By Behzad Khoshandam

The current situation of hostility, conflict and lack of balance and equilibrium among political groups and forces in Ukraine in 2014 is simply an extension of the tension and lack of reconciliation that existed among the world’s major political players following the end of the Cold War. For this reason, the crisis in Ukraine is actually an acute international crisis in 2014, which has already drawn great attention from many global actors, including Iranian political elite and citizens.

The main question is this: “What is the principal reason behind Ukraine’s crisis within the international world system from an Iranian viewpoint?” To answer this question, however, we would need to first answer a more basic one. The basic question is “which geographical region will be the gravity center of the future world’s political developments?” In answer to this question, one may daresay that Eurasia will be the gravity center of political conflicts in the future world. As a result, the foreign policy approach adopted by the United States within framework of the international system at the beginning of the third millennium, especially in its confrontation with other big global powers, including Russia, can be considered as the main reason behind the ongoing crisis in Ukraine in 2014. Therefore, from an Iranian standpoint, 2014 crisis in Ukraine reflects the climax of the confrontation between the United States’ exceptionalism and Russia’s excessive Eurasianism.

To analyze the importance of this crisis for Iran’s national interests, first due attention should be paid to true nature and goals of Iran’s foreign policy approach toward neighboring regions, in particular with respect to the country’s relations with big powers. Of special significance in this regard are Iran’s relations with the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

When analyzing this crisis from an Iranian viewpoint, a major issue to be taken into account is the situation of driving forces behind the Ukraine crisis as well as the players and forces that affect its course. Such driving forces include Eurasianism, Americanism, soft revolution, Slavism, ethnicism, extremist nationalism, pivot strategy in the US foreign policy, Euroscepticism, globalization, the idea of a global NATO, Russophobia, and the issue of energy security. Another driving force to be reckoned with here is the possible conclusion of a new version of the Treaty of Rapallo at international level between Russia and Germany under present circumstances.

To discuss an Iranian viewpoint on this issue, it should be noted that the reason why Ukrainian crisis is important to global political equations in 2014 is the key role that it can potentially play for ushering in a new round of Cold War. This crisis is capable of giving birth to new coalitions and novel equations in Russia’s near abroad and the whole region of Eurasia.

As for the future outlook of the crisis, the Iranian viewpoint to this crisis can be offered in two optimistic and pessimistic versions. According to the optimistic viewpoint, the ongoing crisis will be finally resolved through diplomacy as well as bilateral and multilateral negotiations. The pessimists, on the opposite, believe that the crisis in Ukraine will gradually go deeper. As a result, the nature, course and consequences of this crisis will give rise to a new configuration of separatist and interventionist developments in the international arena.

At the first sight, it may seem that the crisis in Ukraine has nothing to do with Iran. However, a more profound and serious analysis will reveal that since the beginning of the crisis, Iran has condemned intervention in the country as well as extremist measures taken there. In line with the nature and goals of its foreign policy, Tehran has also slammed the use of violence in issues of global importance, separatism, and intervention of foreign forces in international crises like that of Ukraine. The Islamic Republic has also put considerable emphasis on the need to resolve the crisis in Ukraine by main groups involved in that crisis while underlining the need for those groups to avoid all kinds of violent acts.

The new Iranian administration, which came to office following elections in 2013, is profoundly committed to Iran’s neutrality in line with the “constructive interaction” approach it has taken in its foreign policy. Under present circumstances, while voicing its opposition to unilateralism, separatism, and any effort aimed at undermining convergence of countries on regional and international issues, Iran has frequently declared its firm support for regional problems to be managed by regional players in a fair manner and away from all forms of discrimination or application of double standards.

Today, Iran is a rational, proactive, and institutionalist player in the area of foreign policy. While being heavily involved in negotiations over its nuclear energy program with the P5+1 group of world powers, Iran takes most of its large-scale and basic decisions on the basis of bureaucratic processes and through collective decisions that have their roots in the exchange of viewpoints as well as profound, complicated and multifaceted consultations among experts. As put by the former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, in his book, The Age of Deception, Iran is currently a democracy bound within a system of theocracy where the majority of decisions on foreign policy are taken through lengthy bureaucratic processes. As a result, the present-day Iran not only rejects bandwagoning policies that rely on a hegemonic power, but also puts the highest degree of emphasis on constructive and purposive interaction with international players. The past experience of Iran’s negotiations with the P5+1 group up to the end of June 2014 proves that Iran considers diplomacy a key approach to the resolution of international problems. As a result, while rejecting such policies as separatism and interventionism as well as multilateral and bilateral sanctions, the Islamic Republic believes that even under the conditions of a new Cold War in international arena, resolution of such crises as that of Ukraine hinges on the use of diplomacy and political mechanisms that pave the way for the peaceful settlement of international disputes.

From an Iranian viewpoint, the crisis of Ukraine in 2014 and intervention of transregional forces in political equations of Europe, Russia’s near abroad, and Caucasus will, sooner or later, reach its final stages. However, the strategic importance of Eurasia, Iran, and use of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy in strategic equations of the 21st century will continue to be among top priorities of international political agenda. The intervention by transregional forces at subregional levels, such as in Eastern Europe, will finally come to its end as all international crises do. However, geopolitical importance of major achievements of the contemporary world, one of which is the utility of diplomacy and negotiations, will be sustained in the course of the distribution of global and regional power through future developments of the world.

Behzad Khoshandam
Ph.D. Candidate in International Relations & Expert on International Issues

The post Ukraine Crisis: American Exceptionalism Vs. Russian Eurasianism – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Anjli Parrin

The northeast African regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has been working to get the opposing sides in South Sudan to implement multiple ceasefire and peace process commitments to try to end the crisis in South Sudan, but fighting has continued with little progress towards ending the impasse.

Meanwhile, beyond such international efforts, the South Sudanese are trying to organize their own reconciliation conversations, and independent grassroots efforts have sprung up.

In April, church groups and civil society organizations came together to create the National Platform for Peace and Reconciliation (NPPR), an independent body seeking “to form a united platform to work for peace and reconciliation in South Sudan”.

Since its launch, the organization has attempted to reach out to key stakeholders in the mediation process such as the government, opposition and IGAD team in Addis Ababa. They have also worked with local media, and joined forces with other civil society groups.

The platform was formed with the understanding that “the problems confronting the country are urgent, bigger and more complex than any single body can handle,” said Reverend Bernard Suwa, secretary-general of the Committee for National Healing, Peace and Reconciliation (CNHPR), one of three organizations that banded together to form the NPPR. “There was also a realization that the problems of South Sudan must be worked out by the South Sudanese themselves.”

The other two organizations in NPPR are the South Sudan Peace and Reconciliation Commission (SSPRC) and the National Legislative Assembly (South Sudan’s parliament) Specialized Committee on Peace and Reconciliation (SCPR).

“Each [group] brings their own strengths to the platform and their combined mandates, capacities and distinct roles and responsibilities provide the basis for a viable platform through which to promote national peace and reconciliation efforts,” said David Okwier Akway, chairperson of the parliament’s SCPR.

In South Sudan, the churches play a powerful role, and their involvement in a peace platform is crucial. Throughout the decades-long civil war, they were at times the only stable institutions and as such, have legitimacy with many, especially in more remote areas of the country.

During the signing of the 9 May Peace Agreement, Kiir and Machar “initially refused to shake hands during the peace negotiations and it was a bishop who eventually managed to line them up and make them hold hands during a prayer for peace,” said Erik Solheim, chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee, and former Norwegian minister of environment and international development.

Indeed, at the launch of the NPPR, President Kiir noted that “given the nature and leadership of the institutions we see the potential for them to reach out to a wide range of constituencies, not only in Juba… but also to all counties, bomas and payams of our country.”

Understanding the complexities

While national peace efforts generally have a greater understanding of the complexities of the crisis and therefore focus on more long-term solutions, it is clear that the IGAD-brokered talks are so far falling short.

On 10 June, both leaders recommitted to ending the conflict and creating a transitional government of national unity within 60 days. IGAD warned both sides that member states “will take further collective action to pressure any party who fails to honour its commitments to date” noting that this could happen “through imposition of punitive measures”.

But, a fresh round of talks slated to start on 16 June was postponed after the opposition boycotted the event.

“The problem with the IGAD process for many of us is that it will only lead to an elite solution, unable and unwilling, I fear, to deal with the underlying causes,” said Michael Comerford, adviser to the CNHPR.

NPPR was created on the understanding that there is more to the South Sudan crisis than just a conflict between the two principals, and as such, according to their mandate, they will consult with “a wide set of stakeholders and interest groups” over the coming months.

“The main argument for an inclusive peace process is to prevent potential spoilers from destroying the peace outcomes,” said Nhial Tiitmamer and Abraham Awolich of the Sudd Institute, in a paper in February. They called for civil society, women and youth groups, and community to community initiatives to be included within the peace process in order to get a wide range of perspectives.

It is also unclear how neutral regional governments are. Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya all appear to have taken positions in the conflict, and have strong interests in the outcome of the crisis.

“The crisis has added a new dimension to existing tensions in the region – between Uganda and Sudan on one hand, and Ethiopia and Eritrea on the other,” said Berouk Mesfin, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Africa. “Every day the crisis continues, additional pressure is placed on these states that have, for some time now, been locked in a distrustful and suspicious relationship to support one side or the other.

