By Jack Memolo*

A week after the heinous terrorist attack in lower Manhattan, which killed five visiting Argentine tourists, the country’s president Mauricio Macri traveled to New York City to pay his respects to the victims, as well as promote commercial investment in Argentina. Before placing a memorial wreath of white flowers on the spot where an Uzbek citizen struck the five friends with a rented truck, Macri gave a short eulogy for the deceased.

“This must make us defend our conviction of the importance of peace, and our commitment to peace” he said. Macri then addressed the importance of the fight against terrorism, and the need for effective interstate cooperation on the issue. But what was most striking about his short speech was the ending. “We want to be part of this battle (against terrorism) that we all have to face in this world for a peaceful coexistence, with love amongst all of us.”

Certainly we all can identify with this statement. Those who would commit such an act of senseless violence have no place in a society, which respects the beliefs and creeds of all people. Yet no one would have understood this truth more clearly than Santiago Maldonado. While protesting the inhumane treatment of Mapuche Indians in the Patagonia region of Argentina, Maldonado suddenly disappeared. His associates suspected foul play on the part of the Argentine authorities and paramilitary police, with whom Maldonado had allegedly last been seen. Such a disappearance has struck hard at the hearts of many Argentines, especially those who experienced the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, which kidnapped and later murdered upwards of 30,000 people.

Over two months after Maldonado had gone missing, on October 17th, his body was found dumped on a riverbank which had already been “searched” three times previously by authorities.

During the nearly 80 days period after Maldonado’s initial disappearance, President Macri was almost completely silent, even refraining from addressing the issue until over a month after Santiago had first been declared missing. Despite recently saying he was doing “everything possible” to help Maldonado’s family resolve the circumstances of his disappearance, Macri has shown little initiative.

While Maldonado disappeared after showing his public support for the rights of the indigenous Mapuche, what ultimately led to his death was love, but not the kind defined by President Macri. Maldonado stood with the Mapuche not because of religion, or race, or ethnicity, but because of a common sense of humanity. Maldonado was a martyr for human solidarity, and a victim of hatred.

If we are to truly live in a society where, as Macri said, there is “love amongst all of us,” then we must demand answers from him and decry the fact that he has shown little action despite his professed concern for Maldonado. In spite of words issued by the Argentine president that day, Macri’s brief record is not reassuring.

Justice will only be achieved once Macri’s actions match his words, which is why Macri’s appearance in New York must be dismissed as an act of hypocrisy. For a nation like Argentina, which has endured the squalor of the “Dirty War” and the disappearance of tens of thousands of innocent citizens, the President must be held accountable for suppression of protest. President Macri must stand, as Santiago Maldonado did, with the most vulnerable amongst us.

*Jack Memolo, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Additional editorial support provided by Larry Birns, COHA Director, and Eugenia Rosales Matienzo, Research Associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

By Maria Rodriguez-Dominguez*

Over a decade ago, the world witnessed the emergence of a relentless rising power. As a result of an effective and carefully implemented foreign policy, the South American giant and fifth largest country in the world quickly consolidated itself as regional leader par excellence and was joining efforts with other nations to shift the global balance of power. This trend may have been less energetic during President Dilma Rousseff’s mandate, but the Brazilian foreign policy post-coup is merely a shadow of its former self. Additionally, the post-ideology stance of the new government is far from being genuine as its diplomacy encompasses a neoliberal view that favors an alignment with the United States over regional integration, and South-South cooperation.

Brazilian Diplomacy under Lula and Dilma

Luiz Felipe Lampreia, Minister of Foreign Affairs under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, once declared that “o Brasil não pode ser mais do que é” (Brazil cannot pretend to be something more than it is).[i] Lula’s foreign policy, carefully articulated by Celso Amorim (Minister of Foreign Affairs), Marco Aurélio Garcia (Special Advisor) and Samuel Pinheiro Guimaraes (Secretary General of Foreign Affairs) demonstrated that a “diplomacia activa e altiva (active and prominent diplomacy), could serve to consolidate Brazil’s regional and international influence. In addition to observing historical principles of Brazilian diplomacy, such as non-intervention and self-determination, the quartet embraced new precepts, such as non-indifference and emphasized regional integration and decentralization of global power through the promotion of multilateralism and South-South cooperation.[ii] [iii]

Although the country’s agenda prioritized regional integration through the Southern Cone Market (Mercosur), Lula’s foreign policy was successful in strengthening bilateral relations with other Latin American nations, regardless of the governments’ political orientation.[iv] For example, Brazil acted as a credible interlocutor with both the opposition as well as the government during the Venezuelan crisis in 2003 and backed the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) as an important mediator vis-à-vis the regional political crises and the Andean diplomatic crisis in 2008, just as it did in the Honduran Coup in 2009.

Similarly, Brazilian foreign policy was consolidated as an effective instrument to advance the country’s interests and to shift the balance of power through multilateralism. Despite its profound shortcomings, Brazil’s leadership in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) represented the nation’s largest engagement in peacekeeping operations to date. Together with other regional powers and developing countries, Brazil strongly advocated for the reform of the United Nations Security Council to expand the number of permanent and non-permanent members in an effort to more accurately reflect current political realities.[v] For more than a decade, Brazil actively engaged with other so-called BRICS countries (a group of emerging markets made up of China, Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa), to call for new initiatives such as the BRICS Development Bank, and even moved to diversifying its trade strategies to reduce its dependence with the United States. As a result, China became Brazil’s largest trading partner in 2009.[vi]

Despite the move away from its traditional U.S.-trade centrism and the opposing views concerning international trade, the governments of Lula and Dilma maintained an amicable relationship with Washington. Negotiations on ethanol production, as well as efforts to resolve trade disputes through the mechanisms of the World Trade Organization (WTO), are a few examples of the cooperation that defined the bilateral relationship.[vii] The economic results of this active foreign policy were positive for Brazil and included a surplus of $308 billion USD as of 2014, and a global trade participation rate of 1.46%.[viii] Reaffirming Brazil’s sovereignty, Dilma cancelled a visit to the United States in 2013 over alleged spying revelations. However, both governments went on to re-establish a fruitful relationship that eventually facilitated Dilma’s visit two years later.[ix]

More concerned about the domestic economic slowdown, Dilma Rousseff may not have emphasized foreign policy as much as her predecessor. However, her administration was able to achieve key diplomatic victories through the appointment of José Graziano da Silva, the architect of the laurate Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) program, as Head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2011 and Roberto Azevêdo as Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2013.

The End of Ideology in Brazil’s Foreign Policy?

Despite the positive record of Brazilian diplomacy over 13 years, the government of Michel Temer announced a reorientation toward a so-called “non-ideological” diplomacy much more focused on trade.[x] According to Aloysio Nunes Ferreira, the current Minister of Foreign Affairs, the goals of the new foreign policy are defense of national interests and engagement with the rest of the world.[xi] For anyone with an understanding of the foreign policy carried out by the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, PT) governments, these assumptions seem redundant as both objectives were largely achieved by Lula’s and Dilma’s administrations.

Both Nunes Ferreira and José Serra, the previous Minister of Foreign Affairs, have accused PT foreign policy as being too ideological. However, they conveniently disregard the fact their current foreign policy is based on a neoliberal ideology which highly favors the business groups that keep the Temer government in power.

As opposed to all of the foreign ministers under Lula and Dilma, who were career diplomats, Serra and Nunes were long-time politicians from the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (Brazilian Social Democracy Party, PSDB). Moreover, the fact that both of them have been included in the Lava Jato (Car Wash) Operation, suspected of corruption charges, puts into question the so-called pragmatism that they preach. To indicate the severity of events, in 2015 for example, the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court authorized the investigation of Nunes Ferreira for bribery during his campaign for the Senate in 2010.[xii]

By accusing the PT diplomacy of ideological, Temer’s government is hypocritical because it is forgetting the fact that its foreign policy is based on a market ideology that seeks to preserve the former status quo which was strongly aligned with U.S. interests. It is no coincidence that on his first trip abroad to India and Japan, Temer was accompanied by Blairo Maggi, the Minister of Agriculture, also known as the “Soy King,” who has been accused of being one of the biggest deforesters of the Amazon rainforest.[xiii]

The reorientation of Brazilian foreign policy has been especially visible at the regional level, particularly with regard to the role sought by Mercosur and Unasur. As opposed to the previous integration efforts, Temer’s first action was to block, together with Argentina, Uruguay from passing Mercosur’s presidency pro-tempore to Venezuela. Venezuela was finally able to preside over the regional organization, as Uruguay insisted at the time on respecting the organization’s rules regarding succession of the presidency.[xiv] This overt attack against the Andean country negatively affected Brazil’s regional leadership, as it lost its ability to act as mediator in the Venezuelan crisis as it had in 2003. Additionally, Temer has favored the Organization of American States (OAS) as the main conflict resolution organ, disregarding the previous role of Unasur to effectively solving political crises within the region.[xv] This is problematic because it reveals a growing realignment with the United States as opposed to Unasur’s regional independence.

