A week ago Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to like the idea of a conflict between ISIS and Iran — a conflict in which the United States should refrain from becoming aligned with Tehran.

“Don’t strengthen either of them. Weaken both,” Netanyahu said.

He may have imagined his anti-interventionism would resonate with several constituencies in the U.S.. But he couldn’t have imagined what might happen next.

With the U.S. reluctant to intervene on behalf of Maliki, he has turned to both Iran and Russia both of which have stepped up to provide military support. Iran may have already conducted air strikes in Iraq.

Now comes a twist which — if the reporting is accurate — will shock the Israelis: a significant boost to Iran’s air force.

David Cenciotti, a highly respected aviation blogger, reports:

On Jul. 1, all the seven operational Su-25 Frogfoot attack planes operated by the Pasdaran (informal name of the IRGC – the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution) have completed their deployment to Imam Ali Airbase where they will join the ex-Russian Air Force Su-25s already delivered to Iraq in the air war against ISIS (Al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).

The aircraft (three Su-25UBKM and four Su-25KM jets, according to ACIG.org sources) will be operated by four Iraqi pilots and 10 Iranian pilots.

The aircraft and support to fly them would be part of a military contract (backed by the U.S.) according to which Iran’s IRGC Air Force will receive six Su-30K multirole jets destined to Iraq.

The Su-30K is one of the best Russian combat jets available and would present a significant extra layer of defense for Iran in the event that Israel ever considers attacking Iran’s nuclear installations.

Meanwhile, a Bloomberg report on Obama’s lack of options in Iraq alongside Russia and Iran’s growing involvement, notes:

The swift action by two of America’s adversaries has prompted Obama’s critics in Washington — and even some members of his administration — to argue that the U.S. must act quickly to avert an extremist takeover of a country it invaded and occupied for more than eight years.

Obama’s ability to influence events in Iraq is limited, though, according to a U.S. intelligence official.

Two U.S. administrations have inspired distrust among both Shiites and Sunnis by invading in 2003, then failing to stabilize the country or compel Maliki to stop his revenge campaign against Sunnis, and finally withdrawing and leaving a polarized state at the end of 2011, the official said.

Now, the administration is exploring a three-pronged strategy, according to U.S. officials involved in the effort. It consists of providing Maliki’s government with limited military aid, pressing him to step down or agree to a more inclusive government and trying with Saudi Arabian assistance to pry Sunni tribesmen away from their de facto alliance with the Islamic State.

The post US Reluctance To Intervene In Iraq May Have Unintended Consequences For Israel – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Every six months, I ask people to write to the prisoners in Guantánamo, to let them — and the US authorities — know that they have not been forgotten.

The letter-writing campaign was started four years ago by two Facebook friends, Shahrina J. Ahmed and Mahfuja Bint Ammu, and it has been repeated every six months (see here, here, here, here, here and here). This latest campaign also coincides with the holy month of Ramadan, which began on June 29.

Guantánamo remains a legal, moral and ethical abomination, a place where the men still held — 149 in total — are, for the most part, indefinitely imprisoned without charge or trial, even though over half of them — 75 men — were cleared for release in January 2010 by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force established by President Obama when he took office in 2009, and three others were cleared for release in recent months by a new review process, the Periodic Review Boards.

In 2010, the task force recommended who to release, who to prosecute, and who to continue holding without charge or trial, on the extremely dubious basis that they were “too dangerous to release,” even though insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial. What this means, of course, is that the supposed evidence is no such thing, and consists largely of extremely unreliable statements made either by the prisoners themselves, or their fellow prisoners, in circumstances that were not conducive to telling the truth — involving the use of torture, for example, or other forms of abuse, and in some cases, bribery, when prisoners told lies to secure favorable treatment.

The Guantánamo Review Task Force’s report was published in January 2010, but it was not until June 2013 that a document explaining which prisoners had been placed into which categories was released through FOIA legislation. I analyzed that document here, and noted which prisoners had been placed in which categories in the prisoner list on the CloseGuantánamo.org website. Then, in February 2014, my friend and colleague Jason Leopold published a prisoner list, which he had just obtained from the Pentagon through a FOIA request, and which had not previously been made public, identifying 71 of the 166 prisoners held in April 2013 who had been designated as eligible for Periodic Review Boards. I analyzed that document here, and also added the information to the prisoner list on the CloseGuantánamo.org website.

These 71 men consisted of 46 men designated for ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial, and 25 others designated for prosecution, until two appeals court cases severely dented the viability of trials in the military commissions system at Guantánamo, when judges dismissed the convictions against two prisoners on the basis that the war crimes for which they has been tried had actually been invented by Congress and were not legally recognized.

In the list below, I have divided the remaining 149 prisoners into those cleared for release (78), those listed as being eligible for Periodic Review Boards (61) and those charged or tried in the military commissions system (10). Please note that I have kept the spelling used by the US authorities in the “Final Dispositions” of the Guantánamo Review Task Force.

Last May, after the prisoners, in despair at ever being released or being treated with justice, embarked on a prison-wide hunger strike that drew international criticism for President Obama’s failure to close the prison as he promised, the president made a new promise, in a major speech on national security issues, to resume releasing prisoners.

In the previous three years, the release of prisoners had slowed to a trickle because of opposition by Congress that the president was unwilling to spend political capital overcoming, even though he had the means to do so. The president also promised to appoint two envoys, in the Pentagon and the State Department, to deal with the release of prisoners and to work towards the closure of the prison, and, with support from important figures like Sen. Carl Levin, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Congress was also persuaded to ease its restrictions on the release of prisoners in December.

As a result of all of the above, twelve prisoners were released between August last year and March this year, and five more — all with leadership positions within the Taliban — were released in Qatar at the end of May in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the sole US prisoner of war in Afghanistan.

In his speech last May, President Obama also dropped his ban on releasing any cleared Yemeni prisoners, which he imposed after a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was recruited in Yemen, had tried and failed to blow up a plane bound for the US on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb in his underwear.

However, despite this, no Yemenis have yet been freed, even though they make up the majority of the prisoners cleared for release, and this failure — based on the US establishment’s fears regarding the security situation in Yemen — needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

Writing to the prisoners

If you are an Arabic speaker, or speak any other languages spoken by the prisoners besides English, feel free to write in those languages. Do please note that any messages that can be construed as political should be avoided, as they may lead to the letters not making it past the Pentagon’s censors, but be aware that your messages may not get through anyway — although please don’t let that put you off.

When writing to the prisoners please ensure you include their full name and ISN (internment serial number) below (these are the numbers before their names, i.e. Shaker Aamer is ISN 239)

Please address all letters to:

Detainee Name
Detainee ISN
U.S. Naval Station
Guantánamo Bay
Washington, D.C. 20355
United States of America

Please also include a return address on the envelope.

The 78 prisoners cleared for release

Below are the names of the 78 prisoners in Guantánamo — out of the remaining 149 — who have been cleared for release. The phrase used by the task force to describe the recommendations for 55 of these men was “Transfer to a country outside the United States that will implement appropriate security measures.” Their identities were first revealed in September 2012. See below for the 30 other Yemenis recommended for “conditional detention,” and also for the three men recommended for release this year by Periodic Review Boards.

The 20 non-Yemeni prisoners cleared for release

ISN 038 Ridah Bin Saleh Al-Yazidi (Tunisia)
ISN 168 Adel Al-Hakeemy (Tunisia)
ISN 174 Hasham Bin Ali Omar Sliti (Tunisia)
ISN 189 Salem Abdu Salam Ghereby (Libya)
ISN 197 Younis Abdurrahman Chekkouri (Morocco)
ISN 239 Shaker Aamer (UK-Saudi Arabia)
ISN 257 Imar Hamzayavich Abdulayev (Tajikistan)
ISN 309 Mjuayn Al-Din Jamal Al-Din Abd Al-Fadhil Abd Al-Sattar (UAE)
ISN 326 Ahmed Adnan Ahjam (Syria)
ISN 327 Ali Hussein Muhammed Shaban (Syria)
ISN 329 Abd Al-Hadi Omar Mahmoud Faraj (Syria)
ISN 502 Abdul Bin Mohammed Abis Ourgy (Tunisia)
ISN 684 Mohammed Tahanmatan (Palestine)
ISN 722 Jihad Deyab (Syria)
ISN 757 Ahmed Abdel Aziz (Mauritania)
ISN 894 Abdullah Bin Ali Al-Lufti (Tunisia)
ISN 899 Shawali Khan (Afghanistan)
ISN 928 Khi Ali Gul (Afghanistan)
ISN 934 Abdul Ghani (Afghanistan)
ISN 1103 Mohammed Zahir (Afghanistan)

The 25 Yemeni prisoners cleared for release

ISN 034 Al-Khadr Abdallah Muhammad Al-Yafi (Yemen)
ISN 035 Idris Ahmad Abd Al-Qadir Idris (Yemen)
ISN 152 Asim Thahit Abdullah Al-Khalaqi (Yemen)
ISN 153 Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman (Yemen)
ISN 163 Khalid Abd Al-Jabbar Muhammad Uthman Al-Qadasi (Yemen)
ISN 170 Sharaf Ahmad Muhammad Mas’ud (Yemen)
ISN 224 Abd Al-Rahman Abdullah Ali Shabati (Yemen)
ISN 249 Muhammed Abdullah Al-Hamiri (Yemen)
ISN 254 Muhammad Ali Husayn Khanayna (Yemen)
ISN 255 Said Muhammad Salih Hatim (Yemen)
ISN 259 Fadhel Hussein Saleh Hentif (Yemen)
ISN 511 Sulaiman Awath Silaiman Bin Agell Al-Nahdi (Yemen)
ISN 553 Abdul Khaled Al-Baydani (Yemen)
ISN 554 Fahmi Salem Said Al-Asani (Yemen)
ISN 564 Jalal Salam Awad Awad (Yemen)
ISN 566 Mansour Mohamed Mutaya Ali (Yemen)
ISN 570 Sabri Muhammad Ibrahim Al-Qurashi (Yemen)
ISN 572 Salah Mohammad Salih Al-Dhabi (Yemen)
ISN 575 Saa’d Nasser Moqbil Al-Azani (Yemen)
ISN 680 Emad Abdallah Hassan (Yemen)
ISN 686 Abdel Ghaib Ahmad Hakim (Yemen)
ISN 689 Mohammed Ahmed Salam (Yemen)
ISN 690 Abdul Al-Qader Ahmed Hassain (Yemen)
ISN 691 Muhammad Ali Salem Al-Zarnuki (Yemen)
ISN 1015 Husayn Salim Muhammad Matari Yafai (Yemen)

The 30 Yemeni prisoners cleared for release but designated for “conditional detention”

These men were cleared for release by the task force, although the task force members conjured up a new category for them, “conditional detention,” which it described as being “based on the current security environment in that country.” The task force added, “They are not approved for repatriation to Yemen at this time, but may be transferred to third countries, or repatriated to Yemen in the future if the current moratorium on transfers to Yemen is lifted and other security conditions are met.”

