By IPCS

By D Suba Chandran

The renewed attempts by the Pakistani State to initiate another round of dialogue with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have gained momentum, and numerous measures are in place. The government has appointed a four-member committee to negotiate with the TTP; the TTP for its part has formed two committees – a political committee led by Maulana Samiul Haq, comprising people outside the TTP to negotiate with the government committee; and a second committee comprising TTP ideologues and fighters to operate as a link between the TTP leadership and the political committee.

Talking to the Taliban: What is the Endgame for the State?

It should be clear at the outset, it is not the TTP that was keen on negotiating with the State; rather, it is the State, especially this government, which is interested in initiating the talks.

What does the State want to achieve through this round of talks with the TTP? It is obvious, that the State would expect the TTP to cease violence and stop militancy. On this issue, the State has a wider consensus – supported by the Parliament, Military and the Civil Society. None within Pakistan (outside the TTP and its multiple franchisees all over the country) would like to see violence and mayhem perpetrated by the Taliban to continue.

Second, the State would expect the TTP to respect its writ, especially in non-tribal areas and the settled districts within KP and outside it. While the State would be willing to live with the TTP as a non-violent and non-State actor within the FATA, it certainly would not want the TTP to cross the tribal agencies.

Besides the above, is the State likely to demand that the TTP should give up its position on Afghanistan and imposition of Shariah within Pakistan? Is the State also likely to demand that the TTP should not provide base for the Afghan Taliban and support them against the established government and the international security forces in Afghanistan?

Unlikely. For the State it is a secondary issue or worse not an issue at all. If the State in Pakistan and its security Establishment themselves are backing Afghan Taliban, it would not make sense that they ask the TTP not to do so.

Talking to the Taliban: Are there Redlines for the State?

How far is the State willing to go to achieve the above?

While there is a consensus at the political level (especially amongst the leading political parties both within and outside the Parliament) towards initiating a negotiation process with the TTP, there seems to be no threshold set by the State towards how far it could go to accommodate demands made by the TTP.

In the absence of open documents and/or policy outlines, any answer to the above questions will be conjectural.

One of the principal demands of the TTP is the release of Taliban internees who are currently in state captivity. While the State is likely to bargain on the specifics of the releases, one can expect it to yield to the TTP’s demand. While the State would not release all Taliban prisoners, a few important members who are part of the leadership are likely to be freed. The State and the TTP would dub this as a goodwill gesture. For, ominous as it may sound, if the TTP has agreed to come to the negotiating table as a ‘goodwill gesture,’ the State will have to return the favour. After all, it is the State, and not the TTP, that has been keen on initiating the negotiation processes.

The TTP’s second demand is likely to be vis-à-vis the US and Afghanistan. This would include the severing of all ties with the US and its support to the international security forces in Afghanistan, and an end to the drone strikes in the North-West Frontier Province. On this demand, the State will act in a pussyfooted manner. While there would be heavier emphasis on sovereignty and respecting Pakistan’s internal peace processes, much would depend on the government’s ability to cope with the US pressure on both accounts.

Depending on the value and significance of the targets, the US is likely to go ahead with the drone attacks. Perhaps, the number of attacks would reduce, but only for a brief while. The US is unlikely to abandon the campaign of drone attacks; neither would it stop pressurising Pakistan from doing more in Afghanistan. After all, this would be an intrinsic part of the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue, tied to crucial economic and military aid for Islamabad.

Another major demand of the TTP would be the imposition of Sharia law in the country. In fact, irrespective of what the TTP leadership wants, hard line members of the nominated team, such as Maulana Samiul Haq, are likely to insist on it. While the State would resist such a move in the rest of Pakistan, it would be willing to provide a space, perhaps within the FATA as the previous government attempted in Swat, few years ago.

In fact, while negotiating over the three aforementioned likely demands of the TTP – the release of Taliban internees, the severing of ties with the US and ending drone attacks, and the imposition of Sharia law – the State has little manoeuvring space. Perhaps, it is not strong enough to impose its will. At least for now.

D Suba Chandran
Director, IPCS
E-mail: subachandran@ipcs.org

The article Talks With TTP: How Far Will The State Go? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By IDN

By Martin Khor

Several developing countries are now being engulfed in new economic crises as their currency and stock markets are experiencing sharp falls, and the end is not yet in sight. The “sell-off” in emerging economies has also spilled over to the American and European stock markets, thus causing global turmoil.

Countries whose currencies were affected of late include Argentina, Turkey, Russia, Brazil and Chile. A hike in interest rates by Turkey and South Africa has so far failed to stem the depreciation of their currencies. An America market analyst termed it “emerging market flu” and several global media reports tend to focus on weaknesses in individual developing countries.

However the broad sell off is a general response to the “tapering” of purchase of bonds by the US Federal Reserve, which marks the slowdown of its easy-money policy that has been pumping many hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking system.

On January 29, the Fed reduced its monthly asset purchase by another $10 billion to $65 billion, following the $10 billion reduction in December. It gave a new boost to the weakening of emerging market currencies. A lot of the Fed’s money pumping had earlier been taken up by American investors and placed in emerging economies as they searched for higher yield.

With the tapering expected to raise yields in the US, money is flowing out from bonds and stocks in the emerging economies, putting pressure on their currencies. The capital flows have reversed direction.

The current “emerging markets sell-off” thus cannot be explained by ad hoc events. It is a predictable and even inevitable part of a boom-bust cycle in capital flows to and from the developing countries, which originates from the monetary policies of developed countries and the behaviour of their investment funds.

This cycle, which has been very destabilising to the developing economies, has been facilitated by the deregulation of financial markets and the liberalisation of capital flows which in the past had been carefully regulated.

This prompted massive and increasing bouts of speculative international flows by Western investment funds, motivated by the search for higher yields. Emerging economies, having higher economic growth and interest rates, attracted the investors.

Yilmaz Akyuz, chief economist at South Centre, analysed the most recent boom-bust cycles in his paper “Waving or Drowning?”

Recovery

A boom of private capital flows to developing countries began in the early years of the 2000s but came to an end with the flight to safety triggered by the Lehman collapse in September 2008. However, the flows recovered quickly. By 2010-2012, net flows to Asia and Latin America exceeded the peaks reached before the crisis. This recovery was largely caused by the easy-money policies and near zero interest rates in the US and Europe.

In the US, the Fed pumped US$85 billion a month into the banking system by buying bonds. It was hoped the banks would lend this to businesses to generate recovery, but in fact investors placed much of the funds in the Western stock markets and in bonds and shares in developing countries.

The surge in capital inflows led to a strong recovery in currency, equity and bond markets of major developing countries.  Some of these countries welcomed the new capital inflows and the boom in asset prices.

But others were upset that the inflows caused their currencies to appreciate (thus making their exports less competitive) and that the ultra-easy monetary policies of developed countries were part of a “currency war” to make the latter more competitive.

In 2013, the capital inflows into developing countries weakened due to the European crisis and the prospect of the US Fed “tapering” or reducing its monthly bond purchases.

This weakening took place at a bad time — just as many of the emerging economies saw their current account deficits widen. Thus, their need for foreign capital increased just as inflows became weaker and unstable.

In May-June 2013 there was a preview of the current sell-off when the Fed announced it could soon start “tapering”. This led to sudden sharp currency falls including in India and Indonesia.

However, the Fed postponed the taper, thus giving a breathing space. But in December, it finally announced the tapering — a reduction of its monthly bond purchase from $85 billion to $75 billion, with more to come.

There was then no sudden sell off in emerging economies, as the markets had already anticipated it and the Fed also announced that interest rates would be kept at current low levels until the end of 2015.

By now, however, the investment mood had already turned against the emerging economies.  Many of them were now termed “fragile”, especially those with current account deficits and dependent on capital inflows.

Many of the so-called fragile countries are in fact members of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), hat had been viewed just a few years before as the most powerful emerging economies driving global growth. In this atmosphere of deepening concerns, it just required a “trigger” to cause a simultaneous sell-off in currencies and markets of developing countries.

Several factors were to emerge which together constituted a trigger. These were a “flash” report indicating contraction of manufacturing in China; the sudden fall in the Argentinian peso; and expectations of further tapering by the US Fed.

For two days (January 23 and 24) the currencies and stock markets of several developing countries were in turmoil, which spilled over to the US and European stock markets. The turmoil continued into the following week, seeming to confirm investor disenchantment with emerging economies, and a reversal of capital flows. The depreciation in currency and the capital outflows could put strains on the affected countries’ foreign reserves and weaken their balance of payments.

The accompanying fall in currency would have positive effects on export competitiveness, but negative impacts in accelerating inflation (as import prices go up) and debt servicing (as more local currency is needed to repay the same amount of debt denominated in foreign currencies).

Martin Khor is Executive Director of the South Centre. [Contact: director@southcentre.org] This article was originally published on February 4, 2014 in South Views with the headline New economic crisis engulfing South countries. South Views is a service of the South Centre to provide information and news on topical issues from a South perspective. It is being re-produced by arrangement with the South Centre.

The article Crises Swamping Developing Economies – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Eurasia Review

The 26-year sentence for Zaid Saidov, a prominent member of Tajikistan’s beleaguered political opposition, strikes a blow to freedom of expression and democracy in Tajikistan, Human Rights Watch said today. Saidov should be released pending an independent review of the case.

A court in Dushanbe found Saidov, a businessman and former government official who had formed a new opposition party, guilty on five criminal charges on December 25, 2013 and issued the sentence after a politically motivated trial.

“Saidov’s conviction starkly illustrates that the Tajik government will neither accept criticism nor the role of opposition parties in a democratic society,” said Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Saidov’s prosecution was clearly designed to remove a vocal opponent from the political arena.”

Saidov, a member of Dushanbe’s city council, announced the creation of the New Tajikistan party on April 6, seven months before Tajikistan’s presidential elections. Saidov and his supporters said the party would focus on economic reforms. In presenting New Tajikistan’s platform, Saidov criticized the government for “inefficient reforms, pressure on small- and medium-sized businesses, exorbitant prices, and widespread corruption.”

Saidov’s lawyer told Human Rights Watch that shortly after the announcement Saidov received anonymous text messages with death threats and warnings to “stay away from politics.” A few days later officers from the Department of Internal Affairs and the State Committee for National Security pressured Saidov to come for “talks.” The session lasted several hours, during which he was repeatedly threatened with “dire consequences” if he did not abandon plans for the new party.

On May 19, as Saidov returned from a trip abroad, police from Tajikistan’s Anti-Corruption Agency arrested him at the Dushanbe airport as he left the plane, though they had no formal arrest warrant and he had immunity from prosecution as a city council member. Without informing him of his rights or the reason for his arrest, police took Saidov to the Anti-Corruption Agency, where he was held incommunicado for 41 hours without access to legal counsel or contact with family members.

The next day, in a hastily arranged vote, the Dushanbe city council voted to strip Saidov of his immunity from prosecution. Sources close to the city council told Human Rights Watch that Dushanbe city council members, including the mayor’s office, received instructions directly from the office of President Emomali Rahmon to ensure that Saidov’s immunity was stripped and to hold the vote immediately in Saidov’s absence, without giving him an opportunity to present his case, as required by law.

That evening, after his immunity was revoked, Saidov had his first introduction to his lawyer, during the police examination of a witness, but he had no opportunity to meet with the lawyer privately.

On May 21, a court approved pretrial custody for Saidov. He was charged with “bigamy or polygamy” (article 170), “illegal deprivation of an individual’s freedom” (article 131), rape (article 138), fraud (article 247), and bribery (article 319) under Tajikistan’s Criminal Code. Authorities accused Saidov of raping an underage girl and fathering her child. Court-ordered DNA tests did not prove any link between Saidov and the child. Prosecutors also accused Saidov of simultaneously living with four wives. Saidov has said he has one legal wife but provides material support to two former wives.

Activists and New Tajikistan members have told Human Rights Watch they believe that Saidov was targeted for his opposition activity. Saidov has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing and said the charges are retaliation for his decision to form a political party. Authorities sealed the New Tajikistan offices and dispersed rallies of Saidov’s supporters outside the detention center where he was being held. On one occasion, on August 27, authorities dispersed a rally of approximately 50 people. Eight participants, including four of Saidov’s sons and one son-in-law, were sentenced to five days in jail and administrative fines.

With the exception of a single confidential meeting with his lawyer in June, Saidov was denied access to counsel from his arrest until the start of trial in September. Key questioning of witnesses and alleged victims and cross examinations occurred during that period.

Saidov’s lawyers appealed to police, courts, and even President Rahmon to grant them access to their client, but their appeals were denied or ignored. Saidov was allowed only one meeting with family members, with his sons in June, and the authorities warned his family they could face criminal charges or other consequences if they spoke out publicly on Saidov’s behalf.

In the days following Saidov’s arrest, four of Tajikistan’s state television channels aired news stories alleging that Saidov was involved in corruption and accusing him of polygamy. Unidentified people distributed brochures about his alleged criminal conduct on the streets of Dushanbe.

“From start to finish, the criminal investigation against Zaid Saidov has been marred by serious due process violations and an unmistakable attempt by authorities to deprive him of the right to defend himself,” Swerdlow said.

Saidov’s trial was closed to the public. His lawyer told Human Rights Watch that the trial included numerous procedural violations and that the judge did not allow Saidov to mount a complete defense. They said the judge denied over 50 trial motions on evidentiary issues raised by the defense.

The Supreme Court of Tajikistan convicted Saidov on all five charges. Authorities detained and later fined five Saidov supporters for refusing to leave the area outside the detention center where the sentence was announced on December 25.

“Saidov was held in incommunicado detention, denied access to counsel, and not allowed a proper opportunity to prepare a defense,” Swerdlow said. “Statements from senior government officials in the media about Saidov’s guilt amplify the concerns about the lack of independence of the Tajik judiciary. Saidov should be released pending an independent review of the charges against him.”

