without adequate verification of their background and it remains to be seen as to what would be the impact of such policy in the social and security scenario in Canada in the coming years.

While US has not followed such policy of entertaining the refugees with open arms, still it has become vulnerable to such acts of terror. President Trump’s move to restrict the entry of persons from some selected countries to US has been vehemently criticized by a section of the US media and of course the pledged critics of Trump. Under their pressure, Trump also appears to have diluted his policy in this regard to some extent.

What is the way out from such internal security crisis situation now faced by US? What are the options left for President Trump, particularly since he would be personally held responsible if such attacks and killings would continue in US?

One obvious need is to severely tighten the gun laws which protect the right of US citizens to keep and bear arms. Today, almost every US citizen possesses a gun to meet the self protection need. This really means that everyone in US is scared that he may be shot down by anyone at any time and must have a gun to retaliate and protect himself.

The recent recurring incidents of shootings and killings in public places further create fear in the mind of the US citizens and perhaps, the gun culture in US will get further reinforced in such situation. This would be a very undesirable trend.

The first reaction of US President to the recurring shootings should be to start imposing severe curbs on the possession of guns by individuals. Of course, the gun lobby will not support this and US President should have the courage of conviction to defy the campaign of the gun lobby.

It is widely rumored that gun lobby in US regularly pays money to many US politicians including several senators in a way, that politicians will never act against the interest of the gun lobby. If this were to be true, then it is high time that this must be ruthlessly exposed by social groups in USA.

As innocent lives are being lost in violent shootings, President Trump cannot prevent the recurrence of shootings without imposing severe curb on the possession of guns by individuals. Unfortunately, Trump appears to be giving an impression that he is in favour of the present gun policy, which is a great cause for concern for those asking for safety and protection of individual citizens in private and public places.

What is very astonishing is that even while shootings take place at such frequent interval, the gun lobby in USA is sitting pretty.

While the terrorists and extremists are suspected to be indulging in shootings in big way, how to distinguish them and isolate them when everyone is having a gun whether he is a terrorist or not?

The threat of terrorism, which shook the world during 1970s and 1980s, gained significant global attention only after 9/11. In response to September 11 attack, extensive combat operations were carried by nations in an effort to counter the threat of terrorism. However, many nations took “careful” measures to reinforce their domestic and external security strategy, while further strengthening their intelligence gathering network, however, the emerging threat of lone wolf attacks continues to pose a “serious” challenge to security and intelligence agencies yet failed to attract “necessary” attention from the global nations.

Although, in accordance to the US State Department definition of terrorism (premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents), the lone wolf attack, according to the definition of State Department is not an act of terrorism per se since, it does not involve multi-national groups or violent non-state actors.

Nonetheless, the lone wolf attacks are carried out under same “inspiration and motivation” as that of traditional terrorists that share direct association with militant organizations. Additionally, it cannot be argued that the threat posed by lone wolf attacks are “extensive”. Many security and intelligence agencies face difficulty in identifying perpetrators before their strike, a pre-emptive response which is extremely difficult in the light of absent “credible” and “reliable” human intelligence.

The recent lone wolf attack, carried by an Uzbek national Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov in New York, is a perfect example of attack carried by a “below the radar” individual. During post-assessment of such terror incidents, the principle responsibility for intelligence and security agencies is to identify and apprehend the perpetrator, especially because of large number of casualties caused by the attack. The article will thoroughly assess “multiple” investigative mechanism while explaining significant behavioral properties of lone wolves which differentiates them (makes them more dangerous) than traditional predictable, militants. While adequately addressing the issue, the paper further discusses certain “motivational and inspirational” factors that instigate them in carrying out acts of terror, despite knowing the consequences of their attack.

While assessing lone wolf terror attacks, policy makers first understand the term “lone wolf”. Lone wolf terrorism can be defined as “a terror attack carried out by individual(s) who

1. carry out the attacks “individually”;
2. have no direct affiliation with terror factions, and;
3. whose operational mechanism remains independent without the influence from any external terror mechanism or commands from leadership.

The aforementioned “definition” differentiates between a lone wolf actor and “organized” groups. However, experts continue to argue on the “necessary elements” that constitutes a terror attack. Certain agreed properties that constitute in a terror attack are:

(a) acts of violence,
(b) instigation of fear,
(c) certain motivation factors that may involve (but not limited to) domestic politics, ethno-religious centric or ideological.

These preliminary guidelines could be helpful in assisting policy makers in establishing a “universal” guidelines differentiating violence with acts of terror.

Policy makers must note that, there are much “deliberated” theories already in place which explains “detailed” tutorials on “how to become a terrorist”, of which many have become “favorites” for terror recruiters. However, in theory, the process of recruitment of terrorist comprises of four important steps. However, in the light of massive recruitment in the Middle East and North Africa, the “successful” nature of this recruitment remains a question, especially when only a small percentage of young recruits become terrorists.

Similar to theories related to terror recruitment, there is no “clearly defined” methodology. However, in the light of significant “volunteers”, it can be said that, masses have a choice to “opt” for terrorism. So, what differentiates the young “self-indoctrinated” recruits in taking the course of terrorism than the traditional “organized” members of terror factions? For most of young recruits, research points towards “injustice” as the pushing factor. However, there is no “specific” reason behind the inclination of an individual to terrorism, there are rather numerous “supporting” factors that could force an individual in opting the path for terrorism, or feel a “connection” or “sympathy” for the terrorists. These factors may include their “strong” deterrence towards an issue or a majority group posing a grave threat to their existence and right to life.

Behaviour Analogy And Psychological Prognosis

Extensive psychological prognosis conducted by militaries all over the world rules out the “psychology” as the principle factor for an individual to become terrorists. Since, psychology of lone wolf attackers vary differently, it cannot be completely ruled out from the study.

Although, psychology does play an extensive role for lone wolf attackers, but it remains variant in militant groups preferably at very low or medium levels. While carefully analyzing the behavior of lone wolf attackers along and linking their “behavioral” analogy with terror attack they carried out, “a specific pattern” of psychology appears. Most of the cases have preliminary connections with “obsession and personality disorders”, whereas almost all the attackers have severed from acute “depression” sometime in their lives.

Experts, however, argue that, these “psychological” connections are inconclusive, rather they are more stable than ordinary human beings. This argument seems “rhetoric”, especially when most of the lone wolf attackers perceived themselves as “God’s chosen worriers” and literally “heard the voice of god echoing” in their ears. However, these are “pre-recorded” statements and after initial psychiatric enquiry, it can be argued that, phycology per-se does not carry enough weight of a principle factor but is plays a significant role. Although in the light of certain challenges that arise while understanding “behavioural prognosis” of certain “self-indoctrinated” individuals, security and law enforcement agencies must include the factor of “psychology” while investigating lone wolf attacks.

Indiscriminate Nature Of Attack

After extensive evaluation from post-lone wolf attacks, it can be safe to say that the attacks bear no marks of “personal” offense against a community or a person. The victims of these attacks are not deliberately targeted for their occupation, racial, creed or ethnicity or their occupation. Most wounds are inflicted on civilian population. Moreover, past incidents, experiences may act as an “instigating” principle here. The primary notion for becoming a lone wolf attacker may have certain “connections” with issues (domestic, national, international or personal), with “significant” importance.

Moreover, within the context of group based terrorism, individuals are aligned with similar thoughts and same mindset, which in case of a single individual remains absent. In the context of group based terrorism, the “concept” involves mistreatment or a threat posed to the group which is a significant important factor, opening the doors of terrorism for the group members. After extensively studying previous lone wolf attacks, most of the attackers felt a “moral responsibility” to stand after a certain incident which forced them to react, which seemed largely absent in a group.

Active Factors In Group Based Terrorism

The two most important factors that contribute to the formation of group based terrorism are: commitments and common goals.

Although, in the light of inadequate research conducted on lone wolf terrorism and absence of policies on lone wolf terror, there are no instruments to extensively evaluate their roles. Although, it is absolutely clear that, lone wolf attackers do not follow a traditional “terrorist” approach, which highlights the fact that, these attackers are ready to sacrifice their lives for a greater cause. In the context of traditional theory, the lone wolf attackers are follow a “free fall concept”, which deviates from the traditional theory of “let everyone else sacrifice and only share the fruits of their efforts”, rather sacrificing yourself.