ISN 026 Fahed Abdullah Ahmad Ghazi (Yemen)
ISN 030 Ahmed Umar Abdullah Al-Hikimi (Yemen)
ISN 033 Mohammed Al-Adahi (Yemen)
ISN 040 Abdel Qadir Al-Mudafari (Yemen)
ISN 043 Samir Naji Al-Hasan Moqbil (Yemen)
ISN 088 Adham Mohamed Ali Awad (Yemen)
ISN 091 Abdel Al-Saleh (Yemen)
ISN 115 Abdul Rahman Mohammed Saleh (Yemen)
ISN 117 Mukhtar Anaje (Yemen)
ISN 165 Adil Said Haj Ubayd (Yemen)
ISN 167 Ali Yahya Mahdi (Yemen)
ISN 171 Abu Bakr Ibn Ali Muhammad Al-Ahdal (Yemen)
ISN 178 Tariq Ali Abdullah Ba Odah (Yemen)
ISN 202 Mahmoud Omar Muhammad Bin Atef (Yemen)
ISN 223 Abd Al-Rahman Sulayman (Yemen)
ISN 233 Abd Al-Razaq Muhammed Salih (Yemen)
ISN 240 Abdallah Yahya Yusif Al-Shibli (Yemen)
ISN 251 Muhammad Said Salim Bin Salman (Yemen)
ISN 321 Ahmed Yaslam Said Kuman (Yemen)
ISN 440 Muhammad Ali Abdallah Muhammad Bwazir (Yemen)
ISN 461 Abd Al-Rahman Al-Qyati (Yemen)
ISN 498 Mohammed Ahmen Said Haider (Yemen)
ISN 506 Mohammed Khalid Salih Al-Dhuby (Yemen)
ISN 509 Mohammed Nasir Yahi Khussrof (Yemen)
ISN 549 Umar Said Salim Al-Dini (Yemen)
ISN 550 Walid Said bin Said Zaid (Yemen)
ISN 578 Abdul Al-Aziz Abduh Abdullah Ali Al-Suwaydi (Yemen)
ISN 688 Fahmi Abdullah Ahmed Al-Tawlaqi (Yemen)
ISN 728 Abdul Muhammad Nassir Al-Muhajari (Yemen)
ISN 893 Tawfiq Nasir Awad Al-Bihani (Yemen)

The three Yemeni prisoners cleared for release by Periodic Review Boards

ISN 031 Mahmud Abd Al-Aziz Al Mujahid (Yemen)
ISN 045 Ali Ahmad Al-Rahizi (Yemen)
ISN 128 Ghaleb Nassar Al-Bihani (Yemen)

The 61 prisoners eligible for Periodic Review Boards

Of the 61 prisoners notified that they were eligible for Periodic Review Boards in April 2013, the 38 listed below had been recommended for continued imprisonment without charge or trial in January 2010 by President Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force. 26 of these 38 were recommended for “Continued detention pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (2001), as informed by principles of the laws of war.”

The 26 prisoners recommended in January 2010 for continued detention (without possible transfer to imprisonment in the US), but determined to be eligible for a Periodic Review Board in April 2013

ISN 028 Moath Hamza Ahmed Al-Alwi (Yemen)
ISN 037 Abdel Malik Ahmed Abdel Wahab Al-Rahabi (Yemen)
ISN 041 Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmed (Yemen)
ISN 042 Abd al Rahman Shalbi Isa Uwaydah (Saudi Arabia)
ISN 044 Muhammed Rajab Sadiq Abu Ghanim (Yemen)
ISN 131 Salem Ahmad Hadi Bin Kanad (Yemen)
ISN 195 Mohammed Abd al Rahman Al-Shumrant [Shumrani] (Saudi Arabia)
ISN 232 Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad Al-Odah (Kuwait)
ISN 242 Khalid Ahmed Qasim (Yemen)
ISN 244 Abdul Latif Nasir (Morocco)
ISN 324 Mashur Abdullah Muqbil Ahmed Al-Sabri (Yemen)
ISN 434 Mustafa Abd al-Qawi Abd Al-Aziz Al-Shamiri (Yemen)
ISN 441 Abdul Rahman Ahmed (Yemen)
ISN 508 Salman Yahya Hassan Mohammad Rabei’i (Yemen)
ISN 552 Faez Mohammed Ahmed Al-Kandari (Kuwait)
ISN 695 Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker Mahjour Umar (Libya)
ISN 708 Ismael Ali Faraj Ali Bakush (Libya)
ISN 713 Mohammed Al-Zahrani (Saudi Arabia)
ISN 836 Ayub Murshid Ali Salih (Yemen)
ISN 837 Bashir Nasir Ali Al-Marwalah (Yemen)
ISN 838 Shawqi Awad Balzuhair (Yemen)
ISN 839 Musab Omar Ali Al-Mudwani (Yemen)
ISN 840 Hail Aziz Ahmed Al-Maythali (Yemen)
ISN 841 Said Salih Said Nashir (Yemen)
ISN 1045 Mohammed Kamin (Afghanistan)
ISN 10025 Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu (Kenya)

Note: 037 and 131 had their ongoing imprisonment approved by Periodic Review Boards in 2014.

In addition, the 12 men below were recommended for “Continued detention pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (2001), as informed by principles of the laws of war, subject to further review by the Principals prior to the detainee’s transfer to a detention facility in the United States.” This is a reference to the Obama administration’s plans to bring prisoners to a facility on the US mainland, so that Guantánamo could be closed. These plans were blocked by Congress, but it is unclear why the task force only designated these 12 men for possible transfer to the US because, if the 26 others were to continue being held at Guantánamo, it would have been impossible to close the prison. In April 2013, they were determined to be eligible for a Periodic Review Board.

The 12 prisoners recommended in January 2010 for continued detention (with possible transfer to imprisonment in the US), but determined to be eligible for a Periodic Review Board in April 2013

ISN 027 Uthman Abd Al-Rahim Muhammad Uthman (Yemen)
ISN 029 Mohammed Al-Ansi (Yemen)
ISN 235 Saeed Ahmed Mohammed Abdullah Sarem Jarabh (Yemen)
ISN 522 Yassim Qasim Mohammed Ismail Qasim (Yemen)
ISN 560 Haji Wali Muhammed (Afghanistan)
ISN 576 Zahar Omar Hamis bin Hamdoun (Yemen)
ISN 975 Karim Bostan (Afghanistan)
ISN 1017 Omar Mohammed Ali Al-Rammah (Yemen)
ISN 1119 Ahmid Al-Razak (Afghanistan)
ISN 1463 Abd al-Salam Al-Hilah (Yemen)
ISN 10023 Guleed Hassan Ahmed (Somalia)
ISN 10029 Muhammad Rahim (Afghanistan)

The task force originally recommended 36 prisoners for prosecution. Three accepted plea deals in their military commissions at Guantánamo, and one other, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, was transferred to the US for a federal court trial (before Congress banned the transfer of prisoners to the US mainland for any reason, even trials), at which he received a life sentence. Of the remaining 32, 23 were determined to be eligible for a Periodic Review Board in April 2013, after two of the only convictions secured in the military commissions were overturned by appeals court judges.

The 23 prisoners recommended for prosecution but not charged, who were determined to be eligible for a Periodic Review Board in April 2013

ISN 063 Mohamed Mani Ahmad Al-Kahtani [Al-Qahtani] (Saudi Arabia)
ISN 535 Tariq Mahmoud Ahmed Al-Sawah (Egypt)
ISN 569 Suhayl Abdul Anam Al-Sharabi (Yemen)
ISN 682 Abdullah Al-Sharbi (Saudi Arabia)
ISN 685 Said bin Brahim bin Umran Bakush (Algeria) aka Abdelrazak Ali
ISN 694 Sufyian Barhoumi (Algeria)
ISN 696 Jabran Al-Qahtani (Saudi Arabia)
ISN 702 Ravil Mingazov (Russia)
ISN 753 Abdul Sahir [Zahir] (Afghanistan)
ISN 760 Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Mauritania)
ISN 762 Obaidullah (Afghanistan)
ISN 1094 Saifullah Paracha (Pakistan)
ISN 1453 Sanad Al-Kazimi (Yemen)
ISN 1456 Hassan Bin Attash (Saudi Arabia)
ISN 1457 Sharqawi Abdu Ali Al-Hajj (Yemen)
ISN 1460 Abdul Rabbani (Pakistan)
ISN 1461 Mohammed Rabbani (Pakistan)
ISN 10016 Zayn Al-Ibidin Muhammed Husayn (Palestine) aka Abu Zubaydah
ISN 10017 Mustafa Faraj Muhammed Masud Al-Jadid Al-Usaybi (Libya)
ISN 10019 Encep Nurjaman (Indonesia) aka Hambali
ISN 10021 Mohd Farik bin Amin (Malaysia)
ISN 10022 Bashir bin Lap (Malaysia)
ISN 3148 Haroon al-Afghani (Afghanistan)

The 10 prisoners charged or tried

The seven prisoners currently facing charges

ISN 10011 Mustafa Ahmad Al-Hawsawi (Saudi Arabia)
ISN 10013 Ramzi Bin Al-Shibh (Yemen)
ISN 10014 Walid Mohammed Bin Attash (Yemen)
ISN 10015 Mohammed Al-Nashiri (Saudi Arabia)
ISN 10018 Ali Abd Al-Aziz Ali (Pakistan)
ISN 10024 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (Kuwait)
ISN 10026 Nashwan Abd Al-Razzaq Abd Al-Baqi (Hadi) (Iraq)

The two prisoners already convicted via plea deal

ISN 768 Ahmed Al-Darbi (Saudi Arabia)
ISN 10020 Majid Khan (Pakistan)

One other prisoner convicted under President Bush

Ali Hamza al-Bahlul was not included in the task force’s deliberations, as he had been tried and convicted in a one-sided trial by military commission in October 2008, at which he refused to mount a defense. His conviction was dismissed by an appeals court in January 2013, although the government has appealed.

ISN 039 Ali Hamza Al-Bahlul (Yemen)

Note: For further information on the prisoners, see my six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list (Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five and Part Six).

The post For Ramadan, Please Write To Prisoners In Guantánamo, Forgotten Again – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

“Once again an all-Catholic, all-male, all-ultra-conservative majority of five has voted en bloc to eviscerate fundamental rights,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor of the atheist Freedom From Religion Foundation. Yup. Catholics always conspire to do things “en bloc” (save for Sonia).

“Court’s Catholic Justices Attack Women’s Rights” is the headline of Margery Eagan’s Boston Herald article (it’s those Catholics again). The American Humanist Association issued a statement with a picture of a rosary next to birth control pills. Cute.

In the Huffington Post, Ryan Grim noted that “these men [the five judges who voted for religious liberty] are Christians.” He also said, “The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Christian business owners are special.” I guess the ruling does not apply to Mormons.

Also in the Huffington Post, Ronald A. Lindsay, a militant atheist, asks, “Is it appropriate to have six Catholic justices on the Supreme Court?” His hero is JFK, who famously threw his religion overboard to win votes. “Unfortunately,” he writes, “a majority of the Supreme Court may now be resurrecting concerns about the compatibility between being a Catholic and being a good citizen….” He’s not resurrecting the old canard—the Justices are.

Philip F. Cardarella, writing in the Kansas City Star, says that when JFK ran, the question was, “How could someone who owed his religious obedience to the Pope in Rome and the doctrines of the Catholic Church truly be trusted?” Now, he opines, “Five men on the Supreme Court—all Catholics—may well just have proven him [JFK] wrong.” Got it.

