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Seagulls Blamed For Cause Of E. Coli Beach Closings

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This summer, during the middle of a heat wave, you might want to enjoy a swim at your local beach. But summer is also the time of algal blooms and E.coli alerts–and that can put a damper on your plans to cool off.

Researchers have recently published results identifying the major sources of E. coli breakouts on several beaches on Lake Michigan. They have also researched an effective method of reducing the breakouts and the resulting beach closings.

“It’s important to encourage access to these important natural areas,” said Meredith Nevers. Nevers is a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “Finding and eliminating the source of E. coli, which is one reason for closing beaches, can lead to fewer beach closings and more people getting to the beach.”

Nevers worked with colleagues from the USGS as well as Michigan State University. The team sampled water from Lake Michigan beaches in Indiana in 2015 and 2016.

The researchers studied a region that includes the Grand Calumet River, Indiana area of the Great Lakes. “This was identified as an area of concern in 1987 by the International Joint Commission,” said Nevers. “The area had a high amount of pollution, as well as a high number of beach closings. The Grand Calumet River is low-gradient, meaning its flow isn’t usually very fast. This can cause pollution to stay in place, rather than flowing out of the river to Lake Michigan. It received over 100 years’ worth of industrial and municipal waste before the EPA stepped in. Removing long-buried contaminants is one area of research by other resource managers. Our team is working on more current sources of contamination.”

When determining whether to close a beach, local authorities measure total E. coli but do not focus on the source. Closing the beaches protects swimmers from illness. The E. coli itself may not be the cause of human health risks, but its presence tends to indicate that more harmful pathogens are in the water. The USGS/Michigan State team wanted to determine the source of the E. coli as well as possible ways to prevent high levels.

The team turned to “fecal markers” –the source of which is poop. Scientists can test to determine if the E. coli comes from feces from human, canine, or bird populations. Determining the source of E. coli can provide information to begin restoration activities.

In this case, the team was looking at gull species. Across all of the sampling sites, gulls were identified as the major source of E. coli that led to beach closings.

To be fair, it’s not just gulls in the avian category that create nuisance problems. Canada geese and mallard ducks have been in the news for creating messy–and contaminated–beach fronts. Additionally, the research team found human sources of E. coli, most likely from wastewater treatment plants that need fixing or their overflow after rain events. Canine E. coli was also in their samples. However, the majority of the E. coli problems were caused by gulls at all beaches studied.

Once the team determined the source of E. coli, they turned to effective methods of control. Trained dogs patrolled the beaches from sunrise to 7 PM for one month in 2015, and from June through September in 2016. The dogs reduced gull abundance by close to 100%. They also reduced the number of times per day that gulls were present on or near the beaches by 93%. Beach closings were down, especially at sites with this canine gull deterrence program.

“Restoring the Grand Calumet River so it can supply all of its ecosystem functions should improve overall shoreline health,” said Nevers. “Continued efforts will help to re-establish native plant and animal communities, and improve public access to the shoreline.”

Future research could study other rivers that flow into Lake Michigan. They could also focus on exact sources of human E. coli and fix those problems.

What can you do to help improve beach conditions? Refrain from feeding any shorebirds, and bring your trash home with you or use trash receptacles. In addition, pick up your pet’s waste, and dispose of it properly. The researchers did find that canine E. coli was in the beach water and can be a source of beach closings.

The dogs that were used to help clean up the beaches were specially trained for their job of gull deterrence, and their handlers made sure the dogs “left no trace behind.”


Israel Reported To Be Using F35 Jet Fighters In Syria

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Israel has used F-35 jet fighters in the air raid against Syria, media report said, citing an Israeli commander.

Israel has been the first to use the F-35 fighters in an actual war in the world, the commander of Israel’s air force said in a tweet, according to as-Wasat website.

The Lockheed Martin F-35 is considered to be the most technologically advanced fighter in the world.

Israel made a deal with the U.S. to buy 50 of the jets. Two jets had been delivered in mid-2016. Reports say that Israel has received 9 F-35 fighters so far.

A Special Arrangement For Northern Ireland? – OpEd

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Formal recognition of the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland is vital to securing the objectives being sought as the UK negotiates its orderly withdrawal from the EU. A special arrangement/status is in keeping with a more pluralistic understanding of the UK’s constitution, would be respectful of the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process, and is possible within the contours of the EU’s own legal/political order.

By Colin Harvey and Nikos Skoutaris

The negotiations on Brexit continue and are intensifying. Northern Ireland has found itself at the heart of these discussions. The EU-UK Joint Report of December 2017 gave further endorsement to the notion that there are unique circumstances that demand specific solutions. This appears not to be contested; it is the method of respecting the concept that is subject to ongoing debate. The draft Withdrawal Agreement took this one step further, by turning political agreement into a legal text. As things nudge forward elements of this legal text have secured agreement (indicated via colour coding). The Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland (the ‘backstop option’ or Option C) is intended as a solution if the other options fail. The reaction it received in parts of the UK is a cause for concern; in our view, it simply gave legal meaning to what many felt had already been agreed. This becomes even more troubling as Options A (a future EU-UK relationship that would be able to address the challenge of the Irish border) and B (‘specific’ technological solutions) are thus far failing to materialise. We are concerned that the debate in the UK is still not displaying adequate recognition of some basic facts about the current situation.

First, Northern Ireland already enjoys a form of special constitutional status. This is evident in the Good Friday Agreement, and subsequent agreements, as well as in the legal content and significance of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. So, the conversation around Brexit is essentially about maintaining and stabilising Northern Ireland’s existingcircumstances in this novel environment. It is a place that ‘diverges’ from the UK (and Ireland) in significant respects. Moreover, it is one of the two UK constituent parts that voted to remain.

Second, it was recognised early in the process that any obstacle to the free exercise of the right of secession that Northern Ireland alreadypossesses needed to be faced. Creating a bespoke solution that ensures alignment with the EU is simply a way of not undermining this existing right.

Third, the invisibility of the border will depend on keeping the island, as far as is possible, as a single economic unit where people and goods can move freely. Proposals for developing a ‘common regulatory space’ are essentially again an attempt to conservethe benefits of what happens now.

Fourth, territorial/geographical exceptions do exist already within the EU and there are many examples where constitutional complexity is recognised, including in cases that are linked with the UK, for example, Gibraltar and the Channel Islands. This makes the argument for a differentiated approach with regard to Brexit plausible and the objective a reasonable one in these negotiations.

Fifth, and finally, we acknowledge and accept that East-West cooperation will have to be enhanced. Here again, however, there is an available solution (in addition to the mechanisms to be agreed as part of the Withdrawal Agreement). The Good Friday Agreement, in its principles and its institutions, is the obvious vehicle to take forward the bi-lateral collaboration that will be required. The British-Irish Council and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, for example, provide an existing framework for nurturing the British-Irish ‘special relationship’. They might also offer a space for the UK, and its constituent parts, to remain engaged with developments within the EU.

We believe that formal recognition of the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland is vital to securing the objectives being sought as the UK negotiates its orderly withdrawal from the EU. A special arrangement/status is in keeping with a more pluralistic understanding of the UK’s constitution, would be respectful of the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process, and is possible within the contours of the EU’s own legal/political order.

Professor Colin Harvey, Queen’s University Belfast, is leading an ESRC funded project (BrexitLawNI) on the consequences of Brexit for Northern Ireland and Dr Nikos Skoutaris, University of East Anglia, has written extensively on this subject and has just produced an Independent Opinion for the GUE/NGL Group of the European Parliament on a Special Designated Status for Northern Ireland post-Brexit.

This post was first published in the QPol blog on 15 May 2018. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of TransConflict.

Earth’s Climate To Increase By 4 Degrees By 2084

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A collaborative research team from China has published a new analysis that shows the Earth’s climate would increase by 4 °C, compared to pre-industrial levels, before the end of 21st century.

To understand the severity of this, consider the Paris Agreement of the United Nations. It’s a global effort to prevent an increase of 2°C. Nearly every country on the planet–the United States is the only country to withdraw–has agreed to work to prevent the catastrophic effects of two degrees of warming.

The researchers published their analysis projecting a doubling of that increase in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences  on May 18, 2018.

“A great many record-breaking heat events, heavy floods, and extreme droughts would occur if global warming crosses the 4 °C level, with respect to the preindustrial period,” said Dabang Jiang, a senior researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “The temperature increase would cause severe threats to ecosystems, human systems, and associated societies and economies.”

In the analysis, Jiang and his team used the parameters of scenario in which there was no mitigation of rising greenhouse gas emissions. They compared 39 coordinated climate model experiments from the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, which develops and reviews climate models to ensure the most accurate climate simulations possible.

They found that most of the models projected an increase of 4°C as early as 2064 and as late as 2095 in the 21st century, with 2084 appearing as the median year.

This increase translates to more annual and seasonal warming over land than over the ocean, with significant warming in the Arctic. The variability of temperature throughout one year would be lower in the tropics and higher in polar regions, while precipitation would most likely increase in the Arctic and in the Pacific. These are the same effects that would occur under 1.5°C or 2°C increases, but more severe.

“Such comparisons between the three levels of global warming imply that global and regional climate will undergo greater changes if higher levels of global warming are crossed in the 21st century,” wrote Jiang.

The researchers continue to investigate the changes associated with 4°C of global warming in extreme climates.

“Our ultimate goal is to provide a comprehensive picture of the mean and extreme climate changes associated with higher levels of global warming based on state-of-the art climate models, which is of high interest to the decision-makers and the public,” said Jiang.

Challenges In Implementing JCPOA After US Withdrawal – Analysis

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By S. Samuel C. Rajiv*

President Donald Trump announced on May 8 that the United States ‘will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal’.1 Trump went on to note that the US will be ‘reinstating nuclear sanctions against the Iranian regime’. These sanctions, which were waived as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in return for significant Iranian commitments on its nuclear programme, were imposed by successive administrations as part of a ‘dual-track’ policy of ‘applying pressure in pursuit of a constructive engagement and a negotiated solution’.2

The JCPOA was the result of more than 12 years of negotiations, which initially began with the European Union-3 (EU-3; made up of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) in 2003 and later expanded to include the other members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) after Iranian nuclear concerns were referred to the UNSC in February 2006.

In the aftermath of Trump’s statement, the EU High Representative has stated that

‘As long as Iran continues to implement its nuclear related commitments, as it has been doing so far and has been confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] in 10 consecutive reports, the EU will remain committed to the continued full and effective implementation of the nuclear deal’.3

On his part, President Hassan Rouhani noted during a sombre televised address that Iran has ‘lived up’ to its JCPOA commitments as verified by the IAEA and that the White House’s decision was reflective of the ‘unfaithfulness’ of the Trump administration to its international commitments. He further stated that ‘from this moment, the JCPOA is between Iran and five countries’.4 His Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has visited Beijing, Moscow and Brussels to ‘construct a clear future design’ for the agreement.5

Background and Context

INARA Certification

The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA), which was signed into law by President Barack Obama on May 22, 2015, requires the US President to certify to Congress every 90 days (after Implementation Day, which was January 16, 2016) that Iran was implementing the deal; was not in material breach of the JCPOA; was not engaging in covert nuclear activities; and

‘providing continued sanctions waivers as per JCPOA is appropriate and proportionate to the specific and verifiable measures taken by Iran with respect to terminating its illicit nuclear programme and vital to the national security interests of the United States’.6

Trump gave such certifications twice on April 18, 2017 and July 17, 2017 after assuming the presidency, albeit reluctantly on account of advice to do so by senior members of his Cabinet such as then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. It was only after a mid-April 2017National Security Council (NSC)-led inter-agency review of the JCPOA was undertaken that Trump refused to provide such a certification in October 2017. On that occasion, Trump had stated that Iran was in ‘material breach’ of the JCPOA provisions on two occasions and that the agreement was not contributing to regional peace and stability.7While it is true that Iran briefly exceeded the limits on the amount of heavy water it can produce twice in 2016,that did not, however, prevent Trump from certifying the deal twice in 2017 as noted above (in April and July). Further, the JCPOA notes in the first paragraph of its preface that the ‘full implementation of this JCPOA will contribute to regional and international peace and security’.8 Trump and his officials therefore laid the blame in October 2017 for lack of regional peace and stability on the JCPOA, which was then only in its second year of implementation.

