By Anja Vladisavljevic

Months after the Croatian national football team won glory with a silver at the World Cup in Russia, the sport is in the headlines for very different reasons – with fresh corruption indictments.

The Croatian State Attorney’s Office in Osijek, eastern Croatia, on Wednesday filed an indictment against Dejan Lovren, a Croatian football player and Liverpool defender, for giving a false statement during the corruption trial of Zdravko Mamic, the former chief of the Dinamo Zagreb club, and three co-defendants, on September 1, 2017.

The Liverpool defender is charged with lying about signing documents relating to his 2010 transfer from Dinamo Zagreb to Lyon in France.

After news broke about the indictment, Lovren wrote on his Instagram profile that he only learned of the indictment after his training and defended his innocence.

“I want to say this to all, especially to my family, friends, supporters in my homeland, my club and my club’s fans in England, that I am innocent. I did not commit any criminal offence. I am proud of my life, every step of my life, everything that my family and I have created,” he wrote.

Luka Modric, Real Madrid midfielder and the Croatian team captain, testified together with Lovren in the Mamic case as witnesses.

Both have been charged with giving false testimony. Modric was charged in the same case in March 2018.

It has been said that Dinamo paid Modric a part of his transfer fee, most of which he then returned to Mamic and his family in cash; Lovren, meanwhile, allegedly forwarded the entire amount he earned from his transfer immediately to Mamic’s account.

On June 6, a court in Osijek, in a first-degree ruling, sentenced the controversial football mogul Zdravko Mamic, his brother and two others, to a total of 18-and-a-half years in prison for syphoning off money from football clubs and damaging the state budget.

In May, it was discovered that among the documents Mamic handed to the Osijek court, which he claimed were “a proof of his innocence”, was a paper with instructions to Lovren about what to say in court.

One day before the sentence, Mamic – who also has Bosnian citizenship – fled there to avoid imprisonment at home.

Resale of tickets for the World Cup final also a subject of investigation

FIFA is exploring the possible resale of World Championships tickets, allegedly traded by officials of the HNS, the Croatian Football Federation, the Croatian website Telegram has confirmed.

The regional television network, N1, announced on Wednesday that DORH, the Croatian State Attorney, has ordered the Zagreb police to investigate the alleged sale of tickets for the final match of the World Championship in Russia between Croatia and France that the HNS received from FIFA. Those tickets were not for public sale but for “purchase by members of the football family, primarily to current team members and staff members”.

Meanwhile, Drago Cosic, one of the most famous Croatian sports TV commentators, was fired recently. He allegedly participated in reselling World Cup tickets that HRT, Croatian public television, got from the European Broadcasting Union on the black market. His lawyer has denied his client’s guilt.

(RFE/RL) — The foreign ministers of archrivals India and Pakistan will hold a rare meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York later this month, India’s Foreign Ministry said on September 20.

The announcement comes after Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan wrote to his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, seeking to resolve outstanding disputes between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, including the issue of the divided region of Kashmir.

Raveesh Kumar, India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesman, told reporters that diplomats from both countries will work out the details of the meeting between the foreign ministers.

Kumar said the meeting will take place “at Pakistan’s request.”

Khan wrote: “We owe it to our people, especially the future generations, to peacefully resolve all outstanding issues including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute.”

He said Pakistan is ready to discuss the issue of terrorism, a top priority for India.

High-level talks between India and Pakistan are rare. India has long accused Pakistan of arming rebel groups in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. It also blames Pakistan for financing the deadly 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Kashmir, divided between the two countries but sought by each in its entirety.

Secretary General of the Lebanese Hezbollah Resistance Movement Seyed Hassan Nasrallah renewed allegiance to Iran and stressed support for the country in dealing with US sanctions, which he said result from Iran’s independence and backing for the axis of resistance.

Addressing a religious gathering in Beirut on Thursday, Nasrallah said it is a duty for Hezbollah to stand by Iran against the wave of new US sanctions.

Deploring the US attempts to impose economic blockade on Iran and prevent other countries from buying Iranian oil, Nasrallah said the sanctions are a result of rule of religion, democracy, independence and freedom in Iran.

He also hailed Iran’s help in thwarting Israeli plots, the Islamic Republic’s backing for Lebanon and Palestine, and its support for Iraq and Syria in the fight against Daesh (ISIL) and other Takfiri terrorist groups.

Nasrallah then warned the Zionist regime of Israel against attempts to damage Hezbollah, saying the resistance forces have a range of weapons, including precise missiles, which will make Israel experience what it would never expect.

In May, the US government backed off from a multilateral agreement of Iran’s nuclear program, the JCPOA, and re-imposed the previous sanctions on Iran in a violation of the deal and the internal law.

Washington is going to impose new sanctions on Iran’s oil in early November, and has urged the customers to cut off crude imports from Iran.

Washington has attempted to block the inter-Korean dialogue and sabotage the peace process.

The negotiations with Pyongyang (on behalf of the Trump administration) are led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who is accused by the DPRK of carrying out “gangster like tactics”.

The Trump administration has no intention of reaching a peace agreement which would annul the Armistice Agreement of 1953. Under this agreement the US and the DPRK are still at war.

It is therefore essential for the DPRK and ROK within the framework of the inter-Korean dialogue to reach a bilateral agreement which would render the 1953 armistice (US, DPRK, China) null and void.

How to achieve this objective?

A workable ROK-DPRK Peace Agreement requires the prior annulment of OPCON (Operational Control) and the Repeal of the ROK-US Combined Forces Command (CFC) which puts all ROK military forces “in times of war” under the command of a U.S. General appointed by the Pentagon. This procedure is a preamble to the de facto repeal of the 1953 armistice.

In 2014, the government of (impeached) President Park Geun-hye was pressured by Washington to extend the OPCON (Operational Control) agreement “until the mid-2020s”. As a result of a decision by an impeached president who violated her oath of office, all ROK forces were to remain under the command of a US General rather than under that of the command of the ROK President and Commander in Chief. At present the US has more than 600,000 active South Korean Forces under its command. (i.e. the Commander of United States Forces Korea, (USFK) is also Commander of the ROK-U.S. CFC).

Why is the repeal of the Combined Forces Command (CFC) a prerequisite to establishing peace on the Korean peninsula?

A Peace Treaty cannot reasonably be implemented if the armed forces of the ROK are under the command of a foreign government. The annulment of the OPCON agreement as well as the repeal of the ROK – US Combined Forces Command (CFC) structure is a sine qua non condition to reaching a Peace Treaty.

We are dealing with a diabolical military agenda formulated in Washington: The US seeks under the Combined Forces Command to mobilize the forces of South Korea against the Korean Nation. If a war were to be carried out by the US, all ROK forces under US command would be used against the Korean people. The annulment of the CDC is therefore crucial. A prerequisite to the implementation of the April 27 agreement is that the ROK government of president Moon Jae-in have full jurisdiction over its armed forces.

The legal formulation of this bilateral entente is crucial. The bilateral arrangement would in effect bypass Washington’s refusal. It would establish the basis of peace on the Korean peninsula, without foreign intervention, namely without Washington dictating its conditions. It would require as a second step (following the annulment of the Joint Forces command) the withdrawal of all US troops from the ROK.

Moreover, it should be noted that the militarization of the ROK under the OPCOM agreement, including the development of new military bases, is also intent upon using the Korean peninsula as a military launchpad threatening both China and Russia. Under OPCON, “in the case of war”, the entire forces of the ROK could be mobilized under US command against China or Russia.

This article was published at Global Research and reprinted with permission.

Finding himself in a situation much like the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill “high-tech lynching” of a black judge who “dared to think for himself,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee decided to take a more forceful approach than the GOP did during the Bush 41 SCOTUS nomination of a U.S. Constitution originalist.

Religious conservatives dedicated to ending abortion gave U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley a standing ovation Friday for his role as the Republican point man in navigating Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh through a hailstorm of controversy and a confirmation process the senator described as “a partisan blitzkrieg.”

Grassley, R-Iowa, while giving a speech before about 700 people evangelicals and conservatives who were attending the seventh annual Family Leader summit that the GOP-led effort to confirm 68 federal judges — including 26 circuit judges and one U.S. Supreme Court justice so far — “will reshape the federal judiciary for a generation.”

But that’s precisely reason for the Deep State Democrats to “suddenly” find a Democrat college professor in Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s state who decided decades later to accuse Judge Kavanaugh of a sexual offense committed when he and she were high school students.

The fact that the complaint is an old one, is made more sinister by Sen. Feinstein admitting the accusatory letter was in her possession for weeks, Feinstein decided to allow the story to be leaked to the news media as the day for the Kavanaugh’s Senate vote approached.

Then without warning, the often intentional or unintentional unreliable Democratic-Party propaganda machine, the Washington Post, reported that the “woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault came forward with her explosive allegations on Sunday, saying the supposed attack “derailed me substantially for four or five years” and claiming that the episode rendered her “unable to have healthy relationships with men.” Her name is Professor of Sociology Christine Ford of Palo Alto University, a known hotbed of radical left politics.

A brief background check revealed that besides a registered Democrat, she is also politically active and attended a number of left-wing Democratic Party fundraisers and events.

Following Sen. Grassley’s visit with conservative voters on Sunday, his office released a press statement about this latest Democratic Party “circus:”

“The standard procedure for updates to any nominee’s background investigation file is to conduct separate follow-up calls with relevant parties. In this case, that would entail phone calls with at least Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford. Consistent with that practice, I asked Senator Feinstein’s office yesterday to join me in scheduling these follow-ups. Thus far, they have refused. But as a necessary step in evaluating these claims, I’ll continue working to set them up.