President Rahmon was re-elected to a fourth term in November in an election that lacked meaningful political competition in the period before the election. Authorities widened a crackdown on freedom of expression, imprisoned opposition leaders, and stepped up efforts to extradite political opponents from abroad.

The Tajik government should end its harassment of the political opposition, Human Rights Watch said.

The article Tajikistan: Long Sentence Blow To Free Expression, Says HRW appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Geopolitical Monitor

By Misha Boutilier

The Central African Republic (CAR) is in the throes of an extreme political crisis that exploded in early December with mass killing in the streets of the capital Bangui. Despite a French military intervention under UN auspices, an increase in aid funding for the CAR, and the accession of a new president committed to national reconciliation, the situation is still dire. UN officials warn that there is a “high risk of crimes against humanity and genocide,” and the French Ambassador to the UN Gerard Araud has emphasized that the 6,000 peacekeepers currently deployed are insufficient to quell violence between Muslim Seleka fighters and Christian anti-balaka militias.

Given these events, it is perhaps time to revisit the idea that the CAR is a success story for conflict prevention. Some writers, most notably Hayes Brown of the popular liberal news platform Think Progress, have celebrated the rapid international response to the surge of violence in early December. According to Brown, President Obama’s Presidential Study Directive-10 on atrocity prevention and the creation of the Atrocity Prevention Board to coordinate interagency responses allowed the United States to lead a masterful conflict prevention effort. Thus, Brown credited the international community for learning the lessons of Rwanda and moving quickly to prevent genocide in the CAR, in sharp contrast to its inaction in Rwanda in 1994.

Certainly, the international response to atrocities in the CAR has been far superior to the total inaction during the Rwandan genocide that now US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power detailed so brilliantly. Still, this analogy in fact serves to mask the reality that the international response in the CAR has been too late and insufficient. Only compared to the Rwandan genocide is it possible to label the international response a success story in a country where nearly half the population have difficulty finding food, one fifth are displaced, security has fully collapsed, and ethno-religious tensions have dangerously risen.

In fact, the international community paid scant attention to the deteriorating security situation in the CAR from the Seleka takeover in January 2013 until December 2013. While the Security Council did meet to consider the crisis several times, it largely failed to take decisive action. Meanwhile, then-President Michel Djotodia was unable to control his Seleka rebel fighters, who rampaged throughout the country raping, killing, and pillaging. While arms exports from the United Kingdom and elsewhere flooded the country, hardly any states contributed to a fund to complete the disarmament process. As a result, state institutions and health and education infrastructure collapsed, the agricultural sector broke down, and hundreds of thousands fled their homes. In July 2013, Medecins Sans-Frontiers even warned that the CAR had been “abandoned to its fate.”

Moreover, even the much-celebrated international response in December has fallen short in several areas. French President Francois Hollande deserves great credit for contributing 1,600 French troops, which together with 4,000 African Union peacekeepers has made some progress, but it is evident that they have been unable to restore security to the vast expanses of the CAR. Despite their best efforts, peacekeepers have proven unable to quell the sectarian violence by anti-balaka militias against Muslim civilians as Seleka rebels withdraw. In remote areas of the country, anti-balaka lynch mobs have driven tens of thousands of Muslims to flee. Moreover, peacekeepers are unable to ensure food deliveries, as evidenced by a World Food Program convoy escorted by African peacekeepers that was blocked by militia groups and forced to turn back. Recently, the EU offered 500-600 troops to secure the airport of the capital Bangui, but this still falls short of the 10,000 peacekeepers that Ambassador Araud said were the bare minimum.

Certainly, the picture in the CAR is not all negative. President Catherine Samba-Panza promises to pursue reconciliation, and the country’s top religious leaders Archbishop Nzapalainga and Imam Kobine are working hard to promote the peace process. In addition, the UN Security Council has continued to stay engaged, and on January 28 authorized the EU force and imposed targeted sanctions on atrocity perpetrators. UN officials and leading NGOs also deserve credit for mobilizing the fear of genocide and “never again” rhetoric to spur a rapid international response in December.

However, if the CAR is to avoid becoming another Somalia, it needs not just a short-term military intervention to halt mass-killing. Only long-term assistance with security, development, and building effective state institutions will effectively prevent future violence. Peacekeepers must secure remote areas so that the UN and NGOs can provide aid and displaced peoples will feel confident enough to return. The state must restart education programs, lest more of the 70% of children not currently in school join militia groups as many already have.

If these actions are not taken, the CAR conflict could well draw in neighbouring states and non-state actors, a strong possibility given that the CAR borders unstable states such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan. Moreover, there is a real risk that the Seleka fighters could regroup and the influence of radical Islamists in their leadership could grow. In short, instead of congratulating themselves for a job well done, international actors must dramatically step up efforts to extend security, improve aid delivery, and foster political stabilization to prevent future conflict.

Misha Boutilier is a contributor to Geopoliticalmonitor.com

The article Central African Republic: The Jury Is Still Out On Conflict Prevention – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Dean Baker

The US January employment report showed the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) rising from 58.6 percent to 58.8 percent. This matches the previous high for the recovery in October of 2012. The household survey showed employment rising by 638,000 after increasing just 101,000 over the prior two months. Interestingly the growth was concentrated among younger workers. Employment for workers between the ages of 25-34 rose by 230,000, while employment for workers between the ages of 54-44 rose by 318,000, a one month increase of more than 1.0 percent. Whites disproportionately benefited from the rise in employment with the EPOP for both white men and white women rising by 0.4 percentage points.

The establishment survey was not nearly as positive, showing an increase of just 113,000 workers following last month’s weak 75,000 gain. Interestingly, the goods-producing industry accounted for the bulk of the growth with construction showing a gain of 48,000 jobs following a decline of 22,000 in December. The private service sector as a whole had a gain of just 66,000, its weakest since June of 2012. Especially noteworthy was a drop 0.4 thousand jobs in health care. This figure, combined with December’s weak 2,400 gain is the weakest two month period on record.

While the rise in EPOPs in the household data is very good news, the poor job showing in the establishment survey over the last two months is a real basis for concern about the strength of the labor market going forward.

The article US January Jobs Report Shows Big Jump In EPOPs – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Mike Whitney

“The U.S. worked hard to create the American dream of opportunity. But today, that dream is a myth.”

Economist Joseph Stiglitz, Financial Times

If you follow the financial news, you already know that the American people are on an epic downer. Just check out some of these headlines I pulled up in a five minute Internet search and you’ll see what I mean:

“Gloom and doom? Americans more pessimistic about future” Las Vegas Review

“U.S. Standard of Living Index Sinks to 10-Month Low; Expectations for future standard of living drops more than current satisfaction” Gallup

“Americans Still Pessimistic About Economy–Almost 70 percent think the economy is in bad shape” Time Magazine

‘Slipping behind’: Are we becoming a nation of pessimists?” NBC News

Income Inequality in the United States Fuels Pessimism and Threatens Social Cohesion” Center for American Progress.

And here’s my personal favorite:

“NBC/WSJ poll: 60 percent say fire every member of Congress” NBC News

Pessimism, pessimism, and more pessimism. It’s like the whole country is on the brink of despair. Maybe Phil Graham was right, after all. Maybe we are just a nation of whiners. But I kind of doubt it. What’s really going on can be summed up in one word: Frustration. People are frustrated with the government, frustrated with their jobs, frustrated with their shitty, stagnant wages, frustrated with their droopy incomes, frustrated with their ripoff health care, frustrated with living paycheck to paycheck, frustrated with their measly cat-food retirement plan, frustrated with their dissembling, flannel-mouth president, frustrated with the fact that their kids can’t find jobs, and frustrated with the prevaricating US media that keeps palavering about that delusional chimera called the American Dream.

What dream? The dream that America is the land of “land of opportunity”?

Tell that to the 23-year old college grad who’s stuck delivering pizzas to try to put a dent in the $65,000 tab he ran up getting his Masters in engineering. See how much he believes in the Dream.

All that stuff about “working hard and playing by the rules” has turned out to be pure bunkum, just like the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” horsecrap or the “owning a home enters one into the middle class” thing. What a freaking joke. 6 million people have been booted out of their homes since the bubble burst, and the Pollyannas on TV still drone on about “owning a home”. Get the gun!

No one’s buying that garbage anymore. Just like no one believes that our economic system is “a level playing field”, or that our kids will have a better standard of living then our own, or that tomorrow will be better than today. Every one of those “shining city on a hill” promises have turned out to be complete hogwash. The only city on a hill you’re going to find in the US, is the privately-owned gulag where petty drug offenders are locked up for life so some chiseling hedge fund manager can report record profits to his shareholders. There’s your shining city in a nutshell.

The American people aren’t whiners. They’re just tired of the lies, that’s all. Look; the country was in the throes of the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression, but the American people rallied, right? They came out by the millions to vote for the dazzling young senator from Chicago who was going to change everything and restore America to its formal glory.

So much for that fairytale. Can you really blame the people for believing the hype and pegging their hopes on a man who never had any intention of keeping his word?

No, of course not. The people did what was expected of them. They cast their vote thinking that their vote mattered, thinking they could change the system if a solid majority supported it. But they were hoodwinked, right? Because that’s not the way the system really works. In fact, the system doesn’t really work at all. Power is just handed from one group of scheming elites to the next behind the laughable, public relations charade we call political campaigns. The whole process is designed to pull the wool over people’s eyes, and to avoid the possibility of any real change. Isn’t that how it works?

So now we’re stuck with candidate Tweedledee and everything keeps getting worse. Unemployment is deliberately kept high so big business has a permanently large pool of desperate workers it can hire for a pittance. All the profits from productivity-gains are carved up by moneybags CEOs or divvied up among shareholders instead of going to working people. And the banks are given money at zero rates so they can roll over their gargantuan pile of toxic loans at no cost to themselves or increase the leverage on their illicit hedging operations which they keep off their balance sheets and away from the prying eyes of government regulators. The entire system is rigged from top to bottom to make sure that no one who isn’t part of the inner circle is ever able to lift himself above his present, clock-punching, mind-numbing, 9 to 5 drudgery.

And now things are suddenly getting worse. And they’re getting worse because the fatcats who run the system think that working people have had it too easy for too long and they want to tighten things up. They want to trim the deficits, dismantle vital social programs, and slash the unemployment rolls. As one Paul Ryan opined, “We don’t want the safetynet to become a hammock.” Indeed. Workers, you see, have had it too cushy up to now, so Obama ‘s going to change all that.

The American people know what’s going on. They’re not as dumb as the jowly, stuffed-shirt pundits on CNBC and Bloomberg think. They can see beyond the lies and political bloviating. They know their goose is cooked. That’s why they’re so depressed, because they feel powerless. Pessimistic, frustrated and powerless. And for good reason. Take a look at this from Farai Chideya at Huffington Post:

“According to the Pew Research Center, in the first two years following the Great Recession, 93 percent of Americans lost net worth. Only 7 percent got wealthier. Forty-three percent of those sampled in a nationally-weighted survey I recently commissioned believe this is a permanent trend…

I ran the 2500-respondent query as part of an ongoing book project charting how America’s workers are faring, and (found) that nearly 35% of respondents said they had spent retirement or personal savings to supplement their wages. Twenty percent relied only on personal savings; four percent on retirement savings, like an early withdrawal from an IRA or 401k, and eleven percent spent both…

Even more arresting: 21 percent of those I surveyed agreed with the statement “In 2013, I borrowed money from friends or family specifically in order to pay household, medical or credit card bills.” (“Working on Empty: America’s Workers Are Spending Down Savings to Survive,” Huffington Post)

You’ve heard it all before. People are draining their savings just to make ends meet day to day. And what choice do they have? It’s not like they can just up-and-quit and get a better job down the street. There are no jobs! And the few jobs that are available, don’t pay a living wage. So they’re stuck. Everybody’s stuck. And you wonder why people are so glum about the future? It’s because America has changed, and not for the better.

Did you know that nearly 80 percent of the people who were questioned in a recent LearnVest and Chase Blueprint survey said the American dream involved owning a home?

Unfortunately, a mere 43 percent of those respondents said they think “achieving the American dream in this economy is possible.”

43 percent! Less than half the people believe the ideological gobbledygook we’ve been spoon-fed from Day 1. That’s got to mean something, right? It means more people are giving up, they’re throwing in the towel. Why? Because hard work, a good education and playing by the rules just doesn’t cut it anymore. The opportunities are gone, vanished, kaput. That’s what 30 years of outsourcing, offshoring and corporate-friendly policy does for a country. It turns it into a two-tiered system where all the gravy flows to the top and everyone else is left with table scraps. That’s why according to Gallup “67% of the people are Dissatisfied With Income, Wealth Distribution”. Check it out:

“Two out of three Americans are dissatisfied with the way income and wealth are currently distributed in the U.S. … Americans are much less optimistic about economic opportunity now than before the recession and financial crisis of 2008 unfolded. Prior to that, at least two in three Americans were satisfied, including a high of 77% in 2002.”

And here’s more from another Gallup survey:

“Americans’ Satisfaction With Economy Sours Most Since 2001–Public more satisfied on most other issues today than 13 years ago,” Gallup

“Americans … are significantly less satisfied with the economy and the role the U.S. plays in world affairs. The 40-percentage-point drop in Americans’ satisfaction with the economy, along with a 21-point drop in the world affairs issue…

The U.S. has seen numerous changes since early 2001, but….The biggest change in satisfaction has been with the state of the economy — now much lower than it was then, at the end of the dot-com boom and before the major recession of 2008-2009.”

No one needs Gallup to tell them that the economy stinks. We all know that. Just like we know that America is no longer the land of opportunity, which Gallup confirms as well:

“In U.S., Fewer Believe “Plenty of Opportunity” to Get Ahead–Similarly, only half say the U.S. economic system is fair.” Gallup

Of course, there’s no opportunity. Why would there be more opportunity when the government is cutting spending instead of creating jobs? That’s not how the economy works. You have to spend something, to get something. There’s no free lunch.