As Brazil’s involvement with the BRICS is weakening, Temer’s government has ardently sought alignment with the United States. For instance, Nunes Ferreira recently revealed the administration’s intention to negotiate a bilateral trade agreement rather than through Mercosur, arguing that “the two largest countries in the Americas share a great deal in common… and should work together to build a mutually beneficial agenda.”[xvi] To further advance such an agenda, the government has approved measures that directly favor U.S. interests, such as the end of the compulsory participation of the state-run company Petrobras in the exploration of oil in the Pré-Sal reserve. There is also a bill that would allow foreign governments to use the Alcântara launch base in the State of Maranhão.[xvii] Brazil has also renounced its intention of reforming the U.N. Security Council, which José Serra wrote off as “a fight for the big guys.”[xviii]

This shift toward a more submissive foreign policy was criticized by David Rothkopk, former editor of Foreign Policy magazine in an interview with the BBC in May 2016, who declared, “if Serra thinks that reforming foreign policy means to undo what Lula has done, he is not acting in the best interests of Brazil”.[xix] According to Rothkopk, establishing trade policies with only certain countries, keeping a low profile in multilateral relations, and adopting a “skeptical-reflexive” tone with the United States will not be positive for Brazil.[xx]Indeed, after more than a year in power, Temer and his two foreign ministers have shown that neither sovereignty nor the promotion of multilateralism is an essential component of their administration’s diplomacy. Moreover, Temer’s controversial takeover and his suspected involvement in corruption episodes have taken a negative toll on Brazil’s reputation at the international level. Several foreign leaders such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence have opted not to visit the country and Temer’s team has had a hard time setting bilateral meetings in international fora such as the G20 meeting in Germany and the most recent session of the U.N. General Assembly.[xxi]

For years, Brazilian diplomacy was a global example of a dignified and active foreign policy that, along with a group of emergent economies, had the potential to shift the balance of power toward a multipolar world order. Its leadership allowed it to act as a credible mediator within the region while maintaining solid bilateral relationships with an array of governments, regardless of their political orientation. Brazil was also able to advance its national interests through diplomatic initiatives. Despite this exemplary reputation, Temer’s government has disdainfully labeled the previous foreign policy as ideological. That said, it is contradictory that a government that has shamelessly favored the interests of a nefarious group which has kept it in power, can implement an impartial and independent foreign policy. Its current alignment with the United States and its rejection of multilateralism signals that Brazil’s diplomacy is far from being non-ideological. However, as former Foreign Minister Celso Amorim stated: “When policy is carried by the left, it is seen as partisan. When the right carries it, it is perceived as state policy. Perhaps this is because the right has always dominated the state.”[xxii]

*Maria Rodriguez-Dominguez, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Additional editorial support provided by Aline Piva, Assistant Deputy Director and Head of Brazil Unit, and Liliana Muscarella Research Fellow

[i] Roberto Amaral. “Serra e o servilismo na política externa.” Carta Capital. July 08, 2016. https://www.cartacapital.com.br/internacional/serra-e-o-servilismo-na-politica-externa.

[ii] João Paulo Caldeira. “Lula e Dilma não implantaram diplomacia ‘ideológica’, diz Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães.” GGN. July 04, 2016. https://jornalggn.com.br/noticia/lula-e-dilma-nao-implantaram-diplomacia-ideologica-diz-samuel-pinheiro-guimaraes.

[iii] Amorim, Celso. “A política externa do governo Lula: dois anos.” Ministério das Relações Exteriores. http://www.itamaraty.gov.br/pt-BR/discursos-artigos-e-entrevistas-categoria/7788-a-politica-externa-do-governo-lula-dois-anos-artigo-do-ministro-das-relacoes-exteriores-embaixador-celso-amorim-publicado-na-revista-plenarium.

[iv] João Paulo Caldeira. Op. Cit.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] “Brazil sets trade records, due to Chinese demand.” NPR. January 02, 2012. http://www.npr.org/2012/01/02/144587105/brazil-sets-trade-records-due-to-chinese-demand.

[vii] João Paulo Caldeira. Op. Cit.

[viii] Marcelo Zero. “Nem o barão do Rio Branco salvaria a política externa do golpe.” 247. March 6, 2017. https://www.brasil247.com/pt/colunistas/marcelozero/283605/Nem-o-bar%C3%A3o-do-Rio-Branco-salvaria-a-pol%C3%ADtica-externa-do-golpe.htm

[ix] Dan Roberts. “Brazilian president’s visit to US will not include apology from Obama for spying.” The Guardian, June 30, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/30/brazil-dilma-rousseff-obama-nsa-spying-apology.

[x] Aloysio Nunes Ferreira. “Brazil’s Foreign Policy Is “Back in the Game”.” Americas Quarterly. April 17, 2017. http://www.americasquarterly.org/content/brazils-foreign-policy-back-game.

[xi] Ibid

[xii] Diogo Bueno and José Medeiros. “Aloysio Nunes: uma política externa omissa e submissa.” Carta Capital. March 03, 2017. https://www.cartacapital.com.br/blogs/blog-do-grri/aloysio-nunes-uma-politica-externa-omissa-e-submissa.

[xiii] João Filho. “Gaffes, mistakes, and humiliations define Brazil’s new foreign policy.” The Intercept. October 26, 2016. https://theintercept.com/2016/10/26/gaffes-mistakes-and-humiliations-define-brazils-new-foreign-policy/.

[xiv] Roberto Amaral, op. cit.

[xv] Gilberto M.A. Rodrigues. “Brazil’s Foreign Policy: A Regressive Path?” Aula Blog. September 06, 2017. https://aulablog.net/2017/09/06/brazils-foreign-policy-a-regressive-path/.

[xvi] Aloysio Nunes Ferreira, Op. Cit.

[xvii] Esteban Actis. “La política exterior de Michel Temer.” Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica. August 31, 2017. http://revistafal.com/la-politica-exterior-de-michel-temer/.

[xviii] João Filho. Op. Cit.

[xix] Ibid

[xx] Ibid

[xxi] Ricardo Senra. “Após críticas internacionais, Temer defende proteção à Amazônia em discurso na ONU.” BBC Brasil. September 19, 2017. http://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-41318365.

[xxii] Fernando Caulyt. “”Há contradições em novas diretrizes do Itamaraty”, diz Celso Amorim.” DW. June 14, 2016. http://www.dw.com/pt-br/h%C3%A1-contradi%C3%A7%C3%B5es-em-novas-diretrizes-do-itamaraty-diz-celso-amorim/a-19328437.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Donald Trump agreed there was no military solution to the Syrian conflict, the Kremlin said on Saturday.

According to a joint statement published on the Kremlin website: “The presidents agreed that there is no military solution to the conflict in Syria.”

The statement came after the two leaders met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Da Nang, Vietnam.

The statement added that the conflict should be forged through the Geneva process pursuant to UNSCR 2254 – a UN Security Council resolution that reaffirms the sovereignty of Syria.

Putin and Trump affirmed their commitment to Syria’s sovereignty, unity, independence, territorial integrity, and non-sectarian character and urged all parties to actively participate in the Geneva political process, the statement added.

The two leaders expressed their commitment to defeat Daesh, adding that joint efforts by the American and Russian forces had weakened the group.

“Finally President Trump and President Putin confirmed the importance of de-escalation areas as an interim step to reduce violence in Syria, enforce ceasefire agreements, facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, and set the conditions for the ultimate political solution to the conflict,” it added.

Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating civil war that began in early 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict and more than 10 million displaced, according to the UN.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin and President of the United States Donald Trump approved a joint statement on Syria following a conversation on the sidelines of the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting.

Following is the complete statement, as released by the Kremlin.

*****

President Trump and President Putin today, meeting on the margins of the APEC conference in Danang, Vietnam, confirmed their determination to defeat ISIS in Syria. They expressed their satisfaction with successful US-Russia enhanced de-confliction efforts between US and Russian military professionals that have dramatically accelerated ISIS’s losses on the battlefield in recent months. The Presidents agreed to maintain open military channels of communication between military professionals to help ensure the safety of both US and Russian forces and de-confliction of partnered forces engaged in the fight against ISIS. They confirmed these efforts will be continued until the final defeat of ISIS is achieved.

