Many now talk about “black swan” events, occurrences that are of low probability but that could happen and radically change the situation. Now, a group of Russian analysts has come up with 12 such events for the coming year, a list worthy of attention less because these things will happen than because some in Moscow consider them possibilities.

They appear in the latest issue of Profile (storage5.static.itmages.ru/i/17/1227/h_1514367367_4768426_660dc5d31c.jpg) and include:

1. The adoption of a new RF constitution giving the leader lifetime incumbency and absolute power

2. The resignation of Donald Trump under threat of impeachment

3. A worldwide financial crisis because of insufficient liquidity given the tight money policies of most central banks

4. The implementation of harsh new US sanctions on Russia leading to a collapse of the ruble, massive capital flight, and economic collapse

5. The imposition of draconian social policies after the presidential election, including raising the retirement age and cutting other social benefits

6. The outbreak of a war between the US and North Korea

7. The failure of Russian athletes to be among the top ten teams at the South Korean Olympiad

8. A move by FIFA to pull the World Cup out of Russia and transfer it to England

9. A decision by Moscow to launch another small victorious war against another neighbor

10. The overthrow of the Maduro regime in Venezuela with Russia thus losing its investment there

11. The continued rapid absorption of private companies and banks by state corporations

12. The rise in the value of the bitcoin to 200,000 US dollars

The new Indonesian Armed Forces Commander, Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto, created waves when he reversed the reshuffle of the military top brass initiated by his predecessor, General Gatot Nurmantyo. Who is Indonesia’s new TNI commander who hails from the air force in a military traditionally dominated by the army?

By Satrio Dwicahyo Rahadi*

Hadi Tjahjanto, the new commander of the Indonesian military, reversed his predecessor’s recent reshuffle of the top brass soon after taking over. Unprecedented in posture and boldness, Air Chief Marshal Hadi seemed to have drawn strength from his close relationship with President Joko Widodo.

Appointed in April 2017 to replace General Gatot Nurmantyo, ACM Hadi and the president have known each other since their time in Solo as commander of the Adi Sumarmo airbase and mayor of the city, respectively. Good personal ties between them continued up to ACM Hadi’s appointment as the president’s military secretary and more recently as the air force chief of staff before his latest elevation. Who is the new TNI commander?

Javanese Background

ACM Hadi will be the 17th commander of the TNI and only the second airman to reach the peak of the military organisation. He will lead the TNI during an especially uncertain period due mainly to the upcoming regional elections which require the TNI commander to be someone who is popular and well-liked.

At the same time, ACM Hadi will have to contend with reforming the TNI in light of the legacy of his controversial predecessor Gen. Gatot. There are hurdles that ACM Hadi will have to face as the new TNI commander, notably his own identity as an air force officer and one who resonates mainly with a Javanese cultural setting.

Both ACM Hadi and Gen. Gatot are Javanese by background. However, ACM Hadi expressly chooses to identify more with his Javanese cultural identity as compared to other Javanese officers who are at the peak of their careers such as Gen Gatot and the army’s Chief of Staff Gen. Mulyono. He had been seen demonstrating his rich knowledge of the tradition namely by speaking in polite Javanese (basa krama), showing Javanese courtesy (tatakrama) and even singing in Javanese (nembang).

ACM Hadi also has strong beliefs in Javanese philosophy that is derived primarily from the Javanese version of the Indian epic Mahabharata. During a television interview, he mentioned that his favourite character is Gatotkaca from the Mahabharata. The figure of Gatotkaca is also commonly associated with the Indonesian Air Force (TNI AU).

Different from Predecessor

ACM Hadi’s cultural expression stands in contrast with Gen. Gatot who frequently likes to use Islamic narratives. Gen. Gatot who is also Javanese by background often identifies himself more as an Indonesian Muslim rather than an abangan (traditional or syncretic Muslim) Javanese. Driven by political ambition, Gen. Gatot did not shy away from seeking support amongst Muslims who are members of established organisations (namely Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah).

Following the huge demonstrations against incumbent Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama that took place in Jakarta on November and December 2016, a number of Islamic organisations including the hardline GNPF-MUI threw their support behind Gen. Gatot.

It may seem odd that an army officer would draw support from a group like GNPF-MUI. Seen in the light of the historically amiable relations between the military and Islamic parties in Indonesia, Gen. Gatot’s courtship of Muslim allegiances fits what would be defined as the aspiration for ahlul quwwah or bearers of military might. Although Gen. Gatot will be retiring soon, his support from Muslim groups is not likely to drop.

A few decades ago, typical military officers like ACM Hadi who identify strongly with their Javanese roots would make up the majority in the TNI. Following the fall of President Suharto, political Islam has been on the ascendancy and has since spread into every sphere of society including the military. Peer pressure and sociocultural transformation resulted in the military shedding its past image as abangan by gradually becoming putihan (pious Muslim). ACM Hadi, nonetheless, is still seen as abangan. Such an image may work to his detriment.

His Javanese cultural background, however, is only one of his multiple identities. ACM Hadi is also a graduate of the class of 1986 of the Indonesian Air Force Academy. This partly explains his closeness with his deputy chief of staff, Air Vice Marshal Yuyu Sutisna, a graduate of the same batch.

In addition, foster family (keluarga asuh) relations is a prominent feature that binds groups within a traditional military family. ACM Hadi himself is a member of the “Sparrow” foster family that includes Air Marshal (Retd.) Sunaryo, former deputy chief of staff of TNI AU as well as Air Vice Marshal Dedy Permadi, currently serving as an assistant to the Armed Forces Commander.

Indonesian Air Force in Limelight

Coming from the air force (TNI AU) has its complications in an army-dominated organisation. The TNI AU was perhaps unfairly implicated with the notorious 30 September Movement (G30S) that was linked to the PKI or Communist Party of Indonesia. This has undoubtedly remained a sore point among the more pious servicemen.

For the Indonesian Army, the G30S Incident of 1965 was a blemish on its record. The army, in particular, was seen as the standard-bearer of Indonesian nationalism. The air force, in contrast, holds a less prestigious stature allegedly due to the historic involvement of some airmen in the Incident.

As such, the Indonesian air force carries a particular historical burden of surpassing the army in both prestige and loyalty to the nation. Communist fear-mongering unfortunately had not declined in post-Reform Indonesia. There is always a danger that political polarisation might cause disunity within the ranks of both the army and air force.

Furthermore, ACM Hadi will most definitely have to contend with the legacies left behind by his predecessors, namely Gen. Moeldoko and Gen. Gatot. These two generals had expanded the original scope of the TNI to include non-defence related matters such as corruption eradication, counter-terrorism, and the most recent “Bela Negara (Defend the State)” policies.

Lastly, ACM Hadi’s biggest challenge would be in tackling an alleged corruption related to the recent procurement of an Augusta Westland helicopter. A high-ranking air force officer had already been summarily dismissed due to his involvement. To make matters worse, the Indonesian corruption eradication commission (KPK) had decided to investigate ACM (retd.) Agus Supriyatna, who was ACM Hadi’s senior in the air force. For starters, this particular case will certainly test the new military commander’s professionalism and mettle.

*Satrio Dwicahyo Rahadi is a Research Associate with the Indonesia Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Several significant firsts have been achieved by the Japan Self-Defence Forces (JSDF) which has become more visibly engaged in ASEAN. On the other hand, Japan’s soft power potential also now encompasses its ability to provide joint solutions to shared challenges such as health and ageing, urbanisation and access to clean water supplies.

By Yee-Kuang Heng*

Wary of potential negative reactions to its military and security presence, Japan in the post-World War Two period has largely relied on private actors like shipping organisations in forming the Malacca Strait Council (MSC), or civilian agencies like the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Japan Coast Guard (JCG). These civilian agencies continue to be relied upon heavily, with several significant developments.

Japanese and Philippine coast guard boats held anti-piracy drills in the Philippines in 2015, the first such joint exercise since World War II. JCG training vessel Kojima has engaged in three-month long patrols and cooperation training programmes in the region. The Development Cooperation charter was revised in 2015 to enable use of aid more in line with Japan’s national interests. Tokyo’s long-standing support for anti-piracy continues. The Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP) celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2016, while the first-ever Global Coast Guard Summit was hosted by Tokyo in September 2017.

Series of Firsts for JSDF

Rather than a big-bang approach, one can identify an incremental evolution of Japan-ASEAN defence exchanges from the early 1990s to the growing visibility of JSDF today in Southeast Asia. There have indeed been several historically and strategically significant ‘firsts’ regarding the JSDF. This incremental and carefully considered approach remains characteristic of Japanese engagement with the region.

The declaratory position of the Shinzo Abe administration has been clear and consistent: it emphasises Japan’s desire to play a more proactive and visible role in the region. Prime Minister Abe declared to the Australian parliament in 2014: “So far as national security goes, Japan has been self-absorbed for a long time…We want to make Japan a country that will work to build an international order that upholds the rule of law, in order to make vast seas from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian, and those skies, open and free…”

Japan’s first-ever National Security Strategy depicted the country as a ‘guardian of the rule of law’ to “maintain and develop open and stable seas. The so-called Abe Doctrine unveiled by PM Abe himself at the 2014 Shangri-La Dialogue stated that “Japan will offer its utmost support for the efforts of the countries of ASEAN as they work to ensure the security of the seas and the skies, and thoroughly maintain freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight”.

The Vientiane Vision 2016 presented in Laos for the first time formalised principles and focus areas for Tokyo’s ongoing and future defence cooperation with ASEAN.

In June 2017, the Izumo, Japan’s largest naval vessel since World War Two, conducted a high-profile cruise through Southeast Asia. This included a stop-over in Singapore and other port calls in the region before joining Malabar naval exercises in the Indian Ocean. In Singapore, military officers from ASEAN countries were invited on board and briefed on the ship’s capabilities.

Defence Cooperation

Tokyo also signed a defence equipment transfer agreement with Manila in February 2016, its first-ever with a Southeast Asian nation. Five retired Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force (JMSDF) TC-90 maritime surveillance airplanes have also been leased to the Philippines Navy. There are reports of Japan planning to transfer spare parts for Philippines UH-1 Huey helicopters.

In other landmark firsts, in May 2015, Japan-Philippines joint naval exercises were held in the South China Sea for the first time. JS Harusame and Amigri trained with Ramon Alcaraz on “unplanned encounters at sea”. In April 2016 submarine Oyashio and destroyers Ariake and Setagiri arrived in Subic Bay, Philippines for a training exercise, the first appearance by a JMSDF submarine in 15 years.

The same two destroyers also sailed into strategic Camh Ranh Bay in Vietnam for the first time since World War Two. Amphibious vessel JS Kunisaki became the primary command platform for the US-led multinational Pacific Partnership humanitarian assistance mission in 2014, the first time a non-US vessel has assumed command.

JSDF also sent its largest continent of military personnel overseas since WW2 in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan that ravaged the Philippines in 2013. This included about 1000 SDF members, and major vessels such as helicopter destroyer JS Ise, C130 transport and KC 767 refuelling tankers. P3C Orion maritime surveillance aircraft were also despatched in the hunt for missing flight MH370 in 2014.

Expanding Soft Power Presence

Alongside the growing JSDF presence, Japan’s soft power influence is also sizable. Singapore hosts the first-ever Japan Creative Centre in Southeast Asia, described as a soft power initiative for Japan to expand its influence and attraction in the region through its pop culture and traditional arts and crafts. The annual Anime Festival held in Singapore and Jakarta has become one of the largest outside Japan.

In 2016, Isetan Mitsukoshi opened a new flagship store in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia based on the government-sponsored Cool Japan concept to offer high-quality products and lifestyle trends from Japan. Besides cultural attraction, Japan’s normative soft power potential is expanding towards its ability to address shared challenges with ASEAN.

The ASEAN-Japan Active Ageing Regional Conference has been held annually since 2014. Singapore Health Minister Mr Gan Kim Yong travelled to Japan in 2013 to learn about Japanese experiences in ageing. Under the Japan-ASEAN Health Initiative, Tokyo helps train 8,000 persons over five years to promote health lifestyles and disease prevention.

As ASEAN urbanises, there is room for cooperation to address shared challenges arising from urbanisation. Tokyo Suido Services (now TSS Tokyo Water) contracted with Bangkok to maintain its water supply system, especially detecting and fixing leaks. JICA is assisting Metro Manila subway projects to alleviate traffic congestion.

Limitations

ASEAN has so far, by and large, not reacted negatively to the increasingly visible JSDF presence, but several obstacles remain. PM Abe’s 2013 visit to the Yasukuni Shrine drew negative responses from otherwise close partners in ASEAN. Singapore’s Foreign Ministry stated that “these visits reopen old wounds and damage attempts to build trust and confidence in the region”.

Furthermore, interest in Japanese ageing initiatives or waste water technologies does not necessarily mean alignment with Japan’s broader diplomatic and security agenda. These resources still remain to be translated into concrete desired outcomes.

