Finding food to feed baby birds is getting more and more difficult for seabirds due the effects of climate change, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, carried out by an international team with the participation of the lecturers Jacob González-Solís and Raül Ramos, from the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona.

According to the study, seabirds have not adopted their breeding cycle to the new climate conditions, which are marked by global change. In a future time, the progressive rise of sea temperatures could create a lack of synchrony between the breeding and feeding period and the stages in which preys are more abundant in oceans.

The new study is the global result of the collaboration of a big international team of experts on seabirds, which is led by the University of Edinburgh, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), from the United Kingdom. The new study, with the support of the Natural Environment Research Council of the United Kingdom, analysed the breeding patterns of sixty-two seabird species from 1952 to 2016, a period that has been marked by the significant rise of temperature in the sea.

How do seabirds respond to global change?

Nowadays, seabirds are the most threatened group of birds, and the conservation status of many of the species –orders of Sphenisciformes, Procellariiformes, Suliformes, Pelecaniformes and Charadriiformes– are worsening every day. According to the study, seabirds cannot adapt their biological rhythm to temperature changes in the ocean surface while their most common preys (squids, sardines, etc.) are modifying breeding patterns as a response to global change.

The mismatch between the biological rhythms in seabirds and preys can make it harder for those seeking food (trophic cascade), in particular during the breeding season and feeding of chicks, a situation that would put the survival of many vulnerable populations at risk.

As part of the study, the UB-IRBio team studied phonological data –link between climate factors and biological cycles- of a Cory’s Shearwater (Calonectris borealis), which breeds in the Canary Islands archipelago.

According to Jacob González-Solís, lecturer from the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences of the UB and IRBio, “in particular, we could monitor the breeding of this bird population since 2001, which allowed us to contribute significantly to the final results of the study. According to the conclusions, within the area of oceanic areas in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, long distance migratory species are expected to be the most affected ones, since they live at least in two different areas over the year”.

Ocean birds: a life under extreme conditions

Seabirds have extreme life history, with a life expectancy which is higher than the preys’, high adult survival, low fertility, and advanced breeding age. According to the lecturer Raül Ramos (UB-IRBio), “these factors make seabirds to be specifically sensitive to any environmental perturbation, whether it is direct or indirect”.

According to Ramos, predoctoral researcher in the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences of the UB, “this trophic cascade between seabirds and preys, due global warming, will be particularly harmful to the order of Procellariiformes, mainly for the giant petrels, fulmars and albatrosses”. These species, from the families of Procellariidae and Diomedeidae, show a lower flexibility in the offspring phenology. Also, seabirds with a higher climate response towards global warming and a trophic cascade are Pelecaniformes and Suliformes (that is, cormorants and gannets)”, noted the researcher.

By Michelle La Rosa

In a letter to the New York Times, the U.S. vicar of Opus Dei said that the personal prelature has no conflict with Pope Francis, but supports him and is united with his mission.

“From my perspective, I don’t see that there’s any conflict with the Holy Father. Love for the Holy Father is part of our DNA. We pray for him every day. We learn from him,” Msgr. Thomas Bohlin told CNA April 5.

He quoted Opus Dei’s founder, St. Josemaria Escriva, who used to say that Opus Dei had three great loves in the Church: “Christ, Mary, and the pope.”

Bohlin spoke to CNA after responding by letter to the mention of Opus Dei in a March 24 opinion piece in the New York Times, written by Paul Elie, a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs.

“While John Paul forged a relationship with Opus Dei — the strict and secretive movement with roots in the postwar Spain of Francisco Franco — Francis is at ease with the Community of Sant’Egidio, founded in Rome during the student uprisings of 1968 and now present in 70 countries, working with the poor, migrants, the elderly and people with AIDS,” Elie wrote.

Msgr. Bohlin responded in an April 3 letter to the Times’ editor. “As head of Opus Dei in the United States, I want to affirm that all of us in Opus Dei support the pope and his work as pastor of the universal Church,” he said.

Pitting Sant’Egido and Opus Dei in opposition to each other creates a false dichotomy, he said, adding that Pope Francis “can be at ease with both.”

Bohlin pointed to several signs of the Pope Francis’ support of Opus Dei.

“He has prayed at the tomb of Opus Dei’s founder in Rome; he has beatified Opus Dei’s first prelate, Álvaro del Portillo; and he has appointed several Opus Dei priests as bishops around the world,” the vicar said. “Recently, the pope sent a beautiful letter supporting a project for young people (UNIV) organized by members of Opus Dei.”

In his comments to CNA, Msgr. Bohlin said he felt compelled to write the letter because “we wanted to make sure that people know that we support the pope, we pray for the pope. He needs our prayer, he needs to feel that support.”

“We are very much on the wavelength of the Holy Father…We love the pope, and the pope loves and respects Opus Dei too.”

Bohlin objected to the depiction of Opus Dei as “strict and secretive,” saying that this is a “caricature” of the personal prelature, which is open about its mission in the Church.

“Opus Dei is fully a member of the Church. [It] spreads the message of holiness in ordinary life, especially among the laity, to be actively engaged in society through their work and their presence there, to bring the Christian message there and make it felt in the world.”

Opus Dei and Sant’Egido are not opposed to each other, he emphasized, adding, “It’s kind of a red herring to try to divide the Church that way.”

“We are all united with the Holy Father, in his message of mercy and love for the poor, imitating Jesus in this world today, being missionary disciples. All the things that Sant’Egido stands for are things that we too stand for.”

While Elie in his opinion piece emphasized the service work being done by Sant’Egido, Bohlin said Opus Dei also has a strong tradition of service, with projects all over the world. For example, he said, the organization runs a major hospital in Democratic Republic of the Congo, schools for poor children in Guatemala, and an inner-city center for kids in Chicago.

Bohlin clarified that Opus Dei does not have a specific mission to serve in one particular way. Rather, he said, “we try to set people on fire with the love of Christ,” and then encourage them to serve in whatever way they feel called. Members of Opus Dei work in hospitals, schools, homeless shelters, pro-life organizations and other charitable outreaches.

“We leave people a lot of freedom, but we urge them, ‘Take your talents, and go out and serve,’” he said.

The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MEE) of the Republic of Maldives and Kokyo Tatemono Company Limited (Kokyo) of Tokyo, Japan, to embark on a wave energy project in the Maldives.

The project involves testing prototype Wave Energy Converter units (WEC-units) in the Maldives with the aim of supplying sustainable energy and reducing carbon emissions, in collaboration with MEE and the Government of the Maldives.

This experiment is to be principally conducted with invaluable assistance and cooperation of MEE, as well as Holiday Inn Resort Kandooma at South Male Atoll, Maldives.

Professor Tsumoru Shintake, leader of the Quantum Wave Microscopy Unit, OIST, and his colleagues designed special WEC-units which can capture energy from surf waves along the shore-line and convert it into usable electricity, as part of the wave energy project which was launched in 2013.

Prof. Shintake’s WEC-units have been carefully designed, taking inspiration from nature: the blade design and materials are inspired by dolphin fins and the flexible posts resemble flower stems. The units are built to withstand forces from breaking waves. They are also safe for sea-creatures, with the blades rotating at a carefully calculated speed that allows them to avoid the blades. One of the principal features of the WEC-units is that the generating turbines are designed to be located at the mean sea level to harness the wave energy most effectively.

The experiment in the Maldives will involve installing two half-scaled WEC prototypes, with 0.35-meter diameter turbines. For simplicity, the prototype blade is not yet a flexible design but is made from high-tension duralumin. The prototypes will be installed about 50 meters offshore along the shoreline of the Southeastern part of Kandooma Island. The location has been carefully selected for its low environmental and visual impact — it is shallow with no living coral and it is situated behind a hotel, away from surfers and divers.

“The Maldives is an ideal place to test our Wave Energy Converters for three reasons,” said Prof. Shintake. Firstly, the Maldives needs new ways to generate electricity. Consisting of approximately 1,200 islands, there is no central power plant or way to transmit energy between islands. Currently, each inhabited island must generate its own energy supply, usually by burning fossil fuels.

Secondly, the Maldives has a vested interest in finding renewable energy sources and reducing carbon emissions. Since the Maldives is an archipelago nation made out of atolls, in which each and every island is elevated only a few meters above sea level, the islands might be possibly influenced by the current global warming environment, and are facing a certain geophysical impact, i.e. the gradual rising of the sea level.

“The Maldives is a symbol of global climate change,” said Prof. Shintake.

Thirdly, the location of the Maldives makes it a suitable place to harness wave energy. The Maldives receives a constant stream of waves which have propagated across the Indian ocean from the South Pole. Unlike Okinawa, the Maldives is not a hurricane or typhoon region, so the WEC units are at low risk of damage from extreme weather conditions.

Wave energy is the most suitable form of renewable energy for the Maldives. The fact that wave power provides a continuous stream of energy gives it a major advantage over other types of renewable energy, such as solar panels which cannot generate electricity at night. This reduces the requirement for energy storage systems which can be large and expensive to develop. This is particularly important in a location like the Maldives that has many hotels and remote villages. In the hotels, facilities running throughout the night, such as laundry, desalination water plants, and air-conditioners, are one of the biggest sources of energy consumption.

The prototype WECs are currently being shipped to the Maldives and are scheduled to be installed in April 2018. The researchers will monitor the wave energy generation from the power house on the island, as well as remotely from Japan using web cameras.

This initial trial will be followed by two full-scaled prototype models with 0.7-meter diameter turbines which will be installed in September 2018. In the long term, the hope is to eventually diffuse full-scaled production models of wave energy convertor units throughout the Maldives.

From one island to another, this transfer of wave convertor technology is a step towards a greener future that embraces renewable energy.

Related papers:

[1] Tsumoru Shintake, “Harnessing the Power of Breaking Waves”, Proc. of 3rd the Asian Wave & Tidal Energy Conference (AWTEC2016), October 2016, Singapore, ISBN:978-981-11-0782-5

[2] Tsumoru Shintake et al., “Technical R&D on a Surf Zone WEC”, Proc. of 12th European Wave & Tidal Energy Conference (EWTEC2017), August 2017, Cork, Ireland

Saudi Arabia has urged the UN’s Security Council to condemn Tuesday’s attack by Iran-backed Houthis on a Saudi Arabian oil tanker in international waters west of Yemen’s Hodeidah port.