Reconciliation still a long way off

International peace talks are also often a quick fix solution. “What is taking place in Addis is a political settlement, but [it is] not building bridges across social divides,” Suwa told IRIN. “Unless comprehensive work is done in the area of reconciliation, these problems are likely to raise their ugly heads later.”

Because the peace deal was largely forced upon the leaders, using the threat of sanctions, it is “not a reflection of reconciliation or a political agreement between the president and his former deputy,” said an Amnesty International report in May. “The mood between them is ice cold and both of them still think they can benefit from victories on the battlefield.”

These types of deals are unlikely to be perceived as legitimate, or engender any sense of goodwill and forgiveness between the warring parties.

“A peace process which is truly inclusive and listens to the voice of the people on the ground has to trust those people,” John Ashworth, an adviser to church groups in South Sudan, told IRIN. “They will tell us how they want justice, accountability and other issues built into the process. These things will arise organically during the process, and should not be imposed from the beginning.”

Lack of political goodwill

“Although on paper the government seems to appreciate this process, I am afraid there is very little political goodwill from politicians,” Suwa told IRIN. “The government, for example, is prepared to run its own political dialogue and the people in opposition also are gearing to establish their own process of peace and reconciliation, instead of supporting a body that brings together all CSOs [civil society organizations].”

He also believes that the government views the NPPR as threatening “because it is likely to carry a stronger voice of the people of South Sudan” and will be a body that, once hostilities have ended “will question the people in authority and seek for justice and accountability”.

Comerford notes that the NPPR struggles with a perception of neutrality, and maintaining independence. For many, he believes, especially within the international community, independence mistakenly “seems to mean having no contact with the government, while reaching out to the opposition.”

More broadly, instituting successful peace and reconciliation is uncommon in South Sudan. “The precedent has been established with regard to violence as a political tool,” Comerford told IRIN. Actors appear to believe in South Sudan that “change and political objectives are achieved through non-peaceful means…

“While I am not party to the calculations made with regard to who should be included in the current talks in Addis, armed actors appear to have secured an automatic right to be there, while non-violent actors have to wait to be invited,” he added.

Indeed, when boycotting the continuation of peace talks on 16 June, the opposition said they would not attend because civil society representatives nominated to the negotiations were done through “a faulty process”.

Precedents for local peace

A report from the US Institute for Peace (USIP) shows that, under certain specific conditions, local dialogue and small peace talks between groups can be very effective. If the agenda is limited, if the right people are in the room and are empowered, if the process is transparent and agreements and implementation mechanisms are drafted, and if there is a way to monitor results, war-torn states can use local processes to create stability.

There have been previous precedents for local peace initiatives in South Sudan. In May 2012, the Presidential Committee for Peace, Reconciliation and Tolerance in Jonglei State managed to negotiate and sign a peace agreement between the chiefs of all six communities in the area.

They came painfully close to creating a stable Jonglei, but for the actions of David Yau Yau, whose insurrection against the government of South Sudan led the state back into violence.

At the time, in 2013, the CNHPR said that “although not part of the traditional conflicts in Jonglei State, nevertheless the actions of Yau Yau have further destabilized the State and have begun to draw other actors back into a sadly familiar pattern.”

The inability of the government to cement the peace deal with meaningful development assistance and foster genuine reconciliation ultimately led to the collapse of the 2012 agreement. But it provides an illustration that there may be viable alternatives to IGAD processes, which for now are faltering.

The post Looking Beyond IGAD In South Sudan – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Citing the “collapse” of Iraq amid the ISIS insurgency and sectarian violence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed the de-facto independence of Iraqi Kurds. Netanyahu has also called to support the “Kurdish aspiration for independence.”

The hawkish Israeli leader said on Sunday that Kurds are “fighting people that has proved its political commitment, political moderation, and deserves political independence,” Reuters reported.

Speaking to Tel Aviv University’s INSS think-tank, Netanyahu described the situation in Iraq and the Middle East in general as a “collapse,” due to strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Amid the recent insurgency of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL) militants, Kurds have seized the opportunity to bring a long-sought independent state of Kurdistan closer to reality. Kurdish Peshmerga armed forces have been guarding their provincial borders from ISIS, but also seized the contested Iraqi city of Kirkuk, proclaiming it part of their territory.

Now, in an apparent clash against the international community’s support of a united Iraq, the Israeli leader has called to back the de-facto independence of Kurds.

“We should…support the Kurdish aspiration for independence,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying.

Netanyahu’s words followed similar statements by senior Israeli officials. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday told US Secretary of State John Kerry that he believes “the creation of an independent Kurdish state is a foregone conclusion,” citing Iraq’s “breaking up.” Meanwhile, Israeli President Shimon Peres told US President Barack Obama that “the Kurds have, de facto, created their own state, which is democratic.”

The 40 million-strong Kurdish population has historically been scattered between northern Iraq, eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and western Iran – and has been denied independence by each of those countries. Kurds have had the broadest autonomy in Iraq, ruled by the Kurdistan Regional Government. Iraq is the only country that has accepted the Kurdish language as official. Turkey and Syria have restricted its use.

Netanyahu on Sunday also officially confirmed what was reported in Israeli media earlier this year, in regards to sustained military presence in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In a policy speech Sunday night, Netanyahu said that there would have to be a long-term presence of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) throughout the West Bank, even after any future deal with the Palestinians, AP reported.

The Israeli government’s position on the issue comes in sharp contrast to that of the international community, which has been calling for IDF’s withdrawal from the West Bank to make way for an independent Palestinian state.

The post Netanyahu Endorses Kurdish Independence appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A large number of prisoners of public rights have been released following an amnesty announced by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah on the occasion of Ramadan.

Thirty-five prisoners in Yanbu, 39 in Baha and 54 in Taif were released on Sunday. “Special committees in charge of studying cases of public right prisoners are continuing their meetings to release more prisoners,” said Brig. Muedi Al-Buqami, director of prison in Taif.

Meanwhile, King Abdullah highlighted the important position of Jeddah city in the Kingdom. “On its right we have the Grand Mosque and on its left the Prophet’s grave is located. This is one of Jeddah’s outstanding features despite its humidity,” he said.

King Abdullah made this comment while speaking to princes, Islamic scholars, ministers, senior officials and a large group of citizens who came to greet him at his palace on Saturday on the advent of Ramadan.

He underscored the growing reputation of Saudi Arabia in the world. However, he expressed his anguish over some young Saudis who had gone to places of conflicts like Syria and Iraq, influenced by evil forces.

“We are satisfied to know that Allah is happy with us as He facilitates all our activities,” King Abdullah said.

He added that God would punish those who enticed some young Saudis to follow the wrong path.

“We wish success and God’s blessings for everyone of you during this holy month,” the king told the gathering.

The post Saudi Arabia King Announces Amnesty For Prisoners appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Muhammad Waqas

Tahirul Qadri, the chief of Pakistan Awami Tehrik (PAT) is back with calls for a revolution in Pakistan. His return has already seen plenty of drama with the police engaging in violent clashes with PAT’s supporters, and later the government frantically diverting his flight from Islamabad to Lahore.

The government’s response to his arrival showed signs of immaturity, haste and weakness. Qadri has denied having any political ambitions or being on a mission to overthrow the Sharif government. Dismissing any plans to form a grand political alliance against the government, he claims that his agenda is to “bring change in the current system.”

The PAT leader is not new to creating ripples in Pakistan’s political scene as he has already led three large rallies that demanded electoral reforms and increased political transparency in the country. His meeting with mainstream political parties to discuss the killing of his party workers in a clash with police is expected to exert further pressure on the ruling government.

Qadri has stressed that the only way to save Pakistan is through a revolution. To his followers, only a grass-rooted revolution can help the country overcome its troubles and guarantee the rights of all countrymen. The PAT chief has also likened his mission to that of Arab Spring, which will result in the downfall of political and social elite, and empower masses. However, revolutionary changes are often bloody and may lead to power tussle among groups that may further spiral a society downwards.

In the aftermath of Arab Spring, a struggle against political and socioeconomic oppression in several Middle East countries, many revolutionaries remain disgruntled and feel that the movement has failed to truly improve the lives of a common man. Egypt’s difficult democratic transition and widespread civil unrest in Libya and Syria provide recent examples of how revolutions may not live up to expectations.

While it is no secret that the socioeconomic gulf in Pakistan has widened in recent years, Pakistan is certainly not ready for a mass revolution. The call of Qadri for revolution is likely to go unheeded as the countrymen fully back a military operation in North Waziristan and identify terrorism as the top most threat to Pakistan’s existence.

After the collapse of peace talks with militants, the government is also determined to weed out their safe havens from the country’s northwestern borders. Sharif has already expressed the government’s desire to take the democratic process forward and hailed the electoral system as the only way to bring a change in the country. Although Qadri has refuted claims of launching a political revolution, some political experts already smell a rat in view of his meetings with political parties. The need of hour is not a mass revolution, but to engage in a consultative dialogue that helps Pakistan counter challenges of sluggish economic growth, energy crisis and poor security situation. Like most developing countries, Pakistan’s electoral system reflects several imperfections but this should not impede the democratic process and cause civil anarchy.

The post Pakistan: Revolution Is In The Air? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ryan Dagur

Followers of the minority Muslim Ahmadiya sect are demanding that they be allowed to re-open their mosque which was sealed off on Thursday by local officials in Ciamis district, West Java.

