Quantcast
Channel: Eurasia Review
Viewing all 73339 articles
Browse latest View live

May And EU Consider Extending Transition To Break Brexit Impasse

0
0

By Alexandra Brzozowski and Benjamin Fox

(EurActiv) — British PM Theresa May appeared to open the way to extend the post-Brexit transition period until December 2021, as EU leaders offered an olive branch to her in a bid to break the impasse during the EU summit on Wednesday (18 October).

Talks on finalising the UK’s withdrawal agreement and a political declaration on future trade relations with the EU have been blocked by failure to agree on a backstop to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic in the event that an agreement on future EU-UK relations cannot be struck.

The EU proposes a backstop that would effectively keep Northern Ireland inside the customs union, while May has repeatedly insisted on a UK-wide arrangement.

Last December, EU and UK negotiators agreed to a 21 month transition period after the UK formally leaves the bloc in March next year during which the UK would remain part of the single market but have no say over new rules governing it, and on the need to agree a backstop on the Irish border.

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani confirmed that both sides had mooted the idea of extending the transition period by an additional year.

“I certainly perceived political will to make headway,” he added.

But even extending the transition period led to a compromise between May and the EU-27, there is no guarantee that she would be able to sell such a deal to her divided Conservative party.

“I did not perceive anything substantially new in terms of content as I listened to Mrs. May,” Tajani told reporters, though he added that “It was the tone of someone who want to reach an agreement.”

Tajani, however, also emphasised that “without an agreement on the three points (EU citzens rights in the UK, Brexit divorce bill and the Northern Ireland matter), the European Parliament cannot and will not vote in favour of the agreement.”

May addressed EU leaders for 15 minutes before they sat down to a dinner which she did not attend, with her spokesperson briefing that the Prime Minister had urged EU leaders to show “trust and leadership”.

“We have shown we can do difficult deals together constructively. I remain confident of a good outcome,” she added. Most EU leaders struck a note of cautious optimism that a deal would eventually be reached even though there was disappointment that, as expected, May offered no new proposals on how to break the impasse.

Tusk broke off the meeting, after nobody responded to the British Prime Minister.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he was “cautiously optimistic” that an agreement would be made “in the coming weeks”.

The harshest words came from Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, who alluded to Mrs May’s difficulties in being able to unite her government.

“We do not know what they want, they do not know themselves what they really want – that’s the problem,” she said.

In the meantime, the chances of an extraordinary summit being held in November to finalise an agreement have all but vanished as sufficient progress in the talks had not been made.

“The EU27 leaders stand ready to convene a European Council, if and when the union negotiator reports that decisive progress has been made. For now, EU27 is not planning to organise an extraordinary summit on Brexit in November,” an EU source told reporters in Brussels.

Instead, a summit to seal a Brexit deal will only be called if and when the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier deems that there has been “decisive progress”.

EU leaders also underscored their support for Barnier and the importance of maintaining a united front behind him – a further rebuff to the UK’s attempts to peel off support from individual member states.

Barnier warned ahead of the EU summit in Brussels that the Brexit negotiators needed “much more time” to complete a deal.

“We are not there yet. Brexit must be orderly for everyone and for all the issues including the island of Ireland. So we need time, we need much more time. We continue to do the work in the next weeks calmly and patiently,” he told reporters arriving at the summit.


Almost Half The World Lives On Less Than $5.50 A Day

0
0

Economic advances around the world mean that while fewer people live in extreme poverty, almost half the world’s population — 3.4 billion people — still struggles to meet basic needs, the World Bank said.

Living on less than $3.20 per day reflects poverty lines in lower-middle-income countries, while $5.50 a day reflects standards in upper-middle-income countries, the World Bank said in its biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report, “Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle.”

The World Bank remains committed to achieving the goal of ending extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 a day, by 2030. The share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty fell to 10 percent in 2015, but the pace of extreme poverty reduction has slowed, the Bank warned on Sept. 19.

However, given that economic growth means that a much greater proportion of the world’s poor now live in wealthier countries, additional poverty lines and a broader understanding of poverty are crucial to fully fighting it, the report says.

“Ending extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity are our goals, and we remain committed to them,” said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. “At the same time, we can take a broader view of poverty at different levels and dimensions around the world. This view reveals that poverty is more widespread and entrenched, underlining the importance of investing in people.”

While rates of extreme poverty have declined substantially, falling from 36 percent in 1990, the report’s expanded examination of the nature of poverty demonstrates the magnitude of the challenge in eradicating it. Over 1.9 billion people, or 26.2 percent of the world’s population, were living on less than $3.20 per day in 2015. Close to 46 percent of the world’s population was living on less than $5.50 a day.

The report also goes beyond monetary measures of poverty to understand how access to adequate water and sanitation, education, or electricity affect a family’s well-being. And since the burdens of poverty often fall most heavily on women and children, the report analyzes how poverty can vary within a household.

The report finds that the incomes of the poorest 40 percent grew in 70 of the 91 economies monitored. In more than half of the economies, their incomes grew faster than the average, meaning they were getting a bigger share of the economic pie. However, progress in sharing prosperity lagged in some regions of the world. The report also warns that data needed to assess shared prosperity is weakest in the very countries that most need it to improve. Only one in four low-income countries and four of the 35 recognized fragile and conflict-affected states have data on shared prosperity data over time.

The new measures allow the World Bank to better monitor poverty in all countries, in multiple aspects of life, and for all individuals in every household.

Canada Legalizes Marijuana Sales

0
0

In Canada since October 17, marijuana is legal to be purchased by anyone and not with doctor’s prescription but with the aim of relaxation.

The first stores to start the sale of marijuana have special license and are located in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It was also stated that people wishing to purchase marijuana were waiting for the start of the sale since 20:00 local time till midnight, reports InterFAX referring to CBC TV channel.

Since October 17, usage and purchase of marijuana for relaxation (meaning consuming psychoactive substances without prescription, for pleasure or other reasons) is legal. Appropriate law was approved in summer of 2018. According to the law, inhabitants of Canada have the right to purchase and keep maximum 30g of marijuana without any reference or prescription. Canadians are now also allowed to grow the appropriate plant in their houses however no more than 4 bushes.

Sale of marijuana to individuals under 18 is prohibited.

Canadian government had made the use of Marijuana for medical reasons legal back in 2001. As of now consuming marijuana for relaxation is legal in 9 states of the US as well as in Colombia Federal District. However the laws of 4 other states prohibit any use of narcotic plants.

Challenging Concerns Around Imported Farmed Shrimp

0
0

Scientists at the University of Stirling have challenged concerns around the consumption of imported farmed shrimp – with new research indicating that it is as safe as any other seafood product.

Experts observed the findings after using European Union (EU) data to perform a risk assessment on shrimp imports, which have a reputation among some consumer groups as being of low quality.

Professor Dave Little and Dr Richard Newton, of Stirling’s Institute of Aquaculture, working with colleagues at Shanghai Ocean University, also found that shrimp imports have become much safer to consume in recent years. The findings of the research are published in the Aquaculture journal.

Dr Newton said: “Farmed shrimp imported to the EU has a reputation among some consumer groups as being of low quality and this is sometimes reflected in the mainstream press, as well as on the internet.

“Over several decades – since farmed shrimp imports first appeared on supermarket shelves – a negative narrative has grown over environmental and social malpractice. This has included claims that tropical farmed shrimp are grown in polluted water and treated with large quantities of chemicals, which can be harmful to human health.

“We hypothesised that we could perform a risk assessment of shrimp imports which would allow us to calculate the amount that an average adult would need to consume to surpass the acceptable daily intake (ADI) for any particular harmful substance.”

Dr Newton and the team analysed 18 years of data from the EU’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), which contains information on food and feed imports that have been found to contain banned or excessive quantities of substances, and subsequently removed from the market.

“Based on the information in the RASFF database covering 1998 to 2015, our study found that consumers would need to eat more than 300g of shrimp per day to exceed the ADI for antimicrobials,” Dr Newton explained.

The research also identified shortcomings in the RASFF system when it comes to determining ADIs, with the scientists concluding that – in reality – the ADI is likely to be “much higher” than the 300g calculated because the RASFF database only contains information on contaminated shrimp and not those available to consumer.

Dr Newton added: “This means that imported farmed shrimp are no less safe than any other seafood product.”

Over the 18-year period, the number of alerts dropped markedly despite shrimp imports increasing – meaning that shrimp have become much safer to consumer as exporting countries meet the safety demands of importers more effectively. The numbers peaked in 2002, in relation to large numbers of consignments contaminated with antimicrobials, the experts said.

The researchers compared the RASFF data with coverage on shrimps that appeared in mainstream media over the same period – and found that it tracked closely with the number of alerts, which are now a fraction of what they were in 2002.

However, the team found that information available on the internet has continued the negative narrative, which is based on practices mostly phased out and does not reflect improvements that have been made in the industry. They noted that many websites promoted the consumption of local, wild-caught species in favour of imports – despite some evidence showing that wild shrimp can also be contaminated with various harmful substances, and have ethical and environmental impact issues.

The study concluded that there was scope for the RASFF system to be improved to allow a better understanding of risk associated with food consumption, and also highlighted a need for standardising testing procedures throughout EU member states, as well as third parties.

Dry Conditions In East Africa Half A Million Years Ago Possibly Shaped Human Evolution

0
0

Samples of ancient sediments from a lake basin in East Africa have revealed that arid conditions developed in the area around half a million years ago, an environmental change that could have played a major role in human evolution and influenced advances in stone technology, according to an international research team that includes geologists from Georgia State University.

The team of geologists and anthropologists drilled deep cores in Lake Magadi in Kenya to obtain ancient sediment samples that date back a million years ago to the present. Georgia State researchers conducted mineral analysis on thousands of samples, and their collaborators performed other types of analyses.

Lake Magadi is one of five sites across the East African Rift that is being studied as part of the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project. Two additional sites are also being studied in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution and Indiana University.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide clues into how environmental and climate change may have played a role in human evolution and how early humans developed early stone technologies.

“The sediments that accumulated over the last million years show us that Lake Magadi used to be fresh water and gradually over the last million years has gotten more and more saline. That tells us that arid conditions developed in East Africa about half a million years ago,” said Dr. Daniel Deocampo, collaborating author of the study and professor of geosciences at Georgia State. “On top of that long-term increase in aridity in East Africa, there were also higher frequency environmental changes. There were shorter-term fluctuations where you might have some wet centuries and some dry centuries.

“The reason why this is important is that when you see these fluctuations really kicking in, that’s right about the time when the Middle Stone Age technologies were being developed by early human ancestors, about a half million years ago. These are really more meticulously made artifacts, not the crude, stone tools of a million years ago.”

While the researchers can’t directly link climate change to human evolution and advanced technology with evidence at this point, they’re using geological data to understand the details of how the environment changed.

“I think everyone in the community agrees that environmental change plays a role in evolution, including human evolution and the development of technology,” Deocampo said. “The problem that we’re trying to address is the details. In some ways, this is kind of the first step because by drilling these sediments we can better understand how the environment changed, and that’s the first step to understanding how that environmental change affected human evolution. Those are questions that will be addressed by evolutionary biologists and anthropologists. As geologists, we’re providing data on how the environment itself changed.”

US Tornado Frequency Shifting Eastward From Great Plains

0
0

A new study finds that over the past four decades, tornado frequency has increased over a large swath of the Midwest and Southeast and decreased in portions of the central and southern Great Plains, a region traditionally associated with Tornado Alley.

The study, by meteorology professor Victor Gensini of Northern Illinois University and Harold Brooks of NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., found significant decreasing trends in frequencies of both tornado reports and tornado environments over portions of Texas, Oklahoma and northeast Colorado.

Tornado Alley remains the top zone for tornadoes in the United States, but other areas, including the so-called Dixie Alley that includes much of the lower Mississippi Valley region, are catching up.