Obama has done nothing to help working people. He hasn’t lifted a damn finger, which is why “58 percent of Americans disapprove of his stewardship of the economy” (Wall Street Journal/NBC News and Quinnipiac University) It’s also why 78 percent said of respondents in a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll said they think the country is “on the wrong track.” And it’s also why Obama’s personal performance ratings have slipped below those of George Bush in the fifth year of his presidency. Obama has been a disaster and everyone knows it. The impact of his misrule with be felt for years to come. Just take a look at this comment by University of Michigan economist Richard Curtain who explains the dramatic change he’s seen in consumer behavior due to the policies that were put in place following the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). The quote is from an analytic piece titled “Consumer Behavior Adapts to Fundamental Changes in Expectations” Economic Outlook Conference November 21, 2013:

“I have been reporting on the economic implications of the latest twists and turns in consumer expectations at this conference for nearly four decades. From the heights of expansions to the depths of recessions, consumers had never deserted their bedrock belief that the economy would produce ever increasing levels of affluence. The Great Recession, unlike any other downturn in the past half century, has not only tarnished the American Dream, but has prompted some fundamental changes in consumer expectations and behavior.” (“Consumer Behavior Adapts to Fundamental Changes in Expectations” Economic Outlook Conference November 21, 2013, University of Michigan)

How do you like that? After 40 years of watching this stuff, Curtin says he’s noticed a “fundamental change” in the “bedrock belief that the economy would produce ever increasing levels of affluence.”

This is quite profound, I think, with far-reaching implications for the economy. The pessimism that Obama (and Congress) have generated through their policies have dampened expectations and changed people’s views about the future. Most people no longer expect their wages to increase or their financial situation to improve. For a growing number of people, the American dream is dead. This is already having an effect on personal consumption, household spending and economic growth. It’s also effecting the way people view the government, and what we think of ourselves as a nation. As Curtin notes:

(The) “deeply rooted uncertainty about future economic conditions…has been sustained by the growing recognition that no federal policy has yet emerged that will restore long term economic prosperity anytime soon for the majority of consumers. Optimism about long term job and income prospects are essential for maintaining high levels of economic motivation. Too few consumers have regained that optimism.”

Exactly. “No federal policy” has been put in place to “restore long term economic prosperity.”

That’s the whole ball o’ wax, right there. The pols have done nothing.

The pessimism we now see everywhere, can be traced back to government policy. All the blame goes to Obama and Congress. They’re the ones who ended the American Dream. They killed it.

The article The American Dream Is Dead – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Radio Zamaneh

The Obama administration says it has temporarily dropped sanctions on Iran’s state broadcaster in a move aimed at building confidence in the nuclear negotiations with Iran.

The announcement indicated the U.S. has determined that “harmful satellite interference” was no longer emanating from Iran, which had been the reason for the sanctions. The U.S. had accused Iran’s broadcaster of blocking foreign channels with interference.

With the lifting of these sanctions, non-U.S. companies will be allowed to provide broadcasting and satellite services to Iran without attracting any penalties from the U.S. government.

The move comes just as the U.S. is announcing new additions to its Iran-related blacklist; it says these new additions are being punished for having helped Iran avoid sanctions.

The Geneva agreement reached between Iran and the 5+1 has led to some sanctions relief, but the U.S. insists the deal does not necessarily mean Iran is open for business before a final deal has been reached.

Iran and the world powers are to meet on February 18 to continue nuclear negotiations.

The article US Seeks Goodwill, Lifts Sanctions On Iranian Broadcaster appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By IDSA

By Laxman K Behera

In mid-February, the Finance Minister would present the Interim Budget 2014-15 to the Parliament in which he would seek Vote-On-Account (VOA) to enable the government to meet the essential expenditure till such time that a new government assumes power and present a regular budget. Although the VOA is of short-term relevance, the interim budget would nonetheless contain the estimates of both revenue receipts and expenditure for the full financial year. It is the prerogative of the next government to revise the estimates and present a regular budget as per its priorities it perceives. Defence being a major charge on the Union Budget, it is worthwhile to analyse the likely impact on it by the unfolding scenario. Some of the likely challenges that the defence ministry would likely to face are discussed as under.

The first and foremost challenge that the defence ministry would face is the impending general election and its likely impact on the union budget as a whole, and the defence budget in particular. It is commonly viewed that in an election year, the incumbent government is tempted to present a populist budget. In that scenario, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) would have reasons to be unhappy, particularly so when the modernisation requirement of the Indian armed forces has reached a stage which is now contingent upon substantial additional resources to remain on course. Nothing would perhaps describe the grave situation better than the overwhelming share of committed liability (arising out of contracts already singed) in the MoD’s total modernisation budget. By 2013-14, the committed liability has reached 96 per cent (in comparison to 92 per cent in the preceding year), meaning that only four per cent (or Rs 2,956 crore) of MoD’s total capital modernisation budget (of Rs 70,489 crore) is available for signing new contracts. Any further tightening on the modernisation budget in the coming financial year would definitely affect the on-going modernisation process.

Assuming that the government defies the common logic and provides ample resources to the defence ministry, there is still very little one can expect on the modernisation front. Since the number of days before a new government comes into power is limited, the incumbent government would unlikely to take decision on major armament programmes which have reached fairly a high stage of contract negotiation. Rather the responsibility to take decision on major acquisition proposals would be shifted to the new government which would also find it difficult to expedite the process given the various oversight concerns that often surround the defence procurement. Given this scenario, the year 2014-15 may well be a year of inaction, as far as modernisation of the Indian armed forces is concerned. Some of the modernisation programmes which are likely to be subjected to this inaction are: the ultra-light howitzers and javelin programmes of the Indian Army; and the medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA), heavy lift and attack helicopters, and tanker aircraft of the Indian air force.

The second challenge that the defence establishment would likely to face is related to the growth prospect of the Indian economy. It is noteworthy to mention that the GDP growth for 2013-14 is expected to be around five per cent, which is lower than 6.1-6.7 per cent estimated by the government initially. The economic slowdown, combined with the tight fiscal situation has already led to tightening of the government purse. What is of more relevance is that the growth prospect in the coming years would also remain subdued although some improvement is expected. According to a recent UN report, the World Economic Situation and Prospects 2014, the Indian economy is likely to grow by 5.3 per cent and 5.7 per cent in 2014 and 2015, respectively. This is in stark contrast with the high annual growth rate of 8-9 per cent registered few years ago.

While the subdued growth prospect of the Indian economy in the coming years would limit the spending capacity of the government of the day, it would, at the same time, have a major consequence on the defence. It is to be noted that current phase defence modernisation, which is an offshoot of the armed forces’ long term integrated perspective plan (LTIPP) 2012-27 and the Five Year Capital Acquisition Plan, is premised on a high economic growth rate (7-8 per cent annually) and a larger share (around three per cent) of the GDP on defence. Compared to this optimism, the economy forecast is rather gloomy and, the share of defence in GDP is not expected to be drastically different from the current 1.76 percent. Given this, mismatch of a huge proportion is expected in the coming years between the expectation of the armed forces and what the government could actually provide to meet such expectations.

What is of significance to debate here is that the MoD does not have an institutional mechanism to address the challenges expected in the coming years and prioritise its modernisation plan accordingly. It is to be noted that the modernisation approach followed by the MoD so far is something like a ‘first come first serve’ (i.e., a service which succeeds in processing its procurement proposal first, gets the government approval. It does not give due importance to the needs of other service (s) which may be of greater significance but is struck in the bureaucratic process). This may serve the procurement requirement of a particular service, but may not be an ideal solution to address the modernisation issue holistically, keeping in view the resource constrain. Since the challenges, as discussed above, are serious, what the MoD needs now is to have an institutional capability to prioritise its modernisation plan keeping in view the likely shortage of funds and the vital security requirements of the country.

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

Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/RunuptotheDefenceBudget201415_lkbehera_040514

The article Run Up To India’s Defence Budget 2014-15: Challenges To Modernisation – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Uri Avnery

WHAT’S WRONG about the demand that the Palestinian leadership recognize Israel as the “Nation State of the Jewish People”?

Well, practically everything.

States recognize each other. They don’t have to recognize each other’s ideological character.

A state is a reality. Ideologies belong to the abstract realm.

When the United States recognized the Soviet Union in 1933, it recognized the state. It did not recognize its communist nature.

When the PLO recognized the State of Israel in the Oslo agreement, and in the exchange of letters preceding it, it was not asked to recognize its Zionist ideology. When Israel in return recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, it did not recognize any particular Palestinian ideology, secular or religious.

Some Israelis (including myself) would like to change the self-definition of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state”, omitting the word “Jewish”. Some other Israelis would like to omit or demote the word “democratic”. Neither of us believe that we need the confirmation of the Palestinians for this.

It’s just none of their business.

I DON’T know what the real intention of Netanyahu is when he presents this demand as an ultimatum.

The most flattering explanation for his ego is that it is just another trick to sabotage the “peace process” before it reaches the demand to evacuate the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. The less flattering explanation is that he really believes in it, that he is driven by some deeply rooted national inferiority complex that needs outside assurance of “legitimacy”. Recognizing the “National State of the Jewish People” means accepting the entire Zionist narrative, lock, stock and barrel, starting from the divine promise to Abraham to this very day.

When John Kerry considers whether to include this demand in his Framework Agreement, he should think about this twice.

Where would this leave his special emissary, Martin Indyk?

Mr. Indyk is a Jew, bearing a Yiddish Name (Indyk means turkey). If Israel is the state of the entire Jewish nation and/or people, he is included willy-nilly. The state of Israel represents him, too. So how can he function as an honest broker between the two warring sides?

And where does this leave the millions of American Jews, now that the conflict between the governments of the US and Israel is deepening? On what side are they? Are they all Jonathan Pollards?

THE NEWLY found independent American voice vis-à-vis Israel drives Israeli rightists to devise more and more weird solutions.

The latest example is Binyamin Netanyahu’s brilliant idea: why not leave the Israeli settlers where they are as Palestinian citizens?

This looks to many sensible people as eminently fair, in the best Anglo-Saxon tradition.

The state of Israel now has some 1.6 million Arab Palestinian citizens. Why should the State of Palestine, including East Jerusalem, not include some 0.6 million Jewish Israeli citizens?

The Arabs in Israel enjoy, at least in theory, full legal rights. They vote for the Knesset. They are subject to the law. Why should these Israelis not enjoy full legal rights in Palestine, vote for the Majlis and be subject to the law?

People love symmetry. Symmetry makes life easier. It removes complexities.

(When I was a recruit in the army I was taught to mistrust symmetry. Symmetry is rare in nature. When you see evenly spaced trees, I was told, it is not a forest, but camouflaged enemy soldiers.)

THIS SYMMETRY is false, too.

Israel’s Arab citizens live on their land. Their forefathers have been living there for at least 1400 years, and perhaps for 5000 years. Sa’eb Erekat exclaimed this week that his family has been living in Jericho for 10,000 years, while his Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni, is the daughter of an immigrant.

The settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories are mostly new immigrants, too. They do not sit on the land of their forefathers, but on Palestinian land expropriated by force – either “private” land or “government land”. This so-called “government land” was the communal land reserves of the villages that in Ottoman times was registered in the name of the Sultan, and later in the name of the British and Jordanian authorities. When Israel conquered the area, it took over these lands as if it owned them.

BUT THE main point is something different. It concerns the character of the settlers themselves.

The core of the settlers, precisely those who live in the “isolated” small settlements in the areas that will in any case become part of the Palestinian state, are religious and nationalist fanatics.

The very purpose of their leaving comfortable homes in Israel and going to the desolate stony hills of “Judea and Samaria” was idealistic. It was to claim this area for Israel, fulfill their interpretation of God’s commandment and make a Palestinian state forever impossible.

The idea that these people would become law-abiding citizens of the very same Palestinian state is preposterous. Most of them hate everything Arab, including the workers who work for them without the benefit of minimum wages or social rights, and say so openly at every opportunity. They support the “Price Tag” thugs who terrorize their Arab neighbors, or at least don’t speak out against them. They obey their fanatical rabbis, who discuss among themselves whether it is right to kill non-Jewish children, who, when grown up, may kill Jews. They plan the building of the Third Temple, after blowing up the Muslim shrines.

To think about them as Palestinian citizens is ludicrous.

OF COURSE, not all the settlers are like that. Some of them are quite different.

This week, an Israeli TV station aired a series about the economic situation of the settlers. It was an eye-opener.

Those ideological pioneers, living in tents and wooden huts, are long gone. Many settlements now consist of palatial buildings, each with its swimming pool, horses and orchards – something the Israeli 99% cannot even dream of. Since almost all of them came to the “territories” without a shekel in their pocket, it is clear that all these palaces were built with our tax money – the huge sums transferred every year to this enterprise.

The clusters of urban settlements near the Green Line called “settlement blocs” are another matter. They are likely to be joined to Israel in the context of an “exchange of territories”. But at least two of them raise severe questions: Ariel, which lies some 25 km inside the putative Palestinian state, and Maaleh Adumim, which practically cuts the West Bank into two.

Incorporating these two large towns with their inhabitants into the sovereign State of Palestine is a pipe-dream

WHEN NETANYAHU promised this week that he will not remove one single settler nor evacuate one single settlement, he may have been thinking of Charles de Gaulle, who also did not remove settlers or uproot settlements. He just fixed the date when the French army would leave Algeria.

That was enough.

The article Israel-Palestine Peace Talks: Another Pipe Dream – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Eurasia Review

By Laolu Akande

Yesterday at the 62nd National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton, President Barack Obama restated the resolve of the US government to support the Nigerian people in the ongoing effort to end terrorism.

“I’ve pledged our support to the people of Nigeria, who deserve to worship in their churches and mosques in peace, free from terror,” Obama said while advocating religious freedom around the world.

