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Scotland, Nationalism And Freedom – OpEd

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Scotland recently rejected freedom, and voted in favor of staying in the United Kingdom. Of course, this was not the last time we have heard from Scottish nationalism, and voices for self-determination and recognition will continue to be heard, until sovereignty is achieved and Scotland’s earns its rightful place among the nation-states of the world.

However, apart from setting a paradigm in self-determination for the rest of the world, the Scottish referendum also gave us a lesson in the ground realities of history and nationalism.

From The Annals of History

1707 was a big year for both England and Scotland. Voluntary acts passed by the Scottish and English parliaments led to the Union of the two countries, and resulted in the creation of the Parliament of Great Britain. Back then, there were several ideological pillars on which the Union rested: the British Empire, the Royal Navy, Protestantism, et al.

Yet, after over 300 years, all of these ideological notions have either perished or become virtually dormant. Thus, when Norman Davies predicted in 2012 that the United Kingdom no longer deserves to be “united”, it seemed like the only plausible and logical choice for Scotland to take the next step forward and head towards liberty.

On Nationalism

The desire to have one’s own nation-state, or at least to be recognized as a nation-state, can have either of these two causes:

  1. Being forced to be a part of some other country or nation
  2. Being eager to be a part of one own’s country or nation.

In the first case, secessionist movements in the erstwhile Soviet Union serve as the biggest examples. Kremlin’s policies in 1920s-30s created a jigsaw puzzle of pseudo-ethnic entities all around USSR, and this eventually led to ethnic outbursts and nationalist movements towards the end of the twentieth century.

The second case, on the other hand, is a typical showcase of pure nationalism. It is not enough to be recognized as a part of one state; nationhood is mandatory. Both Scotland and England, for the rest of the world, were one entity in terms of identity: British. However, being British is not the same as being Scottish, or being European. This is where the concept of nationalist identity comes into play: ethnic distinctions can be extinguished over a period of time, but national distinctions tend to stick around.

As such, being a part of UK not only undermines one’s Scottish identity, but also deprives him/her of a pan-European supra-national identity.

The Question of Scotland

So why did Scotland vote ‘No’?

British nationalism is a political consequence. It has been constructed, not built. Thus, each time a constituent state of the United Kingdom rethinks its identity or wishes to change the status quo, London’s political considerations come into play. UK can preserve itself (at least as of now) by citing economic, social, territorial and even religious reasons. Practical constraints, if properly manipulated, can overshadow nationalist sentiments. An independent Scotland can perform well — ‘can’ is not the same as ‘will’.

In that case, when will Scotland attain freedom?

Eventually.

Once again, take up the case of Soviet Union. Much like London, Kremlin too had constructed a sense of nationalism all around USSR. Soviet identity came before other ethnic or regional ones. However, the day Perestroika promised a sense of freedom, it triggered nationalist sentiments and the Union collapsed.

In a similar fashion, England has promised a good deal of stuff to Scotland. David Cameron made every emotional appeal that he could come up with, just to retain Scotland in the United Kingdom. This is where things get interesting: the Scottish people will now expect these promises to be delivered, and going by UK’s record, it might not be an easy task.

Appraisal

All said and done, Scotland will have to wait for its freedom. Speaking of waiting for freedom, there are a lot many nations currently doing the same, albeit each of them has a different story to tell.

For instance, the likes of Scotland and Quebec have done their home-work in self-determination, and even though the referenda have not offered a break-through yet, legal and political status of such nations is no longer questionable.

On the other hand, cases such as Bangsamoro in The Philippines or the various nationalist movements all over Europe, such as Northern Cyprus, Aragon and Andalusia, still have a long journey to cover both in terms of recognition and self-determination.

Freedom movements and nationalist tendencies all over the world have their own social, cultural, historical and sometimes territorial backgrounds. Thus, we need to judge each case in its own context. Scotland’s ‘Yes’ vote would have shaken the boundaries of the United Kingdom, both literally and metaphorically. However, the ‘No’ vote too will have a tectonic impact: neither UK nor Scotland will ever be the same! It is only a matter of time before Scotland and various other nations achieve their destiny and fulfil their quest for statehood. Right to national identity can only be delayed, not denied.