This theory does not persist in group based terrorism. There are no rewards for participation nor are consequences of their choice, but every member of the group witnesses the same process. On the contrary, for lone wolves, these theory does not exist. This is precisely the point where “commitment and dedication”. The concept of sympathy and empathy does not exist and their only dedication and commitment lies towards achieving their goals. However, there have been instances when lone wolf attackers had cooperated with similarly aligned groups in inducing violence against the “non-believers”, this extreme behaviour may have also tripped them into committing terror attacks. Hence, it can be “confidently” stated that lone wolf attackers are committed towards their cause a sense of responsibility that exists in them higher than any ordinary individual. However, this fact cannot sufficiently explain their instigation to commit acts of terror.

Moreover, common agendas and objectives further strengthen the bond between members of a group. When an individual aligns with the group, his understanding towards the group becomes a “common” nation, moreover, every member of the group feels equally dedicated and committed to the group. They remain safe, and share the fruits of efforts, but take extensive measures to reinforce trust in the group. Although, there are negative behavioral properties too, especially when individual feels “insecurity” towards another and feels “happiness” to see others into trouble.

Moreover, in the case of conflicting views and opinions, their commitment become focuses larger to themselves and their group. An individual express care and concern for others and when they are threatened, this could instigate internal rifts or war. This is the epi-centre for domestic conflict, the sheer tendency of human behavior.

Hence, when an individual aligns himself to the group, and then feel that the group is being threatened by external elements, this instigates a scenario of conflict. Moreover, the concept of group terror attacks has its links with lone wolf attackers. The lone wolf attackers remain committed and dedicated to a group than an ordinary member. Its objective, agendas, instigates them to take necessary action. Hence, rather than creating an “operational” plan they take matters into their own hands. This could result from a sense of “dedication and commitment” they have to their members, the thought that their members are continuously threatened, forces them to react. Although, there are other theories that points towards the fact that, lone wolves do interact with groups, but they prefer to be alone.

Breeding in isolation

The lone wolf attackers thrive in complete “isolation”. After assessing most of the lone wolf attacks, the lone wolf attackers had few friends and remained alone. Most of them suffered from “extreme unsocial” personality disorder. This could possibly be the reason as to why individuals become lone wolves and they remain until they are neutralized.

Conclusion

The article extensively assessed factors that instigate individuals to become lone wolf attackers and spread violence and fear among the masses. The aforementioned argument extensively discussed the factors that could assist an individual during its transition of “choosing” to become a lone wolf attacker. Psychology could play an important factor; however, this argument needs extensive assessment and evaluation. Furthermore, the extensive impact of psychology on lone wolf attackers needs extensive deliberation and analysis. However, two possible factors could be dedication and commitment towards the cause followed common group objectives. From the aforementioned statement it is quite clear that lone wolf’s behavioral prognosis involves extreme “sympathetic and empathetic” tendencies.

This explains their dedication and commitment to the cause, along with a sense of belongings in the group, more than ordinary citizens. The aforementioned factors highlights an “unnatural” behavioral prognosis which forces them to commit acts of terror. However, it fails to shed the light on their “tendency to act alone”. Of all the lone wolf attacks, the perpetrators where remained “un-social”. They lived in complete isolation, and made decisions alone.

The Way Forward

The conceptual analysis of lone wolf attack is carried out to understand the “behavioral prognosis” of lone wolf attack. Experts and policy makers should use this analysis to draft a strategic military and tactical strategy to effectively counter the lone wolf attackers. However, the issue of rising lone wolf terrorism needs to be addressed with a multifaceted resolution in an effort to adequately address the issue. Although, many militaries are analyzing the threat perception posed by lone wolf attackers in an effort to create a counter strategy, policy makers must ensure that the assessment and evaluation of the procedure remains productive. The role of intelligence is of prime importance harem hence law enforcement agencies can delegate the task of formulating a strategy to specific intelligence agencies. Policy makers must note that, there is no absolute mechanism to evaluate and assess hundred percent achievement of the policy. The best-case scenario could be to extensively engage academia with law enforcement and policy makers actively.

*Anant Mishra is a former Youth Representative to the United Nations. He had previously served with the United Nations Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly as well as the Economic and Social Council. His previous assignments were in Rwanda and Congo. He also serves as a visiting faculty for numerous universities and delivers lectures on conflict and foreign relations.

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace as well as spiritual home of Islam, has been in news in recent years as it makes strenuous efforts to enhance its global profile as a leader of (Sunni) Islamic world. It managed the Arab Spring so well that though the phenomenon had struck entire Arab world, starting from Tunisia, just passed by that nation without making any real impact on the Saudi life and politics. However, the Saudi government and the king himself were in anxiety and despair until the “spring” died down.

Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is now seen taking bold steps to cleanse the system off corruption. That Saudi Arabians and royal families are corrupt has shocked the world that thought Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of holy Prophet of Islam, as free from bribery and corruption.

All of a sudden Saudi government decided to check growth of corruption in the Islamic nation, found even many of the royal families within the government corrupt, arrested and put them in jail. According to initial report, at least 11 princes, four current ministers and several former ministers had been detained in the anti-corruption probe.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has dismissed a number of senior ministers and detained nearly a dozen princes in an investigation by a new anti-corruption committee on Saturday. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a billionaire businessman who owns investment firm Kingdom Holding, was among those held. The senior ministers who were sacked include Prince Mitaab bin Abdullah, the head of the National Guard.

Those involved in the historic corruption scandal of Saudi kingdom include: Alwaleed bin Talal, owner of Kingdom Holding group; Prince Mitaab bin Abdullah, minister of the National Guard; Prince Turki bin Abdullah, former governor of Riyadh ; Prince Turki bin Nasser, former head of meteorology, environment; Waleed al-Ibrahim, chairman of MBC media group; Khaled al-Tuwaijri, former president of the Royal Court; Adel Faqih, minister of economy and planning; Amr al-Dabbagh, former president of the General Investment Authority; Saleh Abdullah Kamel, chairman of Dallah al Baraka Group; Saud al-Tobaishi, head of Royal ceremonies and protocols; Ibrahim al-Assaf, state minister and executive of Saudi Aramco; Bakr Binladin, owner of construction company Saudi Binladin Group; Saud al-Dawish, former CEO of Saudi Telecom Company; Khaled al-Mulhem, former director general of Saudi Arabian Airlines.

In a statement King Salman alluded to the “exploitation by some of the weak souls” who have put their own interests above the public interest, in order to, illicitly, accrue money” for the creation of the anti-graft committee.

The detentions follow a crackdown in September on political opponents of Saudi Arabia’s rulers that saw some 30 clerics, intellectuals and activists detained. Prince Alwaleed, a flamboyant character, has sometimes used his prominence as an investor to aim barbs at the kingdom’s rulers. In December 2015, he called then-US presidential candidate Donald Trump a “disgrace to all America” and demanded on Twitter that he withdraw from the election.

The arrested officials are believed to be being housed in the five-star Ritz Carlton Hotel, which two weeks ago held a high-profile investment summit under the auspices of Prince Mohammed. The convention centre next door was used to receive Donald Trump in May, when the US president travelled to Saudi Arabia to reset relations with his country’s long-term ally, which had deteriorated under the Obama administration that had pivoted to Iran.

Saudis really are on the brink of dramatic changes. In 2015, Mohammed bin Salman became minster of defence. Just a few months ago, he became the head of all the internal security forces because they got rid of the Mohammed bin Nayef, then crown prince. Now he’s taken control of the third most important security apparatus within the country, so he has defence, he is in control of interior and now he is in control of the guards.

Clearly he has the stage set. Clearly all the heads of all the major media networks, newspapers, and commentators were all already groomed, set in motion in order to defend the crown prince and his policies. There are already new songs for the crown prince and his glory, so internally they are definitely setting the stage in terms of the three security apparatuses, the media and so on.

President Trump has given his blessings and support to the crown prince with the hundreds of billions of dollars of promised contracts, so he’s certainly supporting his various ambitions in the region, most importantly that of the confrontation with Iran in the region. This is something that Trump really wants as well as apparently a promised rapprochement with Israel.

Rise of Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is geographically the fifth-largest state in Asia and second-largest state in the Arab world after Algeria. Saudi Arabia is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast and Yemen to the south. It is separated from Israel and Egypt by the Gulf of Aqaba. It is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian Gulf coast and most of its terrain consists of arid desert and mountains.

Saudi Arabia is called in the West as a monarchical autocracy. Saudi Arabia is considered a regional and middle power. Saudi Arabia was the world’s second largest arms importer in 2010–2014. By 1976, Saudi Arabia had become the largest oil producer in the world. King Khalid’s reign saw economic and social development progress at an extremely rapid rate, transforming the infrastructure and educational system of the country; in foreign policy, close ties with the USA were developed.