“Unfortunately, committee Republicans have only known this person’s identity from news reports for less than 24 hours and known about her allegations for less than a week. Senator Feinstein, on the other hand, has had this information for many weeks and deprived her colleagues of the information necessary to do our jobs. The Minority withheld even the anonymous allegations for six weeks, only to later decide that they were serious enough to investigate on the eve of the committee vote, after the vetting process had been completed.

“It’s deeply disturbing that the existence of these allegations were leaked in a way that seemed to preclude Dr. Ford’s confidentiality.

“Over my nearly four decades in the Senate I have worked diligently to protect whistleblowers and get to the bottom of any issue. Dr. Ford’s attorney could have approached my office, while keeping her client confidential and anonymous, so that these allegations could be thoroughly investigated. Nevertheless, we are working diligently to get to the bottom of these claims.”

By Jill Richardson*

When Christine Blasey Ford came forward to report that President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, sexually assaulted her in 1982, you could cue the response: Why didn’t she speak out then? Why didn’t she go to the police?

There’s a long, long list of reasons why a woman wouldn’t speak out even now, and no doubt it was even more difficult in the pre-Anita Hill world of 1982.

I can’t speak for everyone who has faced sexual assault, but I can speak for myself.

1. At first, I didn’t know that what happened to me was a crime. My first assault occurred in college, 18 years ago. He lived in my dorm. I knew what rape was and didn’t think I’d experienced that. But I didn’t know that sexual violations without consent that aren’t sexual intercourse are also a crime.

2. I couldn’t talk about it. Even now, I can’t describe what happened to my therapist in any detail. What happened involved body parts that are too private to discuss with those closest to me — let alone the police, a judge, or a newspaper. Talking about a past trauma can be re-traumatizing. Some of us cope by staying silent.

3. I blamed myself. I physically resisted for a while and then I froze and it happened. At the time, I told myself that if I really didn’t want it, I would’ve kept fighting. I didn’t know that freezing is a normal human response in a traumatic situation.

4. Afterward, I wanted him to be my boyfriend. My therapist said this was my way of trying to improve the situation. If he was my boyfriend, then what happened could be reinterpreted as meaningful. It’s a perverse response, but it’s apparently not uncommon.

5. I know someone who reported a rape to the police and had a traumatic experience of testifying in court and getting cross-examined by her rapist’s lawyer in front of her rapist. And then the rapist was found innocent. I don’t want that to happen to me.

6. Now, 18 years later, the man who assaulted me is an instructor of neurology at a prominent children’s hospital. He did a terrible thing to me, once, nearly two decades ago. Should I attempt to ruin his career because of it?

The answer to that is: I don’t know. If I thought he was still assaulting women and my speaking out would contribute to making him stop, I would in a heartbeat.

What he did to me 18 years ago still hurts so much that I would only revisit that assault and expose him publicly if there was a very clear purpose to doing so.

I expect if I did attempt to expose him, I’d be attacked. People would say that it wasn’t an assault because I wanted him to be my boyfriend afterward. They would say I wanted it because I froze and stopped fighting. There are good odds I wouldn’t be believed.

I’ll tell you this: Like Christine Blasey Ford, if the man who assaulted me was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court, I’d speak up. I don’t think a man who violates a woman that way is qualified to rule on cases of violence against women, or any other aspect of their well-being. I don’t think he could be impartial.

When a victim of sexual crimes comes forward, even if it’s decades after the crime took place, we shouldn’t use her past silence against her as “evidence” to discredit her. That urge to discredit is exactly why it takes so long for some to come forward in the first place.

*OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is pursuing a PhD in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She lives in San Diego. Distributed by OtherWords.org.

When the Pennsylvania grand jury report on accused priests was released, there was a rush to judgment on the part of the media, pundits, and activists, all concluding that the accused were guilty. This included many Catholics, both liberals and conservatives. I tried to raise questions about the veracity of the report and was immediately criticized for doing so.

Now some of these very same people are saying that the woman who has accused Rep. Keith Ellison of violence and sending threatening text messages to her, Karen Monahan, should not be believed.

In fact, last month, after Monahan’s allegations were made, Ellison received the overwhelming support of his colleagues in the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party: In his bid to become state attorney general, he won 82 percent of the delegates. Monahan’s accusations obviously didn’t matter.

Worse, some of Ellison’s supporters started attacking her.

Monahan tweeted the following: “I’ve been smeared, threatened, isolated from my own party. I provided medical records from 2017, stating on two different Dr. Visits. I told them about the abuse and who did it. My therapist released records stating I have been dealing and healing from the abuse.”

Why should the priest accusers be believed, but not Ellison’s accuser? Not one of the accused priests had the chance to rebut any of the charges, yet all of them were condemned in the eyes of the public.

In another example of duplicity, why should anyone trust Debra Katz, the lawyer for Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford?

When Paula Jones accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment, Katz, a left-wing lawyer, dismissed Jones’ claims saying the alleged incident “lasted 10 to 12 minutes.” It is certainly true that it didn’t take long for Clinton to drop his pants, expose himself, and tell Jones to “kiss it” [his penis].

Now if the clock is the measure of injustice, that would mean that the most common abuse committed by molesting priests—”inappropriate touching”—should be dismissed as trivial (it only takes a few seconds to grab someone’s behind). But, of course, there is a different standard for judging priests.

In another demonstration of her hypocrisy, Katz made little of the sexual misconduct accusations levied against Senator Al Franken.”Context is relevant,” she said. She pointed out that the offenses took place before he was a senator.

Kavanaugh’s alleged offense took place 36 years ago when he was in high school, but that matters gravely to Katz. If her client decides to testify, she should be asked how long it took for Kavanaugh to pin her down. If it took 10-12 minutes, then she loses. End of story.

Priests should have the same rights as everyone else, but that is not the case. This calls into serious question the motivating factors behind this unequal playing field. Duplicity abounds.

Traditionally dictators limit their human right violations to their own people and within their geographical borders but this logic do not apply in the case of the Iranian regime. Iranian regime Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif almost caught everyone by surprise when he asked Twitters CEO Jack Dorsey to close down Iranian accounts on Twitter opposing his regime. This is new. On Sunday he accused Twitter of “closing accounts of “real” Iranians, while allowing anti-government ones backed by the United States.” In August, Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc collectively removed hundreds of accounts tied to an Iranian propaganda operation.

“Hello @Jack. Twitter has shuttered accounts of real Iranians, (including) TV presenters & students, for supposedly being part of an ‘influence op’,” Zarif said in a tweet, addressing Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

“How about looking at actual bots in (the Albanian capital of) Tirana used to prop up ‘regime change’ propaganda spewed out of (Washington) DC? #YouAreBots,” Zarif said.

Since Zarif’s targeted the Iranian regime’s main opposition the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and its partner the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Mohammad Mohadissen, NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee Chair twitted back: “RIDICULOUS! Mullahs FM tries 2cover up the scandal of the closure of regime’s fake accounts, by asking Twitter 2close #Iran resistance accounts,thus mobilized Trita Parsi&other agents &paid TV programs. The anxiety of the main sponsor of terror from ppl uprising prior 2oil sanctions.”

Zarif knows that Iranian people are fed up with the mullahs’ regime and want it gone. He is nostalgic for the 1980s when the theocratic regime tortured and killed thousands of Iranian dissidents in dark cells. This summer marked the 30th anniversary of the shocking massacre of 30000 political prisoners. It was a crime unprecedented since World War II. Back then with the exception of families of political prisoners hardly anyone was aware of the full extent of the regime’s atrocities. Had there been social media, it would have been a totally different picture.

Following Zarif’s accusation, Iranian Internet activists began a campaign on Twitter — #WeAreNotBots — and posted comments like, ‘There’s no robot involved, we are the real people! We’ve been denied our right to free expression and get severely cracked down on freedom of speech and free use of press or cyberspace.”

It is obvious that Ali Khamenei and his partners in crime such as his foreign minister would miss those days.

What is Zarif really up to?

Digging a little deeper the truth revel itself. In the age of social media and fast growing digital technologies and information era the Iranian regime is confused. It feels that it is losing control of the people. Iranian protests of past 8 months show that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards are worried sick of social media and people’s access to internet. The regime blamed the social platforms for helping the protesters organize and regroup. Telegram’s role was unique. The regime was caught off guard when the first waves of protests hit cities across Iran.

According to numbers from official sources about 40 million Iranians used Telegram in January.
Social media has become a nightmare for ruling mullahs in Tehran. Friday prayer leaders, IRGC top commanders and Hassan Rouhani the president in an orchestrated act of public deception warn against social media platforms. Rouhani’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology’s first task is to come up with plans to slow the internet and provide sophisticated filters for social media.

According to the UN, approximately 53% of Iran’s 80m citizens are internet users. Roughly 60% of the country’s population is under the age of 30, and there are estimated to be more than 40m mobile phone users in the country – almost all of whom are registered on messaging app Telegram, which offers encryption.

Mostafa Tajzadeh, a regime strategist close to Rouhani’s camp is alarmed with the role social media plays in today’s Iran. He said: “Open access to social media is yet another problem. This is unprecedented and we have never faced such dilemmas all at once.”

A game-changer

What has become a game-changer and a factor the regime cannot ignore is its main opposition, the MEK’s Resistance Units legitimately using social media platforms to shine light on its suppressive measures against Iranian citizens. The regime wants this voice silenced at all costs. Khamenei struggles to keep everyone and most of all Iranian people in the dark. Thanks to social media including Twitter for their work. Keeping the free flow of information is a must. The Iranian regime simply wants to stifle science and hide the truth.