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Iran Viewpoint: Interaction With World, Is Not Diplomatic Compliment – OpEd

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By Gholamali Khoshroo

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has met with a number of world leaders and heads of state from such European countries as France, the UK, and Switzerland on the sidelines of the 69th annual session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The meetings can open a new chapter in Iran’s relations with European countries. During past year, European countries have had to deal with the crisis in Ukraine and have been countering Russia over its alleged role in the East European country. Various political and economic dimensions of this crisis have left their mark on all European countries. At present time, a spiraling wave of extremism is sweeping through the Middle East and North Africa, which is not only posing a grave threat to the interests of Europe, but has drawn thousand of European citizens into the vortex of extremist, terrorist, and Takfiri groups. Those citizens are now considered a serious threat to internal security of their home countries in Europe.

Although certain steps have been taken in negotiations between Iran and the Western states over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program in order to find a solution to Iran’s nuclear issue, the West is still insisting on its unilateral and illogical positions in this regard. As a result, European countries have practically brought their economic and political relations with Iran to a situation of stalemate. Unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe against Iran have, in practice, disrupted economic and financial exchanges between Iran and Europe and, in doing so, have inflicted a huge loss on the ailing European economy which is already suffering from a profound crisis. If European countries give priority to their own strategic interests, they would clearly see that Iran can serve as a good trade and economic partner for them and an important factor for the promotion of peace and stability in the region. Efforts made by the current Iranian administration of “hope and foresight” to promote interaction with European countries are not just a diplomatic complement, but represent a strategic approach. With regard to Iran’s nuclear case, if European countries are concerned about peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear energy program, Iran has been, and still is, ready to provide them with adequate and objective guarantees in this regard. Europe should take the best advantage of this opportunity in order to clinch a balanced deal with Iran over its nuclear case and rebuild its economic and political relations with the Islamic Republic.

A big opportunity is on the table for investment and participation in energy, mineral and industrial projects in Iran. Therefore, the economic factor in both Iran and Europe is also a factor for establishing stability in the entire region. Economic and industrial cooperation between Iran and Europe will not only lead to development and progress on both sides of this equation, but will also turn into a factor for building confidence and bringing stability to the region. Once and for good, Europe should reach the strategic understanding that Iran is not a threat, but a factor for peace and stability in the region. Those policies and propaganda campaigns which try to show Iran as a major security threat to the region and the entire world have already dealt the most drastic blow to the interests of the European countries. If Europe changed its attitude, it would clearly see that Iran’s nuclear energy program is just part of a general plan for development and production of energy in Iran. Sanctions on Iran’s banks and oil industry by European countries not only lack legal basis, but are also devoid of economic justification. As a result, Europe should take rapid steps to think about the stage that comes after the sanctions are removed, and pay more attention to its long-term interests.

Iran’s president submitted a plan to the UN General Assembly last year proposing a global fight against extremism and violence. If that plan had been taken seriously in all its dimensions by the West, we would not have been witness to such heinous crimes that are currently being committed in Iraq and Syria and Africa. Iran’s approach to these issues enjoys strategic depth, but unfortunately, policies followed by Europe and the United States have become repetitive and uncoordinated. Iran is a pioneer when it comes to fighting extremism and violence. During recent years, Takfiri terrorists have massacred thousands of Shias and European countries have turned a blind eye to it. After all this mass killings, now, the US President Barack Obama is admitting that a Shia Iran is not posing a security threat to the region and the world, but it is the Sunni extremism which is posing that threat and this time in the form of ISIS. Is it really necessary for all this innocent blood to be spilt in order to understand such a simple reality? The fight against extremism and violence is very complicated and multi-dimensional and if Europe paid due attention to Iran’s views in this regard, it could have become successful in fighting terrorism through interaction and cooperation with Iran. Therefore, Iran’s role in establishing peace and stability in the region is at odds with Europe’s approach for mounting sanctions and pressure on Iran. The latest meetings between the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran and heads of European states can be effective in promoting mutual understanding on both sides and help to expand cooperation and interaction between Iran and Europe.