The Presidents agreed that there is no military solution to the conflict in Syria. They confirmed that the ultimate political solution to the conflict must be forged through the Geneva process pursuant to UNSCR 2254. They also took note of President Assad’s recent commitment to the Geneva process and constitutional reform and elections as called for under UNSCR 2254. The two Presidents affirmed that these steps must include full implementation of UNSCR 2254, including constitutional reform and free and fair elections under UN supervision, held to the highest international standards of transparency, with all Syrians, including members of the diaspora, eligible to participate. The Presidents affirmed their commitment to Syria’s sovereignty, unity, independence, territorial integrity, and non-sectarian character, as defined in UNSCR 2254, and urged all Syrian parties to participate actively in the Geneva political process and to support efforts to ensure its success.

Finally President Trump and President Putin confirmed the importance of de-escalation areas as an interim step to reduce violence in Syria, enforce ceasefire agreements, facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, and set the conditions for the ultimate political solution to the conflict. They reviewed progress on the ceasefire in southwest Syria that was finalized the last time the two Presidents met in Hamburg, Germany on July 7, 2017. The two presidents, today, welcomed the Memorandum of Principles concluded in Amman, Jordan, on November 8, 2017, between the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America. This Memorandum reinforces the success of the ceasefire initiative, to include the reduction, and ultimate elimination of foreign forces and foreign fighters from the area to ensure a more sustainable peace. Monitoring this ceasefire arrangement will continue to take place through the Amman Monitoring Center, with participation by expert teams from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Russian Federation, and the United States.

The two Presidents discussed the ongoing need to reduce human suffering in Syria and called on all UN member states to increase their contributions to address these humanitarian needs over the coming months.

Vietnam, Danang, November 10, 2017

By Gordana Knezevic

(RFE/RL) — Bridges are meant to connect people, but the one over the Ibar River in Kosovo has long been a tool of separation, used by ethnic Serbs to maintain isolation from the Albanian majority in southern Mitrovica.

Parapets and barricades had impeded access to the other side since 1999. Now, as the bridge becomes passable once again, Russia appears to be stepping in to preserve the physical and political divide it symbolized in its ruinous state.

Russian influence is visible at every turn in North Mitrovica. Russian flags hang over balconies, while portraits of Vladimir Putin and graffiti honoring the Serb-Russian alliance are everywhere.The political leadership of the Kosovo Serbs boasted of having been summoned to Moscow for “consultations” prior to recent local elections (October 22), claiming to have forged closer ties with United Russia. It seems that Moscow is now the destination of choice for Serbian politicians facing elections or in the process of forming a government — whether in Serbia or in Kosovo.

For Russia, Northern Kosovo is useful because it allows Moscow to appear as the protector of its Balkan Slavic cousins with little effort, almost by default. The fact that since 2013 Serbia has been engaged in dialogue with the Kosovar government under EU auspices is seen as betrayal by Kosovo Serbs because it destroys the illusion that Mitrovica is still somehow a part of Serbia. Feeling abandoned, many Serbs in Northern Kosovo instinctively looked to Russia. When the high-level talks between Belgrade and Pristina began, local Serbs demanded Russian citizenship — which was of course unrealistic, but reveals the depth of their disappointment.

RFE/RL spoke with ordinary people on the streets of Mitrovica, and the pro-Moscow feelings were unanimous. A typical comment was that of pensioner Jova Jovanovic:

“The Russians have been our friends for centuries. Whoever has a problem with the Russians is an enemy of the Serbian people.”

Another person interviewed, Bosanka Prodanovic, also expressed admiration for Russia and added:

“We have no idea what kind of agreements they are making in Brussels. But we have confidence in Putin.”

The reconstruction of the Ibar Bridge was part of the agreement between Belgrade and Pristina guaranteeing “freedom of movement” for both ethnic groups. The reconstruction project is estimated to cost 1.2 million euros ($1.4 million) and is being financed by the EU. Yet, like so many agreements brokered by Brussels, it has been subject to delays and obstruction. Europe is doing its best to nudge ethnic Serb communities toward integration with the rest of Kosovo, while Russia supports those who continue to insist that Kosovo is a part of Serbia.

“Kosovo is also effectively used by Russia to highlight the hypocrisy of the West’s commitment to preserving states’ territorial integrity in some cases while supporting the principle of self-determination in others. This has served to both discredit the West as well as justify Russia’s own foreign policy actions in Georgia and Ukraine, with Russia citing Kosovo as precedent,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies writes in its study on “The Kremlin Playbook.”

Nevertheless, the bridge over the Ibar River that has been the scene of so many incidents and violent clashes is now open in both directions, albeit so far only for pedestrians. Italian Carabinieri who are part of the KFOR peacekeeping mission are still posted on the bridge, but the tensions are lower than they have been for a long time.

Faruk Ahmeti, a Kosovo Albanian who lives in Bosnjacka Mahala, at the entrance of North Mitrovica, told RFE/RL’s Pristina bureau that crossing from one part of the town to the other is easy, but that some apprehension remains.

“I am still anxious, because I work in the southern sector, and my family lives in the north, and I am constantly wondering if they are safe.”

Besides freedom of movement there are signs of progress elsewhere, but it is slow, and many obstacles remain. It is estimated that around half of the inhabitants of the four ethnically Serb municipalities in the northern sector have Kosovo ID cards, but only 3 percent have Kosovo driver’s licenses — even though Serbian documents are not accepted as valid by the Kosovar authorities.

According to RFE/RL reports, the problem is not only that the majority of ethnic Serbs refuse to identify with Kosovo as their country, but that even those who do try to obtain a Kosovo ID or passport find that the process is made unnecessarily difficult by the local bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, those who stubbornly refuse to make any compromise with the reality of living in the state of Kosovo have put their faith in Putin’s Russia, even more than Serbia. It is Putin’s face smiling down on passersby from a giant billboard in Mitrovica’s main square.

Russian meddling is no surprise for Daniel Serwer, senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“Russia will use any opening to try to make trouble in the Balkans, where doing so is cheap and productive. If Moscow can wreck the progress made in the dialogue, all the better from its perspective,” Serwer told RFE/RL.

Naim Rashiti of Balkans Policy Research Group feels that Russia is keen on sabotaging any project where the West is actively involved, and Kosovo is no exception in this sense — although it is seen as particularly fertile ground for disruption.

The Russian state-supported media outlet Sputnik habitually refers to Kosovo as “the West’s most expensive project.”

“It is in their interest to keep tensions high in the Western Balkans in order to divert Euro-Atlantic integrations of the countries in the region,” says Rashiti. In Kosovo, the goal of Russian interference is “to impede reconciliation (between Serbs and Albanians) and to prevent the integration of Kosovo North.”

According to a recently published paper on Russian interference by the Kosovo Center for Security Studies (KCSS), the country’s biggest challenge will be finding a way to prevent the Association of Serb Municipalities in Northern Kosovo from becoming Russian government proxies in the manner of Republika Srpska in Bosnia.

The official opening of the bridge over the Ibar River was scheduled for March, and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini was due to attend. With the bridge only partly functional and the opening postponed again, she said that it is “a symbol of the fractures, the wars, and the pain that has marked the history of the Balkans in the last 25 years.”

But she added that it could become “a symbol of dialogue, reconciliation, hope.” The barricades and walls on the Ibar Bridge may be gone, but it will take longer for the walls in people’s minds to come down.

Dr Haedar Nashir, Muhammadiyah’s general chairman, recently outlined the concept of Islam with Progress during his visit to Singapore. It is the organisation’s new platform to reemphasise the doctrine of moderation in Islam in Indonesia, by promoting socio-economic development to counter radical ideas in the country.

By Alexander R Arifianto*

On 26 October 2017, Dr Haedar Nashir, general chairman of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second-largest Islamic organisation, delivered his RSIS Distinguished Public Lecture in Singapore. The main thrust of his speech is to introduce the concept of Islam with Progress (Islam Berkemajuan), the organisation’s new platform, which was adopted during its 47th national congress (muktamar) in Makassar, Indonesia, in August 2015.

Dr Nashir argues that from Muhammadiyah’s perspective, Islam is a religion that is constantly progressing. The Qur’an and the Sunnah (Way) of the Prophet Muhammad – the principal sources of Islamic teaching – contain messages which exhort all human beings to think critically and rationally. The first revelation to the Prophet is iqra or read. “Read” has a broad definition: exploration, research, as well as to think about everything created by God. Dr Nashir adds that within the Qur’an, there are messages in the form of questions and orders that encourage humans to think rationally to resolve their worldly problems.

Muhammadiyah’s Socioeconomic Mission

Dr Nashir argues that Islam is not only asking humanity to worship God but also to be able to manage its own affairs. In other words, Islam teaches Man to be proactive actors to promote various socio-economic changes. Humans will not be able to change their socio-economic conditions unless such change starts from their own efforts.