*Reza Shafiee is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). He tweets @shafiee_shafiee

German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Lithuania last week. This country always was a reliable partner. Germany supported Lithuania on its way to the European Union and NATO. According to DW, today Germany is Lithuania’s third-largest foreign investor, with 500 of its companies providing over 17,000 jobs. This summer, Continental, one of the world’s leading automotive manufacturers, started building a €95 million plant near Kaunas. It is set to create 1,000 new jobs. Defense cooperation is also strong: Lithuania buys German howitzers, armored vehicles and other military hardware.

The more so, Germany-led troops of the multinational NATO battalion thave been stationed here since 2017.

On the one hand, Lithuania realizes the Germany’s assistance amount and appreciates Germany’s efforts.

On the other hand, Germany and Lithuania, for example, evaluate differently the ways of interaction with Russia. If Germany manages to separate its economy from political issues, Lithuania as well as other Baltic States do not.

German successful business approach to its foreign policy let the country maintain smooth economic relations with gigantic Russia. At the same time, mutually beneficial economic and diplomatic relations do not prevent Germany to be a leading nation in the European Union and NATO. The diplomatic art also let Germany to balance its own interests and the interests of organizations the country participates in. Merkel and Putin periodically meet, discuss accrued problems. In contrast to such position, Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian leaders do not even accept the idea of negotiations, common programs or direct talks.

The most demonstrative case of differences in foreign policy is the attitude towards Nord Stream 2 project. Germany considers it purely business issue, the Baltic States name it political. It is absolutely evident, that Nord Stream 2 will be built despite of opposing by the Baltic leaders. Almost all interested and involved countries gave their permissions. And then what is the meaning of all verbal confrontation? Such useless activity makes the image of the Baltic States even worse. It underlines that they do not influence European politics even to a small extent. The more so, it does not help Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to cope with their economic problems and even makes them deeper.

Such tough political position has lead to breaking of established economic ties and excludes future common beneficial projects. Is it good for the countries of the Baltic region? And who will suffer more from such politics?

It is obvious, that Russia, being highly criticised for its politics in the international political arena, remains very powerful economic empire and the Baltic countries should not neglect it.

A Saudi decision to indefinitely delay an initial public offering (IPO) of five percent of the Saudi Arabian Oil Company or Aramco, the Saudi state-owned oil company, has further dented investor confidence and fuelled debate about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ability to push economic reform. It has even prompted speculation that his assertive policies, including the Kingdom’s ill-fated military intervention in Yemen, harsh response to Canadian human rights criticism and failed Saudi-United Arab Emirates-led diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar, could dampen his prospects of eventually ascending the throne.

No doubt, Prince Mohammed touted the IPO, projected as the world’s largest with a US$ 100 billion price tag, as a litmus test of the Kingdom’s willingness to diversify and reform its economy. There is also little doubt that Prince Mohammed may have been too ambitions in his US$ 2 trillion valuation of Aramco, misread market conditions, and underestimated political and bureaucratic resistance to transparency requirements associated with a public offering of what The Economist once dubbed “the world’s biggest, most coveted and secretive oil company.”

As a result, the indefinite delay, ordered by King Salman in his second intervention this year to curb the Crown Prince’s policies, was widely perceived as yet another failure of a young, inexperienced, and often impetuous crown prince. Yet, it could prove to be a blessing in disguise given that international financial markets currently value national oil companies at a steep discount. The delay, moreover, does not leave the Kingdom without options, including a long suggested private equity sale.

RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) may turn into a nightmare for India with China suspected to ploy a trade trap in the trade block. Hit by Trump’s fierce trade war, which will downsize China’s export, China is believed to offset the loss by aggressive exports to India through the platform of RCEP. In the trade block, China is the biggest exporter and India is the biggest consuming country because of its demographic advantage. Eventually, the real aim of India to be within the block will be defeated. It will succumb to bigger trade deficit.

China is the biggest stake holder in RCEP, which includes ASEAN 10 + 6 (China, Japan, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand and India). It accounts for more than one-fifth of member countries of RCEP. At present, India reels under trade deficit with RCEP members. Given the China’s predominance in RCEP, the major concern for India is that trade deficit would swell, leading to a paranoia of trade trap.

In 2017-18, RCEP accounted for 64.4 percent of India’s world trade deficit. China was the main cause for India’s trade imbalance with RCEP member countries. It accounted for 60.4 percent of India’s trade imbalance with RCEP.

The vulnerability of India’s joining RCEP cropped up when it was perceived that the trade block would impart a reverse impact on India. Instead of gaining in export, India will be a major import market . The major beneficiary will be China. The spill over impact of RCEP will prove double whammy for India, with China asserting for a new and big untapped market in India.

A close study of the trade relation between India and RCEP versus China in the represents that China will be the game changer. Given the China’s predominance in the block, critics cried foul , saying how can RCEP be a springboard for India’s export buoyancy? They feared that with the tariff concessions invoked in the block under FTA, it would leverage opportunities to China for larger eligible entry into Indian market and eventually the country would witness import surge from China, causing another dose of trade deficit.

Hitherto, China was exploring Indian market through backdoor using China –ASEAN FTA vis –a –vis India -ASEAN FTA. These FTAs became easy route for China to push its cheap products to India via ASEAN , while utilizing low tariffs. China signed FTA with ASEAN in 2010. Anecdotal evidences proved that since 2010, India’s trade deficit with ASEAN widened further. It increased by over 68 percent in between 2009 -2010 to 2017-18.

Another empirical evidence to prove China using FTA with ASEAN to make a backdoor entry into India was dramatic changes in the basket of imports from ASEAN. Imports of engineering and plastic goods from ASEAN doubled in between 2009-10 to 2017-18 , where China has a bigger propensity to produce cheap goods. These product groups accounted for 27 percent share in total imports from RCEP member countries in 2017-18, against 23 percent in 2009-10.

This made Indian policy makers wary to conclude the RCEP deal and adopt a dilly-dally approach in the last Singapore meeting. Nevertheless, India could snatch away the commitment from the members of the trade block for continuing the negotiations over to the next year, leaving the target of this year in abeyance.

India had several FTAs and CEPAs in the past. The common argument is that India roiled into a mess in utilizing FTA’s for its export buoyancy. According to estimates, not more than 5 percent of India’s exports utilized FTA routes.

What are the reasons which decimated FTA benefits to India. Broadly, there are three reasons which shadowed the use of FTA. They are low competence in manufacturing, inverted duty structure and strict Rules of Origin.

Inverted duty structure prohibits Indian exporters to benefit from the tax concessions under FTA. The inverted duty structure means where custom duty on imports of components, parts and intermediaries are higher than the finished products. Given this duty structure, it is uncompetitive to produce products for exportable purposes. Several industries depend on imported raw materials and components.

India’s competitiveness in manufacturing is low as compared to partner countries of FTAs. Big domestic market and protection by high tariff resisted Indian manufacturers to improve qualitative and cost-effective production. Advantage of low labour cost is eroded by low availability of skilled workers. Only 4.7 percent of working population are formally skilled in India against 24 percent in China.

As a result, Indian exporters failed to enter the export market with qualitative and cost competitive advantages. They are much behind of China and South East countries in manufacturing capability who developed export based model of economy.

Indian exporters expressed concern over Rules of Origin in some major partner countries under FTAs. According to a FICCI survey, who are mainly engaged in trade with major six countries of ASEAN, viz, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam, Rules of Origin were posing hurdles to Indian exporters. About 30 percent of the respondents exporting pharmaceuticals, automotive parts and chemical products to these countries highlighted the Rules of Origin as one of the main barriers to reap the benefit from FTA.

Given the past experiences of FTA utilization and trade structure between India and RCEP, where China will be the game changer, it presages a threat of trade trap by China. In the light of this, it is advisable for India to give second thought for participation in the trade block, unless changes are made in the original model. In this perspective, longer period of phase out of the tariff reduction, particularly in case of China and entry of service sector, with easing of visa regulation, are imperative.

Views expressed are personal

he flexibility of English, and thriving sign that it is not a dead language, permits repeated atrocities to be committed in the name of new terms. We are told that what is new is supposedly good, a sign of evolution. More accurately, such terms simply describe an old phenomenon, giving the false impression that the novel has appeared before the old.

The term “deplatforming” is de rigueur at the moment, a creature of the social media age and lecture circuit. Invitations to writers’ festivals can be withdrawn at a moment’s notice because the invitee has either not observed the current fashion, or has done something distinctly against it. Users of social media have their carpet, or platform, as it were, taken from under them.

The star recipient of that treatment was Alex Jones, who has found himself, and his Infowars, expelled beyond the city gates of social media babble. Social media giants, pressured by the very individuals who believe that free speech is vital oxygen to the body politic, have taken it upon themselves to police expression. “It’s implausible to imagine a future,” observed a bleak David Harsanyi, “in which liberal activists don’t demand that Republican groups be de-platformed.”

A creature of argumentation and debate very different to Jones is Germaine Greer, a permanent voice of insurrection whose The Female Eunuch still retains, even after a half-century, the sense of being both iconoclastic and holy. When your book becomes a household weapon of feminist liberation, an item to be found on reading lists to perturb, you know you have made it. While she has never quite emulated the initial triumph of that deliciously confronting text, she has always managed to take stage and floor, to back into the limelight. Her enemies are many, and there are as many amongst the fractious sisterhood as they are outside it. Having never been a full card carrying ideologue, Greer has never, thankfully, belonged.

On the ABC’s Q&A program, Greer was again found showing how her opinions and essays can still strike appropriate chords, ruffle the occasional, fixed feather and disrupt the nonchalant with a discomforting start. On this occasion, it was rape, that tool of power, appropriation and control that has preoccupied analysts of sexuality since cognition was discovered. Greer’s reaction was hardly surprising, a no-nonsense slap down on how victimhood should be treated. “Trauma is something that is dictated really by the sufferer. You know, I can’t bear huntsman spiders. It is not their fault. It’s my fault… I decided to be frightened of them.”