*Yee-Kuang Heng PhD is Professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Tokyo, Japan. He contributed this specially to RSIS Commentary based on a seminar he presented recently at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

By KP Fabian*

On 7 December, US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; ordered the US Department of State to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; and unleashed a diplomatic storm with the potential for disaster, not exactly unforeseeable. The US’ diplomatic isolation is almost complete.

Trump’s action was shocking, but not surprising. The decision fits in with his CEO style of functioning and was taken despite opposition from the US’ Department of State and Department of Defense. Trump knew well that there would be strong opposition, even condemnation, from the Muslim world and that Europe will not stand by him. However, Trump is not a somnambulist. He might have anticipated the storm and decided to face it and carry out his promise as candidate. But, it is too early to say when the embassy will be physically relocated to Jerusalem.

Trump’s most resolute defender so far, is US Permanent Representative to UN, Nikki Haley, and not US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Speaking at the emergency session of the UN Security Council where the US and Israel were ‘isolated’, Haley asserted that the decision was meant to advance the cause of peace; that the US has credibility with both the Israelis and the Palestinians; and that any peace agreement “would be signed on the White House lawns.” It is difficult to find any good reason to believe that any peace agreement would be delivered with Trump acting as the chief obstetrician and his son-in-law Jared Kushner as his assistant. Trump, with his decision, has aborted the pregnancy if there ever was one.

Saudi Arabia, the first country Trump visited as president, characterised his decision as “unjustified and irresponsible;” warned of the “dangerous consequences;” and asked him to reverse his decision. The Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon have called for an uprising. Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas saw it as “the greatest crime.” The Arab League declared that Trump’s decision was a “dangerous violation of international law” that had “no legal impact” and was “void.” The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) met in Istanbul and has called for the declaration of East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

Declarations and statements do not do much harm. But, protests, peaceful or violent, can have a larger impact than words. The US Embassy in Amman advised parents not to send children to school and embassies in the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region and elsewhere have issued security warnings to their nationals.

The US’ isolation is near total. The US had to veto Egypt’s draft resolution as the rest of the UN Security Council (UNSC) voted for it despite explicit threats from Haley. The threats did not work at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) either. The UNGA adopted a resolution by 128 to 9 with 35 abstentions and 21 absences a resolution expressing “deep regret” over recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem and stressing that the Holy City’s “final status issue is to be resolved through negotiations in line with relevant UN resolutions.” India rightly voted for the UNGA resolution, correctly ignoring Haley’s threats. The US might sulk for a while, but it cannot ‘punish’ 128 countries.

The key question is whether there will be large scale violence tantamount to a war. Israel might provoke a war for its own reasons, or its retaliation to rockets from Lebanon or Gaza might start a war. Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah has threatened that after winding down operations in Syria, it would take on Israel. In 2006, they sent a few rockets to Israel, which retaliated, causing the deaths of 1200 Lebanese and 120 Israeli soldiers.

Israeli intelligence has claimed that the Hezbollah has 150,000 rockets including some long-range ones made in Iran. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) has adopted a doctrine of periodically fighting the Hezbollah — ‘mowing the lawn when the grass has grown too tall’. Israel is seriously worried that Iran might get a land bridge to send weapons to the Hezbollah through Iraq and Syria. Therefore, one cannot rule out hostilities on the Israel/Lebanon front. Similarly, to force Trump’s hands to transfer the embassy, Netanyahu might start a war on the Hamas.

President Mahmoud Abbas has stated that the US no longer can be an impartial mediator. The assumption is that till Trump took this decision, US was one. This is a widespread but fallacious assumption. A mediator should be willing and able to mediate. Even if one assumes that the US is willing, the US is not able. The US is Israel’s protector, diplomatically and militarily. International Relations theory teaches that generally, the protector has much influence over the protected. As ably argued out by John J. Mearsheimer in his work, The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy, it is Israel that virtually controls US policy towards the rather volatile region. Israel does not want a Palestinian state. It will give nothing more than municipal autonomy. If the Palestinians begin an Intifada, or the Hezbollah or the Hamas begin sending rockets to Israel, the IDF will retaliate with disproportionate force and the rest of the world might do nothing to stop the carnage.

It is customary to blame the Arabs in general and the Palestinians specifically for their sad plight. But, that is a wrong conclusion. The Palestinians are more sinned against than sinning. President Trump has unwittingly made it easier for the Islamic State to find new recruits. It is painfully clear that one now lives in a world with decreasing respect and increasing contempt for international law.

* KP Fabian
Former Indian diplomat, & Professor, Indian Society of International Law

Signed on Tuesday at Moncloa Palace by Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, the presidents of the business organisations CEOE and CEPME, and the general secretaries of the trade unions UGT and CCOO, the agreement represents a 4% increase to the national minimum wage for 2018 and the first step towards reaching the target of 850 euros in 2020.

The agreement seeks to help “the positive effects of the economic recovery reach everyone,” said Rajoy. “We don’t want anyone to be left behind and that’s why we’re going to improve wages, starting with the lowest.”

According to estimates, 530,000 people will benefit from this 4% increase to the national minimum wage in 2018, explained Rajoy, for whom this agreement successfully combines “generosity and responsibility.”

Rajoy explained that the agreement represents “another step” towards fulfilling the pact reached between the Government of Spain and the Socialist Party to raise the national minimum wage by 8%. The target is to reach 850 euros, almost 12,000 euros a year in 14 payments, by 2020.

This goal, said Rajoy, is “reasonable and sustainable” because the national minimum wage increase will be maintained provided that economic growth stands at no less than 2.5% and at least 450,000 jobs are created per year. Rajoy said he believes that these conditions are “very prudent, because they are below what we are achieving already”. In this regard, he recalled that, since 2014, “we have posted growth in excess of 3% and have created over half a million jobs per year.”

Rajoy said that there are still over three million Spaniards seeking work and “that should spur us all on – the national government, the regional governments, the local council authorities, the social stakeholders and companies – to keep working together.”

Rajoy recalled that, during the investiture debate, he made a commitment to bring new momentum to social dialogue and engagement in order to “respond to the situation in which those with the greatest difficulty joining the labour market find themselves: the long-term unemployed, young people and those on the lowest salaries.”

Since then and in collaboration with workers’ and business representatives, whom he thanked for their commitment to this issue, “social dialogue has enabled us to improve the activation for work programme and the extraordinary extension until April of the Prepara Plan,” stressed Rajoy.

He went on to add that this positive atmosphere of agreements has also led to approval for the Royal Decree-Law on Urgent Measures for the Promotion of the National Youth Guarantee System. These measures enabled 2017 to conclude with over one million young people registered on the Youth Guarantee programme, of which 40% have found work.

Do you believe that there’s a business case for CSR (corporate social responsibility)? And do you believe that our market economy system is essentially fair?

If you answered yes to both of these questions, you have a fairly typical executive mindset, according to research by IESE Sebastian Hafenbrädl and David Waeger of Wilfred Laurier University. And these findings have implications on the take-up, or lack of take-up, of CSR initiatives.

Academics and activists have long thought that if executives can be convinced that CSR is beneficial — not just socially but also to a company’s bottom line — that they will be quick to embrace and invest in such activities.

It’s hard to conclusively prove the relationship between social good and economic profit, but, as the research shows, executives do generally believe there is a business case for CSR. So why don’t we live in a more social-minded world? Hafenbrädl’s research into the intersection between psychology and economics examines the force — system justification — that neutralizes the effect of the belief in the business case.

Is our Economic System Fair?

CSR, the authors argue, is often less about logic and economics than it is about worldview and ideology. In a series of tests, they examined executives’ and students’ beliefs re: the modern economic system, and measured them against their understanding of the business case for CSR, and also against CSR decisions.

Studies show that most of us justify and idealize the system, or social arrangements, under which we live, at least to some degree. Those who view the market economic system as more inevitable or inescapable can be categorized as believing in “fair market ideology” — i.e., seeing the market economic system as fair, legitimate and justified. The authors link educational background to fair market ideology. Specifically, they find that educational backgrounds in business, economics and law — common backgrounds among high level executives — are more likely to have more exposure to the market system, less exposure to alternatives, and be more likely to believe in fair market ideology.

The research findings hinged on this point are intriguing. Since the current business environment has companies striving for economic benefits, and, at the same time, producing many CSR initiatives, those who believe in the general fairness of the current system also tend to believe that CSR makes economic sense — and yet they aren’t any more likely to engage in meaningful CSR initiatives themselves.

The key to this is found in the psychological justification of the current system which, ultimately, is motivated by a desire for stability. You see, justifying the status quo has also been shown to reduce the use of both morals and emotions in dealing with business decisions. Both guilt and moral outrage were shown to take a hit in individuals with high system justification. Moral outrage, in particular, is key to initiatives to help the more disadvantaged.

“It is thus not so much their difficulty believing in the business case, but rather their lack of moral emotions that prevents executives with an instrumental view from investing in CSR,” the authors conclude.

So where does that leave CSR? Possibly in need of a new marketing campaign.

Methodology, Very Briefly

A series of four studies were designed to test executives’ and students’ beliefs and CSR engagements. The belief in the business case for CSR was measured using an innovative prediction game. The studies showed how the belief in fair market ideology, belief in the business case for CSR, educational background, moral outrage and CSR engagement were related to each other in complex ways.

More Americans than Europeans oppose redistribution and government intervention in areas such as healthcare, gun control, the minimum wage, and pollution control. This column argues that the longstanding American culture of ‘rugged individualism’ is rooted in the history of the frontier. Even accounting for individual-level support for the Republican Party, areas in the US with greater historical frontier experience still exhibit greater opposition to redistribution and government regulation today.

By Samuel Bazzi, Martin Fiszbein and Mesay Gebresilasse*

A large share of American voters strongly oppose redistribution. They would prefer to cut welfare spending rather than increase taxes. Despite a sharp increase in income and wealth inequality in the last 40 years, this opposition to redistribution has remained stable (Ashok et al. 2015). There is “a world of difference” between redistributive policies and preferences in the US and Europe (Alesina and Glaeser 2004). This has been an important theme in political economy (Alesina et al. 2016, Benabou and Tirole 2006, Picketty 1995).

In a recent article in the New York Times, David Brooks (2017) asked why American voters support policies against their economic self-interest:

“… my stab at an answer would begin in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many Trump supporters live in places that once were on the edge of the American frontier. Life on that frontier was fragile, perilous, lonely and remorseless…discipline and self-reliance were essential…In their view, government doesn’t reinforce the vigorous virtues. On the contrary, it undermines them.”

We agree. We argue that opposition to redistribution in the US is part of a culture of ‘rugged individualism’ rooted in the history of the frontier.

In a recent paper (Bazzi et al. 2017), we investigate the thesis that the American frontier fostered individualism. This was first advanced by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893. We examine this frontier thesis at the subnational level, and identify its long-run implications for culture and politics. Historically, frontier locations have had distinctive populations and greater individualism. Many decades after the closing of the frontier, those demographic differences had disappeared, but the cultural legacy persists. Locations that spent more time on the frontier historically exhibit more pervasive individualism and opposition to redistribution today.

The frontier in American history

The early history of the US was one of rapid westward expansion. Until the late 19th century, its territory contained vast tracts of open land. The frontier that divided settled and unsettled locations strongly influenced American culture, fostering the development of rugged individualism – a distinctive combination of individualism and opposition to government intervention.

In our research, we use historical data and modern GIS methods to locate the frontier and track its evolution over time. Following historical sources, we define the frontier line at each time as the line at which population density dropped below two people per square mile. We then define frontier locations as those that were within 100 km of the frontier line, with population density below six people per square mile.

Figure 1 Population density and the frontier line, 1790 and 1890

Frontier populations had distinctive characteristics. They were disproportionately male, prime-age, illiterate, and foreign-born. They also had much higher levels of individualism, as captured by the prevalence of uncommon names for their children. The idea behind this creative measure proposed by Twenge et al. (2010) is that individualistic types usually avoid common names (fewer Johns and Sarahs), which reflect a desire to fit in, and instead choose infrequent names (more Rufuses and Lucindas), reflecting a desire to stand out. This measure fits the social psychological definition of individualism well: the primacy of self-interest, the emphasis on self-reliance, and the regulation of behaviour by personal attitudes rather than social norms.

Differences in demographics and individualism are associated with both defining features of the frontier – low density and isolation. But the frontier was not just statistically different. It was a qualitatively distinct type of society. This can be seen, for example, in the structural breaks in sex ratios and infrequent names at low levels of population density.

Figure 2 Skewed sex ratios and individualism on the frontier

The frontier presented a unique set of opportunities and challenges. The abundance of land and other natural resources offered many opportunities for profit if they were properly exploited. On the other hand, frontier settlers had to rely on themselves. They often faced multiple threats, including droughts, blizzards, plagues, crop failures, attacks from wild animals, and conflict with Native Americans.