Officials from the district’s Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) hung a white banner over the door of the Nur Khilafat Mosque Thursday morning.

The banner stated that the mosque was closed for all activities.

According to Satpol PP, the mosque was sealed off in accordance with the 2008 joint ministerial decree banning Ahmadiya from propagating their interpretation of Islam.

“We are now facing an uncertain situation following the closure … whether or not we can hold activities in our mosque during the Holy Month of Ramadan,” Kamal Abdul Aziz, head of the district’s Indonesian Ahmadiya Congregation, told ucanews.com Friday.

“The only hope we have is that we can meet with the [Satpol PP] head or other district officials to demand a re-opening of our mosque,” he said, adding that he planned to meet soon with an assistant to the district official dealing with the case.

On Monday, around 300 members of the district’s Islamic Defenders Front held a protest in front of the mosque to demand its closure.

A number of police officers stood guard outside the mosque during the protest.

“In our view, the joint ministerial decree doesn’t mention a ban on freedom of worship. So the closure is against our freedom of worship,” Aziz said.

Such a closure, he said, could be justified only if there was an official letter from the court.

“Now we can only use the terrace of our mosque to hold activities,” Aziz added.

In April, the district’s Indonesian Ulema Council called for Ahmadis to be banned from practicing their faith because it deviates “from the principal teachings of Islam”.

However, the Ahmadis, who number about 200 in Ciamis district, had continued to worship in their mosque until its closure on Thursday.

The post Indonesian Ahmadis Demand Re-Opening Of Their Mosque appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Felix Corley

About 30 armed officers from a number of Russian security agencies conducted an early-morning raid on a madrassah (Islamic religious school) close to the Crimean capital Simferopol on 24 June, Forum 18 News Service notes. The staff and students were from the Crimean Tatar minority. The raid appears to have been led by Russia’s FSB security service. Three weeks earlier, a mob attacked a church of the Kiev Patriarchate Ukrainian Orthodox Church on a military base in Perevalnoe. The mob changed the locks and the congregation cannot now use the building.

Since March 2014, places of worship and individuals of some faiths (including followers of Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Kiev Patriarchate) have faced violent attacks, apparently without the perpetrators being identified and punished (see below). Attacks on Muslim and Kiev Patriarchate places of worship also took place before 2014, also without the perpetrators being identified and punished.

The Kiev Patriarchate states that five of its ten priests in the region have been forced to leave Crimea amid threats, and that it has lost at least two of its churches. The government’s Crimean Property Fund is also massively increasing the Patriarchate’s rent for a building it uses as its cathedral in Simferopol.

The Kiev Patriarchate – which emerged in the early 1990s – is the second largest Orthodox Church in Ukraine after the Moscow Patriarchate. However, the Kiev Patriarchate is not recognised as canonical by any other canonical Orthodox Church.

Life for Greek Catholic clergy from elsewhere in Ukraine has become more difficult. As Ukrainian citizens, they can stay for only three months at a time before being required to leave for at least a month.

Annexation

Religious communities in Simferopol, Sevastopol, Yevpatoriya and Feodosiya – including Latin-rite Catholics and Protestants of various registered and unregistered affiliations – told Forum 18 in mid-June that their life has continued as before since Russia controversially annexed Crimea in March. Some communities appeared to be choosing their words carefully in their responses.

“During the change of leadership, there were questions,” one Protestant pastor told Forum 18 on 23 June. “But there have been no negative consequences for us.”

Russia now regards the Crimean peninsula as an integral part of Russia, but Ukraine and the international community do not recognise the peninsula as part of Russia. The peninsula is now divided between two Russian federal regions, the Republic of Crimea (with its capital in Simferopol) and the port city of Sevastopol. The city has equal status with two other federal cities, Moscow and St Petersburg.

Russia insists that Russian federal law – including the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offences – now applies in Crimea. This means that its inhabitants may fall foul of Russia’s anti-”extremism” laws.

Many Islamic texts – including numerous translations of the writings of the late Turkish theologian Said Nursi and the contemporary Istanbul Naqshbandi Sufi teacher Osman Nuri Topbas – as well as Jehovah’s Witness publications have been banned in Russia as “extremist”. Anyone who distributes or possesses such works risks criminal prosecution and punishment.

The Russian authorities have also established branches in Crimea of federal agencies, including the Justice Ministry and the FSB security service. However, many local officials appear to have been already in post before March and have simply had their posts transferred to the new authorities.

The Religious Affairs Department of the Culture Ministry in Simferopol declined to answer any questions by telephone on 25 June, referring Forum 18 to Culture Minister Vera Novoselskaya. Her number went unanswered the same day.

Raid

At about 6 am on 24 June, about 30 armed Russian security agency officers raided the madrassah in the village of Kolchugino (Bulganak in Crimean Tatar), some 20 kms (12 miles) west of Simferopol, according to Crimean news agency QHA and Radio Free Europe’s Crimean Service. The madrassah – which is part of the Spiritual Administration of Crimean Muslims (the Muftiate) – teaches boys how to recite the Koran in Arabic.

Officers – some of them masked – were from Russia’s FSB security service, OMON riot police, ordinary police, and Berkut (security units originally formed under Ukrainian Interior Ministry jurisdiction). Officers broke glass on windows and doors to gain entry to the building, where 13 teenage boys and two teachers were asleep.

Two Berkut officers “burst into the room with Kalashnikov automatic weapons and asked who was the oldest”, 15-year-old madrassah student Emir Kurtametov told QHA later on 24 June. They also aimed a pistol at a student in a neighbouring room to force him to open the window to allow them in, he added.

Officers then interviewed madrassah Deputy Director Aider Osmanov. The entire premises – including Osmanov’s private home next door – were searched over the following hours. Officers found no weapons or other dangerous items. They confiscated two computers and one unidentified book, and also took mobile phones from the boys and the teachers. Osmanov was taken away for questioning at the main police headquarters but was freed after 90 minutes of questioning, news agencies reported.

Another nearby home belonging to a woman named Sanie was also raided at 6 am by officers dressed in camouflage and men in civilian clothes. A search warrant was shown. Officers said they were looking for drugs, weapons “and some kind of extremist literature”, she told QHA the same day. After a thorough three-hour search, officers left, taking photocopies of the family members’ passports.

Officers told Muftiate officials who arrived at the madrassah that they were acting on the basis of a court decision on suspicion of extremism and storing of weapons, RFE’s Crimean Service reported.

Crimean Deputy Mufti Esadullakh Bairov – who oversees religious education in the Muftiate – said officials had told them that they had not found anything that they were looking for during the search. “We’re not hiding anything, it’s open,” he told RFE’s Crimean Service. “It’s not an underground school.” He insisted that any search could have been done “in a more civilised manner”.

No answers

The duty officer for the newly-formed Crimean branch of the FSB refused to tell Forum 18 on 24 June why the madrassah had been raided. “We have this information”, he could be heard telling a colleague as they conferred. He then told Forum 18 to send its question in writing. Forum 18 had received no response to its written question by the middle of the working day in Crimea on 26 June.

The FSB duty officer declined to tell Forum 18 if he is a long-time resident of Crimea or had arrived in Crimea after March 2014.

The press office for the Crimean Interior Ministry – which oversees the police – refused to discuss the raid with Forum 18 on 25 June. “On this issue we recommend you to talk to the FSB,” the press office told Forum 18 with no explanation. It refused to explain its role in the raid.

Mob attack

Early on Sunday 1 June, a mob of about 50 people prevented Fr Ivan Katkalo, a priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kiev Patriarchate, from entering his church in a military base in the village of Perevalnoe in Simferopol District, local media reported. Demonstrators smashed the lock on the Church of the Protection of the Holy Mother of God and threw out items belonging to Fr Ivan’s congregation. A pregnant parishioner and Fr Ivan’s daughter, who has cerebral palsy, were caught up in the mob attack.

The demonstrators then changed the lock to prevent the Kiev Patriarchate from gaining access to the building.

Fr Ivan told local media that he had appealed to the police, but they had failed to assist him, protect the community, or take action against the perpetrators.

“Fr Ivan has left Crimea for Canada,” Archbishop Kliment (Kushch), head of the Kiev Patriarchate’s Simferopol and Crimea Diocese, told Forum 18 from Simferopol on 25 June. “I’ve already lost that church.”

A Greek Catholic place of worship is also on a former Ukrainian military base taken over by the Russian military. “People tried to close this church, saying it would be handed over to the Moscow Patriarchate”, a member of the Greek Catholic Exarchate told Forum 18 from Odessa on 24 June. “Thankfully this didn’t happen.”

First lost church

The first church of the Kiev Patriarchate lost was its only church in Sevastopol, St Kliment’s Church, located on a Ukrainian military base. “When the Russians took over the base they threw us out. We were able to hold one last service there on Easter Sunday, 20 April.” Archbishop Kliment said the parish had about 400 attendees at major festivals, with about 150 regular attendees each Sunday.

Five Kiev Patriarchate churches – including those in Perevalnoe and Sevastopol – have been forced to stop functioning. Most of the Patriarchate’s eight surviving parishes are in small villages in northern Crimea.