Gholamali Khoshroo
Iran’s Ambassador to Bern, Switzerland

Source: Etemaad Newspaper
http://www.etemaad.ir
Translated By: Iran Review.Org

The post Iran Viewpoint: Interaction With World, Is Not Diplomatic Compliment – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Pakistan: Left Behind In North Waziristan – Analysis

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Humanitarian attention during the ongoing Pakistan army offensive against militants in North Waziristan Agency (NWA) has focused on the roughly one million internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have fled. But a less accessible group of people exist: those who stayed behind.

“In each village where the conflict goes on, there are people who chose to stay – to look after homes or livestock,” said Hassan Ahmad*, an NWA IDP in Peshawar. “My cousin is among them.”

Many of those who decided not to flee are now far from basic services and humanitarian support. “We have been trying to get food supplies through to them, but the trucks from Bannu are not being allowed in,” said Safdar Dawar, president of the Tribal Union of Journalists. “The conditions are terrible.”

As a result of the military action, access to NWA is extremely limited, but Dawar estimates that close to 40 percent of the population has remained despite the army operation, a figure disputed by security officials.

“Those who stayed behind are desperate to keep their homes and property safe,” said Ahsan Wazir, based since late June in a camp in the Bannu District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. The 1998 census put the population at around 400,000 people, though that number recently has been estimated at around a million.

Ahmad said village homes were being demolished by armed forces, leaving hundreds without shelter. “There is also no medical aid since hospitals in Waziristan are based only in the main towns, Miramshah and Mirali, and these are not functional right now,” Ahmad said.

Several tribes who refused to leave their homes have been forcibly shifted, say some of the IDPs, and have still not been allowed to return home.

The FATA (the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies) Disaster Management Authority says more than 630,000 IDPs have been verified by the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) as displaced from NWA since late May, according to the UN Refugee Agency head of its Peshawar sub-office, Jacques Franquin. Around 74 percent of the displaced are women and children, says the latest humanitarian bulletin from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Very few humanitarian agencies currently work in NWA, according to OCHA. Instead, work has focused on IDPs in neighbouring areas.

“The situation in North Waziristan is very grim, we understand,” said Mingora-based human rights activist Shaukat Saleem. He said attempts had been made to send observers into NWA, but that this had not been possible so far because roads are blocked by the military.

“No one has been left behind”

The situation of those still in NWA has not been commented upon by the government or by other agencies.

State security officials deny anyone remains in NWA. “The population of North Waziristan is over one million, and no one has been left behind. There is no one guarding homes,” a security official told IRIN, asking not to be named. He said it was uncertain how long the military operation would continue.

People still based in North Waziristan, such as Ahmad, say the military is now in charge of all administrative affairs in the area. An administrative official who asked not to be named said the people who had chosen to stay behind had done so “of their own free will” and mostly consisted of young men, while women, children, and older people had been sent away. He said many felt it was necessary for them to remain – despite military warnings – to safeguard their belongings. Some say they are tired of repeated displacement.

One NWA resident who stayed behind and prefers anonymity says he is now deeply concerned about the women and children in his family that he sent away. “I worry all the time about my wife, who is expecting our third child, and about my two young children who are with her at the camp in Kurram Agency,” said the man from a village near Mirali, a major NWA town.

He said it was difficult to communicate with his family as mobile phone connections were poor, and often suspended in the areas where fighting continues. He had heard conditions at camps were “very poor” but was unable to leave to try and join his family because his elderly mother was unable to travel and also because many routes were blocked.

For now, the problems in NWA seem set to continue. Despite the gains that the Pakistan military says it has made, fierce fighting continues in many areas, according to media reports quoting the military, and it is unclear when people who have left will be able to return.

Meanwhile, those who have stayed on must cope with bombed houses and destroyed land, adding to their difficulties in eking out any kind of livelihood.

*Not a real name.