The program merely saw a reiteration of Greer’s views outlined in her latest essay On Rape, which does not disparage victims but provides a trenchant critique of the justice system that reduces such victims to the minutiae of “evidence”. “Rape,” she contends, “is a jagged outcrop in the vast monotonous landscape of bad sex; we can only understand its prevalence and our inability to deal with it if we position it correctly within the psychopathology of daily life.”

It is “banal rape” that poses the greatest problem, wrapped, as it were, in the dilemmas of the incommunicable, the gulf between sexual participants. To that end, and here, Greer supplies the kindling for her critics, a different sentencing regime is required, one that focuses on convicting “on the assault charges while leaving the rape issue moot”.

It is such views that have seen Greer disinvited to the Brisbane Writers’ festival, a move which has been couched in the lingo of organisational guff. Melbourne University Press publisher Louise Adler was far from impressed by the decision of the organisers, claiming that it “seems counter to the ethos of freedom of speech”.

The response from the festival was resoundingly cowardly: “Brisbane writers’ festival does not shy away from controversy or challenging ideas, but as all festival organisers know, it’s invariably difficult to choose between the many authors currently promoting books and the need to provide engaging choices for our audience along a curatorial theme.”

There will always be fashions and tyrannies of thought, attempts to close off argumentation if not ignore it altogether. Liz Duck-Chong reflects this tendency, and finds it necessary to preface any views with the identity descriptor “trans” (because identities are mysterious, self-justifying ideas rather than markers). Having accepted with a heavy reluctance that there is a “market place of ideas”, she proceeds to dictate, akin to a book banning commissar, what constitutes that market. “Greer and her ilk” are not “worth listening to” and have nothing to add to the “on going conversation”. Talk about tolerance is “tired”, an old excuse best left by the wayside. What such opinions do is remind us that the oldest of ideas, intolerance, remains ever threatening, the censor, a dangerous reality. The market place is enjoyable, till you encounter ideas you do not like.

It is important to note that Australia had, at one point, a censorship record of such astounding ferocity it rivalled that of Ireland. Books of interest were not published for fear of stirring scurrilous thoughts or fostering wayward behaviour. Banning as an instinct of paternal control came first. To remove Greer, a well read, tutored figure strides ahead of many of her critics, is to deny audiences not merely an intellectual draught of consequence but a poking sense of fun. Disliking her ideas is hardly an excuse to avoid entertaining them.

As for Greer herself, some humour prevails. “The Brisbane writers’ festival is very hard work. So, to be uninvited to what is possibly the dreariest literary festival in the world, with zero hospitality and no fun at all, is a great relief.”

More than one year ago, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates severed diplomatic ties with Qatar over Doha’s alleged support for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The decision came a few days after US President Donald Trumps’ meeting with the Muslim leaders in Riyadh where Trump accused Doha’s Emir of supporting terrorism in the region.

Although the United States wants to take part a advantageous role in Qatar diplomatic crisis, but the United States has so far failed to resolve the crisis.

As a result, the United States has invited members of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council to attend the Camp David Summit this autumn to get a solution to the crisis.

To answer the question of whether the Qatari crisis in Camp David will be resolved, we should look at the cause of the crisis and the reasons for continuing it.

At the beginning of the crisis, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) issued a list with 13 demands to Qatar to end the crisis. In response, Qatar’s Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, dismissed the “unrealistic” and “not actionable” demands saying they aimed to abolish Qatar’s sovereignty. (https://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/demands-saudi-allies-unrealistic-1428484)

However, Doha rejected the demands and declared ‘reciprocity’ to the conditions of Arab states. Doha also enhanced its military and economic relations with Iran and Turkey, and inked an agreement on combating terrorism and its financing with Washington.

The conflict between Qatar and neighboring states dated back to 1995 when Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani managed to defeat his father in a coup and took power.

In 2013, when Sheikh Hamad passed power to his son Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, many falsely believed that the new emir would adopt policies in line with other Arab countries. Qatar’s support for the Moslem Brotherhood made the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain recall their ambassadors from Doha. In the same year, under Saudi pressure, the Qatari emir signed a secret agreement that his country would refrain from acts contradictory to Arab states national interests. However, the secret news was out the following year and the world realized that Qatar wouldn’t change its policy and would keep distance from the Saudis and its allies.

Emirates role in Qatar’s crisis

All recent attempts to pressure Qatar are pursued and directed by the United Arab Emirates, and the Saudis only play a supportive role. Emiratis view Qatar as their only rival in regional investments.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), which enjoys the support of Riyadh and Washington viewed Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia as an opportunity to get closer to the US and restrain Qatar’s unilateral policy. The UAE believes that the pressure will bring Qatar to its knees and keep Doha away from Iran, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

In reality, the UAE has an underlying agenda in all this. They hope the US will transfer its military base from Qatar to the UAE, and if their plan goes through the country will try to claim ownership over the three Iranian islands, the Great Tunb, the Little Tunb and the Abu Musa.

Saudi Arabia’s role

One of the reasons behind the Qatar crisis is the competition between the two royal families in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Qatar holds the reputation as a very successful state and is considered a great “Dar al-Hikmah” or House of Wisdom in the region and for many Arab intellectuals. The country has a very strong educational infrastructure, which gives the country considerable influence. On the other hand, the Saudis, who are lagging behind, envy Qatar’s global influence.

Qatar’s block by the House of Saud has given the Saudi royal family some clout to appear as peace keeping force among the Muslim community.

Annually, Riyadh exports 420 million tons of oil versus 200 million for Doha. The volume of gas production on top of that indicates that Qatar is ahead of Saudi Arabia in energy production.
(https://www.opec.org/opec_web/static_files_project/media/downloads/publications/ASB2017_13062017.pdf)

This enormous wealth has led to two military conflicts between Qatar and Saudi Arabia since the Cold War ended, and major conflicts have taken place in oil field regions.

A new wave of Salafi and the Muslim Brotherhood influence has emerged in Saudi Arabia, which the Saudis fear. Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood has also been dangerous for Saudis.

America’s role

Ever since the 1970s, the US and Qatar have held a strong political and economic relations which has barely been affected by regional and domestic developments.

Given the US diplomatic positions and the Pentagon’s actions since the Qatari crisis erupted, Washington can only say that it intends to continue to work closely with all members of the Gulf Cooperation Council in the war on terror. Nonetheless, Washington’s mixed messages on Qatar’s crisis have illustrated the complex nature of the overall situation. (http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-washington-cant-quit-qatar-21627)

The White House intends to nudge Riyadh and Doha toward reconciliation because the solidarity of the Arab countries is crucial for the United States to confront Iran in the Middle East, as Washington fears Iran’s close relations with Qatar.

Trump’s relations with the Persian Gulf Arab countries includes a great deal of passion for selling American weapons against its assumed enemy, Iran, as it offers huge profit to Washington. Thus, the White House has to mediate a resolution to differences between these Arab countries. On the other hand, the failure to adopt unified positions by the Arab states in the interests of the US in the region, and Qatar’s relations with Iran, have created the powerful impetus for Washington to establish an agreement and end the conflict between Qatar and Saudi/UAE-led bloc of states.

The Prospect

Qatar will endeavor to reduce the recent tensions. The Qatari leaders know all too well that changing their core regional policy under the pressure of other states will result in losing their political legitimacy. If the Qataris bow down to Saudi wishes, they inevitably will have to face changes in their political administration.

However, Arab countries in the Persian Gulf region, with Saudi Arabia at the top, have no desire to end the Qatar crisis, as Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jabir has recently stressed and the issue with Doha was not addressed at the Arab Summit. The Qatari Emir, who had previously announced plans to go to Saudi Arabia personally to attend the summit, had a change of heart and did not attend the meeting.

Foreign policy in each country is affected by benefits, and benefits determine a state’s identity. The fulfillment of Saudi conditions means that Qatar would have to fundamentally change its foreign policy, and this is not acceptable to Doha now.

It is anticipated that the Qatar crisis will continue on to some extent even as Doha may moderate its policies in some areas.

*Javad Heirannia, Ph.D student of International Relations in Iran, Visiting Fellow of the Persian Gulf Department in the Center for Middle East Studies in Iran

The South Indian city of Bidar – the northernmost part of Karnataka, 145 km from Hyderabad, is a placid habitation where Hindus and Muslims peaceably coexist to the eternal rhythms of sowing and harvest. It is barely known beyond the subcontinent. But in recent years, it has built a great reputation in the field of education. It is drawing students from miles around, and the teaching pedagogy at its largest seminary (Madrasa) is delivering amazing outcomes, confounding even seasoned educationists. The Madrasa is not just opening the gateway to modern careers but also strengthening the prospects of eternal salvation.

A dignified aura of its rich past cloaks every corner of the town. The crowning minarets that dot the city landscape and the villages around it dissolve into the mist of history as the lavender of the evening glow envelopes the monuments from which writers extract magical romances for their books. Legends abound of the great kings and saints who once inhabited this land. The ravages of time and the passages of history have slowly driven the chapters of glory into bygone memories.

But Bidar has re-emerged on the map. In a narrow alleyway, opposite the 15th century edifice of Madras a of Mahmud Gawan (1472) in Gole Khana area of Bidar stands Shaheen School, the flagship institution of a vibrant educational revolution whose ripples are touching thousands of lives across the country. Parents seeking a blend of temporal and spiritual education are choosing it over mainstream institutions. The unique offering at this institution is a bridge course for Madrasa pass-outs that equips them to join the mainstream education system. It is popularly phrased as ‘a short hop from Madrasa to science lab’.