Riyadh also called on the council to hold the Houthis and Tehran accountable for violating international law.

In a letter, the Kingdom called for all possible measures to be taken to ensure the speedy and comprehensive implementation of UN Resolutions 2216 and 2231 to prevent the escalation of Houthi attacks.

The Kingdom “condemns in the strongest terms this cowardly terrorist attack on the Saudi oil tanker, expressing its deep concern at the threats being posed by the Houthis’ relentless terrorist attacks on freedom of maritime and international trade in Bab El-Mandeb and the Red Sea region,” the letter said.

“By launching this failed terrorist attack on the oil tanker (the Houthis) have also shown their indifference to the potential catastrophic environmental and economic consequences of an oil spill in the Bab El-Mandeb and Red Sea areas.”

Ship inspections

The UN is beefing up its inspections of ships bringing humanitarian aid to Yemen to ensure that no military equipment is being smuggled through and to speed delivery of desperately needed relief supplies, UN and Saudi officials said.

The move comes as the Houthi movement steps up attacks on the Kingdom.

A Saudi-led coalition said that Riyadh’s air defense had intercepted a missile on Wednesday night, which the Houthis said was aimed at storage tanks belonging to Saudi Aramco oil company.

Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of supplying missiles to the Houthis.

Under an arms embargo imposed by the UNSC, monitors from the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism (UNVIM) are based in ports in Djibouti, Dubai, Jeddah and Salalah to observe screening of cargo destined for Yemen.

“We met the UNVIM director and his team in Riyadh and we agreed on improved and enhanced capability,” Saudi Ambassador to Yemen Mohammed S. Al-Jabir told reporters in Geneva.

He said UNVIM would increase its inspectors to 10 from four and its monitors to 16 from six, and would also improve technology for inspecting ships.

“We are cooperating with the UNVIM and other UN organizations to facilitate and to increase the amount of ships that arrive to Hodeidah port,” Jabir said, referring to Yemen’s main port for humanitarian and commercial goods, under Houthi control.
Imams in crosshairs

A spate of deadly drive-by shootings targeting imams and preachers has sparked panic in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden, prompting some imams to quit, abandoning their mosques, while dozens have fled the country.

The killings have also brought attention to a rivalry that has emerged in Aden in yet another layer to Yemen’s complex civil war.

Many of the slain clerics belonged to the Islah party. In most cases, they were shot by gunmen while leaving their mosques after Friday prayers, or outside their homes.
At least 25 clerics, preachers and religious scholars have been gunned down since 2016 in Aden and the southern provinces, with over 15 killed in the past six months alone, according to a tally by the Associated Press news agency.

Minister of Religious Endowment Ahmed Attiya said that the killings are “systematic” and that more than 50 clerics have left Yemen so far, fleeing to countries such as Egypt and Jordan.

“If this continues, we will ask the clerics to stay home and stop going to mosques,” he said from Riyadh.

Attiya has also appealed for an effort to “rescue the clerics, scholars, and imams” of Aden. His office has warned that the killings are taking place alongside forced replacements of clerics who are affiliated with Islah.

The government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has denounced the slayings as “desperate attempts by terrorist elements and outlaws” against Yemen’s legitimate government.

No group has claimed responsibility for the killings. Security authorities in Aden would only say that they are investigating and that they have rounded up some suspects.

Researchers from LSTM’s Health Economics team have been looking at the links between socioeconomic inequities and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in low and middle-income countries as part of a series of five papers published in The Lancet in its Series on Economics and Health.

Professor Louis Niessen is lead author on one paper and a contributor on another in the series that examine the available evidence to tackle health and social inequalities and NCDs under the Sustainable Development agenda.

According to Niessen,  “Five Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set targets that relate to the reduction of health inequalities nationally and worldwide and one of these targets is poverty reduction, while health contributes to achieved equity under the three related SDGS on gender, general inequalities, and global equity. Our research points to the fact that low socioeconomic status leads to chronic ill health and that the chronic nature of diseases reduces the income status of households.”

NCDs account for most early death and disability worldwide with conditions such as stroke, heart disease, diabetes and cancer being drivers of poverty. Comprehensive strong evidence from the 283 studies that the LSTM team analysed, supported by their Johns Hopkins colleagues overwhelmingly shows a positive association between low-income, low socioeconomic status or low educational status and NCDs since 2000.

Professor Niessen continued: “Health inequalities due to non-communicable diseases are increasing both within and between countries. The poor, with already shorter life expectancies and bearing the brunt of undernutrition, malnutrition, major infections, childhood diseases, and pregnancy-related conditions, are the most likely to be affected by non-communicable diseases.”

According to Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO,  “Every year, almost 100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty because of out-of-pocket health spending, and the costs of treating NCDs are a major contributor to this global scandal.”

The research shows that to end poverty by the elimination of its causes, NCD programmes should be included in the development agenda, while national programmes should mitigate social and health shocks to protect the poor from a worsening of their social and health status. The team also calls for improved international regulations across jurisdictions that eliminate the legal and practical barriers in the implementation of NCD control.

Professor Niessen and Dr Khan of LSTM and their economist colleagues formed part of The Lancet Taskforce on NCDs and economics, with the taskforce being a partner of the WHO’s Independent High-Level Commission on NCDs. The series of five papers will be presented at the WHO NCD Financing meeting in Copenhagen later this month and at several Washington-based meetings.

By John Zaw

Myanmar’s ethnic-based political parties are gearing up to take more seats in the 2020 national election by merging Kachin, Karen and Chin parties.

The Chin Progressive Party, Chin National Democratic Party and Chin League for Democracy have agreed to merge and register at the Election Commission as the Chin National League for Democracy.

Manam Tu Ja, a Catholic and chairman of the Kachin State Democracy Party (KSDP), said mergers are a positive development for the election.

“There are good prospects for ethnic-based parties in the 2020 election, so by doing this people can choose an ethnic-based party easily,” said the former vice-president of the Kachin Independence Organization, the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army.

He said a public meeting on April 10 will discuss a merger of the KSDP, Kachin National Congress and Kachin Democratic Party and choose the new party’s name, logo and flag.

In Karen, the Karen Democratic Party, Karen Democracy and Development Party and the Karen National Democratic Party have merged and registered at the Election Commission as the Karen National Democratic Party.

Yan Myo Thein, a Yangon-based political analyst, said the mergers will provide a step forward for winning seats in the election.

“Ethnic-based parties will play a crucial role in the 2020 election, so all parties from ethnic regions need to start drawing up a strategy,” he told ucanews.com.

He said people will choose ethnic-based parties in 2020 despite previously voting for the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) to change the country.

Two-thirds of around 90 registered political parties represent minority groups from Myanmar’s seven ethnic-based states.

Ethnic-based parties suffered major losses in the 2015 national election as Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD swept to power by defeating the military-linked Union Solidarity and Development Party.

The Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), however, won seven seats in the state parliament in 2017 by-elections while the ruling NLD got only nine out of 19 seats in national and state parliaments.

Gin Kam Lian, an upper house lawmaker for the Zomi Congress for Democracy party in Chin State, said it is important for parties to form an alliance.

“In our Chin situation, people can choose ethnic-based parties easily if we negotiate in advance for competing in a different constituency,” he told ucanews.com.

Pe Than, a lower house lawmaker for the Arakan National Party in Rakhine State, said effective mergers avoid splitting the vote.

“The voices of ethnic parties are very important, so our voices will be louder if we can get around 25 percent in the national parliament and work towards equality and a federal system,” he told ucanews.com.

Pe Than admitted Myanmar faces challenges as parties have previously split after mergers.

“Parties have common objectives for the development of ethnic people but personal affairs and power are the main reasons for splitting,” he said.

In Shan State, the SNDP and SNLD tried to merge before the 2015 election but the move was not successful.

Mergers among ethnic parties have been an issue of protracted discussion for decades, while such mergers met with limited success in the 1990 and 2010 polls.

By Bruce Pannier

(RFE/RL) — Once, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) shared power in the government of Tajikistan. The IRPT was the only registered Islamic political party not only in Tajikistan but anywhere in the former Soviet Union.

Today in Tajikistan, you can’t even talk publicly about the IRPT without risking arrest, as was just seen.

Independent Tajik news agency Asia-Plus reported on April 2 that four men, all in their 30s, were sentenced to six years in prison for continuing to speak about the IRPT and supporting the party’s ideas.

Asia-Plus referred to a “source in the Sughd provincial court” who said the four continued party activities in the northern city of Istaravshan despite a ban on the IRPT that has been in effect since late 2015.

The source said, “For example, during 2016, under the guise of having plov, they would meet in chaihanas (teahouses) and, criticize the Supreme Court decision to declare the IRPT a terrorist and extremist organization, and preach party ideas to those gathered.”

Six years, in a maximum-security prison, for talking about subjects that just three years ago, and for 18 years previously, would have been acceptable, or at least legal.

Even after the 1997 Tajik peace accord, when opposition groups such as the IRPT were allowed to return to the villages, towns, and cities, and live openly, the IRPT’s situation was not easy. IRPT members were increasingly harassed, sometimes beaten, and an unofficial campaign to smear the party’s image gained traction in the decade leading up to the IPRT being banned

Places in government, allotted to the opposition as part of the 1997 peace accord, gradually diminished. The IRPT lost its last two seats in parliament in the March 1, 2015, elections, a vote that some felt was rigged.

A few months later, authorities claimed the party was not sufficiently active throughout the country and the IRPT’s registration was revoked. On September 29, 2015, after authorities drew dubious links between the IRPT and a dubious mutiny in one small area of the outskirts of the capital, Tajikistan’s Supreme Court declared the IRPT to be an extremist organization. All its activities were prohibited and 14 high-ranking members still in the country were arrested and later given lengthy prison sentences, two of them life sentences.

The four men in Istaravshan, identified as 33-year-old Kurbonboy Abidov, 38-year-old Nasim Barotov, 30-year-old Shukrat Mavlonov, and 38-year-old Shoumed Okilov, were simply IRPT members.

There were officially some 40,000 of them when the party was legal though unofficially the number might easily have been more than twice that.

The incarceration of the four men seems a new step in the Tajik government’s campaign to wipe all traces of the IRPT from the country and it potentially affects all those tens of thousands of people still in Tajikistan who supported the IRPT when the party was legal.