The post Pakistan: Left Behind In North Waziristan – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Modi’s US Visit And Indian Nuclear Conundrum – Analysis

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By Kaveri Ashok

The eagerly awaited Modi-Obama summit, scheduled for September 29-30, is expected to “set an ambitious new agenda to chart a new course in the relationship” between the two countries. Considering the six years long stalemate owing to India’s Civil Nuclear Damage Liability bill, the Indo-US nuclear deal will indeed be a key topic of discussion. The historic deal which was essentially the ice-breaker of India’s nuclear isolation of almost thirty years has been in many ways compensatory to its NPT non-signatory status. An agenda to move forward the long-stalled deal is bound to gain momentum presently as India endeavours for civil nuclear deals with Japan and Australia and its NSG membership.

India, with its ambitious nuclear energy plans, is definitely an attractive market for the suppliers around the globe. All the suppliers interested in the Indian market, namely the US, France and Russia, have however unequivocally objected to the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage bill of 2010, specifically clause 17(b) and section 46. These deal with the right of recourse for the operator against the supplier and right to file tort claims for the victims respectively. The US has been the most disconcerted with this because the suppliers and contractors of the US are privately owned unlike their European state-owned counter-parts. The US government, in the interests of its major private suppliers collective, had pressurised the Indian government to be party to the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damages (CSC), the most significant international instrument for model liability regime.

The concept of exclusive liability, or channelling of liability (to the operator), which is the corner stone of all the international instruments of nuclear liability, has been followed since the first convention on this issue — Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage of 1963. E Ameye, member of the European Commission Expert Group on Nuclear Liability, argues that the nuclear industry is no longer an infant industry and that the possible role of the players other than the operator such as the suppliers, designers, transporters etc should be taken into account, considering the highly complex and evolved reactor technologies of today. The Indian legislation’s additional right of recourse and the right to file tort claims hence can be seen as a firm footing for a necessary paradigm shift from the traditional liability models.

The CSC (1997) is the latest among the three international conventions instrumental for the liability regime. The acceding countries are obliged to model their domestic liability legislation on its draft law. The annexe draft law specifies the right of recourse for the operator only a) if this is expressly provided for by a contract in writing, or b) if the damage results from an act or omission of someone with intent to cause damage. The clause 17(b) of the Indian liability act gives an additional ground for right of recourse for the operator against the suppliers: ‘if the damage is caused by a wilful act or gross negligence on the part of the supplier of the material, equipment or services or of his employee.’ The section 46 of the Indian Act states that the liability bill will not affect the other laws in force, thus implying that in case of an accident, criminal liability as well as tort claims remain valid. The CSC cannot in any way interfere in the normal operation of the regular legal mechanisms of the country. Thus it can be argued that the two tweaks from the model draft law, technically do not violate the terms of CSC; only explicitly states its implications. The US had however contended that India’s liability law is not in conformity with the CSC. In response, rightly so, India had contended that the only requirement for signing the CSC was that the concerned “State declares that its national law complies with the provisions of the Annex to this Convention.” Although India has signed the CSC on 27th October 2010, the ratification is yet to happen.

The Liability Act faces equally strong critiques in the domestic front as well, mainly on account of the liability cap on the operator. The total liability amount would be capped at a maximum amount of 300 million SDR (Special Drawing Rights), regardless of the extent of the damages caused in case of an incident. This amount is also inadequate to draw funding from the international pool created as part of the CSC as it can be accessed only if the liability due to nuclear damage exceeds 300 million SDR. Moreover, most of the major nuclear power generating countries do not have a cap on the liability. On the flip side, the domestic suppliers too are unwilling to supply the components for nuclear power plants. This will definitely spark a crisis in the Indian nuclear industry, which has managed even without the foreign suppliers when under sanctions, with extensive reliance on its domestic companies.

While addressing the liability conundrum, it needs be acknowledged that an effective liability regime is an important agent for assuring safety and containing any neglect by the key players involved. In a sense, its role is more significant than that of independent regulation. The risks of a nuclear establishment by nature are dynamic and complicated. This demands more flexibility for the operators, rather than step-by-step regulations enforced by an independent authority. With an effective liability rule, the operators can improvise and modify according to the risk he generates.