When Abdul Qadeer, 58, an engineer by profession, began his enterprise in a one room tenement accommodating 18 students way back in 1989 he never imagined that his effort would become a harbinger of a unique educational revolution. With a mission to “shape an ideal seat of learning that is accessible to one and all”, the movement has mushroomed into a major center of academic excellence and a beacon of modern learning, touching the lives of more than 11000 students supervised by 400 teachers, all of them engaged in creation of knowledge wealth. The network comprises nine schools 16 pre-university colleges and a degree college having its clones in several cities. They have enabled more than 900 students to become doctors in the last 15 years.

Muslims desperately need such institutions. They comprise 14% of India’s population but have the highest illiteracy rate (42.7%), the lowest level of enrollment in higher education (4.4%) the lowest share of public(or any formal) jobs, school and university posts including that of government jobs (4.9%), earn less than other groups, are more excluded from the financial world, and spent fewer years in school. Pitifully Muslims account for 40 per cent of India’s prison population.

Qadeer is one of the many links in the chain of modern liberal Muslim education that was forged by Sir Syed Ahmad who founded the Aligarh Muslim University AMU). Sir Syed found the Madrasa syllabus unsuited to the present age and to the spirit of time. He criticized it for encouraging memorising rather than real understanding.

Secular Muslim educationists also tend to agree that curriculum at most Madaris has become fossilized and it cannot be reformed by cosmetic changes, like tweaking a few courses or installing a few computers. Madaris have to be provided with physical and intellectual resources – and most important, cultural temperament – to equip their students for the complex demands of a highly competitive modern world. One of the most accomplished modern products of Madaris, Ebrahim Moosa avers: “Few have been able to rebut the charge that the texts used are redundant and at times impenetrable, save to a few scholars who have spent their lives mastering them. Indeed most texts are frustratingly terse, forcing teachers and students to scour commentaries and super-commentaries for help.”

Historically, Madaris (Madrasa plural) were institutions of higher learning until their importance diminished with the onset of Western education.They have played an important role in the history of Islamic civilization. They have been powerful nodes in the learning system and have been harbingers of several revolutionary achievements in fields as diverse as jurisprudence, philosophy, astronomy, science, religion, literature and medicine. It was only when the Golden Age of Islam began to decline that the madrasas lost their academic and intellectual purity, and their vitality and relevance, and ceded prime space to western-oriented education.

Qadeer has spent his active life bridging the divide between traditional and modern education. His schools teach secular subjects like science, medicine, technology, social sciences, and history, in addition to classical Islamic texts. His unique innovation is the bridge course by which ahafiz is initiated into seculars learning courses. A hafiz (pl. ḥuffāẓ, f. ḥāfiẓa) Is a Muslim who has memorised all 6,236 verses of the Qur’an . Those huffaz who are in the age group of 14 to17 years are enrolled in the eighth and ninth standard. The huffaz undergo a 10-month bridge course so that they can learn Kannada, English, mathematics, science and social studies. Then, they are ready to face the SSLC board.

Abu Sofyan, a doctor and a product of Shaheen, proudly says he can offer both spiritual and physical healing – Dawa and Dua (medicine and prayers) to his future patients. The second year MBBS student at Raichur Institute of Medical Sciences is a hafiz.“When I joined high school,I felt transplanted into an uncongenial soil. With great difficulty I could find my roots. But I managed to score good marks. My stay here turned out to be a life-changer,” he says.

The ‘disciplined Madrasa life’ helped him get good grades in pre-university and a medical college seat. “I realised that the basic principles of engineering are about the wholesome study of nature that the Qur’an emphasises”, he says.

“The experiences are not isolated. Hundreds of Madrasa graduates are in mainstream colleges now. A youth with a wholesome education is less likely to go wayward. A proper understanding of the modern world and exposure to current knowledge equips youth to withstand wrong influences,” Qadeer says. “We encountered a lot of f skepticism from the ulema (clergy), but we persisted, and it paid off. Now, they have all come around as they realized we were training boys to achieve the best of both worlds.”

Vachana Shree Patil of Shaheen College secured the third place in the Common Entrance Test (CET) in the medical stream in 2016. She also stood second in the State in the Indian Systems of Medicine and Homeopathy, third in Veterinary sciences, ninth in B. Pharma and 18th in BSc.

More than 300 Shaheen students who cracked the National Eligibility cum Entrance (NEET 2018) have secured admission in different medical colleges of India. Shaheen Group had sent more than 200 students to different medical colleges in 2017, 152 in 2016, 111 in 2015, 93 in 2014, 89 in 2013 and 71 in its first batch in 2012.

One of the 300 eligible students in 2018 is Waheed Abdullah of Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. He is a Haafiz and never went to a school. He got free coaching at Shaheen’s Bidar center and scored 579 out of the total 720 marks to secure All India Rank (AIR) 3295. Besides him thirteen Huffaz have also made the grade. At least 40 Huffaz have so far cracked the entrance examination of medical and engineering during the last for years.

Azeem Qureshi’s family is another wonderful example. They belong to the butcher (Qureshi) community of Bidar. His three daughters, Ishrat Fatima, Naziya Sultana and Mehreen Fatima are alumni of Shaheen who ended up securing MBBS seats. Ishrat Fatima has done MS in Obstetrics and Gynecology and Naziya Fatima is doing her MD Pathology. Ishrath Fatima was one of the students from this course. A hafiza (a female hafiz), Ishrath moved to Shaheen and eventually went on to complete her medical specialization. She now teaches in a medical college in Jalna district in Maharashtra. “After completing my Hifz, I enrolled in Shaheen with the intention of just passing matriculation as it was thought necessary to get married.”

Madaris and mosques are important features of the Muslim community and can reinforce community cohesion and integration. They can be, and have been pivotal in engendering tolerance, mutual respect and integration. To make them relevant to contemporary times we need a choreographed strategy. People like Qadeer have presented in Shaheen a model worthy of replication. Madaris elsewhere should take a leaf out of Shaheen’s book.

It is true that more than the model it is the charisma of inspirational leaders like Qadeer that infuse institutions with vibrancy. But these Madaris certainly underline that there are silver linings on the otherwise bleak educational horizon of Muslims. The lesson we must learn is that the community’s own shortcomings cannot be easily palmed off on others.

Religion, for Sir Muhammad Iqbal the great philosopher poet, was a dynamic and fluid movement, not a closed theology meant for mere imitation. Islam marked the end of prophecy, not human intelligence. Shibli Nu’mani, a renowned 20th century scholar from within the Madrasa circles himself noted, “For us Muslims, mere English [modern] education is not sufficient, nor does the old Arabic Madrasa education suffice. Our ailment requires a ‘compound panacea’ (maʿjun-i murakkab) – one portion Eastern and the other Western.”

Madaris, like those run by Qadeer, can play a vital role in promoting an intellect that is well equipped to face challenges of the modern world. Since the students are schooled in classical and modern science as well as secular and religious thought, they are better able to spot scriptural distortions. They also tend to be more connected to their own communities as well as to the mainstream society and their stable sense of identity, religious and otherwise, shield them against radicalism. These Madaris are powerful allies in India’s transition to modernity.

Here is what the founders of Jamia Millia Islamia wrote for its students to sing as the official anthem:

“Here conscience alone is the beacon..
It’s the Makkah of many faiths,
Travelling is the credo here, pausing a sacrilege,
Cleaving against currents is the creed here,
The pleasure of arrival lies in countering crosscurrents.
This is the home of my yearnings”
This is the land of my dreams.”

Let this noble thought remain a guiding credo for every Muslim.

According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos survey, 70 percent of Americans, including about 50 percent of Republicans, support Medicare for all, the latest incarnation of single-payer health care. Republican support for a health plan labeled “Medicare for all” is not surprising considering that Republican politicians support Medicare and that one of their attacks on Obamacare was that it would harm the program. Furthermore, the biggest expansion of Medicare since its creation — the Part D prescription drug program — occurred under a conservative president working with a conservative Congress.

Conservative Republicans do propose reforming Medicare to reduce its costs, but their proposals are always framed as “saving Medicare,” and most reform plans increase spending. Few conservative Republicans would dare advocate allowing young people to opt out of paying Medicare taxes in exchange for agreeing to forgo Medicare benefits.

Many conservative Republicans favor other government interventions into health care, including many features of Obamacare. In fact, Obamacare’s individual mandate originated as a conservative proposal and was once championed by many leading Republicans. Many other Republicans simply lack the courage to repeal Obamacare, so they say they only want to repeal the “unpopular” parts of the law. It would not be surprising if we soon heard conservatives and Republican politicians talk about defending Obamacare from supporters of socialized medicine.

The same dynamic at work in health care is at work in other areas. For example, the same conservative administration and Congress that created Medicare Part D also dramatically expanded federal control of education with “No Child Left Behind.” Conservative Republicans who (rightly) fight against deficit spending when a Democrat sits in the White House decide that “deficits don’t matter” when the president has an “R” next to his name.

Many Republican politicians — and even conservative intellectuals — will say they are being pragmatic by not fighting progressives on first principles, but instead limiting the damage done by the welfare state. The problem with this line is that, by accepting the premise that government can and should solve all of life’s problems, conservatives and Republicans will inevitably get into a “bidding war” with progressives and Democrats. The only way Republicans can then win is to join Democrats in continually increasing spending and creating new programs. This is why the so-called “conservative welfare state” ends up as bloated and expansive as the progressive welfare state. Refusing to question the premises of the welfarists and socialists is not a pragmatic way to advance liberty.

While progressives blame social crises on the free market, Republicans and conservatives are unwilling to admit the problems were caused by prior government interventions. Thus the passage of Dodd-Frank was aided by claims that the housing bubble was created by deregulation, while Obamacare’s passage benefited from widespread misconception that America had a free-market health care system prior to 2010.