These conditions fostered the distinctive cultural features of the frontier through three key forces:

• Selective migration: Frontier locations attracted people willing and able to thrive in harsh conditions. We are able to show that, among native-born Americans, the individualistic types – proxied by infrequent names for their children – were more likely to migrate to the frontier.
• Adaptive advantage of individualism: Self-reliance was important for protection and to improve living conditions. The innovativeness associated with individualism was useful in coping with novel and uncertain conditions. Individualistic types had greater socioeconomic status and endurance on the frontier.
• Preferences against redistribution: Land abundance and remoteness created the expectation of upward mobility through effort. This would nurture hostility to redistribution. The frontier had relatively low land inequality, high rates of wealth accumulation and high social mobility.

Frontier locations attracted individualistic types, and, in turn, the frontier’s unique natural and social conditions nurtured individualism. The forces were complementary and mutually reinforcing. For instance, a greater adaptive advantage of individualism on the frontier would induce more selective migration of individualists. On the other hand, selective migration of individualists to the frontier would increase the advantage of this trait because, in a society of individualists, collectivistic norms have limited value.

The long-run effects of the frontier on culture and politics

The high levels of individualism on the frontier could have dissipated, but they did not. Rather, frontier experience has shaped the long-run evolution of culture. The early settlers in frontier locations established the conditions for cultural evolution. In the presence of multiple equilibria and path dependence, this formative period was a critical juncture, and frontier experience left a lasting legacy.

To investigate the long-run effects of frontier experience, we measure the number of years that each US location spent on the frontier between 1790 and 1890. The duration of exposure to frontier conditions determined the scope for the three mechanisms through which rugged individualism thrived on the frontier. In other words, total frontier experience determined the intensity of the imprint of frontier culture in each location.

Figure 3 Total frontier experience

We find that total frontier experience led to persistently higher levels of rugged individualism. Counties that spent a longer time on the frontier still display:

• Higher individualism several generations after the closing of the frontier, reflected in infrequent names in the mid-20th century, and survey responses in the early 1990s.
• Stronger opposition to redistribution and public spending, measured through various surveys capturing different notions of government intervention during the last 20 years.
• Lower property taxes in 2010, a policy outcome that is key to funding local public goods.
• Stronger support for the Republican party in presidential elections since 2000.
• Stronger opposition to contentious government regulations; in this case, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), increases in the minimum wage, a ban on assault rifles, and regulation of CO2 emissions.

Figure 4 Total frontier experience and Republican votes

Republican Party support can be used as a rough proxy for opposition to redistribution and big government. These themes are prominent across the party’s policy platforms today, and have become increasingly salient due to increased political polarisation. This may explain why the association between historical frontier experience and contemporary Republican support increases in the 2000s, with a particularly large frontier legacy in the 2016 election.

The four contentious government regulations we consider offer further insight into the cultural legacy of the frontier. These four policies create partisan debate today, and can be linked to historical features of frontier life. For example, a strong belief in upward mobility through effort rather than luck might generate opposition to higher minimum wages and the ACA. Similarly, the need for self-defence would inspire opposition to gun regulation, and notions of ‘manifest destiny’ might lead to opposition to pollution regulation. Interestingly, even accounting for individual-level support for the Republican Party, those in areas with greater historical frontier experience still have greater opposition to these regulations.

“More and more American”

The comparison between US and European attitudes to individualism and opposition to tax redistribution has attracted a lot of attention. Our research establishes the significance of the frontier in American history. In 1893, F J Turner noted that initially “the Atlantic coast…was the frontier of Europe,” but “the advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement away from the influence of Europe,” and ultimately “moving westward, the frontier became more and more American.”

The deep roots of opposition to redistribution in the US might explain its persistence, even in the face of rising inequality. Opposition to government intervention and growing political polarisation may reflect not only a reaction to current events, but also long-standing attitudes that are a part of American culture.

*About the authors:
Samuel Bazzi, Assistant Professor, Boston University

Martin Fiszbein, Assistant Professor of Economics, Boston University

Mesay Gebresilasse, PhD Candidate in Economics, Boston University

References:
Alesina, A, E Glaeser (2004), Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference, Oxford University Press.

Alesina, A, S Stantcheva, S, E Teso (2017), “Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution”, NBER working paper 21529.

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By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh*

Predicting the direction that US-Iranian relations will take should be anchored in analyzing four major factors. The first is linked to the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The second is Iran’s regional policies. The third is the White House’s policy toward Iran and Tehran’s toward the US. The fourth is the stance of the US Congress toward Iran.

It is possible that the Trump administration will pull out of the nuclear deal if the other signatories decline to hold Tehran accountable for its violations and strengthen the terms of the JCPOA.

The Trump administration has explained how Tehran is committing “multiple violations” of the deal, such as twice exceeding the amount of heavy water (used in nuclear reactors) that it is allowed to have, refusing to permit international inspectors to check military facilities, and trying to illicitly obtain nuclear technology, according to intelligence reports.

US abandonment of the JCPOA does not void all the sanctions relief that Iran is receiving as long as other signatories remain in the deal. Tehran will not walk away because it is a major beneficiary, gaining billions of dollars in revenue due to the lifting of four rounds of UN economic sanctions.

The deal also grants Tehran global legitimacy and potential trade agreements with European countries, which are pressuring the West to turn a blind eye to Tehran’s interventionist regional policies and human rights abuses. Iran’s regional policies will most likely remain hostile to the national security interests of the US and its allies.

Iran’s military budget has increased drastically, allowing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Quds Force to further strengthen their regional stranglehold and to fund, arm and train militias, proxies and terrorist groups. The Trump administration will likely try to counter Iran’s interventionist policies via soft and hard power. It has bipartisan support from Congress when it comes to confronting Tehran and its militias.

This will likely usher in new rounds of sanctions, the most significant of which could be penalizing non-American firms that conduct business with Iran. To counter Tehran successfully, the Trump administration should lead a coalition of Arab states and try to persuade European allies to join it.

US-Iranian relations seem set on a path of escalating tensions. But Tehran will continue to harm US national interests covertly and indirectly, rather than via direct warfare that the ruling mullahs know they would lose badly, endangering their hold on power, particularly considering the widespread domestic discontent they face.

• Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. He is a leading expert on Iran and US foreign policy, a businessman and president of the International American Council. He serves on the boards of the Harvard International Review, the Harvard International Relations Council and the US-Middle East Chamber for Commerce and Business. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh

Social media posts from the Ukrainian battlefields have been invaluable in enabling prosecutors in Serbia and Montenegro to prove the illegal military action of their nationals in Ukraine.

By Marija Ristic

Marko Barovic was always on the wrong side of the law. Growing up in Montenegro, since his teenage years he always hung out with the bad guys.

Not even 30, he already has a conviction for robbery and attempted murder. Now, since April this year, he also has a conviction for taking part in a foreign military conflict, in Ukraine, which is forbidden by law in Montenegro.

Barovic is now serving his three year and six months long prison sentence.

In 2014, as warfare erupted in Ukraine between pro–Russian separatists in the east and Ukrainian fighters, many Russian sympathisers from the Balkans, mostly from Serbia, or Serbs from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, joined pro-Russian paramilitary units operating in eastern Ukraine, mainly in the Donetsk area.

According to the court records, Barovic travelled in December 2014 to Russia, and then, just before New Year, to eastern Ukraine, where he got a military card from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.

According to the same military card, he served there initially as a driver and later as a sniper. In October 2015, however, he was arrested on the border between Ukraine and Russia.

Montenegrin prosecutors say the key proof that he fought in Ukraine and did not just drive a truck, as he claimed initially at the trial, was his Facebook profile.

He often posted photos from the battlefield of himself in uniform and holding a rifle. The posts and photos, which were public, were admitted as evidence before the court in Podgorica.

After being confronted with the evidence, Barovic confessed about he had really spent his time in Ukraine. However, he still defended his conduct. He said he had gone there to “help people for moral and patriotic reasons.”

Serbs flocked to help Russian ‘brothers’

The verdict in April this year against Barovic was a landmark conviction in Montenegro, following the adoption of a law in 2015 that classified fighting on foreign territory as a crime.

In neighbouring Serbia, however, where the number of those who fought in Ukraine as foreign fighters was much higher, there have been no such trials, but only plea agreements.

Around 24 fighters who returned to Serbia last year from Ukraine admitted guilt after the prosecution produced evidence of their presence on battlefields.

Investigators mostly gathered this evidence also by examining their social media profiles.

Plea agreements are not public documents in Serbia, but BIRN sources from prosecutors’ offices say YouTube videos and Facebook photos proved the key evidence in most cases.

The most prominent case was against Radomir Pocuca, a former special police spokesperson, who over several months of fighting in Ukraine posted almost daily videos, photos and other entries related to his time in Donetsk.

Pocuca also claimed that he went to help Serbia’s “Russian brothers” for patriotic reasons, mainly as payback for Russia’s support for Serbia in the dispute over the former province of Kosovo [which declared independence in 2008 – which Serbia has vowed never to recognise].

Serbs also remember that Russian fighters volunteered for the Serbian side in the 1992-5 war in Bosnia, which pitched Serbs against a combination of Croats and Bosniaks [Bosnian Muslims].

For many of the Serbian fighters in Ukraine, this was not their first war.

Ranko Momic, who is believed to be still in Ukraine, escaped trial for alleged war crimes in Kosovo and fled to Donetsk in 2015.

A Bosnian Serb, he fought also in the war on the Serbian side in Croatia in the early 1990s, before taking part in the war in Bosnia, serving in so-called “special” units, such as the notorious Serbian Volunteer Guard.

Even during the 1990s, before mobile phones or social media appeared, these fighters enjoyed being photographed or filmed during their time in battle, and local and international courts used such records to secure convictions for war crimes.

Among the other better-known Serbian fighters in Ukraine with experience in the Bosnian war is Dejan Beric.

He was recently spotted again in the Donetsk area with a new group of Serbian snipers.

Beric was brought up in Putinci, a village in northern Serbia, where he ran a business making doors and windows in the nearby town of Indjija before closing his business in 2014 and leaving for Ukraine.

Many Balkan volunteers say they joined the rebels out of a deep sympathy with Russia and a sense of Slavic Orthodox Christian brotherhood.

But Beric said that he also went there after being personally invited by two Russian volunteers who previously fought in the Balkan wars in the 1990s.

“They called on me to repay the debt, in terms of moral and human spirit,” Beric told BIRN earlier this year in an interview.

Contrary to some accounts published on the internet, Beric said that becoming a volunteer is simple; would-be fighters need only to catch a plane to Rostov-on-Don in Russia and then take a bus across the border to rebel-held Donetsk or Lugansk in Ukraine.

“I came from Sochi, where I worked, via Odessa to Sevastopol, where I became a member of the ‘Defence of Sevastopol’… Then I went to Donbass,” Beric recalled. 

Beric also regularly updates his Facebook and YouTube account with stories from the battlefield.

Many fighters remain on the run

Social media profiles did not only help the authorities in Serbia and Montenegro to secure convictions; Ukrainian authorities have also used them to issue arrest warrants against the remaining Serbian fighters in the country.

Ukraine’s security service has issued arrest warrants against six Serbian mercenaries, while Kiev authorities maintain that almost 300 Serbs remain fighting in various rebel areas.

The six Serbs, according to Ukraine’s security service, fought in Ukraine in 2014 and then in Syria – another conflict zone in which Russia is deeply involved – in 2015.

All six allegedly belong to Wagner, a military company registered in Argentina, which the Ukrainian security service says serves as a paramilitary unit tasked with fighting for Russian interests across the world.

Among the six fighters wanted by Ukraine is Davor Savicic “Elvis”, a Bosnian Serb, who claims to live in Russia and work on a construction site.

Savicic was reportedly highly appreciated by his superiors at Wagner due to his extensive battlefield experience, and given the codename “Wolf” to reflect his strength and courage in combat.

While these claims could not be independently verified, Savicic’s Facebook profile picture is also, by coincidence, a wolf.

Bosnian police told BIRN that they believe that the mercenaries have a meeting point in Moscow, and that most of them are registered as temporary workers in Russia in order to avoid prosecution at home as foreign fighters.

Police records suggest that Savicic belonged earlier to various Bosnian Serb units, and spent the longest time fighting alongside the so-called Tigers, a notorious paramilitary unit led by Zeljko Raznatovic “Arkan”.

He who was killed in 2000 before he could face trial for war crimes by the international criminal tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY, in the Hague.

In 2001, the Montenegrin prosecution accused Savicic and three others of planting a bomb in the house of Dusko Martinovic in the town of Berane, which killed six people. Martinovic allegedly owed them around 15,000 euros.

Savicic was initially jailed for 20 years in absentia in Montenegro, but an appeal court ruled later that there was not enough evidence to prove that he was responsible for the bombing.

From 2001 until his acquittal in 2014, Montenegrin police tracked him from Bosnia to France, Spain and Russia, but never managed to arrest him.

The same year Savicic was cleared, photographs appeared of him on the frontline in Lugansk, after he and an estimated 50 other Serbian fighters brought their battlefield skills to the aid of pro-Russian rebels against the Ukrainian government, according to the Bosnian prosecution.