Saudi Arabia’s command economy is petroleum-based; roughly 75% of budget revenues and 90% of export earnings come from the oil industry. Saudi Arabia officially has about 260 billion barrels (4.1×1010 m3) of oil reserves, comprising about one-fifth of the world’s proven total petroleum reserves It is strongly dependent on foreign workers with about 80% of those employed in the private sector being non-Saudi.

Discovery of oil greatly enhanced the economic and financial prowess of Saudi kingdom. Petroleum was discovered on 3 March 1938 and followed up by several other finds in the Eastern Province. Saudi Arabia has since become the world’s largest oil producer and exporter, controlling the world’s second largest oil reserves and the sixth largest gas reserves. The kingdom is categorized as a World Bank high-income economy with a high Human Development Index and is the only Arab country to be part of the G-20 major economies. However, the economy of Saudi Arabia is the least diversified in the Gulf Cooperation Council, lacking any significant service or production sector, apart from the extraction of resources.

Saudi Arabia is heavily dependent on oil for income and has been suffering since oil prices crashed from more than $100 a barrel in 2014. The kingdom has been desperately trying to diversify its economy away from the commodity, but is still focused on trying to raise oil values and restore its main income source. Saudi Arabia’s risky plot to raise oil prices to save its economy has failed sending the country into crisis. The kingdom tried to manipulate prices by slashing output to increase demand, but the plan backfired as US shale producers continued to pump more oil. Prices have fallen as low as $43 a barrel and remained well below $50 since the end of May when OPEC announced its plans to tackle oversupply. OPEC members Libya and Nigeria were previously exempt from the cap announced in May, but desperate OPEC and Saudi could now pressure the two countries to comply in the hope of denting supply. Russia has already called on OPEC to cap output from Nigeria and Libya in the near future and it will be interesting to see if any new agreements are proposed for both nations to join the oil production cut agreement.

Among the challenges to Saudi economy include halting or reversing the decline in per capita income, improving education to prepare youth for the workforce and providing them with employment, diversifying the economy, stimulating the private sector and housing construction, diminishing corruption and inequality.

In addition to petroleum and gas, Saudi also has a small gold mining sector in the Mahd adh Dhahab region and other mineral industries, an agricultural sector, especially in the southwest, based on dates and livestock, and large number of temporary jobs created by the roughly two million annual Hajj pilgrims. Virtually all Saudi citizens are Muslim (officially, all are), and almost all Saudi residents are Muslim. Estimates of the Sunni population of Saudi Arabia range between 75% and 90%, with the remaining 10–25% being Shia Muslim. The official and dominant form of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia is commonly known as Wahhabism.

According to estimates there are about 1,500,000 Christians in Saudi Arabia, almost all foreign workers. Saudi Arabia allows Christians to enter the country as foreign workers for temporary work. Americans enjoy special status in Saudi as they are not punished there for their crimes and there could be some CIA agents too among them who promote corruption and create challenges for Islam as part of their mission. In 1980, Saudi Arabia bought out the American interests in Aramco.

In 1979, two events occurred which greatly concerned the government, and had a long-term influence on Saudi foreign and domestic policy. The first was the Iranian Islamic Revolution. It was feared that the country’s Shi’ite minority in the Eastern Province which is also the location of the oil fields might rebel under the influence of their Iranian co-religionists. There were several anti-government uprisings in the region such as the 1979 Qatif Uprising. The second event was the Grand Mosque Seizure in Mecca by Islamist extremists. The militants involved were in part angered by what they considered to be the corruption and un-Islamic nature of the Saudi government. The government regained control of the mosque after 10 days and those captured were executed. Part of the response of the royal family was to enforce a much stricter observance of traditional religious and social norms in the country (for example, the closure of cinemas) and to give the Ulema a greater role in government. Neither entirely succeeded as Islamism continued to grow in strength.

This partly explains why Saudi kingdom is touchy of Sunni branch of Islam opposes Iran.

King Khalid died of a heart attack in June 1982. He was succeeded by his brother, King Fahd, who added the title “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques” to his name in 1986 in response to considerable fundamentalist pressure to avoid use of “majesty” in association with anything except God. Fahd continued to develop close relations with the USA and increased the purchase of American and British military equipment. Saudi used a good part of its income from oil sales on terror goods from USA, UK and other western countries.

In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia spent $25 billion in support of Saddam Hussein in the Iran–Iraq War. However, Saudi Arabia condemned the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and asked the US to intervene. King Fahd allowed American and coalition troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia.

As the USA began pushing its own religious and capitalist agenda in the nation of Islam, many Saudis opposed Washington and Saudi Arabia’s relations with the West began to cause growing concern among some of the ulema and students of sharia law and was one of the issues that led to an increase in Islamist terrorism in Saudi Arabia, as well as Islamist terrorist attacks in Western countries

The vast wealth generated by oil revenues was beginning to have an even greater impact on Saudi society. It led to rapid technological modernisation, urbanization, mass public education and the creation of new media. This and the presence of increasingly large numbers of foreign workers greatly affected traditional Saudi norms and values. Although there was dramatic change in the social and economic life of the country, political power continued to be monopolized by the royal family leading to discontent among many Saudis who began to look for wider participation in government

Hidden economy and rampant corruption

Oil made many poor Arabs rich and billionaires in a few years. Now Arab government seriously consider multi-pronged approach to diversify its economy from oil into other fields of economy, including industries, agriculture, services, military equipment production, modernization, etc.

Arabs make huge sums and wealth, both legitimate and illegal. The line between public funds and royal money is not always clear in Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy ruled by an Islamic system in which most law is not systematically codified and no elected parliament exists. WikiLeaks cables have detailed the huge monthly stipends that every Saudi royal receives as well as various money-making schemes some have used to finance lavish lifestyles.

Most of rich Arabs keep their wealth in USA and UK. Trump responded in typically combative terms accusing the prince of wanting to control “our politicians with daddy’s money”. Trump tweeted: “Dopey Prince Alwaleed_ Talal wants to control our US politicians with daddy’s money. Can’t do it when I get elected.” His father, Prince Talal, is considered one of the most vocal supporters of reform in the ruling Al Saud family, having pressed for a constitutional monarchy decades ago.

Al-Waleed had in fact recently promised to donate all his wealth to charity – although he had years earlier purchased a yacht from Trump, and according to Forbes’s profiles, shares the president’s predilection for mocked-up Time magazine covers apparently featuring his exploits.

The highest profile arrest in Saudi Arabia’s anti-corruption purge is Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a multibillionaire with huge investments in western firms. Prince Al-Waleed, 62 and one of the world’s richest men, has become one of the most familiar – and progressive – faces of Saudi in western media. While he has the lifestyle, jets, yacht and palace of a stereotypical Saudi billionaire, he has burnished a different image with interventions such as backing rights for Saudi women and denouncing President Trump on Twitter.

The prince, a grandson of Saudi’s first ruler and son of a Saudi finance minister, has an estimated net worth of $17bn (£13bn), according to Forbes magazine – although he has sued them for underestimating his wealth. He came to prominence internationally as a major backer of Citigroup in the 1990s, and more so when continuing to back the firm as its value evaporated during the financial crisis. His investments extended into major media groups, with substantial stakes in Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, Apple, Time Warner, Twitter, and owning Rotana, whose TV channels broadcast widely across the Arab-speaking world. He has reduced his share in NewsCorp, but his clout was such that an intervention in 2011 in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal was seen as the coup de grace for News International’s Rebekah Brooks, telling the Murdochs from his super yacht in Cannes that “she has to go”.

The investment group he set up in 1980, rebranded as the Kingdom Holding Company in 1996, also owns several global luxury hotel chains, as well as landmark properties such as London’s Savoy Hotel and the George V in Paris. More recently it has backed Uber’s rival ride-hailing firm Lyft. On Twitter in 2015 he called Donald Trump a “disgrace to America” after the Republican candidate floated the idea of a ban on Muslims, and he urged Trump to quit the campaign.

Prince Al-Waleed was an early advocate of women’s employment in Saudi Arabia – hiring a female pilot for his jets, at a time when there was no prospect of women driving on the ground, and speaking out against the driving ban before the regime agreed this year to lift it. His wife, Ameera, who he divorced in 2013, usually appeared unveiled.
Al-Waleed’s international profile was extraordinary – frequently seen with top politicians, Wall Street executives and British royals. But he was an unofficial public face of the Saudi kingdom rather than a key part of the ruling elite – a status underlined by his arrest in King Salman’s crackdown.