President Obama spoke a few months after the State Department designated Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, FTO. There have also been news reports that the US military will be training their Nigerian counterparts in the effort to properly combat terror groups in the country and in the West African region.

Terrorist groups like Boko Haram have continued in their brazen and despicable attacks aimed primarily against Nigerian Christians, but also against Muslims who oppose them, and government institutions and security outfits that seek to curb their violence.

Christian Association of Nigerian-Americans, CANAN, welcomes the continued focus of the US government and the support of President Obama in this matter.

It is our hope and expectation that with the active support of the US government, including through the implementation of the FTO designation of the terror groups, Nigerian Christians and others would heave a huge sigh of relief from the brutal and ruthless violence that is being perpetrated by extreme Jihadist fundamentalists and terrorists.

We call for greater and increasing support from the US government especially in the area of going after terror king pins within the context of the FTO, and also supporting the ongoing operations of the Nigerian military to end the carnage in northeastern Nigeria.

Obama expressed concern that while faith sustains, “it’s also clear that around the world freedom of religion is under threat.”

The National Prayer Breakfast which is held in the US Capital yearly every first Thursday in February has been attended by every president since Dwight Eisenhower. First Lady Michelle Obama, the Vice President Joe Biden and members of both the Cabinet and the Congress, joined President Obama.

Laolu Akande
CANAN Executive Director

The article Nigerian-Americans Welcome Obama’s Pledge To Help Stop Terror In Nigerian Churches‏ – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ralph Nader

Every year brings the world more climatological science that man-made climate change, or overall global warming, is chronically worsening.

Every year, from Antarctica to Greenland, from the Andes to Alaska, the ice is melting, the permafrost is melting, and very soon the Arctic may have a re-unprecedented ice-free season. Every year, more and more businesses are speaking out on how climate change is damaging their businesses. Insurance companies were in the lead on sounding the alarm on global warming. Just a few days ago, Coca-Cola’s vice president for environment and water resources, Jeffrey Seabright, told the New York Times that “increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years” were affecting the supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, “as well as citrus for [Coca-Cola’s] fruit juices.”

Every year, companies quit the climate-denying U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and instead attend conferences on the threat of climate change at places like the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland for big businesses and politicians.

Every year, more mainstream and conservative economists and companies declare their support for a carbon tax.

In Washington, Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, has put climate change on center stage for becoming what he said is a chief contributor to rising global poverty rates.

Every year, there are more demonstrations and marches of people and students around the world demanding action, conversion to renewable energies, and conservation efficiencies. University students are increasingly demanding their schools’ divestment of stock from fossil fuel companies.

Every year, its seems records are being set for sea level rises, more furious storm surges, heat waves, floods, typhoons, and droughts.

Yet every year one institution allows no change in its political climate; nothing is warming up our Congress of 535 legislators who are split between believers and disbelievers on the climate change crises. The result is worse than gridlock; it has become somnolence.

While people may become more frugal in their energy consumption and while businesses may use more renewable energy, a comprehensive national energy conversion mission, reflecting the urgency of action, has to go through Congress.

Omnicidal as it is, climate change has been taken off the table on Capitol Hill. Yes, there are some bills languishing in the hopper, some statements in the Congressional Record, but overall for different Democratic and Republican reasons, Congress has gone AWOL since the energy bill was blocked in the Senate seven years ago.

The Republicans are aggressive climate-change deniers. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) calls global warming a massive hoax and is willing to debate any Democrat. While, by and large, most Democrats are concerned but unwilling to make it a campaign or electoral issue. They’re even unwilling to take on Mr. Inhofe. Somehow, they’ve myopically convinced themselves – even those with grandchildren – that the fast-looming peril provides no net electoral or campaign cash advantages.

This shocking Congressional bubble has avoided the intense focus of the environmental lobby. Astonishingly, there are fewer than a half dozen scattered lobbyists in Washington, D.C. working in personam, full time directly on Congress and its role regarding climate change.

To open up this critical Khyber Pass, called Congress, blocking action on climate change we need, as a minimum, a new 100-person lobbying organization with laser beam, daily focus on every member of the Senate and the House of Representatives. This group would have the requisite scientific, legal, organizing, public relations, and political experience. Every day, the 535 members of our national legislature would feel the light, the heat, and the might of what these hundred advocates unleash directly and indirectly.

The Pentagon’s study a decade ago would be brought to bear with its dire message that climate change is a national security priority. The federal government’s procurement budget would be steered toward renewable fuel and efficiencies specifications for the energy it purchases. The protest activity at the grassroots, which now bursts mostly into the ether, would be sharply redirected to each member of Congress.

The Congressional hearings would garner regular, intensive and productive national attention. The electoral campaigns of both parties would not be allowed to sideline this giant backlash from nature so abused by humankind.

Where would the $25 million annual budget come from for such a lobbying group working to prevent trillions of dollars and millions of lives from being lost? The question is almost absurd were it not for the bizarre aversion to this focus by well-heeled and leading advocates of addressing climate change.

Megabillionaire Michael Bloomberg, just named the United Nations special envoy for climate change and cities, already funding efforts to reduce coal usage, could write the check out of his hip pocket. Billionaire Tom Steyer, a big time opponent to the XL pipeline from Canada and a proven environmentalist from California, could also handily write the check.

Very wealthy Henry M. Paulson Jr., former head of Goldman Sachs and U.S. Treasury Secretary, who is working with Bloomberg and Steyer to commission an economic study on the financial risks connected to climate change, region by region across the U.S. economy, could also write the check.

And don’t forget Al Gore, the leading global publicist of what climatologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University called a “clear and present danger to civilization.” Former Senator Gore – who received the Nobel Prize in 2007 for highlighting the perils of global warming and climate change – could also fund and lead such a group.

Why, readers may ask, am I suggesting a sum small enough that one person could foot the bill for such a portentous peril? Because small sums are better at shaming all those well-endowed institutions and individuals, who know better, but inexplicably have not transformed their concerns into really powerful, serious pursuits for the human race and its more vulnerable posterity.

The article Ralph Nader: Climate Disasters And Ending Congressional Stupor Now – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By INEGMA

By Riad Kahwaji

As representatives of the warring parties in Syria spent hours engaged in what appears to be “ a dialogue of the deaf” and international powers watch from a distance, the daily bloodletting and actions that amount to war crimes and genocide continue to beat their bloody path. The suffering of nearly nine million displaced people continues to crush neighboring countries already buckling under their own security and socio-economic problems. The situation in Syria has reached a catastrophic scale with no viable solution in sight. The agony of refugees has peaked to record levels especially for those taking refuge in makeshift camps, exposed to freezing temperatures, disease and mal-nutrition.

Russia, the Syrian regime’s staunch supporter, has made it clear that it will not pass any resolution in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that could bring an end to the war through any forceful means, and would not even allow the condemnation of the regime’s actions against its own people. The United States and Europe have also decided to avoid any military intervention – for now – and committed themselves to seeking a diplomatic solution to the fighting between two sides that seem determined to fight to the bitter end. Therefore, the Syrian people, especially the refugees, will have to bear the brunt of this political impasse and suffer the consequences of a failed international system.

What makes the problem even worse is the scale of devastation caused by the massive bombardment by the regime’s artillery and air force to Syrian cities and villages, turning many districts and neighborhoods into rubble. The Human Right Watch organization issued on January 30 satellite imagery showing entire neighborhoods in some Syrian cities demolished by the regime forces as collective punishment for the people’s support to the rebels. So even if the war ends today, millions of Syrian refugees will not have homes to return to and would continue to be displaced until new houses are built for them, which could take several years. The Finance Minister in the Syrian rebel’s government estimate that the cost for rebuilding the country would be about $100-billion, and price is rising as the war rages throughout the country.

In Lebanon there are over one million Syrian refugees, and they continue to pour in the country at a pace that prompted the United Nations Refugees Agency to expect their number to reach 1.5 million by year’s end. More than half of them are children. Due to internal political reasons, the Lebanese government did not build organized camps to house them as the governments in Turkey, Iraq and Jordan did. So they live in scattered small camps built by NGOs and charity groups, and the flow of aid to them is not well regulated. They lack water and electricity and stressful conditions which are leading to a rise in cases of rape, child abuse, child labor and other forms of criminal activities. Lebanese security officials believe radical terrorist groups could find a safe haven in these shantytowns, and even find them a fertile ground to recruit new members. The Syrian refugees make up today one fourth of Lebanon’s population. “This poses a serious security and economic risk to Lebanon,” said one senior Lebanese security official. According to Social Affairs Minister Wael Abu Faour, the Syrian refugees have cost Lebanon over $7 billion.

Some 580,000 Syrian refugees have fled into Jordan by early 2014, with 127,000 taking residence in the Zaatari Camp that was built by the Jordanian government. The size of Syrian refugees in the country makes up 10 percent of the Kingdom’s population. Many of the refugees stayed with relatives, but many others stayed in tents. Tens of millions of dollars have been pumped into Jordan to aid the refugees who continue to stream in the country. Again, more than half of the refugees are children under 17 years of age. Jordanian security forces had to storm the camp on several occasions to quell riots and deal with criminal activities like rape, theft and child abuse. Jordanian security is also concerned about radical Islamist groups finding refuge amongst the refugees and posing a threat to the country. The number of the refugees is expected to reach 750,000 by year’s end if war persists in Syria.

Some 700,000 Syrians have sought shelter in Turkey, with nearly 215,000 of them living in 22 temporary protection centers in 10 provinces. Almost 500,000 refugees reside outside the camps. Over $2 billion have been spent by the Turkish government for their needs, while the international community has spent $150 million for Syrian refugees in Turkey. More Syrians continue to cross into Turkey as fighting rages across the borders.

About 300,000 Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring Iraq, 90,000 of them went to the Kurdish provinces. Most of them were housed in camps built by the Iraqi and Kurdish authorities with help from international aid organizations. Iraq has been suffering from Islamic radical fighters associated with Al-Qaeda crossing the borders and promoting violence in the Anbar province. Yet again, the refugee problem will make battling terrorist groups hard due to their ability to blend in with the refugees and exploit their sufferings to their own advantage.

On the top of all of these facts is the displacement of thousands of Palestinian refugees from their camps in Syria. Tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees in the Yarmouk Camp near Damascus were caught in the cross fire. Thousands of refugees fled to neighboring countries while others are trapped in the besieged Yarmouk camp and dying of starvation and other diseases.

The remaining six million displaced Syrians live with relatives and in makeshift camps throughout their country. Some of them even took refuge in caves to escape the fighting that took the form of sectarian cleansing in some areas of Homs. The fighting between the Syrian regime and the rebels, which took on the form of a Sunni-Alawite sectarian civil war with regional and international powers stepping in to support the warring parties, is a very complex situation and seems it will require some time before it is resolved diplomatically. But until then the international community must help ease the suffering of the displaced Syrians and to reduce the risk factors associated with Islamic groups infiltrating and exploiting them, and to also reduce pressure on the neighboring countries.

The international powers must seek solutions to the humanitarian problems independent of the ongoing political process taking place between the two rival Syrian parties in Geneva. The world cannot leave this humanitarian catastrophe for the negotiators in Geneva to find solutions to the refugee issues because they are seeking a full decisive victory over each other and have no confidence in each other nor do they possess a reliable mechanism to implement what they could agree on.

Hence, the UNSC must step in and pass a resolution that calls for the creation of safe zones to house refugee camps along Syria’s borders with Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, and to have a majority of these camps fall on the Syrian side where possible. These refugee camps must be placed under the control of UN peacekeepers and off limits to both Syrian regular troops and rebels. UN agencies must take charge of all matters related to the living conditions and security within these camps, while social and judicial affairs can either be handled in accordance with Syrian law or the laws of the countries which the camps fall in or are adjacent to. The resolution will stay away from the political process and address only the humanitarian side of the refugee crisis. The resolution must also create safe zones inside some besieged cities that could be subject to ethnic cleansing, like Homs and Latakia. The Syrian regime and some of the regional powers involved in the conflict must be prevented from creating sectarian cantons in Syria. Syria’s unity must be maintained to prevent Balkanization of the region.

Clearly, the international community must move quickly to ease the agony of millions of people and prevent the escalation of serious security threats posed by radical groups embedding themselves within the refugees. War crimes and genocide in Syria must no longer be tolerated. Moreover, the refugees in their current condition attract organized crime groups involved in human trafficking to sexually exploit women and children. Thus, the threat is multidimensional, and the human suffering is beyond limits, which necessitates quick UNSC action. It is time for the international community to do right by the Syrian people who have been suffering under their inaction for the last three years.

Riad Kahwaji, CEO, INEGMA

The article Avoiding Disaster: Syrian Refugees And The Case For Safe Zones – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Profit Confidential

To say the very least, 2013 was an interesting year for gold bullion. The precious metal’s price surprised gold bugs and declined 24%.

As 2013 progressed, we heard calls for the yellow metal to fall even lower in price. The stocks of gold producers were slammed. Equity research departments at big banks like The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE/GS) called gold bullion a slam-dunk sell (and the last time I checked, their opinion hasn’t changed).

In the midst of all this, a very important phenomenon was forgotten: gold bullion prices are no stranger to price declines. In the table below, I’ve compiled a list of every period since 1974 when gold prices fell more than 20% and what happened after the decline.

Data source: www.StockCharts.com, last accessed February 6, 2014.

The table above illustrates that the bigger the decline in gold bullion prices, the greater the ensuing rebound.

Since gold bullion prices fell in 2013, gold miners have pulled back on operations at mines where $1,200-an-ounce gold no longer justifies production. This has resulted in a reduction in the supply of newly mined gold.

And while the supply of gold bullion is under pressure, demand for the precious metal keeps increasing. In China, both consumers and the country’s central bank have become gold hoarders over the past two years.