Russia appears to have deployed them using similar methods to those Serbia used in the Bosnian war, when Serbia denied any direct involvement in the conflict and insisted all the Serbian citizens who took part in it were volunteers. Russia has done the same in Ukraine.

Wagner fighters have also fought for Russia’s Syrian ally, President Assad, and although many of them have denied the reports, news from Syria suggests that a number of them lost their lives fighting Assad’s jihadist foes.

Among them was Dimitrije Sasa Jojic whose death aged 25 was announced this June by the Serbian football fan group Firma, to which Jojic belonged before taking the path of a foreign mercenary.

Jojic also initially fought in Ukraine and had been active on social media there, posing in uniform and with other fighters.

It is believed that he was part of the same group from Wagner that went to Syria. Jojic was buried in Moscow this summer.

Other Serbian fighters, allegedly members of Wagner, and also wanted by Ukraine are believed to be stationed in Russia, travelling occasionally to rebel-held areas of Ukraine. All of them have Serbian or Bosnian passports.

Unlike Barovic or Pocuca – who were extradited from Ukraine and Russia – the Wagner men are seen as far more important for both sides in the conflict.

They are important for Russia, as their methods shed light on the hidden ways Russia exports fighters to the conflict zone.

They are equally important for Ukraine, which hold them responsible for numerous attacks that killed hundreds of people.

In consequence, as security experts have told BIRN, their extradition and arrest is highly unlikely.

To avoid seeing the Western Balkans “wooed” or even seduced by China, Russia, or radical Islam, it’s critical for the EU to move forward with accession talks with the Western Balkan states as soon as possible. That’s according to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, who made the remarks at a conference organized by Friends of Europe earlier this month in Brussels.

The accession process for the Western Balkans had been largely shunted aside for roughly a decade, until EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker mentioned the issue as a priority in his State of the Union address this autumn. Now, EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn is saying that 2018 will be a “crucial” one in the accession process for the region. So far, Montenegro and Serbia are currently in accession discussions with the EU, having most recently opened up two new chapters amid expectations that they can join the bloc by 2025. Albania and Macedonia are candidates, while Bosnia and Kosovo have yet to begin serious membership talks.

But at a time when the EU is still nursing a serious hangover over its decision to let in a number of other member states – Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia – too early, the logic put forward by Rama simply doesn’t fly.

Over the past few months alone, there have been a series of worrying developments in the EU’s eastern and south-eastern fringes that has caused concern among Brussels and national lawmakers about the health of the bloc’s border states – and the implications for the union as a whole.

In the most recent report on the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM), which was set up to assess progress in Romania and Bulgaria following their accession in 2007, auditors noted signs of serious backsliding in terms of key judicial and anti-corruption reforms. Most recently, in Romania, lawmakers approved new legislation that critics say will cripple the independence of the justice system and efforts to curb cronyism in one of the EU’s most corrupt member states. The move has prompted seven EU members to urge Romania’s ruling Social Democratic party to avoid the action, and has raised concerns that the European Commission might invoke article 7 of the EU treaty against Bucharest, as it did against Poland this month. Given such developments, the EU Court of Auditors’ 2016 report that both Romania and Bulgaria joined the bloc too early now looks highly prescient.

One of the few Balkan states in the EU, Croatia, has also seen its fair share of growing pains since it joined the bloc in 2013, as it continues to struggle with an unstable government and cronyism. In Transparency International’s most recent Corruption Perceptions Index, Croatia and Hungary won the dubious prize of being described as the “new face of corruption in Europe,” having dropped significantly in the rankings from the previous year. The survey noted crackdowns on civil society and independent institutions as the main reason for the drop. The trend has caused concerns in Brussels that such issues will stir up corruption in other EU member states, set a bad example, and stoke tensions in the bloc’s fringes.

Clearly, joining the EU is no panacea when it comes to solving such issues. Nor does it guard against warming up to foreign powers. Last month, for instance, Beijing co-hosted the sixth China-Central and Eastern Europe summit in Budapest, a platform for China to build its influence and promote its investments in the region. So far, China has invested roughly $8 billion in the region and last year, trade between the Middle Kingdom and the CEE states rose 11% from 2011.

Last year bilateral trade between China and Central and Eastern European countries was up 11 percent from 2011.

Unfortunately, in the Balkans, efforts to play the EU against outside rivals is a time-honoured tradition, and one that has worked well for other states. Montenegro, in particular, has long exploited rivalries between Brussels and Moscow in an effort to have its way, and deflect what would otherwise be sharp scrutiny of its own record when it comes to mismanaged governance, rampant corruption, and organized crime.

Following general elections in October 2016, Montenegro’s longstanding prime minister, Milo Djukanovic, resigned from his position after suggesting that Russia had interfered in the election results. Yet Moscow has denied the allegations and the opposition has charged that they are fabrications intended to justify the ruling Democratic Socialist’s party continued grip in power.

Indeed, even though Djukanovic has stepped down, he is widely described as maintaining a steady presence in the political scene and the levers of government and business in the country, even suggesting that he will run in presidential elections in 2018. Meanwhile, Montenegro’s opposition has only recently suggested that it will return to parliament after having participated in a nearly yearlong boycott. Among other accusations, they charge that the elections of 2016 were fraudulent and that Djukanovic has been polarizing the country in an effort to maintain a grip on power.

Indeed, for Djukanovic, portraying his party as the only bulwark between the EU and Russia has been a profitable strategy, one that has allowed him to successfully distract from more unseemly issues – not least rampant crime – for decades.

At the very least, the difficulties that Brussels is having with some of the most recent joiners to the bloc, from Romania to Croatia, means that they are more likely than not to ignore Albania’s decisive rhetoric and take a harder look at key accession criteria before other Balkan states can come into the fold. For the health of the EU as a whole, ignoring threats from the like of Rama will be more critical than ever.

There is a great deal of talk about reform and reinterpretation of Islam to make it relevant and responsive to modern context. For decades there have been rumblings, both muted and vocal, stressing this need. There have also been consistent attempts to make the clerics recognize the non-clerical perspective in the formulation of an Islamic response to the multiple transitions of our times. It is now being universally acknowledged in Islamic circles that Liberal and progressive interpretations which can answer our doubts and confusions need nuanced readings of the Qur’an and Sunna in the light of multiple perspectives.

Reform is an unruly horse that can go berserk unless it is properly saddled. In several societies it is the hardliners that have served as vigilantes and sentinels of their faith. Their resistance helps in winnowing the weaker strands in the process of formulation of new trajectories of thought and discourse. The unruly forces can acquire Kafkaesque proportions and demonize the entire discourse. Remember, Akbar is considered a great liberal king. But we must not forget that he was actually trying to subvert Islam by reinventing the faith.

It was Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindī, the great mystic and theologian, who was largely responsible for the reassertion and revival in India of orthodox Sunnite Islam as a reaction against the syncretistic religious tendencies prevalent of the time, that were threatening to usurp authentic Islam. Persecuted in his times, he is today revered as a saint and savior of Islam.

Darah Shikoh was similarly a great liberal of his times, but don’t we know that some of his writings were truly blasphemous. Both Akbar and Dara Shikoh were truly secular individuals, but their creative liberty eroded some of Islam’s most cherished values and traditions.

Hardliners have their own unique place in all discourses and their presence helps in reining unchecked and anarchic impulses. The most sagely advice for the marquee thinkers and promoters of new paradigms is: No matter who you are, how experienced you are, and how knowledgeable you think you are, always delay judgment. Give others the privilege to explain themselves. What you see may not be the reality. Never conclude for others. This is why we should never focus only on the surface and judge others without understanding them first.

We must remember that traditional scholarship has emerged out of the labors of scholars who lived a life of hermits over several decades hibernating away from the daily mart of economic and social strife. Pontification may be easy, but we must make sure that we are not blurring the wafer thin line that demarcates faith and heresy.

The process of reformation has to be gradual; it cannot be seismic and convulsive, as most radicalists tend to believe and attempt. Sadly several Islamic reform movements have been driven by ulterior motives and hence protagonists of all such initiatives should appreciate the apprehensions and misgivings of the ulemas. Imam Ghazali is on record saying that once he opened the doors of doubts he could not close them. It was his firm resolve not to allow these doubts to tinker with his faith that sealed his dilemma.

Endowed as we are with limited vision and cognitive abilities, we must realize that we cannot keep continually keeping the doors of doubts open; lest Satan will keep walking in. Despite being an intellectual colossus, Ibn Rush acknowledged about his work: “God knows every single letter, and perhaps God will accept my excuse and forgive my stumbling in His bounty, generosity, munificence and excellence –- there is no God but He!”

It is unfair to tar the entire clerical community with the same brush of obscurantism. If there are regressive elements among the clerics there also heretical minds among the modernists. Modernists cannot usurp the umpireship of the game. We need a level playing field where both the clerical and libertarian fraternities embrace each other

There are several strands in the traditionalist thought that bristle with flashes of liberalism and there is no reason that these green shoots will turn dense. Clerical thought is no longer monochromatic — multiviison is taking shape.

Many scholars are strong proponents of ijtihad (independent rasoning), the process of arriving at new interpretations of Islamic law through critical reasoning, rather than blindly following the views of past scholars. In the early centuries of Islam, the process of ijtihad was an important contributor to the shaping of Islamic law.

Muslim society is ridden with entrenched sectarianism with a diversity of hues and stripes: Sunni, Shiite, Barelvi, Deobandi, Ahmadi, and Mahdi Muslims – all of whom consider each other kafirs (non-Muslims)? Most of the leading lights of these sects lack familiarity with complex field of Islamic political history and hence do not have the tools for grappling the modern challenges with are confronting Islam.

The fundamental problem is that the religion that once saved Greek philosophy from the European Dark Ages now feels that it is under assault from a secular modern world, but many of its leaders have forsaken the interpretive tools and traditions that could otherwise have helped it cope with the present complexities.

For an idea to become legitimate, its foundations must stand on all four legs — reason, tradition, truth and belief. Liberals must continue to seek accommodation with them as they have done in the past. Plural societies, though, can be built by interrogating our long cherished traditions and withstanding the winds of either heresy or obscurantism.

Religiosity is good as long as it does not retard the organic evolution of a thought and belief system. Both the traditionalists and modernists must enlarge the prism through which they view each other; this will create accommodation for both while at the time clarifying their respective perspectives. The world is now too complex, too interconnected, too globalised to be divided into ‘black’ and ‘white’: ’the abode of Islam’ and ‘the abode of unbelief’. The overall message is: break the monolith wherever it comes from. The fundamentalists must realize that their blind literalism could lead them to follow the letter of the law, but betray the intents of foundational texts. We must not forget that the shar’iah (Islamic code) was made for man, and not man for the shari’ah.

In our quest for theological interpretations we must not lose sight of certain fundamental beliefs. Islam (and religion) is about being a good human being. About showing empathy, compassion and charity to others. About seeking strength and comfort through prayer and communal bonhomie. About reaching out to the unknown and seeking guidance and mercy in world. That is what Islam is for the ordinary man, and that is what we need to rescue it from the literalists.

For Muslims, it is a good time to pause, to reflect, and to attempt to re-locate the main features of, to re-discover, Islam. God says in the Qur’an that a people’s condition will not be changed until they change what is in themselves (Q13:11). Muslims have free will and the power to rebel and surrender. Thus, he or she is responsible and the maker of his or her own image. “Every soul is held in pledge for what he earns.” (Q74:38) “And the human being shall have nothing but what he strives for.” (Q53:30) We need to be earnest in our efforts to let the path be enlightened.

Alfaz-o-Maani Mein Tafawat Nahin Lekin
Mullah Ki Azan Aur, Mujahid Ki Azan Aur
Parwaz Hai Dono Ki Issi Aik Faza Mein
Kargas Ka Jahan Aur Hai, Shaheen Ka Jahan Aur

(There is not a speck of difference in words and meanings
But the clarion call of a prayer caller and guerilla are poles apart
The vulture and falcon soar in the same skies
But the world of falcon and vulture are far different) — Sir Muhammad Iqbal

*Moin Qazi began his early career as a development journalist .While still at college he began writing on Issues relating to the plight of child labourers. He did his post graduation in English and English with distinction from Nagpur University in 1980 and obtained his PhD in English from Los Altos University in 1989 and in Economics from Nagpur University in 2012. An accomplished poet, he has contributed to Indian Pen, The Independent, The Illustrated Weekly of India, Kavya Bharati, The Muse etc. His poems have also been set to music by Hollywood companies. He received Hon D Litt at the World Congress of Poets held at Istanbul in 1989. He has contributed articles to Indian and foreign publications including The Times of India, Statesman, Indian Express, The Economic Times, Financial Express, The Hindustan Times, Business Standard, The Hindu, Mainstream, Asian Age, Far Eastern Economic Review and Asiaweek (Hong Kong) Daily Sabah (Turkey), Moroccan Times, Chicago Monitor, Sudan Vision and Times of Malta.He has authored several books on religion, rural finance, culture and handicrafts.

