A comic book which tells the story of Kurt Cobain’s life will be released next month. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the comic book is written and drawn by Jayfri Hashim and it will be available in digital version as well as hard copy on April 2. The book will center on the Nirvana member’s early career and his rise to stardom, AceShowbiz said.

“Not only is this a great way to understand the importance of his contribution to music, but it is a great tool for kids to read about him in a different medium,” said Darren G. Davis of Blue Water Productions. “Our biography comic books are now taught in schools and libraries for students and reluctant readers.”

The Cobain installment is a part of the publisher’s “Tribute” series, which previously featured artists such as Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Jim Morrison and Keith Richards. For the next tribute series, they plan to release other books which feature Freddie Mercury and the members of Monty Python.

In other news, police recently released never-before-seen photos from Cobain’s death scene. According to CBS News, the 35 photos were taken by responding SPD officers at Cobain’s home in 1994. Some of the photos show his suicide note which he placed on top of a planter in the greenhouse with a pen stuck in the middle.

Other photos show drug paraphernalia which he kept in a cigar box. The police also took a photo of his wallet which contained his drivers license.

Russia has begun preparations for terminating bilateral agreements with Ukraine related to the status and operation of the Black Sea Fleet, a Kremlin spokesman said Friday.

The decision was made at a meeting of the country’s Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin.

According to spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the measures to be scrapped include a 1997 agreement on the conditions of the fleet’s stay in Crimea, which was extended by 25 years in a 2010 deal by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

In exchange, Ukraine received a discount of $100 on each 1,000 cubic meters of natural gas imported from Russia, which was provided for by cutting export duties on the gas, money that would have gone into the Russian state budget.

A bill to void the agreements was submitted to the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, on Friday afternoon.

The Russian Black Sea fleet is headquartered in Sevastopol, a city with special status within Crimea, which became Russian territory last week after 60 years as part of Ukraine.

The Kremlin said earlier this month that as the base is no longer located in Ukraine, there were no legal grounds for the discount to be continued.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said last Friday that Moscow would seek a reimbursement of the $11 billion Russia lost while the discount was in place.

President Mahmoud Abbas has been exerting all efforts to negotiate the release of the fourth group of Palestinian veteran prisoners, a PLO official said Sunday.

Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat said in a statement that Israel “must release the fourth batch” of prisoners, held in Israeli jails since before the 1993 Oslo Accords.

The deal at the beginning of the negotiations was for Israel to release 104 veteran prisoners in exchange for the PLO’s pledge not to attempt a statehood bid at the UN or other international bodies, Erekat reiterated.

He said the PLO was involved in “sensitive talks” with the US and the Israel, but that he could not reveal details to the media.

Israel was scheduled to release the final group of prisoners on Saturday, but did not.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that debate with the PLO over the prisoner release could go on for “a number of days,” the Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post reported on its website.

Netanyahu said at a meeting with members of his right-wing Likud party that prisoners would not be freed “without a clear benefit for Israel in return,” the report said.

So far, 78 of a total of 104 veteran Palestinian prisoners have been freed in three separate tranches.

Continued ‘Jewish state’ impasse

Separately, on Saturday, the London-based Arabic-language newspaper al-Hayat quoted western diplomats as saying that US Secretary of State John Kerry was trying to overcome the impasse over the recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state.”

According to the report, Kerry suggested changing the language to “the homeland of the Jewish people.” In exchange, the Palestinians would have to agree to establish a capital in only a part of East Jerusalem, not all of it.

The report said the PLO had rejected the proposal.

The PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist in 1988, but says that recognizing Israel as a “Jewish state” could jeopardize the right of return for Palestinian refugees and limit the rights of Palestinians living in Israel.

Peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians were relaunched in July under the auspices of the US after nearly three years of impasse.

Israel’s government has announced the construction of thousands of settler housing units and its army has killed 60 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza since the negotiations began.

By Linda Karadaku, Bedrana Kaletovic and Miki Trajkovski

Balkan countries are increasing co-operation in response to the developments in Ukraine as experts have warned of security implications of separatist tendencies.

Examples of a re-energised co-operative spirit can be found in several countries, including Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia.

The renewed efforts come as Paddy Ashdown, former High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), warned that interference by Moscow following its intervention in Crimea could lead to additional problems in BiH.

Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik visited Moscow this month to hear a proposal that RS borrow money from Moscow rather than participating in a proposed IMF loan with the rest of BiH.

“Some Bosnian politicians are playing the Moscow card, even, most dangerously of all, the Slav card, in support of policies of separation,” Ashdown told a NATO seminar on southeast Europe in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo.

“Europe and the West must now act decisively to close down this new salient of division in this country,” he said.

The Ukraine Embassy in Sarajevo criticised the president’s statements, noting that Dodik is not responsible for foreign policy.

“Such statements are creating an openly hostile atmosphere towards Ukraine and completely contradict the marks that the entire international community gave on the Crimean referendum. It is also crucial to bear in mind that any support of violations of international law, aggression and separatism can have a strong negative impact on peace and stability in the Balkans,” Oleksandr Oborskyj, the chief of the diplomatic mission of Ukraine in BiH, told SETimes.

While the Serbian portion of BiH entertains overtures from Moscow, Serbia said it is ready to assist regional countries, especially BiH, in their Euro-Atlantic integration.

“BiH’s stability, prosperity and successful European path are very important to Serbia,” said Stanimir Vukicevic, Serbia’s ambassador to BiH.

Vukicevic said only when the regional countries become part of the EU can prejudices that threaten security be fully overcome.

Albania’s Foreign Minister Ditmir Bushati visited Zagreb last Friday (March 21st) to discuss increased energy and infrastructure co-operation. The two countries signed a European Partnership agreement, whereby Croatia pledged it will support Albania’s EU membership bid.

The two countries are undertaking a host of joint projects such as the development of the Adriatic-Ionian corridor.

“This will create a new reality in the region,” Bushati said.

Both countries also agreed to support the EU-mediated Belgrade-Pristina dialogue to strengthen regional peace and security.

The Balkan countries understood there is a need to review their security and competitiveness because of the Crimea crisis, said Enri Hide, a lecturer at the European University of Tirana.

“[That is because] the regional countries are small and consequently more exposed to the sudden changes of the regional or global security architecture,” Hide told SETimes.

Albania is also working closer with Kosovo as both countries proclaimed they want to be promoters of the region’s Europeanisation.

“Such co-operation is strategic for us, stabilising for the region and orientating for all on the Euro-Atlantic path,” Bushati said during his visit to Pristina on March 14th.

The two countries are now in the process of concluding additional agreements to the ones already reached in the fields of energy, employment, culture and tourism, and will include joint projects in infrastructure, finance and education.

Participating in the designing of a regional and European approach to address complex security challenges — such as the Ukraine crisis — is important, said Marjan Gjurovski, professor at the Security Faculty in Skopje.

“Macedonia, has signed bilateral agreements with Albania and Kosovo that include joint military exercises and meetings of security experts. Macedonia is also making available to Kosovo its regional military training centres,” Gjurovski said.

Gjurovski said next on the list is airspace and intelligence co-operation as well as concluding joint projects to further enhance stability as well as mutual trust.

Correspondent Drazen Remikovic in Banja Luka contributed to this report.

By Jamel Arfaoui

Days after announcing plans to raise the retirement age to 62, the Tunisian government on Friday (March 28th) named Rachid Barouni to head the national social security fund (CNSS).

Barouni takes the post amidst controversy over the proposed retirement policy reform. While the measure aims to counter a shortfall in social funds, concerns grow that it could impact many citizens, especially unemployed graduates.

But raising the retirement age by two years is a necessary step, according to Social Affairs Minister Ahmed Ammar Youmbai.

“The social funds deficit hit the 220 million dinar mark in 2012,” Youmbai told lawmakers on March 17th.

“I expect it to reach 400 million dinars in 2014, and therefore, it has become necessary to raise the retirement age to 62 from 60 years as an urgent measure to overcome such a deficit,” the minister added.

If approved, the decision to increase the retirement age would take effect in January 2015.

Citizens wonder if the government is serious about implementing the plan, especially as the number of unemployed people grows every day.

The problem did not arise overnight. According to analyst Khaled Zdiri, the revolution influenced the fiscal balances of the social security fund.

“The demobilisation of a large number of workers after the closure of many institutions, as well as the number of retirees compounded from year to year, versus a limited number of assignments…led to the worsening of the fiscal deficit of the social security fund,” he noted.

Tunisia was compelled, he said, to “prepare a plan for structural reform of the pension systems in both the public and private sectors, so as to enable these systems to fulfil their obligations”.

A team of financial experts should also be appointed to “manage the fund’s investment reserves in an efficient and effective manner”, he suggested.

Tunisians on the verge of retirement are voicing concerns over what the proposed change will mean for young people.

“It’s true that social funds are facing problems, but raising the retirement age will aggravate the suffering of many university graduates and deny them the chance to replace those who retire,” said Mokhtar Dimassi, a teacher in his 50s.

“I was planning an early retirement,” bank employee Sihem Matoussi told Magharebia. “I thought that my decision would give a chance to an unemployed person to replace me.”

She added, “I hope this plan will not go through.”

Her colleague Abdelkader Samaoui was equally critical of the measure.

“We may not be sent to retirement, but to the nearest grave,” he said.

Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) social fund head Abdelkrim Jerad tried to calm concerns.

“The condition of funds is not catastrophic and it’s not about to go bankrupt, as promoted by some former officials,” he said. “These funds are public and the state is their guarantor. Therefore, there’s no fear about retirees’ pensions.”

According to former interim CNSS head El Hedi Boubker, savings are sufficient to cover pensions for the next 13 months.

However, international social security experts say social funds need savings covering at least 36 months in order to meet their obligations.

The initial results of this trial were published a few months ago (Circulation. 2013;128:1495-1503), and showed that patients who received this treatment during emergency transit to hospital had much smaller amounts of dead heart muscle than those randomly assigned to receive no treatment. The new study shows that the proportion of patients with a severely deteriorated heart contractile function is much less (60%) in the group that received metoprolol. Early treatment with metoprolol treatment also significantly reduced the rate of hospital readmission for chronic heart failure, and massively reduced the need to implant a cardioverter-defibrillator.

Borja Ibáñez—joint lead investigator on the study with Valentín Fuster—explains that “the possibility to reduce so dramatically the number of cases of chronic heart failure (with all the associated treatments and hospital readmissions) with such a cheap procedure (the metoprolol treatment costs less than two euros per patient) could generate enormous savings for health services across Europe.”

An initial estimate indicates that if half the heart-attack patients in Europe received early treatment with this cheap drug, the savings in treatment for heart failure alone could exceed €10 billion a year. But as Dr. Fuster is careful to emphasize, it is important to remain cautious, and these estimates will need to be confirmed in a much larger study population across Europe.

The research team is already preparing a new clinical trial, with more than 3000 patients in several European countries, which will be powered to demonstrate a reduction in mortality with this treatment. According to the authors, “The results presented today and published simultaneously in this issue of JACC are unprecedented and extremely promising, but rigorous clinical investigation requires corroboration in an independent population.”