By Lisa Ferdinando

The defeat of the “caliphate” that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria claimed in Syria is near, top Defense Department officials said at the Pentagon Thursday.

“A lot of great work’s been done in Syria,” Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the director of Joint Staff, said.

Speaking at a news conference alongside chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. White, McKenzie noted significant progress, adding that the defeat-ISIS efforts are “very close to reaching an end state against the caliphate.”

“We have always said that our mission in Syria is the defeat of ISIS,” White said. “That is nearly here, but it’s not done.”

She reiterated the commitment to defeat the terrorists.

“We continue to be focused on the defeat of ISIS,” she said. “ISIS remains a transregional threat, and the 71-nation coalition that’s fighting ISIS is committed to ensuring that we combat violent extremism wherever it is.”

The presence of the so-called Islamic State in the Philippines continues to be a significant threat in this region. After Marawi, IS fighters have been reported as still active in the southern part of the country. Jolo and Maguindanao are likely to be the next IS stronghold.

By Syed Huzaifah Bin Othman Alkaff and Jasminder Singh*

On March 22,  2018, exactly five months after the Philippine government liberated Marawi, An-Naba, the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s (IS) mouthpiece, reported a clash between Abu Sayyaf (ASG) fighters and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in the island of Jolo.

The constant update from IS Central through its publications, such as An-Naba, about incidents happening in the Philippines could suggest the trajectory of the group’s activities in the country. The latest are in Jolo and Maguindanao.

Shifting Grounds

Prior to the Marawi siege from March to October 2017, the pro-IS groups were mainly located in four key areas in the Philippines. They were also called IS Basilan, IS Ranao, IS Maguindanao and IS Cotabato – all in the Mindanao region of south Philippines.

Since the failure of the ‘Marawi project’, the pro-IS groups that escaped from Marawi City or were outside the operational zone, have been regrouping. This has led to a new development with fighters from the former four pro-IS areas being reorganised into two, now based in Jolo and Maguindanao.

While the An-Naba news report would indicate that there have been constant communication between pro-IS jihadists in the Philippines and IS Central, more significantly is the decision to zero in on Jolo and Maguindanao as the new IS strongholds in the Philippines.

The IS report also highlighted the importance of Muslims in Mindanao and Sulu in undertaking ‘jihad’. It advocated continuing the mentality of the war against the colonial power in the last 490 years, and replace the current political system in the Philippines with an Islamic ruler and governance.

Why Jolo and Maguindanao?

Maguindanao has been an old ASG stronghold that had pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi long before the Marawi siege. Equally important is the fact that there is a major jihadi group based there, called Jamaatul Muhajireen Wal Ansar. It is led by Abu Turaifi and associated with the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), a breakaway faction from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Similarly, Jolo has long been associated with the ASG. In the present political and military constellation, Jolo is also associated with Amin Baco, one of the leaders of the Marawi siege who succeeded in escaping from the AFP crackdown. Amin’s first father-in-law, Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, is a key ASG leader in Sulu and is from the town of Patikul in Jolo where many of the ASG fighters, including Amin, are believed to be in the inaccessible mountains off Patikul.

Turaifi and Amin are important magnets that have drawn local jihadists and apparently foreign ones too. Since the end of the Marawi siege, there has been a call to ‘hijrah’ (migrate) from Basilan and Cotabato to Jolo and Maguindanao, to rebuild the pro-IS jihadi strongholds. This effort has been greatly facilitated by the presence of another key pro-IS jihadi leader involved in the Marawi siege, Humam Abdul Najid also known as Abu Dar.

Together with Dr Mahmud Ahmad from Malaysia, Abu Dar was responsible for recruiting foreigners and obtaining international funding for the Marawi project. Abu Dar is also believed to be in control of the ‘war loot’ taken from Marawi City and hence, in a position to finance not just the ‘hijrah’ of local and foreign fighters but also in strengthening the declining military capability of the jihadists.

Two Other Factors

Apart from the significant leaders mentioned above, there are two other factors that could facilitate the rise of Jolo and Maguindano as new IS strongholds. First, historically these areas have developed a robust and resilient infrastructure to support jihadi operations and are regarded as a ‘no go zone’ for the AFP and Philippines Police, who fear being kidnapped for ransom.

Second, the failure of the Philippine Government to endorse the peace treaty, called Bangsamoro Basic Law, has created a toxic environment for Manila or any Muslim group keen on negotiating with the Philippines Government. This has the effect of strengthening the jihadist narrative that only a military solution would benefit them and hence, the support for jihadists in Jolo and Maguindanao.

Impact of Rise of Jolo and Maguindanao

The loss of Marawi and the death of Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of the Abu Sayyaf group, and Omarkhayam Maute, leader of the Maute group, do not signal the end of the pro-IS and pro-jihadi struggle in the Philippines. Efforts are being made to find a replacement for Hapilon with Amin Baco, Abu Turaifi and Abu Dar often named as possibilities.

There have been suggestions earlier that Amin Baco could be dead. Hence another possibility is Yassir Igasan, a Libya-trained ASG commander with extensive links with Middle Eastern jihadi groups. Regardless of whoever replaces Hapilon, the decades-old struggle will continue.

While it will only be a matter of time before a new consensual figure acceptable to all is elected to replace Hapilon, the Marawi Siege has totally changed the character of jihad in southern Philippines. The snail-paced reconstruction and rehabilitation of Marawi City will only benefit the jihadists with the government seen as the source of the people’s misery, providing additional recruits to the jihadists. This does not include families who lost their loved ones in the Marawi Siege.

In an endeavour to avenge the deaths of their comrades, leaders and the loss of Marawi City, these jihadists can be expected to target security personnel in revenge killings. For the past three months since January 2018, there have been reports of ASG and BIFF clashing with security personnel. In addition to attacking military targets, groups in the Philippines have also taken the advantage to target non-military targets to widen the war to both embarrass the Philippine Government as well as to spread the security forces thin.

New Phase?

The quest for revenge, the tasting of ‘power’ for five months over a Filipino city, the massive destruction and loss of lives, among others, would be critical in shaping the ‘jihadi’ struggle in southern Philippines in the coming years. The movement of local and foreign jihadists to the new pro-IS strongholds, confirmed by images in the social media, is an indication that a new phase of violence is likely to break out in southern Philippines.

Given the circumstances, the security apparatus in the Philippines and neighbouring countries should be more vigilant as violence is likely to escalate. Keeping track of the jihadists’ movements is imperative in curbing another Marawi. Particularly important to focus on is the extensive jihadi networks of Amin Baco and Abu Dar, both in the Philippines and in Malaysia and Indonesia.

*Jasminder Singh and Syed Huzaifah Bin Othman Alkaff are Senior Analysts with the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR), a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

There are growing signs that a trade war is possible, and that the multilateral trading system may not be able to prevent it. This column asks what would happen with tariffs around the world if countries were to move from cooperative tariff setting within the WTO to non-cooperative tariff setting outside the WTO. It argues that that the resulting trade war with countries exploiting their market power would lead to a 32-percentage point increase in the tariff protection faced by the average world exporter.

By Alessandro Nicita, Marcelo Olarreaga and Peri da Silva*

Multilateral cooperation in trade policy is the safeguard against trade wars. When governments set trade policy outside trade agreements, they exploit their market power by shifting domestic demand towards domestically produced products and away from foreign produced products. The larger the importer’s market power, the larger the reduction in the relative price of its imports obtained through a tariff increase. This income transfer from foreign to domestic producers is inefficient from a global perspective, as higher taxes reduce the overall size of world markets. More importantly, it is likely to be reciprocated by the importer’s trading partners who will retaliate with higher tariffs as they try to exploit their own market power. Ultimately everyone ends up facing much higher tariffs and much smaller world markets.

The prevention of the inefficiencies associated with trade wars is the fundamental rationale behind cooperation in trade agreements identified by Bagwell and Staiger (1999) and recently reviewed in Bagwell et al. (2016).¹ Their basic idea is that the two pillars of the WTO – reciprocity and non-discrimination – ensure that the temptation to use tariffs to exploit the importer’s market power at the expenses of its export partners gets neutralised. In other words, WTO members are willing to accept not exploiting their market power when setting tariffs as long as other members do the same. Through eight rounds of trade negotiations, this has led to an 85% reduction in average tariffs since the creation of the GATT, the predecessor to the WTO, in 1947.

Importantly, Grossman and Helpman (1995) have shown that the neutralisation of market power is also present when tariffs are not only explained by market power, but also by political economy forces such as industry lobbying. Cooperation still neutralises the market power rationale behind tariff setting, while leaving other forces unchanged. This explains why positive tariffs are still observed even though market power forces have been neutralized.

The existing empirical evidence supports the idea that cooperation in tariff setting neutralises market power forces. Bagwell and Staiger (2011) show that new WTO members offer larger tariff cuts in sectors in which they have more market power.  Broda et al. (2008) show that non-WTO members set tariffs that are proportional to their market power. In a recent paper, we show that when tariffs are set cooperatively within the WTO system, the market power rationale behind tariff setting gets neutralised, and political economy forces drive the observed cooperative tariffs (Nicita et al. 2018).

A trade war will lead to substantial increases in tariffs

There are growing signs that a trade war is possible, and that the multilateral trading system may not be able to prevent it (Bown, 2017, 2018). A question we may ask is what will happen with tariffs around the world if countries were to move from cooperative tariff setting within the WTO to non-cooperative tariff setting outside the WTO, leading to a trade war where countries fully exploit their market power.

Using a multi-industry model of trade, Ossa (2014) estimates that the average increase in protection is around 60 percentage points for six of the world’s largest trading partners (the US, the EU, China, Brazil, India, and Japan). We estimate the market power of every WTO member at the tariff line level, as well as the extent to which tariffs are set cooperatively or non-cooperatively. Indeed, the WTO system provides exceptions to its rules that allow member countries to set tariffs non-cooperatively. Using our estimates of market power and taking into account the institutional features of the WTO that allow member countries to set tariffs non-cooperatively as well, we find that the increase in tariffs would be half that estimated by Ossa (2014). These are still very large increases in tariffs. The simple average tariff in the US would increase by 14 percentage points, and in the EU by 25 percentage points. In countries with less market power, the increase would be much smaller. Burkina Faso or Guyana, for example, would increase their tariffs by less than 1%.

