A new study using antimicrobial susceptibility testing and whole genome sequencing to test extended spectrum beta lactamase (ESBL) producing E. coli isolated from cattle for food production and from various retail meat products has shown that all were resistant to at least three antimicrobial classes.

They also carried various types of CTX-M type ESBL genes, which are increasingly common in clinical patients worldwide and whose presence in food-producing animals and retail meat supplies might contribute to a greater incidence of infections. These findings are reported in Microbial Drug Resistance, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers.

Daniel Tadesse, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA, Laurel, MD) and colleagues from the FDA, Texas Tech University (Lubbock, TX), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA, Clay Center, NE) coauthored the article entitled “Whole Genome Sequence Analysis of CTX-M Containing Escherichia coli Isolates from Retail Meats and Cattle in the United States.” The ESBL E. coli isolates from meat samples, including chicken breast, ground turkey, ground beef, and pork chops, were collected by the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS). Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed against a panel of 14 antimicrobials and 9 ß-lactam agents.

“This interesting and well-documented paper by Daniel Tadesse and colleagues provides convincing and alarming evidence of the ‘arrival’ to the dining room table of meat products contaminated by multidrug resistant E. coli, “says Editor-in-Chief Alexander Tomasz, PhD, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY. “This paper brings ‘home’ the seriousness of the issue of antimicrobial drug resistance.”

A recent study from North Carolina State University finds that the tool most often used to assess the efficiency of nonprofit organizations isn’t just inaccurate – it can actually be negatively correlated with efficiency.

At issue is something called the overhead ratio, which is the amount of money a nonprofit organization spends on overhead – such as infrastructure, executive compensation and day-to-day management – relative to overall spending. Overhead spending does not include funding spent on implementing programs, such as program staff salaries.

The overhead ratio is important because it is used by many nonprofit rating sites, donors and nonprofit scholars to assess a nonprofit’s efficiency at using its resources to accomplish its organizational goals.

“But the overhead ratio doesn’t actually measure efficiency, for two reasons,” says Jason Coupet, an assistant professor of public administration at NC State and lead author of a paper on the study. “First, the overhead ratio doesn’t account for what organizations are actually doing with their resources. And second, the ratio doesn’t account for what organizations are accomplishing with their non-overhead spending.

“Some nonprofit researchers have raised concerns about the accuracy of overhead ratios as a means of assessing efficiency, but our work is the first to approach it using efficiency theory – and we were able to demonstrate the problem using real-world data,” Coupet says.

For this study, the researchers collected data on the overhead, programmatic and fundraising expenditures of 666 Habitat for Humanity affiliates around the country, as well as how many houses they were able to offer low-income home buyers.

To better understand the value of overhead ratio as a means of measuring efficiency, the researchers turned to two well-established tools for assessing efficiency: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). The tools rely on different techniques, but have been proven repeatedly to provide valid and reliable assessments of efficiency across multiple types of organizations.

The researchers used the Habitat for Humanity data to calculate the efficiency of each affiliate using DEA and SFA, as well as calculating each affiliate’s overhead ratio.

The researchers found that DEA and SFA efficiency scores were highly correlated. In other words, if one tool found that an affiliate was efficient, the other tool usually did too.

However, the overhead ratio was negatively correlated with both tools.

“In short, this demonstrates that not only is the overhead ratio bad at assessing efficiency, but also that using it to assess efficiency may actively mislead donors,” Coupet says.

“We’re hoping to work with the nonprofit sector to adopt more accurate efficiency assessment tools,” Coupet says. “That may be tricky, since many nonprofits have organizational goals that are difficult to quantify, but we’re optimistic that better tools can offer richer insights for many organizations. Ultimately, we want to help nonprofit organizations get the most out of their resources, and to identify those nonprofits that are actually operating efficiently.

“If nothing else, we hope people stop using overhead ratios as proxies for efficiency.”

In September 2015, the German automaker Volkswagen was found to have illegally cheated federal emissions tests in the United States, by intentionally programming emissions control devices to turn on only during laboratory testing. The devices enabled more than 11 million passenger vehicles to meet U.S. emissions standards in the laboratory despite producing emissions up to 40 times higher than the legal limit in real-world driving conditions.

Now a new MIT study reports that Volkswagen is not the only auto manufacturer to make diesel cars that produce vastly more emissions on the road than in laboratory tests. The study, published this month in Atmospheric Environment, finds that in Europe, 10 major auto manufacturers produced diesel cars, sold between 2000 and 2015, that generate up to 16 times more emissions on the road than in regulatory tests — a level that exceeds European limits but does not violate any EU laws.

What’s more, the researchers predict these excess emissions will have a significant health impact, causing approximately 2,700 premature deaths per year across Europe. These health effects, they found, are “transboundary,” meaning that diesel emissions produced in one country can adversely affect populations in other countries, thousands of kilometers away.

“You might imagine that where the excess emissions occur is where people might die early,” says study author Steven Barrett, the Raymond L. Bisplinghoff Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. “But instead we find that 70 percent of the total [health] impacts are transboundary. It suggests coordination is needed not at the country, but at the continental scale, to try to solve this problem of excess emissions.”

The 10 manufacturers’ excess emissions may not be a result of unlawful violations, as was the case with Volkswagen. Instead, the team writes that “permissive testing procedures at the EU level and defective emissions control strategies” may be to blame.

The researchers report a silver lining: If all 10 auto manufacturers were to improve their emissions control technologies to perform at the same level as the best manufacturer in the group, this would prevent up to 1,900 premature deaths per year.

“That’s pretty significant in terms of the number of premature mortalities that would be avoided,” Barrett says.

Barrett’s co-authors at MIT are Guillaume Chossière, Robert Malina (now at Hasselt University), Florian Allroggen, Sebastian Eastham, and Raymond Speth.

Tuning the knobs

The study focuses on emissions of nitrogen oxides, or NOx, a type of gas that is produced in diesel exhaust. When the gas gets oxidized and reacts with ammonia in the atmosphere, it forms fine particles and can travel for long distances before settling. When these particles are inhaled, they can lodge deep in the lungs, causing respiratory disease, asthma, and other pulmonary and cardiac conditions. Additionally NOx emissions cause the formation of ozone, a pollutant long associated with adverse health outcomes.

“There are many times the number of diesel cars in Europe compared to the U.S., partly because the EU started pushing diesel for environmental reasons, as it produces less carbon dioxide emissions compared with [gasoline],” Barrett says. “It’s a case where diesel has probably been beneficial in terms of climate impacts, but it’s come at the cost of human health.”

Recently, the EU started tightening its standards for diesel exhaust to reduce NOx emissions and their associated health effects. However, independent investigations have found that most diesel cars on the road do not meet the new emissions standards in real driving conditions.

“Initially manufacturers were able to genuinely meet regulations, but more recently it seems they’ve almost tweaked knobs to meet the regulations on paper, even if in reality that’s not reproduced on the road,” Barrett says. “And that’s not been illegal in Europe.”

Life exposure

In this study, Barrett and his colleagues quantified the health impacts in Europe of excess NOx emissions — emissions that were not accounted for in standard vehicle testing but are produced in actual driving conditions. They also estimated specific manufacturers’ contributions to the total health impacts related to the excess emissions.

The researchers considered 10 major auto manufacturers of diesel cars sold in Europe, for which lab and on-road emissions data were available: Volkswagen, Renault, Peugeot-Citroën, Fiat, Ford, General Motors, BMW, Daimler, Toyota, and Hyundai. Together, these groups represent more than 90 percent of the total number of diesel cars sold between 2000 and 2015, in 28 member states of the EU, along with Norway and Switzerland.

For each manufacturer, the team calculated the total amount of excess emissions produced by that manufacturer’s diesel car models, based on available emissions data from laboratory testing and independent on-road tests. They found that overall, diesel cars produce up to 16 times more NOx emissions on the road than in lab tests.

They then calculated the excess emissions associated with each manufacturer’s diesel car, by accounting for the number of those cars that were sold between 2000 and 2015, for each country in which those cars were sold.

The team used GEOS-Chem, a chemistry transport model that simulates the circulation of chemicals and particles through the atmosphere, to track where each manufacturer’s excess NOx emissions traveled over time. They then overlaid a population map of the EU onto the atmospheric model to identify specific populations that were most at risk of exposure to the excess NOx emissions.

Finally, the team consulted epidemiological work to relate various populations’ NOx exposure to their estimated health risk. The researchers considered four main populations in these calculations: adults with ischemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer.

Overall, they estimated that, each year, 2,700 people within these populations will lose at least a decade of their life due to exposure to excess NOx emissions from passenger cars. They broke this number down by manufacturer and found a wide spread of health impact contributions: Volkswagen, Renault, and General Motors produced diesel cars associated with the most yearly premature deaths, each numbering in the hundreds, while Toyota, Hyundai, and BMW were associated with fewer early deaths.

“The variation across manufacturers was more than a factor of five, which was much bigger than we expected,” Barrett says.

“There’s no safe level”

For each country, the team also compared the excess emissions that it produced itself, versus the number of premature deaths that its population incurred, and found virtually no relationship. That is, some countries, such as Poland and Switzerland, produced very little NOx emissions and yet experienced a disproportionate number of premature deaths from excess emissions originating in other countries.

Barrett says this transboundary effect may be due to the nature of NOx emissions. Unlike particulate matter spewed from smokestacks, such as soot, which mostly settles out in the local area, NOx is first emitted as a gas, which can be carried easily by the wind across thousands of kilometers, before reacting with ammonia to form particulates, a form of the chemical that can ultimately cause respiratory and cardiac problems.

“There’s almost no correlation between who drives [diesel cars] and who incurs the health disbenefits, because the impacts are so diffuse through all of Europe,” Barrett says.

The study ends with a final result: If all 10 manufacturers were to meet the on-road emissions performance of the best manufacturer in the group, this would avoid 1,900 premature deaths due to NOx exposure. But Barrett says ultimately, regulators and manufacturers will have to go even further to prevent emissions-associated mortalities.

“The solution is to eliminate NOx altogether,” Barrett says. “We know there are human health impacts right down to pre-industrial levels, so there’s no safe level. At this point in time, it’s not that we have to go back to [gasoline]. It’s more that electricification is the answer, and ultimately we do have to have zero emissions in cities.”

During this unique study from the Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey, led by Professor Derk-Jan Dijk, 36 participants skipped one night of sleep. During this 40-hour period of sleep deprivation, blood samples were taken and changes in the expression levels of thousands of genes were measured.