The European consortium for this larger scale study, which will be led from Spain by the CNIC, is already being formed, and includes renowned researchers from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Denmark, Serbia, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Dr. Borja Ibáñez, leader of the Imaging in Experimental Cardiology group at the CNIC and cardiologist at the Hospital Clínico San Carlos, emphasizes that the new study “will be a flagship project for our country that reinforces Spain’s international leadership in research into cardiovascular diseases.” The CNIC, a center dedicated to the study of cardiovascular diseases, has been led by internationally renowned cardiologist Dr. Valentín Fuster since 2007. Since Dr. Fuster’s arrival, the CNIC has become an international reference center, and the leadership of studies such as the one published today demonstrates the high quality of cardiovascular research in our country.

Dr. Gonzalo Pizarro, one of the first authors on the study, comments that “it has been possible to demonstrate the beneficial and sustained effect of this acute treatment thanks to the realization of advanced cardiac magnetic resonance analysis of almost all the patients in this clinical trial.” The CNIC is recognized for its expertise and research in different imaging technologies, particularly magnetic resonance imaging. The center runs a range of training programs in cardiovascular imaging in collaboration with the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, which is also directed by Dr. Fuster. Many of the cardiologists who contributed to the design, performance and analysis of the MRI scans in the METOCARD-CNIC trial, including Drs. Pizarro and Fernández-Friera (joint first authors on the study), received training on these programs, and now work at the CNIC, combining their research activity and their clinical work in the Spanish hospital network.

This is one of the first studies to reveal extraordinary benefits from very early intervention—in this case with metoprolol—during the first contact with the emergency medical services. Dr. Vicente Sánchez-Brunete, a doctor with the ambulance service SUMMA112 and a principal co-investigator on METOCARD-CNIC is in no doubt about the significance of the study, which has “highlighted the importance of the out-of-hospital emergency medical services, which are the first link in the chain of patient care. We have indirect data showing the earlier the patient receives metoprolol during a heart attack, the greater the benefit.”

The active participation of the emergency medical services (SUMMA112, 061 Galicia and SAMUR) in METOCARD-CNIC has been voluntary. As Sánchez-Brunete explained, “the professionals in the emergency medical services were motivated by the promise of this treatment to change clinical guidelines and the perception that the study was motivated purely by scientific interest.”

By P.K. Abdul Ghafour

Saudi women are capable of holding top positions like ministers of education, health, information and social affairs, said Hanan Al-Ahmadi, a member of the Shoura Council.

“Appointment on women to the Shoura Council is one of the important decisions taken in the history of Saudi Arabia,” she said.

In comments published in the Arabic press, she urged female Shoura members to rise up to the expectations of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah who took the historic decision to induct them to the consultative body.

“We have to do our best to make this experiment a big success.”
Abdulelah Saaty, dean of the College of Business in Rabigh, supported women’s demand to get top ministerial positions.

“We have a large number of educated and capable women with high leadership qualities and they deserve such positions to play a major role in the country’s development process,” he told Arab News while praising the king’s decision to appoint Nora bint Abdullah Al-Fayez as the country’s first deputy education minister.

Al-Ahmadi, who was placed 8th in a list of 30 powerful Saudi women published by Arabian Business, said women play a significant role inside the Shoura to take vital decisions concerning the society in general.

“Women members have been getting good support at the Shoura,” she said.

“The voice of women members had a big impact on social, educational and health issues,” she said, adding the media covers only a small portion of the Shoura discussions.

She, however, admitted that female Shoura members, like other Saudi women, have been facing several challenges like the need to get permission of male guardians to travel and apply for passport.

“This makes us more determined to challenge the rules and regulations that obstruct women empowerment.”

Al-Ahmadi backed the government’s move to employ Saudi women at lingerie and female garment shops, saying it was instrumental in creating more jobs for them.

“It also helped in correcting a major problem in our markets — the presence of salesmen in lingerie shops,” she said.

The Labor Ministry said it was starting the third phase of employing women in shops that sell women’s materials.

“The third phase will cover jobs at shops selling women’s perfumes, shoes, gowns, bags and materials of mother and child care and will be implemented gradually in 48 months,” it said.

By Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg

US President Barack Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia (March 28-29) was a well-timed and urgently needed opportunity to discuss US policies in the region, in particular with regard to Syria and Iran. One objective of the visit was to ensure that whatever differences of opinion existed between Saudi Arabia and the US should not be allowed to weaken their strategic partnership. Equally important, the meeting was an occasion to reassess the situation in Syria in light of the failure of Geneva II and Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Last month, Saudi Arabia and the US marked the 69th anniversary of the historical meeting between President Franklin Roosevelt and King Abdul Aziz, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, which took place on Feb.14, 1945. That historical meeting laid the foundation of a special strategic relationship that has endured many crises and disagreements over the past decades.

However, as I pointed out last month (“Will Saudi-US relations endure Syria’s debacle?” Feb.17, 2014), the Syrian conflict has tested the Saudi-US pact as never before. The US decision to embark with Russia on the “Geneva process” turned out to be failure. Instead of bringing Syria closer to peace, it has allowed the Assad regime to escalate its onslaught against civilians and regain much of the ground it had lost to the opposition.

That reversal of the opposition’s fortunes is due in part to the fact that while the US reduced its support for the opposition, Assad’s allies upped their support for the regime, with heavy weapons, military advisers and fighters. The US belief in the Geneva process turned out to be misplaced.

For one, the Syrian regime cynically exploited the process to gain time and reverse opposition gains. It hid behind the “respectability” of Geneva, while continuing its brutal attacks. It refused to discuss the formation of the “transitional governing authority,” which was the main principle underpinning Geneva I and the key objective of Geneva II. It was understood that Assad will have no place in that authority, after he has slaughtered tens of thousands of his own people, made millions of them homeless and inflicted unspeakable torture on the tens of thousands that he has detained.

But Assad’s supporters now openly flout that understanding and insist on a role for him in upcoming “elections.” In other words, the regime has made a travesty out of Geneva. Similarly, Russia seems to have drawn the wrong lessons. Its annexation of Crimea and saber-rattling elsewhere in Ukraine appear to be inspired by that process: Its actions are premised on a belief that the US would not try to stop them, and could not if it wanted to. As in Syria, by utilizing its veto power at the UN Security Council, it also prevented attempts to mobilize international action.

The Syrian regime’s actions during and since Geneva make it clear that diplomacy is not a substitute for action on the ground to bolster moderate opposition, in the face of both the regime and extremist groups.

It is important after Geneva’s failure to go back to the basics in which most Syrians believe, as well as a majority of nations as evidenced by the voting at the United Nations and the Arab League meeting in Kuwait last week.

First, the Syrian regime has lost its legitimacy and that the Syrian people have chosen the National Coalition for the Forces of Resistance and Revolution as their legitimate representative.

Second, all means of support should be accorded to the Coalition; a reversal is needed soon on the ban on providing the opposition with sophisticated weapons, to neutralize the regime’s airpower, which it has used to destroy indiscriminately whole towns and neighborhoods. Stepped up training of opposition fighters is also essential.

So it was welcome news from Washington last month that the Obama administration was rethinking its options in Syria. The region was looking for a more robust US approach to the problem.

Similarly, the interim nuclear deal the US and its western allies have reached with Iran has not reassured its neighbors, nor has it led to improvements in Iran’s regional behavior. Iran and its regional allies have intensified their efforts to destabilize the region.

US officials have repeatedly asserted that they “will not make a bad Iran deal,” that “no deal is better than a bad deal,” and that they were determined to stop Iran from acquiring a military nuclear capability. But what do these words mean? Is a “good deal” one that ignores the fractious nature of Iranian politics and the fact that a deal reached may not bind other forces in the country? Is a good deal one that takes the words of Iran’s new government at face value, without requiring robust and permanent international supervision of all its nuclear facilities?

Without ironclad guarantees that Iran would not develop a military nuclear capability, the deal would not reassure Iran’s neighbors and could lead to a fervent regional nuclear arms race. Equally important, is a “good deal” one that slows down Iran’s development of nuclear weapons while freeing its hand in Syria, to enable the regime to annihilate its opponents, at unspeakable human cost? Is a “good deal” one that allows Iran to continue its efforts to arm and fund sectarian militias and stir religious divisions throughout the region?

The US President has surely heard during his visit to Riyadh over the weekend what Saudis and others think of US policies in the region.

More importantly, the facts on the ground in Ukraine, Syria and the region as a whole, make it clear that those policies are due for a reassessment. Saudis and the region as a whole are awaiting the fulfillment of US promises of exploring new approaches to the region’s problems, which could rehabilitate the US image and international role and return the Saudi-US strategic partnership to its historical path.

Email: aluwaisheg@gmail.com

By Shwe Aung and Angus Watson

Census-taking in Sittwe, Arakan State, will go ahead as of March 31, as a boycott organised by the All Rakhine Committee for the Census (ARCC) has been called off.

The group met with Immigration Minister Khin Yi on Saturday in the wake of last week’s mob violence in Sittwe — where international aid offices were ransacked and looted as an anti-census protest turned ugly.

As per ARCC demands, the Ministry of Information has now instructed census enumerators, who as of Sunday began their task in a selection of townships in Arakan State, not to enter the word “Rohingya” on any census form, regardless of what the subject might indicate.

According to Presidential spokesperson Ye Htut, the term “Rohingya” will not be available to those surveyed.

“It will be acceptable if they write ‘Bengali’,” Ye Htut is reported to have said. “We won’t accept them as ‘Rohingya’.”

Aung Win is an activist and community leader in Aung Mingalar, a Rohingya enclave of 4,000 in Sittwe that exists under strict curfew and 24-hour police protection.

Speaking to DVB on Sunday evening, Aung Win said that enumerators have not yet reached Aung Mingalar but have already interviewed Rohingya families in other areas of Arakan State. He said that in those cases, enumerators have either entered the code for Bengali — 1410 — or left the space blank.

Asked for a reaction by DVB Aung Win said that “we are not boycotting, but we are not satisfied and we have no choice but to move forward with the international community”.

Burma’s western Arakan State is home to the vast majority of the nation’s Rohingya Muslim population, estimated at around 800,000. In Arakan, protests calling for a boycott of the census have been ongoing for several weeks as the government previously rejected calls to forbid the term “Rohingya” from being entered on census questionnaires.

Rakhine Buddhists prefer to use the term “Bengali”, as it reinforces the notion that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Neither term features on the government’s list of 135 “official races” which provides the basis for citizenship, as per a 1982 ruling.

“As soon as we received confirmation that our needs have been met we stopped our boycott,” ARCC representative Than Htun told DVB on Sunday.

Yet while the shift by the government seems to have facilitated the count going ahead in Arakan state, the government’s new standpoint may now contradict commitments made to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and donor nations.

“In accordance with international standards and human rights principles and as a part of its agreement with the UN and donors, the government has made a commitment that everyone who is in the country will be counted in the census and that all respondents will have the option to self-identify their ethnicity,” the UNFPA stated shortly before the government’s back-flip.

“This commitment cannot be honoured selectively in the face of intimidation or threats of violence,” the UNFPA statement of 28 March read.

The shift by the government has drawn the ire of the UK, who with a contribution of US$16 million is the principle donor to the $60 million census project.

The British Embassy in Rangoon responded to the government’s move by stating that: “The [Burmese] government has committed to run the census in line with international standards, including allowing all respondents the option to self-identify their ethnicity. We are concerned by recent reports that this may not be met.”

Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, believes that the politicisation of ethnicity in Burma is a breach of human rights in itself.

“The problem is not that Rohingya and others are not listed as recognised ethnic groups,” said Farmaner. “The problem is that there is a list at all. All ethnicities should be allowed to self-identify in the census, but this should not be connected with citizenship rights.”

By Jeff Seldin

The United States is warning a new round of saber-rattling by North Korea is “dangerous and has to stop.” The warning comes as U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel prepares for a week-long trip focusing on issues in Asia, including North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

North Korea’s latest attempt to grab attention with live-fire artillery drills – lobbing artillery rounds into South Korean waters – is not going over well with U.S. officials.

Defense Secretary Hagel gave a stern response during a briefing with reporters Monday.

“The provocation that the North Koreans have once again engaged in is dangerous and it needs to stop,” he said.

The North Korean live-fire drills follow a series of missile tests and threats of “a new form of nuclear test.”

The U.S. defense secretary is set to embark Tuesday on a 10-day trip to the Asia-Pacific region, highlighted by a meeting with regional ASEAN defense ministers in Hawaii and a trip to China, where Hagel plans to discuss ongoing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

“Obviously when I’m in China that will be a subject that I will discuss with my counterpart in China,” he said.

Beijing has said it is concerned by Pyongyang’s actions, but has called for restraint from both Pyongyang and Seoul.

North Korea says its actions come in response to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which Pyongyang describes as a prelude to an invasion.

The Syrian Army is trying to retake the Christian majority town of Kessab reportedly seized by al-Qaeda-linked forces. The attack made hundreds of ethnic Armenians flee and caused international outcry with Armenia blaming Turkey for supporting extremists.

Kessab – located in Syria’s Latakia province, near the border with Turkey – fell to rebels sparking a fierce battle in the media as conflicting reports are coming in about the events in the town which is home to over 2,000 ethnic Armenians.

Reportedly, on March 21, extremist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda crossed into Syria from Turkey and seized the town after clashes with Syrian government troops and local self-defense squads.

According to the Armenian side, the jihadists were supported by Turkish forces. Ankara denied the allegations as “totally unfounded and untrue”.

“We consider the efforts of such circles, moving from these claims, to draw an analogy between the developments in the Kessab region and the painful incidents of the past as confrontational political propaganda attempt and particularly condemn it,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement last week.

The relations between Armenia and Turkey have long been strained over Ankara’s refusal to recognize Armenian genocide after WWI.

Hundreds flee

Arman Saakyan, Armenian MP from the Republican Party who has recently returned from the Syrian town of Latakia, where he managed to talk to Kessab refugees. He told RT that the armed groups got into Syria’s Kessab from Turkish soil.

“In the early hours on Saturday [March 22] Turkish border guards disappeared and terrorists, representatives of different countries, attacked Kessab from there with the support of artillery,” he said.

With the help of local self-defense forces and the Syrian army the majority of ethnic Armenians managed to flee Kessab and are currently resided on the territory of an Armenian church in the coastal city of Latakia, the parliament member said. Only some elderly people still remain in the town “occupied by militants from the al-Nusra [Front],” he added.

A group of residents found shelter in St. George’s Armenian monastery in Latakia, about 60 km from Kessab, according to a stringer for RT video agency Ruptly.

“Everyone gathered and started going towards Al-Nabien to be safe. We along with the army and the national defense forces we saved as many as we could,” Father Maron, a priest from the town told Ruptly. “40 more people remained in Kessab – mostly the old and immobile – but we managed to gather the majority and most of the families came to Latakia.”

By Dr. Subhash Kapila

Implicit in the leaked Henderson Brooks Report on India’s military debacle in 1962 are Indian political leadership failures which cry aloud for attention.  Successive Indian political leaderships and pointedly the present one from 2004-2014 have failed to learn the 1962 lessons.

After partial leakage recently of the Henderson Brooks Report by Neville Maxwell on his blog site there has been a furore in India demanding the complete release by the Indian Government and rightly so, as more than 50 years have passed when ordinarily in other countries such reports are de-classified after 30 years. The Congress Governments which have been longest in the saddle and the BJP Government which ruled Delhi for some years both failed to release this Report despite persistent demands by the strategic community.

While the Congress Governments had significant reasons not to release the Report in the public domain to protect their leadership failures, what reasons impelled the BJP Government to follow suit? Who was the BJP Government shielding? This is absolutely inscrutable.

Those opposed to release of Henderson Brooks Report in 2014 have questioned on the timing of the leakage at this juncture implying dubious political motives.

The motives stand explained by Maxwell now nearing 90 years of age who explained that he believed he was “Complicit in continuing the cover-up” by keeping the Report to himself and therefore felt impelled to do so. This can be understandable.

More damningly he adds that “The reasons for the long term withholding of the Report must be political, indeed possibly partisan, perhaps even familial”.

Retrospectively, it appears that the then Government’s order for commissioning the Henderson Brooks Report when the Indian Army had already imitated corrective steps with its own in-house review becomes suspect. By ordering Terms of Reference for this Review as solely to a military review, the then Government had presumably hoped that military shortcomings would divert attention and provide a camouflage for any parliamentary debates on the Himalayan shortcomings of Prime Minister Nehru’s political leadership in the handling of the emerging China Threat and not providing resources to the Indian Army in the run-up to the 1962 Debacle.

Presumably what was not foreseen was that even a military review expressly limited to operations at Corps Headquarters levels and below would very much draw-in conclusions and inferences of the political failures of the anticipation of The China Threat, the erroneous intention readings of how China would react to India’s ;Forward Posture’ and the political management of The China Threat and associated impact of these failures on Indian Army readiness and capacity to effectively the impending Chinese aggression in 1962.

However what is not currently leaked are the Annexures and other Sections of the Report which are reported to be throwing pointers towards failures of the political leadership in the higher direction, management and intentions readings of Chinese strategies and the failure of Prime Minister Nehru in being oblivious to India’s woeful war preparedness to meet a possible Chinese invasion.

Notably, the Henderson Brooks Review on orders of the Government was restricted to a review w of Indian Army operational functions and command failures at Corps Headquarters and below. The Terms of Reference for this Review conveniently left out the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat Committee access to and examination of Army Headquarters functioning and processing of policy directives, intelligence assessments of Chinese intentions received by Army Headquarters from the Ministry of Defence and also political decisions that were imposed on the Indian Army by Prime Minister Nehru and his meddlesome Defence Minister V K Krishna Menon.

Review of Army Headquarters functions by the Henderson Brooks Committee would perforce have drawn-in examination and review of the political directives given by the Prime Minister/Defence Minister and their failures which contributed to the ignominious military humiliation of the Indian Army for no fault of theirs.

Keeping the Army Headquarters out of the Review was therefore a calculated attempt to protect Prime Minister Nehru and Defence Minister Menon’s political failures in the Higher Direction of War to cope with the Chinese Threat both in the run-up to the 1962 debacle and in their interference in military matters during the war itself.

The Indian Army following the military reverses inflicted on it by the failures of Indian political leadership had in December 1962 itself by in-house review initiated corrective measures in terms of changes in its operational doctrines, training programs and logistics management. This I can vouchsafe from personal experience of soldiering pre-1962 and post- Sino-Indian War 1962.

By 1963-1964 the Indian Army had reorganised its organisational structures with raising of Mountain Divisions and induction of effective weapon systems and equipment. Finally and tragically, PM Nehru was forced to shed his strategic delusions on the looming China Threat and listen to Indian Army Generals to provide resources for a rapid transformation of the Indian Army— something that should have been initiated in the time period 1954-1959 but stymied by Prime Minister Nehru and his Government’s severe disconnect with the Indian Army hierarchy by Nehru’s own imposition of an archaic civil-military relations template on the Indian Armed Forces.

What was beyond the Indian Army’s transformation was National Security mechanisms, higher direction of war, defence infrastructure improvements in border areas, and increased defence budgets to meet enlarged threats from India’s enemies. In the absence of a co-terminus review of failures of India’s political leadership leading to the 1962 Debacle these political and strategic deficits were not addressed. These aspects lay in the domain of the Indian political leadership.

While the Indian Army has transformed its operational doctrines, training and perspective planning after every war with whatever resources were niggardly allocated to it, the major question that begs an answer is whether India’s political leadership even after 50 years after the submission of the Henderson Brooks Report which within its lines sends implicit messages of failure of India’s political leadership has cared to transform itself by overcoming Indian political leadership’s “Strategic Culture Deficits”?

The Indian Republic must know that in terms of India’s external security and internal security at every stage of modern India’s history, national security failures have resulted from failures and flawed policies/lack of policies of India’s political leadership and an obstructive bureaucracy in the Ministry of Defence, and not the Indian Armed Forces who have time and again have risen to the occasion and safeguarded India’s sovereignty and National Honour despite the flawed approaches of its political masters.

Coming to the political failures inherently implicit in the Henderson Brooks Report on a reading between the lines, and with more than 30 years of soldiering in the Indian Army, the Indian Republic needs to be pointed out as to how the Indian Army which had excelled in two World Wars all over the world had a military debacle heaped on its head by the sheer ineptitude of India’s first Prime Minister and his meddlesome Defence Minister. It would take a whole book to enumerate the failures of these two worthies but here one would like to limit the scope of examination to some of the more salient political failures which continue to plague the whole National Security template even till today

These can be enumerated as follows:

• “Strategic Culture Deficit” in India’s Prime Ministers, Defence Ministers and Ministry of Defence Bureaucracy.
• “Severe Disconnect” between the Prime Minister and the Indian Armed Forces Hierarchy.
• India’s Anticipation of Military Threats, Threat Assessments and Threat Analysis-The Flaws
• Archaic Civil-Military Relations Template Reinforcing the “Severe Disconnect” stated above
• Political Leadership’s Propensity for Political Appointees in Indian Armed Forces Hierarchy.

Intelligence Failures by Agencies Tasked for Provision of Timely Intelligence for the Armed Forces.

Prime Minister Nehru, Defence Minister Menon and the Indian Defence Ministry bureaucrats interposed by Nehru as a firewall between the Prime Minister and the Indian Army Generals were sadly and regrettably suffered from a severe “Strategic Culture Deficit”. They had no grasp of matters military or in the anticipation of threats and threat-management. India’s national security cannot be subordinated to idealistic impulses of the Prime Minister and his yearning for international recognition. This malaise sadly persists till today even when India has a National Security Adviser and a National Security Advisory Board. India’s shoddy war preparedness today in face of enhanced threats today would not be so had they had the strategic vision necessary.

India ‘s Defence Minister in the run-up to the 1962 Debacle may have been a brilliant person but he proved a no-good Defence Minister who was mostly curt and rude to the Indian Army Generals. With his close proximity to Prime Minister Nehru he could have prevailed upon Nehru to fast-track India’s war-preparedness. India’s Defence Ministers with the exception of George Fernandes have been lack-lustre individuals with no strategic culture and more often than not allowing the bureaucrats to rule the roost. Presently India has an “honest” Defence Minister who in the pursuit of honesty has put India’s war preparedness back by a decade and consequently India’s national security that much more vulnerable. India deserves highly intelligent, strategic- cultured Defence Ministers who can synergise with the Indian Armed Forces hierarchy, who by their professional expertise and military conditioning can best provide sound advice on national security challenges than civilian bureaucrats of the Defence Ministry or even National Security Advisers.