Until a popular intellectual movement arises that is able and willing to challenge the premises of Keynesianism, welfarism, and democratic socialism, while putting forth a positive vision of a free society, government will continue to expand. Fortunately, such a movement exists and is growing as more Americans — particularly young Americans— are studying the ideas of Liberty and working to spread those ideas. If the new liberty movement grows and stays true to its principles, it will be able to defeat the socialists of all parties, including those who call themselves conservative.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

By Deepak Kumar Nayak*

On August 7, 2018, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Gangaram Ahir informed the Lok Sabha (Lower House of the Indian Parliament) that the geographical spread of Left-Wing Extremism (LWE)-linked violence had shrunk considerably. He stated,

“… 90 districts in 11 States will now be covered by the (Security Related Expenditure, SRE) Scheme, down from 126… The revised categorization is a more realistic representation of the actual LWE scenario…”

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UMHA) reportedly undertook a “comprehensive exercise in consultation with the States to review the affected Districts in order to ensure that the deployment of resources is in sync with the changed ground reality.” As a result, 44 Districts were excluded and eight new Districts [Malappuram, Palakkad and Wayanad of Kerala; West Godavari of Andhra Pradesh; Kabirdham of Chhattisgarh; Mandla of Madhya Pradesh; and Angul and Boudh of Odisha] were added to the list of SRE Districts.

Significantly, on April 16, 2018, UMHA had stated that 126 Districts in 10 States were covered under the Ministry’s SRE Scheme. The Ministry noted that, over the past few years, a number of Districts had been carved into smaller Districts, as a result of which the geographical area of the 106 SRE Districts was redistributed over 126 Districts.

SRE is a non-plan scheme under implementation since April 1, 1996, to supplement the efforts of the States to deal with the LWE problem effectively [the SRE scheme also reimburses certain heads of security related expenditure in the North Eastern States and Jammu and Kashmir]. The total number of Districts covered under LWE SRE scheme in 1996 was 55 in nine States, namely, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. According to the UMHA’s Annual Report 2004-05, 76 Districts in nine States (Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal) were covered under the scheme. `

The Scheme was revised comprehensively in February 2005, increasing the rates of reimbursement from 50 per cent to 100 per cent and also covering a larger number of Districts as well as an expanded list of items for reimbursement. According to the revised scheme, the items eligible for reimbursement include:

• Ex-gratia payment to the family of a civilian/ Policeman killed;
• Provision for transportation, communication and other logistics support for Central Paramilitary Forces (CPFs) deployed in the State for anti-Naxalite operations including expenditure incurred on POL (Petrol, Oil and Lubricants) used by Joint Teams of State Police and the CPFs to undertake anti-Naxalite operations;
• Ammunition used by State Police Personnel in anti-Naxalite activities;
• Training to State Police Forces;
• Community policing by the local police;
• Lump sum grants to the Village Defence Committee / Nagrik Suraksha Samiti (Citizens’ Defence Committee) and honorarium to Special Police Officers (SPOs);
• Rehabilitation of hardcore, underground Naxalite surrenderees;
• Premium for insurance of police personnel engaged in anti-Naxalite operations. The revised scheme has raised the rate of reimbursement from 50% to 100% and also allows advance release of funds to the Naxalite-affected States.

In 2009, six Districts were added to the SRE scheme (Dhenkanal, Deogarh, Jajpur, Kandhamal and Nayagarh in Odisha; and Nizamabad in Andhra Pradesh) taking the number up to 82 Districts, with another one added later. Informing Parliament, the then Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Gurudas Kamat, stated in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of the Indian Parliament), on March 9, 2011,

On the basis of Naxalite violence profile, currently, 83 Districts in 9 Naxal affected States are included under Security Related Expenditure (SRE) Scheme, which is meant for reimbursing the expenditure incurred by the States on anti-Naxal operations. Inclusion/exclusion of Districts under the SRE Scheme is a continuous process.

Another 20 Districts were added in 2012 [Muzaffarpur, Sheohar, Vaishali, Banka, Lakhisarai, Begusarai and Khagaria of Bihar; Dhamtari, Gariyabandh, Balod and Mahasamund of Chhattisgarh; Dumka, Deoghar and Pakur of Jharkhand; Aheri of Maharashtra and Kalahandi, Nuapada, Bargarh and Bolangir of Odisha; and Birbhum District in West Bengal], raising the total number covered under SRE to 103. Another three from Chhattisgarh (Sukma, Kondagaon and Balrampur) were added in 2013, taking the number up to 106 in nine States.

On June 2, 2014, with the creation of the Telangana State, the list was upgraded to 106 Districts in 10 States.

The criteria that MHA follows for inclusion of States under the SRE Scheme are;

• Existence of and activities by one or more of the organizations (which have been declared unlawful associations/terrorist organizations either under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention Act, 1967 or any other Act in the State).
• Enactment of legislation by a State to tackle activities of Naxal extremists or similar organizations.
• Raising of India Reserve Battalions (IRBs) by the concerned States for curbing the activities of the extremists.
• Inadequate development of affected area due to hindrances created by extremist activities.

The provision of budgets under the SRE Scheme is made according to the Annual Work Plan of the Scheme, finalized on the basis of proposals received from State Governments of LWE-affected States. MHA gives ‘in-principle’ approval to the Annual Work Plan of the LWE-affected States for the purpose of reimbursing the expenditure incurred by the State Governments on counter-LWE operations. However, the reimbursement of the State Governments’ claims under the Scheme is done on the basis of actual expenditure incurred in accordance with Scheme guidelines.

State-wise details of Funds released under SRE Scheme for LWE affected States 2010-18  (Figures in INR Lakhs)

*Telangana formed on June 2, 2014.

Note: Under the SRE Scheme for LWE affected States, expenditure incurred by the State Governments on counter-LWE operations, inter-alia, including expenditure incurred on rehabilitation of surrendered LWE cadres, are reimbursed as per the extant guidelines in this regard.

Significantly, a large number of LWE surrenders has been recorded over the past years. According to UMHA data, at least 685 Naxalites surrender through 2017 in addition to 1,442 surrenders in 2016. During the current year, as on May 15, 2018, the number of surrenders was 284. Since May 16, 2018, another 87 Naxalites have surrendered (data till September 16, 2018), according to South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) data.

On March 21, 2018, replying to a question in Lok Sabha, regarding the actual disbursement of funds under the SRE scheme, Minister of State (independent charge) for the Ministry of Planning and Minister of State in the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Rao Inderjit Singh, disclosed that the SRE Scheme disbursed INR 5.7522 billion between 2011-14; INR 6.7573 billion between 2014-17; and INR 4.45 billion in 2017-18, towards assistance to the LWE affected Districts for recurring expenditure relating to operational and training needs of SFs, including the expenditure incurred by the States for the rehabilitation of the surrendered LWE cadres etc. However, no specific number of beneficiaries list under the SRE scheme is available.

Surrender of Left-wing Extremists: 2005-2018* (MHA)

Source: MHA; *Data till May 15, 2018

On April 29, 2018, the UMHA the first-time allowed the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) deployed for operations in LWE-affected areas, to directly utilise SRE Scheme funds for building infrastructure facilities for its troops. According to the order, a Central Paramilitary Force (CPMF) is authorised to directly draw from the SRE funds for the creation of camps, barracks and other living facilities in its main operational theatres, after seeking approval from respective States to whom this money is made available by the Union Government.

In 2015, the total number of LWE-affected Districts was 106. It rose to 126 in 2017 following bifurcation of States and Districts, and the expansion of Maoists activities. Of the 106 Districts, 36 accounted for 80 to 90 per cent of the country-wide LWE violence, and were categorized as “Worst Affected Districts” in 2015. The UMHA on April 16, 2018, noted that 44 of the 126 Districts reported negligible violence and were removed from the list. Eight new Districts which registered significant Maoist activity were added to the SRE list. Currently, 30 of the worst affected Districts account for 90 per cent of LWE violence.

According to a statement by the UMHA on April 16, 2018,

Over the last four years, there has been a substantial improvement in the LWE scenario. Incidents of violence have seen a 20% decline with a 34% reduction in related deaths in 2017 as compared to 2013. The geographical spread of LWE violence also shrunk from 76 districts in 2013 to just 58 districts in 2017. Besides, just 30 of these districts account for 90% of the LWE violence in the country. At the same time certain new districts have emerged as the focus of expansion by the Left Wing Extremists.

The SRE scheme has helped in the fight against the Maoists. UMHA had, for instance, sanctioned the fortification/ upgradation of 400 Police Stations in 10 LWE affected States on June 2010, of which 393 of Police Stations have been completed, significantly enhancing both defensive and offensive capabilities of the local Police.

Deficiencies, nevertheless, persist. According to the Bureau of Police Research & Development (BPR&D), as on January 1, 2017, there were at least 126 Police Stations in Chhattisgarh, the worst Naxalism-affected State, which did not have a vehicle. Similarly, the second worst affected State, Jharkhand, had 23 such Police stations. The number of Police Stations without telephones in these two States was 23 and 64, respectively.

While the numbers of surrendered Maoists augments rapidly, implementation of the reward and rehabilitation scheme has tended to be tardy. In an interview, on September 4, 2017, Inspector General, anti-Naxal Operations, and Jharkhand Police Spokesperson Ashish Batra, disclosed that, due to technical delays, benefits under the surrender Policy do not reach intended beneficiaries:

Matter of giving reward money and other benefits to the surrendered Maoists is taken up individually and differs from case to case by a district level rehabilitation package committee headed by the Deputy Commissioners. After deciding the packages given to a surrendered Maoist, it makes a recommendation to the State Government which is given to them after a verification done by the Special Branch.