The researchers identified significant increasing trends of tornado reports and tornado environments in portions of Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky.

“Regions in the Southeast and Midwest are closing the gap when it comes to the number of tornado reports,” said Gensini, who led the study published Oct. 17 in the Nature partner journal, Climate and Atmospheric Science.

“It’s not that Texas and Oklahoma do not get tornadoes,” Gensini said. “They’re still the number one location in terms of tornado frequency, but the trend in many locations is down over the past 40 years.”

The study examined tornado frequency trends in fine-scale resolution using two separate approaches, Gensini said.

The researchers tracked the number of tornado reports from 1979 to 2017, while also investigating regional trends in the daily frequency of tornado-environment formation over the same time period, using an index known as the Significant Tornado Parameter (STP). Frequently used for predicting severe weather, the index captures the coexistence of atmospheric ingredients favorable for producing tornadoes.

Both the number of actual tornado reports and the historical STP analysis showed the eastward uptick in tornado frequency.

“One could argue that because a region’s population has increased, more tornadoes are sighted and reported,” Gensini said. “But we also identified this eastward trend when using the STP index, which looks at the frequency of tornado environments and has nothing to do with people. This increases our confidence in the reporting trend that we’re seeing.”

The trend is important for understanding the potential for future tornado exposure, damage and casualties. Severe thunderstorms accompanied by tornadoes, hail and damaging winds cause an average of $5.4 billion of damage each year across the United States, and events with $10 billion or more in damages are no longer uncommon.

Previous research, including 2007 and 2016 studies by NIU professor Walker Ashley, has identified the Southeast as particularly vulnerable to tornadoes. Because of factors such as longer and larger tornado paths, expanding population density, mobile-home density and higher nighttime tornado probabilities, most tornado fatalities occur in the Southeast, particularly the mid-South region.

“We’ve shown the tornado frequency trend is increasing in the Midwest and Southeast,” Gensini said. “While tornadoes can happen in all 50 states, if more tornadoes are happening in your area, you’re more susceptible to one of these disasters.

“This could be taken into consideration when adopting building codes, identifying potentially impacted community assets, creating awareness and making emergency preparations,” he added.

The researchers cannot say for sure whether the eastward shift in tornado reports and environments might be caused by natural or human-induced climate change.

“Clearly, there is a climate change signal here,” Gensini said. “What’s causing the change is still an open question.”

Pakistan: Child-Killer Rapist Hung

0
0

By Kamran Chaudhry

Pakistan has hanged the self-confessed killer and rapist of a 6-year-old and several other minor girls.

Imran Ali, 24, was convicted earlier this year after the body of Zainab Ansari was found lying in a heap of garbage in Kasur district of Punjab province.

The attack sparked nationwide public protests.

Ali was one of Zainab’s neighbours and a famous reciter of’ ‘Naat’ poetry praising the Prophet Mohammed.

After Ali was condemned to death for raping and murdering Zainab, he was convicted for similar crimes against six other girls.

What occurred to Zainab was one of 12 such crimes to occur in Kasur in the space of one year, reported local media.

Amin Ansari, the victim’s father, had requested public hanging of the killer and witnessed the execution occur.

He claimed that Ali was a member of global ring distributing child pornography.

Ansari also accused authorities of trying to cover-up the illegal network.

“The government is trying to hide the details and are presenting Imran as a lone wolf for face-saving or to protect some vested interests,” he told media representatives.

A Punjab province government spokesperson denied the allegations.

Pastor Saleem Massey, a psychologist formerly at the United Christian Hospital in the provincial capital, Lahore, blames poverty and depression for increasing paedophilia.

Nobody talked about the underlying lack of education and awareness, said Massey, who has been managing nine churches in the Kasur district for past three decades.

“Sudden panic and later hangings are not the solution,” he added.

Efforts should be stepped up in hospitals and through use of the media to increase awareness of the ‘mental sickness’ behind such abuses as the Kasur tragedy was not an isolated case.

Nabila Feroz, a Catholic child rights’ activist, said capital punishment did not constitute a solution to what was a societal problem and noted that Pakistan had signed United Nations conventions against the imposing of death sentences.

The Zainab Ansari tragedy should serve as an alert to parents on the need to protect their children from predators, including from among relatives and neighbours, Feroz told ucanews.com.

Hyacinth Peter, executive secretary of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Major Religious Superiors Leadership Conference, supported the execution.

But she said a decline in moral values and an immature society lay behind such crimes.

Peter said that a government crackdown on red light areas had exacerbated such evils as some people sought to satisfy sexual urges in other shocking ways.

Iran: Increased Arrests, Harassment Of Baha’is, Says HRW

0
0

Iranian intelligence officials have increased the arrests of the country’s Baha’i religious minority over the past two months, with no clear charges, Human Rights Watch said. In August and September 2018, authorities arrested more than 20 Baha’i citizens, as well as a city council member who a colleague said offered support for those arrested.

Those arrested included 12 people in the city of Shiraz, 4 of whom remain detained in an Intelligence Ministry detention center. On September 25, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) reported that between August 23 and September 23, authorities arrested 11 more Baha’is in Isfahan and Karaj provinces and transferred them to the Shiraz detention center. The source who spoke to Human Rights Watch did not know about the charges brought against the detainees. Authorities also detained Mehdi Hajati, a member of Shiraz City Council, for 10 days after he said he was trying to secure the release of the Baha’is.

“The more than 20 arrests in a month without providing any justification shows how intolerant the Islamic Republic is towards Iran’s Baha’i community,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “And authorities are taking their campaign of intimidation, harassment, and persecution even further by detaining elected officials who dare to show solidarity with their fellow citizens who are Baha’i.”

Iran’s constitution does not recognize Baha’is as a religious minority in Iran. Authorities routinely harass, prosecute, and imprison Baha’is solely for practicing their faith, and they also regularly destroy their places of burial. They also prevent Baha’i students from registering at universities and expel those who are adherent of this faith.

On October 10, a source who wished to remain anonymous told Human Rights Watch that authorities arrested Bahareh Qaderi, Navid Bazmandegan, Ehsan Mahboob Rahvafa, Elaheh Samizadeh, Soudabeh Haghighat, and Noora Pourmoradaian on August 24 and 25. The source said the authorities arrested Koroosh Rouhani, Mahboob Habibi, Dorna Esmaili, Houman Esmalili, Negar Misaghian, and Pejman Shahriari on August 17.

Authorities released Misaghian and Dorna Esmaili the day of their arrest, while conditionally releasing Rouhani, Shahriari, Habibi, Haghighat, Pourmoradian, and Samizadeh until their trial.

The Center for Human Rights in Iran said that authorities arrested Bahareh Zeini, Sepideh Rouhani, Afshin Bolbolan, Milad Dordan, Anousheh Rayneh, Farhang Sahba and Foujan Rashidi in city of Baharestan, in Isfahan province, and Peyman Manavi, Kianoush Salmanzadeh, Maryam Ghaffarmanesh and Jamileh Pakrou in the city of Karaj, in Alborz Province in period between August 23 and September 23.

On September 27, Qasem Moghimi a member of the Shiraz City Council, told the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) that authorities arrested Hajati, a member of Shiraz city council who is also a member of the council’s citizens’ rights commission, “for supporting Baha’is.”

Hajati had tweeted on September 25 that “Over the past 10 days, I tried my best to secure the release of two Baha’i friends but have failed. While standing against the foreign enemy, our generation has a duty to do its best to reform the judicial processes and other issues that threaten social justice.”

On September 30, Ali Alqasimehr, the head of the judiciary in Fars province, told Mehr News that other than “supporting a deviate cult,” Hajati is facing other criminal charges but did not provide details. Authorities released Hajati on October 7.

Several members of the Iranian parliament raised concerns about Hajati’s arrest and said he was defending citizens’ rights. On October 3, however, the association of members of parliament from Fars province published an open letter asking authorities to not allow the “deviant cult” of Bahai’s to conspire and operate while ensuring citizens’ rights are respected.

On September 18, Iran Wire news website published the name of 54 Baha’i students whom authorities had prevented from registering at universities after they took the national entrance exam for the 2018 school year. The origin of such blatant discrimination reportedly goes back to a 1991 by-law of the High Council of Cultural Revolution, a body in charge of setting education policies, that mandates authorities to expel Baha’i students from higher education institutions.

Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”(ICCPR), to which Iran is a party, freedom of religion includes “freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.” Similarly, under ICCPR “anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest, of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him.”

“For four decades Iran’s judiciary and security agencies have violated the most fundamental rights of the Baha’i community in Iran,” Page said. “President Rouhani and his cabinet need to stop pretending that they aren’t responsible for persecuting the Baha’i and end these violations.”


Sri Lanka: Court Orders Eviction Of University Students, Parents Blocking Building

0
0

Sri Lankan Police have obtained an order from the Akkaraipattu Magistrate to evict students and parents blocking the administration building of the South Eastern University, the UGC and Higher Education and Cultural Affairs Ministry said, in a statement issued through the Director General of Information.

The statement said that the allegation that the University administration had closed the administration building is completely false and a travesty of truth.

The statement added that earlier, a group of students who committed acts of indiscipline by engaging in ragging and other acts of obstruction were punished according to the gravity and seriousness of their acts.

However, they were given an opportunity to appeal against their punishment.

The students who were punished are trying to resolve their problem by force by trying to hide their wrongful acts, the statement said.

A majority of students in the technology faculty were completely against these acts of indiscipline committed by a handful of students and opposed any moves to restore the studentship of the students who had been expelled.

They have threatened to even leave the University if these expelled students were taken back.

Given this situation, some of the students along with their parents had forcibly entered the administration building on Friday night and barricaded it with chains preventing the Vice Chancellor and other officials from entering the building.

However, academic activities of the South Eastern University are continuing as usual and the Vice Chancellor and his administrative staff are operating from an alternative building, the statement said.

Spain And Japan Strengthen Position As Strategic Partners

0
0

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez received the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, at Moncloa Palace, on his first official visit to Spain and the first by a Japanese Prime Minister in the last 15 years. During their meeting, Pedro Sánchez and Shinzo Abe signed a joint declaration that raises the framework of relations between Spain and Japan to that of a “Strategic Association”.

The two leaders also signed two agreements, one amending the annex to the 1980 Air Services Agreement, and the other on the elimination of double taxation on income and to combat tax avoidance and evasion.

Sánchez expressed his satisfaction at the agreements reached, which he described as a “milestone” as this is a “qualitative leap” in relations between Spain and Japan that “opens up tremendous possibilities for the two countries in the future”.

At the meeting, the two leaders also agreed to explore formulas for collaboration in Asia, Latin America and Africa, harnessing the knowledge and degree of involvement of both countries in these regions. They also addressed economic and trade ties, as well as business opportunities for Spanish and Japanese companies under this new Strategic Association and the new Economic Partnership between Japan and the European Union.

The two leaders also undertook to strengthen scientific and technological cooperation and to boost the constant and growing cultural, tourism and education relations between the two countries.

Pedro Sánchez and Shinzo Abe also exchanged opinions on questions on the global agenda, such as the fight against climate change, and reaffirmed their commitment to the effective application of the Paris Agreement and the preparation for the upcoming G-20 Summit in Buenos Aires on 30 November and 1 December, following which Japan will assume the Rotating Presidency on 1 January 2019.

The visit by Shinzo Abe concludes a year of celebrations and rounds of contact between Spain and Japan on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries, and takes place just days before the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Brussels where the two leaders will meet again and further extend their talks.

Violent Extremism And Its Continuum – Analysis

0
0

ISIS may have suffered battlefield reverses, but in some respects – not least ideologically – it is resilient. Analysts, academics and security officials should resist the impulse to call time on the study of these types of issues – this mistake has been made before.