Finally, the question remains as to how the new government will choose to address this issue, balancing both the supplier and the domestic concerns. Dilution of the Liability Act is not an option, which is an important lesson learnt globally, even as Japan, Asia’s richest democracy, is dragging its feet with the decontamination activities and compensation to the victims, three years and counting post-Fukushima.

It may be safely assumed that the nuclear suppliers will not keep away from the lucrative Indian market, considering the extensive nuclear plan it is determined to embark upon. It is probable that the suppliers may increase their prices to an unreasonable level in the name of high insurance premiums. However, this will eventually be a backlash for the suppliers because of the possible market crash due to high costs of nuclear energy compared to the alternatives. Given the situation, the most desirable solution would be for the suppliers to accept the Indian Liability Act as an incentive to ensure the maximum possible safety and security of the materials and services, instead of dealing with it as an impediment.

As a first step towards nuclear diplomacy, the Modi Government’s ratification of the IAEA Additional Protocol is indeed a wise one. Whether the “Modi lexicon” would charm the long-flustered US suppliers, is a pivotal question for the Indian nuclear programme.

(The writer is a Research Intern at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi)

The post Modi’s US Visit And Indian Nuclear Conundrum – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

US-India Relations: A New Beginning Or An Old Story? – Analysis

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By Harold A. Gould

On Sep 26, the man who could not get a visa to come to the United States of America will arrive in New York and on Sep 29 be received by President Barak Obama in Washington as India’s new prime minister.

Not only is the irony of Narendra Modi’s coming poignant, but even more are the challenges facing this impending encounter between the two men. For it cannot be denied that relations between the world’s two largest democracies have measurably diminished, or at least grown significantly more ambiguous and problematical, since the days of George Bush and his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

During the Bush administration, declares Wikipedia, “the long strained relationship between the United States and India, has strengthened. Even President Bush’s critics credit Secretary Rice with stabilizing and improving the relationship between the two countries.” The key was negotiating a “nuclear energy partnership” despite the fact that India had not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Yet despite the fact that there was considerable domestic American resistance to going forward as a result, as well as an atmosphere of pique in Indian circles about US-South Asian policies generally, both countries found ways around their moral and technical reservations and achieved sufficient reconciliation to get the job done.

An extensive dialogue between Jaswant Singh, India’s external affairs minister (during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s tenure as prime minister), and America’s Deputy Secretary of State (1994-2001), Strobe Talbott in the late 90s, in a sense consummated this reconciliatory phase of US-Indian relations. As Talbott put it in his book on the period (Engaging India), “Jaswant had come to Washington with a subliminal message in support of an overarching goal: to persuade the American government that unlike Pakistan, a democratic, socially cohesive, politically confident India could be trusted with the bomb.” (p.121) So, even though the dialogue that transpired had its ups and downs, the level of mutual respect and trust between the two countries matured as India demonstrated that indeed it was qualified to take its place in the ranks of responsible nuclear powers.

In subsequent years, as the Congress party coalition gradually slipped into political limbo along with economic stagnation in India, and political stalemate in America between a progressive Obama administration and an intransigent US Congress driven by a cocktail of malignant racism (against an African-American president), ultra-right-wing ideological purism, and socially irresponsible financial and corporate adventurism, diplomacy between both countries faded into remission. Neither party has undertaken a significant foreign policy dialogue vis-a-vis one another since this mutual political stagnation set in.

It is this inertial state of affairs which Modi’s American Yatra will be compelled to confront when he steps off his flight to the US on Sep 26.

Clearly, Modi and Obama must address the security challenges being posed by the potential ramifications of the intensifying Middle East crisis emanating from the Hamas-Israel confrontation, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) holocaust in the Trans-Tigris-Euphrates nexus; and, closer to home, the potential disintegration of the Afghan election outcome; and always, of course, Kashmir.

There remains the nuclear threat to South Asia, and particularly to India, posed by the weapons arsenal in the hands of a Pakistan already ideologically permeated by Wahabism and teetering on the brink of political disintegration.