To assess the cost for exporters of such a trade war, we then calculate the increase in tariff protection experienced by the average exporter in each WTO member country. The average world exporter experiences a 32 percentage point increase in tariffs, but this varies depending on the composition of the export bundle and bilateral trade flows, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Average tariff increase faced by exporters in case of trade war

Note: (1) We calculated tariff increases in every country as the move from cooperative tariffs to non-cooperative tariffs. Non-cooperative tariffs are given by each country optimal tariff in the presence of market power. These are given by the inverse of the export supply elasticity of the rest-of-the-word faced by each importing country. The average tariff increase faced by exporters is then given by the export-weighted average tariff faced by each exporting country in the rest of the world.

Nobody wins trade wars

President Trump famously tweeted in March 2018: “[w]hen a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!” Our estimates suggest that US exporters will face an increase in tariffs abroad of more than 27 percentage points. This means that a full-blown trade war will cause a ten-fold increase in the average tariff faced by American exporters (from 3% to 30%). This is similar to the 36-percentage point increase in tariffs that Chinese exporters would experience, or the 32 percentage points experienced by EU exporters. Both China and the EU are partners with whom the US had a bilateral trade deficit in goods totalling over $100 billion in 2017. However, it is unclear how these very similar tariff increases faced on their export bundle would lead to any country winning the trade war.

An argument often put forward is that large countries are more likely to benefit from a trade war than small countries. The idea is simply that in order to exploit market power and reduce the relative price of your imports with tariffs, you need to have market power. Kennan and Riezman (1988) formalise this argument and find that a country can win a trade war when it is substantially larger than its trading partners. However, the link between market power and economic size only works when everything else is equal. The degree of market power proxied by economic size ignores that some goods produced abroad can be closer substitutes to each other and to goods produced domestically than other goods. Some goods are only traded regionally, particularly in remote countries, whereas other goods face a world market. This suggests that economic size is an imperfect proxy to predict who will win a trade war. Estimates of export supply elasticities of the rest of the world need to be estimated in order to have an accurate description of which country is likely to be able to exploit its market power more than its trading partners.

Our calculations suggest that very small countries like Guinée Bissau or Algeria would see their exporters face a 5 to 6 percentage point increase in foreign tariffs in a full-blown trade war. Other small (and poor) countries, however, could be seriously hurt. Haitian exporters would see the average tariff imposed on their export bundle increase by 85 percentage points. Honduras and Mexico would also experience average tariff increases in their export bundle above 60 percentage points. The reason for these large differences is due to the very different export bundles of these countries.

Conclusion

A full-blown trade war outside the WTO system would result in a 32-percentage point increase in the tariff protection faced by the average world exporter. US exporters would face a 27-percentage point increase in foreign tariffs. Chinese and European exporters would experience similar increases in foreign tariffs. Some small and poor countries such as Haiti and Honduras would experience much larger increases in tariffs. These outcomes suggest that a full-blown trade war would have no winner.

*About the authors:
Alessandro Nicita, Economist, UNCTAD

Marcelo Olarreaga, Professor of Economics, University of Geneva; and Research Fellow, CEPR

Peri da Silva, Associate Professor of Economics, Kansas State University

References:
Bagwell, K and R W Staiger (1999), “An Economic Theory of GATT”, American Economic Review 89(1): 215-248.

Bagwell, K and R W Staiger (2011), “What Do Trade Negotiators Negotiate About? Empirical Evidence from the World Trade Organization”, American Economic Review 101(4): 1238-73.

Bagwell, K, C Bown and R W Staiger (2016), “Is the WTO passé?”, Journal of Economic Literature 54(4), pp. 1125-1231.

Bown, C P (2017), “Aluminum, Lumber, Solar: Trump’s Stealth Trade Protection”, Policy Watch, Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Bown, C P (2018), “Trump’s Steel and Aluminum Tariffs: How WTO Retaliation Typically Works” Policy Brief , Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Broda, C, N Limão, and D E Weinstein (2008), “Optimal Tariffs and Market Power: The Evidence”, American Economic Review 98(5): 2032-65.

Carballo, J, K Handley, and N Limão (2018), “Economic and Policy Uncertainty: Export Dynamics and the Value of Agreements”, NBER Working Paper 24368.

Grossman, G M and E Helpman (1995), “Trade wars and trade talks”, Journal of Political Economy 103(4): 675-708.

Johnson, H (1953), “Optimum tariffs and retaliation”, Review of Economic Studies 21(2), 142-153.

Kennan, J and R Riezman (1988), “Do Big Countries Win Tariff Wars?” International Economic Review 29(1): 81-85.

Nicita, A, M Olarreaga and P Silva (2018), “Cooperation in WTO’s tariff waters?” Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming.

Maggi, G, and A Rodríguez-Clare (2007), “A Political-Economy Theory of Trade Agreements.” American Economic Review, 97 (4): 1374-1406.

Ossa, R (2014), “Trade wars and trade talks with data”, American Economic Review 104(12): 4104-4146.

Endnotes:
[1] Other rationales behind trade agreements include the provision of a commitment device for governments facing credibility issues as explored in Maggi and Rodriguez-Clare (2007) or the uncertainty-reducing effect of trade agreements as recently put forward by Carballo et al. (2018) and discussed on Vox here. https://voxeu.org/article/trade-cold-wars-and-value-agreements-during-cr….

Reported problems with a new communications satellite have once again placed New Delhi’s space capabilities under scrutiny.

By Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan

India’s space organization, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), launched its heaviest communication satellite, the GSAT 6A, on March 29. The satellite was carried on GSLV-F08 rocket from the second launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota in South India.

GSLV-F08 rocket itself was on its 12th mission, and the sixth using an indigenously developed cryogenic engine. Putting the satellite into the right orbit (a geosynchronous orbit above 36,000 kilometers) was to take place subsequently in what is called an “orbit raising operation.”  The first of the three such operations took place on March 30, and the second operation was successfully conducted on March 31.

But then the ISRO confirmed on April 1 that it had lost communication with the satellite, four minutes after the second orbit raising operation. Even several hours after losing the communication with the satellite, ISRO officials maintained that they may still be able to reconnect, saying that they know the “approximate location of the satellite in space by using other satellites and other resources.”

It is suspected that the loss of communications links is due to a power failure. This could have been something like a short-circuit, leading to what the experts call “‘loss of lock’ or loss of contact with the ground station.”  The Chairman of ISRO, Dr. Sivan, too, pointed to a recent similar incident in Russia, when the Russians lost links with a communication satellite that they were launching for Angola (Angosat-1).

To be sure, this is not entirely new: there had been a number of incidents in the 1980s and 1990s where Indian satellite launches have experienced power failures. Since then, however, the ISRO appeared to have fixed the problem.

The latest incident with the GSAT 6A suggests this might not be the case. This is not without consequence. Reports suggest that if ISRO is unable to establish communication links with GSAT 6A, it could end up floating in space as debris but fully loaded debris, with fuel for its orbit raising and for its full life cycle of 10 years.

The GSAT 6A satellite, built at a cost of 2.7 billion Indian rupees ($41.5 million), was to last 10 years and was meant as a backup for the GSAT 6, which was launched three years ago.  GSAT 6A is a communication satellite meant to offer mobile communication for India with multi-band coverage facility – five beams in S-band and one in C-band.

There were high hopes placed on GSAT 6A. With a 6-meter unfurlable S-band antenna, the biggest used yet by the ISRO, GSAT 6A was supposed to offer better capacity and thereby strengthen the communication system. The satellite was also to help mobile communication throughout the country, particularly in India’s remote areas. Beyond this, the satellite was also important for the Indian military, which was hoping to enhance its own communication network.

This launch itself was also important because it tested the ISRO’s modified, High Thrust Vikas booster engines, which generated about six percent more thrust than previous Vikas engines. This time, the new Vikas engines were used only in the second stage; in the future, the four first stage booster engines will also be the high thrust boosters.

How significant is this failure given all of this?

Media accounts have noted that this is technically the second major failure in the last six months, and the first since Dr. Sivan took over as the ISRO Chairman. The launch was certainly scheduled prior to his taking office. The previous failure involved a PSLV C-39 carrying India’s navigation satellite, IRNSS-1H, due to a problem with the heat shield. The next navigation satellite IRNSS-1I, the eighth satellite to join the NavIC navigation satellite constellation, will be launched on April 12 as per schedule.

The deeper question, beyond the one of blame and individuals, is whether the failure of the GSAT 6A will have a longer-term impact on ISRO’s credibility as a reliable satellite launcher. Considering that there do not appear to have been any problems with the launch itself, or the new high-thrust Vikas booster, the ISRO can salvage something even if they are not able to re-establish communication with the satellite. Hopefully, this will mean that the GSLV can achieve the kind of reliability that the PSLV has achieved, which has made the latter a tried and tested workhorse of the ISRO.

This failure, however, is not without its costs. The first part of this is the simple reality that the ISRO, which itself works on a shoestring budget, cannot afford failures. Beyond that, the Indian military will also now have to wait longer to upgrade its communications. But most of all, failures like these hurt the ISROs reputation as a credible space agency that can launch satellites in a cost-effective manner. That is what will worry it the most.

This article originally appeared in The Diplomat.

This paper looks at the various scenarios for debt mutualisation in the Eurozone beyond 2018, considering both the fiscal role played by the ECB on sovereign markets and the popular support for further integration.

By Alfredo Arahuetes García and Gonzalo Gómez Bengoechea*

This paper summarises the main options that literature and policy makers have explored to implement common debt issuance in the Eurozone. It describes the role that monetary policy is playing as a fiscal tool and why it is not sustainable due to the limitations that inflation and populism impose on political stability and debt sustainability. The current economic and institutional environment requires some form of debt mutualisation to avoid the reappearance of sovereign crises. The balance between monetary normalisation and debt mutualisation should allow a soft transition from ECB’s sovereign interventions to some form of fiscal solution ‘from the centre’.

Analysis

Following the election of Emmanuel Macron as French President, the debate about the future of the Eurozone regained momentum. The pro-European policies supported by the new French administration have found a perfect complement in the new German government coalition. Policy-makers and researchers are leaking and publishing new proposals on how to enhance the Eurozone’s institutional framework to transform it into an optimal currency area.