Separately, the fund released for modernizing State Police Forces (in 10 Maoist-affected States) under the Modernisation of Police Forces (MPF) scheme has declined considerably over the past four Financial Years (FY) from INR 6376.4 million in 2014-15; to INR 3147.8 million in 2015-16; INR 2020.1 million in 2016-17; and INR 1453 in 2017-18. LWE affected States covered under this program include Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.

The Naxalites, are certainly losing influence across the country, but they remain a significant threat. Persisting deficits in governance and the potential for a revival of conflict need sustained attention. The SRE scheme is an attempt to supplement the efforts of the affected States to deal with the LWE menace, and its implementation has paid dividends. The scheme needs to be maintained even in regions that have been recovered from Maoist disruption, as the potential for future disorders is yet to be neutralized. The continuation of the scheme is, consequently, as necessary to contain the Maoist insurgency, as it is for stabilization and the comprehensive development of Maoist-affected areas.

*Deepak Kumar Nayak
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

By Dr Sandip Kumar Mishra

It is conventional wisdom that China’s role would be the most crucial in the process of de-nuclearising North Korea. North Korea and China share strong historical connections along with political and strategic mutual needs. Given how nearly 90 per cent of North Korea’s external trade has been with China alone in the past few years, the salience of this wisdom cannot be exaggerated. For North Korea, China is definitely the most important country, providing a credible and continuous economic and military backup, despite the fact that on occasion, Beijing faces discomfort and annoyance arising from Pyongyang’s provocative and isolationist behaviours including its nuclear and missile programmes.

After coming to power, US President Donald Trump first tried to squeeze North Korea by courting China on the basis of these few discords between Beijing and Pyongyang. On several occasions, Trump profusely praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for his cooperation in dealing with North Korea and appealed for more of it. Trump correctly realised that his policy of ‘maximum pressure’ on North Korea could not succeed without China’s cooperation. There are opinions that the US tried to at least postpone disagreements and contestations with China in most of the contentious issues. China also obliged by placing more restrictions in its economic transactions with North Korea.

However, in early 2018, North Korea surprised Trump when it agreed to hold direct talks with the US to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for a security guarantee. After few hiccups, the historic summit between the leaders of the US and North Korea finally took place in Singapore on 12 June 2018. Even though both have been maintaining contact with each other, the US and North Korea do not sufficiently trust each other. For the same reason, just a few days before the Singapore summit, Trump declared that his proposed meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, might not happen–and eventually, the process was brought back on the track thanks to South Korean intervention. China appeared less active in this phase as North Korea, South Korea and the US were apparently making all the moves.

Unlike during the previous occasions, the US’ engagement policy towards North Korea did not involve sufficient communication with China, and Beijing was not given much of a space and role in the process. However, the occasion provided a golden opportunity to North Korea for reaching out to China–and Pyongyang immediately grabbed it. In fact, Kim Jong-un visited China both before his first summit meet with South Korean leader Moon Jae-in in April 2018 and also before his Singapore summit with Donald Trump in June 2018. Overall, the North Korean leader has met Xi Jinping three times in the last six months and some other important high level visits between North Korea and China have also taken place.

Basically, North Korea has cleverly utilised growing frictions between the US and China in 2018 on trade and other strategic issues. In last few months, the US accused China for not doing enough towards resolving the North Korean nuclear and missile issues; raked up the Taiwan issue; and more importantly, imposed trade restrictions on China. In March 2018, the US signed the Taiwan Travel Act; and in August 2018, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen made stopovers in the two US cities–Los Angeles and Houston–during her trip to Central and South America. By early July 2018, the US and China had imposed tariffs on US$34 billion worth of goods from the other countries, and on 7 September 2018, Trump threatened to add another US$267 billion worth tariffs on goods imported from China. In a way, the US has touched upon two extremely sensitive issues for China–Taiwan and trade–and Beijing must be highly annoyed by Washington’s policy and moves.

Trump anticipates that he may create gap between North Korea and China by being soft towards North Korea but tough on China. The US policy was evident, when on 9 July 2018, Trump tweeted that he is confident ”that Kim Jong Un will honor the contract we signed &, even more importantly, our handshake” but blamed that “China, on the other hand, may be exerting negative pressure on a deal because of our posture on Chinese Trade-Hope Not!”

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo alleged that ”China has relaxed sanctions against North Korea” and that there have been complications in achieving North Korean de-nuclearisation because of Chinese behaviour. Unfortunately, the US strategy towards deal with North Korea alone does not appear to succeed. The US needs to go back to the conventional wisdom which demands working with China to resolve the North Korean issue. The US needs take a more in-depth, patient, innovative approach to devise a mutually acceptable quid pro quo with China rather than venturing alone.

A delegation from the US Government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), led by Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Nash, visited Sri Lanka this week to continue progress on the proposed MCC compact – a large-scale five-year grant programme. MCC is developing the compact in partnership with the Sri Lankan govvernment to promote inclusive economic growth that will benefit Sri Lankans.

During the visit, COO Nash met with senior government officials, including Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera, State Finance Minister Eran Wickramaratne and Foreign Secretary Prasad Kariyawasam.

The proposed MCC Sri Lanka Compact is in the final stage of development. The compact is expected to be negotiated with the Sri Lankan government in the coming weeks. MCC will fund the compact entirely through grants which do not need to be repaid rather than loans.

The proposed MCC compact reflects our commitment to development projects that make economic sense and drive growth in a way that increases local jobs,” said Chargé d’affaires ad interim Robert Hilton. “With this compact, we have an opportunity to promote transparent decisions about Sri Lanka’s long-term interests in terms of costs, benefits, and sustainable development.”

“We are pleased that progress continues on the proposed MCC compact,” said MCC COO Nash. “Developed in partnership with the Sri Lankan government, the proposed MCC Sri Lanka Compact is designed to spur economic growth and investment by the private sector to reduce poverty and increase economic opportunities for the people of Sri Lanka.”

Based on an analysis of Sri Lanka’s economy and the constraints that are holding back private investment and growth, MCC expects to invest in projects proposed by the Sri Lankan government in the transport and land sectors.

The proposed compact would improve road networks and the bus system in the Colombo Metropolitan Region, and improve road connectivity between the central region and ports and markets in the Western Province. The compact would upgrade more than 300 kilometres of urban and interprovincial roads. In addition, the compact would improve land administration, and strengthen land rights and tenure security.

MCC is an innovative foreign assistance agency of the United States Government established in 2004 that has signed compacts with 29 countries around the world. In December 2016, MCC’s Board of Directors selected Sri Lanka to develop a compact.

US-Chinese tensions are less about chronic trade imbalances and more about worries over strategic innovation.

By Stephen S. Roach*

Sino-American tensions are less about trade imbalances and more about a strategic clash over innovation and technology — the Holy Grail of any nation’s prosperity. The large and seemingly chronic trade imbalance between the United States and China is as much a function of America’s own macroeconomic problems as a reflection of unfair Chinese trading practices long alleged by the Washington Consensus and now underscored by the Trump administration.

The United States suffers from a chronic deficiency of domestic saving. Its net national saving rate was just 3 percent in the first half of 2018 — up from the 1.9 percent post-crisis average since 2009, but still less than half the 6.3 percent norm of the final three decades of the 20th century. Lacking in saving and wanting to invest and grow, the United States must import surplus savings from abroad and run massive current-account and trade deficits to attract foreign capital.

Therein lies Trump’s folly. The United States had trade deficits with 102 nations in 2017 — a multilateral problem. By opting for budget-busting tax cuts in late 2017, America’s already depressed domestic saving will move sharply lower in the years ahead, pushing its current-account and trade gaps deeper into deficit. Moves to rectify this imbalance with tariffs against China will only backfire. The Chinese piece of the trade deficit is already shifting to higher-cost trading partners, putting more pressure on American consumers. There is no bilateral fix for a multilateral problem.

Trade deficits are a foil for a more profound struggle between the United States and China. A White House policy paper says it all: “…the Chinese State seeks to access the crown jewels of American technology and intellectual property.” White House advisor Peter Navarro adds, “China has targeted America’s industries of the future … if China successfully captures these emerging industries, America will have no economic future.”

These charges draw heavily on the March findings of a so-called Section 301 investigation conducted by the US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, a report which has become central to Washington’s anti-China narrative. The conclusions are wide of the mark in four areas:

Joint ventures: Allegations of forced technology transfers through the JV structure overlook the most basic aspect of these arrangements — two partners working together willingly, in the context of commercially and legally binding agreements, to create a business that requires sharing of personnel, systems and processes.

Cyberhacking: Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping addressed allegations of cyberhacking during the 2015 Sunnylands Summit. Since then, cyber incursions have been sharply reduced, a point overlooked by the US trade representative in its emphasis on cyberhacking activity that largely predates the summit.

Outbound capture: The US trade representative charges China with technology theft through its policies of acquiring US companies and their proprietary systems. Yet tabulations by the American Enterprise Institute find that only 16 of China’s 228 outward bound M&A deals over the decade ending in 2017 were in the technology sector.

Industrial policy: The US trade representative insists that China is unique in using industrial policies, such as Made in China 2025 or AI 2030, to gain an unfair advantage in the acquisition of foreign technology. However, from Japan to Germany to Pentagon-sponsored innovations of America’s military-industrial complex, industrial policies have been more the rule than the exception for today’s leading economies.

These allegations imply the Chinese have no rightful claim to the hallowed ground of innovation that has long defined the prosperity of nations. That overlooks the simple fact that ancient China was the world’s preeminent innovator – from agricultural production to textile weaving, from paper and printing to missiles and gunpowder. Also ignored is a long history of flagrant examples of technology theft in the 19th century by today’s industrial economies.

Five pieces of compelling evidence suggest that China can pull off the transition from imported to homegrown innovation required to avoid the dreaded “middle-income trap” that ensnares most developing nations:

1. China has established 17 tech hubs that provide cultural assimilation among leading universities, venture capital investors and entrepreneurs.