Trump’s October 2017 de-certification triggered a 60-day window for the US Congress to re-impose sanctions and pass expedited legislation in this regard (in tune with INARA). But the Congress did not do so, with some reports noting that Trump himself was not in favour of recommending such a course of action as that would have led to Iran altogether walking away from the deal.9 The IAEA continued to report that Iran was fulfilling its obligations under the JCPOA. Meanwhile, despite Trump’s de-certification (which was as per INARA, a domestic US legislation), he still had to provide periodic waivers from US sanctions laws that had not been removed in the aftermath of the JCPOA.

Sanctions Waivers

The US commitments under the JCPOA involved periodic ‘secondary’ sanctions waivers (those targeted at non-US persons/entities conducting financial transactions with Iranian entities/persons) from the crippling provisions of US domestic legislation (including preventing access to the US financial system, and huge fines for ignoring such provisions, as BNP Paribas and other banks learnt to their disadvantage). These provisions affected Iran’s oil sales and financial transactions for such sales with the Central Bank of Iran (CBI). US ‘primary’ sanctions (which barred US citizens/entities from doing business with Iran) and human rights-related or terrorism-related ‘secondary’ sanctions designations continued to be in place despite the JCPOA, which only provided relief from nuclear-related designations.

The CBI, for instance, was the subject of sanctions in the aftermath of the National Defense Authorisation Act (NDAA 2012) in a move to constrict Iran’s sources of funding for its alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) activities while terrorism-related designations date back to 1984. The CBI was targeted in the aftermath of UNSC Resolution (UNSCR) 1929, which noted in its preamble ‘the potential connection between Iran’s revenues derived from its energy sector and the funding of Iran’s proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities …’10 Stringent economic restrictions on US persons were put in place in the aftermath of the Bill Clinton administration declaring a ‘State of Emergency’ with respect to Iran in1995 (renewed every year since then), which triggered the provisions of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

On January 12, 2018, Trump gave waivers from sanctions relating to doing business with Iranian shipping and ship-building companies (as per the Iran Freedom and Counter-proliferation Act – IFCA 2012); significant transactions with the CBI pertaining to oil purchases (Section 1245 of the NDAA 2012); and, Section 504 of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (ITRSHRA) 2012 (which went into effect in February 2013) relating to the repatriation of Iran’s money by its oil importers.11 Given that each waiver lasts for 180 or 120 days, Trump challenged the EU-3 to ‘fix the disastrous flaws’ of the Iran nuclear deal, ahead of the next waiver date for some of the sanctions that fell on May 12 (specifically Sec 1245 of NDAA 2012), failing which he threatened to ‘withdraw from the deal immediately’.12

Trump’s Concerns: Ballistic missiles, JCPOA sunset clauses, IAEA inspections

Trump’s January 12 statement generated intense consultations with the EU-3 to come to a common understanding on three main issues of concern highlighted by the US President – Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities; JCPOA sunset clauses; and ‘insufficient enforcement’ relating to access to IAEA inspectors.13 Iran’s ballistic missile launches have been a subject of much angst for the Trump administration. In the aftermath of Iran testing a missile on January 29, 2017 – its first missile launch after Trump took over, the administration passed sanctions against 25 individuals connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and its missile programme.

In its January 12, 2018 statement, Trump insisted that

‘Legislation must explicitly state in United States law—for the first time—that long-range missile and nuclear weapons programs are inseparable, and that Iran’s development and testing of missiles should be subject to severe sanctions’.14

While some launches by Iran like the July 2017 launch of the Simorgh space launch vehicle(SLV) was termed a ‘catastrophic failure’ by an official of the US Strategic Command, another official belonging to the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) was reported as stating that such SLV launches ‘could shorten the pathway to an ICBM’.15 Conservative think tanks like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), whose staff had been at the forefront of efforts advocating sanctions on Iran’s energy sector and its oil exports, have highlighted Iran’s launch of 10 medium range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) after the signing of the JCPOA and till at least February 2017.16

The P5+1, in a statement listed as Annex B of UNSCR 2231passed on July 14, 2015 (which terminated UNSC sanctions and recognized the JCPOA),

‘Called upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technologies, until the date eight years after Adoption Day or until the date on which the IAEA submits a report confirming the Broader Conclusion, whichever is earlier.’17

Most analysts note that the statement does not explicitly ban Iran from undertaking such activities, which JCPOA opponents allege is a big lacuna. Among the P5+1, France, Germany, the US, and the UK (excluding Russia and China) have a common position that such launches are ‘inconsistent’ with UNSCR 2231.18 Iran (and Russian officials) insist that such tests are an essential part of its security profile, and that the JCPOA contains restrictions regarding only its nuclear programme. Further, Iran highlights the fact that it has pledged not to develop nuclear weapons as part of the JCPOA and undertook onerous commitments as part of the deal that are over and above those being adhered to by other NPT signatories. For instance, the JCPOA prohibits Iran from indulging in machining uranium or plutonium for explosive purposes, while the NPT does not require its member states to do so.

As for the sunset clauses which irked Trump, JCPOA Termination Day is 10 years after Adoption Day (which was October 18, 2015). Iran is allowed to manufacture IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuges (without rotors) after 2023 while complete IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuges can be produced after 2025. The limits on enriching UF6 beyond 3.76 per cent or undertake spent fuel reprocessing, expire after 15 years (2030) while surveillance on centrifuge rotors continues for 20 years (2035) and surveillance on uranium ore concentrate continues for 25 years (2040).19

Trump insists that these limitations are not enough and that Iran can enrich uranium at a faster pace after 2023 — given that it is allowed to manufacture more advanced centrifuges, potentially giving it access to larger quantities of bomb-grade material. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charge that Iran will get closer to the bomb if it scrupulously follows the terms of the JCPOA. They do not lay much store on the fact that Iran is provisionally applying the Additional Protocol (AP) since January 2016, and on the fact that the enhanced IAEA monitoring continues beyond the terms of the JCPOA, as long as Iran is a member of the NPT. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano’s statement at a lecture at Harvard in November 2017 that Iran was ‘subject to the world’s most robust nuclear verification regime’ did not seem to convince either Trump or Netanyahu.20

As for IAEA inspecting suspect sites, Trump and JCPOA opponents insist that the provisions of the deal allow Iran to cover up its illegal activities and delay access to IAEA inspectors. As per the JCPOA, Iran has to necessarily provide access within 24 days of an initial IAEA request. Amano on his part notes that the distinction between the IAEA inspecting civilian or military sites is a false one and that the IAEA has the mandate under the AP to inspect any site where suspect nuclear-material related activity takes place under the provision of ‘complementary access’.21

Looking Ahead

Iran might not make use of the dispute resolution mechanism of the JCPOA given that Rouhani has already stated in his initial reaction to Trump’s announcement that the JCPOA involves Iran and five other countries ‘from this moment’. The dispute resolution mechanism involves the Joint Commission and a three-member Advisory Board which could issue a ‘non-binding’ decision in a process that could take 35 days. If this decision is not acceptable to Iran, it could approach the UNSC, where it will lay the door open for automatic ‘snap-back’ of UNSC sanctions given that the UNSC has to necessarily vote in favour of a resolution granting continued sanctions relief — as per JCPOA and UNSCR 2231 of July 14, 2015, a resolution which will surely be vetoed by the US.

The EU has pledged to continue to abide by its JCPOA commitments and to uphold the removal of Iran’s nuclear-related sanctions. EU nations like Italy and Spain are importing on the same level as prior to the EU ban on Iranian oil (which went into effect in July 2012) and absence of EU regulations denying insurance to ships carrying Iranian oil (which severely impacted Iran oil trade in the past given that most insurance providers were based in Europe and especially London) will constrain the bite of US secondary sanctions on Iran’s oil exports in the near term. However, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has indicated that sanctions on the provision of such services — as well as on provision of centralised financial messaging systems to Iranian financial institutions, specifically the Central Bank of Iran’s (CBI), will be re-imposed after November 4, 2018.22

The access of Iranian banks on the EU sanctions list to SWIFT was cut off on March 17, 2012 and was restored after JCPOA Implementation Day. Sanctions on centralised financial messaging systems like SWIFT (headquartered in Brussels) were prescribed by ITRSHRA, introduced in the US House of Representatives in May 2011 as the Iran Threat Reduction Act. Given that ITRSHRA was eventually signed into law by Obama in August 2012, this does indicate the zeal with which the EU came on board regarding the imposition of such restrictive measures.

While analysts have pointed out the complications involved in the Trump administration re-instating such sanctions, given extremely limited international support for such a course of action, it remains to be seen how the EU deals with such looming icebergs that could capsize the JCPOA.23 While Trump’s unilateral decision has strained trans-Atlantic relations, analysts have pointed out that the EU can potentially use counter-measures like ‘Blocking Regulations’ to protect the business interests of at least EU-based firms. 24 Others have noted that such EU threats are ‘empty’ as access to the US financial system is of paramount importance to EU businesses, and they would even be willing to pay fines if required to the EU for not subscribing to such regulations rather than lose US business.25 Further, it is pertinent to note that Article 5 of the 1996 EU ‘Blocking Regulation’ requires EU persons ‘to comply fully or partially’ with extra-territorial laws ‘to the extent that non-compliance would seriously damage their interests or those of the Community’.26 At the same time though, given that the JCPOA is the result of active coordination and involvement of the EU, which expended huge diplomatic capital in achieving the landmark deal, Brussels can be expected to stand up to Washington and limit the damage the re-imposition of US sanctions could cause EU businesses.

An important corollary of Trump’s decision will be an increase in the politicisation of IAEA safeguards implementation with respect to Iran. There will be pressure on the IAEA to re-open its investigations into the possible military dimensions (PMD) issues, in the light of Trump’s May 8 statement and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s charges as laid out on April 30 relating to the Iranian nuclear archives. The IAEA had submitted its final assessment on PMD issues in December 2015, ahead of JCPOA Implementation Day, wherein it noted that there was ‘no credible indication of activities relating to a nuclear explosive device in a coordinated manner after 2003 and definitely not so beyond 2009’.27 Analysts critical of the JCPOA like former IAEA Deputy Director General (DDG) Ollie Heinonen, again, not to be surprised, writing for the FDD, have charged that the closure of the PMD file was politically motivated as the IAEA had to give such a finding failing which the JCPOA would not have begun to be implemented.28

Implications for India

As for implications for oil-importing nations like India, the US Treasury Department, in the aftermath of Trump’s decision not to grant sanctions waivers, stated that nations importing Iranian oil will be allowed 180 days (till November 4, 2018) to achieve ‘significant reductions’ in their oil purchases (generally defined to be 18-20 per cent reductions in terms of price and volume), failing which they will be the target of Section 1245 of NDAA 2012.29 Other sanctions provisions (like Sec 504 of ITRSHRA) mandate that funds owed to Iran as a result of bilateral trade in goods and services be ‘credited to an account located in the country with primary jurisdiction over the foreign financial institution’. Such provisions had led to alternate payment mechanisms and accumulation of Iranian oil money with Indian firms, and severely constrained Iran’s foreign exchange reserves.

Going forward, India will have to make greater use of Euro-denominated transactions for its oil trade to mitigate the impact of the extra-territorial application of US sanctions provisions. Mechanisms like the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) will have to be revitalised, in tune with the decision taken by India and Iran during the visit of President Rouhani in February 2018 to constitute a Joint Committee to establish functional clearing channels as well as examine Rupee-Rial arrangements.30 It is important to note that the ACU clearing mechanism suffered significantly after 2010 not on account of US sanctions provisions but due to EU regulations. One of the provisions of the EU Council Resolution of July 26, 2010 required prior authorisation for payments to listed Iranian banking entities. The then Indian Minister of State for Finance informed the Lok Sabha in March 2011 that the ACU, ‘being a multi-lateral net clearing system, did not facilitate such authorisation’. The DuestcheBundes Bank (DDB), which was channelling ACU payments, declined to do so unless such authorisation was provided that those payments related to oil. This was done to ensure that Iran was not using such oil revenues to fund proliferation-related activities, as was being alleged by the US and as flagged by UNSCR 1929.

Again, as with the SWIFT saga, such regulations were no doubt passed in the aftermath of US laws like Comprehensive Iran Sanctions and Divestment Act (CISADA 2010) — which began life as Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act in April 2009, and UNSCR 1929 of June 9, 2010. Given the different political contexts then and now, it remains to be seen to what extent the EU will work along with India and Iran to insulate such clearing mechanisms from US sanctions pressure.