Catholics are 25 percent of the population and comprise two-thirds of the high court. Jews are 1.8 percent of the population and comprise one-third of the high court. Note: only the former is a problem.

The post Too Many Catholics On The Bench? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) should immediately release the estimated 133 Kurdish boys it has held hostage in northern Syria for a month, said Human Rights Watch.

According to HRW, ISIS abducted 153 children, ages 13 and 14, from the mostly Kurdish town of Ain al-`Arab (Kobani in Kurdish) on May 29, 2014, as they returned from taking year-end exams in the city of Aleppo. Five boys escaped and ISIS released 15 others on June 28, apparently in return for the release of three ISIS members held by Kurdish forces.

Two of the boys who escaped told the media that ISIS was forcing the children to undergo lessons in Sharia and jihadist ideology, and one of these boys said that ISIS beat the children who misbehaved.

“ISIS abducted these children as they returned from taking an exam,” said Fred Abrahams, special advisor at Human Rights Watch. “To hold them hostage is both cruel and a flagrant violation of the laws of war.”

Taking of hostages and using, conscripting and enlisting children in an armed conflict are war crimes.

Human Rights Watch spoke with the fathers of three of the abducted boys, as well as three local officials from the ruling political party in Ain al-`Arab, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

All three fathers said that a large group of male and female students had travelled on May 29 to Aleppo, 110 kilometers from Ain al-`Arab, to take their official school exams because the Syrian government was not offering the exam in their town. The journey required the children to pass through territory controlled by ISIS.

The top education official in Ain al-`Arab, Hussein Mohammad Ali, told Human Rights Watch that at least 1,000 students, ages 13 to 18, travelled to Aleppo in buses and mini-buses, along with some teachers. ISIS allowed the convoy to proceed to Aleppo, but stopped the first group that returned – 13 and 14 year-olds from the ninth grade – in the ISIS-controlled town of Manbij, Ali and the two other local officials said. There ISIS fighters separated the boys from the girls and sent the girls home with the drivers.

About 100 girls from the class returned to Ain al-`Arab, Ali said. The rest of the children stayed in Aleppo and eventually returned safely to Ain al-`Arab via other routes, but 153 of the ninth-grade boys were forced to remain in Manbij.

“We found out they were kidnapped the next day [May 30] from the families of the girls who were let go,” the father of an abducted 13-year-old boy said. “The girls were let go with one of the bus drivers who drove them to a civilian house where they rested and called their families.”

The post Syria: ISIS Holds Hostage 130 Kurdish Children, Says HRW appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Gulbin Sultana

There is a common perception in Sri Lanka that India’s policy towards the island nation is greatly influenced by Tamil Nadu. This perception gained ground during the days of coalition politics in India over the last two decades, when political parties from Tamil Nadu formed part of the ruling coalitions at the centre. Therefore, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) succeeded in securing an absolute majority and its leader Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, a section of the commentators in the Sri Lankan media, particularly from the Sinhala community, heaved a sigh of relief that Tamil Nadu would no longer be able to dictate India’s Sri Lanka policy.

The turn of events after the elections seemed to strengthen this perception. Prime Minister-elect Modi ignored protests by Vaiko and Jayalalitha against extending invitation to the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the new government in New Delhi. In fact, Vaiko, who is an alliance partner of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), was arrested along with other activists while protesting against Mahinda Rajapaksa’s visit in Delhi on May 26.

However, the Sri Lankans were in for a shock when Modi reiterated the previous government’s position on the ethnic issue and requested President Rajapaksa to ‘expedite the process of national reconciliation by fully implementing the 13th Amendment and going beyond’, during their bilateral discussions in Delhi on May 27, 2014. Following this, hundreds of activists, led by the National Freedom Front (NFF), a coalition partner in the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government, protested in Sri Lanka against Modi over his advice to Rajapaksa to step up post-war reconciliation with the Tamils. The Lankan government spokesman and Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said that the government would cooperate with India but no one should interfere with the internal affairs of the country.

Sinhala Nationslist Perceptions

The Sinhala community, particularly the Sinhala nationalists had their reasons to be hopeful about a shift in India’s Sri Lanka policy under the new government. Modi was seen as a nationalist leader and therefore, it was believed that there could be better understanding and cooperation between Modi and Mahinda Rajapaksa. It was also argued by some in the media that Modi, who was allegedly responsible for human rights violations during Godhra riots in India, would not raise the issue of human rights in Sri Lanka. It was also argued that since, Modi was denied visa to the US as a private citizen, he would not cooperate with the US on any issue detrimental to Sri Lanka’s interests.1 Further, it was perceived that Modi would not have to listen to Tamil Nadu on his decisions on Sri Lanka, as his party had a majority (282 seats) in the parliament. Although Jayalalitha’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) got 37 seats out of 39 in Tamil Nadu, it would not play any decisive role in the Lok Sabha far from influencing Modi government’s policies towards Sri Lanka. Extending the same logic the optimists in Sri Lanka also hoped that the other two Tamil parties, most vocal on Sri Lankan issues— Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK)— despite being alliance partners of the BJP, would also not be able to carry much influence in this regard. Therefore, Sri Lankans saw in Modi a reliable ally and partner. However, after the bilateral discussions, Modi was seen, like previous Prime Ministers of India, as interfering in the domestic affairs of Sri Lanka.

However, it would be wrong to say that there is only one nationalist Sri Lankan view on the Modi government. Among the Sinhalas, there are also the liberals who are quite realistic about their assessments.
Indian Policy, Independent of Tamil Nadu

The liberals would argue that there may be a change in leadership in India, but the cornerstone of India’s policy vis-à-vis Sri Lanka will remain the same. Some liberal elements in Sri Lanka however make an objective assessment of the role of Tamil Nadu in India-Sri Lanka relations and argue on a number of occasions in the past the Central government in New Delhi took policy decisions without factoring in concerns in Tamil Nadu. Indira Gandhi signed the Indo-Lanka maritime boundary agreement with Sri Lanka and signed away Kachhateevu island without consulting Tamil Nadu. But during her second term, even though she had a comfortable majority in the Parliament, Tamil Nadu’s role was much more visible. Similarly, contrary to the expectations, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, which was a coalition, supported Sri Lankan government in its war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and abstained from voting in the 2013 United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Resolution against Sri Lanka ignoring the Tamil Nadu demands.

Thus they argue that irrespective of which party or coalition has been in power at the centre with or without the support of political parties from Tamil Nadu, India’s Sri Lanka policy has always been determined by its larger national and strategic interests.

Some of them would say that if Modi is an assertive and nationalist leader that does not necessarily mean he would favour a nationalist government in Sri Lanka. Rather, as an Indian nationalist he would be uncompromising on protecting India’s interest. Therefore, they suggested Mahinda Rajapaksa to have a clear strategy to resolve the ethnic issue if he wanted Indian support at the international level. To deal with the challenges coming from the Tamil diaspora and Western pressures, Sri Lanka needs solid backing from India. And India’s support will largely depend on the sincerity of the government in Colombo to devolve powers to the North under a reconciliation policy which takes due note of the grievances and concerns of all affected communities.

They would thus imply that the ball is now in Rajapaksa’s court. It remains to be seen whether he postpones the process of political reconciliation or finds reason in Modi’s observations and expedites the process, and how the Modi government responds— either to Rajapaksa’s defiance or concurrence.

The Tamil Perspective

Let us also examine the Tamil perspective here. The Tamils of Sri Lanka do not form a homogeneous community. There are pro-government, hardliner and soft-liner Tamils. Although all these factions have their own views on the issue of 13th amendment, they are unanimous in their view that India can and should play a major role in bringing meaningful political reconciliation to the country. However, they are worried about Tamil Nadu’s loss of leverage with the coming of a majority government. But after discussions between Modi and Rajapaksa, and Modi and Jayalalitha were made public, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leaders are convinced that the government of India and Tamil Nadu will not be at variance in regard to the political needs of Sri Lankan Tamils.

For the Tamils particularly the TNA, the 13th amendment is not a perfect solution, but a first step to achieve their goal of larger regional autonomy. Largely under India’s insistence, Sri Lankan government conducted Northern provincial council election last year, where TNA emerged as victorious. However, due to militarisation of the northern province and partial implementation of the 13th amendment, as well as interference of governor, who is a former army commander, the elected chief minister has not been able to deliver anything as yet. Despite Chief Minister Wigneswaran’s repeated demands for appointment of a civilian governor, withdrawal of military from the north and dismantling of High Security Zones, no initiative has yet been taken by the President in this regard. Therefore, the TNA leaders wrote letters to both Jayalalitha and Modi seeking their permission to meet them and discuss all these issues, hoping that India can convince Rajapaksa government to take positive steps in this regard.

Need to diversify the relationship

It is interesting to note that the Sri Lankan media has discussed Indo-Lanka relations under Modi mainly from the prism of Tamil question. Other than political reconciliation, human rights issues during the last phase of war and the fishermen issue, the signing of Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) is also another contentious issue between the two countries. Tamil Nadu hardly played any role in this regard. The two countries could not sign the agreement because of the objections of some businessmen in Sri Lanka considered close to the ruling party. As economic development is expected to be the key aim of the Modi government, it would be interesting to see how he approaches the issue of CEPA with Sri Lanka. However, there is hardly any discussion in the Sri Lankan media on how economic issues with India can be tackled. Sri Lankans seem to be more concerned about perceived India’s interference on the Tamil question rather than exploring other important facets of India-Sri Lanka relationship which can diversify and strengthen bilateral relationship by creating webs of interdependence between the two countries.

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

1. “BJP’s landslide victory a blessing for Sri Lanka”, The Nation, May 25, 2014

Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/SriLankanperceptionsoftheModigovernment_gsultana_010714.html

The post Sri Lankan Perceptions Of The Modi Government – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By placing the oil rig HD-981 in Vietnam’s proclaimed EEZ off the disputed Paracel Islands, China has profoundly affirmed its assertive policy of “monopolising” the South China Sea. The security order in the Sea is in flux, and the time is right for a fundamental reassessment of key trends there.

By Truong-Minh Vu and Nghiem Anh Thao

IN ALL the official (and also semi-official) documents, American interests and standpoints in the South China Sea disputes can be covered by four main principles: promote regional peace, prosperity, and security; be neutral in the overlapping sovereignty claims; maintain freedom of navigation; and encourage peaceful settlement through adhering to international law.

Nonetheless, China’s assertiveness has forced the United States into a situation whereby it has no other choice but to redefine its interests. This process, in fact, is directed by three contradictory priorities.

US’ three contradictory priorities

First of all, the US needs to focus on protecting freedom of navigation and remain neutral over sovereignty issues. However, China’s increasingly assertive behaviour since 2012 has pointed out that these two items are inter-connected. The oil rig HD-981, for instance, is likely to be used as a “mobile territory” coded as declaring Chinese actual sovereignty over the Paracel archipelago and surrounding area. By withholding Triton Island and labeling it a qualified island according to Article 121 of UNCLOS, China has employed a new way to expand its maritime claims.

Secondly, the US should safeguard its regional allies (which will strengthen America’s post-1945 alliance system), but not provoke harmful damage to Sino-American strategic partnership (especially restraining armed conflicts from occurring). The Scarborough Shoal clash in 2012 shows that these two targets could only be achieved in case China maintains its “taoguangyanghui” (meaning “not to show off one’s capability but to keep a low profile”) policy, the concept that has been partially or even totally decried by recent signals.