By Rana Banerji*

Despite several hiccups, on 19 December, the Senate of Pakistan passed the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2017 – resulting in the amendment to Article 51 (5) of the Pakistani constitution – which will enable elections to the National Assembly (NA) to be held on the basis of the 2017 provisional census results.

Under the newly demarcated constituencies, of the 342 NA seats, Punjab will have 141 General seats and 33 Women seats (7 General and 2 Women seats fewer); Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will have 39 General and 9 Women seats (4 General and 1 Women seat added); Baluchistan will have 16 General and 4 Women seats (2 General and 1 Women seat added); and the Federal Capital Area will have 3 General seats (1 General seat added). The existing 61 General and 14 Women seats in Sindh and 12 General seats in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) remain unchanged. The term of the present parliament ends on 31 May 2018. After the Election Commission implements these changes, elections could be held, after Ramadan, sometime in mid-August 2018.

Coincidentally (?), Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Bajwa addressed Senators a few hours earlier on the same day. This `in-camera’ briefing, leaked soon enough to media, laid to rest speculation about a government of technocrats prematurely replacing Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s team. It did not dispel persisting doubts about the Army’s interventionist clout, which re-emerged after photographs of the Director General (DG) Punjab Rangers, Maj Gen Azhar Naveed Hayat Khan, distributing cheques to Tehreek Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYR) volunteers went viral on social media on 07 Dec 2017.

This could be tested afresh in January 2018 when Pakistan Awami Tehrik (PAT) leader, Tahir-ul-Qadri resumes street agitation, asking for the sacking of Punjab Law Minister, Rana Sanaullah, as a price for the heavy handed police action during the August 2014 demonstration in Model Town, Lahore. The Justice Baqar Najfi judicial enquiry findings, which were made public on 5 December 2017, places the already beleaguered Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML(N)) regime on a weak wicket in this regard. How it counters this agitation may impinge on the prospects of Shahbaz Sharif’s prime ministerial candidacy.

Senate Elections

The next important landmark would be the Senate elections, scheduled for 2 March 2018. This poll would enhance the PML (N)’s strength, though not by enough to give it two-thirds majority. At present, the 104-member Upper House has 27 PML (N) Senators; 26 Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senators; and 7 Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Senators. After the election, PML (N) will have 37 seats, PPP, 16; and PTI, 13.

Caretaker Governments

As per the 20th constitutional amendment passed in February 2012, caretaker governments have to be formed to conduct free and fair elections at the national and provincial levels. These are to be chosen through a consultative process between legislators of the ruling party and the opposition under Article 224A of Pakistan’s constitution. Though some wrangling on names can occur, fear of the Army’s ‘Damocles sword’ will possibly ensure that consensus is reached soon enough. This time, PTI Chief Imran Khan may try to get a toe-hold in, to get one or two ‘Caretakers’ of his choice in the interim set ups in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, also at the national level.

The elections may see a fragmentation of the right of centre vote bank, especially in Punjab, between the PML (N), PTI and the new mainstream contenders of the Islamic parties – Hafiz Saeed’s Milli Muslim League (MML) and the Barelvi factions of the TLYR and Mumtaz Qadri adherents, some possibly in the garb of Independents. The PPP and Mohajirs may hold on, respectively, to their bastions in rural and urban Sindh, though the latter may be split into various contending factions. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa may see how Imran Khan’s party copes with the twin threats of anti-incumbency and a rival ganging up of right radical Islamists led by Jamiat Ulema-e Islam (F)’s (JUI-F) Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman. The FATA merger issue could be a thorn in several throats.

Presently, there is much speculation in the Pakistani media about possible ‘course corrections’ which a defensive Army leadership makes to cope with the mainstreaming of Islamists. A ‘divided’ judiciary is seen trying to ameliorate injured civil society sentiment about the biased handling of the disqualification of Nawaz Sharif and the lease of life given to Imran Khan. Though Nawaz Sharif’s charisma and `victim’ narrative remains the prime ‘vote-catcher’ for PML(N), Imran has not done anything too controversial since his `disqualification survival’ and currently, seems slightly ahead of Shahbaz Sharif in the prime ministerial race.

Role of the Army

Gen Bajwa seems well in control now of his collegiate leadership group. 2018 will see retirements of only five lieutenant generals in October. These vacancies may enable slotting of some aspirants as corps commanders. How the Army manages to balance or control emerging political equations will be of greater interest. Overall, it may be content to let political permutations evolve as long as a democratic facade is maintained and the new political leadership at the centre does not question its control of security, neighbourhood and nuclear policy.

Indo-Pak Relations

On relations with India, much will depend on the International Court of Justice’s verdict in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case. Pakistan’s latest going back on assurances on how to treat his mother and wife does not provide any ground for optimism. Neither should one expect any change of heart on the Mumbai 26/11 terror accused trials or generally, in how the Army keeps cocooning favoured ‘non-State’ actors.

* Rana Banerji
Member, Governing Council, IPCS, & former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India

The meaning of the root word kafir is rejection, repudiating, hiding, covering up, obliterating, wiping off, blotting out. Who is rejecting and what is being rejected is not part of the meaning.

Allah is a Kafir for blotting out our sins, a tiller is a Kafir for covering the seeds with soil, a believer is a Kafir for rejecting false gods, a disbeliever is a Kafir for rejecting God, Satan is a Kafir for repudiating Allah’s right for being obeyed, Moses is a Kafir for repudiating the rights of his foster father the Pharaoh for being obeyed. These are the ways in which the word has been used in the Quran. Every use of the word Kafir is consistent with the meaning of the root word kafir.

Understanding the Meaning of Kafir

Satan was the first Kafir. What made him a Kafir? He was not a disbeliever and neither did he reject the faith or the truth. He disobeyed the command of Allah to prostrate to Adam. He became an ingrate rebel (Kafir) repudiating Allah’s rights.

وَإِذْ قُلْنَا لِلْمَلَائِكَةِ اسْجُدُوا لِآدَمَ فَسَجَدُوا إِلَّا إِبْلِيسَ أَبَىٰ وَاسْتَكْبَرَ وَكَانَ مِنَ الْكَافِرِينَ

(2:34) And behold, We said to the angels: “Bow down to Adam” and they bowed down. Not so Iblis: he refused and was haughty: He became among the Kafirin.

Going back to the original meaning of Kufr which is to cover up something, what was Satan covering up? His God given intellect, reason, and nature to obey and to be grateful to God was covered or overcome by his conceit (Takabbur) and envy of Adam whom he considered inferior.

قَالَ رَبِّ بِمَا أَغْوَيْتَنِي لَأُزَيِّنَنَّ لَهُمْ فِي الْأَرْضِ وَلَأُغْوِيَنَّهُمْ أَجْمَعِينَ

Al-Hijr / The Rock (15:39) (Iblis) said: “O my Lord! because you hast put me in the wrong, I will make (wrong) fair-seeming to them on the earth, and I will put them all in the wrong,-

Not only that, but he vowed to be an enemy to Adam and his progeny until Doomsday and hinder them from following the path of Allah. Kufr is therefore allowing your natural good self, reason and intellect to be covered by your conceit, envy, hatred and other base instincts, and like Satan, actively opposing and hindering the believers, for no other reason except their faith and because they invite others to all that is good and forbid what is wrong.  Those who are Kafir for their rejection of belief, are not those who have not accepted “belief” or the “disbelievers” or those who are sinners in their personal life, but the active enemies of the people of good faith, their oppressors and persecutors and enemy of God like Satan.

Moses (Pbuh) Is Called Kafir By Pharaoh!

قَالَ أَلَمْ نُرَبِّكَ فِينَا وَلِيدًا وَلَبِثْتَ فِينَا مِنْ عُمُرِكَ سِنِينَ  Ash-Shuaara 18,19

وَفَعَلْتَ فَعْلَتَكَ الَّتِي فَعَلْتَ وَأَنتَ مِنَ الْكَافِرِينَ

Ash-Shu’araa / The Poets (26:18) (Pharaoh) said: “Did we not cherish you as a child among us, and did you not stay in our midst many years of your life? (19) “And you did a deed of yours which (you know) you did, and you are an ungrateful wretch (min-al-Kafirin)!”

The word Kafir in this verse denotes the trait of ingratitude and rebellion. It has nothing to do with faith or belief. Moses (pbuh) was following the command of Allah, but from the point of view of the Pharaoh, who had brought him up lovingly as a son; he was indeed an ingrate rebel who stood up against the Pharaoh, repudiating the rights of a father for obedience over his son.

The Believers Are Referred As Kafaru

وَجَاءَ الْمُعَذِّرُونَ مِنَ الْأَعْرَابِ لِيُؤْذَنَ لَهُمْ وَقَعَدَ الَّذِينَ كَذَبُوا اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ ۚ سَيُصِيبُ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا مِنْهُمْ عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌ

(9:90) And there were, among the desert Arabs (also), men who made excuses and came to claim exemption; and those who were false to Allah and His Messenger (merely) sat inactive. Soon will a grievous penalty seize the Kafaru among them.

 The Kafaru referred to in the verse are those who professed belief and called themselves Muslim. They were disobedient rebels.

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا أَنفِقُوا مِمَّا رَزَقْنَاكُم مِّن قَبْلِ أَن يَأْتِيَ يَوْمٌ لَّا بَيْعٌ فِيهِ وَلَا خُلَّةٌ وَلَا شَفَاعَةٌ ۗ وَالْكَافِرُونَ هُمُ الظَّالِمُونَ

(2:254) O ye who believe! Spend out of (the bounties) We have provided for you, before the Day comes when no bargaining (Will avail), nor friendship nor intercession. And the Kafirun, they are the Zalimun.

Who are the Kafirun and the Zalimunin in this verse? Those who do not spend out of the bounties provided by Allah. The Kafirun and Zalimun refers to the addressees of the verse who are the believers who show their ingratitude to Allah for the bounties provided to them by not spending. They are ingrate rebels.

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا لَا تُبْطِلُوا صَدَقَاتِكُم بِالْمَنِّ وَالْأَذَىٰ كَالَّذِي يُنفِقُ مَالَهُ رِئَاءَ النَّاسِ وَلَا يُؤْمِنُ بِاللَّهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ ۖ فَمَثَلُهُ كَمَثَلِ صَفْوَانٍ عَلَيْهِ تُرَابٌ فَأَصَابَهُ وَابِلٌ فَتَرَكَهُ صَلْدًا ۖ لَّا يَقْدِرُونَ عَلَىٰ شَيْءٍ مِّمَّا كَسَبُوا ۗ وَاللَّهُ لَا يَهْدِي الْقَوْمَ الْكَافِرِينَ

(2:264) O ye who believe! cancel not your charity by reminders of your generosity or by injury,- like those who spend their substance to be seen of men, but believe neither in Allah nor in the Last Day. They are in parable like a hard, barren rock, on which is a little soil: on it falls heavy rain, which leaves it (Just) a bare stone. They will be able to do nothing with aught they have earned. And Allah guideth not the Kafirin.

The Kafirin in this verse are otherwise believers, but those who spend their substance to be seen of men. Such men will not be guided

الَّذِينَ يَبْخَلُونَ وَيَأْمُرُونَ النَّاسَ بِالْبُخْلِ وَيَكْتُمُونَ مَا آتَاهُمُ اللَّهُ مِن فَضْلِهِ ۗ وَأَعْتَدْنَا لِلْكَافِرِينَ عَذَابًا مُّهِينًا An-Nisa 37

(4:37) (Allah loves not) those who are niggardly or enjoin niggardliness on others, or hide the bounties which Allah hath bestowed on them; for We have prepared, for the Kafirin a grievous punishment.

The verse 4:29 begins by addressing the believers and verse 4:37 is covered by the same address to the believers in 4:29.

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا لَا تَأْكُلُوا الرِّبَا أَضْعَافًا مُّضَاعَفَةً ۖ وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ  Al-Imran 130, 131

وَاتَّقُوا النَّارَ الَّتِي أُعِدَّتْ لِلْكَافِرِينَ

(3:130) O ye who believe! Devour not usury, doubled and multiplied; but fear Allah; that ye may (really) prosper.(131) Fear the Fire, which is prepared for the Kafirin:

It is the believers who devour usury who are asked to fear the fire and such believers who devour usury are the Kafirin.

 In all the verses above, most translators translate Kafirin as “those who reject faith” or as “disbelievers” which is incorrect because the addressee is the believer and he cannot be a both a believer and one who rejects faith or a disbeliever!  The fact of the matter is that, since the addressee of the verse is the believer, Usury etc is Kufr for him but not for the disbeliever. Else the addressee would have been all of mankind or “the Children of Adam”.

Those who will reject the false deities in the Hereafter are being called Kafirina

وَلَمْ يَكُن لَّهُم مِّن شُرَكَائِهِمْ شُفَعَاءُ وَكَانُوا بِشُرَكَائِهِمْ كَافِرِينَ

30:13: No intercessor will they have among their “Partners” and they will (themselves) reject their “Partners”(become Kafirina in their partners).