A machine learning algorithm identified a subset of 68 genes and with 92% accuracy could detect whether a sample was from a sleep-deprived or well-rested individual.

This breakthrough discovery paves the way for a future test which will be able to assess if a driver was sleep deprived. Previous research in this area from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has shown that drivers who get just one to two hours less than the recommended daily allowance in a 24-hour period nearly double their risk for a car crash.

Dr Emma Laing, Senior Lecturer in Bioinformatics at the University of Surrey, said: “We all know that insufficient sleep poses a significant risk to our physical and mental health, particularly over a period of time. However, it is difficult to independently assess how much sleep a person has had, making it difficult for the police to know if drivers were fit to drive, or for employers to know if staff are fit for work.”

Simon Archer, Professor of Molecular Biology of Sleep at the University of Surrey, said: “Identifying these biomarkers is the first step to developing a test which can accurately calculate how much sleep an individual has had. The very existence of such biomarkers in the blood after only a period of 24-hour wakefulness shows the physiological impact a lack of sleep can have on our body.”

Professor Derk-Jan Dijk, Director Surrey Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey, said: “This is a test for acute total sleep loss; the next step is to identify biomarkers for chronic insufficient sleep, which we know to be associated with adverse health outcomes.”

Pope Francis prayed that Lithuania become an example of defense of human rights in a gathering Sunday with former 20th-century freedom fighters, political prisoners, exiles and their families.

“May Lithuania become a beacon of hope,” the pope prayed. “May it become a land of memory and action, constantly committed to fighting all forms of injustice. May it promote creative efforts to defend the rights of all persons, especially the most defenseless and vulnerable.”

“And may Lithuania be for all a teacher in the way to reconcile and harmonize diversity.”

Sunday’s gathering took place at the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fighters, a former KGB headquarters in Vilnius, where Soviets detained and executed hundreds of people. The event mourned victims of Nazi and Soviet oppression in Lithuania and honored those who fought for human rights.

In his prayer, the pope reflected on Christ’s cry in the gospels; “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

“Your cry, O Lord, continues to resound,” the pope prayed. “It echoes within these walls that recall of the sufferings endured by so many sons and daughters of this people.”

“Lithuanians and those from other nations paid in their own flesh the price of the thirst for absolute power on the part of those who sought complete domination.”

The pope urged Lithuanians to remember their history, and to continue to fight against violations of human rights today.

“May that (Jesus’) cry encourage us not to succumb to the fashions of the day, to simplistic slogans, or to efforts to diminish or take away from any person the dignity you have given them,” he prayed.

“Lord, grant that we may not be deaf to the plea of all those who cry out to heaven in our own day.”

The pope’s meeting with former freedom fighters took place on the second day of his four-day trip to the Baltic states. During the gathering, Lithuanians read poems and performed songs from times of exile and Soviet repression.

Prior to his meeting with the freedom fighters, Pope Francis stopped to pray in Rudninku Square, where the historic Vilnius ghetto was located before its destruction 75 years ago. Lithuania had a Jewish population of about 208,000 before World War II. An estimated 95 percent of that population was killed in the Holocaust.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani pledged that the Islamic Republic will arrest and bring to justice all elements behind Saturday’s terrorist attack on a military ceremony in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, which killed at least 25 people and injured dozens more.

Speaking at the Mehrabad Airport on Sunday before leaving Tehran for New York, Rouhani pointed to the deadly terror attack on a military parade in Ahvaz, and said Iran will never forgive those behind this crime.

“It is clear to us which group has done this and on whom it is dependent,” he said, adding that those who repeatedly claim to defend human rights at international levels should be accountable.

Rouhani stressed that Iran has stood up against such huge crimes, adding that this crime will be responded within the framework of the law and the interests of the country and that all of those behind the incident will be arrested and punished.

During the military parade in Ahvaz, which was staged concurrently with nationwide military parades on Saturday to mark the Sacred Defense Week, Takfiri militants wearing disguise opened fire at the people participating in the ceremony.

The political deputy governor of Khuzestan Province, Ali Hossein Hosseinzadeh, put the latest death toll from the attack at 25, saying 60 others have been injured.

According to media reports, the Al-Ahvaziya terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Iran’s Armed Forces staged the countrywide military parades to mark the Sacred Defense Week on the 38th anniversary of the onset of the Iraqi imposed war on the Islamic Republic back in 1980.

By Menekse Tokyay

The partial transfer of control of the airspace over the de-escalation zone in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib from Moscow to Ankara is being discussed by the two sides, Russian sources said.

The aim is to enable Turkey to conduct an aerial campaign against Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which Ankara recently designated a terrorist organization.

A former Al-Qaeda affiliate, HTS is the strongest armed group in Idlib, the last stronghold of Syrian anti-government rebels.

In February, HTS claimed responsibility for the downing of a Russian warplane in Idlib using a surface-to-air missile.

Russia, Turkey and Iran are monitoring the de-escalation zone in the province as part of a trilateral agreement.

Turkey has set up observation posts in Idlib in a bid to prevent clashes between rebels and government forces.

“Discussions are ongoing about the details of this transfer (of airspace control). I guess it will be limited to the buffer zone in Idlib for now,” Yury Barmin, an analyst at the Russian International Affairs Council, told Arab News.

“If Russia is taking steps to allow Turkey to use Idlib’s airspace, it will give Turkey more room for maneuver in the region.”

But airstrikes by Ankara against HTS might create another refugee influx into Turkey, which already hosts more than 3 million Syrian refugees, Barmin said.

Idlib is home to more than 1 million displaced Syrians, and its population exceeds 3 million. Turkey is concerned that the creation of a humanitarian crisis near its border would further swell its own refugee population.

After a meeting on Sept. 17 between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the two countries agreed to create a de-militarized zone in Idlib by Oct. 15.

The deal requires that all radical groups, including HTS, withdraw from the area and that all heavy weapons be removed.

Russian and Turkish troops will conduct coordinated patrols to ensure that all armed groups respect the deal.

Emre Ersen, a Syria analyst at Marmara University in Istanbul, said a transfer of airspace control would mean that Ankara and Moscow are determined to implement their latest agreement regarding Idlib.

“Until now, Idlib’s airspace has been fully controlled by Russia, which weakened Turkey’s hand in trying to convince rebel groups in the region to abandon their arms,” he told Arab News.

Transferring airspace control “would give Ankara additional diplomatic leverage in its dealings with HTS,” he said.

“If Ankara fails to persuade HTS to comply with the Putin-Erdogan deal regarding Idlib, it’s almost certain that Russia and Syrian government forces will start a military operation in the region.”

So Turkey is sending a message to HTS that if carrots do not work, it has some sticks at its disposal, Ersen said.

By Andrew Hammond*

Donald Trump will make his second address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. There will be 140 other world leaders in attendance but the US president is likely to steal the show again, despite the growing disgruntlement with him at the supranational body.

The reason why most eyes are likely to be on Trump again this year is not just his speech on Tuesday, or the drugs policy summit he is hosting on Monday. Beyond this, Washington currently holds the chair of the Security Council, and remains by far the largest contributor to the UN budget.

With his speech on Tuesday, and his chance to chair a Security Council meeting on Wednesday, Trump will have significant agenda-setting power. Previous US presidents, including Barack Obama, have used this opportunity to push forward multilateral solutions. In 2015, Trump’s predecessor made a final pitch for a UN climate change agreement, which was finalized later in the year.

Trump, by contrast, has no major multilateral agendas to push. His big week in New York comes after a year in which Washington flagged its withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and from UNESCO, the UN’s educational and cultural agency; refused to sign the Global Compact for Migration; and made cutbacks to voluntary funding for the UN Population Fund.

While Trump was generally received politely last September, when he gave his first UN speech, there is now a growing backlash. In June, the International Organization for Migration rejected Ken Isaacs, Trump’s candidate to lead the agency, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres this month said: “I think the soft power of the United States… is being reduced.”

Yet the interaction with the UN is only one example of what many see as the Trump administration shooting itself in the foot on foreign policy. During Trump’s first 18 months in the White House, other key US decisions — including withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate treaty — have undermined goodwill from allies and damaged the standing of the country in the world. The president might yet regret this during the remainder of his time in office, given the range of international challenges he faces.

While the idea of soft power — the ability to achieve goals by attracting, engaging and co-opting others, rather than by coercing them — is sometimes misunderstood and criticized, history underlines the key role it has played as a means of obtaining outcomes that policy-makers have sought. For example, US administrations used soft power resources skillfully after World War II to encourage other countries to join a system of alliances, such as NATO, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the UN itself. The Cold War was subsequently won by a strategy of containment and cultural vigor.

Yet Trump seems set on a different course, and his apparent disdain of international treaties and organizations that do not bend to his will is provoking a backlash. A Pew Global opinion poll last year, for instance, found that about three-quarters of the thousands of people surveyed internationally had little or no confidence in his global leadership and policies.

At a time when Washington is facing a series of complex foreign policy challenges, the Trump team would benefit from more engaged, strong and supportive allies. This is true in their attempts to move forward with the president’s promised peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, to combat the continuing threat from international terrorism, and to tackle the range of threats posed by revisionist powers such as Russia.

Yet a key problem Trump faces is that, while he enjoys significant popularity in a small number of countries, including Israel, many of his policy ideas, and occasionally his wild rhetoric, threaten to provoke a new, broader spike in anti-US sentiment. The tragedy is that this could undercut much of the work that has been undertaken in the past decade to enhance US soft power, potentially creating a disabling, rather than enabling, environment for covert and overt cooperation and information-sharing with US officials.

When he took office in 2009, Obama was confronted by a situation in which anti-US sentiment was at about its highest level since at least the Vietnam War. The key factor driving this was the international unpopularity of the preceding Bush administration’s policies, not least the war in Iraq.

While Obama made much progress with his global public diplomacy efforts, the scale of the challenge he faced meant that he still left much to do for his successor.

It is in this context that Trump’s UN speech, and his first 18 months of foreign policy, is being judged by many internationally, with a large body of the global populace still nervous about what his presidency means.

*Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics

A possible boost in oil production was not discussed at a recent meeting between OPEC and other major oil producing nations, following earlier demands by US President Donald Trump that oil output be increased to bring prices down.

Hosted in Algiers, Sunday’s meeting was a gathering of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) of members from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC oil producing countries, including Russia.

When asked if they discussed the further boost in production, Oman’s Oil and Gas Minister Mohammed Rumhi abruptly told reporters “No” after the meeting.

