By Neil Thompson

Electric vehicles (EVs) are starting to revolutionize the car market in 2018, with BMW recently announcing new designs for electric versions of a dozen of its leading models. The BMW effort is being replicated across the car market by its competitors, as technological advances transform vehicle designs in the biggest shift to hit ground transport since the invention of the internal combustion engine. Even roads are changing with the gradual arrival of the energy generating and storing “solar panel roads.” These new EVs come with one drawback from carmakers’ perspectives however; they require a great deal of the rare mineral cobalt. A typical EV battery needs 21kg of cobalt to function properly, and as the mining sector has woken up to the prospect of fleets of EVs on our roads by the 2020s, the price of cobalt has spiked.

Early in January, business outlet Bloomberg reported the price had climbed from $600 to $1700 in 16 months. There is another problem for carmakers however: 60 percent of all known cobalt supplies come from the unstable and corrupt Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). War is also brewing there after the DRC’s autocratic leader President Joseph Kabila refused to step down at the end of his term in 2016. With fossil fuels falling out of favor due to their environmental impact, carmakers do not have the luxury of refusing to engage with the DRC, but how they avoid tying themselves too tightly to the decaying Kabila regime will be a crucial consideration. In the interim period between the end of fossil fuels’ monopoly of the motor industry and the rise of credible alternatives to cobalt (recycling dead batteries is often mentioned), the DRC will have a disproportionate amount of international leverage relative to its tiny and highly dysfunctional economy.

Background

A legacy of dictatorship. Security in the DRC has taken a sharp downwards turn in 2017 as the peace agreement which ended the devastating Second Congo War in 2003 fell apart. President Joseph Kabila, who took over as the DRC’s leader upon the assassination of his father Laurent-Désiré Kabila, went on to serve two full terms as the “elected” leader of the DRC. This was all that was allowed him under the post-war DRC constitution, whose creators wanted to avoid another ‘president-for-life’ in the mold of the DRC’s notorious former military dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu was leader when rebel forces under Laurent-Désiré Kabila took power 1997. He had helped to murder the DRC’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, by turning him over to secessionist forces in the rebelling state of Katanga, who promptly had Lumumba shot. He also overthrew the DRC’s first president, Joseph Kasavubu, in 1965.

Corruption in the DRC. This tradition of coups, assassinations, and violent rebellion has plagued the DRC ever since. Joseph Kabila’s refusal to step down at the end of his final term in 2016 has sparked violent conflict in both the Congo’s southwestern Kasai region and in the DRC’s unstable east. While fear of his own personal safety is undoubtedly one reason that Kabila has repeatedly pushed back elections (he now says they will take place in December 2018, two years after his term officially ends), corruption is another. Kabila and his circle are estimated to have amassed a considerable fortune during his brutal 17-year reign, such that there is no sector in the DRC’s economy which is free from their influence — including the lucrative mining sector.

Impact

Acquiring cobalt from the DRC is therefore a PR nightmare for leading Western carmakers and their developed democratic equivalents in states like Japan and South Korea. For starters they are dealing with a country where the central leadership is facing outbreaks of political dissent in the periphery, and the capital only survives through brute force and playing the opposition off against each other.

The national environment is not a place for safe and stable business arrangements. Conversely it is an excellent one for becoming identified with the regime of an authoritarian despot, risking brand damage over the regime’s human rights record and complications dealing with whatever government succeeds Kabila.

Then there are concerns about just who is operating at the far end of the supply chain where the raw materials are extracted. Carmakers are already exploring the possibilities of sourcing some of their products from the DRC’s inefficient artisanal mines, which still produce around a fifth of cobalt exports. The approach is problematic because the artisanal mines frequently employ child labor, they have been linked to forced labor and militant groups in the recent past, and they are corruptly awarded their mining licenses, if they’re licensed at all. Meanwhile seven of the 10 largest producers in Congo as of 2016 were Chinese-owned according to Bloomberg. These companies operate in a far looser regulatory environment, and as a result have a reputation for condoning terrible work conditions, environmental destruction, and for working hand-in-glove with corrupt rebel warlords, dictators, and organized criminal syndicates.

This article was published by Geopolitical Monitor.com

By Giancarlo Elia Valori*

Bitcoin and the other “cryptocurrencies”, namely Ethereum and Litcoin- although there are 33 additional currencies arriving on the Internet – are a brand new phenomenon on the currency market.

Currently we are all in the so-called “fiat money” regime, namely any money declared by a government to be legal tender, which is a currency not backed by gold reserves – a currency which is always and anyway accepted by everyone.

Hence it is also fiat money, like the first “lire” of the Kingdom of Italy.

This means it is a State-issued currency that is not convertible by law to any equivalent value in gold or other hard currencies.

Fiat money is stable as it is controlled, almost on a daily basis, with the money demand from the economic system.

When there is an excess of money supply, we talk about inflation.

This is, indeed, the true meaning of the alltoowell-known concept of “inflation”, not the mere “price increase” which, at most, can be an indicator of excessive growth in money supply, not one of its causes.

Accepting the Dollar, the French or Swiss Franc, the Euro, the Ruble or any other currency (albeit, in fact, the situation would be somehow different for the Russian currency) is always mandatory by law.

Hence also seigniorage is mandatory, namely the act of legal magic with which each issuing bank decides that a small piece of paper is worth 100 nominal euro – although costing only 3 cents to the issuing bank for producing it.

The difference between the face value of money and the cost to produce it (plus fixed costs such as equipment, staff salaries and taxes) is, in fact, seigniorage.

The latter, however, should not be demonized, as done by some theorists who – by using a silly contemporary language dogma – are called “radicals”.

Reasonably, the possible alternative is the intrinsic value money, like the medieval coins – molten gold marked as shown on the coin front or back. Nevertheless the King often “reduced the value” of coins or melted gold and silver with non-monetary metals, such as copper (although the United States was to use it in the future) or even bronze.

Today we would say it was a form of “seigniorage” “with criminal relevance and implications”.

The primal scene – just to quote a concept by Sigmund Freud -stemmed from the 1971 “Smithsonian Agreement”.

It was the American agreement Nixon had wanted as from August 15, 1971, signed in the Smithsonian Museum of Washington. It was signed by what we would currently call the G7 and reestablished an international system of fixed exchange rates without the backing of gold. It certified the end of FED’s obligation to pay for gold up to the fixed rate of 35 US dollars per ounce.

It was the end of the gold-backed currency – the “fiat money” no longer pegged to intrinsic money – occurring after the Allies verifying that the American currency was severely overvalued.

The costs borne for the Vietnam War, the end of the Johnsonian cycle of Great Society and the crisis of US products on European markets, were all factors which led De Gaulle, at first, to ask – without further ado – the payment of the US debt in gold or in hard currencies. Later many other allies who were reluctant to put in place non-tariff barriers against US products followed suit.

To put it more brutally, Nixon shifted the burden of the US super-inflation onto his allies of the Bretton Woods Agreement, which Europeans were forced to pay since they had to buy highly overvalued dollars for their international trade.

As the US Treasury Secretary, John Connally, said at the time to his European colleagues: “The dollar is our currency but your problem”.

In other words, cryptocurrencies are the result of this long historical process.

The currency based on Nothing, the postmodern point of arrival point of the disembodied monetary instrument.

A currency that is believed to be good because everyone thinks so – a financial transposition of Andersen’s tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.

As you may remember, it is the tale about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that they say is invisible to those who are unfit for their position, hopelessly stupid or incompetent – while in reality, they make no clothes at all, making everyone believe the clothes are invisible to them. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new “clothes”, no one, including his Ministers, dares to say they do not see any suit of clothes on him for fear that they will be seen as stupid. Finally, a child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretense, blurts out that the Emperor “is not wearing anything at all” and the cry is taken up by others.

The same will happen to the contemporary monetary equilibrium, but it will certainly not be a child who will get bankers and the public at large to open their eyes.

Hence today banks create money, which is mandatory to consider valid, with a fiat -namely ex nihilo – from the Void of Value. Or from their debt or even from the State debt.

Just issue securities having another name.

Hence, what is currently money? It is what the Auctoritas decides to be so.

Or, to be precise, the money supply currently issued by the central banks or other banking institutions, which is not based on savers’ deposits or on debt repayment forecasts, but it is only the sign of a debt, the “promise of a settlement”which, however, is spent immediately.

And hence it is confirmed in its Value. The Value lies in theshift from a currency to another or from a currency to real goods or assets.

Obviously banks still earn interest on the money supply, regardless of its source.

Bitcoin, however, is not a currency like any other, guaranteed by internal law and interbank agreements.

The cryptocurrency is based on a mechanism like the one of online sales, namely the peer-to-peer one, which is gradually accepted by all those who now operate with Bitcoins.

Hence, while the final Bitcoin supply is defined – as always happens – our Internet currency is completely volatile.

Therefore it cannot certainly be a unit of account.

Hence Bitcoin varies- programmatically – as demand changes. In fact, last year its value increased by 47 times.

The reason is simple: it is a monetary supply that adapts to demand, but is also able to stop so as to create sufficiently long Bitcoin income and returns to attract average investors.

In January 2018,the cryptocurrency is worth approximately 900 dollars – a value that will probably increase when, in all likelihood, the Internet currency will be accepted by large commercial and distribution chains.

If it is a currency that influences markets by adapting to buyers’ requests (or artificially reducing supply in an instant), the only ones that can reap benefits are the Great States, the International Crime Organizations or the new networks of global Banks.

Never let them tell you that the small investor of Grand Rapids or Varese can determine the first “peer-to-peer” that, by repetition, triggers the chain off.

It is another fairy tale like the one of the movie Mary Poppins pointing to the magical growth of the penny deposited in a London bank, growing out of all proportion and turning into huge amounts of money.

The fairy tale is the expected automatic growth of funds denominated in Bitcoins, from 10 euro up to millions of millions, like the stars.

In fact, nothing is closer to the world of Andersen or the Brothers Grimm than some bad finance.

We can wonder whether the cryptocurrency is nothing more than a “Ponzi e-Scheme”.

You may recall the Ponzi Scheme or pyramid scheme, in which the high interest rates granted to capital providers -attracted precisely by the rates that are promised – are paid with new investors’ fresh capital.

In fact, what is striking is that the production of Bitcoins is sometimes artificially low because there are many people who want to buy them.

An issuing bank à la carte.

In fact, the many people who are waiting for buying Bitcoins hope that their value will increase, but only after they have managed to buy them.

A self-fulfilling prophecy.

A mechanism which is exactly the same as the Ponzi Scheme.

As the best US financial advisers say, do not follow the crowd.

Hence the Bitcoin is a “bubble”. A bubble probably bound to last, but still a bubble.

A bubble born in 2016. The primary year, while everybody makes reference to 2009, when the production of notes was no longer enough and the debt to be repaid was huge, while the West was entering its darkest crisis since the 1929one.

The trigger,i.e. the banking panic and the unaware laissez-faire approach of the US Presidency, were the same in both cases.

Two crises – the old and the new -broken out precisely in the United States, the burden of which was later shifted onto the rest of the West.

With a view to overcoming the first crisis, the huge costs borne for the Second World War were needed.The Rooseveltian stimulus had been to little avail.

The second crisis, much closer to us, which was triggered by the subprime crisis, has needed liquidity injections even greater than those needed during the 1929Great Depression – injections which have not ceased yet.

In the latter case, the exit from the crisis is ensured by the creation from nothing of the largest mass of money in human history, also through the Internet.

In fact, the Internet currencies have allowed to create exchange value, purely financial values ​​that have strongly contributed to multiplying global liquidity in collaboration with standard currencies, which have been distributed indiscriminately to just any market – with helicopter money – by the US Governors and then by the ECB Governor, although certainly in much smaller proportions than his US counterparts.

On the other hand, when there is a liquidity crisis- a crisis caused by an excess of debt – every issuing bank prints money or rather creates money from debt securities. There is no other solution.

Contemporary Value arises from the mastery of a Name and from the artificial dissociation between this Name and a New Name.

Furthermore,in any case, the presence of cryptocurrencies only on the Internet and with a system along the lines of the peer-to-peer mechanism of normal online sales has allowed hackers’ systematic theft of 14% of all cryptocurrencies existing on the worldmarket.

A theft worth 1.2 billion US dollars, with revenues equal to at least 200 million US dollars.

In less than ten years, however, the technology generatingBitcoins will be vulnerable to cyber-attacks launched by quantum computers, which will become more widespread than they are today.

The attacks on virtual currencies have already cost governments and private companies owning them asmany as 113 billion dollars of turnover.

Nevertheless, who is currently inflating the Bitcoin value, which has more than doubled compared to January 2017 – a value that is now around 125%?

The main reason for this is China. Beijing is now the first market for the exchange of cryptocurrencies in the world.

As early as 2015 China alone traded 80% of Bitcoins.

Today, the top 4 among the 32 major exchange platforms of these new currencies mainly trade yuan.

One of these platforms has opened a mining station for “creating” Bitcoins – an operation which is highly energy-intensive and consuming – on the slopes of Tibet, where there is abundant low-cost energy.

Every time the yuan depreciates, the Bitcoin appreciates, because there are so many Chinese who pocket their capital to avoid government’s control and hence buy Bitcoins.

The yuan is depreciating and the capital flight from China is ongoing. The tool is often the conversion of the yuan masses into Bitcoins.

We may wonder whether the e-currency is used as a tool of “indirect war” against China.

Moreover, the current growth on the US and on some other European Stock Exchanges has occurred with credit money, borrowed at zero interest rate, which has been provided to major investors by central banks.

Another possible reason justifying the Bitcoin growth.

Virtual money may havealso been created to avoid the investors’ traditional rush to gold – the “tribal residue”, as Keynes called it – and hence not to increase the dollar value, currently maneuvered downward?

On January 15, one of the most active US-listed banks on the Bitcoin market ceased to convert cryptocurrencies into “traditional” currencies, but especially into dollars.

The beginning of the fall in the Bitcoin value, but the preservation of market liquidity, so as to prevent it from converging towards gold, in particular, or European hard currencies or, even worse, towards the Chinese or Russian financial markets.

Hence the Bitcoin is a pseudo-currency that serves to control the volatility and trends of global financial markets, as well as to keep it artificially high and avoid some currencies becoming “full” or sovereign like the Swiss Franc.

In fact, in 2018 a referendum will be held throughout the Helvetic Confederation on the so-called “full” or sovereign currency, i.e. on a Swiss Franc created by the national central bank and not by international banks.

“True Francs on our accounts”. Only the Swiss National Bank can create e-money, where necessary.

These are the goals of those who have proposed the referendum.

Let us hope for the best. Those who almost invented modern finance – the Swiss merchants of the Middle Ages, the link between Italian ports and large Central European markets -now realize the dangers of creating value from nothing, the Faustian (and darkly malicious) mechanism currently governing the magical and alchemical transformation of banks’ and States’ debt into credit for individuals.

Let us hope that the financial world will come to its senses, just in time.

About the author:
*Advisory Board Co-chair Honoris Causa Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders. Mr Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York. He currently chairs “La Centrale Finanziaria Generale Spa”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group and member of the Ayan-Holding Board. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title of “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

Decades of prioritizing economic growth over social equity has led to historically high levels of wealth and income inequality and caused governments to miss out on a virtuous circle in which growth is strengthened by being shared more widely and generated without unduly straining the environment or burdening future generations. These are the findings from the World Economic Forum’s Inclusive Development Index 2018, which were released Monday.

Excessive reliance by economists and policy-makers on gross domestic product as the primary metric of national economic performance is part of the problem, since GDP measures current production of goods and services rather than the extent to which it contributes to broad socio-economic progress as manifested in median household income, employment opportunity, economic security and quality of life.