One could be a Kafir for rejecting polytheism as in the verse above. Linguistically speaking, one could be a Kafir for rejecting falsehood also.

Kuffara means tillers

كَمَثَلِ غَيْثٍ أَعْجَبَ الْكُفَّارَ نَبَاتُهُ ثُمَّ يَهِيجُ فَتَرَاهُ مُصْفَرًّا ثُمَّ يَكُونُ حُطَامًا

57:20 How rain and the growth which it brings forth, delight (the hearts of) the tillers (Kuffara); soon it withers; thou wilt see it grow yellow; then it becomes dry and crumbles away

The Verb Forms of Kafir Are Used For Allah for Blotting Out Our Sins

رَبَّنَا فَاغْفِرْ لَنَا ذُنُوبَنَا وَكَفِّرْ عَنَّا سَيِّئَاتِنَا وَتَوَفَّنَا مَعَ الْأَبْرَار

3:193 Our Lord! Forgive us our sins, blot (kaffir) out from us our iniquities and in our death take us among the righteous.

فَالَّذِينَ هَاجَرُوا وَأُخْرِجُوا مِن دِيَارِهِمْ وَأُوذُوا فِي سَبِيلِي وَقَاتَلُوا وَقُتِلُوا لَأُكَفِّرَنَّ عَنْهُمْ سَيِّئَاتِهِمْ وَلَأُدْخِلَنَّهُمْ جَنَّاتٍ تَجْرِي مِن تَحْتِهَا الْأَنْهَارُ ثَوَابًا مِّنْ عِندِ اللَّهِ

3:195 Those who have left their homes, or been driven out there from, or suffered harm in My Cause, or fought or been slain,- verily, I will blot out from them (la-Ukaffiranna) their iniquities, and admit them into Gardens with rivers flowing beneath

وَلَوْ أَنَّ أَهْلَ الْكِتَابِ آمَنُوا وَاتَّقَوْا لَكَفَّرْنَا عَنْهُمْ سَيِّئَاتِهِمْ وَلَأَدْخَلْنَاهُمْ جَنَّاتِ النَّعِيمِ

(5:65) If only the People of the Book had believed and been righteous, We should indeed have blotted (Lakaffarnā) out their iniquities and admitted them to gardens of bliss.

The meaning of Kafir in the Quran is the same as the meaning of the root word kfr. Kafir is a neutral term and simply means a person who:

Covers Up, Obliterates, Wipes Out, Removes, Rejects Or Repudiates.

Therefore, any verse that speaks of the Kafaru, Kafirin, Kafirun, necessarily must mention the nature of the Kufr, and covers only those people, who indulge in that Kufr. While Kafir may mean one who rejects belief, it does not mean disbeliever in any verse of the Quran since a disbeliever is not necessarily one who has rejected belief.

Is Not Disbelief Itself Kufir Rendering The Person Kafir?

The antonym of “to believe” is “to reject belief” which is kufr and makes a person Kafir. Rejection is not the same as non-acceptance and must be either accompanied by hostile acts or after the truth of belief has become clearly manifest to them and their own self becomes a witness against their disbelief. The following verses elaborate the point beyond which a Mushrik becomes a Kafir for not accepting belief.

سَنُرِيهِمْ آيَاتِنَا فِي الْآفَاقِ وَفِي أَنفُسِهِمْ حَتَّىٰ يَتَبَيَّنَ لَهُمْ أَنَّهُ الْحَقُّ ۗ أَوَلَمْ يَكْفِ بِرَبِّكَ أَنَّهُ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ شَهِيدٌ   Fussilat 53

Fussilat / Explained in detail (41:53) Soon will We show them our Signs in the (furthest) regions (of the earth), and in their own deepest selves, until it becomes manifest to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that thy Lord doth witness all things?

وَجَحَدُوا بِهَا وَاسْتَيْقَنَتْهَا أَنفُسُهُمْ ظُلْمًا وَعُلُوًّا ۚ فَانظُرْ كَيْفَ كَانَ عَاقِبَةُ الْمُفْسِدِينَ

An-Naml / The Ant 27:14 “And they rejected those Signs in iniquity and arrogance, though their innerselves were convinced thereof: so see what the end of those who acted corruptly was!

وَشَهِدُوا عَلَىٰ أَنفُسِهِمْ أَنَّهُمْ كَانُوا كَافِرِينَ

Al-A’raaf / The Heights (7:37) And they will testify against themselves that were Kafirin.

Whether the truth has become manifest in their inner selves, God alone can say. A Mushrik does not become a Kafir for rejection of the message until the truth has become manifest to him and his own self testifies against his rejection of belief. The Kufr of disbelief is only for Allah to judge and there is no punishment for it by other men nor is there a permission to fight against the disbelievers for their disbelief.

The Kafirin are not the disbelievers but those who will not believe

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ قُلْ يَا أَيُّهَا الْكَافِرُونَ

لَا أَعْبُدُ مَا تَعْبُدُونَ

وَلَا أَنتُمْ عَابِدُونَ مَا أَعْبُدُ

وَلَا أَنَا عَابِدٌ مَّا عَبَدتُّمْ

وَلَا أَنتُمْ عَابِدُونَ مَا أَعْبُدُ

لَكُمْ دِينُكُمْ وَلِيَ دِينِ

Surah Al-Kafirun is an early Meccan Surah (chronological order 18) and is addressed to the Kafirun among the Mushrikun. These Kafirun are told that neither do they nor will they worship what the Prophet worships. These are words of finality and such Kafir will not believe. Who are they? We can identify a few of them. The Prophet faced very hostile opposition to his mission right from the early days. The violent opponents were Abu Jahl mentioned from his behavior in Surah 96 Al –Alaq, chronologically the first Surah to be revealed, Surah 68 Al –Qalam or the Pen (chronology 2), speaks of Walid ibn Mughiyrah who was peculiarly despicable. He was a ringleader in calumniating the Prophet and who came to an evil end not long after the battle of Badr, in which he received injuries. Walid ibn Mughayrah was a wealthy Sybarite, and an inveterate enemy to the Prophet. He and Abu Jahl did all they could, from the beginning of the preaching of Islam, to abuse and persecute the Prophet, to run down his doctrine, and to injure those who believed in it. Surah 111 Al –Masad (chronological order 6) is about Abu Lahab and his wife who were also enemies of the Prophet. These and their active associates and helpers are the Kafirun that the Surah Al-Kafirun addresses. The chronological number of this Surah is 18 and may have been revealed 8 years before Hijrah during which the Prophet continued to do Da’wah among the Mushrikun leaving alone the Kafirun.

إِنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا سَوَاءٌ عَلَيْهِمْ أَأَنذَرْتَهُمْ أَمْ لَمْ تُنذِرْهُمْ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ

(2:6) As to the Kafaru, it is the same to them whether thou warn them or do not warn them; they will not believe.

If Kafaru means disbeliever, then the above verse means that it is futile to do Da’wah among the disbelievers. This is obviously incorrect and clearly therefore, Kafaru does not mean disbeliever, but those with characteristics of a person who will never believe such as Abu Lahab.

فَلَا تُطِعِ الْكَافِرِينَ وَجَاهِدْهُم بِهِ جِهَادًا كَبِيرًا

Al-Furqaan / The Criterion (25: 52) Therefore listen/obey not to the Kafirin, but strive against them with the utmost strenuousness.

The above verse is about not doing Da’wah to the Kafirin because it is pointless to do dawah to them but striving against them to defeat their nefarious designs.

Hud (11:36) It was revealed to Noah: “None of thy people will believe except those who have believed already! So grieve no longer over their (evil) deeds.

After the above verse was revealed, no one believed – not even Noah’s son.

Compare 11:36 with the post migration Medinian verses 8:32 and 33 in which Allah does not consider the majority of the Mushrikin as Kafirin or those who will not believe but people who could ask for pardon and accept belief.

وَإِذْ قَالُوا اللَّهُمَّ إِن كَانَ هَٰذَا هُوَ الْحَقَّ مِنْ عِندِكَ فَأَمْطِرْ عَلَيْنَا حِجَارَةً مِّنَ السَّمَاءِ أَوِ ائْتِنَا بِعَذَابٍ أَلِيمٍ

وَمَا كَانَ اللَّهُ لِيُعَذِّبَهُمْ وَأَنتَ فِيهِمْ ۚ وَمَا كَانَ اللَّهُ مُعَذِّبَهُمْ وَهُمْ يَسْتَغْفِرُونَ

Al-Anfaal / The Spoils of War (8:32) Remember how they said: “O Allah if this is indeed the Truth from Thee, rain down on us a shower of stones from the sky, or send us a grievous penalty.” (33) But Allah was not going to send them a penalty whilst thou wast amongst them; nor was He going to send it whilst they could ask for pardon.

Not all the disbelievers are Kafir who will not believe. There are people who are disbelievers because they lack knowledge (لَّا يَعْلَمُونَ  9:6) or those who fear persecution from the Kafirin if they accept belief as is clear from 10:83 below:

(10:83) But none believed in Moses except some children of his people, because of the fear of Pharaoh and his chiefs, lest they should persecute them; and certainly Pharaoh was mighty on the earth and one who transgressed all bounds.

The disbelievers who are not Kafir will believe once the leaders of Kufr who are preventing them from accepting belief are removed and once they gain true knowledge.

When the Quran uses Kafir for one who has no faith in God and has rejected belief, such a person is also Zalim, Mujrim, Fasiq, Musrif, Mufsid, Alin and Mutakabbir

When Kafir is used for one who has rejected belief, and one who will not believe, such a person is not simply a disbeliever, but someone like Satan, Pharaoh, Abu Jahl or Abu Lahab. He/she is also a Zalim (oppressor), Mujrim (criminal), Fasiq (one who transgresses all limits of what is right), Musrif (extravagant), Mufsid (mischief monger), haughty, proud and arrogant. To quote Pickthall, “In the Qur’an I find two meanings (of a Kafir), which become one the moment that we try to realize the divine standpoint. The Kafir in the first place, is not the follower of any religion. He is the opponent of Allah’s benevolent will and purpose for mankind – therefore the disbeliever in the truth of all religions, the disbeliever in all Scriptures as of divine revelation, the disbeliever to the point of active opposition in all the Prophets (pbut) whom the Muslims are bidden to regard, without distinction, as messengers of Allah.”

(6:21) Who doth more wrong than he who inventeth a lie against Allah or rejecteth His signs? But verily the Zalimun never shall prosper.

(10:17) Who doth more wrong than such as forge a lie against Allah, or deny His Signs? But verily the Mujrimun never shall prosper.

(23:117) If anyone invokes, besides Allah, Any other god, he has no authority therefore; and his reckoning will be only with his Lord! But verily the Kafirun never shall prosper.

(6:135) Say: “O my people! Do whatever ye can: I will do (my part): soon will ye know who it is whose end will be (best) in the Hereafter: certain it is that the Zalimun will not prosper.”

(19:37) But the sects differ among themselves: and woe to the Kafaru because of the (coming) Judgment of a Momentous Day!(38) How plainly will they see and hear, the Day that they will appear before Us! but the Zalimun today are in error manifest!

(31:11) Such is the Creation of Allah: now show Me what is there that others besides Him have created: nay, but the Zalimun are in manifest error.

(36:47) And when they are told, “Spend ye of (the bounties) with which Allah has provided you,” the Kafaru say to those who believe: “Shall we then feed those whom, if Allah had so willed, He would have fed, (Himself)?- Ye are in nothing but manifest error.”

(29:49) Nay, here are Signs self-evident in the hearts of those endowed with knowledge: and none but the Zalimun reject Our Signs.

(31:32) ….. and none but the traitorous kafurin reject Our Signs.

(29:47) …. and none but the Kafirun reject our signs.

(6:49) But those who reject our signs,- them shall punishment touch, for that they ceased not from transgressing (Yafsaqun).

(17:99) See they not that Allah, Who created the heavens and the earth, has power to create the like of them (anew)? Only He has decreed a term appointed, of which there is no doubt. But the Zalimun refuse (to receive it) except with ingratitude (Illa Kufuran).

(6:93) Who can be more wicked than one who inventeth a lie against Allah, or saith, “I have received inspiration,” when he hath received none, or (again) who saith, “I can reveal the like of what Allah hath revealed”? If thou couldst but see how the Zalimun (do fare) in the flood of confusion at death! – the angels stretch forth their hands, (saying),”Yield up yourselves: this day shall ye receive your reward,- a penalty of shame, for that ye used to tell lies against Allah, and scornfully to reject of His signs!”

(165) When they disregarded the warnings that had been given them, We rescued those who forbade Evil; but We visited the wrong-doers (Zalamu) with a grievous punishment because they were given to transgression (Yafsuqun).

(21:9) In the end We fulfilled to them Our Promise, and We saved them and those whom We pleased, but We destroyed those who transgressed beyond bounds (Musrifin).