By Rohan Gunaratna and Shashi Jayakumar*

With the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) seemingly in eclipse, many senior security officials and terrorism analysts we have interacted with around the world are saying that they have now time to think, attend conferences, and see to other security issues that loom large these days.

Case studies on lessons learnt can be compiled, loose ends (like the foreign fighter returnee issue) tackled and then, so the reasoning goes, we can all move on to other pressing concerns. We’ve actually been here before – sort of.

Misreading the Ground

It feels now like so long ago since May 2011, when the perpetrator of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on Sept 11, 2001, Osama Bin Laden, was killed by United States Navy Seals. The group he led, Al-Qaeda, appeared to have lost the capability to mount iconic 9-11 style operations, and was limited to localised attacks.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was deemed by many to be a localised force with the threat it posed under control. AQI’s spawn, ISIS, did not yet exist. Even when it appeared on the horizon in 2013, it was memorably – and wrongly – dismissed by US President Barack Obama as nothing more than an amateurish ‘JV’ (junior varsity) outfit.

Just as the world did in 2011, we risk miscalculating again.

Islamic State in the Future

Even as ISIS’ footprint shrinks in Iraq and Syria, it is making inroads to existing and emerging conflict zones including Asia. Extremists continue to travel to Southeast Asia to join ISIS-centric groups. As demonstrated by the Marawi siege (May-November 2017), ISIS’ strategy of decentralisation works to destabilise Southeast Asia. Governments will have to contend with the possibility of more Marawis, and more Mautes.

And then of course there are longer-term issues. Tracking the fighters and family members (some young children born in Syria or Iraq) who return to their home countries will be important: for some the issue may be judicial process, for others, it may be aftercare or resocialisation, and efforts to prevent “re-radicalisation”.

This itself is an endeavour which will be generational and which will continue to reverberate long after the embers of conflict will appear to have died down. All concerned parties will have to stay the course – because the adversary will.

Now What?

There is an urgent need to go beyond conventional metrics – how many joined ISIS, how many foreign fighter returnees, how many sympathisers arrested locally.  An over-reliance on bean counting would serve to obscure evident truths: ISIS is transforming from a caliphate-building group to a global movement that, notwithstanding its battlefield reverses, has continued resilience ideologically.

In Southeast Asia, Muslims as well as other faiths have for centuries been tolerant, syncretistic, and have valued coexistence. In the present era, sectarianism, exclusivist thought, and intolerance is on the rise. From the western edge of the Rakhine to the eastern edge of Mindanao, ethno-political, politico-religious ideologies, fanned by their ideologues, challenge the security landscape of the region.

None of this is the same as terrorism. But at the extreme edges of this mental and physical geography, ideologues provide the mood music to create the atmospherics for extreme thinking, and, in some cases, violence.

We must ensure that this is not ISIS’ legacy.

Building Partnerships

Governments alone cannot cope with the threat today.

The key is for governments to build partnerships with the community organisations, private sector and academia to prevent the radicalisation of communities and build community resilience among its vulnerable segments.

Three and a half years ago, the East Asia Summit on Religious Rehabilitation and Social Reintegration was convened by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) and the Singapore government, with the aim of sparking a conversation on developing a regional policy, plan and strategy by drawing both government and civil society partners.

Things have moved since then – the attacks in Surabaya and Marawi come to mind – but not just in terms of incidents or attacks. Trends in radicalisation are changing. As Singapore officials have revealed, online self-radicalisation is taking place among young people at a quicker tempo, and at a younger age.

The Religious Rehabilitation Group (RRG) has found particular difficulties in getting through to these newer, self-radicalised individuals, with the deradicalisation success rate standing at 25 per cent (as opposed to close to 90 per cent for radicalised individuals from groups like the Jemaah Islamiyah). There are plenty of theories as to why this is, but no definitive answer.

Needed: A Different Type of Analyst

The recently-concluded 2018 Southeast Asian Track 1.5 symposium, organised as part of Singapore’s ASEAN chairmanship, was timely in taking stock of the evolution of the range of counter-terrorism efforts since the 2015 symposium, while laying the platform for greater counter-terrorism cooperation in the region.

Key decision-makers and experts in the field from ASEAN and the wider world were present. In recognition of how far the field has developed, present too were speakers and representatives from social media companies.

As experts at the symposium argued, upstream efforts to combat extremist thought need to start at the earliest possible stage. The counter narratives themselves will need to be appealing, and informed by variegated perspectives.

In fact, it may well be that in time, a different type of analyst will be needed to look at the problem, which is a continuum that spans violent extremism, to sectarianism, to intolerance, to social media filter bubbles. Individuals versed in anthropology, sociology and ethnography will be crucial to complement orthodox perspectives. At present, we only have a few people who see the proverbial elephant in totality – most see only a part.

Trends and Evolutions

Trends are changing in the wider world, too. Radicalisation knows no colour. In the United Kingdom, the Home Office has announced that the number of white suspected terrorists being arrested in the UK has overtaken those of Asian appearance for the first time in more than a decade. This is in part due to the under-studied phenomenon of “reciprocal radicalisation”, which sees the far right and Islamists feeding off each other in a negative spiral.

Traditionally, in Southeast Asia, governments and security experts have discounted the possibility of such a phenomenon, partly on account of the absence of a defined far-right. But are we so sure there are no similar negative and self-reinforcing spirals here?

In 2011 there was a lot governments and security experts did not see. There were mental model of the way the world worked, and how the threat would evolve.

Many experts were wrong then. If we are complacent, we risk being wrong again in our approach to present problems in appreciation of future threats. We should use this window of opportunity to prepare for ISIS’ evolutions, and for deep thinking about extremism itself. This may just be a lull in the next storm of violent extremism.

*Rohan Gunaratna is Professor of Security Studies and Head of International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technology University, Singapore. Shashi Jayakumar is Head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) at RSIS. An earlier version appeared in The Straits Times, 11 October 2018.

America Is Safe Only When Europe Is United And Safe – OpEd

0
0

In the history of humanitarian aid, Hoover created a new history as he had brilliantly managed the state resources with the help of some highly motivated and publicly spirited volunteers. The tremendous results and message that conveyed were beyond imaginations. During the Great Mississippi River flood of 1927, he created another history in organizing rescue operations for the flood victims. According to Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy in the Presidents Club, people were left to convince that there was not a problem on the earth Hoover could not solve with his technical and organizational capacity. He was considered a kind of superman.

What Roosevelt had said in the early 1920s, was realized into the aspirations of American people and in 1929, he became the president of the United States. But only a few months later, the great economic depression followed his presidency devastated him completely and was doomed to become the most unpopular President in American history. The high expectations of the people turned into a similar disappointment that ultimately shattered his presidency.

In World War II, President Roosevelt ensured the victory of Allied powers, saved Europe from Nazi occupation and raised the morale of European countries for the very survival of democracy in the continent. As mentioned by C D M Ketelbey in A History of Modern Times, America had raised an army of twelve million to ensure the victory of war on behalf of Allied Powers to avoid the similar US retreat from the First World War that President Roosevelt believed was ultimately responsible for the World War II. He, therefore, was determined to build the machinery of post-war collective security into the very structure of peace agreements that followed the war and founded the United Nations.

Unfortunately, President Roosevelt could not see the conclusion of the war that he led so wisely and courageously. After his death Vice President Harry Truman succeeded him. Mr. Truman, an 80 plus days Vice President was destined to lead to the conclusion of the war. But to the surprise of many White House watchers, he did his job astutely and audaciously. He concluded the war and successfully created the bedrock for a long period of peace between major world powers.

But the true Truman was yet to born in Europe after the war.

The war had caused 39 million deaths in Europe alone. Industries, farms, cities, and villages all were turned into debris. People were forced to leave their home, abandon their property and migrate to new places with an uncertain future. Hunger and starvation were common. People were dying of cold, hunger and diseases. Food crises and food riots had engulfed the whole continent. Families were broken. Women and children suffered much more.

Once again, Mr. Hoover’s service was secured by the White House to shape the American Policy on Europe and also on the policy of reconstruction of Germany and Austria. Mr. Hoover, in the best interests of his country, succeeded in fighting the battle against famine in Europe and prepared the groundwork for Marshall Plan that restructured Europe.

Hoover’s efforts began to pay. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in his speech on May 14, 1947, at Albert Hall- London had drawn a clear picture of Europe when he said Europe has turned as “a rubble heap, a charnel- house, a breeding ground of pestilence and hate. Ancient nationalistic feuds and modern ideological factions distract and infuriate the unhappy, hungry populations.” During that speech, Mr. Churchill claimed that Europe could only meet those challenges only with a ‘‘United Europe’’ Movement.

From the war ravages a new Europe was emerging and earlier to his Albert Hall speech, British Prime Minister Churchill on September 19, 1946, had delivered, a historic speech in the University of Zurich, where he appealed Europe to rise for a United States of Europe.

Marshall Plan and Emergence of a New Europe

Then, George C. Marshall came into the scene. He was America’s a former Chief of Staff and the first five-star general. He had organized and directed the largest army in world history that led America and Allied power win the war against the Axis powers – commanded by Germany, Italy, and Japan. Immediately, after the war was concluded Marshall resigned from the Army and in January 1947, President Truman appointed him his Secretary of State.

Few months after, on May 27, 1947, in a memorandum presented to Mr. Marshall, his undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs, William Clayton stated that when millions of people are starving in the cities of Europe and if they did not receive prompt and substantial aid from the US, the economic, social and political disintegration will overwhelm Europe.

This, according to Clayton, would have awful implications – for the future peace and security of the world, and the immediate effects on the domestic economy of the US would be disastrous.

Thereafter, on June 5, 1947, George C Marshall, was at Harvard University to receive an honorary degree. There he delivered a short well-reasoned speech, popularly known as The Marshall Plan Speech. The remarks he made there if looked from his position as the Secretary of State, was an informal one, but by the time he finished the speech, that had become a landmark policy declaration upon which the post-war global order was constructed. Obviously, it was the bedrock for trans-Atlantic relations that had invited long-term responsibility of the United States for the unity and security of Western Europe.

In his speech, Marshall’s focus was restoring the confidence of the European people in the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole.

He expressed American commitment to do whatever was possible for the revival of normal economic health in the world, ‘‘without which’’ he said, ‘‘there can be no political stability and no assured peace.’’

To remove the suspicions of the Soviet Union, he pledged the American policy not directed ‘‘against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.’’ As said by Mr. Marshall, the purpose of the plan was only the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions could exist. Such assistance, he asserted, must not be on a piecemeal basis as various crises develop.

Perhaps the most important strategic message he imparted to American Allies in Europe was that the American assistance intended to help them stand on their own feet economically, had to be utilized unitedly, and therefore, he appealed them to come with such the initiatives. ‘‘The program’’ Marshall avowed ‘‘should be a joint one, agreed to by a number, if not all European nations’’. The only conditions attached with the aid was that all the recipient countries were to cooperate with each other and follow some type of united federal model so that they could combat against their economic and political woes.

Major West European countries like Britain and France were much enthused with Marshall’s speech. Immediately they called a conference of European countries to discuss the American offer. On July 12 (1947), the sixteen European countries including West Germany and Italy met in Paris. They formed a committee to develop a united framework of actions for the American Assistance and on September 22, the same year, the committee presented the report to the Secretary of State George Marshall under the name of Committee of European Economic Cooperation.

The Marshall Plan was meant to cover all European countries from either block – the Soviet and western, but the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, as mentioned by Nigel Hamilton in American Caesars, forbade all Soviet satellite countries in Eastern and Central Europe as well as the USSR to accept American Aid – thinking it as a capitalist ploy to undermine Soviet interests in Europe. However, during the War, Mr. Stalin had gracefully accepted food and other materials.