Instead, the meeting agreed to stick to the previously agreed output, with Kuwait’s Oil Minister Bakheet Rashidi saying the JMMC will fully conform with the Vienna deal, at least until the next meeting in November and December.

“We agreed to target 100 percent conformity for the next coming two months until we meet again at the next JMMC,” Rashidi said.

Agreed in June of this year, the Vienna deal saw major oil producers agree to boost crude oil output by one million barrels-per-day, as part of a compromise deal to ease oil prices and tackle supply issues caused by a fall in output from Iran and Venezuela.

Trump however, wants output increased by as much as two million barrels per day, as oil prices continue to rise in the US amid high consumer demand.

Iran is expected to lose some 1.4 million barrels-per-day of supply as US sanctions go into force November 5, while Venezuela and Libya also present supply risks, pushing up cost, according to market analytics firm S&P Global.

This week Trump labeled OPEC a “monopoly” on Twitter, accusing the organization of wanting to push oil prices “higher and higher.” He also took the opportunity to remind Middle East allies that they would “not be safe for very long” without US protection.

Rather than OPEC controlling prices, analysts have instead blamed Trump’s latest round of sanctions on OPEC-member Iran for driving up the price, as supply from Tehran decreased.

Ahead of Sunday’s meeting, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al Falih maintained, while speaking to reporters, that the “markets are adequately supplied,” insisting that OPEC does not control oil prices.

Falih added that, to justify an increase of two million barrels-per-day, demand would need to increase by 1.5 million per day, something he didn’t think was likely.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said that no immediate output increase was necessary but that Russian production could be increased by several hundred thousand barrels per day, if needed.

(RFE/RL) — Norwegian authorities say they have detained a Russian citizen on suspicion of illegal intelligence activities.

The Norwegian News Agency (NTB) reported on September 23 that the man was detained at Gardermoen airport outside the capital, Oslo, on September 21.

NTB said the man, whose name has not been disclosed, was placed in custody after a hearing at Oslo district court on September 22.

He would be held for two weeks due to the risk of destruction of evidence, NTB quoted a spokesman for the Norwegian Police Security Service as saying.

The man is suspected of conducting illegal intelligence work after attending a seminar on digitalization at the Norwegian parliament.

In December, Russia said it had detained a Norwegian man on suspicion of spying after he allegedly received classified documents from a Russian man who is also under arrest.

Russia has imprisoned several people from neighboring countries including Estonia, Lithuania, and Ukraine on espionage charges, with tension rising over Moscow’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 and involvement in a war against Kyiv’s forces in eastern Ukraine.

Kremlin critics say Russia uses spy claims as a tool in geopolitical competition.

Millennials (and their younger siblings, generation Z’s) are the largest, most diverse and progressive group of potential voters in American history, comprising fully 30 percent of the voting age population.

On November 6th, they’ll have the power to alter the course of American politics – flipping Congress, changing the leadership of states and cities, making lawmakers act and look more like the people who are literally the nation’s future.

But will they vote?

In the last midterm election, in 2014, only 16 percent of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 29 bothered.

In midterms over the last two decades, turnout by young people has averaged about 38 points below the turnout rate of people 60 and older. Which has given older voters a huge say over where the nation is likely to be by the time those younger people reach middle age and the older voters have passed on.

I’m not criticizing younger non-voters. They have a lot on their minds – starting jobs, careers, families. Voting isn’t likely to be high on their list of priorities.

Also, unlike their grand parents – boomers who were involved in civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, the anti-Vietnam War movement – most young people today don’t remember a time when political action changed America for the better.

They’re more likely to remember political failures and scandals – George W. Bush lying about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction; Bill Clinton lying about Monica; both parties bailing out Wall Street without so much as a single executive going to jail.

Most don’t even recall when American democracy worked well. They don’t recall the Cold War, when democracy as an ideal worth fighting for. The Berlin Wall came down before they were born.

Instead, during their lives they’ve watched big money take over Washington and state capitals. Which may explain why only about 30 percent of Americans born in the 1980s think it “essential” to live in a democracy.

Many young people have wondered if their votes count anyway, because so many of them live in congressional districts and states that are predictably red or blue.

Given all this, is there any reason to hope that this huge, diverse, progressive cohort of Americans will vote in the upcoming midterms?

My answer is, yes.

First, the issues up for grabs aren’t ideological abstractions for them. They’re causes in which Millennials have direct personal stakes.

Take, for example, gun violence – which some of these young people have experienced first-hand and have taken active roles trying to stop.

Or immigrant’s rights. Over 20 percent of Millennials are Latino, and a growing percent are from families that emigrated from Asia. Many have directly experienced the consequences of Trump’s policies.

A woman’s right to choose whether to have a baby, and gay’s or lesbian’s rights to choose marriage – issues Millennials are also deeply committed to – will be front and center if the Supreme Court puts them back into the hands of Congress and state legislatures.

Millennials are also concerned about student debt, access to college, and opportunities to get ahead unimpeded by racial bigotry or sexual harassment.

And they’re worried about the environment. They know climate change will hit them hardest since they’ll be on the planet longer than older voters.

They’ve also learned that their votes count. They saw Hillary lose by a relative handful of votes in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

They’ve been witnessing razor-thin special elections, such as Conor Lamb’s win by a few hundred votes in the heart of Pennsylvania Trump country, and Hiral Tipirneni’s single-digit loss in an Arizona district Trump won by 21 points in 2016.

They know the importance of taking back governorships in what are expected to be nail-bitingly close races – in states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Kansas. They’re aware of the slim but increasingly real possibility of taking back the Senate. (Who knew Ted Cruz would be so vulnerable? Who even knew the name Beto O’Rourke?)

As doubtful as they these young people are about politics, or the differences between the two parties, they also know that Trump and his Republican enablers want to take the nation backwards to an old, white, privileged, isolated America. Most of them don’t.

In my thirty-five years of teaching college students, I’ve not encountered a generation as dedicated to making the nation better as this one.

So my betting is on them, this November 6th.

An attack on a military parade in the southern Iranian city of Ahwaz is likely to prompt Iranian retaliation against opposition groups at home and abroad. It also deepens Iranian fears that the United States. Saudi Arabia and others may seek to destabilize the country by instigating unrest among its ethnic minorities.

With competing claims of responsibility by the Islamic State and the Ahvaz National Resistance for the attack that killed 29 people and wounded 70 others in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, which borders on Iraq and is home to Iran’s ethnic Arab community, it is hard to determine with certainty the affiliation of the four perpetrators, all of whom were killed in the incident.

Statements by Iranian officials, however, accusing the United States and its allies, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel, suggest that they see the Ahvaz group rather than the Islamic State as responsible for the incident, the worst since the Islamic State attacked the Iranian parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran in 2017.

Iran’s summoning, in the wake of the attack, of the ambassadors of Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark, countries from which Iranian opposition groups operate, comes at an awkward moment for Tehran.

It complicates Iranian efforts to ensure that European measures effectively neutralize potentially crippling US sanctions that are being imposed as a result of the US withdrawal in May from the 2015 international agreement that curbed the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.

Ahvaz-related violence last year spilled on to the street of The Hague when unidentified gunmen killed Ahwazi activist Ahmad Mola Nissi. Mr. Nissi was shot dead days before he was scheduled to launch a Saudi-funded television station staffed with Saudi-trained personnel that would target Khuzestan, according to Ahvazi activists.

This week, a group of exile Iranian academics and political activists, led by The Hague-based social scientist Damon Golriz, announced the creation of a group that intends to campaign for a liberal democracy in Iran under the auspices of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the ousted Shah of Iran who lives in the United States.

While Iran appears to be targeting exile groups in the wake of the Ahvaz attack, Iran itself has witnessed in recent years stepped up activity by various insurgent groups amid indications of Saudi support, leading to repeated clashes and interception of Kurdish, Baloch and other ethnic insurgents.

Last month, Azeri and Iranian Arab protests erupted in soccer stadiums while the country’s Revolutionary Guards Corps reported clashes with Iraq-based Iranian Kurdish insurgents.

State-run television warned at the time in a primetime broadcast that foreign agents could turn legitimate protests stemming from domestic anger at the government’s mismanagement of the economy and corruption into “incendiary calls for regime change” by inciting violence that would provoke a crackdown by security forces and give the United States fodder to tackle Iran.

The People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran or Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), a controversial exiled opposition group that enjoys the support of serving and former Western officials, including some in the Trump administration, as well as prominent Saudis such as Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief, who is believed to be close to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has taken credit for a number of the protests in Khuzestan.

The incidents fit an emerging pattern, prompting suggestions that if a Gulf-backed group was responsible for this weekend’s attack, it may have been designed to provoke a more direct confrontation between Iran and the United States.

“If the terrorist attack in Ahvaz was part of a larger Saudi and UAE escalation in Iran, their goal is likely to goad Iran to retaliate and then use Tehran’s reaction to spark a larger war and force the US to enter since Riyadh and Abu Dhabi likely cannot take on Iran militarily alone… If so, the terrorist attack is as much about trapping Iran into war as it is to trap the US into a war of choice,” said Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council.

Iran appears with its response to the Ahvaz attack to be saying that its fears of US and Saudi destabilization efforts are becoming reality. The Iranian view is not wholly unfounded.

Speaking in a private capacity on the same day as the attack in Ahvaz, US President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, declared that US. sanctions were causing economic pain that could lead to a “successful revolution” in Iran.

“I don’t know when we’re going to overthrow them. It could be in a few days, months, a couple of years. But it’s going to happen,” Mr. Giuliani told an audience gathered in New York for an Iran Uprising Summit organized by the Organization of Iranian-American Communities, a Washington-based group associated with the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq.

Mr. Giuliani is together with John Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security advisor, a long-standing supporter of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq that calls for the violent overthrow of the Iranian regime.

Mr. Bolton, last year before assuming office, drafted at the request of Mr. Trump’s then strategic advisor, Steve Bannon, a plan that envisioned US support “for the democratic Iranian opposition,” “Kurdish national aspirations in Iran, Iraq and Syria,” and assistance for Iranian Arabs in Khuzestan and Baloch in the Pakistani province of Balochistan and Iran’s neighbouring Sistan and Balochistan province.

The Trump administration has officially shied away from formally endorsing the goal of toppling the regime in Tehran. Mr. Bolton, since becoming national security advisor, has insisted that US policy was to put “unprecedented pressure” on Iran to change its behaviour”, not its regime.