Threats, violence

Five of the Kiev Patriarchate’s ten priests in the region have already left Crimea since March, including Fr Ivan. All were Ukrainian citizens. “The authorities couldn’t guarantee their security”, Archbishop Kliment told Forum 18. “Some were told they’d be killed. They were threatened by phone, in writing, and face to face.” He stated that complaints to the police and Prosecutor’s Office were rejected. “They said we were the guilty ones.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses have similarly complained of “a significant increase in violence” against them since March. They told Forum 18 of threats or physical attacks in the village of Gaspra on 28 March, the village of Pionerskoe on 30 March and 2 April, Yalta on 28 April and Kerch on 9 May.

During the Yalta incident, an aggressive passer-by threatened to shoot Jehovah’s Witness Nikolai Martsenyuk who, with a colleague, was peacefully offering Jehovah’s Witness literature on the street. Martsenyuk tried to stop the man reaching for what he said was a pistol. The unknown man then pushed Martsenyuk to the ground and kicked him in the head, whereupon he lost consciousness. He had to be taken to hospital.

“Despite repeated calls on the emergency number, no police officer came to the scene of the offence,” Jehovah’s Witnesses told Forum 18. “Only at the hospital was the victim questioned.”

However, as with the other incidents of violence against Jehovah’s Witnesses, Martsenyuk has not been informed that the police have taken any action.

The Press Secretary of the Crimean Interior Ministry has not stated what action the police have taken to protect victims from threats and violence, and to identify and punish attackers. Forum 18 asked for this information on 25 June, and no response has yet been received.

An official of the Crimean Prosecutor’s Office refused to answer specific questions by phone on 25 June. However, she stressed that it is not within the competence of prosecutors to investigate or bring administrative of criminal cases. She referred Forum 18 to the police or the Investigative Committee. “But if anyone appeals to our office we are obliged to respond”, she told Forum 18.

Forum 18 asked in writing the same day if any Jehovah’s Witnesses or members of the Kiev Patriarchate had appealed to the Prosecutor’s Office. No response had been received by the middle of the working day in Crimea on 26 June.

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(Civil.Ge) — A U.S. congressional delegation, led by Democratic Senator Ben Cardin held talks with the Georgian leadership and representatives from UNM opposition party in Tbilisi on June 29.

The delegation, which after Tbilisi is heading to Baku to participate in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly session, includes Democratic Senator Tom Harkin; Republican Congressmen Robert Aderholt, Phil Gingrey, David Schweikert and Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff. The delegation met President Giorgi Margvelashvili; PM Irakli Garibashvili and some other government members.

“We thought it was important to come to Georgia because of its importance to the United States and its importance to this region,” Senator Cardin told journalists after talks in Tbilisi on Sunday.

“In each of these meetings we stressed friendship between our two countries, the importance of bilateral relationship between our two countries and how we look forward to strengthening those ties,” said Senator Cardin, who chairs the U.S. Helsinki Commission and who is a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“I must tell you we’ve been extremely impressed by the quality of the leadership in Georgia, their ability to transition from one government to another and… we are here shortly after the local elections – we congratulate the people of Georgia for their commitment to democracy and basic human rights,” he said.

Asked if the issue of providing Georgia with anti-tank and air defense weapons was raised during the delegation’s talks in Tbilisi, Cardin responded: “As President Obama has made very clear the United States is committed to its partnerships in Europe and that includes security partnerships. I know there have been direct talks between the leaders of Georgia and the administration in Washington concerning how we can be helpful. I do not know status of those talks, but those talks have taken place.”

Senator Cardin co-sponsored a bipartisan bill together with John McCain and several other senators that envisages imposing sanctions on human rights abusers from anywhere in the world. If approved the bill, known as Global Human Rights Accountability Act, which was endorsed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 24, would expand globally Russia-specific sanctions of the 2012 Magnitsky Act and would deny entry into the U.S. and bar from using the U.S. financial institutions to those “responsible for gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”

Asked what role this act, if adopted, can play in this region and in Georgia, Senator Cardin responded: “The legislation does not at all aim at a country that has judiciary and law enforcement that deals with the problems within their own country to protect the human rights of its citizens and Georgia is one of those countries.”

“So this bill is not at all directed towards country like Georgia that deals with its human rights needs and [is] developing an independent judiciary and the confidence that all people’s rights will be protected,” Senator Cardin added.

He also said that the U.S. congressional delegation reiterated Washington’s strong support to Georgia’s territorial integrity and its European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations.

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Publicly traded companies are the engine behind China’s growth, which raises the question of how CEO compensation works under an interventionist state. This column presents an analysis of executive compensation in China and a comparison to the West. Chinese listed firms have incentive structures similar to those of the US; in this case, effective compensation policies seem to transcend political boundaries.

By Alex Bryson, John Forth and Minghai Zhou

For many in the West China remains a paradox: a single-party Communist state with a vibrant, thriving economy set to challenge the US in the coming decade. Some have questioned the sustainability of the Chinese growth miracle in the absence of fully-fledged democracy and root-and-branch market reforms. But others point to state-sponsored decentralised market reforms over the past three decades as the key to China’s success (Xu 2012).

In the first decade of the 21st century China’s GDP grew by 250%. The engine behind its growth was the public listed sector. Output grew nearly eightfold, accounting for 43% of total Chinese GDP by 2010. Yet little is known about CEO compensation in China’s listed firms. Using accounting data for all public companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges between 2001 and 2010, we examined trends in cash and bonuses among CEOs and other board executives (Bryson et al. 2014).

In the West the controversy over executive pay has been febrile, with questions raised as to whether those at the top really deserve to be earning so much more than the rest (Piketty 2014). We find cash and bonus compensation has been rising rapidly in China, just as it has been in the West. Although cash and bonus compensation for top executives remains well below what Western executives earn,¹ it has been rising very rapidly, doubling between 2005 and 2010 (see Table 1). These earnings are highly sensitive to firm performance and became more so between 2001 and 2010, thus ensuring that CEO fortunes are tied to shareholder interests. The strength of the pay-performance link is similar to that in Europe – even though the country remains a Communist regime with state control of the largest firms. However, the pay-performance sensitivity is lower than in the US.

Table 1. Top executive pay in China’s listed firms, 2005-10
Notes: Authors’ calculations based on CSMAR data. Figures are deflated to 2001 prices using the IMF’s consumer price index for China.

As in the West, those running the largest firms are paid the most, in accordance with the principles of a market that allocates the most talented people to the job slots where their productivity has the greatest impact. The sensitivity of pay to firm size is of the same magnitude as that found in classic US studies of the 1980s (Rosen 1990). Big differentials between top executives mimic the ‘tournament’ pay structures in the West, creating strong financial incentives for executives to move up the corporate ladder.

In contrast to the West, the state often plays an important role in China’s listed firms, either through its direct ownership stake or via the Communist Party, which plays an important role in the recruitment and promotion of CEOs and other top executives (Li et al. 2007). But this is also changing. China undertook a massive privatisation programme between 2001 and 2010. The percentage of publicly listed firms that were majority state-owned fell by almost half to 45% percent. Executive compensation rose markedly in privatised firms – by around 5% in those firms privatised between 2002 and 2010 relative to those whose ownership did not change – just as it had done during privatisation drives in the West in the 1980s (Wolfram 1998).

Ever since Bebchuk and Fried (2004) argued CEOs are able to exploit their managerial power to extract rents, economists in the West have worried about CEOs’ ability to ‘skim’ profits from firms, particularly when there are weak corporate governance structures in place. There have been moves towards better corporate governance in China’s listed firms in recent years but it is clear that China’s CEOs are able to ‘skim’ company profits when corporate governance is poor. CEOs get a 10% premium if they start sitting on the compensation committee that determines their earnings and they get a similar premium if they become chairman of the board as well as CEO. This role for managerial power in executive pay setting may reflect the recency of the stock market and the regulations underpinning corporate governance.

As Yueh (2011) has argued, future growth in China may depend on the pace of legal and institutional reform. Yet, in so many ways, it would appear that the CEO labour market in China has more similarities with the CEO labour market in the West than differences. For better or worse, some elements of executive compensation seem to transcend national economic, political, and cultural differences.

Authors’ note: The study was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant RES-538-25-0029) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant 71161130175).

About the authors:
Alex Bryson
Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research; Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

John Forth
Principal Research Fellow, National Institute of Economic and Social Research

Minghai Zhou
Assistant Professor at the School of Economics, University of Nottingham Ningbo China

References
Bebchuk, L and J Fried (2004), Pay without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation, Cambridge: Harvard University Press

Bryson A, J Forth and M Zhou (2014), “Same or Different? The CEO Labour Market in China’s Public Listed Companies”, The Economic Journal, 124, F90-F108

Groves T, Y Hong, J McMillan and B Naughton (1995), “China’s evolving managerial labor market”, Journal of Political Economy, vol. 103(4), pp. 873–92

Li H, P W Liu, J Zhang and N Ma (2007), “Economic Returns to Communist Party Membership: Evidence from Urban Chinese Twins”, The Economic Journal, 117: 1504-1520

Piketty, T. (2014), Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press.

Rosen, S. (1990), “Contracts and the Market for Executives”, NBER Working Paper #3542

Wolfram, C D (1998), “Increases in Executive Pay Following Privatization”, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 7, 3: 327-361

Xu, C (2011), “The Fundamental Institutions of China’s Reforms and Development”, Journal of Economic Literature, 49, 4: 1076-1151

Yueh, L (2011), “The Chinese box: the opaque economic borders of the Chinese state”, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 27, 4: 658-679.