But demand for gold bullion in China is just one part of the demand equation. As I have documented in these pages many times, mints around the world are working in overdrive mode to satisfy the record demand from consumers and investors for gold bullion. (See “The Supply Shortage in the Gold Pits No One Is Talking About.”)

Dear reader, don’t cave in to the mainstream opinion that the U.S. economy is improving and that there is no need for gold anymore as a hedge against a weak economy and inflation. These are the same people who told us in 2005 and 2006 that a new era of homeownership was upon us and that the housing market was where the action was.

I like buying investments when they are down and out, when other investors shun them. And that’s why I’m liking gold more and more. Supply is tight; demand is rising. It’s only a matter of time before prices reflect this supply/demand imbalance.

This article The Best Investment You Can Make in 2014? was originally posted at Profit Confidential.

The article The Best Investment You Can Make In 2014? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Oriental Review

Yesterday’s leak of the flagrant telephone talk between the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt has already hit the international media headlines. In short, it turned out that the US officials were coordinating their actions on how to install a puppet government in Ukraine. They agreed to nominate Bat’kyvshchina Party leader Arseniy Yatseniuk as Deputy Prime Minister, to bench Udar Party leader Vitaly Klitschko off the game for a while and to discredit neo-Nazi Svoboda party chief Oleh Tiahnybok as “Yanukovych’s project”. Then Mrs. Nuland informed the US Ambassador that the Washington’s hand by the UN Secretary General, Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Jeffrey  Feltman had already instructed Ban Ki-moon to send his special envoy to Kyiv this week “to glue the things”. Touching the European role in managing Ukraine’s political crisis, she was matchlessly elegant: “Fuck the EU”.

In a short while, after nervious attempts to blame Russians in fabricating (!) the tape (State Department: “this is a new low in Russian tradecraft”), Mrs. Nuland brought her apologies to the EU officials. Does it mean that the Washington’s repeatedly leaked genuine attitude towards the “strategic Transatlantic partnership” is much worthy of apology than the direct and clear interference into the internal affairs of a sovereign state and violation of the US-Russia-UK agreement (1994 Budapest memorandum) on security assurances for Ukraine?  Meanwhile this document inter alia reads as follows:

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

Back to the latest Mrs. Nuland’s diplomatic collapse made public,  it is hardly an unwilling and regretful fault. Andrey Akulov from Strategic Culture Foundation has published a brilliant report (Bride at every wedding, Part I and Part II) a couple of days ago depicting a blatant lack of professionalism and personal intergity of Mrs. Nuland. He described in details her involvement in misinforming the US President and nation on the circumstances of the assasination of the US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens in Benghazi in September 2012 and her support of the unlawful US funding of a number of the Russian “independent” NGOs seeking to bring a color revolution to Russia.

Her diplomatically unacceptable behavior on the Ukrainian track, which culminated on YouTube this week (video and full transcript are available below), suggests that Mrs. Nuland is perhaps a wrong person in a wrong position for protecting American interests in Eurasia.

Full transcript of the telephone talk between the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt (posted on YouTube on Feb 6, 2014):

Victoria Nuland (V.N.): What do you think?

Geoffrey R. Pyatt (G.P.): I think we are in play. The Klitchko piece is obviously the most complicated electron here, especially the announcement of him as Deputy Prime Minister. You have seen my notes on trouble in the marriage right now, so we are trying to get a read really fast where he is on the staff. But I think your argument to him which you’ll need to make, I think that’s the next phone call that you want to set up is exactly the one you made to Yats (Yatsenuk’s nickname). I’m glad you put him on the spot. <…> He fits in this scenario. And I am very glad he said what he said.

V.N.: Good. I don’t think Klitsch (Klitschko’s nickname) should be in the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

G.P.: Yeah, I mean, I guess… In terms of him not going into the government… I’d just let him stay out and do his political homework. I’m just thinking, in terms of sort of the process moving ahead, we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is gonna be with Tyahnibok and his guys. And, you know, I am sure that is part of what Yanukovych is calculating on all this.

V.N.: I think Yats is the guy. He has economic experience and governing experience. He is the guy. You know, what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnibok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week. You know, I just think if Klitchko gets in, he’s going to be at that level working for Yatsenuk, it’s just not gonna work…

G.P.: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s right. Ok, good. Would you like us to set up a call with him as the next step?

V.N.: My understading from that call that you tell me was that the big three were going into their own meeting and that Yats was gonna offer in this context, you know, a «three plus one» conversation or a «three plus two» conversation with you. Is that not how you understood it?

G.P.: No. I think that was what he proposed but I think that knowing the dynamic that’s been with them where Klitchko has been the top dog, he’ll show up for whatever meetings they’ve got and he’s probably talking to his guys at this point. So, I think you reaching out directly to him, helps with the personality management among the three. And it also gives you a chance to move fast on all this stuff and put us behind it, before they all sit down and he explains why he doesn’t like it.

V.N.: Ok. Good. I am happy. Why don’t you reach out to him and see if he wants to talk before or after.

G.P.: Ok, I will do it. Thanks.

V.N.: I can’t remember if I told you this or if I only told Washington this: when I talked to Jeff Feltman this morning he had a new name for the UN guy – Robert Serry. I wrote you about it this morning.

G.P.: Yeah, I saw that.

V.N.: Ok. He’s gotten now both Serry and Ban ki-Moon to agree that Serry will come on Monday or Tuesday. That would be great I think to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, if you like, fuck the EU.

G.P.: No, exactly. And I think we’ve got to do something to make it stick together because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude that the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it. And again the fact that this is out there right now, I am still trying to figure out in my mind why Yanukovych <…> that. In the meantime there is a Party of Regions faction meeting going on right now and I am sure there is a lively argument going on in that group at this point. But anyway, we could land <our toast> jelly side up on this one if we move fast. So let me work on Klitschko and if you can just keep… I think we just want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing. The other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place.

V.N.: So on that piece, Jeff, when I wrote the note Sullivan’s come back to me V.F.R., saying you need Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta boy and to get the details to stick. So, Biden’s willing.

G.P.: Ok. Great, thanks.

Deputy Secretary General EE AS External Service Helga M. Schmid (H.S.) and Jan Tombinsky (J.T.), EU Ambassador to Ukraine (rendering, starting 0:04:13 on the tape):

H.S.: Jan, it’s Helga once again. I’d like to tell you one more thing, it’s confidential. The Americans are beating about the bush and saying that our stand is too soft. They believe we should be stronger and apply sanctions. I talked to Cathy (Cathrene Ashton – OR) and she agrees with us on the matter we were discussing last time. We will do it but we must arrange everything in a clever way.

J.T.: You know we have other instruments.

H.S.: The journalists are already talking that the EU stand is “too soft”. What you should really know is that we are very angry that the Americans are beating about the bush. Maybe you tell the US Ambassador and draw his attention to the fact that our stand is not soft, we’ve just made a hard-line statement and took a tougher stance… I want you to know that it would be detrimental to our interests if we see in the newspapers that «The European Union does not support freedom». Cathy will not like it.

J.T.: Helga, we do not compete in a race. We should demonstrate that this situation is not a competition in diplomatic toughness. I’ve just heard about the opposition’s new proposal to the president. I’ll write Cathy about it right now.

H.S.: Ok.

P.S. Awkward attempts to question “morality” is such revelations sound especially hypocritical from a global spying power that monitors and controls most of the mobile phone and internet users activities, taps the phone lines of world leaders, and oversees the world’s most far-reaching wire-tapping program.

The article What About Apologizing To Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Hudson Institute

By Samuel Tadros

Samuel Tadros is a Research Fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

The article The Future Of Egypt’s Copts – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By PanArmenian

The Vatican struck back Friday, Feb 7, at a UN human rights committee that issued a scathing report on sex abuse by priests, accusing it of straying beyond its mandate and discrediting the UN as a whole by adopting the “prejudiced” positions of anti-Catholic advocacy groups, the Associated Press reports.

The Vatican said the UN committee had ignored both the Holy See’s unique status and its efforts to address the abuse crisis in recent years, noting that it had provided this information to the committee in writing and in person. It blasted what it called the “absolutely anomalous” publicity the committee gave its report and promised a full response at a later date.

The Geneva-based committee on Wednesday accused the Vatican of systematically placing its own interests over those of victims by enabling priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children through its own policies and code of silence.

It recommended the Vatican immediately remove any priest suspected or known to have abused children, open its archives on abusers and the bishops who covered up for them, and turn the cases over to law enforcement.

The Vatican was taken completely off-guard by the severity of the report and, slow to respond, issued a series of increasingly critical and articulated responses that culminated with Friday’s lengthy statement by the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, on Vatican Radio.

Specifically, he accused the committee of giving more credence to the positions of “well-known NGOs, prejudiced against the Catholic Church and the Holy See” than the Vatican itself. In ignoring the Vatican’s own explanations and data, he said, it appeared the committee had written the report before the Vatican made its case at a daylong hearing last month.

The report was issued by an 18-member panel of independent UN experts who monitor implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which among other things calls for signatories to protect children from harm and ensure that their basic rights to education and health care are guaranteed.

The areas of the committee’s report that most piqued the Holy See were those concerning girls’ access to reproductive health care and the need to protect gay children and children in same-sex households from being discriminated against. Those issues are key parts of the treaty, but they also touch on core doctrinal teachings of the Catholic Church.

It was natural that the Vatican would object that its religious freedom was being trampled on when the committee recommended it consider amending its own canon law to allow abortion in some limited cases, the AP says.

The committee cited the case of a 9-year-old Brazilian girl who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather and doctors determined an abortion was necessary to save her life. The girl and her doctors were promptly excommunicated.

The committee also urged the Holy See to ensure that sex education, including access to information about contraception and preventing HIV, is mandatory in Catholic schools. And it called for the Holy See to use its moral authority to condemn discrimination against homosexual children, or children raised by same-sex couples.

In his statement Friday, Lombardi said by entering into such matters, the committee “appears to have gone beyond its competence and interfered in the moral and doctrinal positions of the Catholic Church.”

He said while it was wrong to blame the United Nations as a whole for the committee’s “grave shortcomings,” the organization itself “bears the negative consequences of what was done by one of its committees, beyond its competence.”

Despite the Vatican’s objections, he said the Holy See was nevertheless committed to working for the good of all children via the UN treaty.

The article Vatican Lashes Out At UN Panel Over Sex Abuse Report appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute

By Michael A. Reynolds

The founder of the International Olympic Committee, Pierre de Courbetin, had a vision that athletic competitions would attenuate geopolitical ones. Sport, he believed, could cut across cultures and thereby foster amity in the international realm. Accordingly, he worked for the revival of the athletic competitions of the ancient Greeks: the Olympic Games. To popularize the modern version of those games and build an intercontinental following, he championed the rotation of the games among different national hosts every four years. Today, as de Courbetin might have wished, the Olympic movement is a truly global phenomenon. Nations around the world strive to burnish their reputations through participating in the games, winning medals at them, and, above all, by hosting the games. When holding the games on its soil, a country takes the world stage to showcase itself.

Yet de Courbetin’s vision has been realized only partway. While the Olympic Games do generate goodwill and international good-feeling, they also occasionally aggravate international tensions by serving as a platform upon which countries play out rivalries and indulge their vanity, reveal their insecurities, and expose their grudges, as the 1936, 1972, 1980, and 1984 games illustrate. The Frenchman’s aspirations notwithstanding, the games sometimes exacerbate rather than ameliorate animosity.

The 2014 Winter Olympics, too, may well deepen international acrimony, and do so to the detriment of United States foreign policy. The 22nd Winter Games will take place next month in the picturesque port of Sochi. A resort town on the Black Sea blessed with a subtropical climate and the presence of alpine mountains just thirty-seven miles outside the city, Sochi would seem a superb location for a winter sporting event. In addition, the games have the express and enthusiastic backing of the host country’s head of state.

THE OLYMPICS: POWER, PRESTIGE, AND NOSTALGIA

To host the Olympics is always regarded as an honor. It provides a country the chance to put the world’s spotlight on itself. The Sochi Olympics, however, carry a deeper significance for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin ascended to the prime ministry in 1999 and the presidency in 2000. These games will, he hopes, showcase not simply his country today, but more importantly its recovery under his leadership from the disastrous decade of political disarray and economic chaos that followed the Soviet collapse of 1991.

It is important to remember that in 1980, just barely a decade before the USSR unraveled, Moscow had hosted the Summer Olympics. Soviet citizens, even at the time, saw those games as a special moment in the history of their state. The USSR already by 1956 had established itself as a leader, if not the leader, in the Olympics and in international sport in general, but it was the arrival of the Olympics games to Moscow heralded the arrival of the USSR. The 1980 games signaled that the world saw the USSR not merely as a fearsome geopolitical and technological power but a cultural actor as well. The U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Olympics therefore did sting Soviet sensitivities, but even that slap in the face could not erase the sense of achievement that Soviet citizenry took in hosting teams from eighty nations from around the globe. The Moscow games were a source of genuine pride for Soviets of Putin’s generation.

Putin thus badly wanted to bring the 2014 Olympics to Russia. He lobbied the International Olympic Committee hard, and even traveled to Guatemala to make the case in person, speaking first in English and then in French – rare and unprecedented acts for him respectively. The IOC’s selection in 2007 of Sochi as the site of the 22nd Winter Games thus offered Putin a tantalizing opportunity: What cleaner way to demonstrate to domestic and global audiences alike his success in returning Russia as a world actor than to stage another Olympics?