Messrs. Bolton and Giuliani’s inclination towards regime change is, however, shared by several US allies in the Middle East, and circumstantial evidence suggests that their views may be seeping into US policy moves without it being officially acknowledged.

Moreover, Saudi support for confrontation with Iran precedes Mr. Trump’s coming to office but has intensified since, in part as a result of King Salman’s ascendance to the Saudi throne in 2015 and the rise of his son, Prince Mohammed.

Already a decade ago, Saudi Arabia’s then King Abdullah urged the United States to “cut off the head of the snake” by launching military strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

Writing in 2012 in Asharq Al Awsat, a Saudi newspaper, Amal Al-Hazzani, an academic, asserted in an op-ed entitled “The oppressed Arab district of al-Ahwaz“ that Khuzestan “is an Arab territory… Its Arab residents have been facing continual repression ever since the Persian state assumed control of the region in 1925… It is imperative that the Arabs take up the al-Ahwaz cause, at least from the humanitarian perspective.”

More recently, Prince Mohammed vowed that “we won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia. Instead, we will work so that the battle is for them in Iran.”

Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a prominent UAE scholar, who is believed to be close to Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, played into Iranian assertions of Gulf involvement in this weekend’s attack by tweeting that it wasn’t a terrorist incident.

Mr. Abdulla suggested that “moving the battle to the Iranian side is a declared option” and that the number of such attacks “will increase during the next phase”.

A Saudi think tank, believed to be backed by Prince Mohammed last year called in a study for Saudi support for a low-level Baloch insurgency in Iran. Prince Mohammed vowed around the same time that “we will work so that the battle is for them in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia.”

Pakistani militants have claimed that Saudi Arabia has stepped up funding of militant madrassas or religious seminaries in Balochistan that allegedly serve as havens for anti-Iranian fighters.

The head of the US State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs, Steven Fagin, met in Washington in June with Mustafa Hijri, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), before assuming his new post as counsel general in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The KDPI has recently stepped up its attacks in Iranian Kurdistan, killing nine people weeks before Mr. Hijri’s meeting with Mr. Fagin. Other Kurdish groups have reported similar attacks. Several Iranian Kurdish groups are discussing ways to coordinate efforts to confront the Iranian regime.

Similarly, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) last year appointed a seasoned covert operations officer as head of its Iran operations.

Said Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Khalid bin Salman, Prince Mohammed’s brother: President “Trump makes clear that we will not approach Iran with the sort of appeasement policies that failed so miserably to halt Nazi Germany’s rise to power, or avert the costliest war ever waged.”

Putin’s Russia is “a land of imitations,” one that is neither imperial nor clerical nor traditionalist nor national but rather a “privatized” version of the Soviet system whose goal – the enrichment of the elite – is something that precludes any of those things and that it cannot admit openly, according to Dimitry Savvin.

The editor of the Riga-based Harbin portal says that Russia today is “not a living political thing but a collection of manikins, cadavers and imitations” whose supporters and opponents are both willing to take for something else because doing so is useful for both of them (harbin.lv/strana-imitatsiy).

“We hear so often that Putin’s Russian Federation is conducting ‘an imperial policy’ and has ‘imperial ambitions’ that we somehow even forget to ask: what in fact is an Empire?” Or we are told that it is a budding nation state without enquiring as to what that would require it to become, Savvin says.

Those who view Russia today as an empire assume that centralization and the suppression of national and religious minorities makes it one, forgetting that empires are universalistic in their goals. And those who say it is a nation state in waiting ignore the fact that nation states in contrast are always specifically local rather than universal in orientation.

“If for an Empire, striving for the synthesis of various traditions, cultures and even religions is natural,” the Riga-based Russian analyst continues, “then a nation state is directed at the opposite, at the defense and development of its own ethnic, cultural and religious identity.” But Russia now is not the one or the other.

“The Soviet Union was an empire … filled with anti-human and unnatural content. Its demise theoretically should have led to the formation of new nation states – and this occurred for example in the Baltic countries,” Savvin says. “However, for most of the former USSR, it didn’t happen.”

The reason is simple and was predicted in 1935 by émigré philosopher Ivan Solonevich in his book, Russia in a Concentration Camp. In that work, Solonevich argued that the Soviet system had created in the Soviet nomenklatura “a quasi-elite” that, in the event the USSR collapsed, would nonetheless have enough power to maintain control for itself.

That is exactly what happened in the Russian Federation after 1991. “The nomenklatura quasi elite and state apparatus, not having suffered serious losses and maintaining control in the political system and economy,” remained true to their Soviet origins in terms of methods but changed their goals for imperial outreach to personal enrichment.

They began sometimes consciously and sometimes not “but always consistently” to restore the practice and institutions” of the USSR which “in the end led to the final formation of the neo-Soviet system under Putin,” one in which power was deployed in much the same way but to new ends.

This development created serious ideological problems for the regime. Under the Soviets, the quasi-elite extracted resources from the population to promote world revolution. But after 1991, this same elite continued to extract resources but not for a new empire but for their own wealth.

“In essence,” Savvin says, “this nomenklatura-oligarchic corporation was transformed into internal colonizers like the British East India company,” but with this difference: “The latter never concealed that it was a private commercial enterprise involved in making money” for its owners.

“For understandable reasons,” he continues, “the neo-Soviet regime of the Russian Federation could not openly acknowledge that. But it also couldn’t and didn’t want to return to classical bolshevism with its struggle for world rule;” and it was equally incapable of promoting Russian nationalism because that “obviously contradicted the interests of the quasi-elite.”

But the vacuum had to be filled, and it has been, not with something real but rather with “virtual” things which have taken the form of “a parade of imitations.” Putin promoted the cult of victory in World War II as the basis of state ideology, something that suggested he was in fact interested in Soviet-type goals.

However, he wasn’t able to articulate an imperial ideology and so put out “various imitations” of that. “Why imitations?” Savvin asks rhetorically. Because such an ideology would require the quasi-elite to make sacrifices it was and is not prepared to make. Fake imperialism for this elite is fine; real imperialism is not.

But this imperialism fooled many in the West or, worse, led them to act as if they took it seriously, the Russian analyst says. For Russians, it gave them a feeling of renewed power; and for many in the West, it provided the comforting notion that Russia hadn’t changed, something some were pleased and others horrified by.

This would all be very amusing were it not for one thing, Savvin says. It means that the West is not aware of what is actually happening and that it will not respond correctly when the Putin system weakens. Instead, it will assume it is fighting imperialism or nationalism rather than the nomenklatura-oligarchic-quasi-elite.

And it will again as was the case in the early 1990s accept the reassurance of this elite that it is against both these things and thus end by supporting the same old rulers and attacking everyone else rather than recognizing that these rulers themselves are the problem that must be addressed and removed.

But even before the Moscow-centered state fails, this lack of understanding in the West will have extremely negative consequences for Russia by allowing this elite to continue its thievery and for “many neighboring countries” who will suffer attack as the Moscow quasi-elite tries to put on a virtual show for both its own people and the West – while hiding its own crimes.

Failed state institutions are byproducts of civil wars when governments undergo legitimacy crises and various dissident groups compete for power and legitimacy leading to absence of law and order in large swathes of territory and particularly the border areas flagrantly lacking governments’ writ are likely to be more infested with radical elements. Anarchy is further compounded by collapse of economy and failure of basic social services like education and health. Rise of a radicalized environment has been conducive to growth of terrorism as evidenced in Iraq and Afghanistan and in a host of African countries like Libya, Somalia and Mali.

Great powers selectively intervene in cases of humanitarian crisis which is largely motivated by their respective geostrategic interests. Rwanda, an African state, was left to its fate for long despite cases of serious human rights violations while Kosovo in Europe quickly attracted the attention of the west. Similarly, it was the 9/11 that propelled the US to intervene in Afghanistan but for long the country was ripped apart by civil war and human rights violations by the fundamentalist Taliban regime.

The US considered the Taliban a stabilizing force to ensure its geostrategic interests by assisting in laying down the alternative Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) pipeline bypassing Iran and Russia. It was when the Taliban moved away from the American orbit of influence that the US decided to intervene in Afghanistan. Humanitarian concerns very often provided a veneer to real geostrategic interests driving humanitarian interventions. The intervening powers’ lack of interests in post-conflict state-building exercises and failure to address the roots of insurgency in societies divided along sectarian lines keep tensions boiling on which radical religious groups such as the Taliban germinated and spread their tentacles and the wars led by the intervening powers only transformed the rebellion without actually ending them.

Rise and Resilience of the Taliban

Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US lost interest in Afghanistan (L. P. Goodson, Afghanistan’s Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban, University of Washington Press, Washington, 2001, p. 147). It was more interested in the Gulf War to set the tone of a New World Order than the crisis- ridden Afghanistan for which the superpowers were largely responsible. In this set up, regional powers like Iran, Pakistan and Uzbekistan began to pursue their interests without being client to any bigger power.

Pakistan, in this period, was deserted by the US with aid being withdrawn and sanctions being imposed for undertaking nuclear programme (Former President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf writes about the sense of anti-American feelings generated by the US’s abandonment of Pakistan after Soviet Withdrawal. See Pervez Musharraf, In the line of fire: A memoir, fp free press, New York, 2006, p. 222. Also see, Marvin G. Weinbaum, “Pakistan and Afghanistan: The Strategic Relationship”, Asian Survey, Vol. 31, No. 6, June 1991, p.509). Infighting between the various resistance forces in Afghanistan allowed the communists to remain in power till 1992. Mohammad Najibullah was the last communist to step down in favour of a mujahideen coalition led by Sibgatullah Mujadedi.

But the mujahideen coalition could not remain in power for long and was soon ripped apart by brutal factional struggles. An uncertain phase of civil war ensued characterized by fight for personal power bringing most part of Afghanistan under local commanders and warlords. Kabul was seized by the Tajik dominated Jamiat-e-Islami of Barhuddin Rabbani and his commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud. During the civil war, Pakistan rendered all kinds of support to Hekmetyar but he failed to capture power despite repeated attempts and the disastrous toll on the people that he exacted by indiscriminate rocket and artillery barrages. Heavy fighting ensued between different ethnic factions like Tajik dominated Jamiat-e-Islami, Pushtun dominated Hizb-e-Islami, the Hazara dominated Hiz-e-Wahdat and Uzbek dominated Jowzjan militia in the absence of any predominant external power in the region.