Nehru had a “Severe Disconnect” with the Indian Army hierarchy of Generals despite all of them having participated in the Second World War and distinguished themselves. Had Nehru sought their timely advice and placed them in the defence decision making loop India would have been spared the 1962 Debacle.

But Nehru severely distrusted the Indian Army and had a congenital dislike for them. Despite Indian Army having fought four major wars and safeguarded India’s National Honour every time, successive Indian Prime Ministers have persisted with this “Severe Disconnect” with the Indian Army hierarchy. This stands manifested with the present Prime Minister having advocating the de-militarisation of Siachen Sector on the wrong advice of his close advisers., The China Threat de-emphasis at apex political levels, the downplaying by the Defence Minister of beheading of Indian soldiers on the LOC by Pakistan Army Commandos and allowing the Foreign Minister to make statements dismissive of Chinese recent aggressive intrusions are nothing but a continuance of the old syndrome.

Nothing condemns Prime Minister Nehru, Defence Minister Menon, the Director of the Intelligence Bureau and the then Foreign Secretary for not anticipating The China Threat. Their misreading of Chinese military intentions against India’s ill-fated “Forward Posture” on the Himalayan Borders with Tibet, arose from all the above illustrious personalities coming to the Conclusion that China will not militarily react to what Mao perceived as Indian provocations against a much more powerful Chinese Army backed by an extensive defence infrastructure in Tibet,

In sharp comparison India’s Himalayan borders suffered from a lack of back-up infrastructure and logistics build-up, a fact known to Nehru and the advisers stated above, and yet despite the above, Nehru grandiosely ordered the Indian Army to “evict” the Chinese. Such blunders render Nehru and his advisers to puny strategic stature

Threat assessments and threat analysis focussing on China was non-existent or shoddy with major contributory factors being keeping the Indian Army divorced from the preparation and management of the looming China Threat.

Threat Assessments and Threat Analysis need to be studied in more detail in India. In my Book “India’s Defence Policies and Strategic Thought: A Comparative Analysis” I have devoted a complete Chapter on this subject and how India went wrong in the run-up to the 1962 Debacle.

Nehru imposed an archaic Civil-Military Relations Template contrary to the advice of his outgoing senior British advisers. All advanced democracies of the world do not adhere to the subordination of their Armed Forces to the civilian bureaucracy of the Defence Ministry. “Civilian Control” of the Armed Forces implies the Armed Forces submitting to the control of the political leadership of the day. India’s national security was bedevilled in the run-up to 1962 by a flawed Civil-Military Relations Template and continues to be so even more hazardously today. India’s mediocre Defence Ministers are exploited by their bureaucrats to rub-in their questionable superiority on the military brass.

The Indian Republic must guard against the propensity to foist political appointees or those politically pliable on the Indian Army. Let it be noted that in the 1962 Debacle there are contrasting pictures of Indian Army’s combat effectiveness on India’s Northern Front in Ladakh and India’s Eastern Front in NEFA.

India’s 1962 military debacle did not take place on the Northern Front. There was no military rout in face of Chinese attacks even though Indian Army forward posts were run over by superior Chinese massed attacks. It was so because the Army chain of command in Ladakh was headed by a professional soldier and not a political appointee foisted on the military hierarchy.

Contrastingly, India’s Eastern Front was the scene of the worst Indian military humiliation and its 1962 Debacle because here Nehru and his Defence Minister foisted a political appointee in the person of Lieutenant General B M Kaul over the heads of the Indian Army hierarchy. General Kaul was related to the Prime Minister and 4 Corps was especially created for him because the erstwhile 33 Corps Commander was reportedly opposed NEFA military operations without adequate logistics and infrastructure build-up. General Kaul was a disaster for the Indian Army and also for himself. Propensity still continues for politically pliable appointees by manipulating chains of command and worse still edging out Chiefs of Services too strong for the Defence Ministry bureaucrats, as media reports reflect.

Intelligence failures by agencies tasked for providing timely intelligence to the Indian Army was the most significant and glaring cause for the 1962 Debacle. Director Intelligence Bureau Mullick compounded the intelligence failures with encouraging Prime Minister Nehru into the strategically disastrous ‘Forward Policy’ against the Chinese by providing gross misreading of Chinese intentions.

Never did Nehru ever condescend because of his “Severe Disconnect” with the Indian Army military hierarchy to consult them and seek a second opinion on the intention-readings grossly misrepresented by his much-favoured Director Intelligence Bureau. The results are for all to see.

Intelligence failures by the intelligence agencies in India’s subsequent wars have persistently plagued India’s national security planning apparatus. The Indian Army military intelligence is not authorised to penetrate and collect cross-border intelligence and perforce has to rely on whatever intelligence inputs provided by India’s intelligence agencies. Notably, even today one hears a lot of discussion on Pakistan Army’s ISI intelligence outfit but there is no discussion on the Chinese intelligence outfits targeting India.

The Henderson Brooks Report was rendered to the Government by two highly professional respected senior officers who examined India’s military shortcomings in the preparation, management and conduct of operations on the Northern Front in Ladakh and on the Eastern Front in NEFA. The Report has not been sparing in its critiques. As initially pointed out the Indian Army initiated in-house reforms and re-structuring in December 1963 without waiting for the Henderson Brooks Report.

The Government of the day or the one that follows it needs to recognise the imperatives of a full disclosure of the entire Henderson Brooks Report in its entirety, including all Annexures and Maps attached to it.

In the run-up to the final stages the Indian Army stood handicapped by a Prime Minister with a severe “Strategic Culture Deficit” and in “Severe Disconnect” with his military hierarchy, his favourite Defence Minister saddled with the same shortcomings, an Army Chief in awe of the Prime Minister and hence not forceful in emphasising the looming Chinese aggression to Nehru, a Chief of General Staff who was a political appointees being related to PM Nehru ,and later foisted as General Officer Commanding 4 Corps tasked to combat the China Threat.

Concluding, it needs to be forcefully reiterated that Indian Army’s military humiliation by China in the 1962 Debacle flowed from political leadership failures and not Indian Army failures. India’s Prime Minister failed the Indian Army by ordering it grandiosely “To evict the Chinese” totally oblivious to strategic and military realities that he as Prime Minister had failed in laying the groundwork for the Indian Army to do so.

The Henderson Brooks Report sections recently leaked while confined to military operational aspects contains implicit pointers to political leadership failures recounted above. These cannot be ignored any longer.

Future of India’s national security dictates imperatives for full disclosure of the Henderson Brooks Report so that relevant lessons are learnt and an overdue complete restructuring of the political mechanisms for national security management can be undertaken and India’s civil-military relations template is recast to avoid a repetition of the 1962 Debacle.

Meeting the victims

It was dark when I arrived at Wilson Airport, Nairobi for the 7am United Nations charter flight to Dadaab. I was in Kenya to meet refugees from the Ogaden region of Ethiopia and record their stories. Accounts of false imprisonment, murder, rape, torture at the hands of the ERPRDF government: stories, which would prove deeply distressing.

An inhospitable land, the Ogaden region is home to around five million Ethnic-Somalis, and has been the battleground for several armed conflicts between Somalia and Ethiopia since the 19th century. There is natural gas and oil under Ogaden soil: is the Ogaden yet another oil-infused battleground?

A hidden war, the people’s suffering irrelevant in the eyes of Ethiopia’s donor benefactors, who see their ally as stable and ignore wide-ranging human rights abuses.

Mainly pastoralists, the people of the region live simple lives tending their cattle and moving along ancestral pathways. Most have never been to school, cannot read or write and live hard but honest lives in tune with the land. They want simply to be left alone, and allowed to live peaceful dignified lives.

Shocking stories

A fleet of white UN 4x4s met the incoming Nairobi flight and drove us along the pitted dusty road through Dadaab town to the main United Nations Humanitarian Committee for Refugees (UNHCR) compound. With a population approaching 500,000 in the five sites Dadaab Refugee Camp collectively forms the largest temporary settlement (22 years temporary) in the world.

A small open room in the middle of one of the courtyards suffices as a workspace. Noor, a tall man in his forties, was eager to talk about his experiences. Strong and proud, he had worked for the local government in Fiiq province, Ogaden. All regional government activities, he said, are supervised by the military, “they control everything.” Arrested without charge in 2010, he had been imprisoned for two years in barracks, where he “was repeatedly beaten. After two years I was released and confined under house arrest, but managed to escape.” Noor had witnessed the killing “of a 14-year-old girl, by the Ethiopian military. She had set up a small business – a kiosk. The military suspected she received financial support from the ONLF [The Ogaden National Liberation Front, which has been fighting for self-determination since 1984].”

Noor, frustrated by the lack of international interest, estimates that less than 25% of aid reaches those it is intended for; the military steal the rest, some is used to feed soldiers and the Liyuu Police – their paramilitary brothers-in-arms – some they sell to starving villagers. Donor countries are unable to monitor aid deliveries: the Ethiopian government has restricted access to the region for aid groups and the media since 2007.

Having told his story, he shook my hand and sat quietly with the others in the stifling heat. One woman, Muus Mohammed, beautiful and bitterly angry, looked at me through doubtful eyes, unsure whether to trust me. She had witnessed the killing of her father and brother by the military, and had been imprisoned herself for three years, when she was repeatedly raped and beaten.
Carrying out orders

The inculcation of fear lies at the heart of the Ethiopian government’s methodology in the region and indeed throughout the country: “the first mission for the military and the Liyuu is to make the people of the Ogaden region afraid of us,” said Dahir, a former divisional commander of the Liyuu force; In keeping with acts of (state) terrorism, he dutifully carried out his orders “to rape and kill, to loot, to burn their homes, and capture their animals – we used to slaughter some of the animals we captured, eat some and some we sold back to their owners.” He ordered and committed hundreds of killings and some 1,200 rapes, or 1,500 – he couldn’t say precisely. Should this man be granted asylum in London, to end up running a café in Shepherd’s Bush, or in Sweden studying engineering in Stockholm? This moral question confronted me as the former soldier recounted serial brutality that turned my stomach, rendering me silent.

In the safety of the UNHCR compound, a huge enclosure reminiscent of a French campsite, I met 18-year old Hoden. Dressed in a long black headscarf, she avoided eye contact, looked fragile, and shy and would only speak to me if we were alone. We sat in a small air-conditioned portakabin at the back of the main compound and she slowly, tentatively began to answer my intrusive questions.

She cried as she told me her story. Brought up in Fiqq town, her family moved to Gode after her mother was arrested. It was in Gode that she too was imprisoned for six months, caned, tortured, raped every night by gangs of soldiers. She was a frightened 17-year-old child then, today she is a lonely mother shrouded in shame, with a one-year-old baby girl – result of a rape. Hoden is stigmatized within her community for ‘having a child from an Ethiopian soldier’. At the end of our time together she said her ‘future has been ruined.’ She lowered her head and wept.

Omar was a slight, gentle man with a glazed frightened stare, a look I would come to recognise many times during the week. He came to Dadaab in September 2012 from Gode, in the district of Godi, which he said, is one of the most badly affected areas of the Ogaden conflict.