Dr Nashir highlights that Muhammadiyah is strongly committed to implementing this vision in order to improve the socio-economic conditions of Indonesian Muslims. The promotion of social welfare and development is the key characteristic which defines Muhammadiyah ever since it was founded in 1912. Muhammadiyah continues to build new schools, universities, and hospitals throughout Indonesia. Currently, Muhammadiyah has established more than 5,000 schools and 177 institutions of higher learning – including 42 universities – in all of Indonesia’s 34 provinces.

Recognising Indonesia’s diversity, Dr Nashir states that Muhammadiyah opens its schools, universities, and hospitals without regard to the ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic background of their users. Muhammadiyah has established universities in Sorong, West Papua province where 80 percent of its students are Christians, and in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara province, where 95 percent of its students are also Christians.

Many of these students come from low socioeconomic background. They are able to attend these universities thanks to generous scholarships provided by Muhammadiyah. Thus, Muhammadiyah does not only preach the Islamic principle of promoting mercy to all mankind (rahmatan lil alamin), but is also promoting it through good deeds, through the development of education and health facilities throughout Indonesia.

Countering Radicalism

One reason why the concept of Islam with Progress was introduced within Muhammadiyah is to counter hardline ideas promoted by a number of Islamist groups, including Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), Islamic Community Forum (FUI), and Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI). In recent years, these groups are attracting many new members, particularly those who are young and of university-going age.

Dr Nashir argues the rise of radical groups in Indonesia is caused by an open political process that enables such groups to express their ideas freely, especially through the Internet and social media. He considers such actions as a misuse of religion to achieve political ends, but also added that the growing popularity of these groups can also be attributed to the poverty and the increasingly unequal income and resource distribution among Indonesians.

He reasons that the majority of Indonesian Muslims are still living in poverty. As they feel they are being marginalised economically and politically, they express their grievances to the political elite by using religious arguments, as religion is one resource they possess. Hardline Islamist groups such as FPI and FUI have no significant financial resources. However, they utilise their religious networks to achieve their political goals, often with relatively successful outcomes.

Another Muhammadiyah leader, its General Secretary Dr Abdul Mu’ti, asserts that religion should not be used to polarise and politicise a multiethnic and multicultural society like Indonesia. There is no place for the use of violence and hate speech in society, he says, even as Muslims and non-Muslims alike have utilised both means to polarise Indonesian society.

While religiosity is a highly prized value in any religion, he says, religious preachers who promote violence and intolerance within society should be rejected. Instead, religious texts and teachings should be interpreted rationally and implemented as teachings about good deeds.

New Perspective to Moderation?

Dr Nashir adds Muslims should not only promote good words among their fellow men but also should match those words with good deeds, especially through the development of socio-economic infrastructure. Radical groups are not interested in building such infrastructure, he argues, as they are only interested to promote violence. As a result, the real essence of Islam in society is being undermined by the actions of these radical actors.

Instead, one must interpret Islam, he says, through reason and promote socio-economic development in order to eliminate ‘triggering’ factors for a few Muslims to engage in radical actions, such as poverty and socio-economic inequities.

He asserts that Islam with Progress is similar to the concept of Islam Nusantara promoted by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) – Indonesia’s largest Islamic organisation. He states both Islam with Progress and Islam Nusantara are concepts used by Muhammadiyah and NU respectively, to strengthen the identity of Indonesian Islam characterised by values such as moderation (wassatiya), peace, and tolerance.

*Alexander R Arifianto PhD is a Research Fellow with the Indonesia Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Manufacturers are increasingly using encapsulated coal ash from power plants as a low-cost binding agent in concrete, wallboard, bricks, roofing and other building materials. But a new study by U.S. and Chinese scientists cautions that coal ash from high-uranium deposits in China may be too radioactive for this use.

“While most coals in China and the U.S. have typically low uranium concentrations, in some areas in China we have identified coals with high uranium content,” said Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. “Combustion of these coals leaves behind the uranium and radium and generates coal ash with very high levels of radiation.”

The level of radiation in this coal ash could pose human health risks, particularly if it is recycled for use in residential building materials, he said.

Some of the coal ash samples analyzed in the new study contained radiation levels more than 43 times higher than the maximum safe limit established for residential building materials by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.

“The magnitude of radiation we found in some of the Chinese coal ash far exceeds safe standards for radiation in building materials,” said Shifeng Dai, professor of geochemistry at the state key laboratory of coal resources and safe mining at China University of Mining and Technology (CUMT) in Beijing and Xuzhou, China. “This calls into question the use of coal ash originating from uranium-rich coals for these purposes.”

Vengosh, Dai and their teams published their findings Nov. 8 in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology.

The new paper is part of an ongoing collaboration between researchers at CUMT, Duke and Duke Kunshan University to identify the environmental impacts of coal and coal ash in China. Vengosh holds a secondary faculty appointment at Duke Kunshan, which is in China.

To conduct their study, the scientists measured naturally occurring radioactivity in high-uranium coals from 57 sites in China. They also measured radiation levels in coal ash residues produced from this coal, and in soil collected from four sites.

“By comparing the ratio of uranium in the coal to the radioactivity of the coal ash, we identified a threshold at which uranium content in coal becomes too high to allow coal ash produced from it to be used safely in residential building construction,” said Nancy Lauer, a Ph.D. student at Duke’s Nicholas School, who led the research.

This threshold — roughly 10 parts per million of uranium– is applicable to high-uranium coal deposits worldwide, not just in China, “and should be considered when deciding whether to allow coal ash to be recycled into building materials,” she said.

All radionuclide measurements of coal and coal ash samples were conducted in Vengosh’s lab at Duke.

“Since our findings demonstrate that using ash from this high-uranium coal is not suitable in building materials, the challenge becomes, how do we dispose of it in ways that limit any potential water or air contamination,” Vengosh said. “This question requires careful consideration.”

By Hazem Balousha

Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza marked the 13th anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat on Saturday. Arafat was the founder of Fatah, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for 35 years, and president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) for 10 years.

Arafat, who died aged 75 on Nov. 11, 2004, at a hospital near Paris from unknown causes, remains a seminal figure for Palestinians. He spent much of his life in his Ramallah headquarters, under siege by Israel’s military.

Many Palestinians have accused Israel of poisoning Arafat, and a team of Swiss forensic experts found traces of the highly toxic radioactive material polonium on his body.
Last month’s reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas saw the latter agree to hand over control of Gaza — which has been under Hamas rule since July 2007 — to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) government, paving the way for Saturday’s rally to take place in Gaza City.

Hamas handed over control of Gaza’s borders to Fatah on Nov. 1, in the first key test of the agreement. But there have been signs of tensions in recent days over who will ultimately exercise control of security in the Gaza Strip.

Thousands of Gazans began gathering late Friday night in preparation for the main event, scheduled for midday Saturday, with participants from all Palestinian factions. The rally drew people from all over the coastal enclave, waving flags, raising posters of Arafat and donning his landmark kaffiyeh.

But on Thursday, the former Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan — who lives in exile in the UAE — also organized a rally in honor of Arafat in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Dahlan was once one of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ top officials in Gaza but the two fell out and Dahlan was later expelled from Fatah.

Dahlan and Gaza’s prime minister, senior Hamas figure Yahya Sinwar, have met several times in Cairo over the last year, under the auspices of the Egyptian government. The meetings have been fruitful for both parties: For Hamas, Dahlan helped improve its relationship with Egypt, while for the exiled Dahlan — who still retains supporters in Fatah — improved relations with Hamas paved the way for those supporters to work more freely in Gaza, where Hamas had previously prevented Fatah supporters from promoting the party or individual members.

Mokhaimer Abu Sada, a political science professor at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, told Arab News that the two rallies illustrate how deep the divisions in Fatah are now.

“It used to be a clear dispute between Hamas and Fatah,” he said. “But now people talk about Fatah versus Fatah.”

He claimed that Hamas would use those divisions to press for concessions from Abbas as they negotiate the details of the reconciliation deal. However, he added that he thought it unlikely Fatah’s divisions would really affect the deal, “despite how slowly the PA has moved in removing the sanctions against Hamas,” explaining that the deal is “more related to the stability of regional approval.”

In a recorded speech addressing Saturday’s rally in Gaza City, Abbas was bullish about efforts to finalize the reconciliation and reunite the West Bank and Gaza Strip and said that he “hoped to meet (Gazans) soon.”

“We are proceeding with Palestinian reconciliation,” he said. “We are going to continue until we achieve one authority, one law and one legal weapon. I say to our people in Gaza that the timely implementation of the agreement (to fully empower) the government will definitely ease your hardships and bring hope of a better future for all of us.

“I want to tell all our friends around the world that in spite of the obstacles created by the Israeli occupation and its apartheid-based colonial settlement activities, we are still holding on to the culture of peace and fighting terrorism in our region and in the world.”

He also reiterated the need for governments who support the two-state solution to officially recognize Palestine now.