Among the different policy options currently under discussion, debt mutualisation seems to be losing political interest in favour of other proposals, like tax reform or the creation of the so-called European Monetary Fund (EMF). Although these efforts are welcome, the current economic and institutional environment requires some form of solution ‘from the centre’ to ease sovereign market conditions, in the long term, and to reduce dependence from the European Central Bank (ECB), in the short term.

This paper studies the different scenarios for debt mutualisation in the Eurozone beyond 2018. The main question it tries to answer is whether the current sovereign debt stability is sustainable, given the lack of political consensus about further fiscal integration and the inflation target to which the European Central Bank (ECB) is committed.

The current situation of debt markets, shown in Figure 1, is the result of the ECB’s intervention as well as of better macroeconomic fundamentals. Sovereign yields are now lower and more stable than ever before. The reduction in sovereign yields experienced from 2012 is correlated with several political and monetary measures (the announcement of the Outright Monetary Transactions –OMT– programme, the first steps of the banking union, German support for ECB stimuli, etc) designed to alleviate the sovereign debt burden. The stability achieved by this set of policies is, however, very fragile.

The first reason for this fragility is the ECB’s commitment to its inflation target. The OMT and Public-Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) are providing a strong support to debt markets, but each measure has a common goal: to keep inflation rates close but below 2%, the main mandate of the European monetary authorities.

The second reason is the momentum being gained by populist and anti-European parties. This is limiting the scope of the policies that traditional forces can push. Left-wing populist party criticism of Quantitative Easing (QE) suggests that it only favours the rich and gives special credit conditions to banks, without really helping society. Right-wing populist parties from core Eurozone countries suggest that the risk of high inflation derived from QE is too dangerous to be ignored. Both groups of parties reject any kind of debt mutualisation, for different reasons, as will be explained later.

What are the alternatives to the ECB’s stabilising role in debt markets, if inflation requires a rapid monetary normalisation strategy? Is it possible to build a consensus deep and wide enough to create a mutualised public debt architecture under the current political climate?

Debt mutualisation: recent developments

Pro-European parties face an important challenge regarding debt mutualisation. States with lower financial needs find that any borrowing-at-the-centre mechanism would require their generosity, since it would mean covering highly indebted states for their excessive risk. Countries with higher public-debt-to-GDP ratios find that all of the mechanisms currently under discussion could increase the pressure on them to accelerate economic reforms, in exchange for the protection received, through some kind of implicit or explicit conditionality. There is significant social pressure on both sides. Countries need to transfer financial sovereignty in a politically feasible way.

Anti-European parties, both from debtor and creditor states, try to take advantage of this situation. The lack of some kind of debt mutualisation mechanism increases the cost of the adjustment for member states; economic adjustment is harder to develop in a monetary union without the appropriate institutional framework.

Populist parties in debtor countries use that extra burden to undermine the credibility of the European project and to blame Europe’s institutional architecture for the economic situation of their countries. Populisms in creditor countries use the fragility in debtor states as an alibi to avoid further integration; differences are huge, they argue, and convergence is virtually impossible to achieve. Figure 2 shows this populist-debt-adjustment loop.

Over the past 10 years researchers have published several proposals to reduce sovereign volatility in the Eurozone. Gros & Micossi (2008) suggested the creation of a European Fund as an answer to the US Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). This fund would issue bonds with the explicit guarantee of all Eurozone member states. Weizsacker & Delpla (2011) and Bofinger et al. (2011) studied the creation of a double-tranche security for European public debt that would allow countries to refinance their debt in excess of 60% of GDP. For Philippon & Hellwig (2011) the best way to increase checks on risks, both in terms of magnitudes and in terms of effective control, would be the introduction of Eurobills –common debt with maturity of less than a year–.

This first wave of proposals does not provide an answer to the two main challenges that policy-makers need to tackle to make debt issuance politically feasible: moral hazard and free riding. The second wave of proposals, all of them published from 2016 on, take into account these two problems.

The ESBies concept developed by Brunnermeier et al. (2016) does not require major changes in the current treaties, which would make it easier to implement. Mutualised bonds could be created by a new agency that would buy debt from different eurozone countries and issue, in exchange, two different categories of assets: senior debt, with lower risk, and junior debt, for investors looking for a higher return.

Bénassy-Quéré et al. (2018) recently suggested the creation of a synthetic Eurozone safe asset that could offer investors an alternative to national sovereign bonds. The goal would be to introduce it in parallel with a regulation on limiting sovereign concentration risk. According to the authors, this system would not lead to a permanent transfer mechanism. National contributions would be higher for countries that are more likely to draw on the fund. This is far from the interests of peripheral Eurozone countries, since it does not offer enough budgetary autonomy beyond a small stabilisation fund.

Policy-makers have also shown their interest in some form of debt mutualisation. The European Systemic Risk Board has recently published a proposal (ESRB, 2018), similar to the ESBies’s, to create a new class of safe financial asset intended to strengthen the euro area. The ECB would offer a plan for building government debt from member states into a security that could tackle default by one or more countries without sparking contagion.

Emmanuel Macron is pushing for a common budget in the Eurozone, a proposal that would probably require some kind of common debt issuance. The German position on the topic has changed in the past few months. Before the elections of September 2017, Angela Merkel was willing to accept only a small common budget with no debt issuance. The support that she needs from the Socialist Party (SPD) to retain her position as Chancellor is pushing the German Government closer to a larger European Budget.

The fiscal role of monetary policy

The level of political consensus that these proposals require makes them hard to implement. Policy-makers are studying different options to find the most socially acceptable, politically feasible and economically efficient one. Markets keep pushing for a solution.

Pressure peaked in the period 2010-12. The ECB reacted by announcing and implementing the OMT programme, the PSPP and the Long-Term Refinancing Operations (LTRO). They eased market conditions and became a temporary solution for the lack of adequate borrowing-at-the-centre strategy. As De Grauwe & Moesen (2009) point out, the absence of a common backstop mechanism for each country’s public debt was a major issue that needed to be tackled.

Figure 3 shows the relationship between public administrations, commercial banks and the ECB under the current conditions of public debt issuance. When a country runs a budget deficit, it needs to finance it through public debt issuance, which generates higher interests and, then again, a deeper budget deficit. Each country is responsible for its own debt with no guarantee from the centre. Only the ECB can calm sovereign markets with the protection provided through the various programmes already mentioned.

According to the Bruegel sovereign bond holdings dataset, by the end of September 2017 the ECB had bought €1.784 billion of bonds under its Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP), of which €193 billion were supranational bonds and €1.6 trillion were national government and agency bonds. Purchases of asset-backed securities reached €24 billion by the end of February, while holdings under the third Covered Bond Purchase Programme (CBPP) amounted to €237 billion. Starting in June 2016, the ECB also added a Corporate Sector Purchase Programme (CSPP), which now stands at €116 billion. Figure 4 shows this trend in central banks’ sovereign bond holdings since the implementation of the PSPP.

Through the PSPP, the Eurosystem ‘intends to conduct purchases in a gradual and broad-based manner, aiming to achieve market neutrality in order to avoid interfering with the market price formation mechanism’ (ECB, 2017). Asset purchases provide monetary stimulus to the economy in a context where key ECB interest rates are at their lower bound. They further ease monetary and financial conditions, making access to credit cheaper for firms and households. This tends to support investment and consumption, and ultimately contributes to a return of inflation rates towards 2%.

Figure 5 suggests that inflation is not rising fast enough to be a threat to the ECB’s price stability goal. Prices are growing slightly above 1% according to the latest available data. Headline inflation has been increasing since March 2016 while core inflation has been doing the same since the beginning of 2014.

According to the ECB’s January 2018 statement: ‘The strong cyclical momentum and the significant reduction of economic slack give grounds for greater confidence that inflation will converge towards our inflation aim. At the same time, domestic price pressures remain muted overall and have yet to show convincing signs of a sustained upward trend. An ample degree of monetary stimulus therefore remains necessary for underlying inflation pressures to continue to build up and support headline inflation developments over the medium term’. If inflation rises in the mid-term, the ECB would be forced to reduce its market interventions, including those focused on public debt stability.

There is a second challenge for sovereign debt sustainability associated with the rise of anti-European parties promoting exit referendums and triggering political uncertainty with a critical message about monetary and political integration. Figure 6 shows the percentage of citizens in each country with a ‘fairly negative’ or ‘very negative’ view of the EU.

Negative views about the EU experienced their lowest point in the period 2003-07. After that, once the crisis began, they grew dramatically before moderating from 2013 on. The animosity against the European project was, at the end of 2016, higher than in 2000 in most Eurozone countries. There are two cases where negative views are particularly high still today: Greece (at 47.5%) and Austria (30%).

In the Netherlands, Italy and France around 30% of the population have ‘negative’ or ‘fairly negative’ views about the EU. In half of the original Eurozone member countries there is significant opposition to the European project that needs to be managed and that could eventually limit the scope of the policies implemented, such as bond buying from the ECB, and act as a barrier to deeper integration.

Scenarios for fiscal union

There are two important limitations to the ECB’s role in sovereign markets, as mentioned above. The first is the appearance of high inflation that might lead the Central Bank to normalise monetary policy faster than expected. The second is the awakening and development of anti-EU parties that can limit ECB market interventions or prevent further sovereign integration.

The joint analysis of both threats offers four scenarios for the future of debt mutualisation. Figure 7 shows the options. The vertical axis stresses two possible outcomes for inflation in the coming quarters: inflation rates can rise above the ECB’s target or stay below the 2% threshold. The latest data show that inflation remains subdued in the short term, but that it could accelerate during the second half of 2018.

The horizontal axis is the political one, showing the cases of an anti-Euro backlash capable of stopping debt mutualisation or ECB market interventions. During the first months of 2017 there was huge concern about the possibility that several anti-European parties could win the elections in the Netherlands, France and even Germany. The first weeks of 2018 reveal a more stable political landscape, with pro-European forces dominating the agenda. If a stable government is finally established in Germany, a three-year window would open for deeper economic integration. Italy remains the biggest concern, as the picture after the results of the 2018 election shows no clear government coalition.