The Inclusive Development Index is an annual assessment that measures how 103 countries perform on 11 dimensions of economic progress in addition to GDP. It has three pillars: growth and development; inclusion; and intergenerational equity – sustainable stewardship of natural and financial resources.

According to this year’s index, over the past five years, the 29 advanced economies included in the study have on average flatlined in terms of inclusion, which is measured by median household income, poverty, and wealth and income inequality, despite boosting their Growth and Development score by over 3%. The four indicators that make up the index’s Growth and Development pillar are: GDP per capita; labour productivity; employment; and healthy life expectancy.

Over the same period, only 12 of the 29 advanced economies were successful in reducing poverty and only eight saw a decrease in income inequality.

More worrying still: rich and poor countries alike are struggling to protect future generations. The index’s Intergenerational Equity and Sustainability pillar – which takes into account public debt; carbon intensity of GDP; dependency ratio and adjusted net savings (which measures savings in an economy after investments in human capital, depletion of natural resources and the cost of pollution) – actually deteriorated in upper-, middle- and low-income economies since 2012 and improved only marginally (0.6%) in advanced economies.

Top performing countries

According to the index, the most inclusive advanced economy in the world in 2018 is Norway. The Nordic nation ranks second overall for intergenerational equity and third for the two other pillars of the index: Growth and Development, and Inclusion. Small European economies dominate the top of the index, with Australia (9) the only non-European economy in the top 10.

Of the G7 economies, Germany (12) ranks the highest. It is followed by Canada (17), France (18), the United Kingdom (21), the United States (23), Japan (24) and Italy (27). In many countries, there is a stark difference between individual pillars. For example, the US ranks 10 out of 29 for Growth and Development; however, it ranks 28 on Inclusion and 26 on Intergenerational Equity. France, on the other hand, fares less well on Growth and Development (21 out of 29); however, it ranks 12 for Inclusion. Its low ranking on Intergenerational Equity (24) suggests it may be storing up problems for the future.

Six emerging European economies are located in the top 10 spots in the emerging economies’ ranking: Lithuania (1), Hungary (2), Latvia (4), Poland (5), Croatia (7) and Romania (10). These countries perform well on Growth and Development, benefiting from EU membership, as well as on inclusion indicators, as median living standards rose and wealth inequality declined significantly. Latin America also performs well, with three countries featured in the top 10: Panama (6), Uruguay (8) and Chile (9).

Performance is mixed among BRICS economies, with the Russian Federation ranking 19th, followed by China (26), Brazil (37), India (62) and South Africa (69). Although China ranks first among emerging economies in GDP per capita growth (6.8%) and labour productivity growth (6.7%) since 2012, its overall score is brought down by lacklustre performance on Inclusion. Other emerging countries such as Mexico (24), Indonesia (36), Turkey (16) and the Philippines (38) show more potential on Intergenerational Equity and Sustainability but lack progress on Inclusion indicators such as income and wealth inequality.

Turkey’s present military campaign inside the Syrian territory has transpired after a half-baked US announcement of its decision to set up a mostly Kurdish “border patrol” consisting of some 30,000 fighters, a decision that was quickly shelved by the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson no sooner than it had been broadcast to the world.

Turkey’s gambit has been denounced by Damascus as a violation of its sovereignty and it remains to be seen if it will prove to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, the camel in this case being the tripartite Russia-Iran-Turkey partnership for peace in Syria that the US interprets as antithetical to its interests and maneuvers to break it up and bring Turkey back to its traditional NATO fold sooner rather than later.

A big question is, of course, the end game of the Afrin campaign, its duration and intensity, given Ankara’s stated rationale to create a 30 kilometer buffer zone inside Syria. So far, according to reports, the Turkish incursion has gone only as far as 5 miles deep inside Syria and, naturally, one wonders if even the desired enclave will suffice to put Turkey’s anti-Kurdish anxieties to rest — by simply moving its borders so many miles into its neighboring territory?

Certainly, the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) which operate inside the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are well-armed and well-trained to withstand any mortal blow by Turkey and their ability to fight back should not be underestimated, in other words this could become Ankara’s quagmire, and one that could result in the demise of the tripartite alliance mentioned above. Should this outcome materialize over time, i.e., the next few months, then credit should go to US’s smart power politics rattling the waters sufficient to sink the ship of peacemaking in Syria dominated by those three powers.

In turn, this raises the question of what is US’s strategy in Syria? According to Russian officials, it is to split up Syria, a task well managed in another Arab country, namely Libya. To achieve this goal, US is building more and more mini-bases, thus accelerating its creeping interventionism, a risky move that could lead to open warfare with the Syrian government and its key backers.

As a result, the year ahead can be potentially dangerous for regional and world peace, particularly if Turkey does not self-restrict in Afrin and continues to harbor the illusion of a military solution. But, no matter what Turkey’s (good or bad) intentions, it is increasingly clear that Washington has its own scripts for Syria and the broader region, only some of which coincide with Turkey’s interests. A whole new era of coinciding and conflicting interests between Washington and Ankara has suddenly emerged that can be quite complicating for Ankara to manage.

Turkey is also vulnerable to ISIS and other terrorists’ threats, and not simply the Kurdish threat, and the US is clearly keen on exploiting those vulnerabilities to dictate terms to its NATO ally presently crossing some ‘red lines’ by cozying up to US’s rivals. A delicate balancing act full of nuances and contingencies on Ankara’s part is called for, otherwise it will fall into the traps weakening its ability to conduct sound foreign policy according to its national interests.

By George W. Croner*

(FPRI) — Although falling well short of a civics paradigm of legislative deliberation, with Senate passage of S. 139, the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) cleared the Congress and was sent to President Trump. On January 19, 2018, he signed into law the legislation extending, through the end of 2023, statutory authority for this uniquely critical foreign intelligence collection program. With its reauthorization now a reality, and in a form that largely preserves its utility as America’s foremost foreign intelligence collection tool, it is instructive to examine Section 702 as finally approved by Congress following multiple hearings and its consideration of five separate FISA bills.

Background of FISA

First enacted by Congress in 2008 as part of the FISA Amendments Act, Section 702 permits the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to jointly authorize the targeting of foreigners reasonably believed to be located abroad for the purpose of acquiring foreign intelligence. By 2011, the National Security Agency (NSA), the intelligence agency responsible for conducting the nation’s signals intelligence activities, was acquiring more than 250 million internet communications each year pursuant to Section 702,^[1] and, by 2014, it was estimated that more than a quarter (25%) of all foreign intelligence reports issued by NSA concerning counterterrorism included information based in whole or in part on Section 702 collection.^[2] Although similar calibrations of Section 702’s value remain classified and are rarely publicly disclosed, neither the volume of Section 702 collection nor its ubiquity in intelligence reporting is likely to have diminished since 2014. What is known is that, by 2016, NSA was conducting Section 702-authorized collection on over 106,000 foreign targets,^[3] and, during the reauthorization debate held in the House of Representatives on January 11, 2018, Section 702 was variously described as “the most important electronic intelligence-gathering mechanism that the United States has to keep us safe”^[4] and “as one of the most, if not the most, critical national security tool used by our intelligence community to obtain intelligence on foreign terrorists located overseas.”^[5]

Yet, despite its virtually unmatched pedigree as a foreign intelligence tool and the unqualified support of those who best know that pedigree, the renewal of Section 702 was hardly assured. From its legislative inception in 2008, Section 702 has been the focus of ceaseless criticism from a politically diverse group of opponents who insist that it transcends constitutional bounds and represents the harbinger of an Orwellian surveillance state: charges that reached a crescendo in the aftermath of the disclosures by Edward Snowden in 2013. Given that Section 702 was last renewed by Congress in 2012, the 2017 expiration date represented the first time the collection program (“Section 702 Program”) was debated against the background of Snowden’s revelations.

The array of legislative proposals addressing Section 702 reflected both the diversity of positions in the renewal debate and the odd consortium of groups and individuals that coalesced to oppose renewal of the Section 702 Program. Two of those legislative offerings in particular, the House and Senate editions of the presumptuously labeled USA Rights Act, would have drastically overhauled Section 702 in ways that seriously impaired its value as an intelligence collection tool in the name of “remedying” the ostensible deficiencies that opponents insisted rendered Section 702 constitutionally defective. The USA Rights Bill was specifically introduced in the House as a proposed alternative to the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017, the bill initially offered in the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) that was supported by the House leadership and came closest to embodying the “clean” reauthorization sought by the Intelligence Community.^[6]

Ultimately, after collaboration between the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, a slightly modified variant of the HPSCI bill was also presented as the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 (FISA Reauthorization Act) providing the version of Section 702 that is now law; although, not without some final legislative legerdemain that served to limit overall debate and beat the January 19, 2018 deadline created when Congress added a short extension of Section 702 to the December 2017 stopgap funding bill passed to avoid a government shutdown.^[7] Indeed, signaling the tortured journey of Section 702 through the legislative mill, the final version of the bill proceeded through both chambers labeled as “S. 139,” a bill originally introduced in the Senate as “An Act to implement the use of Rapid DNA instruments to inform decisions about pretrial release or detention and their conditions, to solve and prevent violent crimes and other crimes, to exonerate the innocent, to prevent DNA analysis backlogs, and for other purposes.” The Congressional Record is silent on how this particular piece of legislation came to serve as the host for the renewal of the country’s most important intelligence collection program; but, then again, no connoisseur of haute cuisine is ever encouraged to study the process by which sausage is made.

The Odd Coalition of FISA’s Opponents

Reflecting the odd coalition of Section 702 opponents, some of the most conservative Republicans in the House joined with some of the chamber’s most liberal Democrats in a failed bid to dramatically overhaul the collection authority. Representatives Zoe Lofgren and Justin Amash, strange political bedfellows for sure, sought to substitute the House version of the USA Rights Act as the template for Section 702 renewal, but the full House rejected the effort. Ultimately, 58 conservative Republicans joined 125 Democrats in voting for the Lofgren/Amash amendment that would have significantly hollowed Section 702’s effectiveness as an intelligence tool; but, 55 Democrats joined 178 Republicans in rejecting it, thereby affording a relatively comfortable 50-vote margin of safety for Section 702’s renewal.

The proponents of the USA Rights Act provided yet another example of how many of Section 702’s critics, inside Congress and out, understand constitutional issues only in a colloquial, rather than a jurisprudential, sense by persisting in the argument that the FISA Reauthorization Act fails to rectify the alleged Fourth Amendment violation that, critics insist, occurs whenever the Section 702 database of foreign communications is queried using U.S. person identifiers seeking evidence of a crime. This despite the fact that every court to have considered this issue has concluded that an analytic query of Section 702 communications lawfully acquired pursuant to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)-approved certification is not a separate search under the Fourth Amendment and does not require a warrant.^[8]

In the end, the failed vote on the proffered substitution of the flawed USA Rights Act for the FISA Reauthorization Act represented the high water mark for Section 702’s opponents in the House and, once the amendment was rejected, the full House voted 256 to 164 to adopt the FISA Reauthorization Act, leaving a frustrated Edward Snowden to tweet that the [USA Rights Act] amendment would have passed had fewer Democrats broken ranks.

In the end, the failed vote on the proffered substitution of the flawed USA Rights Act for the FISA Reauthorization Act represented the high water mark for Section 702’s opponents in the House.  Although the vote was complicated by a series of seemingly contradictory tweets from President Trump on the morning of the House vote, once the White House offered clarification and the Lofgren/Amash amendment was rejected, the full House voted 256-164 to adopt the FISA Reauthorization Act, leaving a frustrated Edward Snowden to tweet that the [USA Rights Act] amendment would have passed had fewer Democrats broken ranks.

In the Senate, Rand Paul, Ron Wyden, and others, comprising another curious confederation of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, threatened to filibuster the bill, but the Senate’s Republican leadership managed to secure the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture in a vote on January 16, 2018. With this hurdle cleared, the bill proceeded to a full vote and was approved by the Senate, on January 18, 2018, by a comfortable margin of 65-34.

As passed by both chambers, the FISA Reauthorization Act extends Section 702 authority through December 31, 2023. President Trump signed the legislation into law on January 19, 2018.

So, having survived months of legislative maneuvering and a chorus of criticism from privacy and civil liberties activists, how will Section 702 now operate for the next six years?

FISA Moving Forward

From its inception in 2008, Section 702 has required that the Attorney General, in consultation with the DNI, adopt targeting and minimization procedures to govern the conduct of any authorized acquisition of foreign communications. These targeting and minimization procedures are subject to review by the FISC for consistency with the Fourth Amendment. The FISA Reauthorization Act requires that the Attorney General and the DNI now also produce “Querying Procedures” that, logically, will apply to analytic “querying” of the Section 702 database; i.e., the practice by which intelligence analysts access the database of “raw” communications acquired pursuant to Section 702 certifications approved by the FISC. Like Section 702’s targeting and minimization procedures, the new “querying” procedures are also subject to review by the FISC for consistency with the Fourth Amendment. Additionally, the new “Querying Procedures” mandate that the measures adopted by the Attorney General and the DNI include a “technical procedure whereby a record is kept of each United States person query term used for a query.”

The FISA Reauthorization Act’s new “querying” restrictions also mandate that the FBI, but only the FBI, now obtain a FISC order before initiating any query of the Section 702 database “in connection with a predicated criminal investigation opened by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that does not relate to the national security of the United States.”^[9] It would have been helpful to have defined “predicated criminal investigation,” but the statute is silent, so one is left to assume that it is an investigation that has moved beyond a preliminary assessment of suspected criminal activity that is unrelated in any way to national security; i.e., your garden variety criminal investigation conducted through the FBI’s criminal investigative division.^[10]

In these criminal investigations, before querying the Section 702 database for communications of or concerning a U.S. person, the FBI must now file an application seeking an order from the FISC that probable cause exists to believe that the communications sought in the Section 702 database will provide evidence of criminal activity, contraband or fruits of a crime, or property designed for use in committing a crime. Only upon receipt of an order from the FISC (except in limited circumstances^[11]), can the FBI then access the Section 702 database and use the communications retrieved through such a query against a U.S. person in any criminal proceeding.

Of course, no modification of FISA would be complete without a concomitant reporting requirement and the annual report required by the DNI,^[12] which includes disclosures related to FISA activities must now include a separate listing of “the number of instances in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened, under the Criminal Investigative Division or any successor division, an investigation of a United States person (who is not considered a threat to national security) based wholly or in part on [a Section 702 acquisition].”

At first blush, this new requirement for a FISC order appears as an effort to mollify Section 702’s opponents who have been complaining about the “backdoor search” issue for years. Closer examination, however, reveals it principally as a political gesture offered to appease critics rather than seriously constrict access to the Section 702 database for foreign intelligence purposes.^[13] For example, after creating this new “querying” limitation in purely criminal cases, the FISA Reauthorization Act hastens to point out that the FBI is relieved of any obligation to seek a FISC order: (1) where the FBI is conducting lawful queries of the Section 702 database (i.e., queries directed to producing foreign intelligence information); or (2) where the results of an FBI query are “reasonably designed to find and extract foreign intelligence information, regardless of whether such foreign intelligence information would also be considered evidence of a crime;” or (3) where the FBI query is initiated to evaluate “whether to open an assessment or predicated investigation relating to the national security of the United States;” or (4) where the query is initiated upon reasonable belief that the content of Section 702 communications “could assist in mitigating or eliminating a threat to life or serious bodily harm.” As critics already have noted, these are expansive exceptions affording the FBI broad latitude to eschew pursuing a FISC order except in very limited circumstances, so it remains to be seen whether this new requirement will result in any material change in how the FBI handles access to the database of Section 702-acquired communications. Moreover, as already noted, NSA’s Section 702 collection and reporting activities are entirely unaffected by this new FISC order requirement. All things considered, given the volume of criticism voiced by the “backdoor search” lobby, the new FISC order requirement is unlikely to have a significant impact on the future operation of the Section 702 Program.