Czechoslovakia and Poland had agreed to participate in Paris conference on the Marshall Plan, but due to the pressure put on by Stalin they absented. According to Hamilton, Finland, considered although independent, declined to attend the conference with an aim not to antagonize Russia.

This signaled the beginning of Cold War and before that, the Soviet Union had already begun to criticize the US and its allies for their so-called capitalist and imperialist policies.

America is Safe Only When Europe is Safe

More than Marshall, it was President Harry Truman who was much excited with Marshall’s speech and immediately he initiated needed executive and legislative procedure to implement the project. With the Marshall Plan, President Truman proved his statesmanship and magnanimity. He selflessly authorized the plan to be named by his Secretary of State, as Mr. Marshall was widely popular in America and Europe as well. Any plan bearing his name was expected to move smoothly through the legislative procedures too. Mr. Truman only wanted the plan to get success and did not care for the credit for the plan and its successful implementation.

Besides, Mr. Truman was looking the project with quite a different angle that can well be understood by his observation as quoted by Stephen Graubard in his book, The Presidents: The Transformation of the American Presidency…, when he said, ‘‘in all the history of the world, we are the first great nation to feed and support the conquered. We are the first great nation to create independent republics from the conquered territory ….”

The plan successfully had built European confidence and had also prepared a foundation for creating a European Economic Community that is today the European Union.

Undeniably, because of war, Europe’s very survival was threatened and no other country in the world at that time was in a position to help them. With Marshall Plan America did it. In his renowned book The Marshall Plan, Benn Steil, has stated that between 1948 and 1952 the United States transferred $ 13.2 billion to the 16 Marshall Plan countries that in current dollar values was worth to some $130 billion. However, according to Steil, if calculated as a share of total US output over the period, this would be equivalent to $800 billion today.

The Marshall Plan is widely regarded as the largest and most effective foreign-aid program in history, and from among the countries fighting fiercely for centuries, the Plan created a united Europe and a united defense mechanism in the name of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). A united Europe with a common market and common defense shaped most stable democracies and most prosperous economies in Europe.

Ultimately, the strength of Europe, thus earned, was translated into American power in economic, political and military terms. The support and assistance that America provided to Europe after World Wars, was instrumental to make America a global power and command an international order in favor of America. A new Europe, fully committed to the ideals of freedom and democracy produced several forums for deep engagement between Europe and America—that ultimately helped America become First.

This partnership created global institutions that crafted an era of greater European peace and prosperity -not experienced in human history. This in return helped America amass unprecedented power and prestige that ultimately laid down the foundation for an American global order.

Europe’s trust over the United States was so great that it sacrificed all its military ambitions, forget all those past animosities among them and integrated into NATO and the European Union – the most important institutional mechanism for strengthening international order led by the United States.

Yes, there was a price to pay for it. In a peacetime, the price may seem a bit higher, but when compared to wars America and Europe fought in past, it is minimal.

Had America, failed in rebuilding Europe and protecting European democracy, then the US would have seen a world dominated by Communist Russia and the stability and prosperity that Western Europe has gained since then would not have been possible.

The history has exhibited — a safe America has come out of a safer Europe and similarly, a safer Europe is possible only when America is safe and protected. Political and military leadership across the Atlantic cannot undermine this for the vital security of their countries although, at times, they can make contradictory pronouncements only for the sake of internal political consumption and for a political luxury.

America and Europe have vast differences, but things that are common between them are much more important than those differences. Without their joint efforts the liberal world order – the bedrock for their security and prosperity, is hardly possible to sustain. For this, both America and Europe have paid the price gracefully and have made compromises. However, this has helped them defend their stakes, produce abundances of wealth and ensure greater peace among them. This offered America the massive global strategic power to defend its economic, political and military interest in the most important region of the world.

Unquestionably, Europe depends on the United States for its defense. It seems attractive to create a common European defense mechanism, but they on their own, may not have resources, willpower, leadership and motivations for such efforts. The differences among themselves in Europe is much more complicated than the differences they have with America.

On the other hand, it is a matter to note that during the World War II, a warring and divided Europe was planning to Attack America, and the strategic situation in Europe had prompted Japan to attack Perl Harbor. On 9/11 more than one hundred Europeans were killed and Europe is not only still threatened by Al Qaeda, but the threat to Europe is much more treacherous than to the United States itself.

America itself is the cultural extension of Europe. It offers global value chain that America has dearly hold for long. If America loses its political and military authority over Europe, America’s security itself will be imperiled. Therefore, for the time being, anyone from the positions of power in America or in any European capital, can ignore the basics of their partnerships, but the countries they represent will not agree with them in the course of time, the balance will prevail itself.

Part One of this series may be found here

Is Peace Attainable In Our Time? -OpEd

0
0

Thanks to the Saudi-led coalition, Yemen continues to bleed for the last three years. The country is wrecked by a bloody war between the Houthi rebels and supporters of Yemen’s unpopular government.

The Houthis, who are Zaydi Shi’as, and the Yemeni government have battled on and off since 2004; the fighting was, however, confined to the Houthis’ stronghold, northern Yemen’s impoverished Saada province. In 2011, in the wake of the “Arab Spring” that spread across the Middle East, including Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh was ousted in 2012. He was succeeded by his vice president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi who was chosen as a president for a two-year transitional period on February 21, 2012, in an election in which he was the only candidate. His mandate was extended for another year in January 2014. However, he remained in power after the expiration of his mandate.

In September 2014, the Houthis, dissatisfied with the outcome of the 2011 Revolution. took control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and aided by forces loyal to the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh clashed with forces loyal to the government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, based in Aden. On 22 January 2015, Hadi was forced to resign by the Houthis after a mass protest against his decision to raise the fuel subsidies and placed under house arrest. A month later, he escaped to his hometown of Aden, rescinded his resignation, and denounced the Houthi takeover as an unconstitutional coup d’état. In response to the Houthis’ advances, a coalition of Arab states, led by the Wahabi state of Saudi Arabia, launched a military campaign in 2015 to defeat the Houthis and restore Yemen’s government. Saudi Arabia, keen on ensuring its influence on the Peninsula has accused Iran of supporting the Houthis, which Iran denies.

It is difficult to get an accurate information on the death toll. Save The Children estimated at least 50,000 children died in 2017, an average of 130 every day. A 41-page report on 28 August 2018 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) showed that the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes, tortured detainees, raped civilians and used child soldiers as young as 8 — actions that may amount to war crimes. The report singled out Saudi and Emirati airstrikes for causing the most civilian casualties, saying they had hit residential areas, markets, funerals, weddings, jails, boats and medical facilities. Earlier, OHCHR estimated that Saudi-led coalition air attacks had caused almost two-thirds of reported civilian deaths, while the Houthis have been accused of causing mass civilian casualties due to their siege of Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that more than 3 million Yemenis have fled their homes to elsewhere in the country, and 280,000 have sought asylum in other countries, including Djibouti and Somalia. As reported by Al Jazeera, internally displaced Yemenis often must cope with a lack of food and inadequate shelter. Many Yemenis who have not fled are also suffering, especially those in need of healthcare.

The mess in Yemen has naturally attracted the extremist Salafis to further fuel the crisis. Since the start of the war last year, al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has launched several attacks on Houthi rebels, whom it views as infidels. In 2015, AQAP took over Mukalla, a provincial capital and the fifth-largest city in Yemen, before they were driven out in April 2016, 2,000 by Yemeni and Emirati troops. The neo-Kharijite Daesh (or ISIL/ISIS) announced the formation of a wilaya, or state, in Yemen in December 2014. In March 2015, it claimed its first attack in Yemen: suicide bombings in two Sanaa mosques used by Zaydi Shias, which killed more than 140 people.

As the western governments, esp. the USA, supply and sell weapons to its friendly states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the future looks too bleak to find a peaceful solution to the grave situation in Yemen. A report released by Human Rights Watch in August of this year warned Britain, France and the United States that they risked complicity in unlawful attacks in Yemen by continuing to supply arms to Saudi Arabia.

Although the Talibans were removed from power after 9/11, its people continue to live unsafely and die every month due to the never-ending wars there; some 23,000 civilians died last year.

Let’s now review some of the trouble spots in Africa. Since 2014, Africa has experienced more than half of worldwide conflict incidents , despite having only about 16 percent of the world population.

There are currently fifteen African countries involved in war or are experiencing post-war conflict and tension. In West Africa, the countries include Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo. In East Africa, the countries include Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Mozambique and Uganda. In North Africa, post-Ghaddafi Libya is in a civil war with competing governments claiming authenticity at the two ends of the country. At the center, the Central African Republic (CAR) continues to witness deadly violence in the form of genocide against its Muslim minorities there at the hands of Christian armed groups.

In December 2014, the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Central African Republic (COI) issued a report finding a “pattern of ethnic cleansing committed by the anti-balaka in the areas in which Muslims had been living.” In the first part of January 2014, anti-balaka Christian fighters deliberately killed Muslims because of their religious identity or told them to leave the country or die. As a result, the COI reported that in 2014, 99 percent of the capital’s Muslim residents left Bangui, 80 percent of the entire country’s Muslim population fled to Cameroon or Chad, and 417 of the country’s 436 mosques were destroyed. Since 2014, few Muslims have returned to CAR.

Most Muslims in western CAR continue to live in peacekeeper-protected enclaves. The few who have returned to or continue to live in their home villages report that anti-balaka soldiers forced them to convert or hide their faith. The UN reports that Muslim IDPs and returning refugees have been harassed and abused.

Although the genocidal pogroms against Muslim minorities in CAR has eased somewhat in late 2016, religious violence has grown in recent months in the central and southeast regions of the country, esp. since May 2017 when more than 300 people got killed and over 100,000 displaced. Much of the fighting has taken place in Bangassou, a southeastern border town near the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Red Cross said in May 2017 that it had found 115 dead bodies following a series of militia attacks. The out-going head of the U.N.’s humanitarian office, Stephen O’Brien told AP that he saw 2,000 Muslims trapped in a Catholic church; they had fled their homes after being attacked by anti-balaka militias. O’Brien said that the militias were “lying in wait” to kill the Muslims, while “every Christian family’s house was left standing.”

Prior to 2012, 85% of the population of the Central African Republic was Christian with a 15% percent Muslim minority. This has changed significantly over the years. Now Muslims comprise only 8.9% of the population.

Religious identity continues to be one of the most significant predictors of violence in the Central African Republic. Many Muslim communities remain displaced and in the western parts, Muslims cannot practice their faith freely. The CAR Government has initiated some work to ensure renewed interfaith cooperation and address the growing tensions between religious communities. However, as noted by Ewelina U. Ochab, author of the book “Never Again: Legal Responses to a Broken Promise in the Middle East,” in a Forbes essay, without adequate reconciliation efforts, this has not achieved the desired results.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) found that the situation in CAR merits the designation of a country of particular concern (CRC). In its 2018 report, USCIRF reported that Muslim minorities in CAR had been subjected to marginalization even before the recent conflict arose. Muslims continue to suffer from systemic discrimination in a wide range of areas including their access to education and identity documents. The ongoing violence has resulted in over 2.3 million people requiring humanitarian assistance. It has created more than 450,000 refugees and almost 350,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs). Thousands lost their lives. Ochab recommends that CAR “must accommodate interfaith dialogue and reconciliation. Above all, it must ensure that human rights are afforded to all, including the right to freedom of religion and belief to the minority Muslim groups. More needs to be done to help Muslim minorities in the Central African Republic. This includes ensuring that the refugees and IDPs are allowed to return to their homes, that they are provided adequate protection and that they are guaranteed basic rights in equality with other majority groups. The CAR Government must also ensure that the religious war between ex-Seleka and anti-Balaka fighters is adequately investigated and that prosecutions are pursued against these parties for their role in the sectarian violence in CAR. Combating impunity can greatly support reconciliation and community cohesion efforts.”