His wife, son and brother had been killed: pregnant with their second child, Omar’s wife became sick and “decided to travel to the countryside to drink goat’s milk hoping to recover.” When her condition deteriorated Omar went to her. “I stayed on in the countryside and sent my wife and son back [to Godi] with my brother.” They were stopped by the military “and asked where they had come from, what they were doing in the countryside and where they got the car from.” They were accused of being affiliated with the ONLF and executed at the roadside.

Accusations of ONLF membership/support are the common excuse for killings, torture, false imprisonment and rape, accusations brandishing the innocent as the enemy. All three bodies were left at the roadside.

When Omar returned to the city he “found the dead body of my son by the roadside, he was being eaten by stray dogs.” Omar was arrested and imprisoned for “one year and two months,” when he was routinely tortured. “There is a river nearby the prison, late at night we were taken to the river, a rope tied around our necks and held under the water. They pulled me out and beat me with wooden sticks and their rifles. Sometimes they would vary the method and put a sack over my head, tie it around my throat with rope, submerge me in the river, then beat me – it happened to most of the prisoners.” One night around midnight, “the rope broke and I fell into the water. The soldiers thought I had drowned [as many do] and left me, but fortunately I know how to swim and I swam to the opposite bank and escaped.”

We had been talking for over an hour, despair and anger filled the room. Drawn back to the horrors of his family’s tragedy Omar sat staring into his pain, his soul entrapped.

From Victim to Murderer

A sullen 25-year-old former member of the Liyuu Police, Abdi joined the Liyuu, rather than be imprisoned, in August 2010 and became one of 500 in a regiment stationed in Fiiq. He looked guilty and repeatedly justified his actions – saying he had no choice, unable perhaps to face the reality of what he had done.

During their three-month training he and his fellow recruits were told “to enjoy our freedom, and to rape the young women. I raped between 10 and 20 women and remember killing 11 civilians.” Soldiers “who raped a lot of women, who robbed a lot and did lots of killing were rewarded and praised. They were given bonuses of around 5000 ETB ($250) as a present.”

Abdi was in the force for two years, three months. Two appalling incidents caused him to leave. “One day we saw a group of pastoralist families with their animals. We approached the families and took three women aged 20 to 30 years and nine girls aged 15-20 years old… We were 300 soldiers. We raped all the women and killed about 80 people.” A group of seven furious village elders “came to ask why we raped their women, one of the men was the father of a girl we raped. The old man was very angry and took a stone and hit the leader of our force on the head, and made him bleed. The leader selected two soldiers and ordered them to kill all seven elders and all the girls and women.” This took place in March 2011 and “started to make me feel sorry for the people.” Despite this rush of compassion, Abdi stayed with the force another year, until a final atrocious straw broke his military resolve. It was around 20th December 2012 in the rural area around Galalshe, where “we killed 96 innocent people. Of the 96, 25 were tied together in a clear field, two soldiers were selected and they shot them all dead. We also burnt their homes to the ground. That day I saw a woman who was dead and lying on her was her baby, who was suckling from her breast. That is the day I decided to leave the Liyuu police.”

I had never sat with a man who had killed and raped; I thanked him for his honesty. He was only a child himself, his life before him a past to somehow atone for.

Aid convoys travel to the camps in convoys of 15-30 vehicles with armed Kenyan police throughout: carjacking and hijacking of staff and visitors is an Al-Shabab threat taken seriously.

In Dagahaley camp (c. 100,000 people), an array of shacks 20-minutes’ drive from UNHCR’s Dadaab compound, children and women collected outside the gates of the UN field office. Fifty or so men, women and children were ushered unceremoniously into a holding area, where they sat with the same dignity I had seen on my first day. I photographed them against the white wall of the UNHCR offices. Ahmed, my translator, wrote a succinct word or two next to their name: Ardo, female 30, falsely imprisoned, gang raped, tortured; Fadumo, female 40, falsely imprisoned, gang raped, tortured; Raho, female 31, falsely imprisoned, gang raped, tortured, her family killed by the Ethiopian military; Cibaado, female, 60, blinded in prison and burned; Khadar Hared Adam, male 17, tortured, using a crocodile to attack his legs.

“Why don’t they stop the violence?”

Many who arrive in Dadaab journey to the Kenyan border on foot, walking in intense heat over harsh landscapes for months: 40 year old Fadumu Siyad arrived in Dadaab in August 2012 after two months: “we used to walk all day and all night. At first we cooked food we carried with us, but after a month the food was finished, then we looked for pastoralists who helped us by giving us food and milk. I was walking with my three young children,” a girl, 14 and two boys, 10 and 7 years.

In the Hagadera camp I met Ardo, a pastoralist; she had never known a permanent home, used a power shower or a dishwasher, she bathed in wells ‘sometimes’ and lived a simple life. “I had very long hair, down to my waist, they used to tie my hair around my throat to strangle me and then, whilst the hair was tied like this, they would rape me.” ‘They’ are Ethiopian soldiers, carrying out the orders of the EPRDF government.

May I ask something now, said Ardo: “Why are the British and Americans supporting the government? Why don’t they stop the violence? Why do they say nothing?”

On my last day a defected former officer from the Liyuu Police agreed to talk to me. Forcibly recruited when he was 30, he was in the force for five years before the horror of what he was doing became too much for his humane sensibilities. Trained to rape and kill, and how to “break a virgin,”, a brutal process involving 15 – -18 -year -old girls who have been falsely imprisoned. He told of violent abuses constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity that shocked and appalled.

How to speak to a man who has just told you he and his “men” dismembered teenage girls, buried others alive, hanged boys, murdered village elders and incessantly raped. He seemed to be in a permanent state of shock, staring out from a dark place onto a world of his own making.

The Ethiopian government denies any abuse is taking place in the Ogaden region.

It was pouring with rain as we landed in Nairobi: I walked to my hotel, ate, began writing and wondered at our fractured world and man’s continual inhumanity to man.

By Bhaskar Roy

The Crimean referendum to join Russia and subsequent action by Kremlin incorporating it into Russian territory has raised several questions on issues of territorial sovereignty and aspirations of people. Consequent to this development Russia was expelled form the G-8 and certain sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union.

The Crimean issue is complicated both in historical and strategic terms for Russia. Crimea was part of Russia and transferred by the Soviet Union to its Ukrainian province in 1954 by Nikita Khruschev, who came from that region. The basic fact is that it remained within the Soviet Union and the Soviet leaders had not foreseen their empire’s disintegration. Crimeans are overwhelmingly Russian speaking and decided to break away from Ukraine because they are feeling alienated and discriminated against.

On the strategic side, Russian President Vladimir Putin saw that Ukrainian politics was increasingly being infiltrated by the US and the west, and Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Yanukovic was ousted by a movement covertly engineered by the US and the West. NATO’s eastward move to encircle Russia was noticed since the break up of the Soviet Union. At that time Russia had become very weak, led by leaders like Gorbachev and Yeltsin who decided to give in to the west. Putin, a tough KGB ex-colonel thought otherwise. He may be accused of grinding democracy under his heel and running a draconian regime, but Putin is also being applauded at home for rejuvenating Russian pride, turning around the economy to a great extent and rebuilding its powerful military. In this context, Moscow has regained a very important naval base in the Black Sea region in Western Europe.

How the Crimean action plays out in the immediate future would have implications for international order and behavior. The Crimean decision appears to be irreversible at the moment. The questions facing the international community are: (i) can a people with their historically owned land be forced to remain under an alien dispensation against their will, and (ii) can a nation demand return of its legal territory from foreign occupation? (legality must be proved concretely and not just claimed by historical concoction).

In this context, China-Russia relations and China’s territorial claims stand out large as they are of current context. China’s assertive territorial claims backed by periodic military show are a cause for regional and international concern.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang described relations with Russia as the best ever during the National People’s Congress in March. Both Russia and China have inter-dependability but each also has its own priorities. The Chinese propaganda machinery has been working overtime to advertise their bilateral relations. President Xi Jinping at the opening ceremony of the Sochi winter games was seen standing with President Putin against western criticism. At the same time as mentioned above, their differences or independent political positions may not make for an “all weather” friendship.

An article in the pro-China Hong Kong daily the Ta Kung Pao (Feb.8) reported that at a secret meeting between China and Russia on February 06, China offered to support Russia’s claim on the South Kuril Islands claimed by Japan if Russia recognized China’s sovereignty over islands in the East China Sea, including the Diaoyu (Senkaku in Japanese) islands. Russia declined, and directions went out to the official media from the Chinese state council information office to black out the report and other news and comments connected with it.

China sought such an assurance from the US on the disputed islands of the South China Sea, but US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had declined. If China approached Russia’s support for its claims in the South China Sea, trends suggest that it would be declined. President Putin has given a new impetus to Russia’s policies in the Asia Pacific region and what according to a new terminology is the Indo-Pacific stretch. Vietnam has been a traditional ally of Russia and that relationship is being strengthened. New Russian initiatives have been taken toward Sri Lanka where China has emerged as a leading player.

China, however, would be aware of Russia’s readjustment of relations with Japan. During a meeting with Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe (Feb.8) Vladimir Putin said Russia-Japanese relations had options to settle complex issues (read territorial dispute). Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov also told a Japanese correspondent that the South Kuril issue was not being seen as a territorial dispute.

Putin’s vision is clear. Russia’s oil and gas exports in the region cannot be left hostage to China. Japan, an energy importing country will benefit from Russian resources, and plough back technology. There are many other areas where Russia and Japan can cooperate, and both are examining the possibility of signing a peace treaty. No doubt these developments will influence Russia-China relations, and may even impact Chinese decision making on the Crimean issue, keeping in mind Chinese territorial claims.

China abstained from voting on an UN Security Council draft resolution seeking to condemn the Crimean referendum to join Russia. Moscow, of course, vetoed the resolution. It was a difficult decision for China. The abstention would have demonstrated China’s neutrality and respect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. But it was also interpreted by some sections in China as tacit recognition of Russia’s intervention in internal matters of Ukraine and annexation of Ukrainian territory.

The Crimean issue has left the Chinese leadership in a dilemma on how to respond. Diplomatically, relationship with Russia may have been hit a little, though President Putin is unlikely to show any such signs now. Putin requires support, and if that does not come, then neutrality at least.

There are more concerns for China internally. According to a report, the central propaganda department of the communist party of China issued (March 17) a directive to all media organizations to refrain from highlighting the Crimean referendum, not connect Taiwan, Tibet or Xinjiang to the issue, and not comment without authorization on the foreign ministry’s position on and handling of the Crimean issue.

While Chinese media have strictly abided by the official directives, Chinese netizens have been raising a variety of questions on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of twitter.

Some netizens have raised questions on China’s own position recognizing Crimea’s separation from Ukraine, asking why Beijing opposes Xinjiang, Taiwan and Tibetan independence?

The editor-in-chief of the nationalist daily, Global Times, Hu Xijin came out strongly reprimanding doubters with words like “China is never wrong”, and “in this world, to a great degree, truth follows power”. Hu conveyed the views of Chinese hardliners in a nut shell: China has the power to prevent Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang from seceding, and power determines truth. Hu Xijin is an influential editor.