Reforms to “About” Collection and Others Parts of FISA

Unsurprisingly, a different series of provisions found in the FISA Reauthorization Act addresses “about” collection; yet another feature of the Section 702 Program that drew heavy fire from opponents.^[14]

The new law requires that, prior to any resumption of “about” collection, the DNI and the Attorney General must notify Congress of their intent to resume such collection and, absent emergency circumstances, that notice triggers a 30-day period in which, the Judiciary Committees and the Intelligence Committees in each chamber “shall, as appropriate, hold hearings and briefings and otherwise obtain information in order to fully review [the written notice provided by the DNI and the Attorney General].” In essence, the objective is to insure that “about” collection, a practice that continues to draw substantial fire from critics despite its abatement by NSA early last year and that would have been statutorily prohibited by the USA Rights Act, will not resume without Congress at least having the opportunity to act on the practice. Again, given the level of criticism generated by “about” collection, the provisions found in the FISA Reauthorization Act represent the minimal level of “reform” that a reasonable advocate of Section 702 should have anticipated in any renewal. Absent a significant change in intelligence requirements or technological developments that allow NSA to successfully filter “about” collection in a way that addresses FISC concerns over the acquisition of U.S. person communications, it seems unlikely that the Intelligence Community will risk the inevitable firestorm in Congress that renewing “about” collection would precipitate.

In another effort to improve transparency surrounding the Section 702 Program, the FISA Reauthorization Act now requires that the Attorney General and the DNI conduct a declassification review of the minimization procedures used with Section 702 and, “to the greatest extent practicable,” make those minimization procedures publicly available. This new mandate is somewhat redundant since, for example, NSA is the agency principally responsible for the conduct of the Section 702 Program and NSA’s current Section 702 minimization procedures, in redacted form, can already be found on the DNI’s website.^[15] Nonetheless, there is probably value in creating a statutory requirement for such disclosure since minimization procedures establish the standards that govern the retention, use, and dissemination of all U.S. person information acquired through Section 702 collection.^[16]

One feature of the new FISA Reauthorization Act that almost certainly can be traced to the activities of Edward Snowden is the inclusion of specific whistleblower protections for contractors of the Intelligence Community. As anyone familiar with Snowden’s background knows, he was not employed directly by NSA, but worked as an employee of one of NSA’s many contractors. Congress has now sought to statutorily guarantee that Intelligence Community contractors are afforded the same whistleblower protections as are available to employees of Intelligence Community components.^[17]

Finally the FISA Reauthorization Act includes the provision that had been found in two of the earlier FISA bills introduced in the House of Representatives directing the Comptroller General to conduct a study of the classification system of the United States and the problem of unauthorized disclosures.^[18] As I previously wrote in analyzing this earlier FISA legislation, at the risk of appearing cynical, if the Comptroller General actually produces meaningful reform of the classification system used by the U.S. government, it will represent an accomplishment that has evaded nearly every Congress and presidential administration of the past 50 years.

What’s Missing?

In some ways, what is missing from the FISA Reauthorization Act is almost as interesting as what is found in the renewal bill. The same two earlier FISA bills introduced in the House, the initial HPSCI bill (H.R. 4478 titled the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Bill of 2017) and the USA Liberty Act (H.R. 3989 originally introduced in the House Judiciary Committee) also both sought to address the issue of protecting U.S. person identities in intelligence reporting. The USA Liberty Act would have mandated specific procedures regulating the “unmasking” of U.S. person identities as part of a broadening of existing statutory minimization requirements, while the HPSCI bill proposed amending the National Security Act by adding a new section establishing procedures to regulate “covered requests” seeking the disclosure of U.S. person information.

The underlying focus of these provisions was the “masking” or, more accurately, the “unmasking” of U.S. person identities in intelligence reporting, and the requirements that ought to govern “unmasking” requests. Currently, for example, “unmasking” U.S. person identities in NSA intelligence reporting is governed by NSA’s minimization procedures,^[19] but the HPSCI bill and the USA Liberty Act sought to create some statutory guidance on the topic. However, the entire issue became politically controversial after media reports of alleged requests by members of the Obama administration to unmask U.S. person identities of Trump transition team members referenced in intelligence reporting that was based, in part, on incidentally collected communications acquired during FISA surveillance. Given the silence of the FISA Reauthorization Act on the “unmasking” subject, it appears that the controversy left too much political discord to allow for a compromise resolution on “unmasking” standards.

Yet, another subject that had been addressed in the HPSCI bill (H.R. 4478) but is absent from the final legislation was an effort to amend the long-standing FISA definitions for “foreign power” and “agent of a foreign power” to address the issue of “malicious cyber activity” such that FISA surveillance would have been authorized against foreign governments or organizations (or those acting on their behalf) engaged in “international malicious cyber activity.”^[20] In this regard, the HPSCI bill was the only one of the five separate pieces of FISA legislation that sought to address the cyber activity that has become such a focal point of the investigations surrounding the 2016 presidential election. Despite the current, and widely publicized, threat posed to national security by international malicious cyber activity, the FISA Reauthorization Act ignores the subject and the debate on the final bill offers no insight into why this particular issue was left unaddressed.

While cyber activities are not specifically mentioned in the FISA Reauthorization Act, that topic, and others, are likely to be covered in the report that Congress has now required^[21] from the Attorney General, in coordination with the DNI, on “current and future challenges to the effectiveness of the foreign intelligence surveillance activities of the United States authorized under [FISA].” This report, due in 270 days, is to address: (1) a discussion of any trends that currently challenge, or could foreseeably challenge, the effectiveness of the foreign intelligence activities of the U.S. over the next decade including (a) the extraordinary and surging volume of worldwide data, (b) the use of encryption, (c) changes to worldwide communications patterns or infrastructure, (d) technical obstacles in determining the location of data or persons, (e) the increasing complexity of the legal regime, including regarding requests for data in the custody of foreign governments, (f) the current and future ability of the U.S. to obtain, on a compulsory or voluntary basis, assistance from telecommunications providers or other entities, and (g) such other matters as the Attorney General and the DNI consider appropriate. It is regrettable that this report will undoubtedly carry the highest level of classification because it should make for extraordinarily interesting reading.

So, Section 702 collection authority now has been renewed for six years, and the terms of the reauthorization require no change that will materially affect the utility of the Section 702 Program as currently conducted. A crucial tool of the nation’s Intelligence Community has been preserved and all who take a serious and informed interest in U.S. intelligence and counterintelligence activities should be gratified. As a number of commentators already have observed, some in frustration, this particular legislative renewal debate, the first occurring since the Snowden disclosures, undoubtedly presented the best opportunity for Section 702’s critics to drain the Program of its capabilities in the name of “privacy” and “civil liberties.” That danger has now been avoided.

Correspondingly, this renewal exercise should also represent the last time that any FISA debate is tainted by the specter of Edward Snowden. The clock has now expired on Snowden’s solipsistic illusion that he has any continuing role to play in influencing U.S. intelligence policy. The “serial exaggerator and fabricator”^[22] “who failed basic annual training for NSA employees on Section 702”^[23] has used up his 15 minutes. While the country will unfortunately continue to bear significant expense in repairing the damage caused by his disclosures, it need no longer entertain the fiction that he has any meaningful role to play in shaping the foreign intelligence activities of the United States.

About the author:
*George W. Croner, a Senior Fellow at FPRI, previously served as principal litigation counsel in the Office of General Counsel at the National Security Agency. He is also a retired director and shareholder of the law firm of Kohn, Swift & Graf, P.C., where he remains Of Counsel, and is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
^[1] Memorandum Opinion [Caption Redacted], [Docket No. Redacted], 2011 WL 10945618, at *10 (FISC October 3, 2011).

^[2] Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, Report on the Surveillance Program Operated Pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (hereafter, the “PCLOB Report”), July 2, 2014, at 10. Additionally, a 2012 analysis found that Section 702 collection was the source for 1,477 separate items or “four items per day for the President’s daily intelligence briefing.” Loren Thompson, Why NSA’s PRISM Program Makes Sense, Forbes, June 7, 2013.

^[3] This figure is derived from estimates furnished by the Director of National Intelligence. See, Statistical Transparency Report Regarding the Use of National Security Authorities for 2016 at https://icontherecord.tumblr.com/transparency/odni-transparencyreport-cy2016.

^[4] 164 Cong. Rec. H147 (daily ed. Jan. 11, 2018) (remarks of Rep. Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee).

^[5] 164 Cong. Rec. H142 (daily ed. Jan. 11, 2018) (remarks of Rep. Stewart).

^[6] The various bills addressing FISA’s reauthorization consisted of (1) the USA Liberty Act (H.R. 3989) (introduced by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte on 10/6/2017); (2) the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 (S. 2010) (introduced by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr on 10/25/2017); (3) the USA Rights Act (introduced by Senator Ron Wyden on 10/24/2017); (4) the House version of the USA Rights Act (introduced by Rep. Zoe Lofgren on 10/25/2017); and (5) the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 (H.R. 4478) (introduced by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes on 11/29/2017).

Previous reviews of this Section 702-related FISA legislation have appeared in FPRI E Notes: “What’s To Be Found in the USA Liberty Act,” FPRI E-Notes, October 20, 2017; “Congress Skirmishes Over FISA Section 702: Will it Preserve the Intelligence Community’s ‘Crown Jewel’ or Neuter It?,” FPRI E-Notes, November 1, 2017; “The Gun Lap: FISA Renewal in the Homestretch,” FPRI E-Notes, December 6, 2017; and “The FISA Section 702 Saga: With Section 702 on the Brink of Expiring, Where Do Things Go From Here?,” FPRI E-Notes, January 4, 2018.

^[7] The short extension was itself necessitated by Congress’s failure to renew Section 702 by its original December 31, 2017 expiration date.

^[8] See, e.g., U.S. v. Muhtorov, 187 F.Supp. 3d 1240, 1256 (D. Colo. 2015); U.S. v. Mohamed 2014 WL 2866749, at *26 (D. Or. June 24, 2014) (concluding that accessing the data legally acquired pursuant to Section 702 using the FISC-approved minimization procedures is not a separate search for Fourth Amendment purpose).

^[9] Notably, NSA is not covered by the new requirements relating to obtaining a FISC order. Since NSA’s mission relates exclusively to the production of foreign intelligence, NSA is unaffected by the new FISC order requirement applied to purely criminal investigations. In fact, current NSA minimization procedures require that any query of the Section 702 database use only those selection terms reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence information. See, Minimization Procedures Used by the National Security Agency in Connection with Acquisitions of Foreign Intelligence Information Pursuant to Section 702 of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as Amended (“2016 NSA Minimization Procedures”) at 4-5.

^[10] For what insight it provides, the statement issued by the White House in connection with signing the FISA Reauthorization Act into law describes a “predicated criminal investigation” as one “with an elevated factual foundation.”

^[11] The limited circumstances in which Section 702 information can be used in evidence against a U.S. person without the FBI having first obtained a FISC order under the new FISA Reauthorization Act procedures require a determination by the Attorney General that the criminal proceeding involves national security, death, kidnapping, or one of several other serious and statutorily identified felonies.

^[12] 50 U.S.C. §1873(b).

^[13] In the House debate of the FISA Reauthorization Act, Rep. Stewart specifically noted that: “This [FISC] order requirement does not reflect the committee’s belief or intent that law enforcement access to lawfully acquired information constitutes a separate search under the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment, as interpreted by numerous Federal courts, does not require the FBI to obtain a separate order from the FISC to review lawfully acquired 702 information.” 164 Cong. Rec. H142 (daily ed. January 11, 2018) (remarks of Rep. Stewart).

^[14] “About” collection refers to the practice of acquiring communications that are to, from, or about a particular target. This form of collection has been a particular focus of critics who contend it improperly expands the universe of U.S. person communications incidentally acquired as part of Section 702 collection activity. NSA discontinued “about” collection earlier this year, but, before the FISA Reauthorization Act, the subject of “about” collection had never been statutorily addressed in any FISA legislation.

^[15] See, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/icotr/51117/2016-NSA-702-Minimization-Procedures_Mar_30_17.pdf.

^[16] As defined in FISA, minimization procedures are “specific procedures, which shall be adopted by the Attorney General, that are reasonably designed in light of the purpose and technique of the particular surveillance, to minimize the acquisition and retention, and prohibit the dissemination of, nonpublicicly available information concerning unconsenting U.S. persons consistent with the needs of the United States to obtain, produce and disseminate foreign intelligence information.” 50 U.S.C. §1801(h).

^[17] These whistleblower provisions are worthy and desirable protections for contractors of the Intelligence Community. But, it is specious to suggest that Snowden’s premeditated accumulation of highly classified information, flight to evade the reach of U.S. legal jurisdiction, and subsequent public disgorgement of secrets about some of the nation’s most valuable intelligence programs was precipitated, in any way shape or form, by his lack of confidence in whistleblower protection.

^[18] This feature calling for a study of the classification system was included in both the HPSCI bill (H.R. 4478) and the USA Liberty Act (H.R. 3989).

^[19] See, 2016 NSA Minimization Procedures at 12.

^[20] “International malicious cyber activity” was defined in the HPSCI bill as activity on or through an information system (as defined in the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act) originating from, or directed by, persons located outside the United States, that seeks to compromise or impair the confidentiality, integrity or availability of computers, information systems or communications systems or networks.

^[21] The report is to be directed to the judiciary and intelligence committees in both the House and the Senate.

^[22] Executive Summary of Review of the Unauthorized Disclosures of Former National Security Agency Contractor Edward Snowden (Unclassified), House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, September 15, 2016.

^[23] Id.

The Member States of the European Union have agreed to relocate the Galileo Security Monitoring Center (GSMC) to Spain after Brexit. To house the GSMC, Spain offered a number of installations at the National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA) in the Region of Madrid, which is managed under the Ministry of Defense.

Galileo is the European satellite navigation system that is currently under development. It is already offering a set of initial services and will guarantee highly precise positioning data given that, due to the use of two frequencies, it will provide any user with sub-metric precision in real time. Global navigation satellite systems – also known as GNSS – are of a strategic nature for the economy and defense of countries.

This is a civil program that is fully compatible with the other two systems currently deployed: GPS and GLONASS. It will also guarantee availability of service even under the most severe conditions and will inform users of any constellation anomaly within a matter of seconds. It will therefore be highly suited to such critical applications as highway guidance, railway control and aircraft landing.

The GSMC is a critical infrastructure operated by the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA), which oversees and acts on security threats, alerts and the operational status of the components making up the Galileo system.
The Galileo system consists of space infrastructures (satellites) and terrestrial infrastructures. The Galileo Security Monitoring Centers (GSMC) are an integral and critical part of the terrestrial infrastructure. Two such centers currently exist – one located in the outskirts of Paris and another in the United Kingdom, which acts as a back-up.

The Brexit scenario means that the center in the United Kingdom needs to be relocated to a country within the European Union (EU 27) as from March 2019, at which time it must be fully operational. To that end, the European Commission conducted a selection process with the Member States expressing an interest, with the Spanish bid eventually being chosen.

This center will strengthen the Spanish contribution to and involvement in one of the star programs of the European Union.

Hosting the GSMC is an opportunity for Spain to provide advantages of a strategic nature, position itself within the program, support Spanish industrial involvement in high technological and development value contracts, and consolidate national knowledge and technology in the field of security.