1. Mean compensation in the US stood at $129,399 in 2010.

The post Through The Looking Glass: CEO Pay In China’s Listed Companies – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Mahir Ali

Iraq is up for grabs, Syria has irretrievably been damaged, the West Bank sits on a powder keg. And that’s just the region where some of the worst-case scenarios have come to pass.

On the borders of the Middle East, Afghanistan’s fate remains indeterminate, while the initial repercussions of Pakistan’s long-delayed military offensive in North Waziristan are reflected in the rapid multiplication of internally displaced persons, amid reports that the intended targets had fled into Afghanistan well before the first airstrikes were launched.

The latter arena of conflict was dubbed Afpak by the Americans some years ago, and the somewhat Orwellian terminology attracted plenty of flak, given that there are a vast number of distinctions between these two “stans,” notwithstanding some overlap.

Over the decades, though, it is by no means just the militants who have derided the colonial-era Durand Line that separates the two nations. On the other hand, the challenge to the post-World War I border between Syria and Iraq has come fundamentally from radical warriors.

It is perhaps unlikely that the latter region will be designated as Syriraq, if only because that would seem to endorse the propaganda of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who has proclaimed himself caliph in an area that straddles parts of Syria and almost a third of Iraq, with the force hitherto known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) now rebranded simply as the Islamic State.

To a large extent, the fate of the ersatz caliphate will be determined by what happens in Iraq during the month of Ramadan. A few days ago, Baghdad announced the recapture of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, but the claim turned out to have been an exaggeration, with battles still raging in the zone as of Monday.

One of the explanations for the rout of the Iraqi Army revolves around the nepotism and corruption that determined its nature amid the sectarian milieu that the US left behind under the aegis of Nuri Al-Maliki, who has lately rejected hints from both Washington and Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani that he should make place for a less divisive prime minister or at least attempt to form a government of national unity.

Shiite militias, the most formidable among them apparently controlled by Iran, have entered the fray, while Al-Maliki, after failing to immediately invite US airstrikes against ISIL and its Sunni collaborators, has reportedly spent half a billion dollars on purchasing superannuated Sukhoi aircraft from Russia, which are supposed to turn the tide.

Barack Obama, meanwhile, has solicited exactly that amount of money from the US Congress in the interests of arming “moderate” Syrian militias supposedly challenging the depleted supremacy of Bashar Assad. But, as veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk has lately pointed out, moderates are thin on the ground, and those who exist cannot be relied upon not to sell their hardware to the highest bidder.

And that often turns out to be ostensibly their worst enemies. The Obama administration has lately been accused of training ISIL foot soldiers in Jordan. And Assad is said to have not just freed large numbers of Salafi prisoners from Syrian jails in 2011-12, but to have actively promoted ISIL as a means of countering the Al-Qaeda-approved Jabhat Al-Nusra as well as his more secular adversaries.

There may be some truth in both accusations. It is, after all, hardly unknown for governments to sponsor dubious forces in the interests of protecting or advancing their interests. The US was a vigorous proponent of jihad when the mujahideen were combating Soviet forces and their proxies in Afghanistan. And there was a time when Israel encouraged Islamists to undermine the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Now Israel’s determination to destroy Hamas has been reinforced by the unconscionable murder of three teenage yeshiva students from the occupied territories whom the Islamist organization is accused of having kidnapped. Whoever committed this egregious atrocity in the vicinity of Hebron clearly intended it as a provocation — not only against Israel, from where a predictably rash reaction could be guaranteed, but against the unity government lately inducted in Ramallah, a supposedly technocratic outfit that includes no Hamas members but receives its backing.

Israel made hundreds of arrests and killed at least eight Palestinians during the hunt for the teenagers, and there will no doubt be much worse to follow. The precise consequences may be unpredictable, but they are likely to involve a great deal of further bloodshed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has meanwhile done the cause of the Kurds no favors by explicitly endorsing a Kurdish state — an idea that is apparently not anathema to Ankara either, provided it does not involve any Turkish territory.

Iraq’s neighbors would do well to remember that the border with Syria is not the only one that ISIL is determined to obliterate. A reasonable case could probably be made for redrawing some of the Middle East’s colonial-era boundaries.

Iraq is currently a focus of broadly mutual interests between the US, Russia, Iran and Syria. But the situation is much too convoluted to draw any hopeful conclusions from this unlikely alliance.

It is not inconceivable that the region would sooner or later have experienced an eruption of revolts against a pattern of tyranny, but there can be little question that the unprovoked western aggression against Iraq in 2003 liberated not the Iraqi people but a maliferous genie. In the dire but no longer unlikely event of sectarian strife engulfing not just Iraq and Syria but their (not entirely blameless) environs, precious little credit will accrue to those who continue to argue, in the face of all available evidence, that a prolonged occupation of Iraq or western military intervention in Syria would have produced an altogether more desirable outcome in the medium term. But even those of us who derided the absurd project from the outset are left dangling with a question that has become progressively harder to answer: What next?

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By Samir Saran

Author and eminent scholar Dan Hahn described successful political communication as something where “some will be attracted to what is said, to the position taken by the orator. Others will be impressed by the orator’s crafting of the speech – the organisation, the word choice, or the how the language is combined.”

He might as well have been describing the #NaMo campaign, where the combination of a message of hope, soft ideology and communication craftsmanship has attracted a substantial number of voters within and outside BJP’s traditional vote bank.

Assessment

The new Indian PM ran an efficient and professional campaign that was arguably even more innovative than the first Obama campaign.

However, the million-dollar question is whether PM Modi will be able to institutionalise this communication expertise into a durable feature of his time in office, or if he will struggle, as President Obama has in recent years, to communicate his initiatives and vision to large parts of the citizenry.

The first 30 days offer us a moment to reflect on the communication performance of the PM. It is a mixed bag.

On the upside, we have witnessed deft public positioning, like the invitation extended to South Asian neighbours during his swearing-in ceremony or his visit to Bhutan – each appreciated as significant gestures and adding to his image as a progressive leader.

We have seen the institutionalisation of social media by the Modi Cabinet to reach out to citizens. And we now have #NaMo on twitter in person and in his official persona.

Yet, something is amiss. The PM’s persuasive presence during his campaign is now reduced to clinical digital chatter.

The message, therefore, is incomplete and sometimes unclear. Other voices, some of dissent (rail price hike) and other incongruent, from within and outside his party are muddying the waters very early into his term in office.

The communication code that he had cracked seems to have been misplaced and it is apparent that the campaign team that ably communicated PM aspirant Modi’s vision to many, is either avoiding the Delhi summers or is distracted.

During the election, candidate Modi was ahead of the curve. He was proactive and anticipated issues; he sidestepped curve balls and revelled in responding to provocations.

After the elections, PM Modi has been playing catch up, been largely reactive, and has failed to anticipate imminent challenges.

Vision

Modi has prided himself in being able to empower and use the bureaucracy in Gujarat, and now he hopes to do the same in Delhi.

However, is his communication also going to be defined by the not-so-creative Delhi Durbar? Will slow-moving bureaucratic systems do justice to a man known for his glib oratory skills and deft communication?

Let’s take the swearing-in ceremony as a case in point.

The soon-to-be Indian PM invited Nawaz Sharif and other SAARC leaders (and Mauritius) for his swearing-in ceremony. It was a grand spectacle that did create excitement and was largely appreciated, and yet one was left with a hollow feeling the day after.

We got to know what the MEA felt about it – its official statement offered standard, cut and dry and politically correct fare.

We know what every Pakistan watcher and self-styled foreign policy expert on television and on the op-ed pages thinks about it. But we still do not know what PM Modi thinks about it.

What is this big-picture neighbourhood philosophy that he seems to be crafting? Or is there one? It was his show all the way, and his views and vision are still missing. More recently, when the rapes and murders took place in Badaun and when the Muslim youth was killed in Pune, a calibrated communication response was required.

While there may have been no need for the PM to react himself, a statement from the Home Minister, showing concern, would have helped assuage the shrill response by civil society and the media.

The government was absent on this count.

PM Modi must realise that his victory is his to own alone, and so is all that goes wrong.

Revitalise communication

Silence is golden, but there is such a thing as too much silence. These are early days and PM Modi is not really affected. Yet, a crisis could unfold at any point. That is the nature of government, and systems must be in place.

Modi has always faced a hostile media. This has not changed since his election. The honeymoon period may be shorter than anticipated and questions will be asked, and the din will get louder each week.

During the election campaign, his masterstroke was bypassing media and engaging directly with people. He needs to do this while being in office as well.

It will help to explain the big but potentially controversial policies he wants to pursue.

Of course, he can’t do it every week or every day as he did during the campaign.As such he will need to think of a routine, and of a creative mechanism to manage public expectations and the media.

The PRO cannot remain out of bounds for the media, not for the media’s sake but for the sake of the PM and for the policy line he wishes to perpetuate and guard.

This is how governments work everywhere. Twitter and other social media platforms are excellent communication tools and the PM has mastered their political potency faster than most Indian politicians.

In government, he needs to build a platform that combines social media with more traditional communications mechanisms.

He needs to disrupt the lethargy of the Lutyens communication machinery by introducing some of his young campaign team into the mix, and he needs to reinvent and revitalise #NaMo in his new role as PM.

It was #NaMo that got him here.