And thirdly, the US seeks to assure American hegemony in the Asia-Pacific and at the same time has to deal with domestic economic challenges by cutting the defence budget and concentrating on saving the economy (creating jobs and the federal government’s debt as an example). Consequently, the US is in need of a policy which does not heavily lean on hard power and require massive defence expenditures, but can be employed through other channels such as diplomacy and international law.

A more active policy is needed

Since 2011, US strategies in the South China Sea can be generalised through five different channels: (i) to oppose, or even threaten China’s aggressive behaviours in multilateral forum; (ii) to urge involved parties to find a pacific conflict settlement based on international law (in this case, to support the formation of a full Code of Conduct, COC, and to call for utilisation of the 1982 UNCLOS); (iii) to assist regional allies by providing warships and military facilities for naval defence; (iv) to support cooperation amongst US allies and potential partners; (v) to communicate with China (regarding not only the South China Sea but also the East China Sea’s associated issues) about the costs of their expansion policy.

These approaches do not seem to fully serve US interests. A more active policy, therefore, is needed.

If the US desires to establish a rules-based order in the South China Sea, it should prioritise its own ratification of UNCLOS, the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea. This spirit was shared by President Obama’s commencement speech at the US Military Academy Graduation Ceremony at West Point on May 28 2014: “We can’t try to resolve problems in the South China Sea when we have refused to make sure that the Law of the Sea Convention is ratified by our United States Senate, despite the fact that our top military leaders say the treaty advances our national security”. The treaty provides not only a legal basis but also the moral credibility and “strategic weapon” of the US in the South China Sea.

Furthermore, the US needs to support the establishment of a juridical alliance including Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines – those who are currently undertaking their territorial disputes with China. In 2012, for the very first time, Japan’s minister of foreign affairs, writing in The New York Times, confirmed the possibility of bringing the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute to the International Court of Justice.

This incident left a significant mark on the emerging orientation of “prioritising rules and laws” in conflict resolution.

In term of military cooperation, the US can assist regional states by other means, that is, to provide aid in maritime surveillance and intelligence exchange. Accordingly, the strategies which involve military operations could be applicable if the US avoids direct confrontation with China through helping its regional allies, especially Japan and the Philippines.

The US would then play its role from the rear, in other words, to “lead from behind” – a notion introduced during the Libyan war by the Obama Administration. Taken from there, the US can foster military cooperation with other countries to prevent maritime security threats; as predicted, this process would be speeded up in future.

In sum, China has tied the US into a tough game with contradictory interests. However, right amidst that paradoxical situation, the credibility of a measure stressing rules and law rather than guns and violence might be vigorously reinforced. By forming the “rule of the game” that relied on international law, the US has created unanimity to carry out military engagement in case American (and its allies’) national security and interest are threatened.

Truong-Minh Vu is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Centre for Global Studies, University of Bonn (Germany) and a lecturer at the Faculty of International Relations, College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University. Nghiem Anh Thao is a graduate student in Political Science at VU University Amsterdam/Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. They contributed this specially to RSIS Commentaries.

The post Changing Power, Changing Interests: Freedom Of Navigation In South China Sea – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Andrew Salway and his colleagues have collected 1.4 million blog posts about climate change. They aim to create a tool which will allow computers to analyse opinions expressed in large volumes of text.

There is an enormous number of blogs about climate change. If you google climate change, you get a lot of hits, but if you want to know more, it can be overwhelming.

“We’re trying to develop technology which will help people to understand big, complicated debates in a variety of different subject areas. This will be useful for both lay people and social scientists who want to analyse debates,” says Salway, a researcher at Uni Research Computing in Bergen, Norway.

Salway and his colleagues have so far collected 3,000 blogs with 1.4 million blog posts published from 2005 onwards. They aim to develop technology which will allow computers to automatically capture the essence of blogs on various subjects in different languages.

They are doing this as part of project NTAP (Networks of Texts and People). Uni Research and the University of Bergen, supported by the Research Council of Norway, are collaborating on this project which will continue until the summer of 2015.

“The technology will attempt to automatically capture the main point of what is being said, but it will also show who said it, when they said it and how much influence they have on other people’s blog posts and networks,” explains Salway.

The researchers are also interested in observing changes in blog networks over time – how opinions are formed and changed.

“We will be able to see how polarised the debate is, whether there is a network of people who only talk to one another and provide links to one another’s posts. This is how people reinforce their opinions without being open to other points of view. We can trace whether or not the debate is becoming more polarised,” says Salway.

Halfway through the project, the researchers’ impression is that the blogosphere climate debate is very polarised. Participants in the debate can be split broadly into two groups: sceptics and acceptors. Their blogs are characterised by different word types. Sceptics’ blogs look more at science, and words such as theory, IPCC, cooling, absurdity and Gore appear more often than in believers’ blogs.

“Acceptors talk more about significance and consequences. They have accepted the science and are looking to the future,” says Salway.

In this group, words such as changed, fundamental, background, conditions, grandchildren and oil are mentioned more often than in sceptics’ blogs.

The researchers’ hypothesis is that more sceptics find their way into the blogosphere than into traditional media.

“It’s best when you get an overview of all the different points of view. If you choose the wrong blog, which then redirects you to others with the same opinion, you’re forming your own opinion on the basis of biased information.

Researchers have chosen to look more closely at climate blogs because climate change is an important and relevant topic.

“It is also challenging because of its scope; it’s a topic which encompasses technology, science, politics and people. It’s a challenge for the language technology to work with such a broad spectrum of concepts,” continues Salway.

Instead of searching for individual key words, the researchers are developing a program which will be able to relate key concepts so that it is possible to find the opinion in what is being said.

“We are taking an inductive approach. This means that rather than trying to code grammar and opinions into the computer so that it can use them to understand text, we give it a large volume of text and ask it to look for patterns in that text which may provide an opinion,” explains Salway.

The patterns arise through how words appear in the text. One example of a pattern like this is:

(to (fight|slow|minimise|curb|tackle) climate change)

Most of the texts the researchers have collected are in English, but they are gathering comparable Norwegian and French texts. The technology should work regardless of language or topic.

“When we’re finished I hope we’ll have a tool which social scientists can use in their work, as well as a deeper understanding of how opinions can be extracted from a text just by looking at patterns,” says Salway.

Eventually he hopes to be able to compare what is happening in the blogosphere with what is happening in the news. One of the researchers, Knut Hofland, has collected news articles from selected media every day for 15 years.

“We hope to be able to extract political statements about climate change, for example, and compare these with opinions in the blogosphere,” says Salway.

The post Getting Computers To Analyse Opinions In Blogs appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The risk of developing cancer increases with age. Factors like smoking and regular aspirin use also affect the risk of cancer – although in the opposite sense.

Researchers from the University of Basel were now able to show that aspirin use and smoking both influence aging processes of the female genome that are connected to colorectal cancer. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute has published their results.

Already in the 1990s, scientists discovered that regular use of aspirin over long periods of time decreases the cancer risk. Since then, numerous studies have confirmed the protective effect of the drug against different types of cancer. Regular aspirin use is said to reduce the risk to develop colorectal cancer by an average of 40%. However, it is unknown how exactly the drug influences the cancer risk.

A research group led by Prof. Primo Schär, molecular geneticists at the Department of Biomedicine from the University of Basel and gastrointestinal specialist PD Dr. Kaspar Truninger, has now discovered a possible mechanism of how aspirin decreases the risk of cancer: It slows down certain aging processes of the genome – namely modifications that also play an important role in the development of tumors.

In order to analyze the relationships between lifestyle and genome aging, the researchers examined intestinal tissue samples of 546 healthy women over 50 years of age. They compared age-specific changes of gene markers, so-called DNA methylations, with the women’s lifestyle factors regarding aspirin use, smoking, body mass index and hormonal replacement therapy. The most significant effects were measured for aspirin use and smoking.

Aging Markers

“Each cell’s genome resembles a library that is full of bookmarks”, explains Schär. Thanks to these bookmarks, the cells know which genes to read, so that they can fulfill their specialized tasks as skin, muscle or intestinal cells. “But these markers are not very stable and change during the course of age. If, at certain parts of the genome, the change is to drastic, tumors can develop”, says Schär.

In this study, the researchers were able to show for the first time that this age-related decay of gene markers can be slowed down by the regular use of aspirin. Smoking on the other hand, accelerates the aging process.

“Especially affected are genes that also play a role in the development of cancer”, says Dr. Faiza Noreen, research associate at the Department of Biomedicine from the University of Basel and first author of the study.

Truninger emphasizes that it would be premature to start taking aspirin solely for cancer prevention without consulting a doctor first – especially when regarding the potential side effects such as gastrointestinal bleeding.

The post Cancer Risk: Aspirin And Smoking Affect Aging Of Genes appeared first on Eurasia Review.

St. John’s wort is the most frequently used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatment in the U.S. for depression and similar psychiatric disorders.

The many commonly prescribed medications that St. John’s wort can interact with-sometimes with serious consequences such as serotonin syndrome or heart disease-are reviewed in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

In the article “Use of St. John’s Wort in Potentially Dangerous Combinations,” Scott Davis, Steven Feldman, MD, PhD, and Sarah Taylor, MD, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, Winston-Salem, NC, present the results of a large-scale search of a national medical database across 17 years to assess how often St. John’s wort is prescribed and taken with other medications that may result in adverse reactions, such as oral contraceptives, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), blood thinners, chemotherapy medicines, digoxin, statins, immunosuppressants, or HIV medicines, for example.

The post St. John’s Wort Can Cause Dangerous Interactions With Many Common Medications appeared first on Eurasia Review.

European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said Tuesday it has confirmed previous evaluations that, based on animal studies, acrylamide in food potentially increases the risk of developing cancer for consumers in all age groups.

Acrylamide in food is produced by the same chemical reaction that “browns” food – also making it tastier – during everyday high temperature (+150°C) cooking in the home, catering and food manufacturing.

Coffee, fried potato products, biscuits, crackers and crisp breads, soft bread and certain baby foods are important dietary sources of acrylamide. On a body weight basis, children are the most exposed age groups.

European and national authorities already recommend reducing acrylamide in food as much as possible and provide dietary and food preparation advice to consumers and food producers.

Today, EFSA is launching a public consultation on its draft scientific opinion on acrylamide in food, developed by the Authority’s expert Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain (CONTAM). Until 15 September, scientists and other interested parties can comment on the draft opinion through an online public consultation.

Before finalising their opinion, Members of the CONTAM Panel will discuss this feedback together with the contributors to the online public consultation at a public meeting later this year.

The Chair of the CONTAM Panel, Dr. Diane Benford, explained key aspects of the Panel’s draft: “Acrylamide consumed orally is absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract, distributed to all organs and extensively metabolised. Glycidamide, one of the main metabolites from this process, is the most likely cause of the gene mutations and tumours seen in animal studies.”

Dr. Benford pointed out that “so far, human studies on occupational and dietary exposure to acrylamide have provided limited and inconsistent evidence of increased risk of developing cancer”.

Besides cancer, the Panel also considered possible harmful effects of acrylamide on the nervous system, pre- and post-natal development and male reproduction. These effects were not considered to be a concern, based on current levels of dietary exposure.