His vision has not always matched reality: in a 2013 court case in London, a judge said that Prince Al-Waleed’s evidence in the witness box was “confusing and too unreliable” as he was forced to pay out in a business dispute. And while the prince already owns a Boeing 747 for his personal use, complete with throne, his ambition to have the world’s biggest superjumbo, the A380, refitted with a concert hall, Turkish baths, luxury suites and a parking bay for his Rolls Royce, remains unfulfilled. Despite placing an order with manufacturer Airbus in 2007 at the Dubai airshow, the plane remains on the tarmac in Toulouse to this day.

Hidden economies promote corruption more than the open ones. Transparency deficit automatically causes corruption on a large scale as it had happened in Russia and now happening in China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan etc are ordinary third world countries without any definition of good governance and so corruption is the order of the system in these countries.

The regime and system promote and encourage corruption as a state policy.

Anti-corruption probe and purge for accelerated change

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has tightened his grip on power through an anti-corruption purge by arresting royals, ministers and investors including billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal who is one of the kingdom’s most prominent businessmen. Prince Alwaleed, a nephew of the king and owner of investment firm Kingdom Holding, invests in firms such as Citigroup and Twitter. He was among 11 princes, four ministers and tens of former ministers detained.

The purge against the kingdom’s political and business elite also targeted the head of the National Guard Prince Miteb bin Abdullah who was detained and replaced as minister of the powerful National Guard by Prince Khaled bin Ayyaf. News of the purge came after King Salman decreed the creation of an anti-corruption committee chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, his 32-year-old favourite son who has amassed power since rising from obscurity three years ago.

The new anti-corruption body was given broad powers to investigate cases, issue arrest warrants and travel restrictions, and seize assets. “The homeland will not exist unless corruption is uprooted and the corrupt are held accountable,” the royal decree said.
King Salman issued a statement saying that the committee shall “identify offences, crimes and persons and entities involved in cases of public corruption”. The committee has the power to issue arrest warrants, travel bans, disclose and freeze accounts and portfolios, track funds and assets, and “prevent their remittance or transfer by persons and entities, whatever they might be”, according to the statement.

The shake-up of the Saudi government comes just months after King Salman replaced his nephew Mohammed bin Nayef with his son Mohammed bin Salman as the kingdom’s crown prince. Mohammed bin Salman has been responsible for pushing through a number of changes both at home and abroad since he became first in line to the Saudi crown. Ian Black of the London School of Economics said the move fit a “pattern of accelerated change” since Mohammed bin Salman became heir. “We’ve seen since June this year, very far-reaching changes,” he said, adding: “That was when Mohammed bin Salman, the son of King Salman, was appointed crown prince.”Since Mohammed bin Salman became the crown prince in June, we’ve seen a lot of upheaval. We’ve seen the announcement of this very ambitious Saudi plan to transform the country the Saudi economy, Vision 2030.”

The dismissal of Mitaab bin Abdullah as National Guard minister came shortly after a missile attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Riyadh’s King Khaled International Airport. However, Black said the two were probably not related as the sacking came bundled with changes to other ministerial portfolios.

In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia has announced an end to its long-standing ban on allowing women to drive, and Mohammed bin Salman has also promised to return the country to a “moderate” form of Islam. Since 2015 Saudi Arabia has been at war against Houthi rebels, who control much of northern Yemen on the kingdom’s southern border.
It is not clear if the Trump visit emboldened the kingdom, which has been locked in a decades-long tussle with Iran for power and influence across the region. Since then, a swath of economic policies has been launched, along with cultural reforms unprecedented in Saudi history. By mid next year, women are expected to be allowed to drive, to enter sports stadiums and travel abroad without the endorsement of their male guardians.

It is also said the arrests were another pre-emptive measure by the crown prince to remove powerful figures as he exerts control over the world’s leading oil exporter. The round-up recalls the palace coup in June through which he ousted his elder cousin, Mohammed bin Nayef, as heir to the throne and interior minister. MbS, as he is known, was expected to follow at least by removing Prince Miteb from leadership of the National Guard, a pivotal power-base rooted in the kingdom’s tribes. Over the past year MbS has become the ultimate decision-maker for the kingdom’s military, foreign, economic and social policies, causing resentment among parts of the Al Saud dynasty frustrated by his meteoric rise.

Saudi Arabia’s stock index was dragged down briefly but recovered to close higher as some investors bet the crackdown could bolster reforms in the long run. The royal decree said the arrests were in response to “exploitation by some of the weak souls who have put their own interests above the public interest, in order to, illicitly, accrue money.”

Many ordinary Saudis praised the crackdown as long-awaited.

Reforms

King Salman’s purge should be seen as a part of his reform policy.

In September, the king announced that a ban on women driving would be lifted, while Prince Mohammed is trying to break decades of conservative tradition by promoting public entertainment and visits by foreign tourists.

The crown prince has also slashed state spending in some areas and plans a big sale of state assets, including floating part of state oil giant Saudi Aramco (IPO-ARMO.SE) on international markets. Prince Mohammed also led Saudi Arabia into a two-year-old war in Yemen, where the government says it is fighting Iran-aligned militants, and a row with neighbouring Qatar, which it accuses of backing terrorists, a charge Doha denies.

Detractors of the crown prince say both moves are dangerous adventurism.

The most recent crackdown breaks with the tradition of consensus within the ruling family. Prince Mohammed, rather than forging alliances as the usual strategy, is extending his iron grip to the ruling family, the military, and the National Guard to counter what appears to be more widespread opposition within the family as well as the military to his reforms and the Yemen war.

In September, Prince Mohammed authorised the detention of some of the country’s most powerful clerics, fearing they may not be loyal to his agenda and supportive of his boycott of Qatar, which Saudi leaders accuse of destablising the region. The state moves on the home front followed a striking foreign policy stance earlier in the day that appeared to put the kingdom on a political collision course with Iran. Under Saudi pressure, the Lebanese prime minister, Saad al-Hariri, unexpectedly quit his job, citing Iranian interference across the Middle East. Hariri made his statement in Riyadh after twice being summoned to the Saudi capital during the week.

The attorney general, Saud al-Mojeb, said the newly mandated corruption commission had started multiple investigations. The decree establishing the commission said: “The homeland will not exist unless corruption is uprooted and the corrupt are held accountable.” “The suspects are being granted the same rights and treatment as any other Saudi citizen,” he said. “During the investigation, all parties retain full legal privileges relating to their personal and private property, including funds.”

Prince Mohammed will oversee the corruption commission, adding to his already formidable list of responsibilities, including his role as defence minister and champion of the economic transformation, dubbed Vision 2030, that aims to revolutionize most aspects of Saudi life within 12 years. Prince Mohammed told the Guardian last month that the kingdom had been “not normal” for the past 30 years and pledged to return Saudi Arabia to moderate Islam.

According to Al Arabiya, the new committee, which is headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is looking into the 2009 floods that devastated parts of Jeddah, as well as the government’s response to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus outbreak.

The interests of the Al Saud would remain protected. Both King Salman and heir apparent Mohammed bin Salman are fully committed to them. What they wish to instill, and seem determined to execute, is to modernize the ruling establishment, not just for the 2030 horizon but beyond it too.

Observation: A step in the right direction

Corruption is alien to Islam. The action against corruption shocked the world- not just the Arab nations or Islamic world alone. The world is under the impression, rather illusion that as the Islamic nation Saudi Arabia would not at all allow corruption in any meaner and that Saudis as the decedents of the first ever Muslims of the world would care for projecting a positive way of thinking and living.

The evil of corruption is deep in Saudi Arabia but without any state efforts to contain and reduce corruption the malice has become large scale corrupt practices. The kingdom’s top council of clerics tweeted that anti-corruption efforts were “as important as the fight against terrorism”, essentially giving religious backing to the crackdown.
The state attack on Saudi corrupt machinery at the top level is a well thought out step to root out corruption from the land of birth of Islam and of Holy Prophet of Islam and His infallible companions.

Nearly six months into his tenure as crown prince, which will eventually see him succeed his father as monarch, Prince Mohammed has launched a dizzying series of reforms designed to transform the kingdom’s moribund economy and put the relationship between the state and its citizens on a new footing.

Saudi arrests show crown prince Mohammed bin Salman is a risk-taker with a zeal for reform but the move would enormously strengthen his place in the governance. The move strengthens Prince Mohammed’s control of the kingdom’s security institutions, which had long been headed by separate powerful branches of the ruling family.