(The writer is a Vice-President and Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation)

Courtesy: Mail Today, July 1, 2014

The post The #NaMo Wave Yet To Translate Into Effective Governance – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Emre Tunç Sakaoğlu

On June 29, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wrote an Op-Ed for the Financial Times underlining his resolve in sticking with the reform agenda that his Liberal Democrat Party-led coalition put forth last year.

Mr Abe “shot off” the first two arrows of his exclusive economic reform agenda after he was elected prime minister of Japan for a second term in 2012. These two initial arrows of “Abenomics” included a fiscal stimulus of biblical proportions followed by an extensive monetary easing program. In his essay in the Financial Times, titled “My ‘third arrow’ will fell Japan’s economic demons”, Mr Abe answers widespread questions with regard to the final phase of his overall agenda, i.e. the “third arrow”, which encapsulates several structural measures essential to the Japanese PM’s ambitious dream of regenerating economic dynamism in Japan.

In his essay which was published yesterday, PM Abe firstly elaborates on his government’s concrete steps in the fields of corporate governance reform and the restructuring of the institutional framework underlying pension funds. It is a fact that in an attempt to boost Japanese stock markets by adapting the country’s unique corporate traditions to the requirements of a changing investment environment on a global scale, Mr Abe’s government recently embarked on a program aimed at elaborate reform in corporate governance. And such an effort is directly linked with reorganizing pension funds which, due to the aging population in the country, are gradually becoming more and more of a vital source of investment and financing.

Also in this vein, Mr Abe vows to stick to bold reforms in deregulating various key sectors such as agriculture, energy, and healthcare services. Thereby, venture capital will be encouraged, in a way allowing established firms to benefit from institutional deregulation at large. According to PM Abe’s vision put forth in the essay, the Japanese economy will be able to recover through ‘National Strategic Special Zones’, which are already being instituted, as well as further international economic integration, which will allow both national and multinational firms to speed up investment in Japan.

Secondly, Mr Abe touches on the setbacks of the BOJ’s recent increase of consumption tax. According to the Japanese PM, this is only among the minor obstacles which will eventually be overcome. A recovery in consumption will lead to the betterment of the employment market from which positive signals of cautious liberalization are already being received, and imports together with wages will continue to rise. This, according to an optimistic elaboration on the details of the issue by Mr Abe.

Thirdly, the issue of increasing women’s participation in the workforce and employment levels is presented, in line with common sense, as part of the remedy to Japan’s demographic downtrend and the negative repercussions thereof on the economy. Interestingly, Mr Abe also admitted the need to embrace migrant labor while putting emphasis on individual talent, and more importantly, “diversity” of the workforce.

Although at first sight such wording seems revolutionary as it belongs to the top executive in Japan, the paper does not give us sufficient details as to whether Japanese leadership will be able to side-step deep-rooted prejudices among the population with regard to foreign labor. Nevertheless, considering Mr Abe’s firm stance in domestic politics which we have been witnessing for the last two years, and the decisive steps taken in nearly every field under his government’s reach, the prospects for bold reform in this field seem hopeful enough.

On the right side of history

It is to the advantage of the Japanese PM that the Japanese public highly approves of his willingness to undertake reforms that may indeed cause some necessary pain for them in the short-run. Volatility, indecisiveness, and passivity which have prevailed over Japanese politics over the course of two decades of economic stagnation since the early 1990s are no longer tolerable in the eyes of a large public which awarded Mr Abe’s Liberal Democrat Party a huge slice of the upper house of the Japanese Parliament, i.e. Diet, in the Summer of 2013, based on its bid to overcome what is becoming Japan’s “ill luck”.

Recently, Japanese stock markets have been more or less on the rise, and international confidence in the new Japanese leadership has been building. Nevertheless, the Japanese leadership still faces grave challenges. In order to achieve the ultimate goal of budget consolidation, which is a remote possibility as of now, the Abe administration will need to address difficult problems underlying sluggish growth such as a shrinking population, lifetime employment policies leading to inefficiency, huge savings being hoarded instead of turned into domestic investment, and the outflow of FDI to China and other countries.

From Meiji to Abe

On the other hand, many Japanese policy-makers are fortunately aware of the fact that Washington Consensus-style, wholesale liberalization of every sector has never proven to be a viable remedy, if not an ideal prescription for disaster. In this respect, a tendency toward the elimination of small-scale agriculture, which is promoted by liberal circles, will only lead to inefficiency as history is full of such examples. Likewise, the promotion of shareholder capitalism, although theoretically well-grounded in the liberal mindset, will only cause long-term volatility and an inclination towards financial instability.

At the end of the day, the essential ingredient of successful economic reform, of which vivid examples can be found in modern Japanese history especially since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, is pragmatic wisdom. Mr Abe needs to stick to experience and read well the post-crisis global trends while strictly avoiding the temptation of counting on ideological “misguidance”, which can lead him to excessive liberalization and financialization of the economy unconducive to sustainable growth. From this point forth, Mr Abe’s vision promisingly summarized in the FT Op-Ed has a high potential to realize its objectives, as he has proved resistant to international pressures on many occasions since he came to power in 2012.

The post Why The Odds Favor Japanese PM Abe – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

How does a country escape Russia’s economic grip? According to the Moscow Times, Kazakhstan stepped up efforts to tackle this problem in June, after the government announced that it will suspend corporate and land tax for 10 years for foreign investors setting up new businesses. These perks are offered only to investments of over $20 million in the non-extractive sectors. In addition, foreign investors will be exempted from paying tax on non-land assets for eight years and will be reimbursed 30% of the costs of building new plants.

In a related move, on June 12, the government also lifted visa requirements for business executives from countries that have enjoyed long-running relations with Kazakhstan, such as the U.S, the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan or South Korea. This experimental program is slated to last for one year, after which time results will be assessed.

Through this investment package, the country seeks to achieve two related objectives: to expand away from Russia’s market, which is increasingly seen as a liability, and to diversify its economy, deemed too reliant on oil and gas exports. Volatility in both its region and on world commodity markets has slowed Kazakhstan’s growth, which is expected to fall to 4.5% this year from the high of 6% in 2013.

Kazakhstan is also the second largest ex-Soviet oil producer, with 1.6 million barrels per day and is also a major natural gas extractor, with some 40 billion cubic meters. Like most energy exporters, the country has at its disposal a massive sovereign wealth fund, estimated at some $100 billion (or three times the yearly budget), which is meant to soften the blows coming from commodity volatility of international markets.

In the mineral industry, Kazakhstan is home to one of the largest extractive groups in the world, Eurasian Resources Group (formerly ENRC). The company is the world’s premiere producer of ferrochrome and ninth producer of aluminum; it is a significant contributor to the Kazakh GDP.

According to a 2011 Harvard study, Kazakhstan’s economy is very closely linked to Russia, as the business cycles of the two countries suffer identical fluctuations in 96% of cases. Following the Ukraine crisis, which saw massive depreciations in the ruble and in the Russian stock market, the National Bank of Kazakhstan decided to devalue its currency to the tune of 19%, causing fears of a spike in inflation and a dip in living standards, on top of sluggish growth.

Even if the European Union is the country’s principal trade partner, Kazakhstan is dependent on Russia for almost 40% of imports, a significant vulnerability that has negatively impacted its growth prospects. Decoupling from Moscow’s stranglehold can therefore be achieved by building stronger ties with the West. The set of measures passed by the government earlier this month are a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, it takes two to tango.

The City disease

Like any country seeking to make headway in the Western market, many Kazakhstani companies sought to build partnerships and establish local branches in Europe. Most of them took to London, the unofficial financial capital of Europe, seduced by City dreams of easily raising capital for developing big mines. All they had to do was adapt to British corporate-governance standards, and then file proceedings to get listed on the London Stock Exchange. Once touching down on English soil, adapting to City standards proved to be harder than expected, often with dire consequences.

The most high-profile case that made headlines in recent years concerned ENRC, which was forced to delist from the London Stock Exchange after several senior executives turned against the founders – Alexander Machkevitch, Patokh Chodiev and Alijan Ibragimov – and undermined the company by taking the war from the boardroom to the media. The Independent, a leading British newspaper, revealed that a former director of the company repeatedly met with a journalist to disclose board secrets with the explicit purpose in mind of blackening the owners – destroying confidence in the company and considerable shareholder value in the process. As a result of the media outcry, the UK regulators had no choice but to launch a series of investigations which eliminated ENRC’s hopes of further expansion as a public entity.

The City of London, tarnished by the devastating LIBOR scandal, which brought the unsavory relationship between bankers and regulators into the light, should start regarding companies coming from emerging countries as partners if it hopes to rebuild its reputation as the world’s leading financial center. In this context, taking the moral high ground seems ignominious to say the least because it risks creating a two-tier system. British companies successfully evade regulation due to their links with lawmakers while the rest are forced to adapt to higher standards that alter their bottom line.

Since developed countries no longer power global economic growth, the economic clout of countries such as Kazakhstan will only grow in the future. The West should welcome these developments and help its companies adapt to their standards instead of throwing spanners in the works. Both parties stand to win a great deal.

The post Kazakhstan’s Gamble: Go West Or Go Bust – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Nicholas Cunningham

Violence in Mexico could thwart hopes of a budding shale boom, as oil and gas companies operating in Texas may think twice about moving south of the border.

Mexico holds an estimated 545 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable shale gas and 13 billion barrels of shale oil, but progress in developing those resources has been slow.