Spain is also home to another of the fundamental centers for this program: the Loyola de Palacio GNSS Services Center (GSC), which is also located at the INTA installations in the Region of Madrid. This center is the single interface for all user communities of the open services, commercial services and global integrity service of Galileo. Placing the services center in Madrid, which will be created as an economic and technological hub, was also a major achievement for Spain.

The United States on Tuesday congratulated India on becoming the newest member of the Australia Group, an informal forum that seeks to prevent the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons, and which now counts 43 members.

“This latest accomplishment underscores the Indian government’s excellent nonproliferation credentials and commitment to preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including by regulating the trade of sensitive goods and technologies,” said US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert in a statement.

According to Nauert, India’s accession bolsters the effectiveness of the regime’s nonproliferation efforts.

Stressing that India is a valued nonproliferation partner, Nauert added that the US looks “forward to continuing our work with India in the Australia Group in furtherance of our shared nonproliferation goals.”

Rather than the conventional wisdom of a “wrapping up,” of Syria’s seven years of civil war, this observer calculates that the conflict is on a trajectory to expand during 2018.
Granted, over the past six months there have been perhaps more than a dozen inflated declarations of “Victory,” including 2 or 3 of the “Devine Victory” variety from three governments with deeply intrenched armed forces still fighting the insurgency. Iran, Russia, Syria. Other ‘victory’ claims that the war is over are regularly made by various proxy militia, including Hezbollah and a dozen Public Mobilization Units (PMU) from as many countries, funded, trained and armed by Iran.

Rebels, many funded from the Gulf, have been largely moot on this subject as they hold maps up to the light and squint at the areas that ISIS have been expelled from which is roughly 90% of its short lived “Caliphate.” The reality is that fighting continues and is spreading. Two of the last areas under the control of rebel forces, are about to be largely destroyed as their opponents conduct Raqqa and Aleppo type saturation bombings with just about every weapon their opponents have access to including, Russian and Syrian warplanes and helicopter dropped indiscriminate barrel bombs, more than 12,000 have been dropped since 2011. These locations, will be main war zones in 2018, and bombed-often indiscriminately- including rural towns and villages across rebel-held southern Idlib province. Eyewitnesses have documented, “napalm” type bombs for a second day on 1/18/2018, as reported by Civil Defense volunteers and residents on the ground and by Syria Direct.

There will be no end to Syria’s civil war in 2018 even though foreign armies and militia are still trying to end the March 2011 uprising that ignited spontaneously among teenagers and students putting up makeshift posters and writing graffiti on schoolyard walls in Deraa, south Syria. In some ways the spontaneous demonstration resembles what erupted in Iran last month. But the Iranian regime employed a more controlled reaction. Unlike the Gadhafi regime’s February 2011 threats that it was going to crush “the rats” opposition in Benghazi and sent in Libya’s army causing the uprising to rapidly spread across the country and leading to his ouster and today’s chaos.

Unfortunately, the Syrian government repeated Gadhafi’s miscalculations and the peaceful revolt quickly ignited nationwide and, predictably, foreign opportunists swarmed into the country with a range of agendas. Syria’s current President will also eventually be pushed from power but the timeline is dependent on Iran’s Al Quds Force leader, Qasim Soleimani, the main power-broker in Syria despite Vladimir Putin pursuing that mantle.

Neither the Americans, Iranians, Russians, Syrians, Turks, Israeli’s or other powers and their proxies want Syria’s civil war to end soon. Unless it’s on their terms with guarantees of significant benefits. And that will not happen for the foreseeable future.

Moreover, speculation in this region that Syrian refugees will quite soon be returning to their country soon are not to be credited. Nor that Tourism is returning anytime soon. Not many Syrian refugees are likely to be returning home during 2018. According to Amin Awad, the Middle East Director of UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency, at least 82 percent of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries urgently want to return to their homes in Syria. But they would only attempt a perilous return when security returns. 600,000 who are internally displaced inside Syria have returned to cities like Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Raqqa. Deir a Zor and Daraa and other locals while only 22,000 Syrian refugees of nearly seven million from five neighboring countries have returned so far. In point of fact, Syrians daily continue to flee their country for neighboring states, often with great risk. On 1/19/2018 16 Syrians including 6 women and three children were discovered frozen to death near the Syria-Lebanon border crossing at Masnaa having been abandoned in a heavy snow storm by smugglers.

Still, the UN offers impressive numbers of refugees wanting to return home when compared to others, besides Palestinians, where in Lebanon the estimate of those wanting to return to their homes in Palestine is approximately 96%.

Additionally, the UN’s 82% estimate includes Syrian refugees polled in more comfortable Europe and the West thus producing a lower figure.

In Lebanon, an informal poll conducted by the Meals for Syrian Refugee Children Lebanon (MSRCL) reveals that nearly 90 % of the refugees who fled the civil war want to return to Syria. And with respect to the lovely Syrian refugee children in Lebanon, playing any day of the week, rain or shine, in Aleppo Park south of Ramlet el Baida beach, well, these angels regularly vote unanimously to return to Syria. They just can’t stand still waiting to return to the homes, families, neighbors friends, and schools they remember and desperately want to rejoin. No one at MSRCL is inclined to challenge their dreams by presenting these innocents with gruesome details of what has become of their country. But as all parents know, kids know a lot and are ready to face seemingly unsurmountable challenges.

A few thousands of the one million Syrians in Lebanon could indeed return in 2018 despite the continuing shelling and bombing. And this observer guesses that a somewhat lower percentage will return home from Jordan, Iraq or Turkey in 2018. Why the return to Syria figures for these three countries may be lower in 2018 is the fact that they treat Syrian refugees, while too often inhumanly, with rather more humanity than does deeply sectarian Lebanon given that 97% of Syrians fleeing to Lebanon are Sunni. Few, if any countries ignore the humanitarian provisions of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol than Lebanon which still refuses, seven decades following its enactment, to join the 146 countries that have obligated themselves to the Refugee Conventions humanitarian provisions.

It’s a truism that the map of Syria’s seven-year conflict has been redrawn and currently favors the Assad government and its Russian and Iranian allies who rescued the regime over the past three years. The government has recaptured population centers in Western Syria from rebels and pushed back Daesh (ISIS) in the East. Its next objective will include tightening “surrender or die sieges” against the civilian population that UN agencies and aid workers claim is a calculated use of starvation and withholding of medical aid as a weapon of war.

Complicating this strategy in this observer’s view is the fact that the main players involved in the civil war in Syria, the regime, Russia, Iran, and the US have desperate goals and increasingly since 2013, all the actors will readily work in 2018 with rebel’s forces, even with ISIS and Al-Qaida to advance their short and long-term battlefield objectives, finances, local security and immediate survival prospects. ISIS and friends will play one off against the others as it has been doing with respect to arms, stolen antiquities, drugs, oil and other natural resources.

It’s been common practice for years in Syria that whether at check points, starve or surrender sniper positions, and military posts, blocking medical supplies and food and water to seriously ill and starving civilians in many areas, that pro-regime and “terrorists” often get along better than do the Russian and Syrian armies with various Iranian forces, who are detested by both for many reasons. In Syria, battle lines are becoming amorphous at the beginning of 2018 as the various proxies pursue their own objectives.

The CIA’s recent release of documents seized during the 2011 raid that assassinated al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden claims that Iran supported al-Qaida leading up to the Sept. 11 terror attacks. U.S. prosecutors have long argued that Iran formed loose ties starting in 1991, as noted in a 19-page al-Qaida report in Arabic that was included in the recent release of some 47,000 other documents by the CIA. “Anyone who wants to strike America, Iran is ready to support him and help him with their frank and clear rhetoric,” the report reads. The report is dated in the Islamic calendar year 1428 — 2007 and offers a history of al-Qaida’s relationship with Iran. It says Iran offered al-Qaida fighters “money and arms and everything they need, and offered them training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in return for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia.”

The Assad regime most of all wants to stay in power, but to do so they will need to convince the Iranians. The Syrian regime is impotent to impose control over the country because it dependent on decisive military support from Iran and Russia. Syria’s President is arguably no longer sovereign. His regimes ability to take and hold terrain depends on how much military aid, cash, and neglect of Iran’s people and local economies and casualties Iran and Russia are willing and able to accept.

According to Jennifer Cafarella, senior intelligence planner at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C., the Russians are more concerned than Syrian President Assad about reaching a diplomatic settlement to the war that allows Putin to claim victory and gain international acceptance. Neither Russia nor Assad intends to grant meaningful concessions to the Syrian opposition in 2018 that would weaken the Syrian regime. Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks a diplomatic deal that he can use to claim to be the peacemaker in Syria. Assad would accept a deal that preserves his regime, and is therefore willing to support the process so long as it continues to protect him. He has even rejected Russian proposals to consider concessions for detainee releases. But Russian-Syrian tensions seem to be under control entering 2018. Both Russia and Assad appear willing to work closely together to beef up Assad’s ability to preserve his regime. Their military operations will continue the charade of countering terrorism whether there is diplomatic progress.

Meanwhile, in 2018, Jihadis will try to maximize the cost of fighting in Syria to exploit this vulnerability and will likely retake terrain. Even if they lose it and retake it again. They are in this war against infidels for as long as its takes to honor their commitments to the Koran, one young jihadist explained to this observer earlier this week.

The Russians intend to keep their air and naval bases, seeking to be recognized as the ‘peacemakers’ and benefit from securing a major chunk of Syrian reconstruction projects over the coming. Decades. The Iran regime will continue to colonize Syria which Tehran accurately understands is a precondition for Tehran’s regional projects.

Iran also calculates that during 2018 it can likely contain the unrest among its own population while it gains ever more control of Syria-politically, economically, militarily, demographically and security wise. Applying the “Lebanon Model” that allowed Iran within barely three decades to essentially colonize Lebanon. Syria, Iraq, and Yemen are next on its agenda many in this region believe.

Iranian officials estimate that they need 1 million new jobs per year to dry up the 3.4 million unemployed people. Iran has been missing its earlier targets of 350,000 new jobs per year. Renewed and increased sanctions on Iran, Lebanon, and Syria are unlikely to produce compromise and agreement. Rather, they will produce escalation and entrenchment. The human misery of the region will increase.

Until recently, Iran believed that it had “won” the northern Middle East by securing victory for Hezbollah, the Assad regime, and the Shiites of Iraq against ISIS and the Sunni Arab rebels of Syria and Iraq. Nasrallah, Assad and Iraq’s Abadi have all been crowing about illusional long term victories. They believed that they have weathered the storm and will construct a new security paradigm in the Levant that connects pro-Iranian Arab states as part of creating a juggernaut against their Sunni, Israeli, and American nemeses.

As for the US, the Trump administration intends to maintain a military presence in Syria in 2018 by continuing to support its Kurdish allies and, so it claims, to block the re-emergence of IS. It is a long-term open-ended project and one that is concerning American taxpayers.

The Trump administration believes it can handle the Russians and is now focused mainly on containing Iran. Yet Washington understands Russia is not vacating its bases in Syria any time soon.

The renewed US offensive is not so much about Iran’s nuclear capability or even its missile program. It is about Iran’s rollback and destroying its economy. The more money Iran has, the more it can consolidate the gains of its Shiite allies in the region including Hezbollah, the Syrian government and the Iraqi government. The US sanctions regime will also go a long way to turn Syria into a liability for both Iran and Russia rather than an asset. And as with all sanctions the Syrian people, not political leaders will suffer deeply.

In this observer’s opinion, in 2018 Washington will increasingly focus on keeping Damascus weak and divided, presenting Russia and Iran with many economic negatives stemming from their oft-declared “victories. A staffer on the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee advises that what Trump has is mind, with the help of regional and EU allies, is controlling roughly half of Syria’s energy resources, the Euphrates dam at Tabqa, as well as much of Syria’s most fertile and productive agricultural land. Part of a broader project to keep Syria poor and the Assad regime desperate for natural resources. Keeping Syria poor and unable to finance reconstruction suits short-term US objectives because it will drain Iranian and Russian resources, on which Syria must rely as it struggles to reestablish state services and rebuild when the war winds down.

During his 1/17/2018 speech at Stanford University, Secretary of State Tillerson said the US needs “five key end states for Syria” in 2018 before US troops are withdrawn. These are:

1. IS and al-Qaeda in Syria must “suffer a permanent defeat, do not present a threat to the American homeland, and do not resurface in a new form”
2. The conflict is resolved through a UN-led process, and “a stable, unified, independent Syria, under post-Assad leadership, is functioning as a state”
3. Iranian influence in Syria is diminished and Syria’s neighbors are secure
4. Conditions are created so displaced people can begin to return to their homes
5. Syria is free of weapons of mass destruction

This observer believes that given what is happening across Syria today, that the odds that any of Washington’s above declared conditions precedent to withdrawal being achieved is zero. None will be achieved in 2018 and a majority will not be achieved in the foreseeable future.

With respect to Turkey and its threats to invade Syria unless the US abandons the Kurds, these threats as of 24 hours ago rang a bit hollow to this observer. Events of 1/21/2018 has proved yet again, my weakness in judging regional events around here.
Here’s one reason. On 1/20/2018, Turkey unleased an air-ground operation against the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) to extend Turkey’s buffer zone along the Syrian-Turkish border. This obtuse observer did not think they would. It appears to this observer that the retro Ottomans are getting serious.  Forces from Turkey’s Second Army launched a three-pronged ground attack – “Operation Olive Branch” (!!!) against YPG forces northwest of Aleppo City. Turkeys air force and Syrian rebel forces have joined the operation.  Turkey claims the right to self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter as its legal justification for the operation. Turkey’s wants to extend its buffer zone to cut off the YPG’s access to the Turkish border northwest of Aleppo City and will likely pursue the full defeat of YPG forces in the Aleppo countryside after securing the border. Turkey may attack terrain east of Afrin that YPG forces seized in 2016 while the Syrian opposition attempted to defend Aleppo City against a Russian- and Iranian-backed Bashar al Assad regime offensive. Initial Turkish airstrikes bombed the YPG-held Menagh airbase north of Aleppo City on January 20th. These strikes suggest a Turkish intent to seize the airbase and the nearby city of Tel Rifaat.

US efforts at gaining leverage in the region are focused in Northern Syria and training the Syrian Democratic Forces. Washington is promoting Kurdish nationalism in Syria. The Kurds, like all indigenous people who became subsumed by colonizers, have a basic right to self-determination. Whether in Palestine or elsewhere. The US by occupying North Syria plans to deny Damascus access until an honest election is held. Many question this plan. Moreover, many in DC believe that Turkey’s rising Islamism, hardening dictatorship, and threatening rhetoric will only increase in the future. They appear not to hold out much hope that Washington can reverse this trend, but they may well be mistaken. Erdogan is a loose cannon, there are plenty around these days (including this observer) and he warrants watching but not to be taken too seriously as a dependable partner. If Turkey bolts from NATO, many members may say “good riddance let the Russians deal with Ottoman wannebe Erdogan.” Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman, pro-ummah, big brother game is not working in the Middle East. One reason is that Arabs do not wish to revisit their Ottoman colonial past. Or the earlier Persian colonial edition.

Nor is Israel in a hurry to see Syria’s civil war end in 2018. It views that every day of the war Iran and Hezbollah bleed and weaken more. Plus, last week its army intelligence announced, “amazing new technology” that now allows its military to detect and destroy every Hamas tunnel build in Gaza. The IDF, is reportedly working around the clock to finetune this claimed technological breakthrough to be able to target all of Hezbollah’s tunnels and weapons stores in Lebanon and Syria at will.