The draft opinion includes preliminary recommendations on future research on acrylamide involving humans and also detection and risk assessment methods for germ cell mutation. Data collection activities can also be improved, particularly to provide a more accurate indication of acrylamide levels in food produced and consumed at home.

The deadline for final adoption of the opinion is June 2015. Once finalised, EFSA’s scientific advice will support European and national decision-makers to consider possible measures to further reduce consumer exposure to this substance in food. These may include, for example, advice on eating habits and home-cooking, or controls on commercial food production; however, EFSA plays no direct role in deciding such measures.

The post Acrylamide In Food Is Public Health Concern – EFSA appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The forensic investigation of environmental pollution in developing countries is set to take a leap forward with the unveiling of an important new manual for law enforcement worldwide.

The INTERPOL Pollution Crime Forensic Investigation Manual includes practical and low-cost methods to guide investigators through the forensic environmental investigation process, from initial receipt of information of a potential violation, to evidence gathering, analysis and the preparation and presentation of data for prosecutions.

“Environmental pollution is a worldwide issue, however many countries face limited resources and training to address this problem,” said Gord Owen, Chief Enforcement Officer with Environment Canada.

“By sharing Canadian expertise with INTERPOL and its 190 member countries, we are helping to bridge that gap in order to assist our international colleagues to strengthen the law enforcement response to this problem,” added Mr Owen.

As well as outlining how to deal with specific types of pollution, such as contamination by agricultural pesticides, chemical spills, illegal fishing using cyanide, slaughter waste from an abattoir and improper disposal of sewage, the manual also gives clear instructions on the equipment needed and how to take samples from air, water, soil and wildlife.

“This manual provides technical skills in an accessible format to our member countries to assist them in achieving effective outcomes in environmental enforcement,” said Cees van Duijn, Manager of Environmental Quality within INTERPOL’s Environmental Security unit.

“This effort is a representation not only of the continued collaboration between INTERPOL and Environment Canada, but also of the international cooperation necessary to preserve the integrity of our shared environment,” concluded Mr van Duijn.

Launched at the start of the two-day (30 June and 1 July) workshop on pollution forensics at the INTERPOL General Secretariat headquarters in Lyon, France, the manual – a collaborative effort by experts from a range of countries – is also aimed at generating momentum for a long-term project plan and a training curriculum to strengthen the capacity for environmental investigations worldwide.

By harnessing the high level of expertise to be shared within the international community, the curriculum can be expanded beyond forensics to also cover investigative skills for pollution crime, as well as specialized training for prosecutors.

The handbook can be downloaded here: volume I; volume II.

The post Environment Canada And INTERPOL Unite To Fight Pollution Crimes appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(EurActiv) — A new report by the European Court of Auditors examining the European External Action Service has found that the institution has been “inadequately prepared”, lacks resources and its tasks are “vaguely defined”.

Established in 2009 by the Lisbon Treaty, the (EEAS) debuted in 2011 under the authority of the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Lady Catherine Ashton, whose mandate is winding up. The institution is a merger of different external affairs services from the Council and the Commission, comprising 140 delegations.

For the European Court of Auditors, the new service’s tasks are not clearly defined enough, and it lacks resources and organisational structure, which has undermined its efficiency, the report notes.

The external action service was created in times of financial constraints, and under conditions of uncertainty regarding the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. The auditors criticised it for having started working with “little preparatory work” and without clearly stated objectives.

The EEAS’s reply to these remarks was not very encouraging.

“The EEAS takes note of the Court’s recommendation. However the EEAS considers that the requirements of this recommendation have already been satisfied and recommendations proposed in the EEAS Review,” EEAS spokesperson Michael Mann told EurActiv.

Other challenges facing the EEAS are financial.

Being set up in times of budgetary austerity, the EEAS was not allocated sufficient resources, therefore creating a more difficult start-up environment, the auditors note.

“Establishing a new institution is inherently costly, even more so when the resulting body has to carry out new tasks. Indeed, the Council decided it without a resource assessment that should have taken into account […] the new demands (…)”

Moreover, recruitment procedures are “too complicated, too lengthy and too much costly,” Szabolcs Fazakas from the ECA said.

The audit established that the External Action Aervice should review its recruitment procedures as well as introduce a new financial framework for the management of EU delegations to reduce complexity and rigidity.

Special representatives

The special representatives of the European Union (EUSRs) abroad are another great area of concern to the auditors.

EU special representatives used to be appointed by the Council and were instrumental in coordinating foreign policy between Council and Commission. With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the high representative only can appoint EUSRs.

However, the auditors have found that EUSRs are not sufficiently integrated in the EEAS.

“The EU special representatives are only integrated into the EEAS structure when double-hatted as heads of delegation (4 out of the 11, all located outside the EU). In the absence of clear procedures, it is left to the discretion of the individual special representatives to decide how to manage coordination with the relevant EEAS departments, thus increasing the risk that their actions are inconsistent with other EU actions. Only half of the surveyed heads of delegation considered that they were adequately informed about the activities of special representatives,” the report notes.

The post EU Auditors Slam Ashton’s Office For Lack Of Efficiency appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(EurActiv) — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared his candidacy today for a more powerful presidency which rivals fear may entrench authoritarian rule and supporters, especially conservative Muslims, who see it as the crowning prize in their drive to reshape Turkey, a NATO member, and an EU candidate.

Supporters of his ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party cheered, clapped and sang pro-Erdoğan songs after deputy chairman Mehmet Ali Sahin announced the prime minister’s widely expected candidacy in the August presidential election.

“We entered politics for Allah, we entered politics for the people,” Erdoğan told a crowd of thousands in an auditorium in the capital Ankara, where the party faithful erupted into chants of “Turkey is proud of you”.

Erdoğan, hugely popular, despite a graft scandal he blamed on traitors and terrorists, is very likely to win the August vote.

In so doing, he would bolster his executive powers after 11 years as prime minister that have seen him subdue a secularist judiciary and civil service and tame a once all-powerful army. Erdogan has long sought a powerful presidency, in order to escape the vagaries and potential obstacles of the current parliamentary system.

Critics see in this a move to cast off remaining checks on his power.

“They called us regressive because we said our prayers,” Erdoğan said in a speech dotted with references to his faith.

“They said we weren’t good enough to be a village leader, that we couldn’t be prime minister, that we couldn’t be elected president. They didn’t even deign to see us as an equal person in the eyes of the state.”

Erdoğan, 60, offers himself as champion of a conservative religious population treated for generations as second class citizens. A new breed of Islamic entrepreneur has arisen, and the headscarf, symbol of female Islamic piety, is being seen for the first time in state institutions. Islamist rhetoric that 15 years ago won Erdoğan a jail term is now commonplace.

The enemy identified now in countless Erdoğan speeches as “they” is a secularist establishment that dominated Turkey until he came to power. But many secular Turks in the broader population may increasingly feel the finger pointing at them.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, said Erdoğan was polarizing society. “Someone who does not believe in the separation of powers cannot be a president,” Kılıçdaroğlu told members of his secularist party in parliament. “Someone who does not believe in the supremacy of law, whose sense of justice has not developed, cannot be a presidential candidate.”

Dwindling popularity in West

The presidency Erdoğan would assume if elected would in theory differ little from the largely ceremonial post occupied by incumbent Abdullah Gül.

But his personal authority, and the fact of being elected by the people, not parliament, would in effect allow a reading of the constitution that grants broader powers. The possibility exists that his exercise of those powers could be questioned on constitutional grounds, but a challenge could prove difficult.

The candidates’ list for the election testifies to the dramatic change wrought in Turkey by his premiership, an old secularist elite yielding to two men of Islamist pedigree and a third from a long-suppressed Kurdish minority. No one campaigns now on a secularist, anti-Islamist platform, once the only permissible step to power.

Erdoğan’s Turkey had been held up in the West as a worthy example of a functioning Islamic democracy, on the edge of a volatile Middle East.

He has also brought within reach a possible end to a 30-year Kurdish insurgency which has killed 40,000 people and vowed in his speech to maintain a peace process with militants in which he has invested considerable political capital.

Erdogan has presided over a decade of strong economic growth and rising living standards, bringing stability to a country which for decades was hamstrung by financial crises, ineffective coalitions, and a series of military coups.

Whatever his popularity at home, however, in the West it has dwindled. Last year saw a harsh crackdown on anti-government protests and a purge of the judiciary and police, which drew broad international condemnation. This year, Erdogan is fighting graft allegations against his inner circle, which he has portrayed as part of a foreign-backed plot to unseat him. Political opponents have been branded traitors and terrorists.

“He will bring to the office his own style of aggressively defiant government, typified by micro-management, bullying of opponents and a penchant for polarization rather than conciliation,” said Wolfango Piccoli of risk research firm Teneo Intelligence. “At best, this setup will preclude Turkey from adopting a more liberal and inclusive understanding of democracy; at worst, it will further push the country towards authoritarian governance,” he said.

Power struggle

Critics accuse Erdoğan of using a power struggle with the US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen as a cover to entrench dictatorial powers and create an inner state apparatus based on close personal loyalties.

During his speech, he vowed to step up his battle against what he terms Gülen’s “parallel state” within the judiciary and state organs, which he accuses of plotting to unseat him.

Erdoğan’s chief adviser Yalçın Akdoğan commented: “Erdoğan will not use any power which is not in the constitution. He will exercise every power in the constitution appropriately.

“What is expected of the president in the new period is that all state organs act together towards the same goal in a harmonious way according to state policies,” he wrote in the Star newspaper. Aides have said he would rule with a “council of wise men” – made up partly of close allies in his current cabinet – but would help oversee top government business, senior officials told Reuters, effectively relegating some ministries to technical and bureaucratic roles.

Parliamentary elections next year could give AK a two thirds majority, allowing Erdoğan to consolidate even those powers.

A senior AK Party official told Reuters that Erdoğan, as president, would act in harmony with the government, acting together with the prime minister as the joint head of the executive. Current Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu is regarded as a favorite to take over as prime minister.

The post Turkey: Erdoğan Stands For Presidency, Invokes Allah – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Parameswaran Ponnudurai

Two key decisions last week — one by the government of Laos and the other by a court in neighboring Thailand — appear to have provided a rare respite to Southeast Asia’s Mekong River.

They could result in more hurdles for Laos as it scrambles to build two controversial dams along the Mekong which environmentalists say threaten the livelihood of millions of people relying on the regional artery.

The Lao government last Thursday decided to open the proposed Don Sahong dam to further scrutiny following claims by experts that it would disrupt one of the key pathways of fish migrating between Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

Two days earlier, a court in Thailand declared that it would hear a two-year-old lawsuit brought by villagers against the country’s decision to purchase electricity generated by another Lao dam, the Xayaburi, which is under construction and environmentalists believe will destroy the river’s complex ecosystems.

“Definitely, the two decisions last week are positive signs and the result of efforts from the downstream countries and from civil society organizations,” Marc Goichot, a hydropower expert at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), told RFA. “The pressure is building up steadily and strongly.”

In April, the leaders of Cambodia and Vietnam had pressured Laos to allow the Don Sahong dam to come under a regional consultation process when they met at a summit of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) established to coordinate dam projects on the river.

Thailand, the fourth member of the MRC, had pushed for the Don Sahong dam to undergo the full “Procedure for Notification, Prior Consultation and Agreement” or PNPCA as outlined in the 1995 Mekong River Agreement that led to the formation of the commission.