“We renew our call to the countries that believe in the two-state solution to recognize the two states and not only one state. This is because the two-state solution is now in real danger,” he said.

“We will not accept the policy of apartheid that we live under (because of) the Israeli occupation of our country, and we will demand equal rights for the people of historic Palestine if the two-state solution is not implemented.”

Significant financial stress is associated with a 13-fold higher odds of having a heart attack, according to research presented at the 18th Annual Congress of the South African Heart Association.

The SA Heart Congress 2017 is being held from 9 to 12 November in Johannesburg. Experts from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) will present a special programme.

“The role of psychosocial factors in causing disease is a neglected area of study in South Africa, perhaps because there are so many other pressing health challenges such as tuberculosis and HIV,” said lead author Dr Denishan Govender, associate lecturer, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

“The INTERHEART study showed that psychosocial factors are independently associated with acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) in Africa but as far as we are aware there are no other published local data,” said last author Professor Pravin Manga, professor of cardiology, University of the Witwatersrand.

This study included 106 patients with acute myocardial infarction who presented to a large public hospital in Johannesburg. A control group of 106 patients without cardiac disease was matched for age, sex and race. All participants completed a questionnaire about depression, anxiety, stress, work stress, and financial stress in the previous month. The Likert scale was used to grade the experience of each condition.

Regarding financial stress, patients were graded with no financial stress if they were coping financially; mild financial stress if they were coping financially but needed added support; moderate financial stress if they had an income but were in financial distress; and significant financial stress if they had no income and at times struggled to meet basic needs.

Levels of psychosocial conditions were compared between groups and used to calculate associations with having a heart attack.

Self-reported stress levels were common, with 96% of heart attack patients reporting any level of stress, and 40% reporting severe stress levels. There was a three-fold increased risk of myocardial infarction if a patient had experienced any level of depression (from mild to extremely severe) in the previous month compared to those with no depression.

Both work stress and financial stress were associated with a higher risk of acute myocardial infarction. The odds of myocardial infarction was 5.6 times higher in patients with moderate or severe work stress compared to those with minimal or no stress. Patients with significant financial stress had a 13-fold higher odds of having a myocardial infarction.

Dr Govender said: “Our study suggests that psychosocial aspects are important risk factors for acute myocardial infarction. Often patients are counselled about stress after a heart attack but there needs to be more emphasis prior to an event. Few doctors ask about stress, depression or anxiety during a general physical and this should become routine practice, like asking about smoking. Just as we provide advice on how to quit smoking, patients need information on how to fight stress.”

Professor Manga said: “There is growing recognition that many developing countries are experiencing an increasing prevalence of chronic diseases of lifestyle such as myocardial infarction, and South Africa is no exception. Our study shows that psychosocial aspects are an area of cardiovascular prevention that deserves more attention.”

Dr David Jankelow, Chairman of the SA Heart 2017 Congress, commented: “We know that the depressed cardiac patient is at greater risk. We as clinicians need to identify them much earlier, so that they can be referred for appropriate intervention. Cardiac rehabilitation together with counselling and reassurance will play an important role as well.”

Professor Fausto Pinto, ESC immediate past president and course director of the ESC programme in South Africa, said: “Psychosocial factors including stress at work, depression and anxiety contribute to the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and having a worse prognosis. European prevention guidelines say that psychosocial risk factor assessment should be considered in people with, or at high risk of, cardiovascular disease to identify possible barriers to lifestyle change or adherence to medication.”

The Central Asia Policy Group, with funding from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, has released a 52-page report about four of the five countries in Central Asia – Turkmenistan is not included – that details the explosive growth of Islam in the region and the efforts of the governments there to cope.

Most of the report is devoted to tracing the history of relations between Muslims and the state in the four countries, but perhaps the most useful information the report offers concerns the current size of the Muslim presence in each of the them and the CAPG’s recommendation for the future.

(The entire report, which was just published in Russian in Almaty, is available online at drive.google.com/file/d/0B_Or2oBlCdPVQmRtU1NQOU4xcEU/view. It has been usefully summarized by the Fergana News Agency at fergananews.com/articles/9618.)

The key state institutions supervising Islam in these countries vary as do the non-governmental bodies that supervise mosques and other religious activities. In Kazakhstan, there is a ministry for religious affairs; in Kyrgyzstan a commission; and in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan a committee on religious affairs. Religious parties are banned in all four.

The main religious body in Tajikistan is the Islamic Center and Council of Ulema; in all three of the others, there exist Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs) modelled on the institutions, the tsars and communists used to supervise and control religious life. These bodies replaced the MSD for Central Asia and Kazakhstan that existed in Soviet times.

The number of mosques and their rate of increase is impressive. In Kazakhstan last year, there were 2516 mosques, up from 68 in 1991; in Kyrgyzstan, there were 2669 mosques, up from 1973 in 2009; in Tajikistan in 2016, 3930; and in Uzbekistan, 2065 mosques.

As for religious leaders, there is one imam for every 2210 people in Tajikistan, one for every 7824 in Uzbekistan; one for every 4915, and one for every 2407 in Kyrgyzstan. Thus, respectively, there are now 3914 in Tajikistan, 4100 in Uzbekistan, 3611 in Kazakhstan and 2500 in Kyrgyzstan.

There are also an increasing number of religious educational institutions. In Kyrgyzstan. There are 112 registered Islamic schools, including one Islamic university, nine Islamic institutes, and 88 functioning medrassahs. In Kazakhstan, there are a total of 13 such schools; in Uzbekistan, there are 11; but in Tajikistan, there is only one, a major bottleneck.

The authors of the report, who come from these four countries, conclude by making five comments about the situation of state-Islam relations in the region:

• First, they say, the MSDs are “a continuation of Soviet practice.”

• Second, the evolution of state policy toward Islam reflects two vectors which may be called “the struggle for hearts and minds” to legitimate the state and the struggle for votes in elections there.

• Third, there has been a continuing and sometimes explosive growth in the number of Muslim institutions, initially chaotic but increasingly controlled and regulated by the state.

• Fourth, the prospects for any Islamic political party in any of these countries are non-existent at present.

• And fifth, all of the governments in the region and all of the Muslim organizations there are groping toward new principles for creating greater trust between the two sides.

By Eyad Abu Shakra*

For some in “occupied” and “subjugated” Lebanon, the nightmare is over; for others, the country is approaching a regional cliff edge.

In fact, Lebanon is going through a second “March 14th” uprising, this time against direct Iranian domination, which is the real thing, unlike during the first uprising, when Syria’s “security custody” was a mere shadow of that real thing.

Many have viewed the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri, from a post that was always a flimsy cover for Iranian domination, as a step in the right direction. If anything, his resignation may have been overdue, since his only task was rubber-stamping.

Those relieved when Al-Hariri resigned have always felt that he had already lost a good deal of credibility in both the nationalist and Sunni Muslim camps. Moreover, he had been too passive in the face of unrelenting efforts to discredit him through pushing him and the military and security forces to accept Iran’s political and security domination, and to turn the Lebanese national army into an understudy to a sectarian militia led from abroad and serving foreign aims.

Meanwhile certain groups are still happy to be passive and continue their futile wait, at the expense of Arab interests, Lebanon’s national identity and even its demographic composition. Until now these groups had convinced themselves that diplomacy and appeasement were enough to check Iran’s expansionism fuelled by the armed blackmail it had already used several times both inside and outside Lebanon.

However, Lebanon is now under Tehran domination extending from southern Iraq to the Mediterranean across large Syrian territories. The Iranian regime has destroyed national borders drawn in 1920 to separate the Arabs, which many “Arabists” dreamed of bringing down. Through Daesh (and those behind it) and Iran’s sectarian militias, there are no more borders between Iraq and Syria, or between Syria and Lebanon; thus, Iran now enjoys a corridor to the Syrian and Lebanese Levantine coasts. Thus are laid bare Iranian plans for the whole region, not only a Lebanon under the military occupation of Hezbollah.

Given the above, one should seriously ask: What next?

On the Lebanese front, I believe Saad Al-Hariri did what he had to do, first as a patriotic leader who believes in an independent sovereign Lebanon, and second as Sunni Muslim leader at a time when Sunni Arabs are being targeted and marginalized in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Under the presidency of Michel Aoun and Al-Hariri’s “consensus Cabinet” with Hezbollah ministers, Iran’s influence inside Lebanon gained both a cover of legitimacy and involuntary acquiescence from representatives of its religious sects. Furthermore, displaced Syrian refugees became victims of animosity highlighting the high cost of their stay and their individual transgressions, rather than holding Hezbollah responsible for causing their displacement by fighting on Bashar Assad’s side in Syria.