10:83 And indeed, Pharaoh was haughty within the land, and indeed, he was of the transgressors (l-Mus’rifīna)

The characteristics of Pharaoh the archetype Kafir:

L-Mus’rifīna (extravagant, given to excesses) 10:83, 44:31

Fasiq (rebel, wicked, transgressor) 28:32,

L-Muf’sidīna (mischievous) 7:103, 28:4,

Khāṭiīna (sinner, wrong doer) 28:8,

ʿĀliyan, LaʿĀlin (arrogant, tyrant) 44:31, 10:83

Mutakabbir (arrogant, insolent, haughty, proud) 29:39, 10:75

Kafarū Biāyāti L-Lahi (Rejecter of the signs of Allah) 8:52

Zalim (wrong-doer, oppressor) 8:54

A Kafir is not simply any disbeliever, but one who will not believe because of the traits described above.

40:37 Thus was made alluring, in Pharaoh´s eyes, the evil of his deeds, and he was hindered from the Path; and the plot of Pharaoh led to nothing but perdition (for him).

When Kafir is used in the context of a man’s faith, it acquires the most odious meaning. Kafir when used in this context, is a Zalim, Mujrim, Fasiq, Mufsid or a tyrant, sinner a pervert transgressor of all that is good and reasonable and a mischief monger. These are indeed the synonyms of Kafir in such a context. He is not simply a disbeliever but congenitally incapable of belief. He is covered with arrogance, haughtiness, selfishness, perversity etc. The type of person Allah will never bless with faith. This word does not apply to an ordinary non-Muslim or disbeliever.

Kafir Is Not Used For the Disbelievers Even In the Very Last Verses of the Revelations

Among the very last verses about the Mushrikin of Mecca is verse 9:5, in which Allah announces the penalty of death on those vanquished Mushrikin who had fought the Muslims violating their treaty, if they remain in Hijaz at the end of the four-month amnesty period without accepting Islam. In this verse also, such people are not referred to as Kafir or as people who will not believe, because the verse holds out the possibility that they may accept Islam. And indeed, all of them accepted Islam and no one was killed as per verse 9:5.

To call anyone a Kafir for his beliefs involves passing a judgment. Allah did not pass such a judgment on a people among whom the Prophet had preached for 13 years, who then drove him out of Mecca, fought battles to annihilate the Muslims, violated their treaties, were vanquished eight years later, were not avenged for eighteen months after their defeat, and yet remained disbelievers. Even such people were considered potential believers and therefore not Kafir or not among those who will not believe. If such people are not called Kafir in the Quran, then how can anyone be considered as Kafir for his beliefs? It is only Allah who can judge a person as Kafir and it is not only the non-Muslims who will be so judged, but many among the Muslims who are oppressors, sinners, transgressors, mischief mongers, ingrate rebels will also be among the ranks of the Kafirin. Indeed, we have seen from the verses of the Quran that a Kafir can be from among any people including the believers. Calling a person Kafir for his beliefs when he does not have the traits of a Kafir described in the article, is derogation, slander and a travesty. Those who do so are the Zalim, Mujrim, Fasiq and Mufsid or the unjust, criminal, transgressors and mischief mongers.

*Naseer Ahmed is an Engineering graduate from IIT Kanpur and is an independent IT consultant after having served in both the Public and Private sector in responsible positions for over three decades. He is a frequent contributor to www.NewAgeIslam.com, where this article was published.

By Mihail Neamţu*

Just a few days before Christmas, despite the icy weather in Bucharest, hundreds of thousands of people gathered together to mourn the death of King Michael of Romania (1921-2017). Prince Charles of Wales, as well as King Juan Carlos of Spain, attended the funeral of one of the last Eastern Orthodox monarchs in the world. Many revered him as a dignified statesman, who witnessed the destruction of old Europe under Hitler and Stalin, the tumultuous unfolding of the Cold War, as well as the post-1989 rebirth of democratic institutions in his native region.

Though relatively unknown to the broader public in the West, King Michael’s life was nothing short of extraordinary. In 1927, his father left the throne to pursue a romantic adventure with a larger than life mistress, Elena Lupescu (1895-1977). The royal families in Europe sanctioned this betrayal of the marriage vows, which the astute and yet amoral Prince Carol II had spoken before the youthful Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark (1896-1982). Those were the days when ordinary people saw the open practice of adultery as unacceptable for a sovereign exercising the highest office in the country. As a consequence, Carol II resigned and Michael was made King of Romania at the age of six. While still very young, he saw his mother exiled to Italy, after his father made a shameless return to power through a coup d’état.

Tormented by self-doubt and shocked by the sexual profligacy of King Carol II, the young Michael grew up as a silent, shy, and earnest teenager. His mother introduced him to the spiritual riches of Eastern Orthodoxy. This attachment to Christianity grew stronger after he took some private classes with the maverick historian of Byzantium, Professor Nicolae Iorga (1871-1940) of the University of Bucharest. Later, Michael acquired a taste for the military uniform, while developing a real passion for planes and American cars.

Sandwiched between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Empire, interwar Romania tried very hard to maintain its traditional democratic allegiance towards Great Britain and the United States of America. In the early 1930s, Europe witnessed the rise of tribal nationalism, led by populist parties dissatisfied with parliamentary rule. Influential thinkers such as Carl Schmitt theorized the importance of political voluntarism, by which he meant the promotion of an “all-knowing leader,” who had a “direct connection” to the “soul of the nation.”

To his surprise, Michael discovered that many public intellectuals in Romania, as well as ordinary people, invested great emotional capital in the false promises of various political messiahs. Bigoted demagogues and rabid anti-Semites, such as Corneliu Codreanu (1899-1938), were able to win many votes by promising swift delivery from the corrupt affairs of the political establishment. On September 6, 1940, the fascistic organization Iron Guard became the ruling party in Romania, under the strict command of General Ion Antonescu (1882-1946).

It was in this context that King Michael and the Queen-Mother Helen did their best to save as many Jewish lives as possible, by asking the German ambassador Manfred von Killinger (1886-1944) to stop all deportations to Transnistria. Because of their intervention, medical aid, food, and clothing were made available to those already put in the concentration camps. This is why Yad Vashem recognized King Michael’s mother as a “righteous among the nations,” stating that “she saved the lives of thousands of Jews,” including orphans sentenced to death by the SS officer Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962).

In ways similar to Greece, Italy, or Portugal, Romania was an agrarian society. To understand the traditional peasants’ attitude towards history, we should perhaps digress by explaining the gist of a compelling myth, widely disseminated in the Balkans’ folklore. Once upon a time, a young shepherd lived near a low foothill, at Heaven’s doorsill. The main character owned horses of a rare breed and fierce hounds, protecting his flock (but not necessarily himself). The shepherd was wealthier than his comrades. Envy kicked in, and the ruthless competitors plotted to kill the gifted one. Instead of putting up any form of resistance, the shepherd decided to recast the experience of death in terms of marriage with his own destiny.

Is this a Stoic appropriation of amor fati? We don’t really know. The Romanian shepherd believes that his physical annihilation does not bring an end to life but instead introduces a new, other-worldly dimension in which his soul and the stars celebrate a cosmic wedding. This Gandhi-like appreciation for non-violent behavior has often translated into a collective sense of resignation, melancholy, and powerlessness, especially among the ordinary people.

To some extent, the story of the lonely shepherd is an allegory of King Michael’s minimal use of power as the sovereign of a Christian nation. Confronted with the German economic takeover of its natural resources, as well as with the Soviet invasion of its historical territory (the province of Greater Moldova, established by Stephen the Great by mid-fifteenth century), Romania accepted its unhappy fate. From 1941 to 1944, King Michael was forced to swallow Adolf Hitler’s alliance with the fascist dictator General Ion Antonescu, while from August 1944 to December 1947, the same King Michael consented to the ruthless Bolshevik appropriation of a defenseless country.

Bullied by the Soviets and abandoned by his Western allies, King Michael wasn’t able to save the rule of law or any other democratic institution. Despite all the humiliations inflicted by Stalin’s wartime diplomat, Andrey Vyshinsky (1883-1954), what King Michael managed to rescue was the symbol of the Crown, equated with the notions of honor and dignity.

On January 3, 1948, he left Romania and settled in Switzerland. There, he reinvented himself as a loyal husband to Queen Anna and father of five daughters, for whom he raised chickens on a domestic farm. King Michael’s painful exile was accompanied by the disappearence of all previous forms of public recognition. While still in his prime years, King Michael accepted a very humble life, being deprived of any social gratification. We may assume that Christ’s self-emptying life, so powerfully described by St. Paul as kenosis, helped the former monarch understand that the ultimate prestige of a true king is to care for others, without being noticed, praised or rewarded for work done in the cause of selfless love.

About the author:
*Michael Neamtu, Ph.D., is an Eastern European conservative author and public intellectual. He has written 10 books on American politics, Christianity, and Islam, as well as new trends in Marxist culture. His forthcoming publication is The Trump Arena: How did a Businessman Conquer the World of Politics?

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute.

One of the North Korean soldiers who defected to the South in 2017 was found to have antibodies in his bloodstream, a sign Pyongyang possesses anthrax, the acute disease caused by bacteria.

South Korean authorities did not identify the soldier, who was either exposed to or vaccinated for anthrax, but did confirm he had developed immunity to the deadly disease before he defected, local news network Channel A reported Tuesday.

“Anthrax antibodies have been found in the North Korean soldier who defected this year,” a South Korean intelligence official told the network on the condition of anonymity.

The discovery of the antibodies is causing concern in Seoul.

The disease can kill at least 80 percent of those who are exposed to the bacterium in 24 hours, unless antibiotics are taken or vaccination is available.

But South Korea’s military has yet to secure an anthrax vaccine.

Defense Ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo has said an anthrax “vaccine is expected to be developed by the end of 2019,” but not sooner, for the South Korean military.

North Korea has been suspected of developing biological weapons after the regime publicized the works of the Pyongyang Biological Technology Research Institute in 2015, run by the Korean People’s Army Unit 810.

Pyongyang claimed the facility specializes in pesticide research but analysts have said dual-use equipment on the site suggests biological weapons are being manufactured in North Korea.

The news of possible North Korea anthrax development comes at a time when South Korean newsmagazine Sisa Journal is reporting the U.S. military in the South has continued to test live bacteria at local bases.

The Joint United States Forces Korea Portal and Integrated Threat Recognition, or JUPITR, is budgeted to receive about $9 million, according to the report.

The program, aimed to shape biological detection capabilities, is ongoing, according to Sisa.

Concerns spiked in South Korea after Seoul’s defense ministry confirmed the U.S. military in South Korea imported samples of anthrax 15 times since 2009, and a shipment in 2015 exposed as many as 22 people.

Original source

Got a sore throat? The doctor may write a quick prescription for penicillin or amoxicillin, and with the stroke of a pen, help diminish public health and your own future health by helping bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics.

It’s time to develop alternatives to antibiotics for small infections, according to a new paper by scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and to do so quickly. It has been widely reported that bacteria will evolve to render antibiotics mostly ineffective by mid-century, and current strategies to make up for the projected shortfalls haven’t worked.

One possible problem is that drug development strategies have focused on replacing antibiotics in extreme infections, such as sepsis, where every minute without an effective drug increases the risk of death. But the evolutionary process that brings forth antibiotic resistance doesn’t happen nearly as often in those big infections as it does in the multitude of small ones like sinusitis, tonsillitis, bronchitis, and bladder infections, the Georgia Tech researchers said.

“Antibiotic prescriptions against those smaller ailments account for about 90 percent of antibiotic use, and so are likely to be the major driver of resistance evolution,” said Sam Brown, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Biological Sciences. Bacteria that survive these many small battles against antibiotics grow in strength and numbers to become formidable armies in big infections, like those that strike after surgery.

“It might make more sense to give antibiotics less often and preserve their effectiveness for when they’re really needed. And develop alternate treatments for the small infections,” Brown said.

Brown, who specializes in the evolution of microbes and in bacterial virulence, and first author Kristofer Wollein Waldetoft, a medical doctor and postdoctoral research assistant in Brown’s lab, published an essay detailing their suggestion for refocusing the development of bacteria-fighting drugs on December 28, 2017, in the journal PLOS Biology.

Duplicitous antibiotics

The evolution of antibiotic resistance can be downright two-faced.

“If you or your kid go to the doctor with an upper respiratory infection, you often get amoxicillin, which is a relatively broad-spectrum antibiotic,” Brown said. “So, it kills not only strep but also a lot of other bacteria, including in places like the digestive tract, and that has quite broad impacts.”

E. coli is widespread in the human gut, and some strains secrete enzymes that thwart antibiotics, while other strains don’t. A broad-spectrum antibiotic can kill off more of the vulnerable, less dangerous bacteria, leaving the more dangerous and robust bacteria to propagate.