The Jamiat-e-Islami (JUI), an Islamic organisation in Pakistan which turned into a political party later, organised the rural madrassahs in the Pashtun tribal areas in Afghanistan and the network of madrassahs in Pakistan, where millions of Afghans took refuge after the communist coup in Afghanistan in 1978. After becoming a political party the JUI remained in political opposition to the governments elected after President Zia’s death in 1988. After the 1993 elections, however, it became a part of coalition government of Benazir Bhutto, and its leader, Fazlur Rehman, played a pivotal role in his advocacy of the Taliban. Bhutto also retained the services of Zia’s appointee as head of the ISI, General Hamid Gul, who favoured a more interventionist role for Pakistan in Afghan affairs.

Post-9/11 and state and nation-building in Afghanistan

To conduct the Afghan War, the American forces confined their activity to a high-technologically driven military role while the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission was portrayed as post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction. Between 2001 and 2005, the US spent eleven times more on military operations in Afghanistan than it did on reconstruction, humanitarian aid, economic assistance and the training of Afghan security forces combined (T. Bird and A. Marshall, Afghanistan: How the West lost its Way, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2011, p. 134). James Dobbins maintained that the inadequate resources especially in Afghanistan “represented both an exaggerated confidence in the efficacy of high-tech warfare” and “an aversion to the whole concept of nation-building” (J. Dobbins, “The Costs of Overreaction”, in Brian Michael Jenkins and John Paul Godges, (eds.), The Long Shadow of 9/11: America’s response to Terrorism, Rand corporation, Pittsburgh, 2011, p. 17).

According to Munoz, the paltry investment of the US resources in Afghanistan was only one reason for the American mission stalling there. Another reason was the way those resources were applied. He argues: “Instead of honoring Afghan terms of peace, utilizing village institutions to maintain security, and training Afghans to do most of their own fighting and rebuilding…, the US and NATO tried to impose Western ways of doing things” (Munoz, “A Long-Overdue Adaptation to the Afghan Environment” in Brian Michael Jenkins and John Paul Godges, (eds.), The Long Shadow of 9/11: America’s response to Terrorism, Rand corporation, Pittsburgh, 2011, pp. 23-24). The US applied a top down approach to ensure security and socio-economic development in Afghanistan. On the security front, this has meant building the Afghan National Security Forces – consisting of the Afghan National Army, Afghan National Army Air Corps, Afghan National Police, and Afghan Border Police – as the bulwarks against the Taliban and other insurgent groups. On the economic and development fronts, this has meant improving the central government’s ability to deliver services to the population.

But “there were few efforts to engage Afghanistan’s tribes, sub-tribes, clans, and other local institutions,” laments Seth Jones, who worked closely with US Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan (For details see S. G. Jones, “Lessons from the Tribal Areas”, in Brian Michael Jenkins and John Paul Godges, (eds.), The Long Shadow of 9/11: America’s response to Terrorism, Rand corporation, Pittsburgh, 2011, pp. 37-45).

The US dependence on Afghan warlords militated against the idea of peaceful and democratic Afghanistan. The warlords practiced no less violence than the Taliban. They used the American military and economic assistance for consolidating their role in different pockets of Afghanistan. The intelligence provided by the warlords to the US was based more on their desire to sort out personal feuds with other warlords than to give authentic information about al Qaeda and Taliban hideouts. Instead of creating an independent Afghan National Army, it was suggested at the Bonn conference that the Afghan National Army (ANA) be recruited from these militias (See for details Sam Zia-Zarifi, “Losing Peace in Afghanistan”, Human Rights Watch, World Report 2004).

The intervening power’s military-driven foreign policy was explicit in the reports pointing to Afghan detainees being tortured in Bagram and other US detention centres. An article in the Guardian (UK) stated that in Bagram and eighteen other US detention centres and firebases around Afghanistan, Afghan detainees were regularly tortured (D. Campbell and S. Goldberg, “US tortured Afghanistan Detainees”, Guardian, June 23, 2004). While successful nation-building process requires patience and perseverance American-led troops seemed to lack these qualities. There was an instance where copies of Koran were found to be burned by US troops and in another instance, a US soldier recklessly opened fire and killed many civilians in a village near Kandahar (Praveen Swami, “Afghanistan as “Lost Cause”, The Hindu, March 20, 2012).

Apart from these cases, many civilians kept losing their lives by American-led forces as a collateral damage to the war against the Taliban. While the Obama Administration channelized more security and economic aid to bolster Pakistan to fight terrorism under the Af-Pak strategy, Afghan state institutions remained weak and relied predominantly on American troops and air power to deal with the rising menace of insurgency and the Trump Administration raised the possibilities of escalation of conflicts and more devastations in Afghanistan – as the insurgents could not be neatly identified and separated from civilians- by taking a coercive gesture in the beginning.

Although the incumbent Administration in the US was seen shifting its stance by opening up space for direct talks with the Taliban, the resilience of the militant group with its farfetched demands and the geopolitical and security concerns of the US are likely to be at odds raising the possibilities of more conflicts. In most cases, the intervening powers are likely to lose legitimacy given the operational complexities in target-countries and this happened to the American-led mission whose legitimacy gradually eroded and the Taliban have been able to receive tacit support from certain sections among affected people. The more the US-led mission would be away from Afghans, the more will be the possibility that the Taliban would be treated as a home-grown movement than propped up outside.

I figured  out why Republicans have become Democrats and are allowing the State Department to still be run by the Obama administration. To spite the Russians. For all the hate that each party has for each other, they hate the Russians more. Spite drives Washington D.C.

The ultimate goal of US foreign policy is to increase US imperialism (while ignoring the world decrying it) and, as icing on the cake, anger the “big, bad Russians.”

The latest ploy (and Macedonia is the toy) is to get Macedonia into NATO. Why not get a country that doesn’t need it and can’t afford it into an obsolete organization that should’ve died alongside the Soviet Union, yet only exists to fulfill the goals mentioned above?

The brutal side effect in this case (and there always is one when it comes to American foreign policy) is that Macedonia is being forced to change its name, identity, language, ethnicity and history in order to appease its biggest oppressor, Greece, so that Greece lifts its veto and “allows” Macedonia to get NATO membership.

The Republic of Macedonia’s new…everything, would be “North Macedonia” and “Northern Macedonian” and this changes the very definition of “Macedonian”. Of course, eradicating an ethnic group’s name and identity constitutes genocide and violates international law and human rights conventions, but this won’t stop the United States – the self-proclaimed and brutally ironic “greatest democracy in the world”.

And we are not just talking about the Republic of Macedonia being wiped out. The West, in its infinite racism, partitioned all of Macedonia in 1913 and handed pieces to Serbia/Yugoslavia (now the independent Republic of Macedonia), Bulgaria, Greece and later, Albania. The redefining of an age-old nationality plays right into the handbook of all of our oppressors – to eradicate our existence. Macedonians everywhere, with international support, who have been fighting Greek, Bulgarian, Albanian and Serbian oppression are now by being hung out to dry (with our ethnicity to die) all because the United States values NATO over human decency and democracy.

And let’s not forget – what the United States wants, the United States gets. Despite resistance, if any, from the international community.

Of course, a simple solution to satisfy the United States’ obsession with NATO enlargement while actually RESPECTING an entire people’s right to exist is to remove the one-country veto rule in NATO, something that even George Bush suggested. Donald Trump, are you going to allow George Bush to be your voice of reason?

Now, if changing NATO rules requires too much effort for this incompetent US administration, the US could easily direct (order) Greece to refrain from using its veto power as it would if say, Montenegro, were to threaten to veto a potential NATO member.

If only Donald Trump would notice – anything, he would put an immediate end to this debacle, even if it were only to save his best friend/boss Vladimir Putin from watching NATO gain another member-state.

God forbid (and remember that God apparently watches over Republicans) that Trump acts like a real president and institutes his own foreign policy as I called for after Trump took office in this op-ed in The Hill. The reasons range from common sense, respect for human rights and international law, the saving of millions of US-taxpayer dollars by ending the implementation of a Soros-run government in Macedonia, and spite – something that Trump should have eaten up like yet another Big Mac.

But since Trump is incapable and unwilling to act, can the Republicans who claim to be Trump’s “voice of reason” (or better yet, the anonymous New York Times Republican who claims to have Trump on a leash), implement their OWN foreign policy and save a country as a side effect? As opposed to typical US foreign policy which destroys countries as a main objective.

I wondered when Democrats became Republicans in this Hill op-ed when I blasted their foreign-interventionist policy that is destroying Macedonia. But it is now, ironically, the Republican-like Democratic foreign policy that the Republicans are enabling and executing. If that didn’t make you dizzy…

And this is the vicious cycle that drives US foreign policy. Macedonia is stuck right in the middle of it and going around and around like a carnival ride. But instead of waiting for Trump or any US politician to gain a conscience and act, the vicious cycle ends if the object in it stops moving. Macedonia – STOP. Stop allowing yourself to be a pawn in the United States’ twisted foreign policy game of Risk. But in this case, and as I explained in The Game of Macedonia, Macedonia owns this game and can choose to stop playing at any time.

So, Macedonian politicians, will you finally defend Macedonia, human rights and common sense and end this name change catastrophe? Defend yourselves and the world will defend you, instead of being yet another American doormat and a living example of the Seinfeld episode where the angry Ukrainian yells at Kramer and Newman: “You think Ukraine is weak?! Ukraine is game to you?!” Substitute “Ukraine” with “Macedonia” and Seinfeld would’ve hit the nail on the head.

And finally. With one last homage to Seinfeld (he should’ve been President). Will the Republican Party do what it’s best at and, based purely out of spite, return the US State Department’s policy to one that is not anti-Macedonian?

*Bill Nicholov, President, Macedonian Human Rights Movement International

In the aftermath of the bloody terrorist attack in the southern Iranian city of Ahvaz, Iranian authorities have pointed the blame at Saudi Arabia, UAE and their “American masters.” The attack, which killed and injured dozens of civilians and soldiers at a military parade, has been swiftly condemned by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, as well as by Iran’s neighbors such as Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait.

Yet, a clue to the bitter divisions in Persian Gulf, while Saudi Arabia has remained ominously quiet, its allies in UAE have been barely able to hide their joy and an adviser to the crown prince has even backed the attackers in his tweets, without receiving any official backlash, as a result of which the UAE ambassador to Iran has been summoned to the foreign ministry for questioning. Clearly, UAE leaders, whose hands are bloodied in Yemen and are frustrated about the quagmire there, which they blame on Iran’s support for the Houthis, have now crossed the line and, chances are, Iran’s promised revenge will target them.