More needs to be done to help Muslim minorities in the Central African Republic. This includes ensuring that the refugees and IDPs are allowed to return to their homes, that they are provided adequate protection and that they are guaranteed basic rights in equality with other majority groups. The CAR Government must also ensure that the religious war between ex-Seleka and anti-balaka fighters is adequately investigated and that prosecutions are pursued against these parties for their role in the sectarian violence in CAR. Combating impunity can greatly support reconciliation and community cohesion efforts.

Fueled by America’s drone war, the Somali civil war is still going strong in its third decade. Nearly 5,000 people died last year there.

The Boko Haram conflict in northeastern Nigeria is another epicenter and situated in relative proximity to an area of conflict hot spots in the Central African Republic, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, South Sudan and Darfur. The insurgency is the deadliest conflict that Africa is currently experiencing. Although the casualty figures from Boko Haram have ebbed significantly in recent months, thanks to President Buhari’s new methods of managing the conflict, unless long term strategies are found that address the root causes such conflicts may not be easy to resolve.

South Sudan declared independence from Sudan in 2011, becoming the world’s newest country, with the backing of Western nations. But two years later, civil war erupted in South Sudan creating some of the worst records in bloodshed, massacre, rape and wanton savagery.

The conflict began as a feud between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and to then-Vice President Riek Machar. It soon spiraled into fighting among several factions, engulfing the country in ethnic violence and eventually producing a devastating humanitarian crisis. An estimated 383,000 people have died in this country of 12 million people as a result of civil war, according to a new report that documents the extraordinary scale of devastation after five years of fighting in the world’s youngest country.

The report, published by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and financed by the U.S. State Department, revealed that about half of the dead were killed in fighting between ethnic rivals as it spread across the country, and the other half died from disease, hunger and other causes exacerbated by the conflict.

The number far surpasses earlier estimates from the United Nations and brings into focus the tragedy of a conflict that has received little global attention. The Aid Worker Security Report, an annual global assessment of violence against aid workers, determined that last year, for the third year in a row, South Sudan was the most dangerous country in the world for aid workers. At least 113 aid workers have been killed in the country during the first half of 2018.

In June 2018 a UN peacekeeper from Bangladesh was killed when unidentified gunmen ambushed a humanitarian convoy on a road in South Sudan.

On a positive note, the Christian ruled Ethiopia has been showing progress in its desire to finding peace with its Muslim-majority neighbor Eritrea. In October 5, 2018, its ruling coalition extended the chairmanship of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, further anchoring his authority as he pushes through sweeping political and economic reforms. He will now lead the ruling EPRDF coalition until the next congress, which usually takes place every two to three years.

Abiy Ahmed, 42, an Oromo, took power as Prime Minister in April 2018 after his predecessor resigned following three years of protests led by ethnic Oromos, who were demanding an end to what they considered their political and economic marginalization despite being the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia.

The reforms he has introduced were unthinkable not so long ago. Abiy Ahmed’s priorities included freeing political prisoners, pledging to open up the state-controlled economy and promising to overhaul the security services. He has released thousands of political prisoners and unbanned groups, including the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which had been labelled terrorist organizations.

He has also ended the state of war with Eritrea by agreeing to give up disputed border territory, in the process normalizing relations with the long-time foe. The East African countries fought a bloody border war that erupted in 1998. The two-year war left more than 80,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.

A UN-backed peace agreement in 2000 awarded the disputed border territories to Eritrea, but the deal was never implemented. The countries have skirmished since then in one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts

Abiy traveled to Eritrea in September, his first visit since the Horn of Africa neighbors ended a 20-year state of war in July. Phone services and travel between the two countries have resumed. The two countries have also reopened embassies.

These are laudable examples too rarely seen in our time! If the newly found peace can be sustained, the two countries will have a huge potential for economic, cultural and political cooperation – that will have a great impact not only for the security and integration of the Horn of Africa but also the bigger Eastern Africa.

We are living at a time when people are getting killed for no reason except their ethnicity, race, color, language and gender. Sometimes they are getting killed for no reason at all. It is a messy world that is increasingly becoming hostile, difficult, suffocating, unsafe and insecure for the vast majority of global citizens. They like to see a change for better not only for themselves but also their posterity.

What can be done to make things better? It starts with people and the polity. After all, as the Prophet Muhammad (S) famously said, as you are so will be your leaders.

It is long known that political leaders and entrepreneurs in and out of government tend to fan the flames of division dividing and marginalizing communities along the ethnic, racial, sectarian, religious or whatever lines that suits them. They frequently do so in their desire to solidify their control and maximize their faction’s interest. In that pursuit they often ignore or forget the consequences of their divisive actions.

Responsible leadership means looking to the future beyond today and realizing that there is accountability for everything – good and bad. That means making difficult choices and compromises something that is short in supply these days. But as the recent thawing and normalizing of relationship between two former foes Ethiopia and Eritrea demonstrated peace is attainable when right people are chosen for the right job. They can take people to new highs and open new doors of opportunities, previously either unknown or untapped.

Embassy Disappearances: Jamal Khashoggi And The Foreign Policy Web – OpEd

0
0

Do this outside. You will put me into trouble.” — Mohammad al-Otaibi, Saudi consul, to Saudi agents, Istanbul, October 2, 2018

It smells, but anything wedged between the putrefaction of Saudi foreign policy, the ambition of Turkish bellicosity, and the US muddling middleman is bound to. Three powers tussling over image and appearance; all engaged in a wrestle over how best to seem the least hypocritical. US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi already seems to have found his name into the books of martyred dissidents, but we have no body, merely an inflicted disappearance suggesting a gruesome murder.

The journalist, a notable critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was last seen on October 2 entering the residence of the Saudi consul-general in Istanbul, ostensibly to obtain a document necessary for his upcoming nuptials. A senior Turkish official put forth a brutal scenario on Wednesday based on obtained audio recordings. Saudi operatives, probably numbering 15 from the intelligence services and the Royal Guards, were waiting for Khashoggi’s arrival at 1.15 pm. Within a matter of minutes, Khashoggi was dead, decapitated, dismembered, his fingers removed. The entire operation took two hours.

The New York Times pondered how the brutality was inflicted. “Whether Mr. Khashoggi was killed before his fingers were removed and his body dismembered could not be determined.” The Saudi consul Mohammad al-Otaibi was revealed to be squeamish and worried, suggesting the agents ply their craft elsewhere. The reply from one of the company was curt and unequivocal: “If you want to live when you come back to Arabia, shut up.” A Saudi doctor of forensics, Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, a worthy addition to the crew, got to work disposing of the body. His advice to any companions feeling wobbly: listen to music, soothe the savage breast.

A danse macabre has developed between the various power players. US president Donald Trump has asked his Turkish counterparts for any audio or video evidence that might shed light on the journalist’s fate. To date, these have been drip fed with tantalising timing, disturbing the White House’s neat and comfortable acceptance of the account put forth by Riyadh. But Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, an individual never shy to exploit a jingoistic moment, has remained cautiously reticent.

This is where the world of image, supposition, and make-believe, comes into play. The procuring of evidence is being resisted. Trump asks, but does not expect any. The Turkish side, thus far, supplies crumbs, finding their way into selected news outlets such as the Daily Yeni Şafak. Trump, for his part, remains non-committal, even indifferent to what might emerge. “I’m not sure yet that it exists, probably does, probably does.”

The picture is patchy, gathered from audio surveillance, intercepted communications and a miscellany of sources, but on this point, Ankara remains ginger. US intelligence officials have so far suggested that circumstantial evidence on the involvement of Crown Prince Mohammed is growing.

Trump’s game with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of hedging and hoping: hedging on the issue of blood-linked complicity, and hoping that the sordid matter will simply evaporate in the ether of the next event. “I just want to find out what’s happening,” he deflected. “I’m not giving cover at all.” But he has again fallen victim to the characteristic, off colour corker: allegations against the Saudis might be analogously seen with those of sexual assault against now confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “Here we go again with, you know, you’re guilty until proven innocent. I don’t like that. We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh and he was innocent all the way as far as I’m concerned.” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also shown a marked reluctance to go near any details, telling the press that any facts on Khashoggi will not be discussed.

Politicians in the United States have been attempting to add tears and remorse to the equation, though these dry quickly. Rep. Eric Swalwell Jr. from California suggested that the explanations were needless. “If someone was killed in your home, while you were in it, and 15 days later you’re still coming up with an explanation… forget it. We already know.” US Rep. Paul Ryan and Senator Orrin Hatch are chewing over the prospect that Khashoggi’s fate might have been occasioned by an “interrogation gone wrong”.

The one person to again blow the cover off any niceties, to destroy the façade of propriety in what is otherwise a grizzly affair is the US president. He has avoided funereal respects and regrets. He has avoided referencing any idyllic notions of a free press. The all-powerful dollar and arms sales remain paramount. “You’ve got $100 billion worth of arms sales… we cannot alienate our biggest player in the Middle East.” And just to show that a love of God and the foetus won’t deter evangelicals from embracing a ghoulish Arab theocracy, Pat Robertson has added his hearty support. “For those who are screaming blood for the Saudis – look, these people are our allies.”

Whatever happens regarding Khashoggi, the relationship between Washington and Riyadh is assured. Turkey, from first signs, is avoiding open confrontation. Murder, alleged or otherwise, can take place in certain circumstances, however brazenly executed. The brutality against Khashoggi, should it ever come to be properly aired, is but another footnote in the program of a kingdom indifferent to suffering, from the saw doctor to the jet. And business remains business.

Iran Nuclear Deal Breakdown: What Does It Mean For European Business? – Analysis

0
0

By Ben H. Quandt

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“JCPOA”), as it is formally known, is the culmination of a decade of intensifying economic sanctions, diplomacy, and negotiations. The deal was finally agreed on 14 July 2015 in Vienna between Iran and major world powers: China, France, Germany, Russia, the EU, the UK and the United States. It was adopted unanimously by the United Nations Security Council on 20 July 2015 as Resolution 2231.

The deal trades a halt in Iran’s nuclear program, along with verification protocols, for relief from economic sanctions and opening to global trade. The Obama administration never fully relieved all US-imposed sanctions; most of the primary sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program and the US trade embargo remained in place.

Fast-forward to 8 May 2018 and President Trump’s announcement that he will not sign the sanctions waiver. The US has decided to unilaterally reimpose economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic to be activated in two tranches, in August and November. The November round will hit Iranian oil exports, the lifeblood of the economy. This would be the second time Iran’s oil exports have been surgically targeted by US sanctions, the first being in 2010 under the Obama Administration, which was cited as a major factor in bringing Iran to the table on the nuclear deal. The reimposition of US sanctions has contributed to a slide in the Iranian rial, which has lost approximately two-thirds of its value against the US dollar this year.

The European Response

As recently as 6 August European Union Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini announced that the EU would update its Blocking Statute to protect European firms engaging in legitimate business with Iran, going as far as to encourage Europe’s small and medium enterprises to “increase business with Iran,” referring to the action as a “security priority.” The Blocking Statute is designed to protect European firms from the effects of extra-territorial sanctions imposed by the United States; that is, sanctions the US seeks to impose outside of its jurisdiction. The EU Blocking Statute has yet to be tested. Mogherini further stated that the remaining parties to the deal would commit to maintaining financial channels for the export of Iranian oil and gas. On 23 August, the EU commissioned its first round of financial support for Iran totaling EUR 18 million. This is part of a EUR 50 million package to support private enterprise in the country.