The Crimean incident is being officially debated in China and the official Chinese media. Basically, the actions are seen as Putin’s or a kind of Putin doctrine for the revival of Russia. Crimea’s reunion with Russia is seen as the beginning of a new game between Russia, the United States and Europe. The EU may not always be on the same page with the US, thus making hard sanctions on Russia difficult.

Russian resurgence is also seen as a development that can reduce US pressure on China. Putin’s determined step to protect Russia’s “core” interest also gives China an argument to use military power to exercise sovereignty over the East China Sea and South China Sea islands claimed by it. But rise of Russia also brings back the thought of Tsarist Russia which dominated its Asian neighbours and pressed unequal treaties on China. This, however, is unlikely because China itself is a powerful country now.

The worst scenario for China is how separatists like the Tibetans, Uighurs in Xinjiang and the pro-independence group like the DPP in Taiwan draw inspiration from the Crimean independence from Ukraine. Minority challenges have risen in China in recent years.

(The writer is a New Delhi based strategic analyst. He can be reached at e-mail grouchohart@yahoo.com)

By Shastri Ramachandran

In the politically charged climate ahead of the countrywide general election from April 7 to May 12, the Congress Party led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has offered itself as a target for criticism by its policy paralysis, non-performance and failure to govern.

But there are areas – such as external affairs, national security, space and defence – where its record should be assessed without political prejudice; because, by and large, there is a bipartisan consensus on policies in regard to these. In foreign policy, as in national security policy, there is no great divergence of outlook or approach between the leading political parties.

And yet when the forthcoming elections bring about a decadal shift in politics, India would be facing a critical test on the foreign policy front. Although continuity would be assumed in many areas, political changes would of necessity result in new initiatives based on priorities and policy directions set by the new government.

The foreign policy priorities of the new government would, doubtless, be based on the achievements – and failures – of the UPA during its 10 years in office since 2004. The UPA’s record, in perspective, would be the background for setting out the priorities of the new government. Therefore, it would be useful to take a quick, summary view of the UPA’s record before listing a few priorities that the new government would need to attend without any loss of time.

Soon after assuming office, Prime Minister Singh took a decisive step to secure the “defining partnership (with the US) of the 21st century”. The India-US nuclear deal was the opening gambit – not the sum and substance – of a rising India’s ambition to join the global power elite; to move up from being a leader of the developing (non-aligned) nations to the status of preferred partner of the world’s only superpower.

In his first term (2004-2009), with the support of President George Bush, Singh set out to win India a place at every high table and in nuclear regimes. On the strength of an enviable growth rate, economic reforms, weathering the global financial downturn, an attractive investment climate and rising stature in the neighbourhood, the region and the world at large, it seemed that India was, at last, on the destined path to take its place in the comity of nations.

Singh was lauded for his reforms at home and accomplishments abroad. If the goal of foreign policy was to build India’s prosperity and strength, Singh was seen as taking the right steps.

Prospects of peace in the neigbourhood made New Delhi recognise that India should give more than it receives from its poorer and weaker neighbours. Peace in Nepal, brokered by the UPA government during its first five-year term in power (UPA I), brought the Maoists to the parliamentary mainstream; it initiated the composite dialogue with Pakistan; kept Sri Lanka and Maldives firmly on India’s side and took India-Bangladesh relations to a new high.

In the region, India’s Look East Policy, initiated by PV Narasimha Rao (who was Prime Minister from 1991 to 1996), went beyond ASEAN to Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Indo-Pacific. Singh’s rapport with the Chinese leadership boosted economic ties, opened new tracks of cooperation and positioned the two as partners who could drive the global economic recovery. UPA I saw India sign strategic partnership and comprehensive economic cooperation agreements with many countries including the US, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Vietnam.

The descent

In his second term (beginning 2009), also known as UPA II, Singh succeeded in undoing his own achievements on the foreign front. All the achievements of UPA I came unstuck under UPA II, with 2013 witnessing the worst.

Economic growth took a hit. Recession, inflation and corruption further eroded the climate for investment and infrastructure development, and the world took a dim view of India. The year began with Pakistan’s beheading of an Indian soldier, which put an end to the composite dialogue process. In Nepal, China increased its influence thanks to New Delhi’s “mismanagement”. For the first time ever, Bhutan had a public issue with India, which did not redound to New Delhi’s credit. India-Bangladesh relations took a dive with New Delhi unable to sign the promised agreements on land boundary and sharing of Teesta waters. Anti-India forces in Bangladesh are gaining and India’s friends feel abandoned.

Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2013 (CHOGM) was a diplomatic disaster in the wake of earlier Indian actions against Sri Lanka in international forums. UPA II’s indecisive leadership was further exposed with Union ministers contradicting one another on India attending CHOGM. Events and developments in the Maldives – from losing the GMR airport contract to the conduct of elections – exposed UPA II to be effete. India-US relationship, the cornerstone of Singh’s foreign policy, touched its lowest point after 1998.

The descent from the peaks of achievement scaled in 2004-2009 has been so steep that the final year of the UPA II in office is viewed as, perhaps, the worst in 15 years.

These do not, however, add up to failure of foreign policy. It is more a case of failure to perform – failure of foreign policy management.

There are, doubtless, a few successes, too, that Manmohan Singh has notched up. Prominent among the successes cited is India-Japan relations, which received a boost with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to India in January 2014. India and Japan already have a comprehensive economic partnership agreement. Now, the partnership has acquired a sharper strategic dimension because of China-Japan tensions, and the rising stakes and stakeholders in the Indo-Pacific as the new arena of global power play.

While the upbeat tone of talks between Singh and Abe hold out promise of greater cooperation, the relationship would be tested by whether India clinches a civil nuclear agreement, which could pave the way for the Japanese collaborators of US nuclear reactor manufacturers to ensure that India gets the required equipment. Until tangible gains are visible, there is every chance of India-Japan partnership going awry as it happened with India-US relations.

Success

The second major success of Singh is the opening of a new window in India-Pakistan relations in October 2013 during his last visit to the US, which would be remembered more for the outcome of his talks with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif than with President Barack Obama.

Singh and Sharif agreed to resume meetings between the Directors-General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of the two countries. This is a new and overdue window in India-Pakistan relations. Although the armed forces of the two countries loom large in their relationship, there is little contact or interaction between the top brass across the border.

Among the important countries dealing with Pakistan, it is India alone that shuns the “luxury” of talking to the military brass, who call the shots from Rawalpindi. New Delhi’s interactions are limited to those in Islamabad, whereas others, especially Washington, Beijing, Kabul deal not only with the political leaders but also the generals. When US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Pakistan, he held talks with the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani; so did Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. This is reciprocated with the army chief accompanying the Pakistani Prime Minister on his visits abroad. Kayani was a part of Sharif’s delegation to Afghanistan where he had his own meetings.

The army is a power centre in Pakistan, and foreign policy, along with security, is its prerogative. There can be no policy formulation or engagement, especially when it pertains to India, the US, Afghanistan or China, without the army dictating the terms. Yet there is no Indian channel to the generals. Such access is critical to know the army’s thinking and for strategising approaches to peace in the region through “credible engagement” with the generals.

In this context, the DGMOs being asked to create a mechanism for maintaining the cease-fire along the Line of Control is a big advance given the long absence of military contact between the two countries except for weekly telephonic talks.

Third, Singh, in the latter half of 2013 met world leaders at the UN in New York and President Obama in Washington, attended the ASEAN summit in Brunei, and travelled to Moscow and Beijing. These successful missions underscored the rare respect that Singh commands as a statesman at these high tables where he is most at home.

No pushover

In considering the foreign policy priorities of a new government in 2014, it may be important, at times, to distinguish between Singh’s personal success and the pursuit of national interest. The best example of this is India-US relations, which has hit a nadir. Yet it is not necessarily bad for Washington to realise that India is no pushover to be taken for granted. The stresses and strains of the bilateral relationship may serve a purpose if the new government sticks to the line adopted by the UPA towards the end of its term.

Singh was so focused, to the exclusion of much else it would be said, in building a relationship with the US that Washington took too much for granted. As has been exposed now, norms were thrown to the winds in pampering US diplomats and their families with privileges to a point where they became Super VIPs in India. There was no reciprocity.

To be fair to Singh, this trend of lying down for the Americans to walk over us did not start during his term. During the centre-right National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition regime (1998-2004), too, barring Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee – who refused to kowtow to US strategic and military interests – leading lights of his government submitted themselves to a variety of humiliations at the hands of the US. Besides strip searches at airports and such, which have now been revealed as commonplace, there is the instance of an external affairs minister offering to be a back channel.

In serious trouble

The world’s two largest democracies may have much in common. But far from common interests prevailing over contentious issues, India-US relations are in serious trouble.

Whatever the next government’s political colour, it would do well to hasten to send out an unmistakable signal to the world that the broad national consensus in foreign policy, besides security and strategic affairs, would continue. While the centre-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress are seasoned players in this regard, others in the ring of power would have to articulate an approach to foreign policy that reflects the consensus at home and meets expectations abroad.

First and foremost, the new dispensation has to impress on Washington that much as New Delhi values the strategic partnership and defence cooperation, there can be no compromise on reciprocity; and, this need not stand in the way of the larger, defining objectives of the relationship.

Regardless of Washington’s about-turn in cosying up to Narendra Modi (one of the front-runners as BJP’s prime ministerial candidate), political changes in India cannot banish overnight the causes and conditions in the US responsible for the souring of bilateral relations across many tracks.

Dealing with the US – being firm, strictly reciprocal at all times in all matters and restrained without recourse to grandstanding or avoidable provocations – would be the No1 priority for the new government. It should be recognized that, in the aftermath of the crisis triggered by the Devyani Khobragade issue, the US, instead of picking up the pieces to mend relations, is now on the offensive on all tracks and is bent upon provoking crisis and conflict in other areas, such as trade and visas.

There looms large the spectre of sanctions as a prelude to the US unleashing a virtual trade war against India. This is nothing new. In 1991-92, then US Trade Representative (USTR) Carla Hills had threatened similar action without the fluff of intellectual property rights or legalese about investment climate. She declared that she would “use Section 301 as a crowbar to prise open the Indian market” for US business. The crowbar is at play again. India had refused to succumb to pressure then, and the US was forced to withdraw India from the 301 List.

Washington is always quick to punish countries when their conditions go against US business interests. The issue here is how such action impacts bilateral ties and why the US keeps picking new bones of contention at a juncture when the need is for positive inputs.

The USTR’s pressure tactics came when US Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA) commissioner Margaret Hamburg was in New Delhi hearing India’s concern over attempts to cripple Indian pharma companies and drive their drugs out of the US market. (Recently, the FDA imposed harsh penalties on Ranbaxy and Wockhardt). Close on the heels of the FDA’s punitive strikes, the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) downgraded India’s air safety ratings. Since relations are in “strictly-reciprocal” mode, the directorate general of civil aviation lost no time in announcing safety checks for foreign aircraft flying into India.

By their actions, the USTR, FDA and FAA are scuttling efforts to strengthen ties, such as the January visit of US energy secretary Ernesto Munoz, which had to be rescheduled after Khobragade’s ill-treatment. The way various arms of the US government are pursuing different agendas is of a piece with how the state department and other agencies worked themselves into a hole when targeting Khobragade.