In the ‘Quick Debt Mutualisation’ scenario, inflation rises above the ECB target and pro-euro resurgence allows policy makers to deepen fiscal integration without high political costs. Inflation requires an alternative to the fiscal role that the ECB has been playing since 2012. Eventually, the ECB must abandon its bond-buying strategy. However, thanks to the political consensus, a long-term solution for the public debt problem could be easily achieved. Market pressure would also help. The case for Eurobonds would be more plausible.

The top-right scenario shows a sovereign crisis renaissance. In this case, inflation is again above its target but there is insufficient political consensus for implementing any borrowing-at-the-centre mechanism or some form of fiscal union. The lack of action from the ECB plus the absence of solutions from the centre would ease the conditions for a new sovereign crisis.

In the bottom-right scenario an anti-European backlash dominates. This would be the case of a failed German government or a ‘Five Star plus Legga’ coalition in Italy, with aggravated anti-establishment policies. In this ‘Monetary-Fiscal policy’ case there are no short-term inflationary pressures. This would be the continuity scenario. The lack of political consensus would not allow a long-term solution from the centre, but the ECB could continue with its bond-buying strategy. This scenario would prevail as long as inflation remains subdued. Instability would be high, since monetary normalisation would move the Eurozone to the ‘Sovereign Crisis 2.0’ option.

In the ‘Slow Debt Mutualisation’ scenario there is low inflation and a high degree of political consensus. The ECB could maintain its bond-buying strategy without price-stability concerns. Social acceptance would offer a perfect environment for a slowly cooked debt-mutualisation process, without market pressures. Under these circumstances, the creation of some commonly issued debt security would be more possible.

Conclusions

This joint analysis takes into account only price stability and popular support for reforms. It disregards other limitations such as political willingness, technical difficulties and other negotiating barriers. From the authors’ point of view, the most desirable scenario would be the last one, the so-called ‘Slow Debt Mutualisation’. It would make the negotiating processes softer and allow member states to reach an agreement without market pressures. At the same time, it would let the ECB normalise monetary policy at the right time, when a political solution from the centre would be operational.

Monetary normalisation is unstoppable. The ECB needs to create monetary space. Inflation will eventually rise and get closer to its threshold. Policy-makers need to find a solution from the centre to sovereign-debt market stability that does not rely only on ECB policy. There is a real risk of a new sovereign crisis if the ECB withdraws from debt markets without the implementation of any alternative from the fiscal side. However, the ‘Sovereign Crisis 2.0’ is not expected to dominate over the coming years.

There is room for optimism for at least two reasons. First, the leaking of the ECB’s ESBies proposal shows that policy makers understand the relevance of the debate contained in this paper and are working to find an efficient solution. Even if it were a monetary solution, it would be a significant step ahead. Secondly, inflation remains subdued and populism relatively under control. The German government coalition is close to being operational. Italexit is no longer on the agenda. France and Germany have a three-year window to push for deeper integration. The need for some kind of solution from the centre to sovereign debt market stability is no longer questioned. The ‘Slow Debt Mutualisation’ scenario is at present the most desirable and likely. The depth and scope of such a common solution will depend on the evolution of political debate during the coming months.

*About the authors:
Alfredo Arahuetes García, Senior Research Fellow, Elcano Royal Institute, and Professor of International Economy, ICADE (Universidad Pontificia Comillas)

Gonzalo Gómez Bengoechea, Professor of Economics, ICADE (Universidad Pontificia Comillas) | @ggbengoechea

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute

References:

Bénassy-Quéré, A., M. Brunnermeier, H. Enderlein, E. Farhi, M. Fratzscher, C. Fuest, P.-O. Gourinchas, P. Martin, J. Pisani-Ferry, H. Rey, I. Schnabel, N. Véron, B. Weder di Mauro & J. Zettelmeyer (2018), ‘Reconciling risk sharing with market discipline: A constructive approach to euro area reform’, CEPR Policy Insight, nr 91.

Bofinger, P., L. Feld, W. Franz, C. Schmidt & B.W. Di Mauro (2011), ‘A European redemption pact’, Voxeu, November.

Brunnermeier, M.K., L. Garicano, P.R. Lane, M. Pagano, R. Reis, T. Santos, D. Thesmar, S.V. Nieuwerburgh & D. Vayanos (2016), ‘The sovereign-bank diabolic loop and ESBies’, CEP Discussion Papers dp1414, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

De Grauwe, P., & W. Moesen (2009), ‘Common euro bonds: necessary, wise or to be avoided?’, Intereconomics, vol. 44, May/June.
ECB (2017), ‘Implementation aspects of the public sector purchase programme (PSPP)’, European Central Bank, last updated 30/I/2017.

ESRB (2018), ‘Sovereign bond-backed securities: a feasibility study, vol. I: main findings’, ESRB High-Level Task Force on Safe Assets, European Systemic Risk Board, European System of Financial Supervision.

Gros, D., & S. Micossi (2008), ‘A call for a European Financial Stability Fund’, CEPS Commentary, October.

Philippon, T., & C. Hellwig (2011), ‘Eurobills, not eurobonds’, Voxeu, December.

Weizsacker, J.V., & J. Delpla (2010), ‘The blue bond proposal, Policy Contributions nr 509, Bruegel.

By Mehari Fisseha

Women and children are among those fleeing after the Ethiopian military opened fire on civilians near Moyale.

More than 5,000 Ethiopians have fled their homes and crossed the Kenyan border. The exodus comes after the Ethiopian military “mistakenly” shot nine civilians near the border town of Moyale.

According to Reuters, soldiers were deployed to the region in search of members of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a banned militant group. They were seeking fighters who may have been illegally entering the country across the porous Kenyan-Ethiopian border. The soldiers allegedly received false information which led them to believe the civilians were members of the OLF. They launched an attack on the group, killing nine civilians and injured 12 others.

The five soldiers responsible are in custody pending an investigation. Among them is an Ethiopian military commander.

The 5,000 refugees are the latest addition to an escalating humanitarian crisis in the region. Since March 10, the local Oromia Broadcasting Network estimates 50,000 refugees have fled Ethiopia, and tens of thousands more have been internally displaced within the country.

Protests and civil unrest in the Oromia and Amhara regions have prompted harsh military crackdowns and left several hundred civilians dead over the past two years. Simultaneously, armed conflict between the Oromo and Somali people has led to the widespread destruction of property and a rising civilian death toll. Most recently in December, 60 Somali-Ethiopians were killed in a bloody attack in the Gadulo region, according to Borkena.

Among the refugees spilling into Kenya are pregnant women, the elderly, and those with chronic illnesses. Footage from the Kenyan border shows villagers arriving nursing injuries, with few possessions. One Moyale resident told Daily Nation: “there is continued aggression and harassment, which creates fear and causes people to flee.”

In the interests of preventing a humanitarian crisis, the government must bring an end to the conflict in Oromia. Doing so will be in the economic interest of the Kenyan government. The border region between Kenya and Ethiopian is very significant for Kenya’s economic development.

Moyale sits on the border, with half of the town in Ethiopia and the other half in Kenya. There are plans to bring a railway, highway, and oil pipeline to the town to open up the region to Kenya’s Isiolo town. According to Bloomberg, the projects have a combined value of more than US$10 billion and are part of Kenya’s LAPSSET Corridor 2030 plan to establish Kenya as East Africa’s trading hub.

However, a spokesperson for the Marsabit county governor suggested that the conflict in Ethiopia could have a negative impact on these projects. He said in an interview with Bloomberg that the LAPSSET project “won’t be realised if this conflict does not subside.”

The Kenyan government will likely look for a solution as quickly as possible. In 2016, Kenya hosted 600,000 refugees from surrounding countries. At the time, the principal secretary of the Ministry of Interior told Telegraph UK that Kenya had hosted more than its fair share of refugees. This may be true, but returning refugees to their homes was not an option then and it is not an option now.

Many have had their homes destroyed, and citizens in Oromia are protesting. The government has ominously responded with a statement declaring it has run out of patience with “anti-peace elements” in the region. There is every indication that Oromia is not safe at the moment. It is Kenya’s responsibility to protect the region’s most vulnerable. Rather than directing resentment toward the refugees pouring across the border, the Kenyan government should channel its energy into pressuring the Ethiopian government to bring lasting peace to the region. With a stake in the problem, the Kenyan government should have a role in the solution.

The Ethiopian military has been instructed to “take all necessary measures to restore peace.” With the military ready to “take all measures,” there will undoubtedly be more bloodshed in Oromia and more refugees fleeing to Kenya before peace can actually be restored to Oromia.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect any official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com.

(Civil.Ge) — “The United States welcomes Georgia’s release of a package of proposals intended to improve connectivity across the Administrative Boundary Lines,” the United States Embassy in Georgia said in its statement on April 4.

“These measures help address the needs of the most vulnerable populations on both sides of the Administrative Boundary Lines and provide increased opportunity for mobility, improved livelihoods, and access to education,” reads the statement.

The United States Embassy also welcomed “Georgia’s commitment to dialogue and to a peaceful solution to the conflict,” and reiterated its “full support for Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders.”

The package of proposals, launched by the Government of Georgia for enhancing economic and people-to-people exchanges between residents of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali Region/South Ossetia and the rest of Georgia, was also welcomed by the European Union.

By Gjergj Erebara

Opposition supporters across the country have blocked main roads, cashing in on popular anger over the controversial toll charges on the highway to Kosovo.

Albanian opposition parties have rallied supporters to block traffic on roads across the country, riding on popular anger over a controversial private toll on the highway linking Albania to Kosovo.

Hundreds of opposition supporters created road blocks on the highway linking the north and northeast near Milot, 50km north of Tirana, where some clashed with local police.

In Vora, 16km west of Tirana, another crowd blocked the most used highway that links both north and south and Tirana with Durres.

In Elbasan, tires were burned to block traffic on the only road linking Albania with Macedonia and the same happened at Cerme, 80km south of Tirana, on the main road towards the south and Greece.

Lulzim Basha, head of the Democratic Party, participated in the Vora protest along with his wife, and claimed that he would fight “the criminal private state” of Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama.

In Tirana, Rama told parliament, which was abandoned by most opposition MPs, that the controversial toll that first triggered violent protests last Saturday would “not start before he had found a solution” for a separate deal with the users of the road from Kukes region, the poorest part of the country that is the centre of the wave of protests.

“We weren’t fully prepared for what psychological troubles such a new practice could create for uninformed people,” Rama said.