The Crown Prince is raising the leverage of power in Saudi Arabia. He certainly has the blessings of his father King Salman and he’s determined to make all kinds of changes in Saudi Arabia itself and in Saudi foreign policy, which led to the war in Yemen and the Gulf crisis. But on domestic front, this is new. Not only do we have a new chapter opening up in Saudi Arabia, we have a whole new book: it’s still all done in secrecy. Why those 11 princes, why those four standing ministers? Is it really just to consolidate power or is there more to it?

In the tradition of Saudi Arabia, revolting against the royals is not a good idea. It’s never been recommended. But does it all end with this or will it lead to more? There have been signs over the last two and a half years that more of this is coming.

Corruption has been rampant in recent generations in Saudi Arabia and Prince Mohammed had vowed to make business dealings more transparent. The spectacle of royal family members being arrested would add weight to claims of a crackdown on graft. However, such is the manner in which business is done in the kingdom, there would be few senior figures not connected to contract deals that would be considered corrupt in many other parts of the world.

Saudi Arabia’s leadership has pulled off its boldest move yet to consolidate power around its young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, arresting 11 senior princes, one of the country’s richest men and scores of former ministers in what it billed as a corruption purge. The move aimed to reshape public behavior in a kingdom where patronage networks often determine business deals and prominent families secure substantial cuts from lucrative contracts.

However, some in the Saudi capital describe the move as a naked attempt to weed out dissent, and political rivals, as the ambitious heir to the throne continues to stamp his authority across most aspects of public life in Saudi Arabia.

The purge aimed to go beyond corruption and aimed to remove potential opposition to Prince Mohammed’s ambitious reform agenda which is widely popular with Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning youth population but faces resistance from some of the old guard more comfortable with the kingdom’s traditions of incremental change and rule by consensus.

The work to transform society involves two parallel paths: resisting harmful systems and institutions and creating new systems and institutions to replace them. Our focus in this article is on positive work that people are doing to change current systems in ways that reduce the wealth divide, meet basic needs, ensure sustainability, create economic and racial justice and provide people with greater control over their lives.

When we and others organized the Occupation of Washington, DC in 2011, we subtitled the encampment ‘Stop the Machine, Create a New World’, to highlight both aspects of movement tasks — resistance and creation. One Popular Resistance project, It’s Our Economy, reports on economic democracy and new forms of ownership and economic development.

Throughout US history, resistance movements have coincided with the growth of economic democracy alternatives such as worker cooperatives, mutual aid and credit unions. John Curl writes about this parallel path in “For All the People,” which we summarized in “Cooperatives and Community Work are Part of American DNA.”

Mahatma Gandhi’s program of nonviolent resistance, satyagraha, had two components: obstructive resistance and constructive programs. Gandhi promoted Swaraj, a form of “self-rule” that would bring independence not just from the British Empire but also from the state through building community-based systems of self-sufficiency. He envisioned economic democracy at the village level. With his approach, economics is tied to ethics and justice — an economy that hurts the moral well-being of an individual or nation is immoral and business and industry should be measured not by shareholder profit but by their impact on people and community.

Today, we suffer from an Empire Economy. We can use Swaraj to break free from it. Many people are working to build a new economy and many cities are putting in place examples of economic democracy. One city attempting an overall transformation is Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi.

Economic Democracy in response to neoliberalism

In his new book, “Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis,” George Monbiot argues that a toxic ideology of greed and self–interest resulting in extreme competition and individualism rules the current economic and political culture. It is built on a misrepresentation of human nature. Evolutionary biology and psychology show that humans are actually supreme altruists and cooperators.  Monbiot argues that the economy and government can be radically reorganized from the bottom up, enabling people to take back control and overthrow the forces that have thwarted human ambitions for a more just and equal society.

In an interview with Mark Karlin, Monbiot describes how neolibealism arose over decades, beginning in the 1930s and 40s with John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek and others, and is now losing steam, as ideologies do. Monbiot says we need a new “Restoration Story.”

We are in the midst of writing that new story as people experience the injustice of the current system with economic and racial inequality, destruction of the environment and never ending wars. Indeed, we are further ahead in creating the new Restoration Story than we realize.

Cooperatives

New research from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Cooperatives (UWCC) has found there are 39,594 cooperatives in the United States, excluding the housing sector, and there are 7 million employer businesses that remain “potential co-op candidates.” These cooperatives account for more than $3 trillion in assets, more than $500 billion in annual revenue and sustain nearly two million jobs. This May, the Office of Management and Budget approved including coop questions in the Economic Census so that next year the US should have more accurate figures. The massive growth of cooperatives impacts many segments of the economy including banking, food, energy, transit and housing among others.

In cooperatives, workers or consumers decide directly how their business operate and work together to achieve their goals; it is a culture change from the competitive extreme capitalist view dominated by self-interest.

In Energy Democracy: Advancing Equity in Clean Energy Solutions, editors Denise Fairchild and Al Weinrub describe energy cooperatives that are creating a new model for how we organize the production and distribution of energy, which is decentralized, multi-racial and multi-class.

Lyn Benander of Co-op Power, a network of many cooperatives in New England and New York, writes that they transform not just energy but also their communities:

“First, people come together across class and race to make change in their community by using their power as investors, workers, consumers, and citizens ready to take action together. Then, they work together to build community-owned enterprises with local capital and local jobs to serve local energy needs. It’s a proven strategy for making a real difference.”

In Lancaster, CA, the mayor has turned the town into a solar energy capital where they produce power not just for themselves, but also to sell to other cities. They are also moving to create manufacturing jobs in electric buses, which more cities are buying, and energy storage. Research finds that rooftop solar and net-metering programs reduce electricity prices for all utility customers, not just those with solar panels. The rapid growth of rooftop solar is creating well-paying jobs at a rate that’s 17 times faster than the total U.S. economy. Rooftop solar, built on existing structures, such as homes and schools, puts energy choices in the hands of customers rather than centralized monopolies, thereby democratizing energy.

Including housing cooperatives would greatly increase the number of cooperatives. According to the National Association of Housing Cooperatives, “Housing cooperatives offer the more than one million families who live in them several benefits such as: a collective and democratic ownership structure, limited liability, lower costs and non-profit status.”  Residents of a mobile home park in Massachusetts decided to create a housing cooperative to put the residents in charge of the community when the owner planned to sell it.

Related to this are community land trusts. A section of land is owned in a trust run as a non-profit that represents the interests of local residents and businesses. Although the land is owned by the trust, buildings can be bought and sold. The trust lowers prices and can prevent gentrification.

Universal Basic Income

Another tool gaining greater traction is a universal basic income.  James King writes in People’s Policy Project that “. . . a universal basic income (UBI) – a cash payment made to every person in the country with no strings attached – is becoming increasingly popular in experimental policy circles. . . payments  [would be] large enough to guarantee a minimum standard of living to every person independent of work. In the US, that would be roughly $12,000 per person based on the poverty line.”

The wealth divide has become so extreme in the United States that nearly half of all people are living in poverty. A small UBI would provide peace of mind, financial security and the possibility of saving money and building some wealth. A report by the Roosevelt Institute, this week, found that a conservative analysis of the impact of a UBI of $1,000 per month would grow the economy by 12.56 percent after an eight-year implementation, this translates to a total growth of $2.48 trillion.

Public Finance

Another major area of economic democracy is the finance sector. At the end of 2016 there were 2,479 credit unions with assets under 20 million dollars in the United States. Members who bank in credit unions are part of a cooperative bank where the members vote for the board and participate in other decisions.

Another economic democracy approach is a public bank where a city, state or even the national government creates a bank using public dollars such as taxes and fee revenues. Public banks save millions of dollars that are usually paid in fees to Wall Street banks, and the savings can be used to fund projects such as infrastructure, transit, housing, healthcare and education, among other social needs. Public banks can also partner with community banks or credit unions to fund local projects. This could help to offset one of the negative impacts of Dodd-Frank, which has been a reduction in community banks. In testimony, the Secretary of Treasury, Stephen Munchin, said we could “end up in a world where we have four big banks in this country.”

North Dakota is the only state with a public bank, and it has the most diverse, locally-owned banking system in the country. Stacey Mitchell writes that “North Dakota has six times as many locally owned financial institutions per person as the rest of the nation. And these local banks and credit unions control a resounding 83 percent of deposits in the state, more than twice the 30 percent market share such banks have nationally.” Public banking campaigns are making progress in many parts of the country, among them are Oakland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Santa Fe, and other areas.