The obstacles to kick-starting Mexico’s shale industry have dampened the once lively enthusiasm surrounding Mexico’s historic energy reform. Mexico passed legislation last year that opened up the country’s oil and gas sector to private investment, ending a 75-year monopoly by state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex).

But the secondary laws that the government must pass to actually implement the legal framework for oil and gas development are proving much more contentious.

Political disputes over what could be 21 separate laws have thus far delayed passage, threatening to push back Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s goal of producing 3 million barrels of oil per day by 2018. That would be roughly a 25 percent increase from the current output level of 2.4 million barrels per day, but it is looking increasingly difficult to achieve.

“We can increase, of course, but not enough to arrive at 3 million [b/d],” Fluvio Ruiz Alarcon, an independent board member at Pemex, told Platts on June 24 at a Wilson Center event in Washington, D.C. “I’m sure we’re going to produce over 3 million [b/d] but not by 2018. Maybe 2020, but not before,” he added.

Even if the country’s congress can reach an agreement and move forward with the energy reform, there are other obstacles.

In order to access the potentially abundant oil and gas from Mexican shale, the government will need to rely upon the private sector.

Under the energy reform, Pemex is given first refusal over any projects – meaning that it can keep the assets it really wants, but allows the rest to go to bidding for private companies. Pemex will likely stick with its wells that are already producing, and leave drilling new shale wells to incoming private companies.

However, many areas in the Burgos Basin – which lies just south of the rich Eagle Ford formation in Texas – are suffering from intense gang violence. Bloomberg News reported on the conditions in Tamaulipas, a state in eastern Mexico, which at times resembles a “war zone.” A power vacuum left over by the arrest of the leaders of the Zetas and Gulf Cartels last year has the eastern coast dealing with heightened violence – shootings along highways and burned down buildings are commonplace as rival drug gangs jockey for territory.

Further north, shootings and kidnappings plague Highway 2, which runs parallel to the border with the United States.

The violence poses an immediate threat to the oil companies working there. The Mexican Army is now escorting workers of Weatherford International, an oilfield services firm, to and from their drill sites after a drug gang shot up a hotel where the workers were staying.

Aside from violence, theft of oil and gas by drug cartels poses another threat to companies. In 2013, Mexican gangs stole around $790 million worth of fuel, which is siphoned off from pipelines and smuggled.

Perhaps more importantly, the violence will undermine Mexico’s attempts to boost oil production over the longer term. The Mexican government doesn’t believe that Pemex will be able to increase production. The state-owned company’s goal is to merely keep production steady as wells age and decline. Instead, the government will be relying upon the private sector. Over the next four years, the government expects 500,000 barrels per day to come from non-Pemex sources.

But that goal will prove elusive if independent oil and gas companies are scared off by violence.

“It does raise the cost of doing business when you have to face the threats of kidnapping and extortion,” Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told Bloomberg.

If Mexico is to achieve its goal of reviving oil production, which has declined by more than one-third over the last decade, it will not only need to get the legal framework right, but the government will also need to ensure drug violence drops to a level that doesn’t scare off private oil and gas companies.

Source:
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Gang-Violence-Slowing-Progress-On-Mexican-Shale.html

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Malaysia owns James Shoal, a submerged feature that is within its continental shelf. Being one thousand nautical miles from Hainan, James Shoal is outside the continental shelf of China; it is also outside the continental shelf of Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Indonesia.

By B.A.Hamzah

James Shoal, a feature that is permanently 22 metres (66 feet) under water in the South China Sea, should not have attracted public attention regionally but for geopolitics and ignorance of international law. Malaysians have been alarmed by recent reports of vessels of the People’s Republic of China Liberation Army (Navy), gathering and celebrating above the feature on more than one occasion.

China cannot appropriate any submerged features that are not part of its continental shelf and in its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). James Shoal is more than 1,000 nautical miles (nm) from Hainan, well outside China’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and not part of its continental shelf.

James Shoal and international law

The whole affair could have been quietly resolved if the PLA Navy commanders acknowledged the international law governing a permanently submerged feature, embedded to the continental shelf of a coastal state. Unlike islands, rocks and low-tide elevations, permanently submerged features, cannot generate any maritime zone under international law.

Islands are entitled to a belt of territorial sea, continental shelf and EEZ. Low-tide Elevations (LTEs), on the other hand, belong to the state in whose territorial sea they are located. LTEs can be used to draw the state’s baseline if they are located within its 12 nm territorial sea.

International law defines continental shelf as a natural extension of a country’s landmass to a distance of 200 nm (maximum 350 nm). Drawn from the mainland or any of its islands in the South China Sea, the continental shelf of China is well short of James Shoal. Similarly, contrary to some suggestions, James Shoal is also not part of the extended continental shelf of Vietnam, the Philippines or Taiwan.

In May 2009, Vietnam and Malaysia put up a Joint submission on the Extended Continental Shelf to the UN Committee on the Limit of Continental Shelf (CLCS) whereby Vietnam acknowledged that James Shoal is not part of its extended continental shelf.

James Shoal is 500 nm from Pagasa Island in the Spratlys that the Philippines has occupied since 1971. The Shoal is more than 400 nm from Itu Aba, an island that Taiwan has occupied since 1956. James Shoal is also outside Brunei’s extended maritime zone which the 2009 Letter of Exchange Brunei had with Malaysia attested to. In 1969, Malaysia and Indonesia signed a Treaty on the continental shelf, off Tanjung Datu, Sarawak, which has placed James Shoal on the Malaysian side.

Contiguity not an issue

James Shoal, located 63 nm from the nearest base point (Batuan Likau) on Sarawak coast, is embedded in the continental shelf of Malaysia and within its EEZ.

Although the feature is nearer to Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur’s ownership of James Shoal is not premised on geographical contiguity but on customary international law. In the Island of Palmas (or Miangas) (United States v. The Netherlands), Arbitral Award, 1928 Judge Huber stated, “it is impossible to show the existence of a rule of positive international law” on contiguity to “the effect that islands situated outside territorial waters should belong to the state”.

China claims James Shoal is within the disputed nine-dash line boundary which China has drawn, incorporating close to ninety percent of the South China Sea, and overlapping with the maritime domains of five other states (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam) as well as Taiwan.

Some experts believe China did not even know of the existence of James Shoal as a submerged feature when it drew the controversial nine-dash line maritime boundary over it in 1947/1948. After all, China was not the first state to conduct any physical survey of the maritime area. Besides, there is no evidence that China discovered and administered the feature.

The British discovered James Shoal

The British discovered the Shoal and its two nearby features (Parsons’ Shoal and Lydie Shoal) in the early 19th Century via many of its surveys. James Shoal first appeared on the British Admiralty Chart in the 1870s; China renamed the feature (as Tseng Mu Reef) circa 1947/1948 (1912 in some documents), when it published the nine-dash line.

The only possibility for China to “acquire” the feature, according to some experts, is via cut- and-paste method. While the international law recognises five traditional methods of territorial acquisition, the cut- and- paste method is not one of them.

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf (Malaysia and China subscribe to both Treaties) stipulate, “The rights of a costal state over the continental shelf do not depend on occupation, effective or notional, or in any express proclamation”.

In other words, Malaysia does not have to do anything under UNCLOS to own the submerged feature that is embedded on its continental shelf.

Malaysia’s extensive activities on James Shoal

This notwithstanding, Malaysia has effectively asserted its jurisdiction over its continental shelf including the areas in and around James Shoal, Parson’s Shoal and the Lydie Shoal. As in nearby Laconia shoals, where currently a large chunk of Malaysia’s hydrocarbon resources comes from, the entire area has been explored for gas and oil.

The activities of the Malaysian authorities, which are extensive, peaceful, continuous and public in nature, include the construction and maintenance of a light-buoy on nearby Parsons Shoal on a 24/7 basis; daily patrolling and policing of the area by the Royal Malaysian Navy and the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency; and undertaking economic activities like exploration for and production of hydrocarbon resources on a sustained basis.

Under international law, such display of peaceful and continuous activities over a long period is tantamount to establishing a titre de souverain (acts of the sovereign). This legal principle is critical in determining ownership of disputed islands, rocks and low tide elevations and by inference, submerged features on continental shelf.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Arbitration have applied this principle on numerous occasions. Two recent ICJ Cases on territorial disputes, decided on this principle, involved Malaysia with Indonesia (Case concerning sovereignty over Pulau Ligitan and Pulau Sipadan) and Indonesia (2002) and Malaysia with Singapore (Case concerning sovereignty over Pedra Branca and Pulau Batu Putih (2008).

In sum, the activities of the Malaysian authorities (effectivité to some) are by themselves sufficient to demonstrate that Malaysia is the bona fide owner of James Shoal.

BA Hamzah is a lecturer at the Department of Strategic Studies, National Defence University, Malaysia. He contributed this specially to RSIS Commentaries.

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I don’t know if you are as popular with the political insiders as I am, but already today I have received emails from Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In fact, I’ve received more than a dozen emails today alone from either the Democratic Party, Democrats involved in election campaigns, or Democratic interest groups.

The Democrats aren’t the only ones who email me. I’ve also received emails today from Republicans and Libertarians, though not as many.

I am somewhat interested in getting the emails just because I’m curious about what they are saying (besides “Send Me Money”), but the Democrats are trying my patience with their huge volume of daily spam. I think it’s amusing, for example, to get an email that says I should donate because “We have to defeat the Koch brothers.” I didn’t know the Koch brothers were running for anything.