The pressure from the ground against the Don Sahong, meanwhile, came from 200,000 people who have signed a petition launched by WWF.

“The petition is still running, thus this number is increasing every day,” Goichot said.

Surprise

Laos had previously agreed to only notify MRC members of the progress of the dam, which it wanted to begin building in December.

But Deputy Lao Minister of Energy and Mines Viraphonh Viravong sprang a surprise at the MRC council meeting in Thailand’s capital Bangkok last week by saying that his country would agree to resubmit the Don Sahong project to the prior consultation process.

“The change from notification to prior consultation means that everything we have put on the table will be put on the record,” Viraphonh said.

But his clarification to the media later that preparatory work for the dam building would continue even though construction would not start during the six-month consultation process has raised suspicion that Laos is using a delaying tactic.

“Worryingly, the interventions from the representatives from Laos at the MRC Council meeting in Bangkok give the impression that the prior consultation will just be a formality, and that the outcome will be a slight delay in the start of the construction, and, at best, a small change in the design; very much consistent with the model of the Xayaburi dam case,” Goichot said.

A site visit early this month by global environmental group International Rivers confirmed that workers have begun construction of a bridge connecting the mainland to an island near where the Don Sahong dam would be built. The bridge will create an access route for construction.

“Laos’ decision to submit the Don Sahong Dam for prior consultation appears to be yet another empty political promise,” International Rivers Southeast Asia Program Director Ame Trandem told RFA.

“Rather than undergoing the consultation process in good faith and seeking to agreement from neighboring countries over whether to build the project, the Lao government has already announced its intentions to proceed with building the dam,” she said.

Laos, eager to become the “battery of Southeast Asia,” had already set a “bad precedent” with the Xayaburi Dam, by building the project during consultations and declaring the process closed without the agreement of neighboring countries, Trandem added.

“They probably believe they can get away with the same bad process with the Don Sahong Dam, as the procedures have yet to be reformed and they are allowing entering into the process without planning to really engage in meaningful consultation with neighboring countries.”

‘Fig leaf’

As Laos had planned to launch work on the Don Sahong in December, the six-month consultation period it has agreed to would only delay its plans for a month, experts noted.

“So the Lao concession in Bangkok seems very much like a fig leaf for the government’s ultimate intention to build the dam,” said Milton Osborne, a Southeast Asian expert at the Lowy Institute, an international policy think tank in Sydney, Australia.

The Lao Government has shown itself adept at “gaming the rules and regulations” stemming from the 1995 Mekong River Agreement, he wrote on his blog.

MRC Chief Executive Officer Hans Guttman acknowledged that under MRC regulations, there is no need to suspend or stop the Don Sahong project during the consultation process.

Unless the four governments remedy the existing problems with the regional decision making process, the Don Sahong dam is likely to follow the same problematic path as Xayaburi, “where science, accountability and the public’s well-being takes a back seat to private interests,” Trandem said.

Construction on the Xayaburi Dam, the first of 11 dams proposed for the Lower Mekong River, began in 2012.

Environmentalists warn it could open the floodgates for the other dams to go forward, with significant consequences for the river and people living along it.

Questions

The Thai court decision has raised questions over the Xayaburi’s future.

The Thai Supreme Administrative Court asserted that it has jurisdiction to hear a lawsuit filed by villagers living along the Mekong River.

Thirty-seven Thai villagers filed a case nearly two years ago saying a power purchase agreement signed between the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) and the Xayaburi electricity generating company in Laos is illegal, approved without an assessment of the project’s environmental and health impacts and without consultations in Thailand.

Any court decision that questions the validity of the power purchase plan could dampen the U.S. $3.5 billion dam project, experts warn.

“The decision by the Thai Supreme Administrative Court to take on the Xayaburi Dam’s lawsuit was a positive step forward as the Thai government must also be held accountable for their role in allowing the project to proceed,” Trandem said.

Thailand has been one of the main drivers behind the dam as it is building and financing it and planning to purchase the bulk of its electricity.

“By committing to investigate whether the constitutional rights of Thai villagers were violated, as well as the Mekong Agreement, we hope this case will cancel Xayaburi Dam’s power purchasing agreement and that future dam projects will undergo greater scrutiny before major agreements are signed,” Trandem said.

The EGAT and four other government bodies hauled to court have about three months to respond to the claims made against them before the lawyer representing the impacted Thai communities responds to the submissions.

The Thai court’s decision to accept the case filed by Thai villagers may also open the floodgates to more suits.

“It’s setting a precedent that should apply to other dams in Laos that have clear transboundary impacts,” said WWF’s Goichot. “Villagers from Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam might consider legal action against Don Sahong.”

The post Decisions On Lao Dams Give Mekong River A Respite But Concerns Linger – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By every objective standard, Abenomics has been a complete flop. Household spending has plunged, wages have dropped for 23 months in a row, inflation is on the rise, the number of workers who can only find part-time jobs has ballooned to 38 percent, and most economists now expect 2nd quarter GDP to shrink to minus 4 percent or worse. So where’s the silver lining?

There isn’t one. It’s all hype. In fact, the only part of Prime Minister’s Shinzo Abe’s economic strategy that has succeeded has been the public relations campaign, which has bamboozled the Japanese people into believing that pumping trillions of yen into financial assets will lead to widespread prosperity. Good luck with that. We can see how well that worked in the US where stock prices have nearly tripled in the last five years, but the real economy is still flat on its back. So why would quantitative easing (QE) work in Japan when it hasn’t worked in the US?

It hasn’t, and it won’t. The whole thing is a farce. But political leaders like Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and their central bank lackeys continue to promote this absurd flimflam because it boosts profits for their constituents. That’s what this nonsense is all about; trying to find new ways to enrich the parasite class during a “self induced” long-term slump. The only problem is that everyone else is worse off than before, mainly because the silver spoon slackers at the top of the heap are getting a bigger and bigger share of the pie. That just leaves a few crumbs for everyone else, which is why economic activity has slowed to a crawl. It’s because the people who typically spend money and rev up the economy, have no money to spend. It’s that simple. Check out this blurb from the Testosterone Pit:

“The Abe administration is doing everything in the book to bolster the fortunes of Japan Inc.: offering tax cuts, more public works, and stimulus packages, snatching the Olympics by hook or crook, and cranking up inflation. In April, prices for all items soared 3.4% from a year earlier, and goods prices a confiscatory 5.2%. Yet wages were stuck in the mire, and adjusted for inflation, they plunged…

Then came the consumption tax hike, a broad-based tax that impacts consumers and businesses across the economy. The months before the effective date of April 1, consumers and businesses binged to save that extra 3% in taxes on big-ticket items, and businesses rang up sales faster than they could count.” Japan Inc.’s Worst Quarterly Outlook Since The 2011 Earthquake, Testosterone Pit

How do you like that? So, with the economy already on the ropes, class warrior Abe decided to squeeze working people even more by pushing through a regressive sales tax that put household spending into a nosedive. (Get a load of this ski-jump chart of household spending)

But while Abe has been raising taxes on the workerbees, he’s cutting them for his crooked corporate buddies. As part of his dubious “growth strategy” the Japanese PM has promised to slash corporate taxes from 35 percent to 29 percent, a move that will reduce revenues and increase Japan’s humongous public debt even more. (Japan’s debt is already a gargantuan 240 percent of GDP.) Many analysts think that Abe’s move could trigger a panic in the bond market if investors start to think he’s not serious about addressing the debt. Even so, that’s a risk that Abe’s willing to take as long as it saves his cheesy corporate friends a few shekels.

Of course the best way to pay down the debt, is through economic growth. But that can’t be done when wages are either stagnant or dropping as they are in Japan. Check this out from mni market news:

“Base wages, the key to a recovery in cash earnings, fell 0.2% on year, marking the 23rd consecutive decrease…. In real terms, total wages slumped 3.1% in April, showing the annual inflation rate above 1% is hurting household income in the absence of substantial wage growth and in light of the sales tax hike to 8% from 5% on April 1″. (Japan Apr Total Wages Post 2nd Straight Rise; Base Wages Down, MNI Market News)

The economy can’t grow when demand is weak, and demand is perennially weak in Japan because wages and incomes are shriveling. That means less personal consumption, less economic activity, and smaller GDP. Recently, the situation has gotten worse due to the Bank of Japan’s money printing operations which have increased inflation which has reduced worker’s buying power. Check this out form the Japan Times:

“Consumer prices climbed in May at their fastest pace in 32 years, swelled by the hike in the consumption tax and higher utility charges that are squeezing Japanese budgets as wage gains remain limited.

Consumer prices excluding fresh food but not energy, rose 3.4 percent from a year earlier, the Statistics Bureau said Friday…Household spending subsequently sank 8 percent, more than the forecast fall of 2.3 percent, separate data showed…

All 14 major gas and electricity companies raised prices from May to the highest level since the current pricing system began in May 2009, according to the Asahi Shimbun. Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced a price hike of 5.3 percent in May for households, reflecting the higher tax, rising energy costs and other factors.” (Prices climb most in 32 years as wages limp along, Japan Times)

So, with prices rising and wages stagnant, Japan is experiencing what most analysts anticipated when Abe first announced his plan to hike the sales tax, that is, household spending has dropped precipitously increasing the likelihood of another recession. Abe decided that pushing more of the government’s operating costs onto working people was more important than the health of the economy.

Naturally, Abe’s policies have had a catastrophic effect on the working poor. As we noted earlier, the number of part-time workers in Japan has grown dramatically over the last few years. According to Reuters,

“part-time, temporary and other non-regular workers who typically make less than half the average pay has jumped 70 percent from 1997 to 19.7 million today — 38 percent of the labor force.”

Abenomics has made life considerably harder for these people due to the higher taxes, soaring prices, and reduced welfare benefits. The data show that Japan’s poverty rate is “the sixth-worst among the 34 OECD countries” while “child poverty in working, single-parent households is by far the worst at over 50 percent, making Japan the only country where having a job does not reduce the poverty rate for that group.” (Japan’s working poor left behind by Abenomics, Reuters)

Abe’s attack on working people has intensified in the last few weeks as he’s unveiled parts of his “third arrow” of structural reforms. Along with cutting corporate taxes, Abe wants to take the Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), “the world’s deepest pot of savings”, and shove it in the stock market. George W. Bush wanted to do the same thing with Social Security but abandoned the idea after Lehman Brothers collapsed and the economy tanked. Now Abe is pushing the same loony plan which will put the long-term security of Japan’s elderly at risk just to boost profits for his voracious plutocrat friends.

Abe also wants to eliminate overtime pay, make it easier for corporate bosses to fire workers, and allow foreign workers to care for children and the elderly in a series of “special economic zones”. All of the so called “reforms” are just ways of extracting more wealth from labor by loosening regulations. None of them have anything to do with increasing productivity, boosting capital investment or sparking more innovation. They’re all about wringing every last dime out of the people who are already so broke they can barley keep their heads above water.

On top of it all, Abe’s easy money policies have ignited the same flurry of “irrational exuberance” they have in the US. As Marketwatch notes, “A greater number of investors are demanding increased dividends and share buybacks than (ever) before.”