These developments may be attributed to India not finding a place in President Obama’s scheme of things. The US political leadership is not interested and, therefore, not hands on in maintaining bilateral relations and taking it forward. India is clearly not on Obama’s map.

If India-US relations were politically important, then Obama, like president Bush, would be taking greater interest to ensure that avoidable irritants did not keep recurring. He would have made the various arms of his administration fall in line and work in tandem towards diluting negative sentiments and healing a wounded strategic partnership.

Immediate neighbours

The second priority is India’s policy towards its immediate neighbours. No country, least of all a rising power, can afford hostility in the neighbourhood. There is a case for greater clarity, elimination of recent strains, strengthening bonds and keeping out big-power politicking. In Nepal, today, China is more active than India, in influencing the political direction and policies. Bangladesh feels let down with India failing to deliver on the promises – including the Teesta river accord and the land boundary agreement – held out during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s high-profile visit in 2012. The US agenda in Bangladesh could destabilise that country and adversely affect India-Bangladesh relations.

In the aftermath of the Devyani Khobragade case, the US may play hardball with India; not only in Bangladesh, but also in Sri Lanka, Maldives, Afghanistan and wherever else it can. And, thus, the third priority: to reinforce bilateral ties in a way that countries vulnerable to US influence and blandishments remain mindful of India’s strategic concerns. To achieve this, New Delhi needs to go beyond platitudes and show what solid support it can offer to its friends and neighbours. For instance, Afghanistan, which will see the US drawdown, needs funds, weapons and much else beyond encouraging words.

Fourth, there is Pakistan, a permanent challenge, with which India has to pursue peace and, at the same time, fight terrorism. The importance and long-term advantage of the meeting of the DGMOs of India and Pakistan, initiated by UPA II, should be grasped for the opportunities it represents. Both sides have to create conditions for sustaining the process in their mutual interest. It is another window to get a better view of the ground before taking further steps to improve relations Pakistan.

Fifth, India-China relations are stagnant, having lost their upbeat note after last year’s Ladakh incursion. With new leadership in both countries, new vistas have to be explored; and, this can happen only with a new sense of bilateral purpose.

Sixth, India’s rather narrow Look East policy needs to expand and grow to a point where China and the US reckon with India as more than a “swing nation” in the contested Indo-Pacific. Then, India has to infuse new vigour in its ties with Iran, regain its relevance in strife-torn West Asia and revive its once-vibrant friendship with Russia.

The list can go on. These are but some of the challenges a new government would have to grapple with soon after taking office.

*Shastri Ramachandran, an independent journalist based in New Delhi, is on editorial board of IDN. He was senior editor with the Global Times and China Daily in Beijing. A version of this article first appeared on March 25, 2014 on The Citizen, India’s first online daily under the headline Challenges of Foreign Policy for a New Government and is being published by arrangement with the writer.

Every Friday, King Mohammed VI, in his capacity as Commander of the Faithful, performs Friday prayers in one of the mosques around the country. Today, the event was exceptional and very symbolic. In fact, the King, currently in Tangier, attended the Friday prayers at Tarik Ibn Ziyad mosque in the presence of a controversial preacher Mohammed Fizazi who delivered the Friday sermon. Fizazi, a former jihadist theoretician who was arrested two weeks after the Casablanca attacks in 2003, the day a controversial interview in the Arab newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat was published, in the tense atmosphere surrounding the attacks, and was later sentenced to 30 years in prison. In 2011, he benefited from a Royal pardon and was released after he had distanced himself from all extremist doctrines.

Today’s event is the result of an ongoing religious reform that was initiated by the King since 2004. The Moroccan sovereign endorsed a new approach to promote a moderate, open and tolerant form of Islam which, according to many political observers, has proved to be very successful in countering religious extremism and Al Qaeda’s influence in the region. Morocco then emerged as a beacon in the Arab world in terms of countering extremist ideology and promoting tolerance, respect and dialogue among religious groups. The main goal of the religious reforms that Morocco has pursued since 2004 has been to safeguard the country against extremism and backward thinking.

Morocco pioneered open dialogue to counter extremist ideology and to convince those who do not believe in the value of tolerance. Morocco was able to inspire hope in many extremist religious preachers by explaining to them the virtues of dialogue and respect for others. King Mohammed VI has always stressed that Morocco espouses Sunni Islam, which advocates compromise and tolerance and outlaws extremism, fanaticism and ostracism. Religious laws (fatwas) are issued only by the High Council of Ulemas (senior religious scholars) as a constitutional institution which fulfills its duties with regard to fatwas. The Ministry of Religious Affairs tackled the intellectual roots of extremism and created two departments designed to control mosques (32,000 throughout Morocco) and oversee religious education in the country.

Salafist ideology in Morocco has seen a major shift in focus. Adherents began to engage in political activism such as involvement with the ruling moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) or the Virtue party that split from PJD.

The unusual type of Islam in Morocco, its life-style, its calligraphic art, its mosque architecture, and the coherently crystalline nature of its urban architecture—to say nothing of its Malikism—existed from the very early generations of Islam. Morocco would like to continue promoting a Sufi Maliki Islam based on tolerance, love and respect. Apparenlty, the counterradicalization strategy in Morocco has proved to be very successful and could serve as a modal for other Muslim countries that suffer from extremist doctrines.

By Mohammed al-Jayousi

Bahrain is preparing to host the Formula 1 Gulf Air Grand Prix in April as the Bahrain International Circuit (BIC) celebrates the 10th anniversary of its inauguration as the home of motorsport in the Middle East.

The race this year will be the first night race in the history of the track, with 500 kilometres of electric cables powering hundreds of light posts adorning the track.

Hotel reservations, ticket sales, and shopping and travel services for the race brings in between $200 million and $300 million annually, according to BIC CEO Sheikh Salman bin Isa Al Khalifa.

Abdul Rahman Morshed, head of the National Hotels Company, said he expects hotels will fill up this year.

“The race will have countless positive effects on the ground in Bahrain this year, including stimulating economic activity, improving tourism and boosting revenues for hospitality facilities,” Morshed told Al-Shorfa.

Other economic returns from the race include the creation of 3,000 temporary and 400 permanent jobs and the influx of more than 100,000 visitors to the kingdom, 15% of them from Europe and the rest from Gulf states, he said.

He said he believes this year’s night race will attract even more economic returns than usual.

The hospitality industry relies on this global sporting event to stimulate the sector, he said.

‘Global icon of architecture, tourism and sports’

Bahrain gains a myriad of direct and indirect benefits from hosting the race, said Akbar Jafari, an economist and CEO of business consultancy JAFCON.

“No one can imagine how things were 10 years ago,” he told Al-Shorfa. “The track and its grounds were barren desert, and has now become a vibrant area frequented every year by tens of thousands of people from various parts of the world, as well as a unique regional and global icon of architecture, tourism and sports.”

Jafari estimated that Formula 1 garners around $295 million annually in direct economic returns, including proceeds from ticket sales, transportation, broadcasting rights and advertising, as well as around $600 million in indirect returns.

Further co-ordination and development of understanding among all government agencies and facilities concerned with the event will further boost such returns, he said.

The project has moved beyond the experimental phase, Jafari said: “It is now moving to a new phase of innovation with the first-ever night race [in Bahrain] which will attract additional motorsport lovers, as well as the creation of job opportunities that are unparalleled in the region.”

Nabil Kanoo, chairman of the tourism committee at the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry, also welcomed the new night race.

“The night race was a good choice, especially given that the temperatures will be milder than they are during the day in April, and that the timing will provide an opportunity for many to attend the race after getting off work,” he said.

Formula 1 stokes competition in all vital sectors in the local market, such as restaurants, hotels, transportation facilities, car rental companies and even shopping malls, he said.

By Linda S. Heard

The pro-Europe protesters in Kiev succeeded in dislodging a president for which they’ve paid an unexpected price. The Crimean Peninsula is lost to them, perhaps forever; the majority of their military personnel based there have defected to Russia — and there may be a lot worse to come. It’s an uncomfortable truth that people’s power, however well intentioned, is more often than not destructive. It’s primarily driven by the emotions of people unable to grasp the big picture. The Kiev crowds may have initially got what they wanted, but will they want what they get?

The West’s corporate media paints an optimistic picture of Ukraine’s potential future, provided “bad guy” Putin doesn’t decide to invade parts of the Russian-speaking west. But even if he sticks to his side of the border — as he has pledged to do provided ethnic Russians aren’t victimized — all in the garden is far from rosy.

Firstly, Ukraine’s population is divided. On Saturday, pro-Russian demonstrators turned out in the eastern city of Donetsk demanding regional autonomy while expressing their intention to boycott elections. Several of those interviewed said “the fascists” running Kiev don’t represent them; one said that she didn’t view Russian troops as invaders but rather protectors. It’s a similar story in Kharkiv, close to the Russian border, where there are regular clashes between pro-Europe and pro-Russian protesters.

USA Today quotes a city council representative bemoaning the impact the enmity between Kiev and Moscow is having. “Right now, most Kharkiv factories are only working two days a week. Russians aren’t ordering because they don’t want to cooperate with the enemy. But the EU wants to turn us into a banana republic.” A few stray bullets fired by Ukrainian riot police that kill or injure ethnic Russians could be an invitation to Putin’s tanks.

President Obama has dismissed Moscow’s assertion that ethnic Russians are threatened. Yet a video that’s gone viral show masked Ukrainian vigilantes running after Russian “thugs” in the city of Dnepropetrovsk before holding a knife to the throat of one of their victims and punching another in the face.

Secondly, not all Kiev residents are cheering-on the acting government. A police raid on right-wing militants in Rovno resulting in the death of their leader Aleksandr Muzychko, a prominent anti-government figure in the Maidan, has infuriated the right-wing sector that accuses the interior minister of orchestrating a planned assassination. Thousands demanding his resignation have since obstructed the entrance to the Rada (parliament) in an attempt to block lawmakers from rubber-stamping the IMF’s austerity measures.

Thirdly, it’s worth noting that life-changing decisions affecting ordinary citizens for decades hence have been hurriedly put into effect by an unelected president, prime minister and Cabinet with little authority to speak for anyone. Presidential elections are slated for May 25 but so far candidates look distinctly unpromising. Now that the populist former boxer Vitaly Klitschko has withdrawn from the race, Ukraine is left with just two: The current favorite Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire dubbed “the Chocolate King” and the controversial golden-haired icon of the Orange Revolution Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister who was convicted and jailed for abuses of power.

While polls suggest that Poroshenko will sprint to the winning post, should Yulia manage to overtake him by some quirk of fate, eastern Ukraine is certain to be aflame. She may look angelic but under her signature braid is a ruthless mind. She was caught on tape calling for the “wiping out” of Russians. Expressing the desire to shoot Putin in the head and use her connections to rise up “so that not even scorched earth would be left of Russia,” she vocalizes her desire to see eight million Ukrainian Russians nuked. This is the person on whose behalf the White House lobbied the former president to pardon! I don’t own a crystal ball but if she becomes the next president, there’ll be a bloody civil war.