Coinciding with the attack was a high-profile meeting of the Iran opposition group known as the MEK, which sided with Iran’s enemies during the Iran-Iraq war and is therefore discredited in Iran, featuring President Trump’s personal lawyer, former New York mayor Rudi Giuliani, who gave an incendiary talk and promised “we will overthrow” the Iranian government, this at a time when the other Trump officials including ambassador Nikki Haley in her latest TV interviews have repeatedly claimed (falsely of course) that their intention in Iran is not regime change.

The US Department of State has issued a terse response to the Ahvaz terrorist attack and lectured Tehran to focus on safeguarding the citizens at home! Naturally, Iran has been fuming at the bullying and arrogant Americans who nowadays openly boast of “suffocating” Iranians and “busting up” their economy, and have the audacity to call for a Security Council meeting on Iran’s “violation of international law” while trashing the UN Security Council resolution on Iran’s nuclear accord by unilaterally exiting the Iran deal and re-imposing the Iran sanctions, despite the opposition of other signatories to the deal.

Notwithstanding the above-said, the timing of the Ahvaz attack on the eve of the UN gathering in New York deserves close scrutiny. The attack came a day after the publication in Washington Post of an article by President Rouhani stating Iran’s readiness for dialogue, asking if Trump is ready? This article was the clearest indication that Iran was on the verge of accepting an offer to meet the US president on the sideline of the UN summit, in light of Trump’s earlier offer of talk without preconditions.

As this author has stated in a recent oped article in the New York Times, the US and Iran share a number of interests in the region warranting a dialogue. Apparently, the Washington hawks and their Israeli and Saudi allies thirsting for war with Iran have been disquieted by the possibility of a Trump-Rouhani talk and the Ahvaz attack may be timed to torpedo this possibility. As a direct result of the bloodshed in Ahvaz, President Rouhani would be taking huge political risks at home now if he dares to meet Trump. The public mood in Iran is now very angry and revengeful and not in sink with the dictates of persuasive diplomacy.

On the other hand, Iran should not allow the sinister objectives of Iran’s enemies to prevail, which in turn raises the question of what direction Iran’s diplomacy will take next week at the UN? We shall soon find out the answer. For sure, the stage is set for a US-Iran showdown at the UN and next week’s developments at the UN can actually contribute to the US-Iran tensions just as the opposite possibility of a minor dent in the bilateral tensions is also possible, depending on the choices of leadership on both sides.

India has vast landscape, enormous natural and mineral resources, various soil and climatic conditions that enable cultivation of several types of agri products. India also has enormous traditional wisdom and deep rooted ancient philosophy on way of life. In spite of such favourable factors, India has not been able to forge ahead to the level of it’s full potential.

While the country has achieved several milestones in the last seventy years of independence, the overall happiness index in the country is much lower than the desirable level.

When Mr. Modi became the Prime Minister of India four and half years back, his objective was not only to push the country towards industrial and economic developments that can promote material affluence but also to introduce fundamental solutions for India’s basic issues which are mostly related to the mental make up of the Indians.

Three basic deficiencies

The strategies and schemes introduced by Mr. Modi in the last four and half years obviously point out to his seeking solutions to overcome the following fundamental deficiencies amongst Indians:

• Lack of cleanliness in maintaining the surroundings, which inevitably lead to unhealthy conditions and multiple diseases, apart from attitudinal issues.
• Lack of pride and faith in traditional practices of India and failure to observe the healthy norms for way of life as propounded by ancestors , amongst large section of Indians.
• Lack of commitment to probity in public life ,which has resulted in not only extensive corrupt practices in government machinery and business houses and even educational and religious institutions but also widespread tolerance towards corruption.

Mr. Modi has taken up the task of finding solutions to the above basic issues and he has accepted the challenges to tackle them with characteristic courage of conviction. While such problems cannot be overcome in a short period, positive and healthy beginning with clarity on targets is very important and certainly Mr. Modi has achieved this task of initiating the mission in spectacular manner.

Campaign for cleanliness

Mr. Modi’s clean India campaign was ridiculed by many critics, when Mr. Modi himself took the broom and started cleaning the road. While the critics were of the view that it is not the task of the Prime Minister to take the broom, the discerning observers appreciated the purpose, spirit and need for this exercise. While even after four and half years of clean India campaign, many public places in India continue to remain unclean, certainly wide awareness has been built amongst huge population in the country about the importance of cleanliness. Mr. Modi’s efforts to build thousands of toilets in rural areas and villages on a national scale is the most laudable initiative that Mahatma Gandhi would have applauded.

Yoga movement

To inculcate a sense of discipline and good health in personal life of Indians, Mr. Modi gave impetus to the yoga movement,. He himself participated in the yoga event which again was criticized by section of people as a task which Prime Minister of the country need not undertake.

However, the yoga movement has caught the imagination of not only Indians in a big way but around the world with United Nations Organisation declaring Yoga day in a year. The yoga practice certainly help in building discipline and healthy life. While it is not as if all the Indians are practicing yoga now, the fact is that the essence of yoga movement has been made a central theme in public discourses on healthy way of life. Certainly, the yoga movement will forge ahead and Mr. Modi’s contribution for this great exercise will be very much appreciated by history.

Building anti-corruption mindset

The level of corruption in India and tolerance towards corruption amongst cross section of people is a matter of very high concern, as government’s welfare projects are not reaching the people adequately due to siphoning of the funds and merits get neglected in several sphere of life where corrupt money is used to get jobs and even admission in educational institutions,. Parallel economy has caused huge setback to the fair distribution of income in India. Mr. Modi has sought to tackle this corruption menace by taking the bull by the horns.

Several measures initiated such as demonetization, anti-benami act, digitization, opening of the zero balance account for millions of poor people in the bank to facilitate transfer of welfare funds directly to their accounts are some of the very significant steps initiated to root out corruption. Of course, the anti corruption movement in India has still very long way to go but Mr. Modi has made the anti corruption drive as an essential act of the governance by introducing meaningful systems instead of indulging only in moral preachings.

India needs Modi’s governance

Four and half years is too short a period to bring around positive and visible changes in the basic issues, which essentially revolve around the mindset of Indians.

While the task has been initiated , what is needed is sustained thrust to take forward the efforts with determination. Obviously, Mr. Modi needs five more years to make a significant dent on the above three fundamental issues faced by India.

The wisdom of Indian voters would stand tested in the forthcoming 2019 parliamentary election, when Mr. Modi would seek one more term.

Early warning is must to cope with floods and people along the Brahmaputra heaved a sigh of relief as authorities in Indian states of Assam and Arunachal geared up to face any eventualities. This simply did not happen in the preceding weeks, when people in Kerala or in Nagaland and Assam were caught off guard in some of the worst man-made disasters.

This year the Meteorological Department has been warning of a deficit monsoon and there prevailed a drought-like situation in many parts of upper Assam. In the eastern part of the Golaghat district villagers resorted to the age-old practice of Bhekulir biya (marrying of frogs) to satisfy the rain gods! When conditions were such, the news of the Dhansiri river breaking the highest flood level mark at Numaligarh in Golaghat district in the early hours of Aug 2, 2018 not only confused the weather forecasting authorities, but caught almost a million people off-guard. It was simply unprecedented.

Going by the IMD’s daily district level rainfall, there has not been unprecedented rainfall in the Dhansiri River catchment in the preceding week of August 2. Rather the unprecedented flash floods in Dhansiri and the Doyang rivers that flow through Nagaland and Assam was brought by the Doyang dam situated on the River Doyang, a tributary of the River Brahmaputra, located in Wokha district of Nagaland.

The 75 MW Doyang Hydroelectric Power Project owned by North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Limited (NEEPCO)– the Central government company that owns and operates the dam wreaked havoc downstream claiming five lives as NEEPCO opened the gates of the dam.

By August 6, the Assam State Disaster Management Authority put the number of affected persons at 87,300 and 7,086 hectares of land in Golaghat district were under water. The deluge left a trail of destruction ravaging some 120 villages. Sediment and slush filled up hundreds of wetlands in the catchment.

Flood in Tran-boundary Rivers

Effected states in India has been witnessing such disasters due to most of trans-boundary rivers. The high waves of Siang (the Tsangpo or Yarlung Zangbo in China) reminded inhabitants of June, 2000 midnight when 30-feet high wave of Siang had submerged the historic township killing at least 30 people and more than 100 had gone missing. People were fast asleep and none expected flood as there was no rain. Siang is the main headwater of the Brahmaputra and it contributes at least 20-30% percent of water to the Brahmaputra. Flood and its effects are very much seen in Assam. It is the ninth largest river in the world with 19,800 cubic metre per second by discharge and the 15th longest is also one of the few rivers in the world that exhibit a tidal bore. It is said that water breaks some natural dam formed in the Himalayas and heavy water has been contributed to the Siang and flow with high waves and becomes turbulent.

It is believed that the latest turbidity of the Siang water is connected with the landslide dams that developed on the course of the river in Bayi District and rampant mining in southern China. Tensions rose when China unveiled a new mine in Lhunze, near the de facto border with India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, east of Bhutan. The mine sits on a deposit of gold, silver, and other precious metals worth up to $60 billion.

Dams on Brahmaputra or on its tributaries either in Tibet, China or in Arunachal Pradesh, India are a matter of grave concern. The study of the December 10, 2017 satellite imagery captured by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel -2 undertaken by research scholars Chintan Sheth of the Bengaluru-based National Centre for Biological Research (NCBS) and Anirban Datta-Ray of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) had led to the conclusion that three dams were formed on the Yarlung Tsangpo, in the Bayi District of Nyingchi County of Tibet.

Downstream people in India are against building dams either in Chinese or Indian side. The lingering bitterness resurfaced late last year, when the more raucous sections of the Indian media began to buzz with a new China conspiracy story – the blackening of the Brahmaputra river in northeastern India. Seizing on a lawmaker’s allegation that Chinese excavations were releasing extraordinary levels of slag in the water, several media outlets saw in the discolouring a “sinister plot” from across the border. China and India’s geopolitical-resources rush threatens the safety of this entire river system. The new Lhunze mine’s position among the Brahmaputra’s headwaters is so precarious that its owner, Hua Yu Mining, was allowed to mine there. .” The mine is liable to be damaged by the region’s frequent earthquakes. It was suspected that any toxic leak from Lhunze flowed straight into the Brahmaputra.