One of the key problems for the EU and European companies is their exposure to, and dependence on, the US dollar. The global financial system is based on the dollar and those transactions eventually wind up remitting through the US Federal Reserve, which is why the United States can exert extra-territorial leverage. The first option being tabled by Germany, France and the UK, is around establishing an alternate financial channel in order to facilitate trade with Iran. This could take the form of a legal entity, a Special Purpose Vehicle (“SPV”) – essentially a barter trade account – which would hold Euro-denominated credits from Iranian exports to spend with European suppliers. High-level meetings held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2018 have seen Mogherini and Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif announce the creation of such an SPV. The final details are yet to be released. This alternate financial channel is the best option for ensuring continued trade and potentially saving the nuclear deal.

With the unique creation of this SPV, European companies can conduct legitimate business with Iran. The SPV has the support of the remaining parties to the Iran Deal: Russia, France, Germany, China, the UK and the EU. The European Union will be in the spotlight as to whether they can stand firm in the face of pressure from the US. It will be a telling moment for the EU leadership, which will have lasting repercussions either way.

The Role of China

Arguably the most influential party to the agreement is China, as Iran’s largest trading partner and the biggest export market for Iranian crude. The European Union has in recent years been looking East, cozying up to Beijing as there is a stronger realization that trade with China is paramount to Europe’s future prosperity. At this stage, the Chinese have indicated they are not going to be cutting crude purchases from Iran. The China-Iran relationship is transactional in nature and Beijing sees Iran as a “valuable non-US-aligned partner in a geostrategic region,” according to RAND’s Scott Harold. Harold also asserts that: both countries share “a skepticism of the US-led international order.” China has repeatedly thwarted international (EU and US) pressure to comply with international sanctions regimes imposed on Iran. In 2012 when the Obama Administration again pressured China to cut imports of Iranian oil Beijing voiced its opposition, though ultimately agreed to lower purchases by 20 percent.

The Chinese leadership has been taking concrete steps toward internationalizing the yuan, which importantly means paying for crude oil purchases in their own currency. As the world’s largest importer of crude, this is significant. In March this year, the Chinese launched crude oil futures on the Shanghai stock exchange, denominated in yuan. As of July, the yuan-based crude futures contracts already had won a sizeable 14.4 percent market share. China has already tested yuan-based payments for crude with both Russia and Iran via the Bank of Kunlun, a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation.

Alternate payment channels are now widely being tabled. In addition to the EU proposal for the creation of an SPV, Russia, Turkey, and Iran have been in discussions – as recently as September – about ditching the US dollar in transactions between the three nations. Over the past five years, Iran’s trade with Russia has averaged USD 1.8 billion per annum, and with Turkey USD 6.6 billion. Second, there is the option of utilizing a bank with no exposure to US dollars. There is precedent for this in Russia. Rossiya and SMP, both Russian banks with close ties to Putin, have been under US sanctions since 2014. In that time, both banks have seen increases in their assets, primarily based on financing construction projects and establishing retail banking operations in Crimea.

What Does This Mean for European Businesses?

European businesses have a new 80-million-strong and largely untapped market to enter. Despite decades of economic sanctions, Iran is the 26th largest economy in the world (2nd in MENA to Saudi Arabia) with a gross domestic product (GDP) of USD 440 billion. This ranks on par with Thailand, slightly behind Poland, and ahead of Austria, Norway, and Nigeria. The Iranian economy grew by 13.4 percent in 2016 and 4.3 percent in 2017. Between 2000 and 2011, the economy averaged over 5 percent growth. However, with crude sales sliding over the past three months and uncertainty over the EU’s financial vehicle, the Iranian economy is forecast to contract by about 1-1.5 percent over the next three years.

These numbers alone make Iran a genuinely attractive emerging market. It is no coincidence that European majors rushed into the country after the JCPOA was formalized. Airbus signed an agreement to deliver 100 planes, Daimler entered into a joint-venture with an Iranian automotive manufacturer to build Mercedes trucks, French oil and gas firm Total earmarked USD 1 billion for Phase-2 of South Pars, and Swiss company Stadler Rail had a USD 1.4 billion deal for the production of railway cars. All of these deals have been withdrawn from or placed ‘on hold.’ Large European multinationals face uncertain regulatory risks at present. The threat stems from secondary sanctions imposed by the US given their large exposure to the US market and the US financial system, plus potential global brand reputation risk.

The situation is markedly different for European small and medium enterprises. Those with low- to no exposure to the US market could benefit from the fast-growing Iranian market. The EU is actively encouraging this strategy. It remains to be seen how much, and what type of, support the EU is willing to provide, and the effectiveness and strength of the Blocking Statute. For Iran, increased European business offers some hedging against the overwhelming Chinese influence in the economy by diversifying their trading partners, and also serves to internationalize their position with increased vested interests. That said, the EU is mired with its own contentious issues: the ongoing migrant crisis, surging populist parties including the rise of the Alternative for Germany (“AfD”), Brexit less than six months away, and upcoming European parliament elections in 2019.

Ultimately, international public opinion presently sides with Iran, not the US. There is growing resentment even among Western allies of US unilateral and extraterritorial sanctions. Beijing’s drive to increase international acceptance of the renminbi coupled with the EU’s proposal to build a new financial mechanism to evade the US financial system will only serve to strengthen the knowledge base of how global markets will operate in a post-USD dominated system.

 

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


Why China Will Win The Artificial Intelligence Race – Analysis

0
0

Two Artificial Intelligence-driven Internet paradigms may emerge in the near future. One will be based on logic, smart enterprises and human merit while the other may morph into an Orwellian control tool. Even former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has foreseen a bifurcation of the Internet by 2028 and China’s eventual triumph in the AI race by 2030.

In the meantime, the US seems more interested in deflecting the smart questions of today than in building the smart factories of tomorrow.  Nothing embodies this better than the recent attempt by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) to create an AI-based filter to “stamp out fake-news outlets before the stories spread too widely.”

But what exactly constitutes fake news? Does it include media-colluded lies over Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction in 2002? Or the egregiously fraudulent Nurse Nayirah testimony a decade earlier? Will the binary logic of “either you are with us or against us” be used to certify news sources?

According to US President Donald J. Trump, fake news is a 24/7 specialty of the CNN, Washington Post and just about every other US mainstream media. The author agrees with Trump on this note. As a futurist, he relies heavily on credible news sources. The CNN and WaPo therefore rarely feature on the trusted list. At the same time, the author squarely blames Trump for the ongoing US-China trade war.This raises several questions: How will MIT’s AI filtration system treat editorial divergences in the same publication? Will they all be feathered and tarred as “fake news” once a threshold – 150 articles according to the new system – is crossed? How will it evaluate analytical gems in the unregulated alternative media and open source fora? Will social media evidences, planted and generated by a critical mass of trolls, be machine-aggregated to determine true news?

It is also disturbing to note that this digital commissariat is being partly developed by Qatar – a nation that has been routinely singled out for its human rights abuses, use of slave labour, rampant anti-Semitism, runaway fake news and support of jihadi terrorism. While Qatar and the US media have incessantly accused Syria of wielding chemical weapons, experts from MIT and the UN have adduced otherwise.How will such contradictory reports be treated in the future as more Gulf Arab money pour into MIT and its cohort research institutions?

Not Made-in-America

The future of US artificial intelligence and its emerging technologies is overwhelmingly dependent on foreign talent drawn from Asia and Eastern Europe. This is unsurprising as 44 million US citizens are currently saddled with a staggering $1.53 trillion in student loans – with a projected 40 percent default rate by 2023.

The US student loan bubble is expanding in tandem with the rising un-employability of young Americans. Fake news overload naturally leads to pervasive intellectual stupefaction.  US policy-makers will ignore this ominous trend, just as they ignore the perennial national slide in global indices that measure the quality of life, education and human capital yields. Can the human mind – incessantly subjected to politicized fairy tales and violent belief systems – be capable of continual innovation?  It is of course easier to blame an external bogeyman over a purely internal malaise. Herein lies the utility of fake news; one that will be filtered by a digital nanny and policed by thousands of ideologically-biased fact-checkers.  Funded, of course, by the US deep state!

Somehow no known form of intelligence – artificial or otherwise – has impressed US policy-makers on the national security dimensions of the immigrant-citizen digital divide. High-achieving immigrant communities, for example, may be targeted by irate citizens during a period of intense economic distress, precipitating a reverse brain-drain to their countries of origin.

Even otherwise, the children of highly-skilled naturalized immigrants face a variety of discriminatory practices when they come of age. The most notorious of this is the “Asia fail” in take regimen at vaunted US universities where, smart second-generation Asian Americans are routinely sacrificed on the altars of artificial diversity and multiculturalism. In future, a digital panoptic on may selectively reject meritorious applicants based on “inappropriate” social media posts made a lifetime ago. Any litigation-unearthed bias in the admissions process can be blamed on a technical glitch. Or on the Russians!

Forget about merit! The prevalent imperative is to develop next- generation rubber-stampers for the privileged 0.1%.

Divergent Futures

Just like the Internet, the middle classes of a rump US-led Greater Eurabia and a China-led world may have separate trajectories by 2030.  With China experiencing a middle class boom and record numbers of STEM graduates, AI is poised to boost the quantity and quality of a new generation of digital scientists.

At the same time, the search algorithms of Google, YouTube, Facebook and its cohorts are making it harder for individuals to access critical open source data and analyses.  The convenient pretext here is “fake news” and the need to protect society from misleading information. Why think… when a state-led AI Commissar can do the thinking for you? Ironically, the West routinely charges China for this very practise. How is it possible then for China to develop rapidly and become a leader in AI?  In the core Asian societies, the art of “constructive criticism” incentivises erudition, knowledge and a face-saving approach.  Knowledge is also unfettered by ideology or provenance.

The US, on the other hand, is hopelessly trying to find a balance between its ideological dictates, visceral populism and next-generation knowledge. Talent and AI are sacrificed in the process. According to Google’s Eric Schmidt, “Iran…produces some of the smartest and top computer scientists in the world. I want them here. I want them working for Alphabet and Google. It’s crazy not to let these people in.”

It is even crazier to think that a smart society can be moulded by AI-mediated claptrap and news filters.  This is why China will win the AI race, and Asia will prevail in the Internet of Ideas (IoI).

Why And How Russia Is Poised To Strengthen Its Afghan Role – Analysis

0
0

After the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the USSR’s subsequent disintegration, Russia seemed neither interested in nor capable of securing a pro-Moscow regime in Kabul as was seen during the Cold War. In a move aimed at safeguarding its strategic back yard (Central Asia) from the rising menaces of drug trafficking and Islamic fundamentalism (non-conventional threats) emerging from Afghanistan, Russia accepted the American presence (a conventional threat) in the region post-9/11. However, any academic pursuit at understanding the Russian role in Afghanistan in perspective must incorporate efforts at grasping Moscow’s threat perceptions to its strategic interests emanating from Kabul.

How Interests in Central Asia Shaped Moscow’s Afghan Concerns and Role

Russia has had both geopolitical and geo-economic interests in Central Asia. It considers Central Asia its strategic back yard and has a monopoly over pipeline diplomacy as it continued to supply the Central Asian natural resources through the pipelines existing since Soviet times. Russian role in Afghanistan has been shaped primarily by the threats to the region emanating from and facilitated by the latter. Post 9/11, the Russian policy has been evidently geared towards containing the American penetration into the region as well as preventing the Central Asian Republics from radical Islamic influences and drugs generating from Afghanistan. The American objective of laying down alternative pipeline routes for transfer of Central Asian resources to the world market through Afghanistan threatened Russia’s interests.

It is noteworthy that the American strategy gravitated towards the Eurasian region not only with an aim to develop continental strategies to contain the regional influence of Russia, Iran and China given their geographical contiguity to Afghanistan and the Central Asian region, the natural resource potential also attracted the American attention. These objectives became the prime movers of US policy towards the region apart from the immediacy of the threat of terrorism which rose to prominence as being a national security threat. It is worth recalling that In a move to reach out to the Central Asian region, the US Congress started passing bills that called for diversification of energy supplies from the Central Asian and Caspian region starting from late 1990s. The Bush Administration soon after it formed the government released an energy policy report indicating that the exploitation of Caspian energy resources could not only benefit the economies of the region, but also help mitigate possible world supply disruptions which was considered a major US security goal.