Lastly, the country’s basket-case economy requires fixing. Ukraine’s interim government says it needs $35 billion just to pay its debts over the next two years. Its currency has lost a fifth of its value against the dollar in little more than a month and its foreign currency reserves are dwindling fast. Endemic corruption from the top down has led to its coffers having been plundered. Here’s where the IMF comes in after its arm has been twisted by Washington and Brussels. It’s offering loans totaling up to $18 billion, which come with painful conditions. Ordinary Ukrainians can expect severe belt-tightening, job losses and 50 percent higher energy prices once subsidies are eradicated even with the added benefit of a projected $10 billion EU/US package. They should look at Greece, where parents are giving up their children because they can’t afford to feed them, to get a glimpse of things to come. It won’t be pretty!

Email: Sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk

By Ronan Keenan

The word “legitimate” is given three definitions by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, but it seems that none of them are known to those in the White House. Earlier this month President Obama declared that “any discussion about the future of Ukraine must include the legitimate government of Ukraine.” Illogically, he was referring to the new unelected leadership headed by acting prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who was subsequently welcomed to Washington by Obama to send a message that the United States “strongly supports… the legitimacy of the new Ukrainian government.”

While the Obama administration is correct in vigorously opposing Russia’s attempt to divide Ukraine, continually describing the latter’s new government as legitimate is a spurious and damaging pretense. Much of the media has made the same error. Western powers ignored Russia’s intimidation of former president Viktor Yanukovych and later supported a panicked power transition that bypassed democratic principles. In putting its official stamp of approval on these events, the United States looks all the more hypocritical as a promoter of global democracy.

Let’s put the current government in the context of the dictionary’s first definition of “legitimate”: allowed according to rules or laws. Yanukovych was overthrown in a single day on February 22. Earlier that morning he declared in a televised address that he had no intention of resigning from power. Regardless, with Yanukovych and many of his allies chased out of Kiev, a rushed emergency session vote was held under the specter of violence in which the majority of parliament agreed to depose the president.

The legality of the move is dubious. The Ukrainian constitution states that there are four circumstances in which a president may be removed between elections. The first three are moot in Yanukovych’s case as resignation, incapacitation, and death don’t apply. The fourth, impeachment, is what the new leadership uses as its justification for the president’s removal. Yanukovych’s alleged act of authorizing troops to fire at protesters would certainly be worthy of prosecution, but the parliament alone cannot administer impeachment. A committee investigation and judgment from the Constitutional Court must also be dispensed; neither of which occurred.

Even if the US government chooses to overlook the legal details – after all Yanukovych tried to tamper with the constitution for his own gain in 2010 – it doesn’t seem to adhere to the dictionary’s second explanation for “legitimate” either: fair or reasonable.

The day prior to his removal, Yanukovych signed into law constitutional changes that diluted his powers, formed a caretaker government, and allowed early presidential and parliamentary elections in May. While these concessions didn’t bring an immediate step towards resolving the catalyst issue of the EU trade agreement, it was a European-mediated deal expected to ease social unrest. But belligerent mobs of protesters continued to rout the city, effectively taking control of Kiev as police were forced into retreat. Yanukovych didn’t hang around and fled for Russia amid claims his car came under attack from gunfire, allowing the parliament to call the emergency session that resulted in the president’s removal. It was in nobody’s safety interest to oppose the motion.

The third definition for “legitimate” is: real, accepted, or official. As recent years have demonstrated, mass demonstrations can result in constructive political changes. But Ukraine is not experiencing an Arab Spring. Unlike the despotic regimes of Arab nations, Yanukovych was elected to power in 2010 under conditions deemed fair by international observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Yanukovych won 49% of the vote versus 45.5% for the incumbent Yulia Tymoshenko.

The 2004 and 2010 elections illustrated Ukraine’s political divisions, with the east of the country supporting the traditionally pro-Russian Yanukovych, and most of the west voting for pro-Europe candidates. From afar it may have appeared like there was a mass uprising against Yanukovych in recent months, but Kiev’s geographical location in the West-leaning heartland magnified the negative sentiment against the president.

Yanukovych’s ascension to power was real, accepted, and official; adjectives that should not apply to the reigning US-supported government. Of course, a fair election does not give a leader free reign over a nation, but Yanukovych was not a Putin proxy. While depicted as a rigid puppet, last September Yanukovych forcefully vowed to his party at a private meeting that “we will pursue integration with Europe.” He was originally in favor the EU trade deal but those plans were spoiled by a combination of Russian trade threats and a $15 billion investment in fragile Ukrainian debt which lessened the attractiveness of Europe’s proposal.

Yet Yanukovych attempted to appeal to both sides of Ukraine by suggesting an arrangement involving trade deals with the EU and Russia. Such notions were quickly dismissed by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso who indicated that Ukraine must choose between the EU and Russia. “When we make a bilateral deal, we don’t need a trilateral agreement,” he said. Yanukovych didn’t sign and thus ensued anarchy in Kiev.

Yanukovych received no sign of US backing when Russia pressured him into rejecting the EU deal. The Obama administration only spoke out when it became embarrassingly clear that Russia felt it could do what it wanted with its neighbors. Putin’s boldness grew as the US government struggled with its own inertia.

Threatening Russia with sanctions, increasing NATO presence in the region, and facilitating aid through the IMF will help with Ukrainian security. But while the Obama administration believes that saluting the new government will encourage stability, in reality it is appeasing one mob and breeding contempt in another. The EU trade deal that spurred the unrest was not unanimously supported. A poll by German group GfK in November found that just 45% of Ukrainians supported the deal.

President Obama said he “supports Ukrainian democracy and self-determination,” while concurrently throwing his symbolic weight behind a government that came to power via blunt force. While it would be wrong for the US to condemn the current Ukrainian leadership, it should dial back its warmth in the public arena. At the moment the United States is trying to make a strong statement to Russia, but the message to Ukrainians is that storming a parliament counts as “legitimate” democracy.

Ronan Keenan is a contributor to Geopoliticalmonitor.com, where this article originally was published.

Every year I ask my class on “Wealth and Poverty” to play a simple game. I have them split up into pairs, and imagine I’m giving one of them $1,000. They can keep some of the money only on condition they reach a deal with their partner on how it’s to be divided up between them. I explain they’re strangers who will never see one other again, can only make one offer and respond with one acceptance (or decline), and can only communicate by the initial recipient writing on a piece of paper how much he’ll share with the other, who must then either accept (writing “deal” on the paper) or decline (“no deal”).

You might think many initial recipients of the imaginary $1,000 would offer $1 or even less, which their partner would gladly accept. After all, even one dollar is better than ending up with nothing at all.

But that’s not what happens. Most of the $1,000 recipients are far more generous, offering their partners at least $250. And most of partners decline any offer under $250, even though “no deal” means neither of them will get to keep anything.

This game, or variations of it, have been played by social scientists thousands of times with different groups and pairings, with surprisingly similar results.

A far bigger version of the game is now being played on the national stage. But it’s for real — as a relative handful of Americans receive ever bigger slices of the total national income while most average Americans, working harder than ever, receive smaller ones. And just as in the simulations, the losers are starting to say “no deal.”

According to polls, they’ve said no deal to the pending Trans Pacific Trade Agreement, for example, and Congress is on the way to killing it.

It’s true that history and policy point to overall benefits from expanded trade because all of us gain access to cheaper goods and services. But in recent years the biggest gains from trade have gone to investors and executives while the burdens have fallen disproportionately on those in the middle and below who have lost good-paying jobs.

By the same token, most Americans are saying “no deal” to further tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. In fact, some are now voting to raise taxes on the rich in order to pay for such things as better schools, as evidenced by the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York.

Conservatives say higher taxes on the rich will slow economic growth. But even if this argument contains a grain of truth, it’s a non-starter as long as 95 percent of the gains from growth continue to go to the top 1 percent – as they have since the start of the recovery in 2009.

Why would people turn down a deal that made them better off simply because it made someone else far, far better off?

Some might call this attitude envy or spite. That’s the conclusion of Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, in a recent oped column for the New York Times. But he’s dead wrong.

It’s true that people sometimes feel worse off when others do better. There’s an old Russian story about a suffering peasant whose neighbor is rich and well-connected. In time, the rich neighbor obtains a cow, something the peasant could never afford. The peasant prays to God for help. When God asks the peasant what he wants God to do, the peasant replies, “Kill the cow.”

But Americans have never been prone to “kill the cow” type envy. When our neighbor gets the equivalent of new cow (or new car), we want one, too.

Yet we are sensitive to perceived unfairness. When I ask those of my students who refuse to accept even $200 in the distribution game why they did so, they rarely mention feelings of envy or spite. They talk instead about unfairness. “Why should she get so much?” they ask. “It’s unfair.”

Remember, I gave out the $1,000 arbitrarily. The initial recipients didn’t have to work for it or be outstanding in any way.

When a game seems rigged, losers may be willing to sacrifice some gains in order to prevent winners from walking away with far more — a result that might feel fundamentally unfair.

To many Americans, the U.S. economy of recent years has become a vast casino in which too many decks are stacked and too many dice are loaded. I hear it all the time: The titans of Wall Street made unfathomable amounts gambling with our money, and when their bets went bad in 2008 we had to bail them out. Yet although millions of Americans are still underwater and many remain unemployed, not a single top Wall Street banker has been indicted. In fact, they’re making more money now than ever before.

Top hedge-fund managers pocketed more than a billion dollars each last year, and the stock market is higher than it was before the crash. But the typical American home is worth less than before, and most Americans can’t save a thing. CEOs are now earning more than 300 times the pay of the typical worker yet the most workers are earning less, and many are barely holding on.

In 2001, a Gallup poll found 76 percent of Americans satisfied with opportunities to get ahead by working hard, and only 22 percent were dissatisfied. But since then, the apparent arbitrariness and unfairness of the economy have taken a toll. Satisfaction has steadily declined and dissatisfaction increased. Only 54 percent are now satisfied, 45 percent dissatisfied.

According to Pew, the percentage of Americans who feel most people who want to get ahead can do so through hard work has dropped by 14 points since about 2000.

Another related explanation I get from students who refuse $200 or more in the distribution game: They worry that if the other guy ends up with most of the money, he’ll also end up with most of the power. That will rig the game even more. So they’re willing to sacrifice some gain in order to avoid a steadily more lopsided and ever more corrupt politics.

Here again, the evidence is all around us. Big money had already started inundating our democracy before “Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission” opened the sluice gates, but now our democracy is drowning. Only the terminally naive would believe this money is intended to foster the public interest.

What to do? Improving our schools is critically important. Making work pay by raising the minimum wage and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit would also be helpful.

But these are only a start. In order to ensure that future productivity gains don’t go overwhelmingly to a small sliver at the top, we’ll need a mechanism to give the middle class and the poor a share in future growth.

One possibility: A trust fund for every child at birth, composed of an index of stocks and bonds whose value is inversely related to family income, which becomes available to them when they turn eighteen. Through the magic of compounded interest, this could be a considerable sum. The funds would be financed by a small surtax on capital gains and a tax on all financial transactions.

We must also get big money out of politics — reversing “Citizens United” by constitutional amendment if necessary, financing campaigns by matching the contributions of small donors with public dollars, and requiring full disclosure of everyone and every corporation contributing to (or against) a candidate.

If America’s distributional game continues to create a few big winners and many who consider themselves losers by comparison, the losers will try to stop the game — not out of envy but out of a deep-seated sense of unfairness and a fear of unchecked power and privilege. Then we all lose.