Mutual Aid

When crises occur, no matter what their cause, people can work together cooperatively and outside of slow and unresponsive state systems to meet their needs. This is happening in Athens, Greece, which has been wracked by financial crisis and austerity for years. People have formed “networks of resistance” that meet in community assemblies organized around needs of the community, such as health care and food. They started with time banks as a base for a new non-consumer society.

Similar efforts are underway in Puerto Rico following the devastation of Hurricane Maria. A group called El Llamado is coordinating more than 20 mutual aid efforts, and providing political education and support for self-organizing at the same time.

As George Monbiot describes it, this is consistent with the truth about what human beings are:

We survived despite being weaker and slower than both our potential predators and most of our prey. We did so through developing, to an extraordinary degree, a capacity for mutual aid. As it was essential to our survival, this urge to cooperate was hard-wired into our brains through natural selection.

As we face more crises, whether in lack of access to health care, education, housing, food or economic and climate disasters, let’s remember that we have the capacity to meet our needs collectively.  In fact, every day, people are putting in place a new economic democracy that allows people to participate based on economic and racial justice as well as real democracy. As these alternatives are put in place, they may become dominant in our economy, communities and politics and bring real democracy and security to our lives.

The Asia-Pacific Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, opened in Bangkok this week with a call for governments in the region to take action through economic, social and environmental policies to safeguard the rights and interests of all migrants, high- and low-skilled workers alike.

Policymakers, civil society, academia and experts from 44 countries are gathered at the three-day forum organized by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), in partnership with IOM, as well as ILO, UNFPA, UNHCR and UN Women, to provide regional input into the Global Compact – the first intergovernmental document developed under the auspices of the United Nations, to cover all dimensions of international migration.

At the opening today, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP Dr. Shamshad Akhtar highlighted that Asia and the Pacific has long welcomed migrants, whether for economic benefits or to accommodate those displaced, and whilst they make invaluable contributions to both their countries of origin and destination, migrants are also exposed to a range of vulnerabilities.

“As non-citizens of their countries of residence, and non-residents of their countries of citizenship, migrants are often bypassed in both home and host countries. As a result, their rights are often not respected and their contributions may go unrecognised. Migrants are often poorly paid, concentrated in labour work, employed in low-skill jobs and in the informal sector requiring difficult and sometimes dangerous physical labour,” said Dr. Akhtar.

“In a world on the move, addressing these challenges directly is all the more critical. Given the economic dynamism of the region and ageing of the population in many countries, migrants can play an even bigger role in filling labour force gaps until host countries resolve the fundamental issues of ageing. With growing regional connectivity, the region will need its labour force to take fuller advantage of opportunities generated, but beyond the impact on goods and services, this will also spur people-to-people connectivity.”

Asia and the Pacific is an epicentre of international migration with over 62 million migrants residing in the region, and almost 102 million migrants originating from its shores. Most are engaged in labour migration, taking up low-skilled work in developing countries, and many face human rights abuses because of their race, gender, ethnicity or cultural background. This exploitation not only affect people’s human rights, it impacts the contributions they make both at home and abroad.

Regional priority areas of action identified at the meeting will feed into the forthcoming global preparatory stocktaking meeting for the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in December, and the negotiations in New York next year. The Global Compact is a significant opportunity to improve governance and address the challenges associated with today’s migration. It will also help to strengthen the contribution of migrants and migration to sustainable development.

Like most farmers, Illinois dairy producers want to maximize efficiency and productivity to improve their bottom line. But many don’t have the time or objective perspective to audit their own operations for potential improvements. That’s why the University of Illinois Dairy Focus Team was formed.

“Knowing a farm’s potential causes of inefficiency and efficiency is key to improving its performance,” says Ines Rivelli-Bixquert, a doctoral researcher in the Department of Animal Sciences at U of I, and leader of the Dairy Focus Team. She recently published findings from the project in The Professional Animal Scientist.

Rivelli-Bixquert worked with assistant professor Felipe (Phil) Cardoso and a team of graduate and undergraduate students in the department to develop a protocol to evaluate dairy operations in Illinois. In the summer of 2014, the team visited 20 farms across the state.

Upon arrival, the group would fan out, evaluating and sampling every aspect of the dairy, while Cardoso sat down with the farmer to complete a lengthy questionnaire and get copies of the farmer’s data.

Specifically, the team evaluated nutrition, by taking samples of corn silage, total mixed rations, and manure; reproduction, by examining farmers’ data on yearly pregnancy rate, first conception rate, and services per conception; and young stock, by measuring aspects of calf housing.

Back at the lab, the researchers analyzed farm samples and data from farmers to obtain an overall view of the dairy industry in Illinois. Specifically, data from farms in northern and southern Illinois were compared to pinpoint geographic patterns.

“There were definitely management differences between south and north,” Rivelli-Bixquert says. “Some of these differences were leading southern farms to be more proficient when ensiling corn, meaning that they could have reduced losses and lower costs. On the other hand, northern farms had more proficient feeding management strategies for calves and better reproductive efficiency than southern farms.”

Cardoso explains the differences might simply come down to climate variations in the two regions. “The other difference is that in the north, the proximity to Wisconsin, a huge dairy state, makes the transference of information easier,” he says. “As extension personnel, we should be talking more about reproduction in the south, and perhaps encouraging those producers to visit farms in the north to learn how to obtain good reproductive results.”

Perhaps more importantly, results from individual farms were shared with each producer, along with specific recommendations for potential improvements.

Rivelli-Bixquert says some of the farmers weren’t aware of problems before the team showed up. “Sometimes they thought they needed help with nutrition, but they really needed to focus on some aspect of reproduction. The process helped them to understand their farms,” she says.

Cardoso and the team also used the data to develop a research-based newsletter and online tools for farmers, available at dairyfocus.illinois.edu. He says using farm-collected data and using it to improve efficiency for other farmers is the modern version of extension.

Rivelli-Bixquert adds, “I believe that if we do science, it is because there is someone out there who needs it, but it is not always easy to translate it to the general public. And extension is the best tool we have to bring scientific knowledge to the farmers.”

The article, “Nutrition, reproduction, and young stock performance on dairy farms throughout Illinois: A Dairy Focus Team approach,” is published in The Professional Animal Scientist. Authors include Rivelli-Bixquert, Sarah Morrison, Katherine Haerr, Sandra Rodriguez-Zas, and Cardoso. The work was supported by the Illinois Milk Producers’ Association and USDA NIFA

Early flowering, early fruiting: Anecdotal evidence of climate change is popping up as quickly as spring crocuses, but is it coincidence or confirmation that plants’ timing is shifting in response to warming temperatures?

Scientists have had few tools to piece together disparate, anecdotal data into a collective, bigger picture. Now, however, McGill University biologist Jonathan Davies and colleagues have produced a statistical estimator that extracts meaningful measures of phenological change – that is, the time a plant first leafs-out, flowers or sets fruit – from data collected by current and ancestral citizen scientists (Henry David Thoreau among the latter cohort), and along a continuous record from herbaria collections stretching more than two centuries into the past. Their findings appear in the Nov. 6, 2017, online edition of Nature Ecology & Evolution.

“Plant phenology provides a powerful symbol of how climate change is impacting our environment, and these changes can be observed both in nature and in the crops we plant and grow to feed ourselves,” Davies says. “Because we have short memories, it is difficult, however, to determine whether the changes we observe today are unusual or if they simply represent natural variation from year to year.”

Using new statistical techniques, the researchers show how it is possible to estimate, from dried plants housed in herbaria, when a flower first bloomed. “Plants in herbaria number in the millions, but they are often hidden from view,” Davies said. “Our work shows how these dusty specimens can provide new insights into how human activities have altered today’s climate, by contrasting the time a flower bloomed in the past to observation in the present day.”

Utah State University scientist Will Pearse, lead author of the paper, said that “using this estimator, we can place modern observations within the context of a vast wealth of historical data.”  Pearse, a former postdoctoral fellow at McGill, said the new technique also unleashes the power and emphasizes the value of citizen science.

The paper is co-authored by Charles Davis, Harvard University; David Inouye, University of Maryland and Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory; and Richard Primack, Boston University.

A multi-racial facial recognition system delivers more accurate results than those typically used today, a new study published in Pattern Recognition journal has revealed.

The University of Surrey has developed a 3D morphing face model that has ‘learned’ from different racial faces and can better identify people in 2D pictures – even if a person’s appearance is compromised by their pose, expression, lighting or poor image resolution.

Many facial recognition systems fit 3D models to 2D faces found in pictures. However, most systems use the same model for different races and ignore inherent differences. The team from Surrey’s Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP) found that the use of multi-racial 3D face models improves accuracy when trying to recognise people. It also found that the team’s aging effect technology – which is used to identify individuals after a long period of time has passed – is more precise when you use a model that is taught to learn different races.