The IDF believes time is on its side because Iran has become vastly overstretched in Syria and is spending a minimum of 20 million USD every week to supply Hezbollah with missiles and other armaments which Israel insists it can and will destroy with impunity as reported in nearly daily media reports. Iran and Hezbollah can do nothing about Israel’s bombings of their arms convoys and arms depots because above all else Tehran does not want a conflict with Israel which would likely destroy within days its regional ambitions. It is no longer speculative whether Israel claims responsibility for the increasing number of strikes against Iran and Hezbollah in Syria–or doesn’t.

According to US Senate staffers who work on this subject matter, VP Mike Pence will discuss during his current trip to Israel preparations to destroy Iranian air, naval and land bases in Syria just as soon as the timing appears propitious.

The increasingly likely Israel/Hezbollah/Iran war is taking form from the fog.

Despite claims that 2018 will see the end of civil war in Syria, Jihadi groups, including Al-Qaeda and remnants of the Islamic State, retain the capability to metastasize within hours across the region and beyond. And to keep this war raging for many years. And who can stop them? As noted above, the Assad regime is unable to control much of Syria because it is dependent on military support and financing from Iran and Russia. Mindful of this, Jihadis will maximize the cost of fighting in Syria to exploit this vulnerability and will retake terrain, even temporarily.

In this observer’s opinion, based also on some long conversations with military officials inside Syria, the conflict will expand during 2018 and perhaps for years beyond. Just this week, a counterattack by Syrian opposition groups in northwest Idlib province recaptured from regime allies several villages while taking many prisoners and liberating more than two-thirds of the territory earlier captured by Iranian deployed Shia militia. This has slowed an offensive launched two weeks ago by regime troops, Iranian militias and Russian jets toward the Abu Zuhour air base, which has been held by the opposition since 2015. The regime offensive has displaced about 200,000 people, opposition spokesman Yahya Al-Aridi told Arab News on 1/13/2018. “They are now refugees, but, the morale of the anti-Assad forces is high. The freedom fighters are just doing a good job and are liberating many of the villages captured by the regime.”

This observer has seen little probative evidence on the ground in Syria to support the internet wishful thinking that the rebels in Syria are about to give up the fight. Only this week (1/17/2018) Abu Mohamed al-Jolani, the Director of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) as well as of Syria’s leading jihadist alliance, called on rebels across Syria to “close ranks” to destroy the Russian-backed government offensive in the country’s northwest.

Three months ago, Russia claimed they had either killed al-Jolani or he was in a coma. Jolani also condemned the Russian/Iranian/Turkish Astana conference to be resumed at the end of this month, as paving the way for the current offensive, but said Syria’s rebels could “overcome these crises, if we unite our efforts and close ranks. We are ready to reconcile with everyone and turn a new page through a comprehensive reconciliation. Let us preoccupy ourselves with our enemies more than with ourselves and our disagreements,” Jolani said.

Dear reader, there are few compelling reasons to believe that 2018 will bring to the noble people of Syria a modicum of the justice, peace, empowerment, and freedom from oppression that are their birthright and of which they have been so brutally deprived for the past seven years.

Nay, for the past half century.

The World Economic Forum announced Tuesday an ambitious partnership to sequence the DNA of all life on Earth and create an inclusive bio-economy, as part of its Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth Initiative.

The Earth Bio-Genome Project (EBP) will sequence all the plants, animals and single-cell organisms on Earth – the eukaryotic species – now possible due to the exponential drop in costs of genomic sequencing.

Meanwhile, the Earth Bank of Codes (EBC) aims to make nature’s biological and biomimetic assets accessible to innovators around the world, while tackling bio-piracy and ensuring equitable sharing of the commercial benefits.

The announcement follows warnings by scientists in a paper last year that a “sixth mass extinction” is under way in which 20,000 species are in danger – a “biological annihilation” that represents a “frightening assault on the foundations of human civilization.”

The EBC part of the partnership will boost the economic incentives for local communities and global businesses to preserve the environment. It aims to unlock the potential of the planet’s biodiversity and boost the global marketplace for bio-inspired chemicals, materials, processes and innovations that solve human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested strategies.

Such advances include harvesting the next generation of antibiotics from Amazonian frogs to combat the antimicrobial resistance threat, and pioneering self-driving car algorithms using inspiration from Amazonian ants.

Only 14% of the estimated species of plants and land animals have been classified and less than 0.1% have had their DNA thoroughly sequenced, meaning there is a huge gap in our knowledge of the vast scientific, economic, social and environmental potential of our biodiversity.

Yet, this tiny percentage has delivered all of our modern knowledge of biology and the life sciences.

Like the Human Genome Project, which delivered at least $65 to the US economy for every public dollar spent as well as myriad benefits for human health, molecular medicine and scientific understanding, the EBP aims to create an inclusive bio-economy and enable the conservation and regeneration of biodiversity.

“The rate of biodiversity loss is sobering. Those born since 2012 have inherited a planet with fewer than half the number of animals on land and below water than those born before 1970. There is an urgent need for innovations that can quickly make natural habitats worth more intact for local people than cutting them down for other land uses. The Fourth Industrial Revolution in biology could offer such innovations if linked to new models for biodiversity management. This is why this partnership could be very exciting,” said Dominic Waughray, Head of Public-Private Partnership and Member of the Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum.

The partnership will take 10 years and cost an estimated $4.7 billion – now possible due to the drop in costs of genomic sequencing. The Human Genome Project, by comparison, took more than a decade and cost $4.8 billion in 2017 to sequence the first human genome.

Putting the plan into action

The EBC will work by providing an open, global, public-good and digital platform that registers and maps the biological IP assets on the blockchain. This code bank will record the provenance, rights and obligations associated with nature’s assets – their intellectual property – to track their provenance and use. When value is created from accessing these assets, smart contracts would facilitate equitable sharing of benefits to the custodians of nature and to the bio-diverse nations of origin.

An important proof of concept for the EBP and EBC will be located in the Amazon basin in light of its rich biodiversity.

The pilot – known as the Amazon Bank of Codes – can be seen as an initiative that offers practical means to indigenous and traditional communities and local actors in the Amazon basin, and the Convention on Biodiversity at the international level, to eliminate bio-piracy. Bio-innovators in the Amazon and worldwide would tap into a store of data that accelerates the likelihood of scientific breakthroughs with a one-stop shop for nature’s assets. A fair share of the economic value created from such breakthroughs would automatically be returned to the custodians of the various components of nature’s assets in the Amazon.

For indigenous and local communities, the value could be immense. At the same time, it helps shift local incentives away from short-term forest clearance towards longer-term preservation.

This platform would help support national regulators in the Amazon and implement the fair and equitable sharing of benefits as intended by the 2017 Nagoya Protocol, which governs access to genetic resources.

Following this proof of concept, the EBC, in partnership with the EBP, would facilitate a similar approach in other areas rich in biodiversity on land and in the oceans.

The World Economic Forum System Initiative on Shaping the Future of Environment and Natural Resource Security will offer its platform and networks to help advance the development of the EBC as a discrete project in its wider partnership with the EBP. This will form an associated workstream of the System Initiative’s Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth Initiative. By providing a platform for the partnership between the EBP and the EBC, the World Economic Forum’s Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth Initiative will enable experts from across the public, private and research sectors to work together on developing guidelines that maximize the opportunities and minimize the risks to society from such an innovation.

“Scientists and entrepreneurs are now able to tap into a new source of knowledge that could be the driver behind the next generation of novel technologies. If the dividends are shared equitably, an inclusive bio-economy could be created that provides a significant new funding stream for conservation and sustainable development efforts centred on the custodians of nature,” said Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio, Founder and Chairman of Space Time Ventures, Founder of the Earth Bank of Codes and member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on the Environment and Natural Resource Security.

“The partnership will construct a global biology infrastructure project to sequence life on the planet to enable solutions for preserving Earth’s biodiversity, managing ecosystems, spawning bio-based industries and sustaining human societies,” said Harris Lewin, Distinguished Professor of Evolution and Ecology, Robert and Rosabel Osborne Endowed Chair, University of California, Davis, member of the United States National Academy of Science and Chair of the Earth BioGenome Project.

There is still work to be done. For example, the additional $4.7 billion needed for ongoing scientific research has still to be raised. Also, the regulatory framework, governance and data-sharing principles and protocols will need to be developed alongside the research to ensure that the risks to society are minimized, the opportunities for societal benefit are maximized, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits is operationalized.

To address these challenges, the partnership will rely on convening multistakeholder collaborations that draw in science, research, technology and ethics communities, along with governments and the private sector.

The goals of the EBP are supported by some of the world’s leading universities and research centres, in addition to the Smithsonian Institution in the United States, the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) in Shenzhen, China, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Royal Botanical Gardens in the United Kingdom, the FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation) in Brazil and the Department of Agriculture in the United States – and the list of partners is expanding. The EBP is working closely with the Global Genome Biodiversity Network, the Earth Bank of Codes and a number of biotech and innovation start-ups.

The World Economic Forum’s 48th Annual Meeting is taking place on January 23-26, 2018 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.

For many people in eastern India, Bangladeshi means Bengali. It indicates that everyone living in Bangladesh must be a Bengali. But in reality, Bangladesh is a tiny neighbouring nation bordering Indian provinces of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura with a secular identity. The populous country is however dominated by Muslim population comprising various ethnic tribes where everyone speaks Bengali language.

The people of Assam still maintain a strained relationship with the Bengali people, even though some of the distinguished Bengali personalities immensely contributed for the growth of Assamese language and culture. One can remember the contributions of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Ashutosh Mukherjee, Prafullachandra Ray, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, Annada Sankar Ray, Rajmohan Nath, Padmanath Bidyavinod, Bibhubhusan Choudhury, Arun Purkayastha, Arun Guha, Hemanga Biswas, Baidyanath Mukherji, Basanta Kumar Das, Arun Chanda, Amalendu Guha, Nanda Benarji, Pulak Banerji, Rabin Dey (Rangman) etc for Assam since time immemorial.

So when West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee publicly criticized the process of National Register of Citizens (NRC) updation in the State, many motivated Assamese intellectuals came out with the easy conclusion that Bengali (irrespective of their nationalism) cannot be friend to Assamese people. Knowing or unknowingly with the hurried conclusion they simply disgrace the sizable Bengali populace, concentrated in Barak valley of southern Assam.

Emerged as a straight forward and energetic politician of the country, Ms Mamata on 3 January made a controversial statement that the NRC updating process was a ‘conspiracy to drive away Bengali people’ from the State. She also asked her party Parliamentarians to raise voice against the NRC in the national capital. Later a public meeting was also organized in Kolkata on 12 January to gather public supports against the process, but it witnessed only a lukewarm response.

But everyone knew that Assam was updating the NRC under the direction and supervision of the Supreme Court to identify the illegal Bangladeshis (with other foreign nationals) and its first draft was published on the midnight of 31 December 2017. The much-awaited updating of 1951 NRC comprised 19 million people out of around 32.9 million total applicants in the first draft. The process of updating began in 2013, which received 65 million supporting documents comprising over 6.82 million families residing in the State. The second and final part of the draft is expected to be published by this year.

Need not to mention that it’s a follow-up action of Assam Accord, signed by the leaders of All Assam Students Union (AASU) and Asom Gana Sangram Parishad in 1985 with the Union government in New Delhi in presence of the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The historic memorandum of understanding puts responsibility on the Centre to detect and deport all migrants (read East Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals) who entered Assam after 25 March 1971.

In other words, the agreement accepted all residents prior to the dateline as Indian nationals in Assam even though the movement was run with the spirit of 1951 as the base year to detect illegal migrants like the other parts of the country. It also mentioned about constitutional safeguards to the indigenous communities of Assam to be facilitated by the Centre.

The influx of illegal Bangladeshi migrants remains a vital socio-political issue for Assam along with Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Manipur of northeast India still today. With the emotion and the anxiety of turning minority in their own land because of unabated influx from the neighboring country, the people of Assam joined in the movement, which culminated with the agreement.

The development finally empowered Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), born out of the popular movement with the same leadership of AASU coming to power in the State for two separate terms, but shockingly the regional party leaders shamefully followed their incompetent predecessors and ended up in betraying the people over the pertinent issue.

Presently the AGP is an ally to the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) led government at Dispur under the chief ministership of Sarbananda Sonowal, a former AASU president. Unlike the previous Congress and AGP regimes, the new government that came to power in May 2016 has seemingly taken the issue of influx seriously.

The people of Assam have reposed faith over the authority on the updating of NRC and hence contrary to the widespread apprehensions of unpleasant situation arising after the release of the NRC draft, no unwanted incidents were reported from any part of the State.

The government authorities along with various political parties, civil society & advocacy group representatives and the media definitely deserve appreciations for their pragmatic roles in maintaining peace across the region after the release of the NRC draft, even though many people could not find their names in the list.

However Ms Mamata wanted to be a saviour of Bengali people and started commenting against the NRC Assam updation. But amazingly, not to speak of her State people, she even could not convince the Bengali speaking people of Assam. They denounced her intention and clarified that the Trinamool Congress chief was never a guardian or spokesperson for the Bengali community.

They had a relevant question to her, if Ms Mamata was so concerned about the fate of Bengali people, why she had been opposing the Centre’s Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 that would grant citizenship to the persecuted religious minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh after due processes. If the citizenship act is amended in the Parliament, hundred thousand Hindu Bengalis (with few other communities) would get Indian citizenships.

Leaving aside few politicians in Barak valley, Sadou Asom Bangali Parishad, Bengali Students’ Federation of Assam, Nikhil Bharat Banga Sahitya Sabha etc denounced Ms Mamata for her disrespectful comments against the apex court and the people of Assam. They stated loud and clear that the Bengali and Assamese people were living in Assam happily and ‘no outsiders should poke their noses into it’.

Meanwhile, politicians in power, social outfits, number of distinguished individuals of Assam came with critical comments against the Bengal chief minister. They were unanimous in their views that Ms Mamata was trying to communalize the process for the sack of her vote bank politics.

Assam government spokesperson Chandra Mohan Patowary, powerful State minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam BJP president Ranjit Das, AGP president Atul Bora, Assam Congress president Ripun Bora, AASU advisor Samujjal Bhattacharya, Assam Public Works chief Abhijit Sarma, KMSS leader Akhil Gogoi with many others had criticized Ms Mamata for her irrational statements.

Assam also witnessed series of protest demonstrations against Ms Banerjee for her stand over the NRC updation in the State. At least three FIRs were lodged against the firebrand politician in different police stations of Assam (by Krisak Shramik Kalyan Parishad president Pradip Kalita, Guwahati based advocate SN Das and social activist Kailash Sarma) for her derogatory comments indirectly targeting the apex court of the country.

The Patriotic People’s Front Assam (PPFA), in a strong statement, pointed out that Ms Mamata was trying to play a cunning game as a few Bengali politicians of yesteryears (including her predecessor Communist leader Jyoti Basu) along with a bunch of intellectuals for the sack of minority appeasement policies, had done the same during the Assam movement.

The PPFA however appreciated the Bengali people living in Assam for their stand against those politicians who often run behind the cheap political gains out of any crisis. It also supported the demand raised by few nationalist Bengali politicians including Dilip Ghosh to have NRC updating process in West Bengal as well to segregate the illegal Bangladeshi nationals from the indigenous Bengali people.

Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast have found that female cats are much more likely to use their right paw than males.

Dr Louise McDowell, Dr Deborah Wells and Professor Peter Hepper from the School of Psychology at Queen’s, recruited 44 cats for the study and found that while there was no overall population preference like the human preference for right handedness, there was a gender preference. The findings have been published in Animal Behaviour.

Until now, studies on limb preference of animals have focused solely on forced experimental challenges. However, in the Queen’s study, the cats – 24 male and 20 female and all neutered – were studied in their own homes so that information could be gathered as they went about their everyday tasks.