An Indian television channel, Times Now, for example, claimed “exclusive” laboratory results to “expose” China’s evil design to “poison” and “divert” the river through mining and dam-building. China eventually refuted the media reports, saying an earthquake in Tibet that had caused large-scale landslides was responsible for the change of colour, a view echoed by the Indian government. This incident again revived demands for China to share hydrological data, with Indian lawmakers alleging that China was using its status as an upper riparian state to punish India.

New Delhi had then blamed China for breaking an earlier agreement to share hydrological data. In 2006, India and China had signed a pact under which China would share hydrological data from May 15 to October 15 every year for the Brahmaputra and Sutlej rivers, both of which originate in Tibet. The two sides renewed the agreement in memorandums of understanding signed in 2013 and in 2015. But when floods struck northeastern India last year, reports surfaced that China was not adhering to the agreement. There was speculation that China held back on the data in retaliation for the 73-day military stand-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers in Doklam near Bhutan around the same time. On its part, China said its hydrological systems were washed away by floods, as a result of which it was unable to share data.

In October-November 2017, the Siang turned dark with sediment, so much so that fish and animals were dying. As the turbidity of the river began before it entered the Indian territory, there was much speculation about Chinese activity being behind the change which prompted political leaders from the region to write to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting him to take up the matter with China.

Experts, journalists and activists from Assam demanded for trans-national cooperation for agriculture, meteorology and flood mitigation and other purposes.

It is a wholly different story this year, which marked a high point in bilateral relations when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in May for an “informal summit” to reset strained ties. One of the two key pacts reached at the end of the summit requires China to provide hydrological data during the flood season from May 15 to October 15 every year, and if water levels exceed mutually agreed limits during the non-flood season.

The river had turned muddy and got cleaned by April 2018. Several scientific studies in subsequent periods held an earthquake of 6.4 magnitude on the Richter scale in Tibet as a strong reason for generating enough dirt to turn the colour of the water from crystal clear to black. It is worth mentioning here that two Indian scientists working on the Brahmaputra had found three artificial, landslide-induced dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo (the Chinese name of the Siang), containing an accumulated water of around one billion cubic metres. The dams were formed following the November 17, 2017 earthquake of 6.4-magnitude that shook the Nyingchi County of Tibet.

Virulent Siang River

The Yarlung Zangbo in Arunachal Pradesh, India turned virulent with unusually high waves in last July. But the reason behind such changes in the river, which generate the major chunk of flow of the Brahmaputra, could not be determined. The water of the river had also turned blakish with high turbidity again. The Central Water Commission (CWC) maintained that since the end of the part of July, the river is behaving such a manner and also carrying turbid water. Many residents they had such waves in the rive never in their life and were not sure of the reasons behind such phenomenon. The causes of the unusual behavior could either be man-made or natural. Last year, China clarified that it would not pollute its own river, Yarlung Yarlung or Tsangpo in Tibet.

However, the high waves of the river are confined only to river’s reaches in Pasighat area of Arunachal Pradesh and no impact of this changed behaviour of the river is felt in the downstream areas of Assam. The Yarlung Zangbo takes the name of Siang as it enters India at Geling in Upper Siang district. Two other rivers– Lohit and the Dibang –join the Siang at Kobu Chapori in Assam about 30 km downstream of Pasighat, which is about 230 km from the international border to form the mighty Brahmaputra. The unusually high waves in the Siang river have created fear among the people of the two Arunachal Pradesh districts and the administration had cautioned the people to refrain from venturing into it for fishing, swimming and other activities.

Nobody could detect the cause of this and we had been very worried with the phenomenon. The Chinese side neither react nor informed about natural or unnatural activities on their side. After around one month later China informed Delhi as well as Indian Government that it had been heavy rain in Tibet or South China region and it may cause flood in downstream areas in India. The unusal waves had been seen since July, 2018.

On August 29, 2018, China alerted India of a massive cloudburst in Tibet that forced the Chinese authorities to release more water down the Brahmaputra than at any time over the last 50 years. The discharge was measured at 9,020 cubic metres per second (cumec) at 8 a.m. on August 29 and led to huge waves on the Siang in Arunachal Pradesh. Eyewitness said the wave heights at up to four metres, uncharacteristic of a river. It gave hydrological data and flood warning to the Government of India. As soon as Delhi received these information, the concerned department sent the message to State Government of Arunachl Pradesh as it is the immediate bordering state of China.

The East Siang Deputy Commissioner (DC) Tamiyo Tatak in a circular issued on 29th of August stated that the Tsangpo river has been swelling with a discharge of 9,020 cumec on August 29th morning, which broke the record of last five decades. The very next day of the flood alert, the Indian Air Force rescued 29 people stranded in an island of the Siang.

Following the report of heavy downpour in the Tsangpo basin in China, which was relayed to the Arunachal government by the Government of India, sounded alert of possible deluge by the Siang river and asked the people residing in low lying areas to refrain from venturing into the river and nearby water bodies to prevent any eventualities.

Dhemaji and Dibrugarh in Assam had sounded alert of deluge due to unprecedented rise of water in Siang River, creating panic among the people living in downstream Assam. The Dibrugarh district administration referring to a report warned the people of unprecedented rise of water level in the Brahmaputra river that might cause severe flood on the left bank. The administration in an order
issued today also asked the government officials not to leave the district headquarters and stay alert to deal with the situation.

Dhemaji district administration asked the people of riverine villages to be ready for shifting to safer places. The district administration, however, asked the people not to panic as the water resources department is keeping a vigil on the situation and any impending danger would be informed to the people in advance. Downstream, the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) warned the district administrations in the eastern part of the state to be on high alert on August 30.

There was nothing to panic as the Central Water Commission (CWC) had reported that the water level at the Grand Canyon of Tsangpo on August 14 was 8070 cumec and an increase should not inflict severe damages, Arunachal government officials said quoting the Chinese communication. Of course, Indian Air Force helicopters rescued 19 people stranded on an island in the Siang in the Sille-Oyan area on the morning of August 31.

As per Ravi Ranjan, superintendent engineer of the Central Water Commission (CWC) – It’s certainly a relief. “The overall flood situation in Brahmaputra and Barak basin is well within control, there is no need for any alarm, all the tributaries are running well below danger levels. Real-time information sharing by China has certainly helped prepare better.” Ninong Ering, a member of parliament from Arunachal, was among the first to officially acknowledge that China’s early warning helped, enabling residents of the East Siang district of Arunachal to move to higher grounds.

It has been a hurdle for riparian countries to mitigate water and weather related problems without a proper mechanism data sharing, weather forecasting and flood mitigation. And for the first time Indian state governments issued flood alerts based on data received from China. The Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) agreed the alert from China but “made a difference”. ASDMA officials said although India had developed its own hi-tech satellite imaging systems which could pick up disturbances on the ground, the information was insufficient without ground data from China.

After long efforts from diplomats, experts, activists and journalists China had agreed with request from lower riparian India and Bangladesh and the the country with headwater of Brahmaputra is providing data. It is a positive sign towards a good trans-boundary river management. Extending cooperation will definitely lead towards better cooperation among neighbouring countries. Exchange of hydrological data and weather forecasting are very important since a trans-national river belongs to many countries. Exchange of hydrological data and weather forecasting are very important since a trans-national river belongs to many countries in the region. Not only the Brahmaputra, five rivers originating on the third-pole, the Himalayas. They are the Yangtze, the Indus, the Mekong, the Salween, and the Ganges – rank among the world’s ten most endangered rivers.

As science and environmental journalists, we had an opportunity to meet Chinese journalists and experts through the different programme. The Thirdpole and Earth Journalism Network (EJNet) gave us opportunity to interact with Chinese counterpart and we insisted Chinese experts and journalists to work with a view to have bilateral or multilateral transboundary river management pact. Ninong Ering, a member of parliament from Arunachal, was among the first to officially acknowledge that China’s early warning helped, enabling residents of the East Siang district of Arunachal to move to higher grounds.

Despite the Chinese authorities released 9020 cumec of water on the Yarlung Zangbo in Tibet, China, due to heavy rainfall in Tibet, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam had nothing to worry. For at Pashighat, in Arunachal Pradesh, the Siang is 756 metres. And at Jonai, where the river enters Assam, the width of the river is around 4 km and hence the water level of the river would rise only 30 cm there. The Union Water Resources Ministry official said Indian experts have analysed the data shared by China and came to the conclusion that the effect may not be so strong in the country even through it was an alarming situation in China.

The early warning China issued to India in August on the rising waters of its Tsangpo river – which hit its highest level in 150 years – gave the Indian authorities enough time to prepare. Thousands of people in scores of districts in Assam and Arunachal have been affected in the latest floods, but the losses are minimal in comparison with the devastation last year, which killed 130 people and left three million people stranded.

As China informed India about heavy rain in Tibet or probable flood in downstream areas, the Indian Government informed and cautioned Arunachal Government. A senior official of the Union Water Resources Ministry said it was an unprecedented situation on the Chinese side where Tsangpo broke a 150-year record with swollen waters and hence China has shared the information with India.

Anyway, Delhi should inform or involve Assam with the process equally with Arunachal Pradesh. Assam been victim of devastating floods of every year. Thousands of hectares of land has been affected by the Brahmaputra and its tributaries. Since, vast floodplains and flood effected areas belong to Assam, the state need more time to be prepared after getting the flood warning. The annual rainfall in many parts of the northeast is much higher than the southern coastal State. The densely populated floodplains of Assam thus have to worry because of changes in land use that have impacted the micro-climate adversely.

Both India and China are fast-growing economies and technological clout, and resources that can help resolve regional and global challenges. The Himalayas are now subject to accelerated glacial thaw, climatic instability, and biodiversity loss. What a difference a year can make in China-India relations. Some Indian media houses interpreted the release of water in a wrong way that might generate panic among people in the downstream. China did not respond or reacted any allegation about release of water from any dam.

As China is exploiting minerals from Yarlung Zangbor region in Tibet, India is building dams in arunachal Pradesh to generate huge amount of hydropower. Most of river catchment is in Arunachal Pradesh, which is controlled by India but claimed by China. The region was militarised during the 1962 war, and has since been inundated by troops, roads, airports, barracks, and hospitals. These have caused deforestation, landslides, and river pollution.