As for Chahbahar, Phase I of the port was inaugurated in December 2017. The port is being built by Khatam-al Anbia, a company that is affiliated to the IRGC. While the IRGC has not been designated a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the US Department of State, it is under various human-rights-related, WMD-related and counter-terrorism-related designations by the OFAC. India Ports Global Limited (IPGL), a joint venture (JV) between Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) and Kandla Port Trust (KPT), is expected to take over the operations of two terminals of Shahid Behesti port at Chahbahar in mid-2019.

Sanctions against Iran’s shipping, ship-building sector and port operators are prescribed as per provisions of IFCA 2012. However, it is pertinent to note that exception from such provisions is provided for ‘Afghanistan Reconstruction’.31 Given that the main purpose of India’s involvement in Chahbahar is to provide developmental assistance to Afghanistan — and given the positive statements by the US State Department and military officials relating to India’s developmental assistance to Afghanistan, IPGL could be exempt from the negative impact of such extra-territorial sanctions pertaining to operation of ports inside Iran.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India.

About the author:
*S. Samuel C. Rajiv
is Associate Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

Source:

This article was published by IDSA.

Notes:

A Plan To Save The Euro – Analysis

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For the euro area to be stable and move forward productively, substantial improvements in its operation are required. This column, part of the VoxEU Euro Area Reform debate, argues that the proposals in the recent CEPR Policy Insight are necessary if the euro area is to avoid another catastrophic crisis and that they would go a long way towards addressing the legitimate concerns of citizens in both the core and periphery of the euro area.

By Jeffry Frieden*

The mismanagement of the euro area debt crisis has been the gravest failure in the history of European integration. Inaction, misguided action, contradictory policies, and political conflict turned a manageable debt problem into a decade of economic stagnation, social upheaval, and political protest.

The economic and social impact of this bungled crisis has contributed mightily to the rise of populist movements that challenge the euro, and European integration more generally (see Algan et al. 2017 for one among many surveys).

For the euro area to be stable and move forward productively requires substantial improvements in its operation. It is unlikely that the euro could survive another crisis like the one from which it is just (barely) emerging.

This makes it particularly important to evaluate the proposal from 14 leading French and German economists to reform the euro area in a way that they say combines risk-sharing and market discipline (Bénassy-Quéré et al. 2018). It also makes it particularly important to understand the political need for reform, and the political conditions any meaningful reform has to address in order to be successful.

There are several points worth making if we want to understand the current political economy of euro area reform.

1. Most residents of the euro area remain positive about the monetary union.

Even in the most heavily affected debtor nations, support for monetary union never fell below 50% of the population, and was typically closer to 70%. However, Europeans have little faith in the willingness or ability of existing political leaders to manage it fairly and efficiently: debtor-country citizens’ confidence in the institutions of the EU dropped from over 70% before the crisis to barely 20% during it (e.g. Foster and Frieden 2017, Frieden 2016).

2. The central failure of crisis management was the inability to arrive at a reasonable distribution of the adjustment burden.

As in all debt crises, a major axis of conflict has been between debtor and creditor countries over how to distribute the pain. Creditors wanted debtors to make the sacrifices necessary for prompt and full debt service payments; debtors wanted creditors to play their part in helping reduce the political and social costs of austerity. And in this crisis, like most other debt crises, there was also a domestic axis of conflict. Citizens of debtor countries battled over who would make the most sacrifices to satisfy creditors; and within creditor countries, the dispute was over whether taxpayers, financial institutions, or others would pay whatever price there might be for a settlement. As it turned out, in this debt crisis the vast majority of the adjustment was done by the debtors, and there was no serious debt restructuring (Greece was an exception, given the clear impossibility of servicing its debt as contracted).

Citizens of the debtor nations, quite reasonably, resent bearing the lion’s share of the burden of adjustment, despite the fact that lenders were at least as responsible for the accumulation of bad debts. Citizens of creditor nations, quite reasonably, having been largely misled by their governments about the true nature of the crisis, resent the use of taxpayer money for purposes never made clear to them.

And the sad fact is that much of this suffering, and much of this bitterness, was avoidable. Prompt debt restructuring, with creditor financial institutions sharing the sacrifice with debtor nations, might well have reduced the likelihood of the ten years of stagnation that ensued, of the vicious political standoffs that continue to hamper progress in the euro area, and – not incidentally – of the rise of dangerous strains of populism throughout the region.

3. The principal culprits in the mismanagement of the crisis have been national governments, not European institutions.

Certainly, the construction of the euro area left many important issues unresolved, and the euro’s inadequacies deepened the impact of the crisis. However, when the crisis hit it, was not primarily the institutional inadequacies of the euro area that failed its people. It is true that the principal euro area institution, the ECB, could have played a more positive role at the outset of the crisis; but eventually, after 2012, it performed reasonably well. However, it was first and foremost the member states that came close to destroying the euro. At almost every turn, member states attempted to shift the burden of adjustment onto others, missing opportunity after opportunity for a less costly resolution of the crisis. Almost from the moment the crisis broke, the governments of the principal nation states stubbornly resisted attempts to find cooperative strategies to address the debt problem. The tragedy is that the more these conflicts delayed constructive policies, the more the costs of the crisis rose. A quicker resolution of the crisis with more burden-sharing would almost certainly have been in the interests of allmember states.

For the euro area to move forward, its member states have to overcome the existing stalemate. The gridlock hampers both the resolution of the remaining debt overhang – which continues to exert a drag on the region’s recovery – and the reform of euro area institutions. This reform needs to address some of the principal gaps in the monetary union’s construction; and, perhaps more important, it needs to provide assurances to the citizens of the euro area that it will be managed more responsibly in the future.

What are the principal, legitimate, concerns of the euro area’s citizens? Those in the peripheral, debtor countries see the euro area as a mechanism to impose austerity on them. They believe that the creditor countries have used their massive bargaining power to force onto the borrowers virtually all of the burden of dealing with the fallout from a decade of irresponsible lending. For their part, citizens of the core, creditor nations see the euro area as a mechanism to force them to send their money to dissolute southern Europeans, to turn the euro area into a transfer union. There is some truth in both sets of beliefs; but, of course, both are misguided.

What, then, are the economic policy and political tasks faced by the member states?

Any serious reform needs to prove to citizens of the indebted, crisis-ridden periphery that the institutions of the euro area – and, most important, the other member states – will take seriously their legitimate concerns. This means ensuring that the creditor nations take on at least some of the sacrifice necessary to wind up the ongoing crisis – and that future crises will be resolved in a more timely and equitable manner.

By the same token, any serious reform needs to prove to citizens of the core, creditor nations that the institutions of the euro area – and, most important, the other member states – will undertake serious reform measures to avoid a recurrence of the current disaster. This means ensuring that the peripheral nations undertake a credible commitment not to abuse the common pool components of a monetary union in order to engage in uncontrolled and unjustified borrowing and spending.

Would the measures suggested by the current reform document accomplish these tasks? To a large extent, they would. The proposals for a meaningful mechanism to restructure troubled debts, along with a common deposit insurance scheme, would help guarantee that the risks inherent in lending among euro area members would be more equitably shared. A strengthening of the banking union, of common regulation, and of mechanisms to bail in creditors of failing banks, would all go in this direction as well.

On the other hand, sovereign concentration charges would limit opportunistic behaviour by debtor sovereigns and banks; and a more reasonable – hence credible – system of fiscal and debt oversight would limit excessive sovereign borrowing. This would complement a reform of relevant euro area institutions, first and foremost of the ESM, to play a more consequential part in monitoring the operation of the monetary union.

So the reform proposals are eminently reasonable. They are, more to the point, necessary if the euro area is to move forward without risking another catastrophic crisis. And they would go a long way towards addressing the legitimate concerns of citizens of the euro area, core and periphery. This in turn would help limit the ability of anti-European populists to point to the disastrous mismanagement of the crisis as evidence for their rejection of European integration.

Whether these reform proposals are politically feasible is another matter. Perhaps growth will soften hearts on all sides of the bargaining table. Perhaps, also, the continuing and escalating economic policy threats from the Trump administration will lead to a greater sense of solidarity among the EU’s member states.

Progress in this direction is certainly to be desired. Failure to move forward with a reform of the euro area now may lead to its collapse in the future.

About the author:
* Jeffry Frieden
, Professor at Harvard University’s Department of Government

References:
Algan, Y, S Guriev, E Papaioannou, and E Passari (2017), “The European Trust Crisis and the Rise of Populism”, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall: 309-382.

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 and J Zettelmeyer (2018), “Reconciling risk sharing with market discipline: A constructive approach to euro area reform”, CEPR Policy Insight No. 91.

Foster, C, and J Frieden (2017), “Crisis of Trust: Socio-Economic Determinants of Europeans’ Confidence in Government”, European Union Politics 18(4): 511–535.

Frieden, J (2016), “The crisis, the public, and the future of European integration”, in F Caselli, M Centeno, and J Albuquerque Tavares (eds), After the Crisis: Reform, Recovery, and Growth in Europe, Oxford University Press.

Environmental Cost Of Tearing Down Vancouver’s Single-Family Homes

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Rising property values in Vancouver have resulted in the demolition of an unprecedented number of single-family homes in recent years, many of which were replaced with the same type of structure. Despite the better energy performance of the new homes, this cycle is likely to increase overall greenhouse gas emissions, according to new analysis from researchers at the University of British Columbia and MountainMath Software.

“The Zero Emissions Building Plan instituted by the City of Vancouver, which aims to eliminate emissions from the operations of new buildings by 2030, has already improved the energy efficiency of new homes,” said study author Joseph Dahmen, a professor of architecture and landscape architecture at UBC. “This is a significant accomplishment, but the teardown cycle is preventing many single-family homes from surviving long enough to ‘pay back’ the initial impacts caused by construction materials, which are not accounted for in the current plan.”

The study, which will be published in July in Energy and Buildings, finds that new single-family home construction in Vancouver will result in one to three million tonnes of added emissions between 2017-2050, even though the new homes will require less energy to heat and operate. It also reports that each percentage point increase in land value will result in an additional 130,000 tonnes of emissions in Vancouver during the same period.

“In Vancouver, we estimate that new single-family homes will take an average of 168 years for efficiency gains to recover construction impacts,” says Dahmen’s collaborator and co-author, Jens von Bergmann of MountainMath Software. “The payback time will be shortened as efficiency requirements become more stringent leading up to 2030, but Vancouver’s teardown cycle will still cause overall emissions to increase, unless we change residential zoning to permit denser forms of housing.”

The study points to an urgent need for city planners to rethink residential zoning in Vancouver to encourage architects and developers to explore denser forms of housing that will last longer and yield those environmental benefits sooner, according to the researchers.

“Single-family homes are among the most carbon-intensive building types. In contrast, low- to mid-rise row housing, such as that found in Montreal, Berlin, and Paris, could increase overall housing stock, address affordability and create a more vibrant public realm,” said Dahmen. “We could design similar homes for Vancouver using mass timber from sustainably harvested wood from B.C. forests. This would provide additional environmental benefits by removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in the building materials themselves.”

The fact that Vancouver gets much of its electricity from renewable sources is also a factor in the longer payback times for efficient homes, say the authors. Because Vancouver has a high percentage of “clean” energy, it takes longer for buildings to pay back initial construction impacts.

Trump Cancels North Korea Summit

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(RFE/RL) — U.S. President Donald Trump has cancelled a planned June 12 summit with North Korea’s Leader Kim Jong Un, citing “tremendous anger and open hostility” in a recent statement.

Trump says in a letter to Kim Jong Un released on May 24 by the White House that, based on the statement, he felt it was “inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.”

The U.S. president said the North Koreans talk about their nuclear capabilities, “but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.”

Trump appeared to leave the door open to a new meeting: “If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write.”

Trump wrote that he “felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me.”

“The world, and North Korea in particular, has lost a great opportunity for lasting peace and great prosperity and wealth,” Trump said in the letter.

Earlier on May 24, North Korean official Choe Son-hui dismissed remarks by U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence who had said North Korea “may end like Libya” as “stupid”.

Choe, who has been involved in diplomatic interactions with the United States over the past decade, said his country would not “beg” for dialogue and warned of a “nuclear showdown” if diplomacy failed.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said North Korea did not respond to repeated requests from U.S. officials to discuss logistics for the now-canceled summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 24 that the lack of response was an additional reason for Trump’s decision to cancel the meeting.

Test Site ‘Completely’ Dismantled

News of the cancellation came not long after North Korea appeared to have blown up tunnels at its only nuclear test site, in a move to reduce regional tension on the Korean Peninsula.