The cat owners collected “spontaneous” data on whether the cats used their left or right paws when they stepped down the stairs or over objects and whether they slept on the left or right side of their body. A “forced” test was also carried out where the cats had to reach for food inside a three-tier feeding tower.

The majority of cats showed a paw preference when reaching for food (73%), stepping down (70%) and stepping over (66%) and their preference for right and left was consistent for the majority of the tasks, both spontaneous and forced. In all cases, male cats showed a significant preference for using their left paw, while females were more inclined to use their right paw. However, when sleeping the cats did not appear to have a side preference.

Dr Deborah Wells said that while there is further research needed to investigate why there is a gender preference, it could be down to hormones. She commented, “The findings point more and more strongly to underlying differences in the neural architecture of male and female animals.”

The Queen’s University researcher also explains that the findings could help cat owners to understand how their pet deals with stress. “Beyond mere curiosity, there may be value to knowing the motor preference of one’s pet. There is some suggestion that limb preference might be a useful indicator of vulnerability to stress. Ambilateral animals with no preference for one side or the other, and those that are more inclined to left-limb dominance, for example, seem more flighty and susceptible to poor welfare than those who lean more heavily towards right limb use,” said Dr Wells.

She added: “We have just discovered that left-limbed dogs, for example, are more pessimistic in their outlook than right-limbed dogs. From a pet owner’s perspective, it might be useful to know if an animal is left or right limb dominant, as it may help them gauge how vulnerable that individual is to stressful situations.”

In a special address at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, announced that Canada and the 10 remaining members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership had reached an agreement in Tokyo earlier in the day on a new “Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership”, or the CPTPP.

“Today is a great day for Canada,” said Trudeau, “but it’s also a great day for progressive trade around the world.”

Trudeau couched the new agreement in terms of shared determination to address and correct the inequitable distribution of the fruits of global trade in previous decades. “We cannot neglect our responsibility to the people who matter most – the people who aren’t here in Davos, and never will be.” The anxiety and fear they feel is valid, said Trudeau. “If you’re anxious,” he said, directly addressing participants, “imagine how the folks who aren’t in this room must be feeling.”

“For them,” Trudeau said, “technology is a benefit to their personal lives, but a threat to their jobs.”

“Society is demanding that companies both public and private serve a social purpose,” said Trudeau. “Sitting back and hoping some other corporation or some other country volunteers to take the lead on this will get us nowhere.”

Trudeau then made an impassioned case for “hiring, promoting and retaining more women,” arguing that not only is it the right thing to do, but it is also more economically sensible – and that a growing female workforce and better gender equality in the workplace translates into higher profits and a deeper pool of innovation.

His address reached a crescendo as he addressed the issues of sexual harassment and sexual assault that have dominated headlines in many countries. “Finally, here’s the really big one,” he said. “MeToo. Time’s up. The Women’s March. These movements tell us that we need to have a critical discussion on women’s rights, equality and the power dynamics of gender. Sexual harassment, for example, in business and government, is a systemic problem.”

Trudeau’s full-throated feminist address was followed by a panel featuring the Annual Meeting’s first all-female group of Co-Chairs, who shared their perspectives on the meeting’s theme: Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World. Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Washington DC, moderated the panel and asked each Co-Chair to share what they had learned from fracture – the populist backlash, rising nationalism, anxiety over artificial intelligence and advanced robotics, and more – or to talk about examples of ways forward.

Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, pointed to SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East), the first major international research centre in the Middle East. Located in Jordan, it brings together scientists from across the region – including researchers from Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt. “They cannot solve geopolitical conflicts, but they can break down barriers,” Gianotti said, adding that they represent “seeds of peace and collaboration in a fractured world.”

Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of IBM Corporation, USA, offered the example of the three principles that IBM applies when introducing potentially disruptive technologies – especially AI-related technologies – to the market. To practice what IBM terms “Responsible Stewardship,” Rometty said, “you must usher these new technologies in with purpose and transparency … You have to live by a set of data principles, and be very clear that data belongs to the customer or consumer… [and] you have an obligation to prepare the workers of the world for this revolution.”

Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Brussels, called for a “new social contract” that could go far to rebuild and restore faith in globalization. She urged participants to recognize a universal right to collective bargaining – something that has badly eroded in previous decades of globalization, creating resentment – and to “bring the hidden workforce out of the shadows.”

Isabelle Kocher, Chief Executive Officer, ENGIE, France, focused on the issue of climate change, describing it as “a real test – because it is a real global challenge, probably the first one,” because CO2 has, she said, “a global account.” She described how ENGIE took the decision to eliminate 20% of its energy plants, mostly coal-fired – 15 billion euros in assets. Two years later, she can attest that the decision was “value-creative”. Kocher said: “You get a premium from your customers, your stakeholders … [but] most important is what happened within the company,” said Kocher. “The civil society is within the company. Our 155,000 people were fantastic. I was impressed by the increased engagement you get when you do this.”

Chetna Sinha, Founder and Chair, Mann Deshi Foundation, India, talked about fracture in terms of the gap separating poor rural women from the financial system in India. She described how she was initially turned down when applying for a banking licence from the Central Bank of India on the grounds that her bank employees were illiterate. Sinha related how they challenged the Central Bank, saying “We may be illiterate, but we can count,” and demanding to be tested against bank employees in calculator-free calculations of interest. Sinha was awarded the licence, and now works with half a million rural women.

Erna Solberg, Prime Minister of Norway, highlighted the ability of states to solve problems. “More people are living better off than ever. More children are not dying their first five years. There is more equality on one level,” she said. But states are strapped for funds they could invest in programmes to better prepare new workers and reskill people against the inevitable disruptions. “No government can run without money,” she said, but as states compete by lower corporate tax rates, state coffers are depleted. “Maybe we should stop this race to the bottom,” she suggested.

The World Economic Forum’s 48th Annual Meeting is taking place on 23-26 January 2018 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. More than 3,000 leaders from around the world are gathering i

Forced labor and other rights abuses are widespread in Thailand’s fishing fleets despite government commitments to comprehensive reforms, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Tuesday. The report and a 15-minute film were released at a briefing at the European Parliament on January 23.

The 134-page report, “Hidden Chains: Forced Labor and Rights Abuses in Thailand’s Fishing Industry,” describes how migrant fishers from neighboring countries in Southeast Asia are often trafficked into fishing work, prevented from changing employers, not paid on time, and paid below the minimum wage. Migrant workers do not receive Thai labor law protections and do not have the right to form a labor union.

Even though Thailand has received a “yellow card” warning that it could face a ban on exporting seafood to the European Union because of its illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices, and the United States has placed Thailand on the Tier 2 Watch List in its latest Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, Human Rights Watch found widespread shortcomings in the implementation of new government regulations and resistance in the fishing industry to reforms.

“Consumers in Europe, the US, and Japan should be confident that their seafood from Thailand didn’t involve trafficked or forced labor,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “Yet despite high-profile commitments by the Thai government to clean up the fishing industry, problems are rampant.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 248 current and former fishers, almost all from Burma and Cambodia, as well as Thai government officials, boat owners and captains, civil society activists, fishing association representatives, and United Nations agency staff. Of those interviewed, 95 were former fishers who survived documented incidents of human trafficking, while the other 153 were, with a few exceptions, still active fishers. The research was carried out in every one of Thailand’s major fishing ports from 2015 to 2017.

Following media exposés on human trafficking and brutalization of fishers on Thai fishing boats in 2014 and 2015, the EU imposed the yellow card for Thailand’s failures under its IUU fishing program. The EU also demanded that Thai fishing fleets stop abusing the rights of undocumented and sometimes trafficked migrants as fishers, and said that Thailand should undertake reforms to end the abuses. The US TIP program has pressured Thailand by keeping it on the Tier 2 Watch List, one step above the bottom tier.

The Thai government responded by scrapping antiquated fishing laws and issuing a new ordinance to regulate the fishing industry. The government extended application of the key provisions of labor law regulating wages and conditions of work to fishing vessels, and established in law some International Labour Organization (ILO) treaty provisions through adoption of the 2014 Ministerial Regulation concerning Labour Protection in Sea Fishery Work. Migrant fishers were required to have legal documents and be accounted for on crew lists as boats departed and returned to port, helping to end some of the worst abuses, such as captains killing crew members. Thailand also created the Port-in, Port-out (PIPO) system to require boats to report for inspections as they departed and returned to port, and established procedures for inspection of fishing vessels at sea.

Some measures, such as vessel monitoring systems and limiting time at sea to 30 days, have led to important improvements for fishers. However, measures to address forced labor and other important labor and human rights protection measures often prioritize form over results, Human Rights Watch found. The labor inspection regime is largely a theatrical exercise for international consumption. For example, under the PIPO system, Human Rights Watch found officials speak to ship captains and boat owners and check documents but rarely conduct interviews with migrant fishers.

Despite significant resources provided to the Thai Ministry of Labour and its departments, there is no effective or systematic inspection of fishers working aboard Thai vessels. For example, in its 2015 report on human trafficking, Thailand revealed that inspections of 474,334 fishery workers failed to identify a single case of forced labor. More recently, over 50,000 inspections of fishers implausibly did not find a single instance where laws on conditions and hours of work, wages, treatment on board, and other issues in the Labour Protection Act of 1998, the 2014 Ministerial Regulation, and attendant regulations had been violated.

Requirements that fishers hold their own identification documents, receive and sign a written contract, and be paid monthly are frustrated by employer practices which hold fishers in debt bondage and ensure they cannot change employers. The lack of a stand-alone forced labor offense in Thai criminal law leaves a huge gap in law enforcement and deterrence.

“The Thai government’s lack of commitment means that regulations and programs to prevent forced labor in the fishing industry are failing,” Adams said. “International producers, buyers, and retailers of Thai seafood have a key role in ensuring that forced labor and other abuses come to an end.”

In some respects, the situation has gotten worse in recent years, Human Rights Watch found. For instance, the government’s “pink card” registration scheme, introduced in 2014 to reduce the number of undocumented migrants working in Thailand, has tied fishers’ legal status to specific locations and employers whose permission is needed to change jobs, creating an environment ripe for abuse. The pink card scheme, as well as practices where migrant workers are not informed about or provided copies of required employment contracts, have become means through which unscrupulous ship owners and skippers conceal coercion and deception behind a veneer of compliance. In this way, routine rights abuses go unchecked by complacent government officials who are content to rely on paper records submitted by fishing companies as proof of compliance.

Thai labor law makes it difficult for migrant workers to assert their rights. Fishers’ fear of retaliation and abuse by boat captains and vessel owners is a major factor, but Thailand also restricts the rights of migrant workers to organize into labor unions to take collective action. Under the Labour Relations Act of 1975, any person who does not have Thai nationality is legally prohibited from establishing a union or serving as union leader.

By Sigurd Neubauer*

The EU will host a meeting in Brussels on Jan. 31 of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (ADLC), the 15-member body that is the principal policy-level coordination mechanism for development assistance for the Palestinian people.

Invitations have gone out to the foreign ministers of the EU, the Arab League and the members of Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to rally international support for the Palestinian cause and for the urgent need to secure a two-state solution.

The meeting comes at a time of continuing dismay over the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and the cut in US funding for UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees.

While political leaders in Israel and Palestine await US President Donald Trump’s new peace plan, the purpose of the ADLC meeting will be twofold: To recommit international support for a two state-solution, including by the parties themselves, and to recommit to the need to enable the Palestinian Authority to execute full control over Gaza.

The new US National Security Strategy names Iran as its principal regional adversary and lists Washington’s Arab allies, along with Israel, as equal pillars in the implementation of its regional agenda. In this context, Trump wants to use the peace process as a glue to officially bind them together.

The EU’s strategic vision, meanwhile, is to narrow Palestinian-Israeli differences so that direct negotiations can take place.

Building on Trump’s disruptive approach by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a logical next step will be for the EU — with US support — to recognize the State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital as part of an effort to strengthen the Palestinian position.

By giving each party what they want, Washington’s gamble may be that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s domestic standings are strengthened, so that they can carry out the necessary compromises for peace talks to succeed.

The timing of the ADLC meeting is not coincidental. The following day, Arab League foreign ministers will meet in Cairo, where they will discuss the outcome and how to proceed.

Trump may also be gambling that Abbas — with European and Arab support — will engage with Israel. In return, the Arab states can expect Washington to keep the heat on Iran by using the 2015 nuclear deal as leverage to pressure Tehran to roll back on its malign regional activity.

• Sigurd Neubauer is a Middle East analyst in Washington. Twitter: @SigiMideast

By Frank Kane

Russian investors have approached Saudi Aramco with a proposal to take a stake in the Kingdom’s oil giant as it gears up for an initial public offering on local and global stock markets later this year.

The approach is being considered, alongside several other options for the sale of shares in Aramco, but so far no decision has been taken on whether it will proceed to a full deal, according to people familiar with the Russian move, who did not want to be identified. They were speaking at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos.

There is also the possibility of a joint investment by Russian and Chinese investors. Several institutions from the two counties have formed joint vehicles for investment, with a big emphasis on energy and other infrastructure projects.

Reuters reported that Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, was considering an investment in Aramco as part of a long-term strategy for Russia and Saudi Arabia to coordinate energy policy more closely.

“We see great interest in the Aramco IPO from Russian pension funds as well as from our Chinese partners,” Dmitriev told Reuters.

Aramco has already said it is considering a wide range of options for the IPO, which would be by far the biggest in history if it meets official valuations.

Policymakers in the Kingdom have said they would sell 5 percent of Aramco, with an official valuation of $2 trillion on the whole company.

If the Russians bought $10 billion of shares — as has been speculated — it would represent 10 percent of the shares in sale in an IPO at the official valuation.

Options under discussion include a big sale on an international stock exchange in conjunction with a listing on the Tadawul market in Riyadh; an option for a private sale of shares to foreign investors; or a trade sale at the same time as a Riyadh listing with a commitment to sell more on a global exchange later on.

Policymakers have repeatedly committed to undertake an IPO In 2018, without specifying the exact form the share offering would take.

Aramco’s priority is to maximize the valuation of the IPO as a way of demonstrating the value of Aramco to the KIngdom, and in comparison with its international peers in the oil industry.

Aramco has by far the biggest reserves of crude of any oil company in the world, and even after agreeing cuts with non-OPEC member Russia last year, still exports more oil than any other company.

Independent valuations of Aramco’s reserves are in progress, and regarded as essential to helping achieve IPO targets.

Hundreds of policemen were deployed to guard two Catholic educational institutions in India’s Madhya Pradesh state this week amid alleged threats from Hindu hardliners.

The move came as the Madhya Pradesh Catholic Diocesan Schools’ Association sought protection from the state high court for all its educational institutions following threats against them by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student body of the ruling pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party.

Church officials say the group is trying to whip up hostility against the Christian institutions for not allowing its members onto their campuses to perform Hindu rites and other activities.

Police were sent to guard St. Mary’s College in Vidisha on Jan. 15 after the ABVP set a Jan. 16 deadline for college authorities to allow its members to conduct Hindu prayers inside the college grounds.

Police foiled a previous bid on Jan. 4.

“The government provided full security to the college,” said college director Father Shaju Devassy.

Policemen were also sent to guard St. Joseph Convent School in Jhabua Diocese after ABVP activists threatened to storm it after accusing the school of disciplining several students for shouting patriotic slogans.

Hindu hardliners are accused of trying to establish a Hindu only state by using extreme nationalism as a major tactic.

Father Rockey Shah, the Jhabua Diocesan public relations officer, told ucanews.com the ABVP was “cooking up allegations” in an attempt to portray Christians as non-patriotic for political reasons.

Church officials say ABVP threats are not about prayer or patriotism but an overt attempt to take control of the schools in violation of a constitutional provision that allows minorities like Christians to own and manage educational institutions.