Stock buybacks are a particularly execrable activity that pumps up stock prices without adding anything to productivity. It’s pure-unalloyed asset inflation prompted by insanely loose monetary policies. Here’s more from Marketwatch:

“Japanese companies … are sitting on a record amount of cash: about $3 trillion at the end of March …

A number of large Japanese companies, including Toyota, NTT Docomo and Mitsubishi Corp., have announced plans for big stock buybacks, which improve shareholder returns by increasing the value of the remaining shares outstanding.” (In Japan, dividends, buybacks take the stage, Marketwatch)

Yipee! Shareholders are getting richer on Abe’s idiot programs. Too bad they’ll be gone when the bubble bursts and the system plunges back into crisis.

What a screwball system.

Abenomics has nothing to do with prosperity, growth or even deflation. That’s all BS. The policy is designed to do exactly what it does, generate hefty profits for slacker speculators and corporate muck-a-mucks while everyone else faces higher prices, lower wages and a dimmer future.

If that’s not class warfare, then what is it?

The post Why Abenomics Flopped – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Selcuk Colakoglu

Hardly a day passes without a hot conflict breaking out in various parts of our globe. The Central African Republic, South Sudan, Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine are the latest examples of conflict zones where disputes between different ethnic and religious groups have culminated in hot conflict. Under such circumstances, the successful peace process between the Filipino government and the Muslim minority in the Philippines shines out. In this respect, the question of whether the ongoing peace process in Mindanao, the southernmost major island in the Philippines, can be concluded successfully, and whether such an experience can serve as a source of inspiration for conflicting parties all around the world, is a truly important one.

In addition to this question, the state of affairs concerning the Mindanao peace process and future prospects were discussed in detail at a panel meeting organized by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on June 26-27, 2014. The conference was entitled “III. Istanbul Conference on Mediation”, the third leg of a conference series on the theory and practice of mediation all around the world with each panel focusing on a key case. The Mindanao peace process was presented as a successful case in which mediation delivered results by the panelists, a number of whom were themselves leading the process. Prof. Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, the Chair of the Government of the Philippines Peace Panel; Mohaqher Iqbal, the Chair of the Negotiation Panel of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF); Tengku Dato Ab Ghaffar Bin Tengku Mohamed, the Chief Facilitator for the Government of Malaysia in Mindanao Peace Process; and Sayyid Qasim El-Masry, the Special Envoy of the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for Peace in Southern Philippines, discussed the peace process from the day it was initiated up to now.

Progress in the process

The Mindanao issue and the consequent peace process go back a long way in the modern history of the Philippines. Initial armed conflicts in the region began after the Mindanao National Liberation Front (MNLF) was founded in 1968, and continued in low-intensity until 1996. While peace talks were occasionally arranged between the Filipino government and MNLF in the course of these three decades, the most salient step in this regard was taken in 1976 when the Tripoli Agreement was signed through the agency of Libya. Clashes continued afterwards, laying the groundwork for the Final Peace Agreement signed in 1996. However, a splinter rebel group called the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was not satisfied with the accord because they aspired to attain full independence. Hence MILF broke away from MNLF, gradually evolving into the most powerful armed group representing the Muslim minority of Mindanao. Peace negotiations were conducted through two distinct channels, one involving MNLF and the other addressing MILF, as of 1996.

The international community has always provided assistance to constructive efforts aimed at the resolution of the Mindanao conflict, and there has been no direct or indirect intervention by foreign actors trying to undermine the process. Regional organizations such as ASEAN and the OIC, as well as neighboring countries and great powers have been actively supporting the peace process. It was especially Malaysia and Indonesia, two Muslim-majority countries neighboring the Philippines, which after 1968 made significant contributions aimed at securing an environment of constructive dialogue between Manila and the Muslims of Mindanao. In such a fashion, despite some interruptions, significant steps were taken in accordance with the institutionalization and internationalization of the Mindanao peace process after 1996. Malaysia became a country facilitator in 2001. The International Monitoring Team (IMT), comprised of Malaysia, Libya, Brunei, Japan, Norway, and the EU was established in 2005. Finally, the first combined mediation initiative was seen with the participation of both states and NGOs in 2009. It was called the International Contact Group (ICG), and it included Japan, the UK, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey alongside four international NGOs (Muhammadiyah-Indonesia, The Asia Foundation-US, the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue- Switzerland, and Conciliation Resources-UK). As a result of such international mediation efforts, Manila and MILF signed the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro in October 2012.

The roadmap and implementation schedule

An elaborate roadmap and schedule were put together for the smooth implementation of the Mindanao peace process. The Framework Agreement of 2012 formed the backbone of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro which was signed on March 27, 2014. Political, security-related, and socio-economic measures are being formulated thanks to the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, which is expected to become fully effective by 2016. By this time authorities believe the resolution process will be completed in every respect, and all practical deficiencies will be remedied. In essence, attaining peace in exchange for allowing some degree of autonomy to the Bangsamoro region is the aim of all parties involved. Presently, the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) is being established for handling the transition process in question. As for the question regarding what constitutes the most critical ingredient of the peace process: it is the disarmament of MILF fighters one by one.

Despite all its complexity, and diversity of related mechanisms, the political consensus-building phase of the Mindanao peace process was successfully completed thanks to the constructive assistance and participation of the international community. The implementation phase that we are currently passing through can also achieve success in the case that all parties involved continue with their constructive assistance and maintain their positive attitudes.

Challenges

That said, there are still risks which need to be mentioned with regard to the Mindanao peace process. First of all, the process preceding the agreement in 2012 was a product of an initiative undertaken by President Benigno Aquino III himself. It is uncertain whether Manila will continue to back the peace process if the government changes hands. There are examples in the country’s past indicating that the process could be halted if a new government and president were to come to power and suspend relevant policies. However, experts are of the opinion that it will be difficult for any government in Manila to draw back in defiance of all international efforts and attention focused on the issue, unless MILF backs out.

Another uncertainty with regard to the peace process is whether different attitudes can emerge among various Muslim armed groups. As there are different factions within MNLF and MILF, there are also other independent groups. Indeed, split from MILF, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) already declared that it does not recognize the 2012 agreement. MILF, Manila, and international parties involved all indicate that the Muslim population in Mindanao craves peace and stability after decades of conflict, therefore groups which can inhibit the peace process do not rest on a popular base as their arguments more or less lack public legitimacy. Moreover, they believe marginal groups such as BIFF and Abu Sayyaf will gradually dissolve over time.

Future expectations

Within a global context where regional conflicts and clashes are mostly entangled in a Gordian knot, the need to hear success stories is dire. The Mindanao peace process provides us with a success story that we can all make an inference from, as it demonstrates that progress and gains can be made through hard work. If the Mindanao peace process can be successfully concluded, such an experience will inspire efforts aimed at resolving similar tensions within ASEAN countries. In this way, beyond economic integration, the process of political and social integration among ASEAN members will be catalyzed in a manner resembling that of the past experience of the EU. The Mindanao peace process will furthermore motivate the international community to make an endeavor to overcome similar conflicts through dialogue and negotiation.

The post Can The Mindanao Peace Process End With A Success Story? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Emre Tunç Sakaoğlu

On Monday, June 30, the Pakistani army launched a ground offensive against the Taliban in Miran Shah, the administrative center of the North Waziristan Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), a semi-autonomous region located in the northwest of the country.

The operation’s codename is “Zarb-e Asb”, or the “strike with the sword of Prophet Muhammad”; and it officially targets multiple terrorist organizations including Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Al Qaeda, East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), and the Afghanistan-based Haqqani network.

According to Pakistani media, the operation is expected to last at least a couple of months.

The United States, along with other allies of Pakistan such as China, have long been urging Islamabad to commence a wide-scale operation against Taliban strongholds in the region.

However, according to analysts , it is still unclear as to whether the Pakistani military is convinced in uprooting the Taliban as a whole from the region or whether the latest operation is actually limited in its objectives and refrains from targeting “friendly groups” such as the Haqqani network, despite a military statement to the contrary on Monday.

Analysts also point out that the government in Islamabad, led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, had been striving to strike a peace agreement with the Taliban for months, while the military-intelligence establishment is said to be sympathetic to the Taliban.

But even when the peace talks seemed to be making progress, the Taliban pressed its luck and continued with sporadic attacks. Added to this is the urgent need to secure the country’s borders to avoid so-called “proxies” from ravaging Pakistan’s own border regions after NATO troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, scheduled for late 2014.

In response to a major assault on Pakistan’s largest airport in the coastal city of Karachi on June 8 that culminated in the death of at least 36 people including the ten assailants, air operations targeting the Taliban finally commenced on June 15.

Civilian, political, and religious circles in Pakistan have offered widespread support to the operation, which is commonly referred as a “jihad” against terrorism.

A ‘ghost region’

North Waziristan is a remote, tribal region bordering Afghanistan and is infamous for its mountainous terrain that allows Taliban militants to carry out guerilla warfare.

The government has been trying to root out some insurgent groups from the northwest and especially from North Waziristan since 2005, but a continuous flow of militants escaping the NATO intervention in Afghanistan has undermined the efficiency of the Pakistani army’s intermittent operations and turned the region into a sanctuary for terrorists.

Moreover, as the civilian residents in the region, numbering around 450,000 in total just before the latest operation, were entirely evacuated directly after the failure of peace talks with the Taliban, the region became all the more desolate.

Last month, according to reports, around 100,000 locals fled as internal refugees with only their clothes and a few basic items to the city of Peshawar and nearby towns such as Bannu in the Khyber Pakhtunkwa (KB) province.

Around 7,000 families who arrived at KB were resettled in thousands of government-sponsored tents approximately 250 kilometers to the northeast of their houses in Miram Shah, according to officials.

Hundreds of thousands of internal refugees who did not depart for KB have either set off on the long road towards the southern cities of Karachi and Lahore, or entered Afghanistan.

But the drama is not about only the latest influx of refugees. Over the last 9 years around 2.1 million residents of the FATA, which covers a large territory including North Waziristan, have already left due to the Taliban’s de facto invasion of the region. The influx of refugees to nearby towns such as Bannu in KB had already reached 100,000 families prior to the new exodus which took place recently.

Widespread panic is added to food shortages and epidemics among the internally displaced according to locals. Moreover, reports say that since the Taliban banned the locals from receiving government assistance and threatened them, many are afraid to register in refugee camps.

Operations in full spate

On Monday, military officials stated that since the initial ground advance began two weeks ago, 376 militants were killed in exchanges of fire and 19 were captured after surrendering. Those who were killed were mostly ethnic Uighurs from China, or Uzbeks.

Up until now 17 soldiers have also been killed and three are severely wounded.

The military’s death toll remains unclear as the region is strictly sealed off to foreign and domestic media.
Therefore, there is no clear information that can be verified regarding the number of civilian casualties.

Moreover, some media reports and popular politicians, such as Imran Khan, suggest that thousands of civilians who did not have the means to evacuate their houses and stayed behind, and others who refused to leave the region in order to protect their homes and livestock, are currently in grave danger.

Nevertheless, a special service group escorted by infantry troops is currently conducting a door-to-door inspection that started on Monday morning.

According to officials, improvised explosive device (IED) preparation factories and underground tunnels were discovered in the region after the operation was initiated.

The post Pakistan: Army Launches Ground Offensive Against Taliban – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Michael Lombardi

By no surprise to me whatsoever, the government’s third and final estimate of first-quarter U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) came in at a negative annual pace of 2.9%. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, June 25, 2014.) The U.S. economy’s growth rate in the first quarter of this year was the worst since 2009.