Russian lingering concerns remained that the flight of many Soviet Muslims during Stalin’s brutal collectivization campaign and nationalist purges created a permanent Soviet exile population in Afghanistan. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the resultant weakening of its control over the Islamic republics, Russia believed that a radical Islamic regime in Afghanistan would push these people towards the north. Secondly, the regime through its Islamic influences would use the exiled population to destabilize the newly independent Central Asian Republics. Rise of Islamic opposition groups in different Central Asian states strengthened such Russian belief. This apart, the collapse of the Soviet-era economies and the elimination of Soviet-policed borders led to a quick surge in the production and trafficking of drugs in the Central Asian region.

Russia perceived substantial threat when the Taliban rose to prominence in Afghanistan. For instance, Sergie Ivanov, the head of Russian Security Council, threatened to lunch missile and air strikes against Afghanistan after accusing the Taliban government of assisting the Chechen resistance. Moscow further accused the Taliban of giving sanctuary to Islamists from some of the Central Asian states and allowing them to train for guerrilla warfare to destabilise the states. During the Afghan civil war, Russia kept pouring weapons and money in support of Uzbek and Tajik warlords. When the civil war entered a decisive phase, Russia in order to push the Taliban out of Tajik and Uzbek areas threw its weight behind Ahmad Shah Massoud who had bases in Tajikistan.

However, many scholars viewed threat perceptions from all these sources were although relevant but deliberately exaggerated by the Russian authorities with an aim to exercise firm control over the former Soviet republics. The developments in Chechnya, Central Asia (civil war in Tajikistan) and Afghanistan were seen as part of a larger plot hatched by a secretive network of Islamic activists and terrorists whose main goal, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service has been to create a Great Islamic caliphate. However, scholars like Rasul Bakhsh Rais argue that the link between the Taliban and the Islamic movements in Central Asia was questionable. According to him all these movements have indigenous roots and Russia and the ruling elites in Central Asia exaggerate the transnational links among the Islamic movements to divert attention from their own political failures.

Russian Afghan Concerns post-9/11 and Aspirations for a Larger Role

After September 11, 2001, Russian leader Vladimir Putin not only described the terrorist attacks on the US by al-Qaeda as “barbaric” in a TV broadcast but also ensured Moscow’s cooperation, ranging from providing all the information at its disposal about terrorist bases to assuring Russian secret services’ cooperation with the West. Russia’s support for the US-led “war on terror” in response to 9/11 was evidently driven by its national interests apart from the despicable nature of the terrorist acts themselves.

The Russian perspective on and support for the US-led Afghan war efforts were influenced by Moscow’s desire to cultivate international support for its concerns stemming from the uprising of radical Islamic forces in Chechnya. Second, Moscow believed that by cooperating with the US-led war efforts, it could overcome challenges posed by such destabilizing forces as the rise of Islamic opposition movements and drug trafficking in its Central Asian back yard.

Third, in its support for the Afghan war, Russia saw an enhanced prospect for the Northern Alliance group coming to power in Afghanistan, and fourth, a relatively economically and militarily weaker Russia could not completely insulate itself from the US call for a “war on terror,” as it was trying to reset its relations with the West after the disintegration of the Soviet empire.

Moscow had supported the Northern Alliance against the Taliban in terms of arms and economic aid during the Afghan civil war, and to ensure the Northern Alliance group’s rise to power, it provided key support to the alliance during the “war on terror.” For instance, the Russian provision of 60 T-55 battle tanks, 12 T-62 K command tanks and 30 infantry fighting vehicles to Northern Alliance during the war bears testimony to this fact.

However, Russian support for the American-led Afghan war was far from being full-fledged and unconditional. As the US and its NATO allies were drawing close to the areas of Moscow’s strategic interests, suspicions over US geopolitical objectives became visible at the same time, immediately after the American declaration of the war, when then-defense minister Sergei Ivanov ruled out any presence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the region and the Chief of the General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, remarked that Russia had no plans to participate in a military operation against Afghanistan.

Russian suspicions remained as to the intensity of the US engagement with the Central Asian states in the guise of taking on terrorism within the framework of “Operation Enduring Freedom.” In order to secure a firm foothold in Central Asia, the US not only secured temporary forward basing in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, strategic engagement in the region was also fostered through access to airspace and restricted use of bases in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

There were frequent instances of US official visits to Central Asia, intelligence sharing and improved coordination within the US Central Command. Further, American interest to revive the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline project in 2002 in an attempt to end Russian monopoly over supply routes to transfer Central Asian resources, which was undergoing uncertainties due to the turbulence perpetrated by the Taliban, corroborated Russian suspicions over US geopolitical interests.

As the American entrenchment in the Central Asian region deepened, the countries of the region were asked to fulfill their bilateral and other obligations to Russia. Dmitry Rogozin, during his stint as a Russian envoy to NATO between 2008 and 2011 took efforts to make it clear that Russia wanted to help the US and Afghanistan as part of the international community but on its own terms.

Around the same time, Russia although did not object to in principle but viewed skeptically several new transit corridors laid down by the US to deliver goods to its forces in Afghanistan (the routes are collectively termed the Northern Distribution Network), and emphasized that these must not be used to transfer lethal goods. On the other side, many US officials were envisaging the network being transformed into a Modern Silk Route.

In response to the US military bases in different parts of Central Asia, Russia established its own bases, but their direct contacts were surprisingly limited. In response to the greater role of the US in the region, Russia called for a larger role of regional organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in securing security and stability in Afghanistan.

Perhaps because of Russia’s overriding influence due to its monopoly over oil supplies, the Central Asian states agreed to strengthen CSTO as an alternative to NATO. In one of the top-level summit meetings, in 2011, the CSTO leaders unanimously agreed that countries outside the regional security bloc would only be able to establish military bases on the territory of a member state with the consent of all member states.

Responding to the evolving Afghan scenario, Russia not only made efforts at diplomatically engaging successive Afghan governments, it attempted to establish itself as a major stakeholder in the Afghan peace process too. Being excluded from the Quadrilateral Coordination Group to broker peace of which the US, China, Pakistan and Afghan government are members, Moscow opened up its channels to play its part in the Afghan peace process taking other regional countries and the Taliban on board. Realizing the geopolitical importance of the outcomes of regional war and peace efforts, Moscow has allegedly shifted its support from the fragmented Northern Alliance group to the Taliban in order to strengthen its Afghan role. Washington believes that Moscow is channelizing its support toward the Taliban to impede the peace process in Kabul and roll back progress made by US-led forces and drive a wedge between the US and its coalition partners, while Moscow keeps denying allegations of its support for the radical group.

US State Department officials, however, have expressed concerns over Moscow’s failure to work with Washington in Afghanistan, and some US military officials on the ground have not hesitated to accuse Russia of providing arms to and sharing sensitive intelligence with the Afghan Taliban.

As things stand now, Russia has admitted to opening up channels of communication with the Taliban with such objectives as protection of Russian citizens in Afghanistan, promotion of peace in Afghanistan and above all, containing the influence of ISIS – which is considered by Russia a more dangerous threat to the Central Asian region because of its transnational objectives and role.The Taliban’s quick agreement to join Russian-led peace talks scheduled to be hosted by Moscow on September 4 this year indicated Russia’s outreach to the group. Washington’s rejection of Russia’s invitation to participate in the peace efforts underlined geopolitical suspicions of each other’s intentions. The Russian leadership, however, postponed the talks to facilitate the participation of the Afghan government and other stakeholders in the peace process.

Russian intelligence has projected that ISIS has an enhanced presence in Afghanistan with around 10,000 fighters including many foreign fighters (those fleeing Syria after being recruited from the Central Asian region) spread across eight to nine provinces, including its sway in the northern province of Jowzjan, which shares a border with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, carrying a dangerous portent for the Central Asian states.

Moreover, Russian officials have argued that the radical group has been able to recruit many people from the Central Asian region, posing a serious threat to Russian security concerns. Moscow has also been seen praising the Taliban’s efforts at containing drug trafficking into Russia’s back yard.

Nonetheless, given its lingering suspicions of US geopolitical intentions, Russia may be using its support for the Taliban as a hedge against growing American influence in the region. Moscow has rejected Washington’s estimate that the numerical strength of ISIS varied from 1,500 to 2,000 and disputed the claim that the group’s influence was limited to such provinces as Nangarhar, Kunar and Nuristan and consisted of only local defectors from the Taliban and other militant groups. Moscow has allegedly charged the US with sharing common interests with ISIS in keeping Afghanistan embroiled in instabilities and disorder so that it could have a permanent military presence in the region.

The geopolitical rift between the two powers has been further exacerbated by continuing US sanctions on Russia, which will have impacts on the peace process in Afghanistan. Meanwhile in Syria, Russia has stepped up its support for the Damascus regime by supplying S-300 missiles, and Idlib continues to be a hotbed of geopolitical jostling for influence between Moscow and Washington.

Afghanistan, as another site for their scrambling for geopolitical supremacy, will continue to witness an enhanced role of Russia, preventing cooperation between the two powers unless Moscow’s regional geopolitical claims are counterbalanced by a global US geopolitical role.

The Dangerous Demise Of Expertise – OpEd

0
0

Way back in 2000 when Google was two years old and four years before Mr. Zuckerberg created The Facebook, during a time when unconnected and pre-mobile humans roamed the earth, the New York Times wrote an article titled, Suddenly, Everybody’s an Expert. It presciently proclaimed that “an expert, it seems, is now an ordinary person sitting at home, beaming advice over the Internet to anyone who wants help.”

The article, after speaking with some real experts, went on to warn that “we are seeing a lot of questions being asked very inappropriately to the wrong kinds of people, and the wrong information is transmitted”.

In the years that followed, the traditional and sound basis of what we once all agreed was the prerequisite for being an expert — depth of knowledge based on years of study and observation in a specific field — has completely fallen by the wayside.

It feels like an entire generation embraced the type of non-expertise the internet affords, while completely ignoring the dangers of claiming expertise without deep knowledge or specialisation in subject matters. Every second professional on LinkedIn is a self-proclaimed expert in some subject matter; the word has lost its meaning.

I have great admiration for Barack Obama, but I would never rely on him for legal advice. Nor would I let Elon Musk, arguably a genius, perform an appendectomy. Being an expert has nothing to do with intelligence, achievement or celebrity — expertise comes from knowledge that is acquired over a lifetime of study, research, observation, participation and specialisation in a subject.

We have now reached a point where we believe that success in one field translates to other fields. In part, this fallacy is based on the much-touted image of the successful entrepreneur, an image that Silicon Valley has been mythologizing for years. The myth goes like this. A tech mogul who is smart enough to accumulate massive wealth by creating a single life-changing product like a touchscreen smartphone, a search engine, a web-based retail store, an electronic payment platform or an operating system is also equipped to solve all of humankind’s most pressing problems.

Granted, tycoons and inventors tend to have massive egos, but this takes arrogance to new and dangerously ignorant heights. Even the robber barons of the past, like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller (still considered the wealthiest American of all time), were not arrogant enough to believe that their wealth and power made them better positioned to solve the serious social issues of their time.

They assuaged the guilt of accumulating fortunes through unscrupulous means both by donating generously to public institutions and by founding universities, libraries and hospitals that could benefit society. They merely wrote the cheques and never got personally involved in directing these philanthropic ventures, which they rightly left to the domain experts in each field.