Moreover, pressure was applied to make the army and security “defense doctrine” an almost carbon copy of that of Hezbollah, which is part and parcel of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Finally, the post of prime minister — reserved for the Sunnis — was marginalized, and its authority compromised; for example when Gebran Bassil, the foreign minister and the president’s son-in-law, ignored collective Cabinet responsibility and the prime minister’s position against the Syrian regime by meeting Walid Al-Mu’allem, Assad’s foreign minister, in New York.

The “consensus Cabinet” ensured that Hezbollah achieved most of its aims, including securing its favorite “electoral law” and its strategy toward the sensitive Sunni town of Arsal on the border with Syria. The fake consensus spared Hezbollah the need to use military force to impose its will, and tighten its control of the country.

Al-Hariri’s resignation has pulled the cover off a sinister situation that was damaging to him as well as to Lebanon. He has done the right thing in throwing the ball into the world community’s court.

Lebanon, in any case, is but one link in the Middle East chain. The resignation of a prime minister who finally decided not to be a cover for a plan for regional domination is certainly an important step in blocking it, but it is not enough on its own; it will require serious willingness to derail this plan from a much higher level.

Al-Hariri was subjected to much criticism in the past year, but he has now acted courageously. Will he now be supported by those vocal critics of Tehran’s policies, ambitions, and plans for domination underpinned by its arsenals inside Iran and its militias in several Arab countries?

Will the world community react with serious urgency in dealing with a Middle East near boiling point?

And is there a genuine understanding of how dangerous it is to allow religion-clad extremist ideologies to hold sway in a highly sensitive area, where ethnic, religious and sectarian identities intersect, nor far from the heart of Europe?

In 2005, when the Lebanese people rose against a “security custody” imposed from across its borders, the world community reacted quickly, only to forget them soon after.

Many fear this might happen again to their “Second Uprising.”

• Eyad Abu Shakra is managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat, where this article is also published. Twitter: @eyad1949

While President Donald Trump was effectively forced to cancel a formal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin due to the glare of the Mueller indictments – despite the fact that the charges had seemingly little to do with his campaign – the two leaders still took a minute to chat on the sidelines of an Asia Pacific conference in VIetnam on Saturday. Photos captured Putin ominously whispering a message into his surrogate’s ear, before posing for a few photos alongside other world leaders, with one photo featuring a much discussed handshake between Putin and Trump.

Afterward, when reporters asked if he was worried about the Mueller probe, Trump repeated his allegation that the investigation is a ‘hoax’, with the president calling the FBI a “bunch of hacks,” according to the New York Post.

“They’re political hacks,” Trump said of the former CIA director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former FBI chief James Comey, who have said that the evidence of Russian meddling is clear.

“You have Brennan, you have Clapper and you have Comey. Comey’s proven now to be a liar and he’s proven to be a leaker. So you look at that,” Trump said. “And you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with that.”

But he fell short of saying that he took Putin’s word.

“Well, look, I can’t stand there and argue with him,” Trump said. “I would rather have him get out of Syria, to be honest with you. I would rather … get to work with him on the Ukraine rather than standing and arguing about whether or not— because that whole thing was set up by the Democrats.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time Trump has lashed out at his own intelligence community over its finding that Russia actively intervened to try and sway the November 2016 election in Trump’s favor. It’s also not the first time he’s said he believes Putin’s claim that Russia had nothing to do with the hacks. WikiLeaks have also stated there never was a “hack”, instead documents were leaked from the DNC.

Two days ago, the DOJ declared that Russia Today would need to register as a Foreign Agent, or its staff would risk arrest in the US.

President Trump on Saturday brushed off allegations that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election, and implied he would take Vladimir Putin’s word on the matter more seriously than the opinions of some US intelligence officials.

Meanwhile, the CIA has reaffirmed that the Russia interference narrative remains the official position of the US intelligence community by issuing a rebuttal to the president’s statement.

Trump also said the suspicions about Putin are hurting his ability to develop a closer relationship with the leader in order to have more productive discussions on North Korea, the Hill reported.

“We could really be helped a lot with Russia having to do with North Korea,” Trump said.

“You know you are talking about millions and millions of lives. This isn’t baby stuff, this is the real deal. And if Russia helped us, in addition to China, that problem would go away a lot faster.”

Trump and Putin met Saturday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Danang, Vietnam. Though they didn’t have a “formal” meeting scheduled, Trump says they will issue a joint statement later in the day. What that statement is about is unclear.. Trump said the two leaders had “two or three very short conversations” during the larger forum and discussed Syria.

Predictably, Trump said Putin is “very insulted” by the suggestion Moscow attempted to hack the election.

Because presumably, if Putin had done it, he would’ve done a much better job…

By Almaz Kumenov

Kazakhstan is seeking to reprise its role as a locomotive for regional integration by calling for a landmark summit of Central Asian leaders to be held in Astana next year.

The proposal was reportedly voiced by Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov in Samarkand on November 10 at a UN-sponsored conference devoted to security and sustainable development in Central Asia.

“Ever since the acquisition of independence more than 25 years ago, President Nursultan Nazarbayev has actively advanced policies of regional integration that accounted for the interests and expectations of all governments in the region. Today this process has been given a new impulse as we are seeing a burst of regional contacts at all levels,” Abdrakhmanov said.

The minister said there were already successful precedents on which to build. Among those he cited the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea, collective efforts for maintaining Central Asia as a nuclear-free zone and the Central Asian Regional Information and Coordination Centre, an anti-drug trafficking body.

These are largely hollow boasts, however, since achievements in the areas mentioned by Abdrakhmanov are scanty.

After some early abortive attempts at regional integration derailed by the uncompromising demands of national leaders and governments, Central Asia began to fall under the sway of broader geopolitical projects advanced by its larger partners, Russia and China. Accordingly, presidents and heads of government typically meet at events organized by the panoply of political and security groupings that have taken shape over the past quarter century, be it the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Collective Security Treaty Organization or the Eurasian Economic Union, just to mention a few.

Where Kazakhstan was nominally the most visible promoter of exclusively regional cooperation, Uzbekistan has traditionally played the spoiler.

The new impulse alluded to by Abdrakhmanov is, of course, the policy of good neighborliness adopted by Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who has swiftly shed the at-any-cost isolationist policies of his late predecessor, Islam Karimov. The last year has been marked by a dizzying array of breakthroughs in Uzbekistan’s relations with bordering nations with trade deals galore, a flurry of high-level bilateral meetings and long-awaited border delimitation settlements.

Indeed, for all Kazakhstan’s desire to be seen once again leading the regional charge, current developments suggest that it is Uzbekistan that is now best disposed to take up the role. As The Diplomat reported from Samarkand, even as Abdrakhmanov was speaking of the need for the nations of Central Asia to come together, his Kyrgyz counterpart, Yerlan Abdyldayev, complained that an ongoing border dispute between their countries was harming the cause of sustainable development.

All the same, an Astana summit, which Abdrakhmanov has in a gesture of likely purposeful symbolism said could be held around Nowruz — the spring festival of renewal that is celebrated across the region — portends a potentially promising moment.

Pyongyang has accused “dotard” Donald Trump of “begging” for a nuclear war during his trip across Asia. The charge comes as Washington launched rare naval drills in the Pacific with Seoul and Tokyo, which simultaneously involves three US aircraft carrier strike groups.

Trump’s 12-day Asia tour Asia has, so far, focused primarily on containing the perceived North Korean threat, in the wake of the sixth nuclear test that the North carried out in September. As he continues his tour of the region, the US Navy together with Japanese and South Korean ships began massive naval drills in the Pacific.

On Saturday, North Korea lashed out against Trump, describing his tour as “a warmonger’s visit for confrontation to rid the DPRK of its self-defensive nuclear deterrence.”

“Trump, during his visit, laid bare his true nature as destroyer of the world peace and stability and begged for a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula,” a spokesperson of the DPRK Foreign Ministry said Saturday, according to state news agency, KCNA.

During this tour, Trump repeatedly made clear that his patience to reach a peaceful settlement to the Korean crisis is running thin, and that a military option remains on the table. Speaking in South Korea, Trump said nuclear weapons do not make N. Korea safer but instead, places the “regime in grave danger.” Every step Pyongyang takes “down this dark path increases the peril you face.”

North Korea is a country ruled as a cult. At the center of this military cult is a deranged belief in the leader’s destiny to rule as parent protector over a conquered Korean Peninsula and an enslaved Korean people,” the US president said in a speech to the South Korean parliament Wednesday. America does not seek confrontation, Trump said, but emphasized that it will also “never run from it.” We “will not allow American cities to be threatened with destruction. We will not be intimidated.”

“The reckless remarks by a dotard like Trump can never frighten us or put a stop to our advance,” Pyongyang responded. North Korea will defend its “sovereignty and rights to existence and development by keeping a real balance of force with the US,” its foreign ministry said.