A group of foreign journalists said they witnessed a series of explosions at the Punggye-ri nuclear testing site in the northeast.

“There was a huge explosion, you could feel it. Dust came at you, the heat came at you. It was extremely loud,” said Sky News’s Tom Cheshire, who was among the journalists present.

North Korean state news agency KCNA said the nuclear test ground was “completely” dismantled “to ensure the transparency of discontinuance of nuclear test.”

Independent inspectors were not allowed to attend the dismantling of the site, where North Korea has conducted its six nuclear tests.

Scientists believe the site, which consists of tunnels dug beneath Mount Mantap, partially collapsed following the last nuclear test in September, rendering it unusable.

Earlier this year, Pyongyang offered to scrap the site as part of a diplomatic rapprochement with South Korea and the United States.


Text Of President Trump Letter To North Korea’s Kim Jong Un

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Dear Mr. Chairman:

We greatly appreciate your time, patience, and effort with respect to our recent negotiations and discussions relative to a summit long sought by both parties, which was scheduled to take place on June 12 in Singapore. We were informed that the meeting was requested by North Korea. but that to us is totally irrelevant. I was very much looking forward to being there with you. Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate at this time, to have this long-planned meeting. Therefore, please let this letter serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place. You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.

I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me. and ultimately, it is only that dialogue that matters, Some day, I look very much forward to meeting you. In the meantime, I want to thank you for the release of the hostages who are now home with their families. That was a beautiful gesture and was very much appreciated.

If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write. The world, and North Korea in particular. has lost a great opportunity for lasting peace and great prosperity and wealth. This missed opportunity is a truly sad moment in history.

Donald J. Trump

President of the United States of America

What To Do With Pakistani Militant Hafez Saeed? Pakistan And China Grope For Ambiguity – Analysis

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Recent remarks by several senior Pakistani officials suggest that Pakistan and China are groping with how to deal with globally designated Pakistani militant Hafez Saeed as the South Asian nation gears up for elections expected in July and risks being next month put on an international terrorism finance and money laundering watchlist.

The Pakistani-Chinese dilemma stems from a China-backed Pakistani refusal to fully implement designations of Hafez Saeed by the United Nations Security Council and the US Treasury.

The United States has put a $10 million bounty on the head of Mr. Saeed, who is believed to lead the outlawed militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) as well as Jamaat-ud-Dawa, an alleged LeT front, and is suspected of being the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people were killed.

Pakistan has repeatedly put Mr. Saaed under house arrest, only to release him on court orders that asserted that there was insufficient evidence against him. The government has half-heartedly sought to seize Jamaat-ud-Dawa assets and prevent it from collecting donations through its charity arm, Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation.

Pakistan’s election commission has so far refused to register a political party established by Jamaat-ud-Dawa in advance of the elections. The refusal would not prevent party members from running as independents.

To reduce focus on Mr. Saaed, a senior aide to Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said that Chinese President Xi Jinping had asked Mr. Abbasi during a meeting on the side lines of last month’s Boao Forum to explore relocating Mr. Saaed to a Middle Eastern country.

“At a 35-minute meeting, at least 10 minutes of the discussion dealt with Saeed. The Chinese President was keen on pressing the Prime Minister to find an early solution to keep Saeed away from the limelight,” The Hindu quoted the aide as saying.

In separate remarks, Major General Asif Ghafoor, a spokesman for Pakistan’s intelligence service, Inter Services Intelligence, told Indian Express that “anything (Mr. Saeed) does, other than violence, is good. There is a process in Pakistan for anyone to participate in politics. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has its rules and laws. If he (Mr. Saeed) fulfils all those requirements that is for the ECP to decide.”

The divergent proposals to either remove Mr. Saeed from the limelight or mainstream him by integrating him into the political process are unlikely to satisfy either the United Nations or the United States.

They are also unlikely to prevent the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global financial watchdog that monitors the funding of political violence and money laundering, from next month putting Pakistan on its watchlist.

The FATF action could negatively affect the Pakistan economy. Pakistan risks downgrading by multilateral lenders such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as well as by international credit rating agencies Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch.

Mr. Xi’s suggestion to Mr. Abbasi reflects Chinese ambivalence towards those Pakistani militants that both Islamabad and Beijing see as useful tools to keep India off balance. China protected Mr. Saeed from UN designation prior to the Mumbai attacks and has since prevented another Pakistani militant, Masood Azhar, from being designated by the Security Council.

At the same time, China refrained in February from shielding Pakistan from censorship by FATF.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson nonetheless argued at the time that “in recent years, Pakistan has made important progress in actively strengthening financial regulations to combat terror financing… China highly recognises that and hopes all relevant parties of the international community could arrive at an objective and fair conclusion on that.”

Implementing Mr. Xi’s proposal to remove Mr. Saeed from the limelight is easier said than done. Its hard to see what Middle Eastern nation would risk international criticism by granting Mr. Saeed asylum without tacit approval by the United States and/or the United Nations. By the same token, its unlikely that either would agree to the scheme.

Similarly, neither the UN nor the United States are likely to be persuaded by a belief within the Pakistani military that the best way of blunting militancy that has over the decades been woven into the fabric of significant segments of the armed forces, intelligence and society is by mainstreaming militants and integrating them into the political process.

Ousted Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif kicked up a storm when he earlier this month appeared to confirm the pervasiveness of militancy by suggesting that the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks had been supported by Pakistan.

“Militant organisations are active. Call them non-state actors, should we allow them to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai? Explain it to me. Why can’t we complete the trial? It’s unacceptable. This is exactly what we are struggling for. President Putin has said it. President Xi has said it. We could have already been at seven per cent growth (in GDP), but we are not,” Mr. Sharif said.

The remarks by the Pakistani officials suggest that both Pakistan and China are attempting to square circles.

Pakistan needs to be seen as cracking down on militancy while considering the domestic influence of ultra-conservative religious groups as well as seemingly misguided beliefs that support for anti-Indian militants serves its purpose.

For its part, China’s justification of its hardhanded crackdown in the north-western province of Xinjiang as a bid to counter jihadism and nationalism among, Uighurs, a Turkic people, is weakened by its reluctance to be equally firm in countering militants in Pakistan.

The problem for both countries is that 1 + 1 = 2, whichever way one looks at it.

Policies To Ensure Asia’s Sustained Economic Success – Speech

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(Asian Monetary Policy Forum, Singapore) — Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. It is my honor to be in Singapore for the fifth annual MAS Asian Monetary Policy Forum.

I would like to focus on the Fund’s view of key economic issues facing Asia at this moment of global economic strength. We heard last night from Tim Geithner about the lessons of the global financial crisis.

For the purposes of today’s discussion, let me highlight one core lesson that I think should be drawn from the crisis: do not take anything for granted. In essence, the IMF has made this a focus of our work since the crisis. We have constantly underlined the importance of building resilience. This has meant vigilance about vulnerabilities in the face of potential shocks.

So, allow me to take a few minutes to share with you some perspectives on three questions relevant to resilience and vigilance:

  • How well is Asia prepared for unexpected shocks?
  • What are the implications of recent inflation trends in the region? and
  • Why Asia needs to deepen financial inclusion?

Policy Buffers

Let’s start by discussing policy buffers, which is the response to the first question.

There is a broad consensus that the short-term outlook for both the global economy and Asia remains strong. Most of you are familiar with our recent forecasts, which see 3.9 percent global growth this year and next.

But there is also an understanding that we continue to face risks—witness the uncertainty hovered over some financial markets in recent weeks. This has once again raised the concerns about how Asia will respond to increased market volatility or even the next global downturn. Of course, we have seen other moments like this in recent years as central banks have carefully moved down the path of monetary policy normalization.

The Fund has had a clear message to Asia to deal with the uncertainties: we have consistently called on policymakers to rebuild monetary and fiscal buffers. We see this policy approach as essential for avoiding a sudden reversal of capital flows, for example.

Asian countries have certain defenses in place that heighten resilience, especially the increased reliance on flexible exchange rates. And overall, the region is better placed to resist shocks.

Nonetheless, some buffers have weakened. Let me now offer a few examples, starting with the less worrisome trends and moving toward those that might be of greater concern.

  • First, our metric for assessing reserve adequacy shows that Asia’s reserve cover is down from immediately before the global crisis, but much higher than before the Asian crisis. Nonetheless, reserve adequacy remains at the upper end of the adequacy range and higher than in most regions.
  • Second, the average current account balance is a little lower than in 2007. But there have been worries about specific countries.
  • Third, external debt in Asia has substantially risen since 2007. And even before that, there was a significant increase in external debt after the Asian crisis.
  • Fourth, public debt has risen to 59 percent of GDP from 46 percent in 2007. Fiscal balances also have worsened, with an average deficit today of 1.1% of GDP. They were in surplus in the earlier periods.
  • Finally, perhaps the most striking change since the global crisis has been the increase in corporate and household indebtedness.

Many of you know that our message to our global membership has been to “fix the roof while the sun shines.” For Asia, this means that policy makers should focus on increasing resilience by strengthening fiscal and monetary buffers, and employing macroprudential measures where necessary.

The bottom line is clear: there is still work to be done for Asia to have strong defenses.

Inflation in Asia

Here, I would like to touch upon a key element of a policy to strengthen buffers. This is constant vigilance about inflation. As the central bankers in the room today know only too well, the subdued price increases we have seen in recent years offer no reason to relax. There are unique forces at work that require extra attention.

So let’s take a closer look at recent developments.

Our current Regional Economic Outlook for the Asia-Pacific analyzed the inflation trends. We saw sharp price declines between 2012 and 2015, when disinflation was broad-based by various inflation measures. Inflation forecasts through 2017 stayed constant or were revised down.

But we now see headline inflation picking up in Australia, Japan, Korea, and some ASEAN-5 economies. That is in line with other advanced economies and emerging markets, reflecting, in part, the recent rise of commodity prices.

Our research has produced three main findings:

  • First, low inflation has been driven mainly by temporary forces, including imported inflation. Our estimates indicate that weaker import prices, including commodities, contributed to half of the undershooting of inflation targets in advanced Asia, and most of the undershooting in emerging Asia.
  • Second, the inflation process has become more backward-looking. Expectations are generally well anchored, especially in advanced Asia and economies with inflation-targeting frameworks. Still, the importance of expectations has declined in recent years, with past inflation playing a larger role.
  • Third, the sensitivity of inflation to slack in labor markets has declined. This is something we have also seen in other emerging market countries outside of Asia. There seems to be a flattening of the Phillips Curve linked to integration in global value chains and automation. These factors weaken labor’s bargaining power.

Looking ahead, our findings suggest that inflation may rise in Asia as commodity prices rise and low inflation in advanced economies reverses as monetary policy is normalized. Weaker regional currencies could also become a factor. On the other hand, it is not clear what the long-term impact of technological change will be on prices.

So, central banks should be vigilant about imported inflation, and exchange rate flexibility can help provide useful insulation. It will be important to strengthen monetary policy frameworks and improve central bank communications to increase the role of expectations in driving inflation—and keep those expectations anchored to targets.

Financial Inclusion

Low inflation is generally thought to be good for low-income households. But there is another issue relevant to the poor that is relevant in assessing Asia economic prospects. That issue is financial inclusion—the final topic I would like to focus on today.

IMF research has shown that economies that reduce income inequality are positioned to achieve sustained levels of growth. So, targeted policy action to promote financial inclusion is essential to poverty reduction.

Financial inclusion also enhances the effectiveness of macroeconomic policies. Several studies show that financial inclusion strengthens the interest rate channel, making monetary policy a more effective tool.

Asia-Pacific countries have made considerable progress widening access to financial services and improving the quality of financial products available across populations.

Financial inclusion in Asia’s emerging markets is in line with other regions. But Asia’s low-income and developing countries actually show wider accessibility.

Nonetheless, the gaps are significant within countries—between rich and poor, urban and rural, men and women.

For example, In India, only about 46 percent of male adults from the poorest quintile of the population have a formal account. That compares with 79 percent in the richest quintile. This disparity is even more pronounced when measured by use of mobile transactions (a fourfold difference), or borrowing from a financial institution (about a threefold difference).

Gender disparities also remain significant, especially in South Asia. There, less than 40 percent of women have a bank account compared with nearly 60 percent for men.

Our research also shows a wider range of financial inclusion across Asian countries than within other regions. While some Asian countries are at the forefront of financial inclusion, others are only able to provide access to basic financial services. The largest disparity is in access to ATMs or formal banking services.