Lead author of the paper Dr Zhenhua Feng from CVSSP said: “It’s safe to say that facial recognition technology is slowly becoming more prevalent in our daily lives. We need to make sure it’s as accurate as possible, so people can trust the technology. We have found that our model that understands black, white and Asian faces is far more accurate at recognising 2D faces than the typical all-in-one models used today.”

Dr Feng has recently won a prestigious European Biometric Industry Award for his work around facial landmark localisation and he is part of a team at CVSSP that is working on a £6m project for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to make facial recognition ubiquitous across the country.

Professor Josef Kittler, Distinguished Professor at the University of Surrey and founder of CVSSP, said: “We believe that facial recognition technology will be a force for good. It will help us protect our possessions, provide better security for our data and keep us safe from harm. However, the matter of accuracy is something we all have to be mindful of and that is what we are working on improving at CVSSP.

“Dr Feng’s project and the wider work we are doing at the Centre is focused on improving the accuracy of facial recognition technology, even in extreme cases where the resolution of the corresponding image is compromised, or in cases where people may try to trick a system.”

By Madalin Necsutu

As Moldova’s breach with Russia widens, fewer Moldovans going abroad to work are going to Russia – which is having a clear impact on the currencies in which they send money home.

Moldovans who leave their country to work abroad have been choosing the European Union over Russia, indicated by the fact that remittances sent home are increasingly in euros and dollars rather than in Russian rubles, official statistics showed on Monday.

During the third quarter of 2017, Moldovans sent home 154.11 million dollars, 135.99 million euros, and only 27.13 million Russian rubles, the central bank statistics show.

About 800,000 Moldovan citizens are registered as currently living and working abroad, but the real number is estimated at 1 million people. About half work now in the EU, the US and in Canada while the other half work and live in Russia and neighbouring Ukraine.

According to the state bank, the flow of remittances follows political trends. Since relations between Moscow and Chisinau became tense, after Moldova signed an Association Agreement with the EU, Russia has imposed sanctions on Moldova and expelled thousands of undocumented Moldovan workers.

Russian authorities and Moldova’s President Igor Dodon, who is friendly to Russia, in March 2017 urged Moldovans working in Russia to register and receive work permits so they would avoid deportation.

Since the Russia imposed an embargo on Moldova in 2013, 65 per cent of Moldova’s exports now go to European markets, and just 11 per cent reach Russia, government statistics show.

With at least a million of its population of 3.5 million now working abroad, Moldova has one of the highest emigration rates in the world. Remittances also account for about a quarter of the country’s GDP.

By Roseanne Gerin

Three Rohingya activists have called on Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi to speak out against the government military over alleged atrocities against Muslims in volatile northern Rakhine state and for the U.S. government to take stronger action to address the crisis.

About 630,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled northern Rakhine during a military crackdown in response to deadly attacks on police outposts by a Muslim militant group in late August. Some of those who have fled to neighboring Bangladesh have accused the military of indiscriminate killings, arson, torture, and rape, though the Myanmar government has denied the allegations.

While the government has pledged to put in place some of the recommendations made by an advisory commission on Rakhine that examined the causes of strife in the ethnically and religiously divided state, it has also prevented a fact-finding mission appointed by the United Nations from looking into reports of atrocities committed against Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh.

“Daw [honorific] Aung San Suu Kyi should have spoken up before,” Tun Khin, founder and president of the London-based Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK), a group that raises awareness of the plight of the Rohingya, a persecuted and stateless minority considered illegal immigrants from Bangladesh though many have lived in Myanmar for generations.

“Now she’s doing the same thing; she is covering up the crimes,” he said.

“They are crimes that are happening again and again,” said Tun Khin, one of three Rohingya activists who discussed their perspectives of the crisis in northern Rakhine in Washington on Nov. 1. “It’s never-ending now.”

Thousands of Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh during another crackdown by the military in response to smaller-scale attacks by the same Muslim militant group on border patrol stations in October 2016.

A report issued by BROUK on Nov. 1 supports previous evidence by human rights groups of atrocities committed by security forces against the Rohingya in recent months. BROUK interviewed a dozen refugees living in displacement camps in Bangladesh, documenting physical evidence of the atrocities, including rape, gunshot wounds, and injuries from landmines.

Myo Win, executive director of Smile Education and Development Foundation, an interfaith organization based in Yangon, agreed that Aung San Suu Kyi should speak out against the military.

“She should not defend the military,” he said.

“She should not ask why people are fleeing [from northern Rakhine], and why they are remaining,” he said, referring to her national address in September in which she indicated that the government did not know why the Rohingya were still fleeing the area, since subsequent attacks and military operations had ended on Sept. 5.

Given impunity

Wai Wai Nu, director of the Women Peace Network Arakan, a Yangon-based organization that conducts training to promote better understanding between the Rohingya and ethnic Rakhine people in western Myanmar, noted that despite the government’s statement that the crackdown had ended, Rohingya continue to flee Myanmar because the violence against them is ongoing.

Looting of their property continues because security forces have signaled that they will not protect them on account of their religion, while the state has prevented international NGOs from providing humanitarian aid, she said.

“Generally, the [ethnic] Rakhine [people] are encouraged or just allowed to loot properties of the Rohingya in front of everybody,” said Wai Wai Nu, who spent seven years in prison because her father was a member of parliament for the opposition.

“They just come and take goats and cows…sometimes along with security forces, sometimes without,” she said. “It’s not happening everywhere, but in most of the cases looters have been given impunity.”

As a first step, Aung San Suu Kyi must acknowledge there is a conflict in Rakhine, said Wai Wai Nu, who also cofounded the group Justice for Women, a network of female lawyers who provide legal aid to women in Myanmar.

“She can do it, and she has to do it,” she said, adding that the state counselor should use her moral authority and principles to forge peace in Myanmar.

“She can change the narrative by using her moral authority,” she said.

On Nov. 2, Aung San Suu Kyi paid a brief and unexpected visit to northern Rakhine state where she met with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, Muslims, and other ethnic minorities who live in the region to discuss the need for them to live peacefully together and the government’s humanitarian plans.

The Nobel laureate has come under fire by the international community for not speaking out about the treatment of the Rohingya in what the U.N. and others call “ethnic cleansing” in the region — an allegation Myanmar has rejected.

The day after Aung San Suu Kyi’s first visit to Rakhine since the two most recent crackdowns, U.S. Congressmen Eliot Engel (D-NY), ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Steve Chabot (R-OH), former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, introduced bipartisan legislation to reimpose sanctions on the Myanmar military in response to the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya.

The legislation would prohibit U.S. military assistance to Myanmar until the perpetrators of atrocities are held accountable; impose trade, visa, and financial restrictions on the perpetrators; require reporting on “the ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and genocide taking place”; support investigations into the prosecution of war criminals; and promote economic development in Myanmar.

“The Burmese military drafted a constitution which allows it to operate with impunity which means that civilian leaders like Aung San Suu Kyi have no meaningful way to curb military abuses,” Engle said before the three activists spoke on Nov. 1.

“So I think we need to reconsider our policies now toward these Burmese military leaders who perpetuated these abuses,” he said.

If the bill goes through, it would be much more forceful than a statement that the U.S. government issued on Oct. 24 that said it is rescinding invitations for senior Myanmar military officials to attend U.S.-sponsored events and will deem military units involved in operations in northern Rakhine ineligible to participate in U.S. assistance programs.

The restrictions also called for unimpeded access to northern Rakhine for a United Nations fact-finding mission, international organizations, and the media, but U.S. officials did not go so far as to characterize the treatment of the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing.

‘US is not doing enough’

“I want to press again that we must bring those responsible to justice,” said Tun Khin, who calls the systematic violence against and persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar “genocide.”

“The U.S. must take stronger action,” he said. “The U.S. is not doing enough. It’s very disappointing. Whether they are still thinking about ethnic cleansing or not, the U.S. government must call immediately for a U.N.-mandated arms embargo and targeted sanctions and must send a U.N. peacekeeping force to protect the lives of the Rohingya.”

He also said the U.N. Security Council must pass a resolution referring Myanmar to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands, for failing to investigate mass atrocities against the Rohingya.

Two days later, his call was echoed by New York-based Human Rights Watch, which issued a statement urging U.N. member countries to pursue processes for gathering criminal evidence to advance prosecutions in the ICC and other courts.