In the latest show of American muscle in the region, three US carrier strike groups began holding tri-carrier, multinational drills off the Korean coast Saturday. The USS Ronald Reagan, USS Nimitz, and USS Theodore Roosevelt were joined by Japan’s Ise, Inazuma and Makinami ships as well as near a dozen South Korean vessels.

The four-day exercises will focus on carrying out air defense drills, sea surveillance, and replenishments at sea, the US navy said earlier. The drills will also include rehearsing defensive air combat training and close-in coordinated maneuvers. According to the Korean military, the joint drills involve 11 US and two South Korean destroyers equipped with the Aegis Combat System, designed to provide missile defenses against short to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

The maneuvers are aimed at bolstering the allied trio’s policy of “extended deterrence” against the North’s nuclear and missile provocations, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, as cited by the Yonhap news agency. The allies will also show off their readiness to mount a strong retaliation with overwhelming firepower in the event of an emergency, the JCS said further. Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force said the exercises are part of efforts “to stabilize regional security,”according to the Japan Times.

Amid rapidly rising tensions, characterized by almost weekly exchanges of threats of mutual destruction by both Washington and Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow have repeatedly called on both countries to tone down their rhetoric and return to the negotiations table.

On Friday, North Korea’s permanent representative to the UN told the General Assembly in New York that Pyongyang will not enter into negotiations over its missile and nuclear programs until the US completely stopped its hostile policies and threats. Cha Son Nam warned that both states remain “on the brink of war.”

“The DPRK will not lay its nukes and ballistic missiles on the negotiating table in any case, unless the hostile policy and nuclear threat of the US against the DPRK are thoroughly eradicated,” the envoy said. “Despite the serious concerns of the international community, the US continues to stage, annually, the aggressive joint military exercises, with the aim of planning a nuclear attack against the DPRK.”

By Jim Garamone

With an increase in troops, the U.S. and NATO strategy in Afghanistan has a good chance of enabling Afghan security forces to do more to secure their country, the Resolute Support mission commander said during a news conference in Brussels this week.

Army Gen. John W. Nicholson told reporters that Afghan forces have proven their mettle in the time of the greatest risk to the Afghan government.

“We fought most of the year … at the lowest level of capability that we’ve ever had in the 16 years [of the Afghan conflict],” Nicholson said. “It was the lowest level of capability and the highest level of risk we’ve faced in this time.”

Part of the problem is the NATO train and assist mission was not completely resourced. “We were only at an 80 percent fill on our combined joint statement of requirements,” he said.

4-Year Plan

The new strategy will help and it builds on the four-year plan from Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

The plan calls for increasing the offensive capability of the Afghan military — specifically the commandos and air assets. Additional trainers will allow them to go on the offensive and provide security over a greater area of the country, the general said.

“This, coupled with pressure on the external enablers of the insurgency, as well as social pressure at the ballot box, with the elections over the next two years, is all designed to bring the Taliban to the table,” he said. “So this is a fight-and-talk approach.”

Nicholson emphasized that the new strategy is conditions-based and not on a set deadline. The modest increase in NATO, U.S. and partner forces will enable more training at lower echelons and focus air support where it is most needed.

New capabilities will join a force that continues to improve, the general said. Afghan security forces went on the offensive this year in ways that they previously haven’t, he noted. All six of the Afghan corps conducted offensive operations simultaneously. “We saw a decrease in casualties that occurred in September,” Nicholson said. “So, even though there was some very tough fighting, the enemy was unable to accomplish any of their objectives this year.”

Last year, there were eight Taliban attacks on cities around the country. This year, there was one. “Whenever the enemy attempted to mass, he was subjected to U.S. airpower and suffered heavy, heavy casualties — much higher than the Afghans,” he said.

Changes at the Top

Leadership played a large role in the successes, the general said, with Ghani replacing five of the six corps commanders at the beginning of the fighting season. “This lowered the average age of the core commanders by 10 years, and they came into their duties with more energy, frankly, and more offensive mindset, and it showed on the battlefield,” he said.

Nicholson ticked off the areas of success, including Helmand province, where Afghans working with the Marines of Task Force Southwest expanded the secure areas around Lashkar Gah and retook the Nawa district.

In the eastern part of the country, the 205th Corps was able to expand the security environment around Tarin Kot. There was also an expansion of security around Kunduz, the general said.

The gains were local, he said, “but they’re significant in the sense that … the Afghans were on the offensive.”

The successes caused the Taliban to change their strategy and the group launched suicide attacks against mostly civilian targets. “Even though they did attack some military installations and police installations, the majority of the casualties were civilian casualties,” Nicholson said.

“We end the year at roughly the same, in terms of population control, as we were at the beginning of the year,” he said. “However, they are going to be postured, going into 2018, to go on the offensive.”

And Afghan forces are primed. Through December, 1,900 new commandos will join existing units and the Afghan air force is receiving new aircraft. “We’re going to triple the Afghan Air Force and this is going to add to their offensive capability,” the general said.

The Afghan government is doing its part by passing laws aimed at combatting corruption that should result in a generational change amongst the leaders of the Afghan security forces, Nicholson said.

“The biometric enrollment of every soldier and every police officer in the Afghan security forces is ongoing. This will be complete by April,” the general said. In addition, audit teams will be allowed to go into the banking system and the Ministry of Finance to actually follow NATO and U.S. money as it enters the Afghan banking system. This will enable NATO forces to track the money from the point it enters the system to the biometrically enrolled soldier.

By Ana Maria Touma

Romania’s Central Bank governor has sounded a number of warning notes about the country’s apparently booming economy, including the risk of a yawning trade deficit.

Romania’s Central Bank chief Mugur Isarescu on Thursday sounded a cautionary note about the country’s economy, despite the optimistic growth forecasts coming out of the European Commission among others.

Romania faces the risk of running a high trade deficit in 2017, unless the government postpones investment and cuts taxes, he said.

Bank Governor Isarescu also said that inflation is also due to rise from 1.9 per cent earlier this year to 2.7 per cent by the end of the year, due to increased imports and production costs and low exports.

Romania’s currency reached its lowest exchange rate with the euro in five years on Wednesday, due to the high trade deficit.

“We also still have a pro-cyclical fiscal and income policy, an expansive one, although slightly less so lately. The data show now that we will probably meet the[EU’s] 3-per-cent deficit requirement. However, there are issues with the reasons to meet this requirement: reducing taxes and postponing investments,” Isarescu said.

Another problem creating tension in the economy is the lack of correlation between wage hikes and productivity, he added. Romania has a lack of highly skilled workers and too many unskilled workers, he added.

Isarescu explained that while productivity in Romania had risen, wages had risen faster, and the hikes were not always justified by improved productivity.

Romania needs serious structural reforms if the government wants to achieve sustainable economic growth in future, the bank governor warned.

Romania has been hailed for having the fastest growing economy in the European Union in 2017.

On Friday, the European Commission announced that it expects Romania’s economy to grow by 5.7 per cent in 2017 and by 4.4 per cent in 2018, considerably more than economies in the region and way ahead of the EU average.

“Real GDP growth accelerated in 2017, driven mainly by private consumption. Looking ahead, growth is set to decelerate but remain above potential,” the Commission’s forecast for Romania said.

“[However], the budget deficit is projected to increase due to public wage increases projected in the unified wage law,” the report added.

The Commission noted some of the risks that might prevent Romania from reaching the growth forecast. They include a possible tightening of the central bank’s monetary policy in response to emerging inflation, cuts in public investment, and a continued rise in labour costs due to wage growth outpacing productivity growth.

New research answers a long-debated question among anthropologists, archaeologists and geneticists: when farmers first arrived in Europe, how did they interact with existing hunter-gatherer groups? Prior studies have suggested these early Near Eastern farmers largely replaced the pre-existing European hunter-gatherers. Did the farmers wipe out the hunter-gatherers, through warfare or disease, shortly after arriving? Or did they slowly out-compete them over time? The current study, published today in Nature, suggests that these groups likely coexisted side-by-side for some time after the early farmers spread across Europe. The farming populations then slowly integrated local hunter-gatherers, showing more assimilation of the hunter-gatherers into the farming populations as time went on.

The Neolithic transition – the shift from a hunter-gatherer to a farming lifestyle that started nearly 10,000 years ago – has been a slowly unraveling mystery. Recent studies of ancient DNA have revealed that the spread of farming across Europe was not merely the result of a transfer of ideas, but that expanding farmers from the Near East brought this knowledge with them as they spread across the continent.

Numerous studies have shown that early farmers from all over Europe, such as the Iberian Peninsula, southern Scandinavia and central Europe, all shared a common origin in the Near East. This was initially an unexpected finding given the diversity of prehistoric cultures and the diverse environments in Europe. Interestingly, early farmers also show various amounts of hunter-gatherer ancestry, which had previously not been analyzed in detail.