Digital financial services have expanded recently in many countries, including electronic banking, mobile banking, and mobile money. We have seen notable growth in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Mongolia. In Pacific island countries, geographical dispersion represents a major obstacle to providing financial services. So it is notable that in Samoa, mobile products have proven popular.

Interestingly, mobile banking is one area where most Asia-Pacific countries lag sub-Saharan Africa. While Asia leads in traditional banking infrastructure, it is far behind Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe in mobile transactions. In those countries, more than 70 percent of the population uses mobile banking services.

Clearly, there is enormous potential to deepen financial inclusion in the Asia. There are several steps that countries can take to address the issue:

  • First, strengthening such infrastructure as credit bureaus, asset registration, payment systems, and microfinance institutions would lower the costs of financial services.
  • Second, countries need to allocate adequate resources to expand internet and mobile phone connectivity.
  • Third, in some countries, liberalization of the telecommunications and internet industries would help bring down cost and improve services.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Asia needs a concerted effort to build policy buffers that can weather unexpected storms. It needs strong monetary policy frameworks and central bank communications efforts to respond and adjust to an uncertain global environment. Finally, there must be an understanding of the obstacles to wider financial inclusion, and the ways that technological change can help make this inclusion possible.

These issues are inter-linked: the policies that address them can help make the Asia-Pacific region more secure as it builds upon an extraordinary legacy of economic success. But we simply cannot take that success for granted.

There will be many challenges in the coming years. Some can be anticipated, and some inevitably will take us by surprise. Our purpose must be to work to tackle them in a way that ensures strong, sustained and inclusive growth. Thank you!

Israel To Build 2,500 New Settler Homes

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By Daoud Kuttab

Israel’s decision to build thousands of new homes for settlers in the occupied West Bank has “ended the two-state solution,” according to Palestinian officials.

The stark warning comes after Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman confirmed on Thursday that he would seek final approval for 2,500 homes to be built across 30 settlements. The work is likely to be approved at a planning committee meting next week.

The timing of Lieberman’s announcement is regarded as particularly provocative by Palestinian officials, still angered by the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem and the killing of 60 protesters in Gaza on May 15.

In a statement published by the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for the Palestinian president, said: “The continuation of the settlement policy, statements by American officials supporting settlements, and incitement by Israeli ministers have ended the two-state solution and ended the American role in the region.”

The 2,500 houses, which are illegal under international law, will be spread across the occupied West Bank, with construction work due to begin immediately after approval is granted. The new houses will include 400 dwellings in Ariel, north of Jerusalem, and 460 in Ma’ale Adumim, a city already inhabited by about 40,000 people. Lieberman also said that “in coming months” he would push for the approval of another 1,400 settler houses now in the preliminary stages of planning.

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) executive committee, said the plans reveal “the real nature of Israeli colonialism, expansionism and lawlessness.”

She said: “Undoubtedly, Israel is deliberately working to enhance its extremist Jewish settler population and to superimpose greater Israel on all of historic Palestine.”

In an appeal to the International Criminal Court earlier this week, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry branded Israeli settlements “the single most dangerous threat to Palestinian lives and livelihoods.”

Ashrawi called for the legal body to “open an immediate criminal investigation into Israel’s flagrant violations of international law.”

According to a June 2017 article in the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz, more than 380,000 settlers live in the West Bank, with more than 40 percent based outside official settlements. Many Palestinians regard the announcement of the new settlements as being directly linked to the recent opening of the new US embassy and the killings in Gaza.

Khalil Tufakji, director of the maps and survey department at the Arab Studies Society, a Jerusalem-based NGO, told Arab News that the houses were designed to placate demands from the Israeli rightwing to create “a single state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.”

Is It Time To Talk About Peace With Assad? – OpEd

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By Zaid M. Belbagi*

Were it not for a 1994 car accident that killed his elder brother Bassel, shy ophthalmologist Bashar Assad may never have been thrust into the center of power in Syria. Though Assad was never groomed for power, he has, since 2011, displayed an absolute commitment to retain control at any cost. While he can no longer claim the 99.7 percent and 97.6 percent support he received in referendums earlier in his presidency, his government has now regained control of 80 percent of Syria’s population. And, with almost half a million Syrians now dead, many are beginning to suggest engaging with Assad so as to bring about an end to the conflict.

With Daesh on the back foot in Syria, the regime has gone from strength to strength. Though the Syrian government forces are weak and overstretched, they control the main centers of population at Damascus, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Latakia, Tartus, Palmyra and Abu Kamal. They have been able to drive rebel forces into small pockets of territory, defeating them one by one. This week, the Syrian government rejected a Russian plan for a new constitution that would dilute Assad’s powers — a clear setback for the Kremlin’s efforts to negotiate an end to the seven-year civil war.

Following a surprise visit by Assad to Moscow last Thursday, observers had expected the Astana peace process to gather momentum. However, with government forces increasingly on the offensive, the Syrian leader seemed to be working to limit room for negotiation, stating only that he would be willing to discuss amendments to the current constitution. This announcement illustrated his growing confidence amid a conflict that has grown so protracted and complicated that none of the various foreign stakeholders have a decisive upper hand.

Despite their long-standing support of the regime, the Russians and Iranians are hesitant to put an endless amount of resources into the fight. With the Iranian currency in crisis, the $15 billion per year it is spending on the conflict is a burden it can ill afford. The Russians, similarly, cannot continue to compete with US military might without an aircraft carrier fleet, nor can they afford to build one. The reality is that Russia is rapidly losing its advantage in the conflict, especially given the involvement of US forces in the Kurdish areas, as well as the presence of Turkish troops north of Aleppo. Assad is aware of the complexity of the situation and has therefore chosen to seek an end to the conflict on his terms, before his backers withdraw their crucial financial and military aid.

Both Vladimir Putin and Assad have agreed on the need for foreign troops to leave Syria. Assad has therefore chosen to seek a swift resolution to the conflict whilst he is still in a position to do so. But the US and its allies have renewed their calls for the departure of Assad, clearly outlining their intention not to contribute to any post-war reconstruction without a genuine political transition.

Though reaching an agreement with Assad may seem appealing to some, given that government forces have re-established de facto control over large parts of Syria, the US and its allies are correct in insisting upon regime change. The mass scale of civilian deaths leaves the international community in no doubt that the government of Syria is responsible for acts that amount to extermination, amongst other heinous crimes against humanity.

The UN has reported “unimaginable abuses” of women and children, implicating high-ranking officers, government officials and other members of the regime. During the same period that Assad has begun to position himself as a key broker in any post-conflict resolution, his regime has channeled the same confidence into callous new war crimes. The chemical attack at Douma in April prompted the US its and allies to accuse Assad of violating international laws, and it initiated the ensuing bombing of military targets in Damascus and Homs.

In using his new position of strength to increase the cruelty of his crimes against the Syrian people, Assad has provided the international community with irrefutable evidence that he is most definitely not to be negotiated with. The international community, conscious of the strain of the war on both Russia and Iran, must instead work to bring about a solution to the conflict without Assad. The presence of American military advisers and the US air force has kept regime forces out of Kurdish areas, and a reinforced US presence in the country would similarly allow it to weaken the government’s hand. With this in mind and a president keen to show force in the light of war crimes, the US has an opportunity to seek a positive future for Syria, cognizant of the lessons learned from post-conflict Iraq and Libya.

*Zaid M. Belbagi is a political commentator, and an adviser to private clients between London and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Twitter: @Moulay_Zaid

Iran: IRGC Warns US Of Consequences Of Military Action

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The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) highlighted Iran’s military power and deterrent capabilities, warning the US of the horrible fate it will face in case of attacking Iran.

“The hegemony and arrogance system, particularly heads of the criminal, warmongering, deceitful and reneging US regime have gotten the message that aggression against the Islamic Iran will make them meet a fate not different from that of executed Saddam,” the IRGC said in a statement on Wednesday, released on the occasion of the anniversary of liberation of Khorramshahr, a city in southwestern Iran that had been occupied by the Iraq’s Baathist army in the early 1980s under former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The statement also pointed to the valuable experience that Iran has gained in eight years of Iraqi imposed war and during the three decades since afterwards, saying the Armed Forces have full intelligence control over hostile moves, have enhanced their deterrent power and learnt to avoid “strategic negligence” in boosting the country’s defense capabilities.

In comments in February, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei called for efforts to maintain and boost Iran’s defense capabilities, hitting back at the enemies for disputing the country’s missile program.

“Without a moment of hesitation, the country must move to acquire whatever is necessary for defense, even if the whole world is opposed to it,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.

Captured Ukrainian Soldiers Claim ‘Attack’ On Donbass Planned For World Cup

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Ukrainian soldiers captured by the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said in statements on Wednesday that Kiev might launch an offensive against Donbass during the upcoming 2018 World Cup held in Russia.

According to reports, two captured Ukrainian soldiers, Vasily Zhimilinsky and Vitaly Chmil explained the circumstances in which they were captured and answered questions from reporters. The two soldiers confirmed that they were not pressured by the Donetsk side.

“We were told that an offensive would begin either on the eve of the presidential election in Russia, when the snow melted and the earth dried up, or during the World Cup.”

The captured soldiers even revealed that “there was an order and it was all a matter of receiving more ammunition and fuel … The captain also told us that before the offensive, Javelin anti-tank missile systems would be delivered to every unit on the front line.”

Chmil confirmed suspicions that Ukrainian forces are readying for an offensive against Donbass defense forces. The two captured soldiers confirmed the presence of artillery systems at the Ukrainian army’s frontline positions.

One of the captured soldiers was declared a deserter by the high command of the Ukrainian military, although both soldiers were captured on the battlefield, but at different times and in different sectors on the contact line.

The conflict in Donbas began in 2014 when Ukrainian authorities launched a military operation against the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, who refused to recognize the new government in Kiev which came to power after a US-backed coup.

The official Minsk Agreements have done little to prevent constant Ukrainian forays and bombardments. The Donbass republics have persistently accused Ukraine of provocations and violating the Minsk Agreements, whereas Kiev habitually claims that the Donbass militias and “Russian occupation forces” alleged to be in the area are shooting at themselves and blaming Ukraine.


States Of Cruelty: The Dead Refugees Of Manus – OpEd

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In those seemingly interminable refugee debates being held in various countries, cruelty is pure theatre. It is directed, stage managed, the victims treated as mere marionettes in a play of putrid public policy and indifferent public officials. Barriers have been set; barbed wire has been put in place. Open zones such as the European Union are being internally bordered up, the principle of mobility derided and assaulted.

In all of this, Australia has remained a paragon to be emulated. It first began with tentative steps: the establishment of onshore detention facilities at Villawood, Sydney and Port Headland, Western Australia, in 1991. Then came that vile concept of mandatory detention, introduced in 1992. The hobgoblin of offshore detention, financed afar by the Australian tax payer, would come with the Howard government.

The worded rationale since the Hawke years has tended to follow variants of the same, only differing in terms of shrillness and savagery. “Australia,” came the grave words of the Hawke government, “could be on the threshold of a major wave of unauthorised boat arrivals from south-east Asia, which will severely test both our resolve and our capacity to ensure that immigration in this country is conducted within a planned and controlled framework”.

The list of obituaries arising from such a policy is growing and should be chiselled into a wall of remembrance. There is the Kurdish-Iranian refugee Fazel Chegeni, who perished on Christmas Island in November 2015 after escaping the North West Point detention centre. His state of mental deterioration had been documented, along with three reported attempts at suicide.

There is the youthful Hamid Kehazaei, who succumbed to sepsis after his request for a medical transfer was sternly refused, only to then flounder before the overgrown resistance of Canberra’s bureaucracy. The details of his maltreatment laid before the Queensland coroner Terry Ryan have proven to be kaleidoscopically torturous: the refusal to supply intravenous paracetamol for two nights in a row; suffering hypoxia; being left unsheltered at the airfield un-sedated.

The case of Manus is particularly grotesque, given the decision made by the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court in 2016 that detaining people indefinitely was decidedly illegal, a constitutional violation of personal liberty. Those facilities replacing the camp have done little to arrest the decline of health of the remaining population.

Earlier this week, a Rohingya refugee by the name of Salim was found dead in an apparent suicide, taking to seven the number of asylum seekers and refugees who have met gruesome ends on Manus since July 2013. He had jumped from a moving bus near the refugee transition centre, and duly struck by its wheels. The Refugee Action Coalition’s Ian Rintoul was adamant: “He should not have been taken there in 2013, and he should not have been returned there after he was brought to Australia for medical treatment in 2014.”