The government says the toll on the highway to Kosovo is necessary for road maintenance.

A private consortium of local companies won the tender two years ago that effectively privatized the country’s most expensive road.

The agreement foresees the company earning revenue from both tolls and from the budget but it is unclear what that company should provide in exchange for the revenue.

Both the current and the previous government have been criticized for awarding scores of such concessionary agreements – and Rama had made clear his intentions to award more, despite the numerous allegations of corruption and unclear benefits for citizens.

The opposition parties, when in government, had their own share of concessionary agreements, including the controversial toll on the highway to Kosovo.

The procedure to award a concession for this road was started in 2011 by the then Democratic Party-LSI government. It ended when the LSI was in coalition with the Socialist Party in 2016.

In 2017, Islamic State media released a video showing the group manufacturing and modifying a range of weapons systems from workshops inside the Iraqi city of Mosul (since retaken by Iraqi forces).

The video served as evidence to claims from various sources that IS had a primitive weapons production capability.

Lately, IS has carried out an extensive bombardment of Syrian army and allied forces positions in and around the Euphrates city of Abu Kamal with SPG-9 recoilless rifles (a 73-mm light artillery gun), Al-Masdar News says.

Likewise, footage and pictures showcasing the ongoing insurgency being waged by Islamic State fighters along the eastern Euphrates shore against US-backed forces also demonstrates heavy use of the SPG-9.

This is interesting, the source says, because one of the weapons revealed in the 2017 propaganda video as being producible by IS is a reverse-copy of the SPG-9.

Given that the SPG-9 is not terribly complex in design with regards to materials needed and taking into account that IS already has the required knowledge to build it, there may be a chance that the militant group continues to produce the light artillery piece throughout stronghold areas still under its control in eastern Syria.

By Andrew Hammond*

Hungary is preparing for a landmark election on Sunday that is expected to see euroskeptic, illiberal Prime Minister Viktor Orban returned to power for a fourth term.

While challenges to Brussels are often seen through the prism of Western European states, Orban’s re-election is significant because he has helped lead the Visegrad Group of ex-communist states in opposition to the EU, in what has been called a potential “East-West rift.”

For instance, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic (whose collective population is around 65 million) met in Budapest in January to agree a joint position on pushing back at proposals being floated for greater post-Brexit integration amongst the EU-27. Speaking on behalf of the four nations, Orban — who US President Donald Trump has said is a “strong and brave person” — asserted that “Europe needs a new blueprint.”

While increasing euroskepticism is now prevalent over much of the EU, what is striking about Hungary and Poland, in particular, is the rise of right-wing populism, with leaders forcefully promoting values that often clash with the standards promoted by Brussels on democracy, the rule of law and wider freedoms.

Indeed, some six decades after the Treaty of Rome, which was one of the EU’s founding treaties, European Council President Donald Tusk has said the challenges facing the bloc are “more dangerous than ever.” Tusk, who served as Polish prime minister from 2007 to 2014, has identified three key threats, “which have previously not occurred, at least not on such a scale,” that the EU must tackle to survive, let alone thrive, going forward.

While the first of these relates to the external environment outside of Europe, Tusk highlighted two other dangers relating to the rise of anti-EU, nationalist sentiment across the continent, plus the “state of mind of the pro-European elites,” which he fears are now too subservient to “populist arguments as well as doubting in the fundamental values of liberal democracy.” The latter is especially relevant to Hungary and Poland in the eyes of many in Brussels.

Take the example of Hungary, a country with a population of around 10 million, which was at the front-line of Europe’s migration challenges in recent years. There are growing concerns in Brussels that the nation, under Orban, is following a so-called Russian or Turkish model by weakening democratic norms, including clamping down on international NGOs and press freedoms.

On the migration front, specifically, the country experienced in 2015 some 174,435 asylum requests, many from Middle East migrants, with just 502 getting a positive response from Budapest. In 2017, the number was reduced to 3,115 asylum applications, with about a third getting a green light.

Yet, despite this drop-off, the prime minister told an election rally this month that “external forces and international powers want to force all this (immigration) on us with the help of their henchmen here in Hungary… They want to force us to give up (our country) voluntarily over a few decades to strangers arriving from other continents who do not… respect our culture, our laws and our way of life.”

Poland, with a population of around 38 million, has also faced the ire of Brussels, which took the unprecedented step in December of triggering Article 7 — which can lead to the imposition of sanctions — over Warsaw’s controversial judicial reforms.

Developments in Hungary and Poland have given rise to concern in Brussels over the degree to which the Visegrad countries — in the context of their shared concerns over immigration — could function as a more coherent “challenger” bloc at such a crucial moment in the EU’s history. But, for as much as the four countries have common concerns, their interests are by no means identical. Last year, for instance, Slovakia and the Czech Republic disagreed with Poland and Hungary over new EU cross-border labor rules. The former pair endorsed a French-led proposal opposed by Warsaw and Budapest, bringing out in the open tensions within the four.

This underlines the fact that the Visegrad Group has — since its establishment in 1991 — served as more of a diplomatic network than a clear and coherent political bloc. While they have long had common objectives, including initially becoming EU and NATO members, their priorities are not always the same as they compete for external political preferment and investment.

Nevertheless, Orban’s expected re-election will only add to the eastern challenges Brussels now faces. Hungary and Poland, in particular, have the potential to be persistent thorns in the side of the EU, adding to the internal and external threats that may ultimately become, collectively, an existential challenge to the future of the union.

• Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has dazzled international media and public opinion by lifting some restrictions on women’s rights, holding out hope for the abolishment of others, and a vow to return the kingdom to a vague form of moderate Islam that many believe is defined by the social reforms he has already implemented and his curbing of the powers of the country’s ultra-conservative leadership.

No doubt, Prince Mohammed’s reforms have benefitted women and created social opportunity with the introduction of modern forms of entertainment, including the opening this month of Saudi Arabia’s first cinema as well as concerts, theatre and dance performances. Similarly, anecdotal evidence testifies to the popularity of Prince Mohammed’s moves, certainly among urban youth.

Yet, Prince Mohammed’s top-down approach to countering religious militancy rests on shaky ground. It involves a combination of rewriting history rather than owning up to responsibility, imposition of his will on an ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim establishment whose change of heart in publicly backing him lacks credibility, and suppression of religious and secular voices who link religious and social change to political reform.

Prince Mohammed has traced Saudi Arabia’s embrace of ultra-conservatism to 1979, the year that a popular revolt toppled the Shah and replaced Iran’s monarchy with an Islamic republic and Saudi zealots took control of the Great Mosque in the holy city of Mecca.

While there is no doubt that the kingdom responded to the two events by enhancing the power of the kingdom’s already prevalent ultra-conservative religious establishment, Prince Mohammed appears to brush aside Saudi history.

The power of the establishment and the dominance of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia dates to 1744 when Mohammed bin Saud, the founder of the Al Saud dynasty, concluded a power sharing agreement with Islamic scholar Mohammed bin Abd al-Wahhab that lent Bin Saud the religious legitimacy he needed to unify and control Arabia’s warring tribes.

Similarly, Saudi global propagation of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism significantly accelerated in the wake of the events of 1979 but predates them by almost two decades.

Prince Mohammed’s uncle, King Faisal, who ruled Saudi Arabia from 1964 until his assassination in 1975, embodied the export of ultra-conservatism as a pillar of Saudi diplomacy and soft power. Faisal saw it as a way to create a network of supporters capable of defending the kingdom’s strategic and economic interests while simultaneously catering to the outlook of Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment.

Both the Muslim World League, one of the kingdom’s primary vehicles for the funding of its global campaign, and the Islamic University of Medina were founded in the 1960s. The university served as a citadel of ultra-conservative learning and thought, including the notion that Islamic law dictates unquestioned obedience to the legitimate ruler.

Prince Mohammed has exploited that view to put the religious establishment in its place and legitimize reforms it condemned for decades. In doing so, he not only undermines the credibility of ultra-conservative scholars but also enhances that of both more militant ones and those he has either imprisoned or silenced because they advocated not only social but also democratic reforms like free and fair elections, release of political prisoners and respect for human rights.

Prince Mohammed’s assertion that Saudi Arabia propagated ultra-conservatism as part of countering communism during the Cold War is not inaccurate but ignores the fact that Saudi Arabia felt threatened by Arab nationalism, not simply because countries like Egypt and Syria aligned themselves with the Soviet Union, but also because they questioned the legitimacy of monarchs. Aligning Saudi Arabia with the West, moreover, ensured that the United States had a greater stake in the survival of the Al Sauds.

Born 14 years after the events of 1979, Prince Mohammed’s projection of a kingdom whose liberalism was hijacked by Cold War-inspired policies and errant Islamic scholars jars with that of Saudis who are generation older. They recall a process in which post-1979 ultra-conservative social mores were codified into rules, regulations and laws.

“I was a teenager in the 1970s and grew up in Medina… My memories of those years…are quite different… Women weren’t driving cars. I didn’t see a woman drive until I visited my sister and brother-in-law in Tempe, Ariz., in 1976. The movie theatres we had were makeshift… You would pay 5 or 10 riyals (then approximately $1.50-$2) to the organizer, who would then give a warning when the religious police approached. To avoid being arrested, a friend of mine broke his leg jumping off a wall. In the 1970s, the only places on the Arabian Peninsula where women were working outside the home or school were Kuwait and Bahrain.” said Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist who last year went into self-imposed exile because he feared arrest.

Prince Mohammed seemed to acknowledge ultra-conservatism’s long-standing and deep-seated shaping of Saudi culture when he was asked about abolishing the kingdom’s system of male guardianship that forces women to get approval of a male relative for most major decisions in their lives. “We want to move on it and figure out a way to treat this that doesn’t harm families and doesn’t harm the culture,” Prince Mohammed said.

Mr. Khashoggi traces the formalization of existing social restrictions on women’s rights not to an edict issued by the religious establishment but to an attempt by a 19-year-old princess to elope with her lover. The couple’s drama, ending in public execution in 1977, was described in ‘Death of a Princess,’ a dramatized 1980 British documentary that strained relations between Britain and Saudi Arabia.

The incident marked the kingdom’s first major effort to use its financial and energy muscle to thwart freedom of the press beyond its borders and shape its international image. It also spurred codification of the suppression of women’s rights.