Sochi’s geography adds another layer. Sochi lies in the North Caucasus and is just three hundred miles from Chechnya, the place where local rebels’ defeat of Russian Federal Forces in 1996 marked the nadir of Russia’s decline. Putin’s signature domestic accomplishment – if also perhaps his most tenuous – has been the pacification of Chechnya. Sochi is also only about twenty miles from Abkhazia, a territory that effectively broke from Georgia in 1993 after a civil war. Russia recognizes Abkhazia as an independent and sovereign state. Only the comical entourage of Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nauru, and Tuvalu concur in that opinion. The United States, and every other state regard Abkhazia as part of sovereign Georgia. Russia’s rout of Georgia in the war of August 2008, however, not only shattered any possibility of resolving the dispute in Georgia’s favor, but also delivered a stinging and embarrassing defeat to American policy in the region. Washington had loudly and proudly touted Georgia as a beacon of democracy and possible candidate for NATO, but when push came to shove, America did not do much beyond airlifting Georgian troops deployed to Iraq back home.

Although Putin’s popularity has fallen from its peak in the wake of the war with Georgia and Russia’s oil boom, it has stabilized and remains solid. According to polling by the independent Levada Center, as of December 2013, roughly two out of three Russian citizens approve of Putin’s performance. A successful Olympics would forever remain a triumph of his, a capstone achievement that would bolster his legitimacy for some time. To ensure the games are successful, Putin has overseen expenditures that have reportedly risen to over $50 billion, a sum more than seven times greater than the cost of the 2010 Vancouver games.

The need to vastly – and quickly – expand Sochi’s limited infrastructure explains much of this enormous bill, but kickbacks account for a significant portion as well. Despite his rhetoric in the early years of his presidency promising a more disciplined and cleaner government, corruption has become a hallmark of Putin’s Russia. Putin is today seen less as a foe of corruption than an enabler.

Meanwhile, the starkly illiberal nature of his regime has alienated many. His domestic and foreign critics have predictably subjected the preparations to a steady stream of negative commentary. They have highlighted cost overruns, pointed to delays in construction, bemoaned the rampant bribery, and predicted logistical difficulties and failures of various sorts.

In the U.S., conversations about the Sochi Olympics have been dominated by discussion of Russia’s decision last June to outlaw “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” to children. Despite the fact that the upper and lower houses of Russia’s parliament passed the ban with votes of 137 to 0 and 436 to 0 respectively, critics of Putin have been all too happy to make him, and his Olympics, the focus of their outrage. Pundits have mooted threats of boycott and protests. For his part, President Obama announced he will avoid Sochi and demonstratively appointed openly gay athletes to the U.S. delegation to the games. Among those appointed is sports legend and lesbian icon, Billie Jean King. King aspires to be Obama’s “big gay middle finger” to Putin.

The zeal of King and other Americans to use the Sochi Olympics to stick it to Putin may be understandable, but as the suicide bombings of the train station and trolleybus in the city of Volgograd should remind us, Putin’s image is not the sole matter at stake in Sochi. And what is his loss or embarrassment is not necessarily America’s gain. Russia faces a terror problem that is real, chronic, and complex, and that consists of international and global dimensions that touch American interests outside even the vast territory of post-Soviet Eurasia.

REAL, CHRONIC, AND COMPLEX: RUSSIA’ TERROR PROBLEM

On 21 October, and then again on 29 and 30 December, suicide bombers in the city of Volgograd struck consecutively a minibus, trolleybus, and the train station. At last count, the bombings took the lives of 41 people and injured well over one hundred. On 19 January, two young men in their twenties named Suleiman and Abdurrahman from Russia’s Dagestan Republic posted a forty-nine minute long video on the internet. The video opens with a nasheed, a genre of anthem sung acapella on themes of jihad and martyrdom. The nasheed became a hallmark of jihadists during the Afghan war against the Soviets. It is now a favorite in videos of radical Islamists, often accompanying footage of combat against Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whereas nasheeds are usually sung in Arabic, this one is in Russian, albeit on the themes of martyrdom in jihad and its promises of the washing away of sin and life in the hereafter with sweet wine and tasty fruits even as those on the earth call the martyr a terrorist. Footage of two hands preparing a home-made bomb makes vivid the message.

Claiming to represent an organization called Ansar al-Sunnah, Suleiman and Abdurrahman take credit for the attacks. Addressing the Russian people, they warn that unless Russia withdraws from the Caucasus, more attacks will follow. “Putin,” they taunt, “promised you victory, but what has he achieved? By the mercy of Allah, that war caused jihad to spread throughout the Caucasus. And now we will spread it across the full territory of Russia!”

By itself, the video is not conclusive. But well before its appearance multiple signs suggested the Volgograd bombings were carried out by an organization, most likely made up of jihadists based in the Caucasus. A string of suicide bombings is not easy to orchestrate. Building an explosive device in itself is not a simple matter, but preparing an individual to destroy him or herself is a truly formidable task. Willful self-annihilation runs against every human instinct. The recruitment, screening, cultivation, and manipulation of suicide bombers demands a fine grasp of human psychology, Moreover, the process is logistically complex, as it demands time and careful control of the environment. Yet in the space of less than three months, three suicide bombings, two back-to-back, struck Volgograd, a relatively peaceful city of about a million notable only for its former name of Stalingrad and role as a site of a titanic battle in World War II. Notably, all three attacks struck public transportation – a target ideal for indiscriminate killing and maiming and thereby for sowing fear. Similarities in the explosives employed further suggest that the attacks are related.

Lastly, all three bombers were tied to jihadist groups in the North Caucasus. Jihadists have been operating there for nearly two decades. Typically, commentators explain the presence of jihadists in the North Caucasus by pointing to the wars in Chechnya of 1994-1996 and 1999-2009. They argue that the indiscriminate brutality of the Russian Federal forces radicalized many Chechens and drove them to perform acts of terror, including suicide bombings. There is much to support this thesis. Following the outbreak of the Second Chechen War, where Putin expressly sanctioned the use of disproportionate and indiscriminate force, a wave of suicide bombings struck military and civilian targets inside Chechnya and then later in Russia, including Moscow. Many of these women were distraught widows or relatives of slain Chechens, who sought vengeance for the horrors inflicted on those close to them. The trope of the “Black Widow” became a fixture of the Second Chechen War.

Later research revealed that the “Black Widow” phenomenon was not as spontaneous as originally portrayed. Networks existed to identify, cultivate, and indoctrinate distraught women, which is not to say, however, that the human desire to avenge loved ones was not a central motive.

Even as Western analysts emphasized the self-defeating aspects of Russia’s harsh tactics in Chechnya and predicted only the further radicalization of the Chechen population, Moscow and its local Chechen allies slowly but steadily pacified Chechnya. By backing local Chechens – first the Chechen mufti, Akhmad Kadyrov, who saw the jihadists and their primitive interpretation of Salafi Islam as a greater threat to Chechen society than Russia, and then Kadyrov’s son, Ramzan, after the former’s assassination – Putin gave Chechens an honorable alternative to capitulation or death. Gradually the rebel movement dwindled as rebels defected, leaving a hard but small core of ideologically committed jihadists. Moscow’s financial and material support of Ramzan has certainly not brought the republic a just or open political order, but it has fostered comparative stability and development. The once-flattened capital city of Grozny had been entirely built anew, complete with skyscrapers, tree-lined parks, and one of Europe’s largest mosques. Local Chechen forces handle security, and jihadist attacks are small scale and relatively rare.

Undermining this qualified success in Chechnya, however, has been the diffusion of the jihadist movement across the North Caucasus and even beyond. Radical Islam in Russia, which was once largely parasitic on Chechen alienation, is no longer the preserve of the Chechens.

THE BOMBERS: DIVERSITY IN DESTRUCTION

The attacks in Volgograd bear witness to this troubling development. All three were either known jihadists or related directly to known jihadists. Yet none of the bombers were Chechens or directly linked to the Chechen cause. The October bomber was a thirty-year old Muslim woman, Naida Asiyalova, from the Dagestani town of Buinaksk. While studying in Moscow, she met and married through common-law an ethnic Russian from Kranoyarsk, Siberia, Dmitri Sokolov, who converted to Islam. In 2012, the couple joined jihadist circles in Dagestan. Sokolov, who was wanted for participating in two terror attacks in Dagestan, reportedly built the explosive belt that Asiyolova detonated when she boarded a municipal bus in Volgograd. A few weeks later, Dagestani law enforcement found and killed Sokolov and four others in an early morning firefight outside the Dagestani capital, Makhachkala.

The perpetrator of the 29 November bombing of the Volgograd train station was another ethnic Russian, Pavel Pechenkin. Born and raised in the central Russian republic of Marii El, the soft-spoken and introverted Pechenkin worked as an ambulance attendant in the nearby city of Kazan. For reasons unknown to his co-workers, he converted to Islam in January 2012 and later that spring, joined an underground jihadist group based in Buinaksk, Dagestan (known prior to the Soviet era as “Temir Khan Shura”). His parents, heartsick over their son’s turn toward jihadism, traveled to Dagestan in September of that year to find him. They were unsuccessful. Out of desperation, they issued a video appeal to him, begging him to recognize that violence and religious faith are incompatible and imploring him to return home.

Penchenkin answered his parents with a video of his own that was posted to YouTube. The video is striking for Penchenkin’s softly spoken but blunt message. Speaking now as “Mujahid Ansar al-Rusi” of the Temir Khan Shura jamaat (congregation) and sitting with a banner proclaiming the Muslim declaration of faith behind him, Penchenkin rejects his parents’ request to return home and refutes their claim that faith and violence are incompatible. To the contrary, he asserts, Islam requires violence and killing, and he affirms his resolve to become a martyr for Islam several times. Notable, too, is that the video was not a self-production, but was produced and distributed under the aegis of Vilayat Dagestan, the “Province of Dagestan” of the Caucasus Emirate, the same outfit that released the video of Suleiman and Abdurrahman.

The third Volgograd bomber was a twenty-six year-old woman named Aksana [sic] Aslanova. Although born in Turkmenistan, she was of Tabasaran ethnicity and later moved with her family to the city of Derbent in the south of Dagestan, the native land of the Tabasaran people. In Derbent she studied at a local branch of the Dagestani State Pedagogical University.

Aslanova married two or perhaps even three times. Her first husband, Mansur Velibekov, was a member of the “southern sector of the Dagestani front” of the Caucasus Emirate. Dagestani security killed Velibekov and his brother in July 2008 during an attempt to capture him. Other sources maintain that Aslanova then married another underground Dagestani jihadist commander, Israpil Valizhdanov. Born not far from Derbent, Valizhdanov joined a jihadist training camp in Chechnya in the late 1990s and fought there before returning to southern Dagestan to lead an underground militant unit. Known for his tactical proficiency, Valizhdanov was nonetheless struck down by Dagestani security forces in a nighttime operation in April 2011. The following year Aslanova herself “went into the forest,” i.e. took up arms with the jihadist underground and cut ties to her parents and relatives. She reportedly became the “sharia” wife of Gasan Abdullaev, the head of the militant formation. Abdullaev is the suspected organizer of a plot in 2011 to bomb a Moscow-St. Petersburg passenger train and is wanted for arms smuggling and attacks on several police officers among other crimes.

JIHADISM IN THE CAUCASUS

Islamist terror in Russia had its beginnings in the war in Chechnya in 1994-96. Jihadists from around the Arab world, Afghanistan, and elsewhere rallied to the Chechen side. They brought not only their arms and expertise but also their agenda to convert Chechnya into a base for international jihad. The jihadists used the peace that followed the Russo-Chechen truce of 1996 as an opportunity to build camps and recruit new followers, such as the aforementioned Valizhdanov, to prepare to export jihad to the rest of the region and beyond. Their invasion of neighboring Dagestan precipitated the second Chechen War in 1999 propelled the relatively unknown Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency by the year’s end. Crushing the Chechen and jihadist forces and restoring Moscow’s authority throughout the Russian federation were President Putin’s raison d’etre. The former KGB colonel gave free rein to the federal forces to employ overwhelming force.

Chechen rebels responded in two ways. Some laid down arms or switched to the Federal side, a choice made vastly easier by Moscow’s embrace of Akhmad Kadyrov, a prominent Chechen religious figure who saw the jihadists and their interpretation of Islam as the greatest threat to the Chechen people. Others aligned with the jihadists. As the federal forces pressed the rebels, the latter grew increasingly desperate and radical. They turned to terror tactics, sending suicide bombers, often Chechen females, to attack military and civil targets first inside Chechnya in 2000 and then elsewhere in the Russian Federation beginning in 2003. Most famously, they held hostage a full theater in Moscow in 2002 and then, most horrifically, did the same to a school in Beslan, Ossetia.

Since many of the perpetrators were women who had lost husbands or male relatives, these so-called “Black Widow” terror attacks were understood largely as despairing responses to Russian state terror and violence. There is no doubt that the cruelty of the Federal forces provoked rage, but it is important to note that the targets of the attacks were selected thoughtfully. The choice of a Moscow theater showing a favored play of Soviet-era children and the merciless decision to attack an elementary school in Ossetia on September 1, the first day of school and what is effectively a grand national ritual celebration of childhood were not coincidental but aimed instead to magnify the emotional impact of a terror strike against the most innocent and vulnerable. The proliferation of Islamist terror attacks was never simply a reaction to Russian excesses; it has also been the product of a deliberate strategic calculus by jihadists in the Caucasus. Chechen rebels in 1995 had changed the course of the first Chechen war when they seized hostages from a Russian hospital in 1995 and thereby forced Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to agree to a ceasefire.

The spectacular and horrific terror attacks of the 2000s were clearly intended to replicate such success. In the context of Putin’s resolve and a Russian public far less sympathetic to the Chechen cause, however, they failed to reverse the tide of the struggle. Before the end of 2000, Federal forces had taken control of Chechnya’s major population centers, and by 2009 together with their local Chechen allies they had ground down the opposition inside Chechnya so successfully that Moscow declared its “counter-terrorism” operation over.

The ranks of jihadists inside Chechnya have dwindled. Nonetheless, they have refused to concede defeat. To the contrary, they now grandly called themselves the “Caucasus Emirate” in open expression of their ambition to unify the Caucasus under Islamic law as part of a revived global Caliphate. They relegated Chechnya to the status of a “vilayat,” or province, one among several in the virtual Emirate. They continued to mount sporadic attacks on targets throughout the North Caucasus and elsewhere in Russia, including Moscow’s subway system.