I’ve been writing since the fall of 2013 that the U.S. economy would see an economic slowdown in 2014. I have been one of the few economists warning of a recession in 2014. My calls are not to scare or create fear; rather, they are based on the government’s own data.

Not to boast, but it’s like the creators of the first-quarter U.S. GDP report have been reading Profit Confidential! Everything we have been warning about came out in this most recent GDP report.

I’ve been harping on about how the U.S. consumer was tapped out…and low and behold, consumer spending in the U.S. economy increased by only one percent in the first quarter of 2014. In the fourth quarter of 2013, consumer spending increased by 3.3%. The fifth year into the so-called economic “recovery” and consumers are pulling back on spending for the simple reason that they don’t have money to spend.

The poor have no money; the middle class has been wiped out. And the rich are far from spending enough to make up for the lack of spending by the poor and middle class.

But have no fear, dear reader; stocks are up. The stock market is telling us we have nothing to worry about? It seems so.

I, for one, will not be surprised to see another decline in U.S. GDP in the second quarter of 2014. (But it might take another three revisions by the government to get the true story out…just like 1Q GDP.)

For economic growth in the U.S. economy, we need consumer spending. While I don’t have data yet for the month of June, consumer spending in the first two months of the second quarter (April and May) is worrisome.

Consumer spending, adjusted for inflation, declined in both April and May. The month-over-month decline in the real consumption expenditure in the month of April was 0.18% and 0.08% in May. (Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis web site, last accessed June 27, 2014.)

Dear reader, it only takes two negative quarters of GDP for the U.S. economy to be in a technical recession. Don’t buy into the mainstream view that first-quarter GDP was negative because of poor weather conditions. The quarter we just finished doesn’t look any better for the U.S. economy.

Why do I make such a big deal of us entering a recession again? Consumer confidence in the U.S. economy is pathetic. Once they hear the economy is in a recession, consumers will tighten that wallet even further.

About that stock market, since it is a leading indicator, could the market already be pricing in a recession for the U.S. economy? After all, if we did enter a recession again, the Fed would likely have to change its policy and start printing money again…something both stocks and gold love. Maybe that’s why they are both rising in tandem this time.

This article Stock Market Pricing-in a Recession? was originally posted at Profit Confidential

The post Stock Market Pricing In A Recession? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Andrew Garfield

In the final weeks before the second round of the Afghan presidential elections, my company undertook two polls of likely voters to determine which of the two candidates was in the lead – Dr. Abdullah Abdullah or Dr. Ashraf Ghani. Our primary motive for doing this was to provide transparency in the election process and to try and deter fraud at the polling stations and in the counting process.

Many in the Western media and policy community assumed that Abdullah was a “shoo-in” for the second round because the official results from the first ballot had Abdullah at 45 percent and Ghani at 31.5 percent and because many of the candidates eliminated in the first round had endorsed Abdullah, the assumption being that voters would follow their chosen candidates’ advice. I had seen no evidence, however, that Pashtun and Uzbek voters would follow such endorsements and vote for Abdullah. In a straight two-way contest, I believed that the demographic numbers still favored Ghani over Abdullah.

The two polls we undertook – one by telephone and the other face-to-face – had Ghani gaining significant momentum since the first round with a lead amongst likely voters of 48-49 percent to Abdullah’s 42-45 percent. These results showed that Ghani had secured the support of most Pashtun and Uzbeks voters and that he had retained the limited support he had secured with the other ethnic groups. Given that Abdullah was still around the 45 percent level, this indicated that he had just about maxed out his support base and could only increase his share of the vote if he could secure additional Pashtun support, which I considered unlikely

My team then carried out two exit polls – again one face-to-face conducted at polling stations, and the other a telephone survey. We asked Afghan voters, who confirmed that they had just voted, whom they had voted for, and a majority (53/54 percent) said they had chosen Ghani over Abdullah (47/46 percent). These results were entirely consistent with the polling since March, showing Abdullah stuck at around 45 percent and with Ghani winning by 4-6 points in a reasonably free and transparent election.

POST-SECOND ROUND CONTROVERSY

It seems likely that significant election fraud has taken place during and after the second round of these elections.  There was certainly a significant level of fraud in the first round, with hundreds of examples of the more serious types of fraud including ballot box stuffing – “stuffing the sheep.”  Very soon after the end of second round voting, Abdullah and his supporters began making very public accusations about rampant fraud and within days he had withdrawn from the counting process.  According to the BBC, Abdullah said his decision to stop co-operating with the election authorities had not been intended to disrupt the process, but to prevent a fraudulent election result and to protect people’s votes. The BBC has also noted that Ghani has also made accusations of fraud but it has been Abdullah’s accusations that have received the most coverage in Western media, perhaps because most Western journalists were persuaded – wrongly, as I have shown – that Abdullah would easily win the second round.

Another reason for the differential treatment of the candidates’ accusations of fraud is the pervasive myth that Abdullah was robbed of the presidency 5 years ago in the 2009 election. Indeed, a BBC report concluded: “Both presidential contenders have lodged complaints about the conduct of the elections, and for Mr. Abdullah – who felt he was robbed of the presidency back in 2009 – there is a sense that history is repeating itself, our correspondent

A LOOK BACK AT THE 2009 ELECTION

In the summer of 2009, my company was commissioned by the U.S. Department of State to run two polls prior to the 2009 Afghan Presidential Election. Our first poll was fielded between 8^th and 17^th of July 2009, with the second running from July 15^th to July 23^rd. The first wave was conducted amongst 3,556 Afghans age 18+ and our poll had an overall margin of error of +1.64% in 19 out of 20 cases. Data shown among the 2,823 registered voters interviewed had a margin of error of +1.84% in 19 out of 20 cases. The surveys were conducted in person across all provinces, using a multi-staged stratified sampling procedure in all of Afghanistan’s provinces.

These slides clearly show President Karzai well ahead of his nearest rival Abdullah with all of those interviewed and with likely voters. With both groups Karzai was ahead of Abdullah by around 15 percent. Our team therefore correctly assessed that in a fair and transparent election, President Karzai would fail to secure the 50.1 percent majority he would need to win the election outright and that there would have to be a runoff with Abdullah. However, we had Abdullah well behind in that first vote probably by as much as 15 points. The final official results of the election had President Karzai at around 49 percent and Abdullah at around 31 percent, although as we know for some time prior to the official results finally being released, President Karzai’s supporters claimed that he had won outright – a result that could only have been achieved with systematic nationwide election fraud.

As quickly became apparent, there was certainly ample evidence of widespread fraud in President Karzai’s favor and it was only under heavy U.S. pressure that the President agreed to a runoff. However Abdullah then refused to participate in the second round saying “I will not participate in the November 7 election,” because his demands for changes in the electoral commission had not been met, and a “transparent election is not possible.” Abdullah also said the Afghan people should not accept results of an election from the current election commission, and stated that Karzai’s government had not been legitimate since its mandate expired in May 2009. However, it is my contention that this was a shrewd political move on the part of Abdullah designed to create a narrative of the wronged and robbed candidate, when in reality he knew he could not win the second round. Following the advice of Sun Tzu, he did not fight the battle he could not win. And in doing so the myth of his being robbed was born.

Using the evidence of our two polls, we projected as early as August 2009 that President Karzai would secure an overwhelming victory in a second round, defeating Abdullah by approximately 60 percent to 40 percent of the vote. We came to that conclusion for two primary reasons – ethnic support and the overall popularity gap between the two leading candidates.

This ethnic breakdown of support for the main candidates in our first poll showed that President Karzai had a huge lead amongst Pashtun voters and that he had secured a sizable minority of the Tajik vote, which was Abdullah’s base. Karzai was also slightly more popular with Hazara and significantly more popular with Uzbeks. Ergo in a second round he was far more likely to pick up votes from the eliminated candidates from these key minority ethnic groups. We also felt that in all probability he would secure most of the Pashtun vote, once Pashtun candidates like Ashraf Ghani had been eliminated.

Data from the first poll also showed that President Karzai was far more popular with likely voters than Abdullah. This is another strong indicator that in a second round a majority of voters would choose the President over his rival. Indeed President Karzai remained popular across all ethnic groups, which bode well for an easy victory in a second round.

Glevum was not able to publish the findings of our second poll, which was completed after a media ban imposed by the Department of State in the final weeks of the election.  However, this poll also showed Karzai with a commanding lead over Abdullah (33 percent to 21 percent) and a similar split of the ethnic vote.

Both polls demonstrate that while President Karzai could not win the first round outright he was well on course to win the second round handsomely – a narrative that is now overshadowed by the perception of Abdullah as a candidate that was robbed. Notwithstanding the accusations of fraud, I still think that voters would have favored Karzai over Abdullah had the second round been held. Indeed, Karzai retained positive popularity numbers even after the second round was cancelled.

CONCLUSION

There is no doubt that the second round of the 2014 President elections has been marred by fraud, as was the first round. However, at this point the perception in the Western media at least is that Abdullah is the candidate that has suffered the most and this is reinforced by his own narrative that he was robbed in 2009, which seems to have become accepted wisdom even with the BBC. I contend that this narrative is a total myth created by Abdullah himself and that the evidence simply does not support that perception. President Karzai would have won a second round in 2009 by a wide margin, as Abdullah had maxed out his core vote and could not erode the core vote of the President.

Notwithstanding the accusations of fraud from both sides this time around, the four Glevum polls undertaken just before and during the second election also indicate that he has maxed out his vote this time, too, peaking at around 45 percent and Ghani, by dint of simply turning out his larger core vote, has won the 2014 election. Whatever the final result of the election, the future prosperity of Afghanistan is not helped at such a sensitive time by Western media and officials validating Abdullah’s assertions about the fraud at this election by suggesting he was robbed in 2009.  That simply was never the case.

About the author:
Andrew Garfield is a Senior Fellow in FPRI’s Program on National Security. A U.S citizen since 2010, served as a British military then senior civilian intelligence officer, finishing his U.K. government service as a policy advisor in the UK Ministry of Defense (MOD). Since emigrating to the U.S. in 2004, he has worked exclusively for US clients including the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Army, and more recently the Department of State. In late 2006, Mr. Garfield founded Glevum Associates LLC, a company that specializes in conducting Face-to-Face Research and Analysis in conflict and post-conflict societies.

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

The post The Afghan Elections: Is Abdullah Right That He Was Wronged (Twice)? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been formally placed under investigation after entering police custody for questioning on Tuesday in a probe into alleged influence peddling.

Sarkozy is under suspicion of trying to use his influence to obstruct an investigation of his 2007 election campaign.

A prosecutor said Wednesday that the former French leader tried to get information from a judge about the probe.

Sarkozy’s lawyer and a judge involved in the case were also placed under formal investigation.

Sarkozy turned himself in Tuesday at a police station in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. French media say this is the first time a French former head of state has been detained for investigation.

The probe involves the question of whether the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi contributed funds to Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign.

Investigators are acting on evidence collected after tapping Sarkozy’s phone lines.

Sarkozy has denied any wrongdoing in the case, which is one of several against him that may affect any future run at a return to office. After losing to current president Francois Hollande in 2012, Sarkozy has indicated he may mount another presidential campaign.

The post France: Sarkozy Investigated For Influence Peddling appeared first on Eurasia Review.