The current study, from an international team including scientists from Harvard Medical School, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, focused on the regional interactions between early farmers and late hunter-gatherer groups across a broad timespan in three locations in Europe: the Iberian Peninsula in the West, the Middle-Elbe-Saale region in north-central Europe, and the fertile lands of the Carpathian Basin (centered in what is now Hungary). The researchers used high-resolution genotyping methods to analyze the genomes of 180 early farmers, 130 of whom are newly reported in this study, from the period of 6000-2200 BC to explore the population dynamics during this period.

“We find that the hunter-gatherer admixture varied locally but more importantly differed widely between the three main regions,” says Mark Lipson, a researcher in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and co-first author of the paper. “This means that local hunter-gatherers were slowly but steadily integrated into early farming communities.”

While the percentage of hunter-gatherer heritage never reached very high levels, it did increase over time. This finding suggests the hunter-gatherers were not pushed out or exterminated by the farmers when the farmers first arrived. Rather, the two groups seem to have co-existed with increasing interactions over time. Further, the farmers from each location mixed only with hunter-gatherers from their own region, and not with hunter-gatherers, or farmers, from other areas, suggesting that once settled, they stayed put.

“One novelty of our study is that we can differentiate early European farmers by their specific local hunter-gatherer signature,” adds co-first author Anna Szécsényi-Nagy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. “Farmers from Spain share hunter-gatherer ancestry with a pre-agricultural individual from La Braña, Spain, whereas farmers from central Europe share more with hunter-gatherers near them, such as an individual from the Loschbour cave in Luxembourg. Similarly, farmers from the Carpathian Basin share more ancestry with local hunter-gatherers from their same region.”

The team also investigated the relative length of time elapsed since the integration events between the populations, using cutting-edge statistical techniques that focus on the breakdown of DNA blocks inherited from a single individual. The method allows scientists to estimate when the populations mixed. Specifically, the team looked at 90 individuals from the Carpathian Basin who lived close in time. The results – which indicate ongoing population transformation and mixture – allowed the team to build the first quantitative model of interactions between hunter-gatherer and farmer groups.

“We found that the most probable scenario is an initial, small-scale, admixture pulse between the two populations that was followed by continuous gene flow over many centuries,” says senior lead author David Reich, professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

These results reflect the importance of building thorough, detailed databases of genetic information over time and space, and suggest that a similar approach should be equally revealing elsewhere in the world.

On Saturday, November 11 morning, a surface-to-air missile intercepted a Syrian surveillance drone that was spotted approaching the Israeli-controlled side of the Golan Heights, Al-Masdar News reports citing a spokesman of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

The drone, reportedly operated by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), then fell down over the demilitarized zone around 11am on the western outskirts of the predominately Druze town of Hader where tit-for-tat clashes took place last week.

The IDF spokesperson added that the drone was downed by a MIM-104 Patriot missile.

Following the incident, Israeli TV channel 10 said that the SAA drone never actually entered Israeli territory on their side of the Golan Heights but was downed as a precautionary measure to deter Syrian government forces from spying on IDF positions across the border.

“Despacito” star Zuleyka Rivera is no stranger to going viral on the Internet. The Miss Universe 2006 who starred in the most viewed YouTube video ever is in the news again as photos from her visit last year to Egypt have become a hit on social media, according to the news portal Bitajarod.

The pictures circulating on social media show Rivera visiting several destinations in Egypt, including the Great Pyramid and Sphinx, Abu Simble Temple, and the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, in an attempt to promote and revive Egyptian tourism. There were also photos of Aswan and Luxor streets, and others from the inside of the Mohammed Ali Mosque. Rivera was also spotted on a horse and a camel in front of the Pyramids.

It is clear that Rivera’s photos during the visit were taken by a professional photographer.

At the age of 18, the Puerto Rican model won the coveted title of Miss Universe 2006, and went on to study acting in New York City, eventually nabbing roles in popular Mexican soap operas. She now hosts Spanish-language daytime talk shows “Un Nuevo Dia” (Telemundo) and “Despierta America” (Univision).

Rivera was also in the news lately after confessing in an interview that she too has been the victim of sexual harassment. “That’s why I left a specific country that I’m not going to name,” she said when asked about recent sexual misconduct scandals that have rocked Hollywood. “I left because I believe in me, in my talent, as far as I have come and what I have coming.”

The global price of crude oil has risen sharply in recent weeks.

The price of crude oil which was as high as 111.89 USD per barrel in 2011 fell to around 46.16 USD per dollar in 2015 and then further down to 47.06 USD per barrel in 2016 but has since then shown rising trend

The price of Brent crude, which was around 60 USD per barrel in late October has now touched 64 USD per barrel , which represents rise of around 40% during the last two years.

What cause for present price rise?

A section of industry experts are of the view that the recent crude oil price upsurge has been driven primarily by political uncertainty in Saudi Arabia, which is the world’s second largest producer of oil and the tightening of supply by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries,(OPEC) whose economy has suffered severely due to fall in the global crude price,.

However, other industry experts think that the recent price increase are due to more fundamental factors that will have long term impact.

Will the price rise persist?

It is well accepted by all experts that the sharp increase in production of shale oil in North America is the primary reason for the drop in the price in the global crude oil market in the last few years. While the OPEC is responsible for the 40% of the world oil production, shale gas drilling in North Dakota and Texas in USA have successfully taken place in several thousands of new wells, which has resulted in the shale oil production in USA jumping several fold from 0.5 million barrel per day in 2009.

While it is reported that shale oil output from North America has increased by about 25% over the past one year, the critical questions are as to how long the shale oil production in US will be sustained at the present level , apart from the question as to what will be the growth in demand for oil in the world market. These two factors will decide the global crude oil price behaviour in the coming years.

Apart from the fact that shale oil is a depleting resource in North America , there are serious environmental issues with regard to the fracking carried our for the production of shale oil in USA. Even if shale oil deposit would be available , will it be possible to extend shale gas drilling to more areas , particularly considering the adverse environmental impact is a critical question.

World oil exploration companies used to spend around 450 billion USD annually on exploration and development,. New oil fields typically require 4 to 5 years to be developed before the first drop of oil is produced.

The big oil fields that were discovered decades ago would inevitably begin to deplete. This means that new oil fields have to be discovered. The big conventional oil fields that have not yet been tapped tend to be in inaccessable spots deep below the ocean, high in the Arctic or Antarctic or both. Upstream costs of developing new oil wells are rising due to rising rig rates, deeper water depths and costs of seismic technology. Several global oil and gas exploration projects have been slowed down and some have been put on hold, in recent times due to low price of the oil and consequent poor economics of oil exploration business.

In such scenario, the supply scenario for crude oil is bound to get tightened in the coming years that would inevitably lead to crude price rise.

While it would be a guestimate as to what extent the crude oil price will increase in the global market, one fact that cannot be ignored is that the production of shale oil in North America may not remain at present level all the time due to depleting resources and environmental issues. Further, with oil exploration efforts slowing down and the global consumption rising and the major oil producing countries such as OPEC ,Venezuela and others wanting to increase the price of crude oil to sustain their economy, there is definite possibility of global crude oil price increasing in the near future to the discomfort of large oil importing countries like India.

Is India prepared?

Recent increase in the price of crude oil in the global market should be a matter of high concern to Government of India and Indian industries.

With the domestic production of crude oil remaining virtually stagnant and with no likelihood significant increase in the domestic production and further, with the requirement of crude oil steadily increasing in the country, Indian economy remains highly vulnerable to the international crude oil price scenario. This is the scenario on which the government of India has no control.

A few years back, when price of crude oil increased to more than 100 U$D per barrel, Indian economy faced tremendous crisis , which may well happen once again in the case of crude oil price climbing much higher than present level.

The Indian import of crude oil which was 171.729 million tonne in 2010 – 11 has increased to 215.72 million tonne in 2016-17. The growth in the import of crude oil is likely at 7% per year in the coming years to sustain the growth of Indian economy.

While government of India has taken some steps to increase the domestic crude oil production particularly after Modi government has taken over, expectations are that any domestic crude production increase will only be marginal.

While great efforts have been put forth by Modi government to develop alternate and non conventional energy source like solar and wind power, the impact of development of non conventional energy source will not make a significant difference to the import dependence on crude oil , considering the overall energy need of the country ,

It is matter of concern that India has not taken strong and adequate steps to curtail the growth in the requirement of crude oil in the country by economizing the consumption in various ways .

As more than 75% of the Indian requirement of crude oil is met by import , sharp increase in the global price of crude oil will be a body blow for Indian economy.

It appears that India, as yet, is unprepared to face such adverse scenario and government of India seem to have no clue on the appropriate strategies to overcome such impending crisis due to the likely global crude oil price rise.