2. Over the past decade, the Chinese startup culture has hit its stride. China now has more than 160 “unicorns” – private companies with valuations in excess of $1 billion each – versus about 130 unicorns in the United States. China’s unicorns span the gamut — from the fintech of internet finance and a vast e-commerce platform to online travel, cloud computing, big data management, new energy and logistics.

3. Success hinges on strategy, implementation and effective governance to catalyze the creative spark of entrepreneurs and innovators; China’s two high-profile industrial polices, Made in China 2025 and AI2030, are consistent with this objective.

4. Chinese educational reforms now turn out more than 4.5 million scientist, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates – more than eight times that of the United States. From nanoscience and nanotechnology to quantum networking, stem-cell research and regenerative medicine, gene editing and the genetics of cancer research, and artificial intelligence, this new generation of innovators speaks volumes to China’s own “crown jewels.”

5. US National Science Foundation data put Chinese spending on overall research and development of $409 billion in 2015 (in international dollars) — nearly double that of 2010 and second only to America’s $497 billion. The NSF also reports that in 2016 China surpassed the United States as the world’s leader in academic science and engineering publications.

China may now be coming full circle — from an ancient civilization that once led the world in technology to a modern nation now focused on research, scientific development, innovation and commercialization of these activities. By fixating on intellectual property theft, cyberhacking and forced technology transfer, the US trade representative overlooks this possibility. That may well be one of America’s most egregious oversights.

Each economy needs the productivity payback from technology and innovation for its own purposes – China to avoid the middle-income trap and the United States to counter the risks of economic stagnation that might well arise from another productivity slowdown that now appears to be underway. Resolving the innovation dilemma does not imply one country defeating the other in the arena of global power.

In the end, America’s race, like that of most nations, is more with itself than with any purported foreign adversary. America’s scapegoating of China is a convenient excuse for ducking the tough issues of economic strategy that the United States has avoided for decades – namely, its saving and productivity imperatives. Both the US and China face formidable economic challenges in the years ahead. They both win if they solve their own problems, and both lose if they attack each other in a destructive and diversionary trade war.

Over time, there is a growing risk that perception becomes reality. The US body politic is in danger of convincing itself that China, a nation with a rich heritage as a leader in technological innovation, now must cheat in order to regain that edge. China, for its part, is increasingly convinced that it is being victimized by an American containment strategy aimed at its geostrategic role as well as limiting its progress on the road to innovation, sustained development and prosperity.

The longer the current US-Sino dispute persists, the deeper those convictions are likely to become ingrained on both sides of the relationship. And then, the long and tragic history of struggles between rising and ruling powers — the so-called Thucydides Trap — will become all the more relevant. Resolving the innovation dilemma is key to avoiding that dire outcome.

*Stephen S. Roach is senior fellow with Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia. This article is based on a speech he gave before the AmCham China Conference in Hong Kong, September 7, 2018. He is the author of Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China.

A system of reeducation and detention camps in China aims to “cure” Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslims of their religion.

By Eric Schluessel*

China’s oppression of Muslim citizens has entered a new stage with news emerging about a system of reeducation and detention camps aimed at isolating people the state identifies as Muslims to “cure” them of religion. The main targets are Uyghurs and Kazakhs in Xinjiang – what they prefer to call “East Turkestan” – with Chinese officials claiming to defend their country against Islamic extremism. The facts instead indicate systematic persecution of religious and ethnic minorities.

Since China announced its Open Up the West campaign in 1999, the mechanics of crony capitalism, as described in a 2016 essay “Lucrative Chaos” by Thomas Cliff in Ethnic Conflict & Protest in Tibet & Xinjiang: Unrest in China’s West, have combined with China’s geo-economic strategy, rising nationalism and authoritarianism to produce an increasingly unequal society in Xinjiang, one marred by ethnic discrimination and managed by a surveillance regime of unprecedented sophistication. Chinese authorities justify high expenditures on public security by deploying the language of the War on Terror. One official recently made the hyperbolic claim that the crackdown is meant to prevent Xinjiang from becoming “China’s Syria.” Such rhetoric once earned China the tacit support of the United States and the United Nations, but international concern has increased following revelations of mass incarceration.

The PRC’s crackdown in Xinjiang has sent up to 1 million people into the camps, mostly Uyghurs and Kazakhs, and many more have been disappeared. While the majority of those detained or sentenced to reeducation are ordinary Uyghur men, some high-profile cases have emerged, including those of a prominent anthropologist and the “Uyghur Justin Bieber,” along with eyewitness testimony from former detainees and camp workers. Mounting evidence from official PRC documents and satellite imagery of prison camps confirm the program’s existence and suggest its scope and extent – and has been presented to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the United Nations.

Chinese representatives deny the allegations, claiming instead that many Uyghurs have been sent to vocational training schools or arrested for minor crimes. Coincidentally, many of the so-called vocational schools feature guard towers and razor wire, while the alleged crime rate has increased sharply: 21 percent of all arrests in China in 2017 were made in Xinjiang, which accounts for 1.5 percent of the nation’s population.

Nevertheless, the international response remains muted with political factors in play: Uyghurs, unlike Tibetans, have relatively low name recognition and little serious support abroad. For complex historical reasons, the Uyghur cause has largely been championed by conservative politicians or far-right groups with little chance of implementing policy. Those politicians often deploy the Uyghur issue cynically from an anti-China rather than pro-Uyghur position. Moreover, widespread awareness of the United States’ own prison-industrial complex that profits from mass incarceration reduces the credibility of American criticism.

Economic factors also discourage international outcry. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would seem to be a natural ally to the Turkic-speaking, mostly Sunni Uyghurs and once referred to the situation in East Turkestan as “genocide.” Instead, Turkey has strengthened economic ties with China through the Belt and Road Initiative. Other Muslim countries have been largely silent for similar reasons, prompting frustration among diaspora Uyghurs. Some in the diplomatic community indicate that simply raising the issue of Muslim rights is enough to end productive discussion with Chinese counterparts and thus preclude negotiations on trade or security.

Nevertheless, countries around the world can expect to host more Uyghur and Kazakh refugees in the near future as those abroad become aware of the consequences of returning to China, where any foreign contact is cause for suspicion. Germany ended Uyghur deportations to China this year, and others may follow suit—although such support is more than offset by extraditions from countries closer to China such as Thailand and Uzbekistan. Kazakhstanis are increasingly aware of imprisonment of their own citizens in Xinjiang, and testimony from a camp instructor suggested that many Chinese Kazakhs have fallen victim. All of this may contribute to popular resentment among China’s regional allies, if not actual policy change.

A Han Chinese activist once warned that “Xinjiang is a snapshot of China’s future,” in that the oppression of Islam would lead to more religious persecution elsewhere. A conflict recently arose over a mosque in Ningxia, where the religious institutions of the Hui – Chinese-speaking Muslims – were long thought to be safe from interference and even supported by the state. Just as China once assumed the time was ripe to curtail minority languages and culture in Xinjiang, so it seems to assume citizens will accept a general assault on Islam.

China may be overplaying its hand and missing the point: In Xinjiang, “Project Beauty” punishes Uyghur men and women for sporting veils, beards and long skirts and propagandizes dressing in a way the government considers harmlessly “ethnic” rather than “religious.” Similarly, officials in Ningxia have chosen to emphasize what is deemed “national” architecture over the community’s organic relationship to Islam. History has shown that being a Muslim and a loyal PRC citizen are hardly incompatible, but the leadership periodically demands assimilation. To understand why, one cannot discount the place of religion in Chinese theories of historical change. Many party officials and affiliated academics regard the elimination of religion as a necessary step in the accelerated integration of China’s minorities into a pan-Chinese identity and prosperous, modern state.

The PRC’s ethnic policies in Xinjiang have long produced the opposite of their stated intended effects and will continue to do so. Official corruption and workplace discrimination have long denied Uyghurs the economic benefits of resource extraction and development. The regional government has attempted to alleviate the pain of development with inconsistent and ham-handed efforts at cultural assimilation – a near-textbook example of how to create popular discontent and even encourage the anti-state Islamism that China has claimed to combat all along.

In another sense, Xinjiang is an extreme form of China’s emerging surveillance state. Citizens in East China, particularly those who live and work in massive factories, already experience similar techniques of discipline and surveillance, such as the use of biometric data to track citizens. Xinjiang Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, who first experimented with his “grid-style social management” system in Tibet, has demonstrated the continued efficacy of combining technological surveillance with forcing citizens to police one another. Such techniques could be deployed elsewhere, wherever the party-state desires control and the companies producing security technology seek profits.

In Xinjiang, the technological sophistication of the reeducation and surveillance system suggests to some observers that the party state may have finally created the secularized, Sinicized Uyghur population it has desired for decades. Some reports state that the reeducation program is slated to continue for 30 years, long enough to produce a generation steeped in Xi Jinping Thought. Reports that detainees’ children have been placed in orphanages recall the Soviet Union’s practice of placing well-trained wards of the state in leadership positions.

China will succeed if the international climate does not change quickly. The loss of credible US moral leadership and military power in Central Asia make it difficult for Uyghurs’ allies in the United States to intercede, although some may be speaking up precisely because they are not obliged to back up their words with actions. The prospects for change from within are dismal, and any domestic rebellion in Xinjiang would probably fail immediately. Meanwhile, as China adopts a superpower posture, its actions will create precedents, justified in terms of the PRC’s interpretation of human rights and insistence on discretion in “internal matters.” The outlook is grim.

*Eric Schluessel is Assistant Professor of Chinese History and Politics at the University of Montana and a current Mellon Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is the author of several articles on Xinjiang’s past and present.