Today, it is a different story with people like Bill Gates shaping policy for US public schools and Jeff Bezos announcing that his foundation will launch and operate Montessori- based pre-schools. No matter how well-intentioned and intelligent these men are, the fact remains that they know nothing about improving pedagogy compared to experts who have dedicated their lives to education, both inside and outside of the classroom. According to the AP, since 2001, the Gates foundation has “contributed more than $6 billion toward reshaping American schools” and has had an outsize influence in shaping everything from classroom curriculum to teacher evaluation and student performance.

The results of this well-intentioned intervention speak for themselves. During the last decade and a half, US school rankings have continued to decline among its peers; PISA results from 2015 placed the U.S. 38th out of 71 countries in math, 24th in science. Among OECD countries we ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.

At the other end of the spectrum we are muddying the waters by mistaking celebrity for expertise. Jenny McCarthy, an actress and mother of an autistic child, expounds on the dangers of vaccines and spreading scientifically debunked links between vaccination and autism.

Cynthia Nixon believes she would make a competent Governor of the third largest state in the country without any people management, P&L or public policy experience. We seem to have reached a nadir of accepting wealth and celebrity as sole qualifications for expertise versus experience based on deep knowledge.

Every second actor now appends the word ‘activist’ to their credentials, yet not one of them has spent a day in prison or risked his or her life on the frontlines. I love Emma Stone and believe she is a powerhouse on screen, but why was she invited to speak at the UN? Are we suggesting that a Hollywood actress making millions of dollars is a better spokesperson for women’s rights than women like Hajiya Laila Dogonyaro and Loujain al-Hathloul who risked life and limb standing up to oppressive regimes?

Or are we saying that we are so fickle that “window dressing afforded by celebrity proponents is somehow crucial for advocacy on human rights and feminist issues”? This is a dangerous trend and one that portends to mask the ugliness of serious issues while stealing the spotlight from true experts and rightful heroes.

There is no question that people in positions of authority have let us down and the world is facing a crisis of leadership. The Bush administration started a war under false premises with the US media sitting by idly. The Obama administration blatantly and repeatedly lied to the public about the extent of domestic spying by the NSA. The global financial crisis was a direct result of lax regulatory oversight across the globe. Even the Catholic Church and NGO’s have not been immune with the Red Cross’s financial impropriety in Haiti exposed and news of UN peacekeepers raping young girls in Africa over decades.

From corporations to governments, there are ample examples why people all over the world have lost faith in experts and authority and are desperately searching for alternatives.

The Edelman Trust Barometer, which measures public trust in institutions, found for the first time in its 17 year history a decline in trust across all institutions — business, media, government, and NGOs. In a majority of countries surveyed, the general population no longer trusts institutions to “do what is right”. The Edelman report summed up the findings by saying that, “with the fall of trust, the majority of respondents now lack full belief that the overall system is working for them.”

I agree with the Edelman report that in every democracy the systems and institutions meant to protect the people have failed. In every country people have consistently been let down by elected officials, corporate CEO’s and public stewards. Yet the answer is not to completely abandon these institutions, disregard experts, turn to unaccountable celebrities and trust billionaires with often-conflicting motives for the answers.

Instead we need to focus efforts on rebuilding trust in these public and private institutions, create greater transparency and demand accountability from elected and unelected officials who hold positions of authority. And we need to use the law to prosecute those who have abused power, from abusive cardinals to errant CEO’s.

If we do not start to reverse this trend by respecting knowledge-based expertise once again, one day we will end up with a billionaire reality TV star in the White House; one who believes he is an expert on everything.

Elizabeth Warren Wades Into Sensitive Territory On Identity – OpEd

0
0

Elizabeth Warren recently released DNA results as evidence she has a Native American ancestor. Trump, meanwhile, has been referring to Warren as “Pocahontas” to ridicule that claim.

The two show useful examples of different kinds of racism.

Trump’s racism is obvious. He’s using the name Pocahontas as a racial slur. He means to target Warren, but he doesn’t mind being hurtful to Native Americans either.

Trump doesn’t seem to pay much of a price for saying this. His base apparently loves it, and the rest of us seem to numb to be shocked anymore. Trump’s doing exactly what we expect him to do.

Warren’s gotten some criticism too, though.

She’s a progressive Democrat, and her base holds her to a higher standard. They would never vote for Trump anyway, and Warren might run for president in 2020. Warren’s base wants to vote for someone who reflects their values.

But while liberals (specifically, white liberals) usually abhor overt racism, many still practice more subtle forms of it. It’s less obvious than when people use racial slurs or clearly say they do not like a specific ethnic group.

It’s when a white person treats a person of color as if they’re exotic, or fetishizes them. Or when a white person doesn’t notice or care about racial dynamics and inequality because they don’t have to. Or when a white person doesn’t believe a person of color has faced racism just because the white person didn’t see it and has never experienced it themselves.

In this case, Warren is stepping into a sensitive issue. For one thing, what makes someone a Native American?

Do you have to be raised within the culture of your tribe? How can one measure that? Who gets to be enrolled as members of each specific tribe?

Or do you have to have Native American ancestors? What percent of your ancestry must be Native American for you to qualify?

That’s something for Native American tribes to decide for themselves, not for others to speculate on or decide for them.

The point is that Warren stepped into a controversial issue without much sensitivity for the people who are most affected by it.

The Cherokee Nation issued a statement disapproving of Warren’s use of a DNA test. One Native American journalist, Jacqueline Keeler, said that Warren’s use of DNA as evidence reinforces the idea of Native Americans as a race and thereby undermines their claims of citizenship in sovereign nations.

In this case, the liberal white racism may seem subtle: It was Elizabeth Warren thinking she had the right to speak on Native American identity without checking with Native Americans and becoming educated about the issues related to it.

Some also say it was Elizabeth Warren using Native American identity to bolster her own political career without concern for how her use of it might harm Native Americans.

However, there are three takeaways here. One is that if you identify as a white liberal, there are good odds that you could do some learning about racial issues and how to combat racism.

The second is that Warren could try to set things right now by educating herself and learning how she can best advance the interests of Native Americans in her political career. She should listen to Native American leaders.

The third is that what Trump did was worse. Far worse. We must remember that, too.

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

It’s OK To Buy Your Pet A Halloween Costume (And Other Luxuries) – OpEd

0
0

By Ryan McMaken*

One of the more persistent myths about capitalism is that wealth and resources are “wasted” when spent on luxuries.

But now this waste has reached a new level. Thanks to our abundant wealth in the developed world, we’re no longer just spending money on luxuries for ourselves. We’re “wasting” it on our pets too.

For example, a recent article at Salon contends that the billions spent on luxuries for pets “could do more good” if spent somewhere else.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s those Millennials who are throwing all that money away in order to dress up their dogs.

Well, there’s no doubt that some American millennials do that, but, it turns out that the middle class in China has grown so much that the Chinese are now spending billions on their pets too. The Salon article explains the “problem”:

Sylar, the border collie, has his own mansion along with a trampoline and indoor pool…

Sylar’s mansion, where other pets can visit and indulge in expensive spa-like treatments … drew the media’s attention to the increased spending in China on pet-related services. The Chinese are forecast to spend about US$2.6 billion on their pets by 2019 – a 50 percent increase from 2016.

This, however, pales in comparison with what Americans spend on their pets annually. This year alone, pet spending in the U.S. is estimated to exceed $72 billion , which is more than the combined GDP of the 39 poorest countries in the world.

Of course, these expenditures are not distributed equally among all pets. Sylar, like other celebrities, lives in the lap of luxury, while many of his fellow creatures experience hunger, homelessness, abuse and other deprivations.

How are we to think about the ethics of spending so much money on pets when it could be used to alleviate the suffering in the world?

This is an old, old story. The basic premise has long been this: people should not spend their money on luxuries while there are some people in the world who can’t get enough to eat, or who lack adequate housing, or who lack an education.

Now, there is no doubt that real value can be obtained from charitable giving to people who live in poverty. Encouraging people to share the wealth in this way — freely and without state coercion, of course — is a good thing.

However, much of the argument being made in this case of pet spending is that spending of this sort has little to no actual value.

There are a few problems with the underlying assumptions here, so let’s look at some of them now.

First of all, we can’t really assign value to how much “utility” is gained for the buyer — who is, of course, the person and not the dog — when purchasing, say, a halloween costume for a dog.

We can’t really say how much psychic profit is obtained from buying such things since each consumer is different. However, perhaps the costume was purchased by a parent in the hope of augmenting family bonding. Or perhaps he or she bought the costume to participate in a local Church event designed to build community among members. It’s impossible to say, and thus it’s impossible to conclude that every dime spent on a pet “luxury” is a waste of money.

Secondly, we have to remember where that money goes when it is spent on luxuries. It’s not as if that money simply evaporates into the ether. The money spent on any luxury item goes to someone somewhere — whether a shopkeeper, or a manufacturer, a truck driver who delivers the item, or the factory workers who creates each item.

Take for example a pet concierge — yes, they exist. These are people who specialize in pampering pets in exchange for money from the pet’s owner. Can we say that all of this money is wasted? Presumably, at least some of the the people who run pet concierge services have families. Some may have no skills other than as a pet concierge. At any rate, any person who works as a pet concierge has determined that this is the least bad job he or she can obtain at this point in time.

Can we conclude that the money paid to these people is just wasted? What if the pet concierge uses that money to care for an elderly or impoverished relative? Or a disabled child? To make blanket statements about how all money spent on these services is “wasted” is not only wrong, but inhumane.

And this brings us to our third point.

Some may respond to our previous observation by claiming, “well, if we redistributed all that money spent on luxuries, that pet concierge wouldn’t have to work hard just to help his elderly relative or disabled child.”

In other words, at the core of the “money-spent-on-luxuries-is-wasted” argument is often an assumption that some government agency could do a better job of allocating the money.

But let’s look at what would be required to “re-allocate” this money in an allegedly better way.

First of all, government agents would have to determine which people are spending too much on luxuries, and then determine what portion of their income to confiscate for purposes of re-allocation.

Then, it must be determined which people will receive the redistributed funds.

All of this will be dictated by rules and regulations, and government bureaucrats will take their cut in the re-allocation process, of course.

In the end, some people will end up with more money than they had before. And some will have less. And government employees will certainly have more.

But, can we be sure that the pet concierge who supports her family with the profits from pet luxuries will actually be better off? No, we can’t be sure. Its entirely possible, that as the wealthy are less able to purchase luxuries, the pet concierge will be put out of business, and end up working in a field she less prefers, and possibly even hates.

Moreover, we can’t be sure that she’ll even see a net gain in her income, since the rules authored by bureaucrats may not favor people in her particular situation.

Moreover, the pet concierge’s subcontractors and service providers will themselves see a reduction in their income. Had those people been investing their surplus — a surplus obtained from catering to pet luxuries — been investing in any number of non-luxury goods and services, all of those industries will see a loss.

And finally, workers overseas in poor countries who, say, sew together pet costumes, will see less demand for their work, and thus less income. These people are probably the ones who will suffer the most from our attempt at punishing people who spend too much on luxury items.

The cumulative effect is substantial, and there’s no way a government planner could account for every possible outcome.

And finally, of course, there is the fact that the forced re-allocation of funds requires coercive taxation on the part of the state — taxation under threat of fines and imprisonment. Contrast this with the voluntary exchange between the pet owners and the pet concierge. Both parties benefit. and the benefits don’t end there, as we have seen.

So, the next time we witness someone who is spending money on some luxury we deem unnecessary, whether it be a luxury car, or seemingly pointless toy, or a service that “nobody needs,” it’s helpful to keep in mind that those who sell and market such goods are ordinary people who benefit from these transactions.

Indeed, people who think that “rich” people have too much money and too many luxuries, ought to applaud people who sell dog trampolines to rich people. After all, those people are helping to separate the rich from their money.

About the author:
*Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is the editor of Mises Wire and The Austrian. Send him your article submissions, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado, and was the economist for the Colorado Division of Housing from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

Viewing all 73339 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images