By Vivek Mishra*
The ‘many firsts’ that President Donald Trump’s year-old tenure has chalked up offer an overwhelming indication of his administration’s desire to differentiate itself from and efface the previous administration’s policy choices, and deliver on his campaign promises. This trend, besides being significantly visible in domestic policies, has characterised the US’ foreign relations under Trump.

Executive Orders

One of the first moves of the Trump administration with repercussions on US foreign relations was the executive order issued to halt all refugee admissions and temporarily bar entry to people from seven Muslim-majority countries. The revised order came in September 2017 and banned nationals of Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen from entering the US. While the fiat still faces various degrees of legal challenges across the country, it threatened to permanently alter US relations with the Muslim world, besides creating exonerating rationales for home-grown terrorism. However, in a move that could somewhat soften his earlier anti-Muslim stance, Trump chose Saudi Arabia for his first foreign trip, where he not only indulged in a tango but also declared Islam “one of the world’s great faiths.” While many read this trip as being intended primarily as an apology, Trump also kept his business interests afloat by pledging a two-way combined investment of US $400 billion, including US $110 billion defence purchase by Saudi Arabia.

On the very first day in office as president, Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and simultaneously announced that the era of multinational trade agreements had come to an end. The 12-nation trade deal has been variously assessed as potentially beneficial to the US with contributions to economic growth, enhancing US influence in Asia, and most of all, as a reassurance to US’ Asia-Pacific allies. Trump’s preference for bilateral commitments over multilateral ones and the US becoming one of several players in the TPP may have induced its withdrawal from the agreement. However, the fact that the remaining 11 countries could still strike a deal to take forward the partnership without the US further undermined the US’ expectations and influence.

Withdrawing from TPP also jeopardises the US’ North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) talks with its neighbours, Canada and Mexico, which are members of the renegotiated TTP, and there could be a push back on the US stringent conditions are tabled in NAFTA. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, which was another setback to US foreign policy, was among the first foreign policy changes. As the deal will only take effect in a few years, the decision to walk out of the agreement might not have an immediate effect, but snubbing a consensus reached by 195 countries has definitely hurt the US’ image as a world leader.

North Korea and Iran

Emerging from the “America First” mind-set, Trump’s approach was anticipated to prioritise domestic concerns over the foreign, and relegate the discussion on foreign wars in the face of job creation at home. However, today, the Korean Peninsula, South China Sea (SCS), and Eastern Europe all demonstrate the possibility of conflict. Trump has made no effort to conceal his stand on North Korea and Iran. Voicing his opposition, Trump criticised both North Korea and Iran vehemently from the UN pulpit and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if the US finds “forced to defend itself or its allies.” North Korea led by Kim Jong-un has presented a striking challenge to the Trump administration, matching its word-for-word. In the process, the fear of nuclear escalation between the two countries has reached unprecedented and ridiculous levels with ‘button size’ comparison and both sides ready to increase strategic readiness.

As per reports, the US is clandestinely preparing for a war with North Korea with more planes, troops and bombers. Currently three B-2 bombers and six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers are stationed at the Andersen Air Force base in Guam which is a little more than 2,000 miles away from the Korean Peninsula. Besides these, the USS Carl Vinson is gradually knotting towards western Pacific and USS Wasp with a capability of carrying more than 30 planes is stationed at Japan. North Korea – with possibly a hydrogen bomb, an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM), capability to produce a smaller nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, and ability to deploy up to 60 warheads – has induced a nuclear policy reversal in the US.

On Iran, the US sides with its allies in West Asia who allege that Iran supports terrorism in the region. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated to prevent Iran may soon be wound up. President Trump might have waived sanctions recently but has given Iran its  “last chance,” leading to speculation that the deal might not survive beyond May 2018. Despite the IAEA’s verification of Iran’s compliance, Trump’s aversion to the preceding administration’s policies, and proximity to anti-Iran regional allies, seem to have jointly created circumstances for the deal to be torpedoed.

Russia and China

In the latest National Security Strategy (NSS), both Russia and China have been identified as “long-term strategic competitions.”

The love-hate relationship between Trump and Putin continues but is slated to get murkier, even as investigations about his possible collusion with Russia during the presidential elections are gathering momentum. Trump’s favourable perception of Vladimir Putin and Russia evinced during his campaign has been replaced by accusations that Russia has helped North Korea evade sanctions. The Trump administration has clamped down on Russia with more sanctions and Russia has responded by substantially reducing diplomatic staff strength, mirroring an earlier US move. Trump is viewed as useful to Russia only when seen as inconsistent with the rest of his administration, thus serving practically no purpose. Moreover, Putin’s depiction of a strategic upper hand in Syria through the reinstatement of the Assad regime and forcing the US to cooperate against the Islamic State (IS) have catapulted Putin’s popularity to a new high domestically, in the run up to elections, besides establishing that sanctions are limited in their impact. Russia’s continued military build up in Eastern Europe has been commensurately responded by scrambling NATO forces eastward. The chances of a war between the two are being rated as the highest since the Cold War.

On China, Washington is still in search of a coherent strategy. China is hardly useful in taming Pyongyang and is giving the US a run for its money in the SCS, forcing the US to opt for an Indo-Pacific consensus rather than taking on China unilaterally. Pyongyang and the huge trade deficit with China remain potential deflators to Washington-Beijing ties. However, Trump’s nod to funding two infrastructure projects in Asia point to an emerging China strategy. The Trump administration has revived the ‘New Silk Road’ initiative and the Indo-Pacific Economic Corridor linking South and Southeast Asia. These are being seen as counter-strategies to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Indo-Pacific and South Asia

The Indo-Pacific strategy is probably the US’ best bet to counter China’s Maritime Silk Road (MSR) gambit. The Indo-Pacific has not just resonated in US leaders’ speeches but has found mention in the 2017 NSS and the National Defence Strategy (NDS 2018). The NDS acknowledges that China intends “to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to their advantage” and “seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony.” It also clearly states that maintaining a favourable regional balance of power in the Indo-Pacific is a primary goal. The NSS defines the Indo-Pacific “from the west coast of India to the western shores of the United States,” acknowledging India in its regional strategy. India’s own growing proximity with Washington, Washington’s distancing of Islamabad, and growing Beijing-Islamabad ties together with Russia as a pacifist sympathiser of Pakistan-China relations throws a unique challenge to the Indo-Pacific strategy and the US’ favourable balance of power strategy in South Asia.

Flip-flops, random phone calls, threats to smaller/weaker/poorer countries, and personal slurs: Donald Trump’s style of diplomacy has mixed more a personal and less professional attitude with a high degree of unpredictability. These traits do not bode well for diplomacy. However, Trump has never claimed diplomacy to be his forte – what he has claimed to be capable of delivering are his campaign promises, notwithstanding his distinctively undiplomatic modus operandi.

*Vivek Mishra
Assistant Professor, International Relations, Netaji Institute for Asian Studies, Kolkata

By Tushar Ranjan Mohanty*

Two Balochistan Constabulary personnel were shot dead while another one sustained injuries in an attack by unidentified militants in Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, on January 17, 2018. The personnel were reportedly deployed at a flyover for security duty.

On January 16, 2018, unidentified militants shot dead a Police constable while he was going to report for duty in Quetta.

On January 15, 2018, five Frontier Corps (FC) Personnel were killed and another six injured in an ambush by unidentified militants in the Shapok area of Kech District. Two FC vehicles, transporting soldiers from Panjgur Town in the District of the same name, to Turbat town in Kech District in Balochistan, were attacked with automatic weapons when they were crossing the mountainous area of Shapok. Turbat Assistant Commissioner Jamil Baloch disclosed that, “as a result of the firing and overturning of the vehicles, five FC personnel got martyred and six others sustained injuries”.

On January 9, 2018, seven people, including five Policemen, were killed and another 16, including eight Policemen, were injured in a suicide blast by a Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terrorist near GPO Chowk on Zarghoon Road in Quetta. The suicide bomber targeted the Police contingent returning from duty at the Provincial Assembly building, ramming into the parked Police truck.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), Balochistan has recorded 26 fatalities – seven civilians, 14 Security Force (SF) personnel and five militants – in the current year so far (data till January 21, 2018). During the corresponding period of 2017, Balochistan registered 11 fatalities (three civilian, four SF personnel and four militants).

Balochistan recorded 343 fatalities (183 civilians, 83 militants and 77 SF personnel) through 2017, and 633 fatalities (229 militants, 251 civilians and 153 SF personnel) in 2016. Thus, fatalities in all three categories declined between 2016 and 2017.

Annual Fatalities in Balochistan: 2004-2018

Significantly, the decline in fatalities was the sharpest in the ‘militant’ category. Militant fatalities declined by 63.75 per cent, as compared to a decline of 49.67 per cent and 27.09 per cent registered in the SF and civilian categories, respectively, indicating that the SFs were progressively relinquishing the operational initiative.

As with the fall registered in overall fatalities in terrorism-linked violence in the Province, other parameters of violence also witnessed a decline. The number of major incidents (each involving three or more fatalities) decreased from 59 (resulting in 500 fatalities) in 2016 to 39 (resulting in 273 fatalities) in 2017. Similarly, the Province saw a decrease in the number of bomb blasts: 43 in 2016 to 34 in 2017, even as the resultant fatalities decreased from 262 in 2016, to 134 in 2017.

Suicide attacks and resultant fatalities also declined, though they continued to create havoc in Balochistan. There were five suicide attacks resulting in 73 fatalities in 2017, compared to seven such attacks resulting in 224 fatalities in 2016. However, the number of sectarian attacks increased from four in 2016 to seven in 2017, though the resultant fatalities decreased from 60 to 43.

The problem of extra judicial killings in Province persisted through 2017. According to the SATP database, out 183 civilians killed in the Province in 2017, at least 86 were attributable to one or other terrorist/insurgent outfit. Of these, 10 civilian killings (all in the South) were claimed by Baloch separatist formations, while Islamist and sectarian extremist formations – primarily LeJ, TTP and Islamic State (IS, also Daesh) – claimed responsibility for another 76 civilian killings, 53 in the North (mostly in and around Quetta) and 23 in the South. The remaining 97 civilian fatalities – 71 in the North and 26 in the South – remain ‘unattributed’, and a large proportion of these are believed to be the handiwork of state agencies or their proxies.

Balochistan has recorded at least 6,785 fatalities since 2004, including 4,029 civilians, 1,500 militants and 1,256 SF personnel (data till January 21, 2018). The maximum number of fatalities in the ‘civilian’ category has been the result of extra-judicial killings by SFs in retaliation to targeted killings of SF personnel by ethnic Baloch insurgents. Of the 4,029 civilian fatalities, at least 1,168 have been attributable to one or other terrorist/insurgent outfit. Of these, 395 civilian killings (225 in the South and 170 in the North) have been claimed by Baloch separatist formations, while Islamist and sectarian extremist formations – primarily LeJ, TTP and IS – claimed responsibility for another 773 civilian killings – 690 in the North (mostly in and around Quetta) and 83 in the South. The remaining 2,861 civilian fatalities – 1,694 in the South and 1,167 in the North – remain ‘unattributed’. A large proportion of the ‘unattributed’ fatalities, particularly in the Southern region, are believed to be the result of enforced disappearances carried out by state agencies, or by their proxies, prominently including the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Aman Balochistan (TNAB, Movement for the Restoration of Peace, Balochistan). The large number of unattributed civilian fatalities strengthens the widespread conviction that the Security Agencies execute “kill and dump” operations against local Baloch dissidents, a reality that Pakistan’s Supreme Court has clearly recognized.

A December 28, 2016, BBC Urdu report, attributing data to Pakistan’s Federal Ministry of Human Rights, claimed that at least 936 dead bodies of ‘disappeared’ persons, often mutilated and bearing the signs of torture, had been recovered in Balochistan just since 2011. Most of the bodies were dumped in Quetta, Qalat, Khuzdar and Makran areas, where the separatist insurgency has its roots. Thousands of people have disappeared without trace in Balochistan since the separatist insurgency gained momentum in 2007. BBC Urdu, quoting the International Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (IVBMP) head Nasrullah Baloch, reported that most of the bodies “are of those activists who have been victims of ‘enforced disappearances’ – people who are picked up by authorities and then just go missing.” The IVBMP claimed that it has recorded 1,200 cases of dumped bodies, and there are many more it has not been able to document. None of the mainstream media reported such state sponsored atrocities, as media reporting from these areas is strictly forbidden.

Continued extra-judicial killings by the Pakistani security establishment has made Baloch insurgent groups more violent towards non-Baloch people in the Province, with the result that a in a series of attacks have targeted Punjabi and other non-Baloch settlers in Balochistan. These killings have been orchestrated by Baloch groups including the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) and the Baloch Republican Army (BRA), among others, who have openly to voiced anti-Punjabi sentiments. According to partial data compiled by SATP, a total of 198 settlers have been killed in Balochistan since the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti, leader of the Bugti tribe and President of the Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP), on August 26, 2006, (data till January 21, 2018). Bugti was killed in a military operation in the Chalgri area of the Bhamboor Hills in Dera Bugti District. Out of the 198 ‘outsiders’ killed, at least 75 were Punjabis. While 23 Punjabi settlers were killed in 2017, 2016 witnessed no attack on Punjabis. The number of such fatalities stood at six in 2015; 17 in 2014; 29 in 2013; 26 in 2012; 13 in 2011; 21 in 2010; 18 in 2009; and one in 2008. No such fatalities were recorded in 2007 and 2006. While Punjabis have been the main targets, other ethnic groups, such as Urdu-speaking people from Karachi and Hindko-speaking settlers from Haripur District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), have also been singled out in acts of ethnic violence.

Significantly, most of the Punjabi settler killings were recorded in South Balochistan (principally in Bolan, Kech, Gwadar, Panjgur, Khuzdar, Sibi and Lasbela Districts) which accounted for 156 killings; followed by 27 in North Balochistan (mostly in Nushki, Quetta and Mustang District). The overwhelming concentration of such killings in the South was because of the presence and dominance of Baloch insurgents in this region, while the North is dominated by Islamist extremist formations such as TTP and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), groups that are primarily engaged in sectarian killings within Pakistan.

Other than non-Baloch people, those associated with China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) programs, including the Gwadar Port project, were also targeted by Baloch nationalists and insurgents who consider CPEC an instrument of exploitation of local resources and marginalization of local populations. On May 13, 2017, at least 10 labourers were killed and another two injured when unidentified motorcycle borne assailants opened fire at a construction site in the Pishgan area Gwadar Town. The slain labourers belonged to the Naushahro Feroze District of Sindh. BLA claimed responsibility for the attack. Since the start of CPEC projects in Balochistan in 2014, at least 57 workers (all Pakistani nationals) connected with these projects, have been killed.

The Balochistan president of the Awami National Party (ANP), Asghar Khan Achakzai, alleged on October 9, 2017, that the Pakistan Government was ignoring the Province in CPEC related projects: “Balochistan is being ignored in the development process and all resources were being diverted towards Punjab”. Earlier, on March 13, 2017, Munir Mengal, the President of Baloch Voice Foundation, asserted that CPEC was a ‘strategic design’ by Pakistan and China to loot Balochistan’s resources and eliminate Baloch culture and identity.

Indeed, according to Pakistan’s Federal Ministry of Interior data, shared with Parliament on September 2, 2016, though Balochistan is the starting point of the CPEC, the lion’s share of the project has been assigned to Punjab. According to official statistics, out of the total of 330 projects, 176 were in Punjab while only eight projects were allocated for Balochistan.