But really, how effective can these emails be when more than a dozen arrive every day? Today’s volume of political spam is not unusual for me; it’s just the day I decided to blog about it.

I have no idea where any of these parties got my email address. I assure you I did not provide it to them. Also, I have never donated any money to any political party. I have, on occasion, given money to individual candidates, but I do have a rule about candidate contributions that I’ve never violated: I give money only to candidates who I actually know in person. I’ve never given money to any candidate I’ve never met, or to any political party.

So, it’s not like they’ve found a sucker who will respond to these emails by giving them money. I’ve never done that. But I keep getting this political spam anyway. Of course, once they have your email address, it costs them nothing to send me an email along with the rest of their email list.

The post Political Spam – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Ezra Klein challenges the notion that patients in the United States get better cancer treatment than patients in other developed countries. Klein was writing in response to the Commonwealth Fund’s comparison of health systems in eleven developed countries. As I noted previously, one problem with this survey is that there is no apparent relationship between ranking on the survey and health outcomes. Although the United States does poorly in the survey, it does well in health outcomes, especially cancer outcomes.

Or maybe not, according to Klein:

Most of the studies that highlight America’s skill in treating cancer do so by measuring survival rates — that is to say, they measure how many people survive for a certain number of years after the cancer is diagnosed. So if a certain cancer kills 50 percent of people within five years, then the five-year survival rate is 50 percent.

The problem here is simple: survival rates don’t necessarily measure when people die. They also measure when they’re diagnosed — and sometimes, that’s all they measure.

“Let’s say there’s a new cancer of the thumb killing people,” writes Aaron Carroll, a professor of pediatrics and assistant dean at Indiana University’s School of Medicine. “From the time the first cancer cell appears, you have nine years to live, with chemo. From the time you can feel a lump, you have four years to live, with chemo. Let’s say we have no way to detect the disease until you feel a lump. The five year survival rate for this cancer is about 0, because within five years of detection, everyone dies, even on therapy.”

Carroll goes on to imagine a remarkable machine: “a new scanner that can detect thumb cancer when only one cell is there.” Congress immediately orders that every American be scanned for thumb cancer. “We made no improvements to the treatment,” he writes. “Everyone is still dying four years after they feel the lump. But since we are making the diagnosis five years earlier, our five year survival rate is now approaching 100%!” That’s how survival rates can mislead.

Klein goes on to report that actual death rates (in the U.S. population) have not really changed for many cancers, despite much greater detection. Further, this epidemic of over diagnosis can cause harm, because people will undergo surgery who don’t need it. (This argument is made thoroughly in Gil Welch’s Overdiagnosed.)

Although this argument is not trivial, I find it hard to accept. First, almost all stories of harmful treatment concern breast cancer or prostate cancer. There are lots of other cancers, but their victims do not have the benefit of early screening. For example, lung cancer is often diagnosed after a person has a troubling cough. Only recently did the American Society of Clinical Oncologists suggest annual screening with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) for smokers and former smokers at high risk for developing lung cancer. Surely, opponents of “over diagnosis” do not want us to “uninvent” mammography, and have women wait until lumps appear before they are diagnosed.

Also, early detection has a social benefit, because it leads to greater learning about the nature of a disease, which leads to better therapies. For example, I cannot imagine how we would have any genomic medicine if organized medicine had decided that it did not want to push back the time of diagnosis before symptoms appear.

Further, it is not clear what “over diagnosis” has to do with “universal health care”. Klein cites a study by Tomason and colleagues, which compares U.S. survival rates with international survival rates. However, that study did not describe which health insurance the U.S. patients had. There are very few comparisons of cancer outcomes that compare U.S. uninsured and insured patients. A 2008 study showed that privately insured breast-cancer patients had earlier diagnosis and better outcomes than Medicaid and uninsured patients. So, score one for private health insurance and early preventive screening.

Finally, as Klein notes, the alternative to measuring survival is measuring death rates. However, that ignores all medical interventions. Knowing how many people die of a certain cancer in a population tells us nothing about the state of the healthcare system. For such a purpose, survivability appears to be the superior of two limited measurements.

The post Does The US Over Diagnose Cancer? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Upset Hindus have urged for the immediate withdrawal of duvet cover carrying image of Lord Ganesha sold by a Philadelphia (USA) headquartered firm Urban Outfitters (UO), Inc., calling it inappropriate.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that Lord Ganesha was highly revered in Hinduism and was meant to be worshipped in temples or home shrines and not to be slept upon. Inappropriate usage of Hindu deities or concepts for commercial or other agenda was not okay as it hurt the devotees.

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, also urged Richard A. Hayne and Tedford Marlow; President of Urban Outfitters, Inc., and Chief Executive Officer of Urban Outfitters Group respectively; to offer an apology.

Zed further said that such trivialization of Lord Ganesha was disturbing to the Hindus world over. Hindus were for free artistic expression and speech as much as anybody else if not more. But faith was something sacred and attempts at trivializing it hurt the followers, Zed added.

The Duvet cover which Hindu devotees are finding objectionable is claimed to be Made in the USA and is priced at $129.00-$169.00 on the website. The UO website describes it as “UO Exclusive” and “topped with a standout illustration by the talented Valentina Ramos”.

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The self-appointed leader of the newly proclaimed Islamic state in Iraq and Syria is demanding that all Muslims emigrate there and take up arms.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi posted an audio message on Islamist websites Tuesday, saying the new state is for all Muslims, regardless of skin color or nationality. He said Syria is not for the Syrians and Iraq is not for Iraqis.

Baghdadi said the holy month of Ramadan is the perfect time for all Muslims to take up weapons and flight.

Sunni extremists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant proclaimed a sovereign state for Muslims earlier this week. ISIL has seized much of northern Iraq and is one of the rebel groups fighting to topple the Syrian government.

Also Tuesday, Iraq’s new parliament ended its first session since April’s election, without selecting a new prime minister.

The lawmakers met for the first time Tuesday since being elected in late April, but acting speaker Mahdi al-Hafidh ended the session after a number of members failed to return from a break.

He said they would continue in a week if there is a possibility of an agreement.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was a favorite to claim his third term after the election, but since then Sunni Islamist militants have captured large areas of northern and western Iraq and thrown the country into crisis.

Western leaders have urged Iraqi officials to form an inclusive government to counter sectarian divisions among its Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish populations.

Iraq has been operating under a system in which the prime minister is a Shi’ite, the president a Kurd and the head of parliament a Sunni.

The surge by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant came with a rise in violence that made June an extraordinarily deadly month for Iraqi civilians and for the country’s security forces.

The United Nations mission in Iraq said Tuesday that 886 military personnel were killed last month, a number that is higher than the first five months of 2014 combined. At least 1,531 civilians were also killed, the most since July of last year.

U.N. data shows 7,160 deaths from terrorism and violence in the first half of 2014, compared to about 9,000 deaths in all of 2013.

In response to the violence, the United States has added 200 more troops to bolster security at its embassy and Baghdad’s international airport.

President Barack Obama authorized the deployment Monday, saying in a letter to Congress it will also include helicopters and unmanned drones.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said the troops already have arrived in Iraq. They join the 275 troops sent to protect the embassy last month.

These forces are separate from the up to 300 military advisers the president authorized to assist Iraq as it battles the militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, who have taken over major cities and threatened to attack Baghdad.

The latest announcement brings to nearly 800 the number of U.S. forces in Iraq.

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Anti-immigration protesters impeded the arrival of several buses transporting undocumented immigrants into a US Border Patrol station in Murrieta, California on Tuesday, some 60 miles north of San Diego.

The arrival of the group of Central American families had been decried by Murrieta’s mayor, Alan Long, who alleged that the group of immigrants, adults with their children numbering about 140 people, represented a public safety threat to the community.

Assembled protesters, who numbered 150, converged on a street leading up to an access road into the processing center, preventing the two buses from reaching the facility, reported Reuters.

Police at the scene did not attempt to break up the demonstration, which included picket signs with messages such as “Return to sender” and “Bus illegal children to the White House,” and anti-immigration slogans. Almost a half hour into the incident, the two unmarked buses turned around and left.

A representative of the border patrol agents union said that the immigrants would likely be rerouted to one of the other six Border Patrol stations in the San Diego region. Local news reports seemed to confirm that the 140 undocumented immigrants were instead being driven to the Chula Vista Border Patrol facility in San Diego County.

The Central American immigrants had been flown to San Diego from Texas, and were on their way for processing at the Murrieta facility where US immigration officials told Reuters they would be released under supervision and await deportation.

Tuesday’s incident in Murrieta highlights the influx of both families and unattended minors from Central America, which have strained the border patrol’s resources and led to the creation of several temporary processing facilities to deal with overflow conditions in Texas.

Unlike undocumented immigrants from Mexico, who are subject to immediate deportation, the latest influx of families and children feeling violence and poverty in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are instead subject to processing by authorities.Unaccompanied minors are the responsibility of the US Department of Health and Human Services, which is currently scrambling to create enough housing and provide basic care. Some 500,000 unattended children have crossed into the US illegally within the past year alone. The agency’s program, Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), was only meant to serve the needs of some 8,000 children per year while being processed through US immigration court.Temporary facilities have been set up in Nogales, Arizona to cope with overflow from South Texas. Meanwhile, another group of immigrants had been driven to a similar facility in El Centro, California, some 100 miles east of San Diego.

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