Today the leader of the Caucasus Emirate is a forty-nine-year-old Chechen named Doku Umarov. Umarov is a dour and uncharismatic but dogged figure who has acted as the Emirate’s emir, or commander-in-chief for over six years. His death has been reported several times, most recently on 16 January 2013, but has never been confirmed. Umarov fought in the first Chechen war and from the start aligned himself with the most radical rebels. After attrition had claimed the better known fighters, Umarov emerged as the chief jihadist in 2006. Despite the fact that their presence inside Chechnya was tenuous, Umarov in 2007 declared the creation of the Caucasus Emirate with himself as emir. After a string of suicide attacks in 2010 that struck targets in Moscow, Stavropol, and Kiziliar for which Umarov took credit, the U.S. State Department placed him on its list of global terrorists.

Despite Umarov’s success in mounting attacks on trains, concert halls, and urban transport, his emirate has failed to rattle Moscow. Umarov recognizes that the Sochi Olympics, however, offer him an incomparable platform on which to demonstrate the Emirate’s resiliency and humiliate Putin. Thus in a video posted to the internet this past summer, Umarov declared that he was breaking an earlier moratorium on attacks. The Kremlin, he said, had wrongly interpreted this gesture as a sign of weakness and now planned to hold the “satanic” Olympic games “on the bones of our ancestors, on the bones of many, many dead Muslims buried on our land by the Black Sea.” He now called upon the mujahidin to use maximal force to stop the games.

Umarov’s rhetoric of wounded outrage is sooner an exercise in opportunism than it is an expression of sincere offense. The notion that today’s Russia is desecrating Circassian graves by holding the Olympics borders is a stretch. Whereas the Russian Empire ethnically cleansed the Circassian peoples from the Black Sea coasts of the Caucasus, the Russian Federation in 1999 passed a law permitting their descendants to return and claim citizenship. Over two thousand Circassians from Turkey and the Balkans have reportedly returned, and another 1,200 from Syria are currently lobbying for expedited return. Moreover, the Umarov’s harsh Salafi interpretation of Islam would never recognize the Circassians, who put little stock into formal Islamic law or practice, as proper Muslims.

Although from a tactical standpoint the attacks in Volgograd were unimpressive –urban public transport is among the softest of targets– the diversity in the cast of characters they involved reveals an unsettling evolution in Russia’s jihadist community. Where once the jihadist movement had been closely intertwined with and parasitical upon the Chechen national cause, the Volgograd bombings suggest that the movement can not only maintain its existence absent a robust Chechen independence movement but can also attract non-Chechens, including Russian converts. If earlier the desire to avenge the deaths of loved ones or the destruction wrought upon the Chechen homeland might have explained the bulk of suicide bombings inside Russia, it can do little to explain the Volgograd bombings. Asiyalova, her convert husband, and Pechenkin all chose armed jihad before they became suicide bombers. Vengeance might make for a more convincing motive in the case of the twice-widowed Aslanova, but her personal history suggests she chose conflict at least as much as it chose her. When the main Russian jihadist website recently crowed that the Kremlin’s worst nightmare is the growing number of Russian converts to radical Islam, it was not an entirely empty boast. The Caucasus Emirate’s proven ability to draw on populations outside Chechnya to produce suicide bombers reveals a sophisticated organizational capacity.

Even as the Emirate’s influence inside Chechnya has declined, its presence elsewhere and especially in neighboring Dagestan has remained stable, or even grown. Dagestan is the poorest and least developed part of the Russian Federation. It has little to offer by way of natural resources, and its gridlocked politics give little reason to expect development to accelerate any time soon. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the republic began to succumb to chronic violence as clan politics, corruption, and radical Islam began to interact. Its population of one and a half million is divided into more than thirty different ethnicities, complicating politics, where ethnic rivalries sometimes overlap with conflicts between police and criminal gangs. Dagestan has a highly masculine culture that reveres pride, honor, and physical courage. Those who display these qualities in opposing overbearing or corrupt authorities often command respect, their own deficiencies notwithstanding. As one small example of this, news stories posted to the internet on the aforementioned Abdullaev’s death are accompanied by comments praising Abdullaev’s courage and condemning the police. Dagestan’s exceptionally rugged topography makes it easy for rebels, renegades, and outlaws to hide. It is a hospitable place for jihadists.

Dagestan will likely continue to suffer from endemic violence for at least another generation. Fortunately for Moscow, the ethnically fractured nature of Dagestani society – as well as the recognition among most Dagestanis that the republic’s prospects would be still worse outside of Russia – has served to diffuse popular frustration and block it from consolidating in anti-Russian sentiment. There is no popular movement against Russian rule in Dagestan.

TROUBLE IN THE HEARTLAND

This, too, will likely not change, but the continued influx of Dagestanis, Azerbaijanis, Tajiks, and others from the Caucasus and Central Asia into Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other Russian cities has been raising tensions between native Russians and the new arrivals to unprecedented levels in the Russian heartland. The presence in major Russian cities of chernyie (swarthy people) from the Caucasus and Central Asia is nothing new. But unlike in the Soviet era when the internal movement of people was controlled and Communist internationalism made ethnic chauvinism an ideological offense, today the arrival of migrants is less regulated, on a larger scale, and resented by many Russians who see the new arrivals as interlopers who crowd their cities and bring little of value. Whereas ethnic particularism swiftly asserted itself in most parts of the Soviet periphery at the end of Soviet rule, it has not yet in Russia. But no longer is such an idea inconceivable.

Indeed, today Russian nationalists openly decry Moscow’s subsidies to the North Caucasus. They would prefer to cut the region loose than see their money go to the Caucasus and Caucasians come to Russia’s heartland cities. Fights in nightclubs and altercations on the street – quotidian stuff in urban settings – have in recent years sparked mass protests and ugly demonstrations in Moscow when the victims have been Russians and the perpetrators from the Caucasus. For their part, Russian citizens from the Caucasus deeply resent the police and other authorities’ habitual use of profiling to harass and extort bribes from them.

Containing ethnic rivalry in the center will be a challenge for the Russian state throughout the coming decade, not least because the temptation for Russian politicians to exploit such animosities to whip up Russian national fervor will be strong. Serial attacks or worse upon the Caucasians in Russia’s cities would alienate many North Caucasians. This would redound to the jihadists’ benefit, bolstering their argument that a state of war is the only relationship possible between Russia’s Muslims and their government.

CONCLUSION: THREE SCENARIOS

Vladimir Putin has a great deal at stake in the Sochi games, and therefore he and his regime are vulnerable. An orderly, well run, and successful games, he hopes, will recall memories of the Moscow games of 1980 and symbolize his success at restoring order to Russia and reinvigorating it as a player to be reckoned with on the world stage. A disrupted or failed games would signal precisely the opposite, and thus Putin’s liberal critics at home and abroad in the run-up to the games have highlighted the negative.

Assuming the expected number of spectators do show up, there are three likely scenarios that might tarnish the games. The first would be a case of infrastructural failure. The sheer amount of new planning and construction that had to be done in Sochi coupled with the weakness of law and the regulatory state in Russia make it far from inconceivable that something might go wrong with the new facilities. Everything from a power outage to the physical collapse of a building is imaginable. Such an event would prove an acute embarrassment to the Kremlin, as it would simultaneously underscore both the inability of Putin’s Russia to match Soviet achievements and the price that corruption and feeble laws extract.

Whereas even Putin’s most ardent liberal critics could hardly be accused of wishing for a hotel to catch fire or a ski-lift cable to snap, many do fervently wish to see a second scenario, whereby one or more protests in favor of homosexual rights cause a sensation at the games. Putin has the least to fear from this scenario. Such demonstrations would have little appeal to the Russian public, who would see them sooner as an opportunistic gambit to tarnish Russia rather than a heart-felt protest against repression. Similarly, abroad they will likely resonate only in Western Europe and the United States, constituencies from whom Putin can expect little in any event.

The third scenario is a terrorist attack carried out by the Caucasus Emirate or those allied to it. Although such an attack would do nothing to rally sympathy from anyone but the jihadists’ current backers, it would likely deal two severe blows to the Kremlin. The first would be to humiliate Putin by revealing the former state security agent’s impotence after a decade and a half to bring order to Caucasus and to secure even as important a location as Sochi. The temptation of Putin’s security apparatus to retaliate against individuals and groups even only tangentially related to the Caucasus Emirate will be strong. The second would be to further inflame ill will against North Caucasians in Russia’s large cities. Were something like race riots to occur in cities like Moscow or St. Petersburg, the only beneficiaries would be the jihadists. Using the cycle of violent attack and reprisal to polarize ethnically or religiously distinct populations is one of the oldest and most effective tactics of insurgents. More than anything, exploiting this dynamic by provoking mass retaliation or civil strife in Russian cities offers the jihadists the best chance they have to radicalize larger numbers of North Caucasians and widen their war.

To forestall an attack, Putin has ordered over forty thousand police alone to provide security at Sochi. Thousands more personnel from Russia’s military, security, and intelligence services will be deployed as well. They plan to surveil and monitor visitors to the fullest extent technologically possible, and are subjecting all visitors to background checks.

Setting the odds for a successful attack are impossible. As formidable as the Russian security presence sounds, many of the personnel are not well trained. Moreover, the games will be spread out over an unusually large territory, providing enhanced opportunities for terrorists to identify vulnerabilities. The possibility that the Caucasus Emirate has already planted or recruited sleeper elements among the construction workers and service personnel cannot be excluded.

There is little the U.S. can do directly. Due to rivalries between the two countries’ intelligence services, the U.S. will send to Sochi a comparatively small contingent of only about forty FBI agents. In the event of an infrastructural failure or breakdown, or even a successful terror attack, the urge to indulge in schadenfreude will be strong for those who detest Putin. No doubt some will explain that Putin brought it on himself with his autocratic, illiberal ways. And there is a good chance they will be at least partially right.

Americans, however, would do well to keep in mind two things. One is that not everything that is bad in Russia is Putin’s doing, and this applies to the perennial jihadist insurgency in the North Caucasus. The other is that not all of Russia’s problems are Russia’s alone. This, too, applies to the North Caucasus. Last year’s Boston bombings brought this home in the most vivid manner. As radical Sunni militias have taken center stage in Syria’s civil war, fighters from the North Caucasus have prominently emerged among them as field commanders. The jihadist international, including al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri, identified the North Caucasus as a promising zone of activity some two decades ago. Those ties remain strong today and they run both ways.

In so far as they burnish Putin’s reputation, a successful Olympics in Sochi will likely change little in Russia for the better, at least for the short term. An Olympics disrupted by terror attack, or even by accidental catastrophe presented as a terror attack, however, holds the potential to provoke a sharp deterioration in ties between the Russian center and its North Caucasian periphery. Although the majority of Russians and North Caucasians alike detest the jihadists, frustration between the two is mutual and deepening. At this already unhappy time in the history of Russia’s North Caucasus, the further inflammation of relations would benefit neither Russians nor North Caucasians, nor even Americans.

About the author:
Michael A. Reynolds, a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, is an Associate Professor in Princeton’s Department of Near Eastern Studies, where he teaches courses on modern Middle Eastern and Eurasian history, comparative empire, military and ethnic conflict, and secularism. He is author of Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2011), co-winner of the 2011 American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize, a Choice outstanding title, and a Financial Times book of the summer. In addition to his historical research on the Ottoman and Russian empires and their successor states, Reynolds works on contemporary issues related to Turkey, the Kurds, Azerbaijan, and the North Caucasus. He holds a PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton, an MA in Political Science from Columbia, and a BA in Government and Slavic Languages from Harvard.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI and may be accessed here.

The article The Geopolitics Of Sochi – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By FPIF

By William D. Hartung

The United States is far and away the world’s leading arms trafficking nation, with $60 billion in arms transfer agreements last year alone.

In 2011, the last year for which full global statistics are available, U.S. companies and the U.S. government controlled over three-quarters of the international weapons trade.

The Obama administration is proud of its accomplishments on this front and regularly touts the role of U.S. officials — from embassy personnel on up to the president himself — in promoting U.S. arms sales.

Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Tom Kelly underscored this point in April 2013 testimony to Congress:

“It is an issue that has the attention of every top-level official who’s working on foreign policy throughout the government, including the top officials at the State Department,” he said. “In advocating on behalf of our companies and doing everything we can to make sure that these sales go through . . . we take it very, very seriously and we’re constantly thinking of how we can do better.”

But according to administration officials, promotion is only one side of its approach to arms transfers. On January 15, the Obama administration issued the first official policy directive on conventional arms sales since the mid-1990s. The document, Presidential Policy Directive 27, carries on the administration’s explicit commitment to promoting arms sales, but it also includes a pledge to show restraint by being extremely careful about which countries receive U.S. weaponry.

The Human Rights Connection

The most encouraging element of the new policy is its pledge to forego sales where there is a likelihood that the weapons transferred will be used to conduct genocide or other atrocities, violate international humanitarian law, or contribute to violations of human rights.

One would think that any reasonable policy on arms transfers would include these strictures, but that is not the case. Human rights concerns have too often taken a back seat to other considerations, from access to military bases and the cultivation of allies in key strategic locations to a desire to cement relations with major oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia.

The explicit human rights language in the new Obama policy directive mirrors that contained in the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, and it holds out hope that basic principles of human rights may now be given higher priority in arms export decision-making. As the State Department’s Tom Kelly put it in an interview with Reuters, “we wanted to make sure that it’s very clear that human rights considerations really are at the core of our arms transfer decisions.”