“You take an antibiotic to go after that thing in your throat, and you end up with gut bacteria that are super-resistant,” Brown said. “Then later, if you have to have surgery, you have a problem. Or you give that resistant E. coli to an elderly relative.”

Much too often, superbugs have made their way into hospitals in someone’s intestines, where they had evolved high resistance through years of occasional treatment with antibiotics for small infections. Then those bacteria have infected patients with weak immune systems.

Furious infections have ensued, essentially invulnerable to antibiotics, followed by sepsis and death.

Alternatives get an ‘F’

Drug developers facing dwindling antibiotic effectiveness against evolved bacteria have looked for multiple alternate treatments. The focus has often been to find some new class of drug that works as well as or better than antibiotics, but so far, nothing has, Brown said.

Wollein Waldetoft came across a research paper in the medical journal Lancet Infectious Diseases that examined study after study on such alternate treatments against big, deadly infections.

“It was a kind of scorecard, and it was almost uniformly negative,” Brown said. “These alternate therapies, such as phage or anti-virulence drugs or, bacteriocins — you name it — just didn’t rise to the same bar of efficacy that existing antibiotics did.”

“It was a type of doom and gloom paper that said once the antibiotics are gone, we’re in trouble,” Brown said. “Drug companies still are investing in alternate drug research, because it has gotten very, very hard to develop new effective antibiotics. We don’t have a lot of other options.”

But the focus on new treatments for extreme infections has bothered the researchers because the main arena where the vast portion of resistance evolution occurs is in small infections. “We felt like there was a disconnect going on here,” Brown said.

Don’t kill strep, beat it

The researchers proposed a different approach: “Take the easier tasks, like sore throats, off of antibiotics and reserve antibiotics for these really serious conditions.”

Developing non-antibiotic therapies for strep throat, bladder infections, and bronchitis could prove easier, thus encouraging pharmaceutical investment and research.

For example, one particular kind of strep bacteria, group A streptococci, is responsible for the vast majority of bacterial upper respiratory infections. People often carry it without it breaking out.

Strep bacteria secrete compounds that promote inflammation and bacterial spread. If an anti-virulence drug could fight the secretions, the drug could knock back the strep into being present but not sickening.

Brown cautioned that strep infection can lead to rheumatic heart disease, a deadly condition that is very rare in the industrialized world, but it still takes a toll in other parts of the world. “A less powerful drug can be good enough if you don’t have serious strep throat issues in your medical history,” he said.

Sometimes, all it takes is some push-back against virulent bacteria until the body’s immune system can take care of it. Developing a spray-on treatment with bacteriophages, viruses that attack bacteria, might possibly do the trick.

If doctors had enough alternatives to antibiotics for the multitude of small infections they treat, they could help preserve antibiotic effectiveness longer for the far less common but much more deadly infections, for which they’re most needed.

Dubbed by the Romans “Arabia Felix” (fertile or fortunate Arabia), the southern stretch of the Arabian peninsula that we know as Yemen is now universally described as “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.” Tuesday December 19, 2017 marked the 1000th day of the civil conflict that has torn the country apart. The nation is on the brink of famine. The UN reckons three-quarters of Yemen’s 28 million people need some kind of humanitarian aid. Mounting rubbish, failing sewerage and wrecked water supplies have led to the worst cholera outbreak in recent history.

What has brought Yemen to this catastrophic state of affairs? It all started in the sadly misnamed “Arab spring” uprisings of 2011. Mass protests, a near-assassination of the then president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and pressure from neighbouring petro-states forced Saleh to step down in favour of his vice-president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Hadi sponsored a draft constitution in 2015 proposing a federal system split between northerners and southerners, but the Iran-backed Houthi rebels rejected it.

The Houthis, a fundamentalist Shia group, take their name from Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, a revolutionary leader who launched an uprising against the government in 2004 and was killed by the Yemeni army later that year. The organization’s philosophy is summarised with blinding clarity by their flag, which consists of five statements in Arabic, the first and the last in green, the middle three in red.

They read:  “God is Great; Death to America; Death to Israel; A curse on the Jews; Victory to Islam”.

Although a Sunni Muslim, Saleh seemed intent on manoeuvering a return to power in collaboration with the Shia-affiliated Houthis. It was through Saleh that the Houthis were able to gain control of most of the Yemeni military, including its air force. As a result, and supported with military hardware from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, they overran large tracts of the country, including the capital city, Sana’a.

If any one area is a microcosm of the chaotic and bloody battlefield that is today’s Middle East, it is Yemen. Here, as across the region, Islam is at war with itself, as the deadly rivalry between Saudi Arabia’s ruling family, guardians of the Sunni tradition of Islam, and Iran’s equally uncompromising Shia-based Islamic revolution, plays itself out.

Although other militant groups roam the country, the main principals are the Iranian-supported Houthi rebels; and Saudi Arabia which, determined to prevent Iran from extending its footprint into the Arabian peninsula, intervened in March 2015 to beat back the Houthis. Saudi Arabia’s charismatic young Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, assembled a coalition of Arab states from across the Middle East, obtained the diplomatic backing of the US, Turkey and Pakistan, and launched a series of air strikes against the rebels.

The unconventional Saleh-Houthi partnership came to an abrupt end on December 2, 2017, when Saleh went on television to declare that he was splitting from the Houthi rebels, was ready to enter into dialogue with the Saudi-led coalition, and called on his supporters to take back the country. This volte-face is rumored to have been master-minded by Saudi’s Prince Mohammed. It was to end in tragedy.

On December 4, Saleh’s house in Sana’a was besieged by Houthi fighters. He managed to escape, but apparently a rocket-propelled grenade struck and disabled his vehicle as he was trying to flee into Saudi-controlled territories. Dead or alive, he was subsequently shot in the head.

Nearly three years of combat have not succeeded in defeating the Houthis. On the contrary, time seems to have emboldened them. Using Iranian hardware, they have started firing ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia itself, the latest on December 18. Although the Houthis were responsible for initiating the turmoil in the first place, it is the Saudis and their coalition who are at the receiving end of the world’s opprobrium for the humanitarian devastation that the conflict has wrought. More than 350 high-profile figures including six Nobel peace prize laureates, former military generals, politicians, diplomats and celebrities marked the 1,000th day of the civil war by calling on leaders of France, the US and the UK to use their seats on the UN security council to act as peace brokers.

The moment may be opportune. After investing billions of dollars in the war, Prince Mohammed is said to want to cut his military losses and withdraw from Yemen in exchange for some diplomatic arrangement. Getting ex-president Saleh to change sides was his first unsuccessful ploy. Can he possibly mastermind a situation that can extricate Saudi Arabia from the conflict without leaving Iran as victors?

What Yemen needs are elections, an inclusive government, and a new structure for the state. But efforts by the UN envoy, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, to end the conflict and resume the peaceful political evolution that started in 2011 remain stalled. There have been talks in plenty, but the underlying constant throughout has been the lack of political will on the part of the Houthis to share power.

The international community must summon up the will to insist on the immediate implementation of UN Resolution 2216, which aims to establish democracy in a federally united Yemen. It must back this new effort with a UN peace-keeping force, while Iran must be prevented, by the imposition of new sanctions if necessary, from assisting the Houthis and supplying them with military hardware. Humanitarian aid must be given unfettered access to all parts of Yemen, and already on December 19 Saudi announced that it would allow such aid through the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah for a month. A lasting political deal would of course involve the end of the Saudi-led military operation, and probably a major financial commitment by Saudi to fund the rebuilding of the country.

Finally the Houthis must be given the opportunity to choose. Do they wish to remain an outlawed militia permanently, or would they prefer to become a legitimate political party, able to contest parliamentary and presidential elections and participate in government? The price would be withdrawal from Sana’a and serious engagement in negotiations aimed at a peaceful transition to a political solution for a united Yemen. Let’s hope they consider it a price worth paying to come in out of the cold.

Callous-unemotional traits have been linked to deficits in development of the conscience and of empathy. Children and adolescents react less to negative stimuli; they often prefer risky activities and show less caution or fear. In recent years, researchers and doctors have given these personality traits increased attention, since they have been associated with the development of more serious and persistent antisocial behavior.

However, until now, most research in this area has focused on studying callous-unemotional traits in populations with a psychiatric diagnosis, especially conduct disorder. This meant that it was unclear whether associations between callous-unemotional traits and brain structure were only present in clinical populations with increased aggression, or whether the antisocial behavior and aggression explained the brain differences.

Using magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers were able to take a closer look at the brain development of typically-developing teenagers to find out whether callous-unemotional traits are linked to differences in brain structure. The researchers were particularly interested to find out if the relationship between callous-unemotional traits and brain structure differs between boys and girls.

Only boys show differences in brain structure

The findings show that in typically-developing boys, the volume of the anterior insula – a brain region implicated in recognizing emotions in others and empathy – is larger in those with higher levels of callous-unemotional traits. This variation in brain structure was only seen in boys, but not in girls with the same personality traits.

“Our findings demonstrate that callous-unemotional traits are related to differences in brain structure in typically-developing boys without a clinical diagnosis,” explains lead author Nora Maria Raschle from the University and the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel in Switzerland. “In a next step, we want to find out what kind of trigger leads some of these children to develop mental health problems later in life while others never develop problems.”

Blasts targeting a Shiite cultural center in Kabul, Afghanistan, killed over 40 people Thursday and injured more than 20.

Two bombs exploded in the Tebyan center, with a suicide bomber detonating a vest in the cultural center and a “sticky bomb” detonating on the wall.

The attack targeted a pro-Iran cultural center where a gathering of students went for an academic discussion about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve in 1979.

IS took credit for the attack, which occurred at a Shiite Hazara minority neighborhood — just days after it claimed responsibility for a Christmas Day bombing on Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied the group’s involvement in the attack.

Women and students were among the dead, Nasrat Rahimi, Afghanistan’s deputy spokesman for the interior ministry, said. Journalists from the Afghan Voice news agency were also injured in the attack.

“We were having the gathering in the basement,” Hassan Mujtaba, a witness, told Stars and Stripes. “There were many people, suddenly there was a big blast and after that I don’t know what happened.”

Officials estimate 1,000 IS fighters remain in Afghanistan.

Original article

By Ana Maria Luca

A suggestion that Romania may follow America in moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem has dismayed Palestinians.

Palestine’s Foreign Ministry summoned Romania’s envoy for explanations on Wednesday to clarify statements from the ruling Social Democratic Party leader Liviu Dragnea in which he supported moving Romania’s Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Assistant Foreign Minister Amal Jado expressed anger at the speech by the speaker of the Romanian parliament, in which Dragnea spoke of following the US in moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

Jado said this would “contravene international law and UN resolutions, particularly Security Council resolution 478, and the position of the European Union regarding the legal status of Jerusalem.”

According to a press release, the Assistant Foreign Minister also expressed Palestinian dismay with Romania’s decision to abstain from the UN General Assembly resolution on the status of Jerusalem, saying that this showed bias in favour of Israel as the occupying state.

Romania abstained during the December 21 vote in the General Assembly on the status of Jerusalem, which overwhelmingly condemned US President Donald Trump for announcing that the US would move its embassy to Jerusalem.

Despite Israeli pressure on countries to recognise an undivided Jerusalem as its capital, most countries have refused to do so until Israeli and Palestinian leaders agree on a two-state solution, which includes an independent Palestinian state on what is now the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestinians also insist they want their capital located in East Jerusalem.

So far, only Guatemala, a small, poor central American state, dependent on US aid, has said it will follow the US in moving its embassy to Jerusalem.

Palestine’s ambassador in Bucharest, Fouad Kokaly, met Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu on Wednesday to pass on the same message as the Assistant Foreign Minister, according to a Facebook message posted by the ambassador. Melescanu did not comment on the meeting.

Despite the diplomatic tension, Dragnea insisted on Wednesday that moving the embassy was only a practical response to the fact that Jerusalem is the de facto seat of the Israeli government.

“I don’t think it’s that complicated … In Israel, all the embassies are in Tel Aviv … but the central institutions of the Israeli state are in Jerusalem. Every morning, the ambassadors and a part of the personnel travel to Jerusalem and they go back in the evening,” he said.

“If Israel moves its capital officially to Jerusalem, do we keep our embassy in Tel Aviv? I’m just wondering. Let’s say we move the capital to Brasov. The embassies stay in Bucharest?” Dragnea asked.

Unofficial reports in the Israeli media name Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia on a list of ten countries that Israel hopes will move their embassies to Jerusalem.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely on Wednesday said Israel had initiated contacts with at least 10 countries interested in moving their embassies, and some European countries were among them.

However, she said she could not disclose the names because these governments were “under tremendous pressure from the Arab states and other European countries”.

Romania’s Foreign Ministry on December 21 stressed that Romania still supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It also said that Romania’s government did not think that it was the right time to debate the status of Jerusalem before a sustainable solution to the conflict is found.

During the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania was a reliable supporter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Bucharest was one of the first to recognize the Palestinian Authority after the Palestinian Declaration of Independence on November 15, 1988.