Farce became tragedy when a call by a staff member of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre to Salim’s spouse revealed, prior to any notification from Australian officials, that her husband had committed suicide. The worker in question, a certain Kon Karapanagiotidis, was, by his own admission “lost for words”.

During Question Time, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton exercised his long held approach of rebuking the heart sleeve wearers. “I’m not going to take a morals lecture from the Greens when it comes to border protection policy.” His own department, also adopting another standard line to questions on Salim’s death, deemed it “a matter for the PNG government.”

What is in place in Australia’s singularly styled gulag is a measure of calculated degradation, a brutal hierarchy of violence manufactured to defeat the spirit and aspiration of the UN Refugee Convention. Few countries of the nominal democratic world have been so avidly dedicated to this cause, citing counterfeit humanitarian considerations even as the noose – quite literally – is being tightened.

Adding to the heavy handed attempts by those in Canberra to deter refugees and asylum seekers from contemplating a journey to Australia, resources and services are being trimmed back. Nait Jit Lam, the UNHCR’s Deputy Regional Representative in Canberra, offered the following observation on May 22: “With the passage of too many years and the withdrawal or reduction of essential services, the already critical situation for refugees most in need continues to deteriorate.”

Medical care in acute situations is being refused, notably when it requires treatment that would only be possible on the Australian mainland. The oldest Afghan Hazara held on Nauru, one Ali, is said to have advanced lung cancer. He is being housed at the Australian-built RPC1 camp, a woefully inadequate, threadbare facility which is bearing witness to his last days. Doctors have had the ear of the Australian Border Force, but the establishment remains stony towards calls for help. The Department of Home Affairs has preferred to remind Ali that he best shove off his mortal coil back in Afghanistan.

The growing list of deaths, the burgeoning number of psychological wrecks, the casualty list in what can only be deemed a planned campaign against refugees and asylum seekers, is such that even the extreme centre, the Australian consensus approving such treatment, might be changing.

The Victorian State Labor conference, by way of example, will consider an urgency motion calling on the party, on winning federal office, “to close offshore detention centres, transit centres and other camps on Manus and Nauru within the first 90 days, and to bring all the children, women and men who are refugees or seeking asylum remaining there to Australia.”

As ever, such moves stem from the left wing of the party, those condemned as bleeding hearts or soggily wet with teary sentiment. But in federal parliament, refugee advocates could get some hope at the remarks made by Labor MP Ged Kearney, fresh from her by-election victory in the Melbourne seat of Batman.

Still untainted by the wearing grime of the Labor Party apparatus, she could still state in her first speech to the federal parliament that Australia’s refugee policy was not only vicious but corrosive. “We are a rich country. We can afford to take more refugees. I doubt, however, we can afford the ongoing cost to our national psyche of subjecting men, women, children to years of indefinite detention in camps.”

Psyches captive to the police mentality that afflicts Dutton and government front benchers happily tolerate such ongoing costs. As would many of those on the opposite of the aisle. For such political creatures, deterring refugees who arrive outside that planned controlled framework stated by the Labor government of the early 1990s is not merely a job but a duty.

Inside Story Of Prison Takeover By Indonesian Terrorists – Analysis

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By Rohan Gunaratna*

After prisoners seized control of an Indonesia maximum security facility housing 155 terrorist inmates and a baby, Islamic State (IS) leaders in Syria instructed their followers inside to fight until death.

But Indonesian police checkmated IS’s plans for a bloodbath inside the penitentiary in Kelapa Dua, near Jakarta, held by inmates from May 8-10.

Taking advantage of a prison riot, IS operationalized three phases of its standard four-step strategy seen in Paris in 2015 and Dhaka the year after: herding and slaughtering hostages; issuing propaganda; inviting government troops for a showdown; and then fighting until “martyrdom.”

Although 800 personnel from the 40,000-member Brimob staff surrounded the facility and waited for orders to break the siege, the militants were undeterred. Having gained control of the compound, including access to 26 weapons and 300 rounds of ammunition, the IS convicts and detainees maimed and injured seven, tortured to death five and took one Densus 88 officer hostage.

In addition, IS called their supporters throughout Indonesia to storm Kelapa Dua and join the fight to free their supreme leader, Aman Abdurrahman, held in the nearby Brimob provost building.

National Police Chief Tito Karnavian advised a team of counterterrorism officers to meet with Aman. After initially resisting, Aman agreed and advised the inmates not to create a “commotion inside a lion’s cage.”

Aman’s fatwa to end the siege peacefully calmed the inmate population, which had pledged or renewed allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to fight-to-death. All but one terrorist suspect – fatally injured during the take-over – surrendered. The condition of surrender was that there would be no follow up investigations into police lives lost and inmates would be treated like “human beings and not animals.”

The Context

Indonesia houses its large terrorist population at Nusakambangan, nicknamed “execution island.” However, the penitentiary in Kelapa Dua was the holding facility for terrorist suspects under investigation, on trial, or convicts waiting to be placed in a prison.

Located at the heart of the headquarters of the Police Mobile Brigade (Brimob), the facility housed the most dangerous inmates. They included Abu Qutaibah, the Indonesia IS emir; Young Farmer, arrested in Bandung in August 2017 when he was building a radiological dispersal device with Thorium; and Anggi Indah Kusuma, the IS propagandist deported from Hong Kong, and her 1-year-old baby.

Jointly run by Brimob and Densus 88, the penitentiary was overcrowded and faced the challenges almost all prisons housing terrorists face.

Iwan Sarjana, the police officer held hostage by the inmates, explained the typical mindset of the detainees and convicts to Jawa Pos journalist Ilham Dwi Ridlo Wancoko: “They were angry, unhappy, and would be combative with the police. Each time a member [of the police] would walk past a cell, they would be shouting. Usually, they would call out the word ‘thogut’ [Satan].”

May 8

The genesis of the siege can be traced to 7:20 p.m. May 8, when an inmate complained to the staff that food brought by a family member to an inmate was late. The incident was exploited by an IS leader, Wawan, who incited a riot by calling out that “the warden is a dog.”

After the terrorists broke out of the holding blocks at 8:20 p.m., they attacked a second building in the compound, known as the investigation building, and overpowered the officers inside.

Seven including a female investigator escaped with injuries, but six officers were captured and dragged to the cells. Five were tortured to death.

Iwan was beaten, tied up, blindfolded and lashed with chains. Boiling water was splashed and poured onto his back. “I shouted, but still tried to withstand it. The pain was tremendous, but I believed that this would pass,” Iwan said.

The inmates broke into the evidence room and seized arms, ammunition and explosives, and renewed their bayat (oath of allegiance) to the “Caliph.” At this point, 40 percent of the inmates wanted to fight.

Not knowing that their colleagues had been butchered by inmates, police pressured the perpetrators at 9:15 p.m. to release the Densus 88 officers. Police also offered to treat terrorist suspects Ibrahim and Wawan, who had been injured by officers, but there was no compromise. Police threatened to attack the penitentiary, but the terrorist convicts and detainees were unrelenting.

At first, the directions of IS central were followed by the inmates to the letter.

“For almost three hours, the dialogue did not bear any fruit,” revealed a Densus 88 officer at the forefront of trying to initiate a dialogue.

Initially, the inmates wanted to fight. But over time many of them realized the reality of the situation. Most Densus 88 officers, especially those with experience, had treated the inmates respectfully. They regretted the torture and deaths of the officers at the hands of a few inmates.

Although IS leadership within the facility tried to justify the action, a part of the inmate population realized that they had merely jumped on the bandwagon without thinking through their actions. Meanwhile, food, water and electricity had been cut off.

May 9

At 1:30 a.m. May 9, inmate representative Abu Umar asked for permission to leave the Detention Center and meet with Aman Abdurrahman. Abu Umar’s request to meet the IS leader was conveyed to senior police officials.

When they met with Abu Umar, they told him that “five Densus 88 officers had died, one was still held hostage and one detainee was shot dead, and another detainee was wounded.”

In reality, the officers had been tortured to death, and had Ibrahim received timely treatment, he could have been saved. The Jakarta provincial police chief told detainees to surrender and give up the weapons under their control.

At 8:15 a.m., the inmate representative asked to meet again to convey their request to normalize the situation, to meet with “Ustad Aman Abdurahman to hear his ruling” following the riots, and to get medical treatment for those who were hurt. After reviewing the requests, Densus 88 agreed to evacuate the dead bodies, the female detainees, the two injured inmates and one baby.

To keep up the pressure, however, Densus 88 did not respond to inmate requests immediately. Close to noon prayers, the bodies were retrieved. The female detainees and the child were not released. At 3:35 p.m., police pressured the perpetrators to release the hostage by issuing a warning and agreeing to treat the wounded terrorists.

At 8:15 p.m., the inmates asked to meet again, to convey their requests to the Densus 88 officers and their wish to meet “Ustaz Aman” and hear his fatwa (ruling). The representative of the inmates promised to release the hostage. But they did not because they were worried that once the hostage was released, “all of the inmates would be under attack.”

At 10:30 p.m., Densus 88 pressured the perpetrators again by issuing a warning of an imminent attack on the prisoners. The representative of the inmates asked to meet with officers. They told them that when their request to contact “Ustaz Aman” via telephone was fulfilled, they would release the hostage, who was still alive. After they spoke with Aman, Iwan was released at 11:15 p.m. and was immediately brought to the hospital.

May 10

At 1:30 a.m., Densus 88 officers issued warnings that they would “attack within a short period of time.”

At 2:40 a.m., the inmates’ representative asked to meet again to convey that they wanted to surrender and hand over the weapons.

At 5:30 a.m., the inmates’ representative asked for a meeting to convey the technicalities of the weapons handover. At 6:45 a.m., the detainees left the Detention Centre and surrendered.

Weapons numbering 26 units and about 300 rounds of ammunition were handed over by way of leaving them in cells.

Hard questions

Managing the IS threat requires sophistication, both insight and foresight. There are no easy solutions or positive outcomes, no outright wins and failures. Many hard questions linger.

Will the veterans of Kelapa Dua join the terrorist iconography and be hailed by terrorists and extremists as heroes? Respect within IS rank and file is measured by the number of years a leader or a member has been in custody and the battles they have fought. What can be done to prevent their elevation to iconic status, and will they lead a new wave of violence?

The Densus 88 officers paid the supreme sacrifice for Indonesia, fighting the most ruthless terrorists. Should investigators working in penitentiaries holding terrorist inmates, especially high value targets (HVTs), be better protected, better equipped and trained to fight back?

More than any other group, IS has developed a mastery of how to break out and break into penitentiaries. IS know-how and expertise on “breaking walls” has grown steadily since 2003. Should prison management protocols and procedures be revisited? Should the perimeter of terrorist penitentiaries be protected by the military?

The IS leadership, including apex leaders like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Aman Abdurrahman, are recidivist. How can terrorist penitentiaries housing HVTs be better secured and better managed? Considering that the Kelapa Dua inmates had phones, should there be innovative measures to screen visitors and staff entering penitentiaries?

Currently, the global best practice is to implement rehabilitation initiatives after a court of law finds a terrorist guilty. Should governments implement rehabilitation initiatives from the point of capture and throughout the investigation phase, rather than wait for sentencing?

Furthermore, rehabilitation is voluntary and not mandatory. If terrorists in custody are not rehabilitated, they will pose a threat, infect others with their ideas and be hailed as icons. Many IS members who are released relapse and are rearrested. Considering the threat posed by recidivists, should rehabilitation be made mandatory and conditional to release?

Conclusion

In the coming months and years, experts around the world will dissect the siege, the state response and the failure to detect the subsequent Surabaya and Riau attacks. The full extent of the siege and follow-on attacks will be known only to those managing security, and their implications will be experienced only by Indonesia and the region.

What is evident is that IS has come of age in the region.

The new wave of extremism and terrorism engulfing the Southeast Asian region requires greater intelligence collaboration between law enforcement, military and national security agencies. At a national, bilateral and regional level, there are different degrees of cooperation within the ASEAN space.

However, considering the rising regional IS threat and the global expansion of IS, Southeast Asian governments need to rethink their existing security arrangements. The siege of Marawi (May to October 2017), multiple attacks in Indonesia in May 2018, and likely future IS-inspired or directed events require a shift from existing cooperation to collaboration within and between governments.