All of this development and strategic activities along the border is built on the world’s third-largest ice-pack or in biodiversity hot spots. The environmental impacts of their continued entrenchment are rarely mentioned, despite the fact that they are significant and growing. The build-up of troops on the border has displaced local ethnic groups, and they have been encouraged to give up their grazing land to make way for intensive farming. Animal habitats have decreased and clashes with wildlife like tigers and snow leopards have increased. Population transfers and agricultural intensification have even heightened the risk that antibiotic-resistant super-bugs and other toxic pollutants will seep into the world’s most diffused watershed.

China’s leading English daily, The South China Morning Post writes “Just a year ago China was being blamed for a deluge in northeastern India. Now, following its tip off about the rising waters of the Tsangpo, it is being praised for minimising the damage”. Just a year ago China was being blamed for a deluge in northeastern India. Now, following its tip off about the rising waters of the Tsangpo, it is being praised for minimising the damage. Anyway, the latest fruitful data sharing opens the door of better understanding on river, dam as well as trans-boundary river management.

*Chandan Kumar Duarah is a former Robert Bosch Fellow, an environmentalist and Guwahati based journalist.

At China’s eighth Xiangshan Forum in October, a major topic of discussion will be visions and the reality of multilateral maritime security co-operation. http://www.xiangshanforum.cn/  The Xiangshan Forum is China’s  ‘answer’ to the U.K. – organized International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-la Dialogue. It views the Dialogue and its organizers as preferentially providing platforms for outside countries’ perspectives and criticism of China’s policies. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2149061/western-led-summit-chinese-find-controversy-and-clash. Presumably many of the speakers at the Forum will provide an Asian and Chinese perspective on regional maritime security cooperation and the obstacles to achieving it. Hopefully they will address directly or indirectly critical questions like: whose security; security of or from what; and realistically how to proceed?

The Southeast Asian claimants (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam), China and the outside powers like the U.S. have very different answers to these questions. Indeed, they are sailing in the same waters but heading in different directions with different missions.

Regarding whose security, will they primarily discuss the security concerns of the South China Sea littoral countries including China? Or will they primarily discuss U.S. and outside powers’ security concerns or what the outside powers think the major security concerns are or should be?  They are not the same.  Moreover these concerns-and their priorities– also differ between individual South China Sea countries – especially including China.

For most South China Sea littoral countries, the prime international security issue is defending their territorial and maritime claims. The South China Sea countries including China have obtained independence since World War II and suffered through bitter internal and international struggles in doing so.  They jealously guard their sovereignty and any perceived undermining thereof.  In the short history of their modern nation states, it is only relatively recently that they have extended their maritime jurisdiction to 200 nautical miles or more.  Leadership and their populaces tend to view the areas and resources gained –and especially the legal rocks– as part of their ‘sacred’ national heritage.  Indeed, their maritime claims have become symbols of national pride and governmental legitimacy that must be defended against other claimants and outside powers.   This nationalist perspective overwhelms proposals for ‘shared security.’ Ironically this is both the main commonality and the main obstacle to their maritime security cooperation.

Beyond this fundamental obstacle, when the presenters consider security of, or from, what, will they focus mainly on common regional security concerns like ‘terrorism’, piracy, smuggling, illegal fishing and environmental degradation? Or will they focus on the more traditional security concerns of the big powers –like conforming to the “international order”, threats to use force, freedom of navigation for warships and warplanes, trade in weapons of mass destruction, and enhancing maritime domain awareness. These and their derivatives are mostly contentious issues between China and the outside powers, not between China and other South China Sea countries– or themselves. The U.S. and other outside powers would presumably view multilateral Freedom of Navigation Operations against China’s claims as a priority for maritime security cooperation.

In addition to the isue of what to focus on, there is also the all important question of how to proceed –that is who should take the initiative and provide the leadership and centrality for the effort?  ASEAN member countries would probably prefer a focus on non-traditional issues with leadership and centrality provided by ASEAN.  The U.S. and China would of course prefer a focus on more traditional security concerns with each wanting to provide the initiative and leadership in a coalition tacitly aimed at the other.

There are other conceptual and practical obstacles to maritime security co-operation in the South China Sea.

Lack of Trust

Many Asian nations harbor deep,-seated, historically based suspicions of each other making security co-operation all the more difficult.  As Lord Palmerstone and Henry Kissinger believed and practiced “there are no permanent friends or enemies – only permanent interests”. http://opinion.inquirer.net/104346/no-permanent-friends-enemies.    Most countries’ decisions are influenced to some degree by the thinking behind this dictum, particularly in Asia.  Some view maritime security cooperation as advantaging the more powerful who can display the superiority of their technology, assets and weapons and thus tacitly intimidate their potential opponents while observing and detecting the their weaknesses. The same reticence applies to information sharing. This mind-set makes maritime security cooperation all the more difficult.

Differences in Scale

The scales of territory, population, military capacity and economy among South China Sea countries are quite asymmetric.  Many have limited resources and capabilities, and do not want to commit such scarce resources to cooperation to meet threats that are low priority to them.  These might include trade in WMD, non-commercial freedom of navigation concerns, and maritime domain awareness that are in the greater interest of outside maritime powers.

Soft Power Competition Between China and the U.S.

Both China and the U.S. (and its allies Japan, Australia and the U.K.) are offering co-operative maritime security exercises and assistance to the Southeast Asian claimants.  Maritime security co-operation with one is often seen as taking a stand against the other.  This pressure to ‘choose’ is reinforced by China and the U.S. themselves– sometimes publicly- – but more often behind the scenes.  Most Southeast Asian coastal nations welcome assistant in capacity building.  But they may well be more reticent to sign on to any regional scheme that could be taken as ‘siding’ with one against the other  – – or as endorsing a security role for external military forces.

Practical Obstacles

Practical obstacles to maritime security cooperation by Southeast Asian littoral countries include tight operating budgets; lack of common doctrine, language and interoperability of equipment; and widely varying stages of technological development. Intelligence information sharing is particularly sensitive because it involves potentially indirectly revealing sources and methods as well.

First Steps

Some analysts hope that co-operation and regime building in non-traditional security sectors will build trust and confidence and spill over into co-operation on ‘hard’ security issues.  This may eventually happen, but it would involve quite a leap of faith that most are not yet ready to take.

It now seems obvious that multilateral maritime security co-operation in the South China Sea can be successful only if the South China Sea countries collectively perceive a high priority threat and both China and the U.S. are willing and able to co-operate against this threat. Perhaps combating transnational piracy and ‘terrorism’ /insurgencies are prime candidates. Indeed, the cooperation between the Malacca/Singapore Straits countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand—in reducing piracy in the Straits shows that it is possible. However due to nationalist concerns, they insist on doing it themselves without outside power assistance—and are careful not to overstep each other’s ‘red lines’. An even better example is the cooperation against piracy/’terrorism’ in the Sulu and Sulawesi Seas by Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines with the assistance of the U.S., Australia, and perhaps even China.  But even in these positive examples, cooperation is somewhat retarded by differences in capacity and capability, and reticence regarding transparency, sharing of information and operations in sensitive areas.  To move beyond these beginnings to a region wide effort will take considerable time, and diplomatic effort.  The diplomatic graveyard is full of failed proposals and efforts that did not take regional realities into account.

*Mark J. Valencia, Adjunct Senior Scholar, National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Haikou, China

This piece first appeared in the Diplomat https://thediplomat.com/2018/09/maritime-security-cooperation-in-the-south-china-sea-sailing-in-different-directions/

The innovations in technology have brought infinite benefits to the modern life. Today, the world is interconnected as never before. But, inspite of having all technological advancements, there is a bleak side to it; the cyber age is reshaping the warfare. The age where weapons and threats were once identifiable and visible are now anonymous and invisible. Where, there were clear boundaries and rules of warfare; cyber age has borderless and anarchic warfare. This evolving threat landscape by state and non-state actors calls for a new collective security discourse.

According to the Europol 2018 report, terrorists misused more than 150 social media platforms for their propaganda dissemination. They not only used file sharing sites which were used to disseminate and store terrorist messages, and content but bot services were also misused to advertise links for streaming content to many other social media platforms. As a counter-measuring mechanism, law enforcement agencies have tried to minimize the abuse of mainstream social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube by the terrorists. Besides being active on the online surface, there are few terrorist organizations which are active on Darknet. These activities mostly concern with fundraising campaigns, and use of illicit markets for the purchase of malwares and botnets.

Studies suggest that few terrorist organizations have turned to online criminal markets using crime-as-a-service industry to buy cyber capabilities which they are lacking. If it holds true, the cyber capabilities of terrorist organizations would grow rapidly and they may strike and launch a cyberattack which may create the real-world-impact such as cyberattack to disrupt emergency or essential public services.

The terrorists’ use of cyberspace besides using internet to identify the followers and disseminating the messages, remained active. The Austria reported large number of females including minors who left or moved to war zones. They were radicalized through the use of internet. Some of females married to foreign terrorists’ fighters via social media platforms.

The cyber espionage activity was reported during French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign last year. In 2016, the San Francisco was destroyed by the ransomware attack which caused great concern over the security and safety of transport network system of United States of America. In the same year, half of the UK businesses suffered huge breach in their electronic systems. On May 12, 2017, the cyberattack named ‘WannaCry’ affected hundreds of thousands of systems worldwide. The WannaCry was basically a ransomware which was launched with five to ten ransom attempts and affected over 190 countries. In the same year, the Electronic Ghosts of the Caliphate (EGC) of Islamic State (IS) claimed and threatened to launch a great cyberattack in December 2017, but it did not materialize.

In cyber war, enemies can strike anytime from anywhere in the world. It is mostly done by small dedicated group or groups who wear uniform with no identity. They are armed with invisible malwares and unknown codes having no borders and boundaries. The problem of identifying a cyberattack is mostly multifaceted by the fast advancements of malicious codes. The launch of cyberattacks are gearing up with the rapid progress in connectivity escalation between people, and organization all over the world.

In this cyber war, the ideal response would be to match technology with technology; in other words, the cyber-arm race. In this cat-and-mouse game, the evermore lethal weaponry is to be developed to counter the latest arsenals being deployed. The time of taking a paradigm shift has drawn near. The warfare toady is no more a question of weaponry rather it is a matter of strategy. Only a strategic approach can triumph against this never-ending futile battle.

*The writer is a Research Associate at Institute of Maritime Affairs (IMA), Bahria University Islamabad, Pakistan. Her areas of expertise are cyber warfare, cybersecurity, cyber terrorism, cyber threats, regional security, maritime security, and non-traditional security threats. She can be reached at zaheemaeckbaull@gmail.com