On Monday, the U.N. Security Council abandoned plans to adopt a resolution after China strongly opposed the move. Instead, it issued a statement calling for an end to the violence in Rakhine state, full access for humanitarian aid workers in the conflict zone, and the return of the Rohingya refugees who have fled to Bangladesh.

Though U.S. President Donald Trump’s current 12-day tour of five Asian countries does not include Myanmar, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to visit the country on Nov. 15 to discuss the Rohingya crisis with Myanmar government leaders.

“It is important now for the U.S. government to support long-term democracy and human rights work in Burma,” said Tun Khin, referring to Myanmar by its previous name. “Currently what we are seeing is that Daw [honorific] Aung San Suu Kyi’s government is not perpetrating these crimes, but the anti-Rohingya campaign and hate speech are spreading out from there.”

“We want to live side by side with the [ethnic] Rakhine community,” he said. “The problem is the government has no political will to resolve the issue.”

“In this case, the U.S. government must press the [ruling ] NLD [National League for Democracy] government to coordinate with Rohingya leaders and Rakhine leaders to come together for dialogue, and the U.S. government and the international community must support these kind of programs.”

By Michael Lelyveld

Nearly two months after the announcement of China’s largest private investment in Russian energy, terms of the deal keep expanding along with questions about how they will play out.

On Sept. 8, privately-held CEFC China Energy Company Ltd. said it had agreed to buy a 14.16-percent interest in Russia’s Rosneft oil company for U.S. $9.1 billion (60 billion yuan), marking the first major share sale of a state petroleum producer to a Chinese firm.

Shanghai-based CEFC agreed to acquire most of the 19.5- percent stake sold last December to a consortium of trader Glencore plc and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) that had become difficult to finance.

The deal with CEFC would effectively rescue the partial privatization of Rosneft, which the Russian government had been planning for years to help fund the state budget.

Financing for last year’s sale to Swiss-based Glencore and QIA became unaffordable during a period of weak oil prices and western sanctions on Rosneft following Russia’s seizure of Crimea in the war with Ukraine.

The faltering deal with the Glencore-QIA consortium was seen as an opportunity for the little-known but fast-growing CEFC to break into the ranks of the big energy investors in Russia, led by state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec).

Since the announcement, debt-burdened Rosneft has added further sweeteners to the plan for CEFC’s minority share.

The deal has received preliminary clearance from the Chinese government and is expected to win final approval by the end of the year, Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources.

On Oct. 17, a CEFC spokesman said Rosneft had pledged to give the company access to 11 million to 13 million tons of oil annually (220,000-260,000 barrels per day), starting next year.

That volume reported by Reuters was slightly more than the 10 million tons per year promised under a strategic cooperation agreement signed in July, according to Interfax.

The Russian supplies will give CEFC a chance to compete with the world’s largest oil trading firms. The “offtake” deal would eventually rise to 42 million tons per year (840,000 barrels per day), Reuters said.

CEFC’s chairman Ye Jianming reportedly plans to build a trading team of over 100 staffers with offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, London and the United States. Plans sound equally ambitious on the Russian side.

More deals to come

Speaking at an economic forum in the Italian city of Verona on Oct. 18, Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin said there would be more deals to come under a supplementary contract with CEFC, using a variation of the company’s Chinese name, Zhongguo Hua Xin.

“We’ll be developing a number of upstream (exploration and production) oil and gas projects and petrochemical projects with Huaxin on Russian territory,” Sechin said, as quoted by Interfax.

“We’re also interested in working with CEFC to set up logistics infrastructure in China. So we express our utmost satisfaction with this sort of cooperation,” he said.

While the plans are far reaching, realization seems less certain.

The projected volumes of oil supplies have already raised questions. The eventual offtake estimate of 840,000 barrels per day (bpd) may be out of proportion with Rosneft’s current capacity and CEFC’s minority share.

Rosneft exported 34.5 million tons (692,000 bpd) of crude to China last year. In Verona, Sechin said this year’s deliveries would reach 40 million tons (800,000 bpd) with plans to add 10 million tons annually (200,000 bpd) in each of the next five years.

But it is unclear how Rosneft would deliver that much oil, since its pipeline connections are already full, the Russian dailies Vedemosti and Kommersant reported.

In Verona, Sechin responded that all delivery options are being explored.

“We will export by any route, all possible routes with available capacity. At this stage, the volume is clear to us,” he said, according to Interfax.

“We are working with (pipeline monopoly) Transneft, with other transport companies. We will fulfill the commitments we have made,” Sechin said.

Some reports suggest Rosneft may resort to the long-abandoned option of shipping oil by rail through Mongolia, which China has rejected in the past.

Questions about financing

But financing for the deal may raise larger questions.

On Oct. 12, Reuters reported that CEFC planned to raise U.S. $5.1 billion (33.8 billion yuan) in short-term loans from VTB Bank, Russia’s second-largest lender. The state-owned institution, formerly known as Vneshtorgbank, was established in the 1990s to finance foreign trade.

But it is unclear why loans from a Russian state bank would be needed to finance the share sale of a Russian state oil company to a Chinese firm to fund the Russian state budget.

“This is getting curiouser and curiouser,” said Edward Chow, senior fellow for energy and national security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

On Oct. 13, VTB’s president, Andrei Kostin, first raised the possibility of financing the China deal in an interview with Rossiya 24 state television news.

“I can say for certain that this company’s participation in no way depends on whether VTB grants a loan or not,” Kostin said, according to Interfax. “But in principle, we’re prepared to do this if there is such interest, because this is a fairly interesting deal.”

Days later in Verona, it appeared that deal would depend on borrowing from VTB after all.

At a press conference, CEFC executive director Li Yong said the company would take out a loan from VTB “at the first stage of financing,” with funding from China Development Bank (CDB) “at the second.”

Reuters quoted sources as saying that the first stage could last one or two years.

“We are still considering and trying to learn more about CEFC and will be very careful given the sanctions,” said an unidentified banker involved in talks for a “CDB-led refinancing group.”

Although CDB has financed both CEFC and Rosneft in the past, the apparent caution over the share deal may raise doubts that uncertainties over the original Glencore-QIA investment have been resolved.

“It doesn’t sound settled if financing has not been arranged and CEFC needs a bridge loan from a Russian bank,” Chow said.

Last week, VTB also appeared to add conditions to its loan terms.

On Oct. 30, VTB’s first deputy chairman, Yury Solovyev, told Interfax that the bank was willing to finance the sale “if CEFC pledges the (Rosneft) shares to the bank.”

“We are ready to assume such a risk, ready to provide financing secured with shares,” Solovyev said.

CDB already has significant exposure to Russia due to a pair of loans to Rosneft and Transneft from 2009 totaling nearly U.S. $34 billion (225 billion yuan) to finance oil exports and the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline.

The loans represent China’s largest foreign credits to date, according to recently released research on China’s state financing and foreign aid by AidData, a research lab at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Rosneft has been paying interest at an average annual rate of 5.69 percent on U.S. $15 billion (99 billion yuan) of the loans, the South China Morning Post said.

CEFC’s big investment and the financing requirement also coincide with Chinese government’s cautionary stance toward capital outflows since last year.

In the first nine months of 2017, China’s non-financial outbound direct investment plunged 41.9 percent from a year earlier as regulators have barred many large overseas deals to keep capital in the country.

Winning approval

Reports have suggested that CEFC deal would win approval because it is consistent with goals of the government’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative to invest in new trade links. The logic may be shaky, however, since OBOR is primarily aimed at boosting China’s exports and infrastructure, while the CEFC deal appears aimed at increasing imports and assets abroad.

Although CEFC’s role in Russia is growing, a clear picture of its convoluted connections may be clouded by its other investments during its buying spree.

According to numerous reports, the AnAn Group, a Singapore affiliate of CEFC, invested U.S. $500 million (3.3 billion yuan) in a U.S. $1.5-billion (9.9-billion yuan) initial public offering of Russia’s En+ Group last week.

The energy and commodities conglomerate is owned by billionaire Oleg Deripaska, a cohort of President Vladimir Putin.

With the investment, AnAn was expected to gain a seat on the En+ board of directors and veto rights over “a whole range of issues,” Interfax said, citing the IPO prospectus.

Others reportedly investing in En+ included QIA. Proceeds from the IPO will be used to pay down En+ debts to VTB, the prospectus said.

With all that investment, CEFC appears to be reaching for more.

Last week, Vedemosti reported that the company may buy a half-interest in a prize arctic oilfield from Russia’s Independent Petroleum Co., owned by former Rosneft president Eduard Khudainatov.

CEFC also plans to open its own bank early next year, Reuters reported last week.