While terrorism-related violence in the Province has dropped to a seven-year low, the long standing discontent of the ethnic Baloch with regard to the Federal Government’s persistent neglect and injustice continues to rise. Violence in the Province has reduced, but the dynamics that propelled it are well in place, and are increasingly compounded by the activities of Islamist and sectarian extremist formations that have long been active in the North and are progressively pushing into the southern areas of the Province as well.

*Tushar Ranjan Mohanty
Research Associate; Institute for Conflict Management

By Deepak Kumar Nayak*

Left Wing Extremism (LWE) in Odisha continued to suffer reverses through 2017. According to partial data collated by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), through 2017, Odisha recorded for 36 LWE-linked fatalities [18 civilians, nine Security Force (SF) personnel and nine Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres] as against 72 such fatalities (27 civilians, three SF personnel and 42 Maoists) recorded through 2016. There has been no such fatality in the current year so far (data till January 21, 2018).

Odisha registered a decline of 33.33 per cent in civilian fatalities, from 27 in 2016 to 18 in 2017. Fatalities recorded in this category in 2017, on year on year basis, were the fourth lowest since the formation of CPI-Maoist in September 2004. The lowest number (three fatalities) was recorded in 2006, while the second lowest (13) was recorded twice, in 2005 and 2007. Significantly, the highest number of fatalities (62) was registered in 2010.

Though fatalities among SFs increased from three in 2016 to nine in 2017, what is notable here is that the number of incidents in which SFs were killed stood at two in both these years. The two incidents in which SFs were killed in 2017 included:

February 1: Maoists triggered a landmine explosion [LINK: SAIR-15.32] near Mungarbhumi in Koraput District, killing eight Police personnel and injuring another five. The explosion targeted a Police van, carrying 13 Police personnel, on its way to the Police Training College in Angul District. This was the worst attack, in terms of fatalities, against the SFs in the State since May 23, 2011, when nine Policemen were killed in a Maoist-triggered landmine blast in the Sunabeda Forest area of Nuapada District.

June 4: A Special Operation Group (SOG) trooper was killed and another six were injured in a CPI-Maoist ambush near Khamankhol under Baliguda Police Station limits in Kandhamal District.

Maoist fatalities recorded a decline of 78.57 per cent, from 42 registered in 2016 to nine in 2017. Though SFs eliminated a smaller number of Maoists through 2017, they did inflict greater losses on the Maoists in terms of arrests. SFs arrested 62 Maoists, including one ‘commander’ level cadre in 2017, as against to 13 such arrests through 2016. The SFs continued to neutralise Maoist camps through 2017 and recovered arms and ammunition on at least 26 occasions, in addition to 28 in 2016.

Mounting SF pressure resulted the surrender of 54 Maoists in 2017. 401 Maoists had surrendered through 2016. The 2017 surrenders included CPI-Maoist ‘Central Committee (CC)’ member Jinugu Narasimha Reddy aka Jampanna, who headed the Maoists in Kalahandi, Kandhamal, Nayagarh and Boudh Districts; and his wife Hinge Anitha alias Rajitha. The couple surrendered before the Telangana Police on December 22, 2017. Subsequent to their surrender, Kandhamal District Police put posters at several areas in the District asking the Maoists to surrender and lead a normal life in future. The posters mentioned the surrender of these ‘Central Committee’ members and assured the Maoists that they would be provided with all kind of Government benefits if they laid down arms.

Their shrinking strength have forced the Maoists to recognize their declining influence. The number of bandh (total shut down) calls given by the rebels in 2017 came down to two, from 10 such calls in 2016.

An analysis of over ground and underground Maoist activities in Odisha through 2017 indicated that only two Districts – Malkangiri and Koraput – of 18 LWE-affected Districts (Odisha has a total of 30 Districts) fell in the ‘highly affected’ category, while another two Districts – Kalahandi and Kandhamal – remained ‘moderately affected’. The remaining 14 affected Districts – Angul, Bargarh, Bolangir, Cuttack, Deogarh, Ganjam, Gajapati, Keonjhar, Nabarangpur, Nayagarh, Nuapada, Rayagada, Sambalpur, and Sundargarh – were all categorised as ‘marginally affected’. By comparison, in 2016, four Districts – Malkangiri, Koraput, Kalahandi and Kandhamal – out of 16 LWE-affected Districts, were ‘highly affected’; another four Districts – Deogarh, Rayagada, Nuapada and Sundargarh – were ‘moderately affected’; and the remaining eight – Angul, Bargarh, Bolangir, Dhenkanal, Ganjam, Gajapati, Jajpur and Nabarangpur – were ‘marginally affected’.

At peak in 2011, the number of ‘highly affected’ Districts in Odisha was nine (Gajapati, Jajpur, Kandhamal, Keonjhar, Koraput, Malkangiri, Nuapada, Rayagada, and Sundargarh).

Indeed, as Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik noted on March 28, 2017, “Left-wing extremism remains largely contained to few pockets in the State, such as in parts of Malkangiri, Koraput, Nuapada, Kalahandi and Rayagada Districts. The Security Forces have been successful in handling the rebels on all fronts.”

Amidst these positive trends, some concerns remained. Incidents of bomb blasts increased from three in 2016 to five in 2017. Further, a total of 27 persons were abducted in 10 incidents in 2017, while 24 persons had been abducted in six incidents in 2016. The Maoists also carried out 12 incidents of arson in 2017, as against nine in the previous year. In addition, at least 11 families deserted their homes in 2017 due to Maoist threats, as against seven in 2016.

The three-tier panchayat (village level local self Government institution) elections were held in the State in five phases on February 13, 15, 17, 19 and 21, 2017. While the rest of State witnessed violence-free elections, there was no voting in 13 of 19 booths in Malkangiri, for fear of the Maoists. Poll officials disclosed that a very small number of people exercised their franchise in the remaining six booths as well. According to a villager, who did not cast his vote, “We preferred not to vote fearing the Maoists. They would punish people who cast votes.” The Maoists had reportedly warned the tribals of the District to abstain from the voting. Malkangiri had gone to polls on February 19.

Director General (DG) of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Rajiv Bhatnagar, in his meeting with Chief Minister Patnaik on August 28, 2017, had discussed the anti-LWE strategy for the Kalahandi-Kandhamal-Bolangir (KKB) axis, which remained a challenge for the SFs in the State.

Disturbingly, People’s Liberation Front of India (PLFI), a CPI-Maoist splinter group mainly based in neighbouring Jharkhand, continued to make its presence felt in the State. A total of five incidents related to PLFI were reported in 2017, as against two such incidents in 2016. The most significant of the incidents in 2017 involving PLFI included:

February 8, 2017: Two PLFI cadres were killed in an exchange fire with the SFs in the Pital Forest under the Bisra Police limits in Sundargarh District,

April 24, 2017: A bandh call by PLFI cadres affected road communication between Sundargarh District and Jharkhand;

October 1, 2017: Seven PLFI cadres were arrested by the Police during a combing operation in Khukhundbahal forest under the Biramitrapur Police Station in Sundargarh District. One 9 mm carbine, three 9 mm double bore barrel guns, two 9 mm pistols and 37 rounds of live ammunition were seized from them

December 24, 2017: Eight PLFI cadres were arrested by the Police at Bisra in Sundargarh District. The Police also seized two pistols and two motorcycles from their possession.

In addition to measures taken earlier [LINK: SAIR-16.19] to further improve the situation, the State Government decided on October 26, 2017, to intensify its drive against the CPI-Maoist, with a focus on joint operations by the Police and Central Forces in Malkangiri and Koraput Districts, considered Maoist strongholds. State Director General of Police (DGP), R.P. Sharma, reviewed anti-Maoist operations and stated, “Our emphasis will be on joint operations and better co-ordination between the forces.”

Meanwhile, to improve security situation in Koraput District in particular, the Police launched ‘Saathi-2018’ on January 16, 2018, a programme aimed at creating a friendly environment between the law-enforcement agencies and the people, to counter the influence of the Maoists. According to top Police officers, the campaign is on in full swing at Narayanpatna, Bandhugaon, Pottangi and Boipariguda Police limits, and has won the appreciation of the people. The Koraput Police plans to organise at least 40 camps under Saathi-2018 in the Maoist-hit areas of Laxmipur, Nandapur and Pottangi Police limits by the month of February.

Deficiencies and deficits, nevertheless, persist. Odisha Police continues to lag in terms of capacities to deal with the challenges of the Maoists as well as with the general duties of policing in the State. According to the latest Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) data, as on January 1, 2017, Odisha had 132.87 Police personnel per 100,000 population, significantly below the national average of 150.75. More worryingly, the Police/Area Ratio (number of policemen per 100 square kilometres) is 36.42, as against the national average of 60.83. Both these figures are well below the sanctioned strength, at 155.67 and 42.67, respectively. In addition, the sanctioned strength of the apex Indian Police Service (IPS) Officers in the State is 188, but just 117 officers were in position, considerably weakening executive direction of the Force. Nevertheless, it is useful to note that Odisha was among the three worst States in terms of Police-population ratios in 2000, with a ratio of just 96 per 100,000, but has pulled itself up, to the eighth position from the bottom.

Currently, the Centre has deployed a total of 17 battalions of Central Armed Police Forces in the State – eight battalions each of the CRPF and Border Security Force (BSF) and one battalion of the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA), a specialized unit of the CRPF, to boost combing operations. These Central Forces are largely deployed in Rayagada, Malkangiri, Kalahandi, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Nuapada and Kandhamal Districts.

According to a report dated February 23, 2017, at least 700 LWE-related cases have been registered in different Police Stations in Odisha since 2000. Nearly 70 per cent of these were still pending investigation, while the conviction rate of the cases that actually reached a decision in the lower courts stood at a bare seven per cent. According to the report, the LWE wing of the State Crime Branch, which supervises investigation into Maoist offences, had asked the LWE-affected Districts of Odisha to create a databank of such cases and appoint dedicated officers to pursue investigations. Unfortunately, the the District Administration and State Government have failed to address the issue, and its underlying deficits.

On the developmental front, according to a January 15, 2018, report the Union Government has been implementing the National Policy and Action Plan (NPAP) to combat LWE since 2014. NPAP includes a multi-pronged strategy, covering areas of security, development, ensuring forest rights of tribal people and other issues in the Maoist-affected Districts. A new scheme of Special Central Assistance (SCA) was launched by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UMHA) on September 27, 2017, for the 35 worst LWE-affected Districts in the country, which is to continue for a period of three years i.e., 2017-18 to 2019-20. Two Districts of Odisha – Malkangiri and Koraput – will receive INR 285.7 million per annum, each, for the three financial years, under this scheme.

On November 29, 2017, State Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi disclosed that the construction of the Gurupriya Bridge, which would connect the six gram panchayats in the “cut-off” area located across the Balimela Reservoir, with the Malkangiri District’s mainland, will be completed by February, 2018. The cut-off area has long been a region of Maoist dominance, and the Balimela Reservoir was the location of one of the worst massacres of SF personnel in the State, predominantly the elite Andhra Pradesh Police Greyhounds, on June 29, 2008.

Despite the decline of Maoist influence, a residual challenge remains in Odisha. The remaining affected Districts represent some of the poorest and most backward regions in the State and in the country. A January 5, 2018, Union Government list of 115 backward Districts in the country, included eight from Odisha: Rayagada, Kalahandi, Kandhamal, Gajapati, Dhenkanal, Bolangir, Koraput and Malkangiri.The Centre appointed joint secretary-level officers as prabharis (in-charge) of these Districts for better implementation of Government initiatives on equitable development across the country through the Transformation of Aspirational Districts Plan. The Districts were identified on the basis of indicators of education, health, nutrition, basic infrastructure, rural household electrification, and access to potable water and individual toilets. Unfortunately, while the SFs have taken giant steps forward in containing the insurgent threat, an administrative consolidation lags well behind.

* Deepak Kumar Nayak
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

By KP Fabian*

When Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali – who had been Tunisia’s president for 23 years – fell from power in January 2011, it appeared that Tunisia would embark on a journey towards democracy for the first time since its independence from France in 1957. Habib Bourguiba who led the struggle for freedom wanted to be president for life. In 1987, he was deposed in a bloodless coup by his Prime Minister Ben Ali who promised to introduce democracy. Ben Ali soon reneged on his promises and crony capitalism set in.

For over two years post Ben Ali, Tunisia appeared to be moving in the right direction. A progressive constitution was adopted, and a free and fair election delivered a government led by Ennahda (Renaissance), a reformed Muslim Brotherhood party that had been banned for decades. However, the supporters of the old order combined with secularists who nursed an irrational allergy towards Ennahda demanded that the government step down; and, wisely or unwisely, it did step down. Currently, Ennahda is a junior partner in a coalition of contradictions led by those who were Ben Ali’s accomplices in ruining Tunisia. Today, Tunisia has its sixth prime minister since Ben Ali’s exit. As recently as 8 January 2018, 770 protesters were arrested, and one killed. A recent survey found that only 11.5 per cent of Tunisians believe that the present system is democratic.

In short, most Tunisians are angry and disappointed as seven years have elapsed since their country ignited the Arab Spring that felled rulers who had held on to power for decades, through means fair or foul, in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. What went wrong can easily be listed: a mismanaged, stagnant economy not creating jobs for the young in a population with an average age of 31; an unreformed political system unresponsive to the demands of the people; unaddressed disparities between the comparatively prosperous coastal belt and the interior; rampant corruption; and over- centralisation of power in the capital begetting anger and frustration in the rest of the country. Some Tunisians have started saying that it was better under Ben Ali.

In retrospect, Ben Ali did not exactly fall. He went to Jeddah accompanying his wife Leila Trabelsi who had attracted a lot of public hatred as her family members made money by stealing from the state with impunity. Ben Ali’s aides prevented him from coming back as they wanted power. Some Tunisians held the opinion that if Ben Ali had divorced Leila and punished those who plundered the state he could have remained in office. In short, what happened in January 2011 was short of a genuine revolution as power did not pass from the dictator to a new leadership with popular support determined to eradicate the old order and replace it with a new democratic one.

For a while, many well-wishers of Tunisia thought that Rached Ghannouchi, co-founder of Ennahda, named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential leaders in 2012, would lead Tunisia in the right direction. However, he has not done so. He lacks the drive to lead his party with a clear goal of a democratic Tunisia embracing inclusive growth by dismantling the old order.

With mounting public debt (US$16.38 billion as against a GDP of US$42 billion) and an ailing economy, the Tunisian government did what most governments in the third world do and approached the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2013 for a loan. A loan of US$2.9 billion was granted to be paid in tranches depending on progress made in ‘structural adjustments’. Essentially, the IMF wanted to cut down public spending, reform the tax code, and reduce the numbers on the state pay roll. Prices of essential goods including bread and grains shot up. Average family income at US$150 a month proved grossly inadequate, and the people came out on to the streets in January.

At present, Tunisia’s prospects for removing the obstacles in its desired march towards a democracy with an improving economy that will create jobs for the young are bleak. The EU, preoccupied with its own internal problems, has not done much to promote democracy. The IMF has yet to learn from its past follies. That a prescription of austerity will only add to the misery of the common people has been proved time and again and Greece’s pathetic plight is obvious to everyone except to those who are willfully blind.

Thousands of young Tunisians have either joined the Islamic State (IS) or gone to Europe looking for jobs. As the IS has collapsed, some of the young will return. Will they carry out terrorist activities in Tunisia? Will there be another revolution? There might be violent protests, but such protests do not add up to a revolution. Tunisia needs a new political leadership. President Mohamed Beji Caid Essebsi, 91, who held high offices under Ben Ali, cannot take Tunisia in a new direction. Neither can the ruling coalition of contradictions deliver. What happened to Tunisia is best summed up by Shakespeare:

“O, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by and by a cloud takes all away!”

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