Another promising element of the administration’s new policy is its pledge to pay closer attention to where U.S. arms end up. Whether arming the Shah of Iran in the 1970s or transferring weaponry to Afghan extremist groups fighting against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the U.S. government has historically paid too little attention to where U.S. arms end up. Iran still has U.S. weaponry dating back to the Shah’s era, and al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda-like groups around the world have benefited from the U.S. weapons that were poured into South Asia during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The new Obama policy seems to take account of the risk of U.S. weapons ending up with hostile regimes or organizations when it states that it will take into account “the risk that significant change in the political or security situation of the recipient country could lead to inappropriate end use transfer of defense articles.”

The real question is how these new arms transfer criteria will be applied in practice. Will Washington reconsider multi-billion dollar sales to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf regimes given their human rights records or long-term stability? Or will other considerations like the desire to boost the U.S. arms industry by increasing exports to the region take precedence? This question may be moot given the tens of billions of dollar in arms sales agreements the United States has concluded with Saudi Arabia in recent years. But there is still a chance that the new criteria could have an impact on U.S. arms transfer decisions in other parts of the world.

A Loosening of Controls

Ironically, the administration’s new rhetoric of restraint has been enunciated in parallel with an effort to loosen arms export controls, an initiative that could inadvertently make it easier for U.S. weapons to fall into the hands of terrorists and human rights abusers. This danger results from a decision to take thousands of items off the U.S. Munitions List (USML) and place them on the less restrictive Commerce Control List (CCL).

This change will mean that these items will no longer need a license from the State Department to be exported and will instead be subject to the less stringent controls maintained by the Department of Commerce — an agency more associated with export promotion than export control.

There are two principal problems with the administration’s new approach to regulating arms exports. First, the weapons and weapons components that are moved under the jurisdiction of the Commerce Department are not likely to receive the regular human rights vetting that occurs during the State Department’s licensing process. Second, the decision to allow many of the items moved to the Commerce list to go to 36 allied nations with no license at all will make it easier for smugglers that have set up front companies in these allied nations to get a hold of U.S. arms components and ship them on to Iran, China, or other destinations prohibited under U.S. law.

The administration has defended its new arms export control policy as an effort to put “higher fences around fewer items” so that scarce enforcement resources can be concentrated on high-end weapons and weapons components whose transfer could undermine U.S. military superiority. Streamlining export controls in this way would not necessarily be a bad thing, but the Obama administration has lifted the “fences” from far too many items, from older model transport planes to Huey attack helicopters to surveillance equipment. The administration’s narrow focus on controlling the flow of modern equipment to potential competitors ignores the danger posed by making it easier to export low-tech items to nations of concern. Iran, for example, wants spare parts to keep its aged American-made fighter jets and attack helicopters flying; China wants older model technology to copy and manufacture; and many regimes want the means of daily repression, like low-tech guns and communication and surveillance equipment. None of these items would be kept behind the “high fence” of United States export controls as envisioned by the Obama reform.

Business Interests

The Obama reforms did not occur in a political vacuum. Major business networks like the Coalition for Security and Competitiveness have welcomed the administration’s pro-industry stance. The 19 members of the group, which lobbied hard for the arms export control reform, include the Aerospace Industries Association, the Business Roundtable, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and the National Defense Industrial Association.

As so often happens in the realm of business lobbying, the public rationale for this policy change focused not on the possibility of increasing industry profits but on the jobs that would allegedly be produced. The only study of the subject was a flawed effort by the Milken Institute — funded by the National Association of Manufacturers — which arbitrarily assumed that export control reform would radically increase U.S. sales to key markets like China and India. And neither the Milken report nor the administration accounted for the job loss that could occur if the reforms make it easier to transfer U.S. production technology to other countries.

It’s hard to see how the Obama administration’s aggressive promotion of arms exports can be made compatible with the pledges of restraint contained in its new policy directive. Congress needs to subject the arms export decontrol initiative to much greater scrutiny with respect to its impact on human rights and jobs. And the public and Congress need to press the administration to adhere to the human rights principles set out in its new arms transfer policy directive. Given the uncertainties of current global politics, a policy of unrestrained arms exports is both unwise and unacceptable.

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Risks and Returns: The Economic Illogic of the Obama Administration’s Export Reform (August 2013).

The article Obama’s Arms Sales Policy: Promotion Or Restraint? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Franklin Lamb

As of 2/6/14 it’s been seven days since the first humanitarian aid, generally in the form of 56 lb. food parcels packed by UNWRA, the World Food Program, the ICRC or European aid organizations have been able to enter Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp following half a dozen aborted attempts the past few months by various militia and political groups to achieve consensus to deliver aid. The aid parcels, including two kilos of rice, two kilos sugar, three kilos lentils, three kilos dry macaroni, plus flour, jam, tea, oil, and sweet Halawi spread are intended to feed a family of five to eight for ten days. The boxes have been trickling into the South side of the Yarmouk Palestinian camp and up along Rima Street where this observer has seen crowds this past week tensely waiting and hoping for food and clean water. For some camp residents the wait for relief began in June of 2013 when all entrances and exits to Yarmouk camp were cut.

Up to this morning, approximately 5,300 food parcels have been allowed into Yarmouk or an average of 800-1,000 food packages daily. Aid has been entering sporadically and sometimes chaotically, with perceptible but slight increases over the past week.

A large yellow flat-bed truck arrived on the morning of 2/5/14 and this observer watched as food parcels were off-loaded and neatly stacked into six white pick-up trucks that were then driven into Yarmouk under the watchful gaze of pro and anti-regime forces and security agents. According to one source from South Beirut who this observer had met earlier, Jabhat al Nusra, Jabhat Islam, Daash and Jund al Cham snipers could be observed on rooftops monitoring the distribution activity with their eyes pressed against their rifle scopes. One SARCS volunteer who this observer has known for two years advised that she feared there might be a shootout between these fighters and nearby Palestinian forces allied with the government (Ahmad Jibril’s PFLP-GC) suspected Hezbollah fighters with hand radio phones who were watching and seemingly discussing the events. Frankly, for this observer, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish which group is which around here given the proliferation of fighters with beards and essentially indistinguishable attire.

For many food parcel recipients, their first act is to open the jar of jam inside the cardboard box and scoop the confections into the mouths of their children or the nearby infirm refugees, usually elderly. On 2/6/14, UNWRA also started a polio vaccination program, its first in Yarmouk and which is urgently needed by thousands of trapped camp residents. Ten thousand dosages of polio vaccines are being allowed into the camp with vaccinations currently underway for the second day running.

In addition to the so far paltry amount of food allowed into the camp, approximately 1,600 people have been allowed to leave Yarmouk for medical treatment. Young Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) volunteers, wearing shirts with large Red Crosses can be seen trickling out from the besieged camp this morning. Invariably holding the hands, arms, or shoulders of those who could walk the 50 yards to waiting ambulances that will evacuate and transport these patients, suffering the effects of starvation including muscle atrophy and dehydration. Most will be taken to the PCRS Jaffa hospital two kilometers away. Others are being transferred to Syrian government hospitals in Mazah, in central Damascus, including al-Mujtahed, al-Muwasat, al-Tawleed and children hospital.

This observer mingled for a couple of hours among the approximately 250 family members of trapped refugees, many of whom appear daily outside the only exit from Yarmouk camp, hoping that a relative might be allowed to leave. One elderly lady, maybe in her late sixties, explained to this observer that every day for the past seven months, i.e. since the tight siege of Yarmouk began last June, she has stood in the same location waiting for her son Mahmoud to come to her from inside besieged Yarmouk. She has no idea if he is alive but she explained to me that she believes that God will deliver him safely to her.

Another view of much needed Divine assistance was articulated by a lovely young mother who had just exited Yarmouk with her two toddlers who looked, as she did, to be in fairly bad shape and in need of immediate hospitalization. A former English literature student, the lady, whose family is from Haifa, Occupied Palestine, explained to this observer that she no longer has any belief in God and as she elaborated why, she lowered her voice so as not to offend the nearby elderly believer waiting for her son Makmoud.

She told of her experience trapped inside Yarmouk: “For the past more than five months I have sold my body for one hour to whoever would give me a kilo of rice which sometimes costs as much as 14,000 s.p. (close to $ 100). I was proud to be a whore for these terrorists in order to keep my parents alive and who are still trapped and I also prevented complete starvation of my children.” She continued, “God did not help me and my family but I promise if I live and ever see one of those dogs I will kill him and he can learn if his God exists or not. None existed for me!” and she sobbed as two young lady volunteers from the PRCS held her as she and her little ones made their way to a waiting PRCS ambulance.

Given the 18,000 in need of urgent aid this cold winter morning inside Yarmouk camp, what has been allowed in so far has been a mere trickle, rather minor in a sense. But major for those getting the live saving food parcels and urgently required medical treatment.

As this observer waits to return to Yarmouk this morning, and for a promised and expensive taxi to hopefully arrive, for few cabs want to go anywhere near Yarmouk camp these days and charge five times the normal fare if they do, ones imagines that as has been the case this past week, there will be large crowds and long lines of people waiting and sometimes jostling for food. This attests to the enormous humanitarian need and to the desperation of thousands of civilians, Palestinian and Syrian, being starved and used as a weapon of war and as human shields.

After months of false starts toward reaching an agreement among fourteen Palestinian factions here in Damascus, as well as a green light from the Syrian government, and more than a dozen rebel militias, each with disparate agendas, this week’s agreement, and the 8th since early December, may or may not hold. And it may not end the carnage that criminally took 6000 more lives just last month.

If it does succeed, it will be one more half-step, to use UN Envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi Geneva II term, toward lifting the siege of Yarmouk camp which achievement might then augur well for more widespread humanitarian efforts to achieve a nationwide ceasefire as a full step toward serious reconciliation work in order to save this great country.

The article Lifting The Siege Of Yarmouk – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By TransConflict

Research by women’s right organizations purports that the prevalence of child marriage is not due to lack of awareness about the concerns of the practice, but due to the social prejudice that girls face. While reports are inconclusive as to the rate of increase of child marriages among refugee populations, it is still an issue that requires immense scrutiny.

By Kirra Hughes

Early marriage is proclaimed a child rights issue, a human rights issue, a health issue or a gender issue. Sometimes even all of the above. Early marriage is generally classified as a type of gender-based violence and of forced marriage, given that boys and girls under 18 years of age are considered too young to give valid consent. Theories about underlying causes suggest that early marriage is a result of girls’ subordinate status to boys: i.e. girls are a burden. Rachel B. Vogelstien, CFR Fellow for Women and Foreign Policy says, “Child marriage is linked to poor health, curtailed education, violence, and instability, and perpetuates an inter-generational cycle of poverty that is difficult to break.” In communities around the globe, early marriage is the norm – a tradition dating back generations. This is the case in some regions of Syria, such as the Daraa province where many refugees are from. Girls here are frequently married under the age of 18. However, for these refugees marriage is now becoming a perceived necessity for their daughters’ well-being.

Early marriage in the states of Jordan and Lebanon are now on the rise among Syrian refugees. They believe that marriage and the status it brings gives a form of economic and physical protection to their young daughters. Cousins and other distant family members are common choices of husbands. “They rape girls who are as young as [my daughter] in Syria now. If they raped a nine-year-old girl, they can do anything. I will not feel OK if I do not see her married to a decent man who can protect her,” said the father of Hanadi, a pregnant child bride in Jordan aged 14. This theme of needing male protection is found throughout families’ stories. In Za’atari, the world’s second largest refugee camp (now housing at least 120,000 Syrians), a mother explains: “Zeina’s father is not here, so she doesn’t have male protection…Especially at night, Za’atari can be dangerous for young girls. I heard some horrible rumours about girls getting raped or kidnapped. So, when we found out that this young man had a college certificate and good potential to support and protect her in the future, we decided to say yes.”

Syria’s laws sets the minimum age of marriage at 17 for boys and 16 for girls. However, religious leaders are allowed to make exceptions and approve informal marriages for girls at the age of 13 and over and for boys at the age of 16 and over. The marriages remain informal and aren’t registered with the state until both children turn 18. Living together and having children is allowed, however. In the camps, children are marrying as early as 13 or 14. The minimum age for marriage by Jordanian law is 18 for boys and girls though exceptions for 15 year olds have been made. In a UN study, “44% identified the normal age of marriage for girls between 15 and 17 years while 6% identified 12 to 14 years as the average in their community.”

For Syrians to register their marriages at courts in Jordan, they must be able to show a letter from the embassy stating that they are, in fact, single. However, with the conflict still raging in Syria, it’s nearly impossible to obtain any documentation. This means that the marriages remain informal. This informality can be extremely precarious for the young brides.

Beyond the usual dangers of child marriage (early pregnancy, poor health), refugees marrying now face additional dangers. Some refugees can’t pay dowries anymore and with the limited to nonexistent paperwork now needed, girls face hasty marriages as well as “pleasure marriages.” These pleasure marriages are nothing short of prostitution; the man divorces the girl shortly after consummation.

Research by women’s right organizations purports that the prevalence of child marriage is not due to lack of awareness about the concerns of the practice, but due to the social prejudice that girls face. This points to solutions that should be inclusive of fathers and other male family and community leaders. This would instigate a cycle of change: family decisions change thus community decisions change and vice versa. The UN recommends the following:

• Community based initiatives to change the effects of harmful social norms as well as longer term programs to address underlying causes of early marriage.
• Raise awareness of parents, community leaders about health and rights implications of early marriage;
• Develop social and economic programs for out of school girls to reduce likelihood of early marriage as well as encourage empowerment and self-reliance;
• Improve girls’ access to education and retention in school;
• Develop economic opportunities for girls once they graduate schools.

While reports are inconclusive as to the rate of increase of child marriages among refugee populations, it is still an issue that requires immense scrutiny.

Kirra Hughes holds a Masters Degree in Conflict Transformation from SIT Graduate Institute.  Kirra has a diverse experience in working with women’s movement in Nepal, peacebuilding in Southeast Asia, traditional medicine in Tibet and environmental education in the US. She can be reached at KirraLHughes@gmail.com.

The article For Syrian Refugees Child Marriage Is A Necessity – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.