“The reaction of the government to the princess’s elopement was swift: The segregation of women became more severe, and no woman could travel without the consent of a male relative… MBS would like to advance a new narrative for my country’s recent history, one that absolves the government of any complicity in the adoption of strict Wahhabi doctrine. That simply isn’t the case.,” Mr Khashoggi said, referring to Mohammed bin Salman by his initials.

Liberals warned already in the 1970s that the restrictions would tarnish the kingdom’s image. A celebrated poet and novelist, Ghazi al-Gosaibi, who served as minister of industry and electricity, urged King Khalid in a handwritten letter in 1980 to shy away from banning the projection of women’s images in the media “so we would not be made an example of rigidity and stagnation in front of the whole world.”

Mr. Al-Gosaibi’s warning fell on deaf ears then but has been heard loud and clear by Prince Mohammed. To put his reforms on solid footing, Prince Mohammed will, however, have to acknowledge and confront his country’s demons and pursue structural reform, including a revamping of religious education that currently is limited to shaving off raw ends like hate speech, and the grooming of a more independent and critical class of Islamic scholars rather than whitewash his family’s role, whip its former allies into subservience, and suppress any expression of dissent.

“Strangling moderate independent Islamic discourse may succeed in silencing democratic voices within Islam in Saudi Arabia, but it will also create a vacuum for the less moderate discourse that the state has shown it tolerates,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, a post-doctoral fellow in Islamic Law and Civilization and the son of Salman al-Odah, a Saudi scholar imprisoned since September for calling for social as well as political reform.

I never met Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., or attended a march or rally where I could hear him speak, but on the evening night of April 4, 1968, an hour or so after he was assassinated, I was in a jail cell in Concord, Mass. writing a freshman paper about King, Gandhi and Thoreau, and their shared ideas about the power of non-violent political protest.

It had all started out when I found myself blocked, unable to get started on an end-of-the-term paper for my philosophy class at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. The topic I had chosen was tracing Martin Luther King’s political roots back through the thought and practice of Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi and philosopher and anti-war protester Henry David Thoreau.

Stuck for words, I decided on a whim or in desperation on the morning of my birthday to hitchhike, for inspiration, up to Concord and to Walden Pond, where Thoreau famously had built a small cabin in which he was living when he wrote Walden, and also his famous and hugely influential essay On Civil Disobedience — the latter work by way of explaining his decision to refuse to pay his taxes because of what he considered the United States’ illegal war against Mexico.

The US was, of course, at the time of my little journey, waging a similarly illegal and far more vicious and destructive war on the people of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia — a war that I had already decided a year earlier that I would not participate in.

I had, the prior October, gone down to Washington DC to participate in the historic Mobe March on the Pentagon, and had been arrested on the Mall of that huge building dedicated to war, spending several days locked up in the federal prison at Occoquan, Va. on a misdemeanor charge of “trespassing” on federal property (I got a five-day suspended sentence and was fined $50).

I had made a firm decision while still in high school that I would not allow myself to be drafted, and was waiting to be called up, when I would have to face the consequences of that refusal, having decided not to file for a student deferment while in college, which I decided was unfair to those young men who were not able to go to college to escape the war. (My being called up was a certainty given my lottery number of 81.)

One of the big influences in my decision, shortly after my 18th birthday in 1967, to go to the local draft board and register for the Selective Service, at the same time telling the woman staffing that office that I would not allow myself to be drafted, was reading about King’s momentous address at Riverside Church in New York, made on April 3 of that year, in which he clearly linked that criminal war and its violent repression of the Vietnamese people to the brutal racism and class struggle at home in the US. It was a lot to take in for an 18-year-old high school kid but King made it all crystal clear.

My short time spent in a dormitory cell at Occoquan six months later, while short, was probably the most important time in all my four years of undergraduate college study. Locked up with me in that cell were hardened veterans of political action, in particular the civil rights struggle against segregation and for the right of African Americans to vote in the South. These veterans of the struggle, along with other veteran leftists caught up along with me by the Federal Marshalls guarding the entrance to the Pentagon, became the impromptu adjunct faculty of a makeshift “people’s university” who opened my eyes to the wider issues of US imperialism, racism and the corrosive, destructive role of capitalism in America. They helped me to refine what King had said a year earlier.

It was with all that swirling in my mind, and with the knowledge that the war in Indochina had become even more serious and violent following the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Tet Offensive earlier that year and President Lyndon Johnson’s subsequent surprise announcement wees earlier that he would not seek re-election that year, that I headed out on the road for Concord on the morning of April 4, 1968. It at least appeared (wrongly it turns out), that the tide had turned and that perhaps the anti-war movement of which I was a tiny part was helping to end the war, and perhaps might also eventually lead to positive changes in the US, too.

At any rate, at the time King was slain, I was out in the early evening, under darkening skies that threatened rain, making my way by thumb along secondary roads in Massachusetts trying to get to Concord and to my destination, Walden Pond. I didn’t know that the main subject of my paper, yet to be written, had already been shot and was being rushed to the hospital to be pronounced dead as I walked the last mile or so to the little park that contains the pond.

Reaching the park at dusk, I wandered around until I found the marked spot, a slight depression in the ground, where Thoreau’s cabin, long since rotted away, had been. Figuring it was where I should bed down, I spread out my much too light sleeping bag and crawled in, just clouds began to release a cold drizzle a light rain. I pulled the bag over my head, took out my flashlight, opened my notebook, and pondered how to start the paper.

Before I could write a word though, a gruff voice rang out. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I heard. Sticking my head out of the bag, I found myself looking up at a large police officer who was shining his flashlight down at me.

I explained to him that I was a college student and that I had come to Walden Pond to write a paper on Thoreau’s and Gandhi’s influences on Martin Luther King. He replied, shockingly, “Yeah, well they just shot him. He’s dead!”

I was dumbstruck! How could this be? I asked for more information and the cop just said, “Someone shot him in Memphis.”

Then he said, “Come on. You have to leave the park. It’s closed after sunset.” Then, a little more kindly, he added, “Anyhow, you can’t sleep here. It’s raining.”

I said I didn’t have anywhere to go, and he said, “Well, you could sleep in the jail, but I’d have to arrest you to put you in a cell. You’d be charged with vagrancy, but in the morning we can rip up the ticket and let you go.”

It sounded like a good deal to me, so I followed him to his squad car and we rode to the jail. While it wasn’t the same Concord police station that would have been there in Thoreau’s time, I realized that the jail I was being brought to was the direct linear descendant of the jail in which Thoreau had spent a night for his tax refusal. That is where Thoreau was famously visited by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, who reportedly said, “Henry, I’m sorry to find you here,” to which Thoreau replied, “Mr. Emerson, why are you not here?”

My own night in the cell was largely uneventful, except for a disturbing snippet of conversation between two of the cops on the night shift, whom I overheard discussing the King assassination.

“That’s King’s widow on the radio, talking about her husband,” said one cop.

“Yeah, they finally killed that nigger,” said the other.

Clearly, I thought to myself, this country has a lo-o-o-ong way to go.

It still does.

That night, I sat in my cell on a hard bench that served as the bed, locked inside in accordance with jail rules, and hungrily ate the peanut-butter and white bread sandwiches offered to me by my racist jailers, while I wrote my paper which, at that point, came easily to me.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead, but the movement to create a peaceful society and a peaceful world where people are not oppressed or exploited, and where every child of every race and nationality can grow to her or his full potential continues as his legacy, half a century later.

No one, certainly including Dr. King, ever said it would be easy.

The memorial service honouring the life and times of struggle heroine, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, will take place at Orlando Stadium next week, the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) on State and Official Funerals confirmed on Thursday.

“In consultation with Mrs Madikizela-Mandela’s family, government will host a memorial service at Orlando Stadium, Soweto, on Wednesday, 11 April followed by a funeral service on 14 April at the same venue,” said the IMC’s chairperson, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.

Dlamini Zuma, who is also Minister in the Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, said the change from the original venue of Regina Mundi Catholic Church is due to the size of the venue.

“The change was made after the consideration of the size of the venue and the people expected to attend the memorial service,” she told journalists gathered at a media briefing at Orlando Stadium.

The IMC on State and Official Funerals — made up of Minister Dlamini Zuma together with the Ministers of Communications Nomvula Mokonyane, State Security Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba and Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Zweli Mkhize — thanked everyone across the globe for their overwhelming show of support following the passing on of Mama Winnie, as she was affectionately known.

Madikizela-Mandela passed away on Easter Monday at Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg after a long illness that saw her being in and out of hospital since the start of the year.

Minister Dlamini Zuma said government has witnessed how people from all walks of life, including the media, are coming together to celebrate and reflect on the selfless sacrifices made by Mama Winnie.

This, said the Minister, bears testimony that her legacy and fight for equality and justice will continue as a hallmark of our common endeavour for justice.

The IMC reiterated President Cyril Ramaphosa’s condolences to the Mandela and Madikizela families and all South Africans and the world at large.

Government further acknowledged the messages of support that have been received from various Heads of States and eminent persons across the globe ahead of Mama Winnie’s funeral next weekend.

The Minister said government is preparing for dignitaries from around the globe, who want to attend the funeral.

“The Department of International Relations and Cooperation is the one receiving the confirmations of those who would like to come,” she said.

Fighting for freedom

The IMC described the 81-year-old as someone who touched the lives of many people in South Africa and beyond. This was through the tenacity she displayed during the fight for freedom and the subsequent suffering she endured as a result.

The IMC said while there is sorrow in bidding her farewell, there is a sense of pride in that she lived to ultimately see democratic South Africa.

The President has declared a Special Official Funeral Category 1, which entails elements of military ceremonial honours and is declared in line with the Presidency’s State, Official and Provincial Official Funeral Policy for persons of extraordinary credentials, specifically designated by the President.

“The nature of the funeral itself is the highest you can give to a civilian. There will be similarities to [former President Nelson Mandela’s State Funeral] but we cannot say it will be exactly like the one for Tata Madiba,” said Minister Dlamini Zuma in response to a question.

Meanwhile, national days of mourning have been declared from 3 April up to the day of her funeral on Saturday, 14 April. In line with this declaration, the National Flag has, with immediate effect, been flown as half-mast at all flag stations countrywide and at South African diplomatic missions abroad.