*Rohan Gunaratna is professor of Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at the Nanyang Technology University and head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and not of BenarNews.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Its Security Implications – Analysis

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The term “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, alternatively known as “Industry 4.0”, is a buzzword nowadays but what does it actually mean? What are its security implications?

By Cung Vu*

The term “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (FIR) is a buzzword introduced by Klaus Schwab during the World Economic Forum in 2016. It is defined as the convergence of technologies to blur the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. It is also used interchangeably with the more popular term “Industry 4.0” coined by the German government in 2011.

In fact, it is the convergence of underlying technology domains of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information and communication technology and cognitive science where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Security Implications of Industry 4.0

The security implications of the FIR are too complex to fully grasp. These technological waves are coming fast and leaders, whether in private sector or in public service, need to be prepared. The major concern is what happens to the economy and job distribution. However, there are other security implications leaders need to be aware of to develop informed policies and strategies.

Let’s peel off each layer of the FIR “onion” one by one. As the security implications are both deep and wide, the following are only highlights of the security aspects of the underlying technology domains.

Nanotechnology: A technology conducted at the nanoscale (one nanometer is equal to one billionth of a meter), materials at this dimensions behave differently from bulk properties. Nanotechnology is used to produce nanomaterials, smart materials, nanoelectronics, nanosensors, nanodevices, nanomedicine and so on.

Nanotechnology has numerous homeland security and defence applications. It is used for detecting potentially harmful materials, finding pathogens in water supply systems, or for early warning and detoxification of harmful airborne agents. Nanomaterials are used to build lighter and stronger armour and parts for vehicles, equipment, and aircraft. Nanomaterials also allow building of smaller, more powerful rockets, bombs, and other explosive devices.

Biotechnology: Biotechnology is a broad discipline in which biological processes, organisms, cells are exploited to develop new technologies and products that help improve our lives.

Biotechnology has advanced such that personalised drugs could be developed based on individual DNA. We are now not only able to sequence and synthesise DNA, but also edit it. We can not only modify existing life but also create new life from scratch. This has very grave implications as potential new viruses could be created from the laboratory.

Information and Computing Technology (ICT): It seems that almost all aspects of our life now depend on the ICT. The Internet-of-Things allows endless connectivity to improve how we work and live. As a result, our dependency on the digital world has made us more vulnerable. Cyber attackers could exploit such vulnerability to serve their purposes, which could include cyber theft, cyber crimes, cyber attacks, influencing public perceptions, or terrorism.

Cognitive Science: The interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. Advances in the development of human-machine interfaces, algorithms, and power sources as well as other components are making robots readily available for personal and industrial use.

Brain stimulation drugs have been used as cognitive enhancement to keep soldiers alert for days without sleep. Amphetamine and Fenethylline, nicknamed “the jihadists’ drug,” are known to be taken by terrorists in suicide bombing missions or to allow them to go to battle not caring if they live or die.

Technology Convergence: The security impacts of technology convergence are virtually limitless and the following example is only for illustration purposes:

Enter the Humanoid: New Arms Race?

Artificial Intelligence (AI): One of the technology intersections which receives a lot of attention is artificial intelligence where “intelligence machine” could be created to operate and react like a human being. That means a machine could see, hear, talk, learn and reason.

This leads to the fear that human jobs, both blue and white-collar, would be lost to robots or even the human race could eventually be taken over by robots. Only time will tell. In the near term, as machines get smarter and smarter, the potential threats are also gradually increased.

Comparing to cyber security, artificial intelligence security risks are much more critical. The new arms race has begun. As president Putin put it “Whomever becomes a leader in this sphere will be the master of the world”, Russia has exploited AI in cruise missiles and drones. AI could help in analysing both satellite and radar data to find, detect and counter targets hundreds of miles away.

China is incorporating AI in autonomous unmanned aerial systems. Their drone swarms could utilise neural networks to deny the US the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. The US also leverages AI in its Third Offset Strategy to develop cutting-edge technology for military and intelligence purposes.

Homeland Security Front

In the homeland security front, attackers are using AI to study and learn about the target, identify vulnerabilities to generate hacks. Let’s take a look at a few areas of AI:

In speech recognition, a startup company named Lyrebird has developed an algorithm that can mimic anybody’s voice after analysing a few pre-recorded audio clips. It can read text with intonation and punctuation.

In visual recognition, computer scientists were able to exploit AI to modify or synthesise images to impersonate people online. When both audio and video technologies combined, they could be used to generate fake news to persuade public opinions or to fabricate terrorist propaganda.

In machine learning, scientists have demonstrated that AI-generated malicious links outperform human competitors in terms of composing phishing tweets, distributing them over the cyber space and victimizing more users.

In another area of machine learning, researchers have pointed out many pattern recognition algorithms are very easy to be manipulated to trick computers, and the implications are scary.

For example, the visual sensor/machine may interpret a “STOP” sign as a “YIELD” sign or “100 km/hr” as “20 km/hr” speed limit sign when a slightchange such as noise is introduced to a pattern learning algorithm. Think of the scenario if you are in an autonomous vehicle approaching an intersection or on a highway and in front of a-18 wheeler truck travelling at a very high speed.

At the moment, the machine could achieve super-human performance in narrow domains. Machine learning will continue to make progress to perform in complex situations but the negative side is we do not know how it will behave when encountering situations outside its programming parameters.

Way Forward

There is a need for public and private sectors, policy and technical experts to communicate to address the security risks from the current industrial revolution.

Leaders could provide continuous workforce education in multiple disciplines such as data analytics, biotechnologies, automation, computer science, artificial intelligence to enhance societal resilience, to mitigate job risks and to prepare for unknown challenges. Public awareness is also critical in order to maintain social order in adverse situations.

As we are still struggling with establishing sound protocol and governance of cyber security especially in the international governance realm, the situation is exacerbated in artificial intelligence. It remains a huge challenge as states continue to maintain or develop rules and regulations to their own advantage.

*Cung Vu PhD is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is also a consultant for the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, University of Hawaii and has served as Associate Director at the Office of Naval Research Global in Singapore.

The Multiple Stepmothers Of Daesh (ISIS) In Syria – OpEd

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Last month, 186 of the 193-Member States of the UN claimed that they want all foreign forces out of Syria. Iran with its 18 Shia militia recruited from the region, Russia, America, France, the UK—the Lot.  Most urgently wanting all these countries and their proxies out of Syria are naturally the people of Syria themselves- and the Lebanese, Iraqis, Yemeni and others is this region dying in Syria for nothing. More than half a million Syrians who have been slaughtered with some estimates putting the real figure of Syrian killed at over one million, with four million wounded.

This past week, following a White House-Kremlin Conference call, Russia unexpectedly announced its intension to leave Syria and that all foreign forces must depart as well. This week, rumors from Washington, without offering concrete details, speculate that President Trump communicated to President Putin an offer that was way too attractive for him to refuse.  Did Trump offer Putin Syria’s reconstruction–minus the Iranians and their proxies– if he helps to expel Iran?

Suddenly, on 5/18/18, Moscow summoned President Assad to come to Souchi on the Black Sea and shortly thereafter announced that all foreign forces, including Iran and Hezbollah, must leave as well. Russia’s chief Syria negotiator Alexander Lavrentyev announced that the withdrawal of foreign troops would be done “as a whole” and explicitly included Iranians and Hezbollah. But as this observer has learned during more than two dozen visits to Syria and Iran over the past more than six years, Iran has no intention of leaving Syria. Nor does the Assad regime want Iran’s fighters and more than 18 Iranian funded, trained and armed militias to leave Syria—yet.

Putin surely knows all this so what’s his presumably carefully considered angle?

On 5/23/18, “Syria’s deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad replied to Vladmir Putin’s insistence that “all foreign forces leave Syria as a whole.”  Asked whether the removal of Iranian and Hezbollah forces could end Israel’s strikes on Syria, Faisal Mekdad told RIA Novosti state news agency, with a scorn, that “this topic is not even on Syria’s agenda for discussion.”

Iranian officials also reacted testily, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi telling reporters “Nobody can force Iran to do something against its will.” According to pro-government propagandist Mohammad Marandi, a “political analyst” at the University of Tehran “Iranians are fine with leaving Syria. They weren’t there in the first place and if the Americans and their allies hadn’t created this mess in Syria, they wouldn’t be there now.” Tehran officials, according to students at the University of Tehran are not happy with Marandi’s unauthorized assertation.

Meanwhile, Russian military officials, including senior military officer Sergei Rudskoi at a Moscow briefing on 5/23/28 insisted that the United Nations and other international organizations must pay to “rebuild Syrian territory recaptured from terrorists by government forces to consolidate the “successes” of the military campaign.”  The General added, despite some ridicule laughter from the audience, that “The global community must help fund the al-Assad government to completely restore any areas that were damaged by military action against terrorist groups in Syria and restore the economy of Syria.” More chuckles from the audience.

Finally, Rosko ended his appeal with: “Currently all the conditions have been created to restore Syria as a single, non-sectarian undivided state. We will forget the past seven years. But to achieve this aim, not only Russia needs to make efforts, but also the other members of the international community must pay the major share.” Rudskoi said. More open laughter from the audience.

Some 6.1 million people are now internally displaced in Syria, more than five million have fled the country and 13 million including six million children urgently need aid, according to the U.N. More than one million may have been killed but UN agencies have repeatedly been threatened with expulsion from Syria if they deviate from the admittedly old and widely disputed claimed number of 350,000 killed. So, the UN continues to use a lower figure knowing that it is not accurate. The U.N. estimates that $9 billion is needed in 2018 alone to help those in need inside Syria and living as refugees in neighboring countries, but international donors in April pledged only $4.4 billion at a conference in Brussels.

Two congressional sources on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee scoffed at the Russian proposal about raising money to rebuild Syria. One told this observer, “I promise you that the US Congress will not contribute one penny to rebuild Syria, until the Iranian, Russian, Americans and all other foreign forces are long gone from what was a beautiful country. Obviously, Putin, in addition to his dour expressions, has a sense of humor after all!” Neither Iran or Russia has a fraction of the $ 300-400 billion to rebuild Syria and the global community will likely not touch the subject until a democratic government exists in that largely destroyed country.

Among the early Stepmothers still nurturing ISIS in Syria are the Assad regime and Iran’s Supreme Leader-but they are not the only ones

In private, Iranian officials imply that Iran owns Syria having bought and paid for it with Iranian money and blood and does not intend to leave Syria or abandon its deep and expanding penetration of the region. This is partly because, in the words of Mohsen Sazegara, a founding member of Sepah Pasdaran (Al Quds Force of the IRGC), “One of Iran’s wings will be broken if we abandon Assad and he falls or if we leave the region.” Sazegara added, “Iranian officials will continue using all their contacts in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere to keep President Assad in power. If there are 20 Shia in any country on this planet who need our help we will set up an intelligence and military operation inside that country to defend them. That is our moral and religious duty as Muslims from Karbala! Who can stop us?”

The fact is that that ISIS and more than a dozen jihadist militia did not exist in Syria at the time of the Dar’a graffiti writers in March of 2011. Al-Nusra wouldn’t arrive in Syria until many months afterward. So how did they so quickly arrive in Syria?

“Ahman” of Mssrs. Zahran Alloush, Hassan Abboud and Isa al-Sheikh, the leaders of the Islam Brigade (now Islamic Front), Ahrar al-Sham and Suqour al-Islam respectively
“Ahman” of Mssrs. Zahran Alloush, Hassan Abboud and Isa al-Sheikh, the leaders of the Islam Brigade (now Islamic Front), Ahrar al-Sham and Suqour al-Islam, respectively.

To the right is a rare photo made available to this observer by Naam Shaam showing “Ahman” of Mssrs. Zahran Alloush, Hassan Abboud and Isa al-Sheikh, the leaders of the Islam Brigade (now Islamic Front), Ahrar al-Sham and Suqour al-Islam respectively, taken upon their release on 3/31/2011 by the Assad regime from the Saidnaya prison 20dm north of Damascus. All these gentlemen went on to form different Islamist groups that became some of the largest and most heavily armed and supported factions “fighting” against the regime in Syria. Hundreds of other Islamists were also released knowing that they would immediately organize “anti-Regime militia”.

The project was a hoax from the beginning with all these groups highly infiltrated by regime security agencies. This was the plan of the Iranian advisers and the Assad regime to create a “We—Against the Terrorists”” paradigm for the consumption of the Syrian public and outsiders to buy into “foreign terrorists sent by outsiders (the Americans, UK, Saudi’s et al) have arrived!” deception. Around the same time, Abu Mohammad al-Fateh al-Jolani, the leader of the Syrian offshoot of Al-Qaeda, al-Nusra Front, also was allowed into Syria from Iraq.

ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani revealed in a speech in May 2014 that the group has refrained from attacking Iranian forces “acting upon the orders of al-Qaeda to safeguard Iran’s interests and supply lines to Lebanon.”  Internal Syrian state security documents leaked to the media in early 2014 provided further proof that some Islamist armed groups fighting in Syria, particularly Daesh, had been deeply infiltrated by the Iranian and Syrian regimes and had been coordinating with it to a large extent.

One such document is an alleged letter signed by Colonel Haydar Haydar, the head of the ‘security committee’ in the town of Nabl, near Aleppo, and addressed to Major-General Ali Mamlouk, the head of the National Security Office.  It reveals arrangements for training and arming hundreds of Iranian recruited Shia volunteers, who are said to be “ready to fight on frontlines or join the ranks of Islamist groups.”

Mohammed Al-Saud a high ranking former regime official who defected after witnessing the torture and killing of an innocent 13-year one boy has testified: “In 2011, the majority of the current ISIS leadership was released from jail by Bashar Al Assad,” The former member of the Syrian Security Services told the Abu Dhabi newspaper, the National, on condition of anonymity, that with the Assad regime and Iran’s help, by 2012 it was estimated that, despite the open rift with their earlier partners Al Qaeda, ISIS had almost doubled its previous numbers to 2,500 fighters.

According to journalist Simon Speakman Cordall, writing in the UK Guardian, Mohammed Al-Saud was under no illusions when he reported: “In 2011, that most of the current ISIS leadership was released from jail by Bashar Al Assad. “No one in the regime has ever admitted this or explained why.” Al-Saud, a Syrian dissident with the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, left Syria under threat of arrest in 2011. He claims that released prisoners were members of ISIS. “Abu Muhammad al-Joulani, (founder of the Jihadist group, Jabhat al-Jabhat al-Nusra) was rumored to be there. Mohammed Haydar Zammar, (one of the organizers of the 9/11 attacks) was there.  According to Al-Saud, this is where the Syria-Iran part of ISIS was born. “The situation in there and my friends say it’s the same in all regime prisons, is like the middle ages. There were too many people and not enough space. There wasn’t enough water to drink. There wasn’t enough food to eat and what there was would have been ignored by dogs in the street. Torture was an everyday reality. After years in there, all those people became Salafists and in a bad, bad way. Just as the regime and Iran planned.”

Within days of the March 11, 2011 peaceful demonstrations in Dar’a, South Syria and a 14-year old student who this observer has been honored to visit with in Turkey, wrote some graffiti on a neighborhood wall that mentioned President Assad and Iran’s “Supreme Leader,” Ali Khamenei understood that the dozens of demonstrations which quickly sprung up across Syria constituted existential threats to Iran’s plans for Syria. The protests quickly spread to Homs and the city was soon dubbed “the capital of the revolution.”

According to the intelligence think-tank Stratfor, thousands of whose emails were leaked by WikiLeaks in March 2012, members of Sepah Pasdaran and Hezbollah were deployed in Dar’a and other parts of Syria in the early days of the March 2011 revolution to “stand behind Syrian troops and kill them immediately if they refused to open fire on other Syrian soldiers who refused to kill Syrian civilians who were demonstrating peacefully.

Yet, the plans of Iran and Syria were and remain divergent. The Asaad regime wants to stay is power at any cost and the Iranian regime intends to absorb Syria at any cost. But for the time being they need one another.

Ali Khamenei also knew from experience that to counter the student graffiti and the nearly instant uprising of civilians spread employing the powerful message from the kids which was “Democracy Now and Regime change to achieve it!”  it was essential to create an enemy, a WE-THEY” to draw attention from the Assad regime’s oppressive rule.   “The other” were quickly defined as Western, Israeli and Gulf imported jihadi terrorists and the decision was made to arrange for some “Takfiri’s” to launch acts of terrorism against civilians in Syria without delay.

The Assad regime moved quickly and began releasing hundreds more of hardened jihadists from more than a dozen Syrian prisons.  Three of the most experienced and committed jihadists released as noted above, were Zahran Alloush, Hassan Abboud and Isa al-Sheikh, the leaders of the Islam Brigade. They were released by the regime from the Sadnaya prison (dubbed by locals as the “Slaughterhouse”) where more than 50,000 have been reportedly butchered and photographed by “Caesar.” Over the past few years to erase evidence of crimes against humanity, some bodies have been cremated in a gas chamber on the western edge of the facility.

In mid-2011, the regime worked to locate and organize “terrorists” to justify the Assad regime and Iran waging war against the nearly 90% of the civilian population of Syria seeking a democratic government. Other actions by the Assad regime in the early stages of the revolution, and under direction from Iranian “advisors” were again designed to reinforce the “WE-THEY” dynamic commonly employed by despots for public consumption.

“The regime did not just open the door to the prisons and let these extremists out, it facilitated them in their work, armed them with cash and weapons in their creation of armed brigades,” a former member of the Syrian Security Services, Mohammas Al-Saud told the Abu Dhabi newspaper, the National, on condition of anonymity.

“The regime knew what these people were. It knew what they wanted and the extent of their networks. Then it released them. These are the same people who are now spreading across the region and globally.”  Al-Saud added that “Al Qaeda are extremists. They’re terrorists, they’re everything you want to say about them, but they’re operating to a central creed. ISIS are simply a bunch of ignorant young men who have been brainwashed into thinking what they’re doing is right.”

The news agency also quotes a Lebanese security official saying: “Even if Hezbollah has its wise men, the decision [to fight in Syria] is not theirs. The decision is for those who created and established Hezbollah. They are obliged to follow Iran’s orders.”

Sheikh Subhi al-Tufayli, who led Hezbollah Lebanon between 1989 and 1991 before he fell out with the Iranian regime, told Reuters in an interview in 2013 that Hezbollah’s decision to intervene in Syria had been entirely down to Iran:

“I was secretary-general of the party and I know that the decision is Iranian, and the alternative would have been a confrontation with the Iranians. I know that the Lebanese in Hezbollah, and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah more than anyone, are not convinced about this war in Syria.”

In another interview in July 2013, al-Tufaili said: “Although Iran does not get involved in all the little details of Hezbollah Lebanon, political decisions are always 100% Iranian.

Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime has negotiated, starting in late 2011 and deals with the Islamic State’s (IS) “Oil Ministry”  that at one point contributed up to 72% of the militant group’s profit from natural resources, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2015. This and other information was uncovered during a raid on the home of Abu Sayyaf, the Islamic State “oil minister” who was killed by US Special Forces at his Syria’s Deir Ezzour compound. Abu Sayyaf’s records show that ISIS negotiated scores of agreements with the Assad regime to allow Islamic State trucks and pipelines to move from regime-controlled fields through territory controlled by the Islamic State which brought in roughly $40 million a month in oil sales alone.

The Assad regime’s oil and gas ties to the Islamic State have been well documented with four Syrian government officials, including a Russian-Syrian businessman named George Haswani, were sanctioned by the US for serving as middlemen between Assad and ISIS for oil deals. “In exchange for gas, the regime provides utilities like electricity, which ISIS taxes accordingly,” wrote Matthew Reed, the vice president of Foreign Reports Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm focused on oil and politics in the Middle East.

One document, identified as Memo No. 156 and dated February 11, 2015, said agreements allowing trucks and pipeline transit from regime-controlled oil fields through ISIS-controlled territory were already in place. The documents also confirmed previous estimates as to how lucrative the deals were. A senior US treasury official estimated that ISIS made more than $500 million a year trading oil with the Assad regime.

In this context, Assad and ISIS became close partners with the Assad regime being “stepmother” of the Jihadist militia from weeks after the beginning of the 2011 revolution.
Witnesses in Syria to some of these oil transactions explain that in his defense, President Assad used some of the money the regime received to buy electricity, water, home fuel and other essentials for the besieged civilian population of Syria.  I credit these testimonies and would argue that therefore these Assad-ISIS “dealings” are not war crimes or crimes against humanity to be part of the indictments of the future Special Tribunal for Syria (STS).

Iran’s nurturing arms for ISIS

The ‘tipping point’ behind the Iranian regime’s decision to adjust its Syria strategy from an indirect, supervisory and supporting role to heavy, direct involvement appears to have occurred in Summer 2012, after Syrian rebels captured large sections of Aleppo and of the suburbs of Damascus. Fearing that the Assad regime would soon collapse, Tehran reportedly dispatched senior Sepah Pasdaran commanders skilled in urban warfare to supervise and direct military operations. According to US and Iranian officials, Sepah Qods established “operation rooms” to control cooperation between Sepah Pasdaran, Syrian regime forces and Hezbollah Lebanon.

In June 2012, Syrian rebels in Aleppo claim to have intercepted and recorded a radio transmission between an Iranian commander and a commander from Hezbollah in which the first gives the second military instructions. The month before, media reports claimed Hezbollah fighters were involved in the Douma and Saqba massacres near Damascus. From before this date Iran was in deep in Syria working in many ways with ISIS

Well dear reader, if Bashar Assad, Ali Khamenei and Hassan Nasrallah, among others are Stepmothers of ISIS. Who’s the Mother?

Pope Francis Affirms Church Practice Against Admitting Gay Men To Seminary

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By Elise Harris

In a closed-door speech to Italian bishops on Monday, Pope Francis spoke about the number and quality of seminary candidates, including concerns about their sexual orientation.

At the start of his May 21 audience with Italian bishops, Pope Francis voiced three areas of concern for the Church in Italy, the first of which was the lack of vocations.

Francis’ brief remarks on his concerns, which also touched on evangelical poverty and transparency and the incorporation of Italian dioceses, were televised; however, his discussion with the bishops afterward was not.

In his public remarks on vocations, Pope Francis lamented the culture of the provisional, of relativism, and of the dictatorship of money, which hinder young people from discerning consecrated life. He also proposed that Italian dioceses with an abundance of vocations lend some of their priests to those Italian dioceses lacking in priests.

But in the discussion that followed the pope told the bishops to care more for the quality of seminary candidates than the quantity. Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti of Perugia-Citta della Pieve, president of the Italian bishops’ conference, confirmed Francis’ comments about homosexuality in a May 24 press conference.

The Pope touched on the topic of homosexuality, particularly when it comes to individuals with “deep-seated tendencies” or who practice “homosexual acts”, yet who want to enter the seminary.

In these cases, “if you have even the slightest doubt it’s better not to let them enter,” Francis said, according to Vatican Insider, because these acts or deep-seated tendencies can lead to scandals and can compromise the life of the seminary, as well as the man himself and his future priesthood.

Pope Francis’ comments were made during the opening May 21 session of the 71st general assembly of the Italian bishops’ conference.

However, the pope’s statements on the issue of homosexuality and the seminary reflect the Church’s teaching on the topic.

In the 2016 edition of the Congregation for Clergy’s ratio on priestly formation, the dicastery had written that “in relation to people with homosexual tendencies who approach seminaries, or who discover this situation in the course of formation, in coherence with her own magisterium, ‘the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called “gay culture”.’”

The ratio quoted from the Congregation for Catholic Education’s 2005 instruction “Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders.”

The instruction noted that those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the gay culture “find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women. One must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies.”

It distinguished those with deep-seated homosexual tendencies from those “with homosexual tendencies that were only the expression of a transitory problem – for example, that of an adolescence not yet superseded.”

Men with transitory homosexual tendencies could be admitted to seminary, the congregation wrote, though “such tendencies must be clearly overcome at least three years before ordination to the diaconate.”

The instruction drew, in turn, from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a 1985 memo from the Congregation for Catholic Education, and a 2002 letter from the Congregation for Divine Worship.

Though Pope Francis has not addressed the topic publicly, he alluded to problems of homosexuality in seminary formation during a recent meeting with Chilean bishops.

In a letter written to the bishops which was leaked to Chilean media, the pope issued a sharp correction of his brother prelates for a systematic cover-up of clerical abuse in the country.

One footnote in the letter noted how abuses were not limited to just one person or group, but was rather the result of a fractured seminary process.

In the case of many abusers in Chile, Francis noted how problems had been detected while they were in seminary or the novitiate, but rather than expelling these individuals, some bishops or superiors “sent priests suspected of active homosexuality to these educational institutions.”

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