India needs to stress the fact that US policies toward Pakistan have done little to deter Pakistan from perpetuating the domestic political and economic policies and environment that subsidize and nourish Islamic radicalism, inhibit secularism and pluralism, and encourage childish anti-Americanism, while simultaneously taking advantage of American strategic naiveté to extort billions of dollars from the US treasury to subsidize a military establishment that employs its conned-resources to provide infrastructural havens for the Taliban, the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani Network, etc, all of whom are poised to destroy the Afghan state the moment the Americans and the United Nations depart.

These are only a few of the crucial matters which Modi and Obama must address and attempt to resolve if a meaningful partnership between India and the United States is to be restored.

(Harold A. Gould is a Visiting Professor of South Asian Studies in the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He can be contacted at southasiamonitor1@gmail.com)

The post US-India Relations: A New Beginning Or An Old Story? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Obama’s ISIS Gambit For Dangerous Times And Dangerous People – Analysis

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By Brooks Spector

It has been nearly six years since Vice President Dick Cheney left Washington when the Bush administration ended. This past week, Cheney offered a stinging rebuttal of President Barack Obama’s strategy against ISIS – in advance of the president’s speech. Just hours before Obama appeared on television, Cheney spoke at a leading conservative think tank in Washington to an audience that was like a convention of the right-wing faithful, hoping to strap on their weapons and do battle once again, one more time.

One can feel sympathy for Obama at this point in his administration as he wonders what happened to those dreams of rebuilding the country’s spirit and structure, back when he first took office. When he entered the White House, his plan was to extract the military from its fool’s errands in Iraq and Afghanistan, hold back the impending financial collapse, then reignite the economy, and then rebuild the country’s infrastructure for a sustained run against America’s new international economic competitors.

The economy has actually been slowly recovering to a position of health with unemployment at around 6.1% and his big domestic accomplishment was the Affordable Care Act. But that must seem a world away by now. And those capstone foreign policy achievements of the large-scale troop withdrawals and a repositioning of attention towards rising powers like China have been largely overwhelmed by the increasing chaos across a swathe of the Middle East.

But as force withdrawals from Iraq drew to an end, the Arab Spring broke out and then soured; Iraq’s national cohesiveness melted away into its constituent, hostile parts; and the gruesome Syrian civil war broke out as well. Almost exactly year ago, the Obama administration drawn that “red line” in the sand against Bashar al-Assad’s Syria over his government’s use of poison gas against its population (as well as its attacks on rebel forces). But Obama had been unable to rally Congress to offer an endorsement of an attack on Syria, and neither could the British prime minister gain one from his parliament either.

Now, with the ascendancy of ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State across northern Iraq and eastern Syria and its attacks against ethnic and religious minorities, executions of Iraqi military personnel who had surrendered, and its public beheadings of American reporters, Obama was increasingly forced to respond. In a speech delivered the evening before the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Obama set out his strategy for dealing with ISIS, noting it would not be a quick, easy solution.

The Obama strategy has a distinctly limited ambit. It includes a campaign of air strikes against IS targets “wherever they are”, including in Syria; increased support for allied ground forces fighting IS – but not for Syria’s Assad; more counter-terrorism efforts to cut off IS funding and stem the flow of fighters into the Middle East; and continuing humanitarian assistance to the civilians affected by IS attacks.

There will also be increased training and support to fighters opposing IS (and against Assad’s government at the same time – a real complexity of this conflict), as well as Americans to train and support IS opponents – up to the level of around 475 personnel. As Obama said, “Working with the Iraqi government, we will expand our efforts beyond protecting our own people and humanitarian missions, so that we’re hitting ISIL targets as Iraqi forces go on the offense.” Obama added he would welcome congressional approval for this fight but he had the authority to act, even without it. Ensuring extra funding for this is slightly different – and Congress will be asked – and expected – to come up with the cash.

Until Obama’s speech, the US had already carried out some 150 air strikes against IS in Iraq. The new mandate will add air strikes into IS-controlled territory in Syria too. Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry has been in the Middle East, rallying a “broad coalition to roll back” IS, meeting counterparts from key Arab nations and Turkey. Media reports say the Saudis have agreed to serve as a base for further training for anti-IS forces and word was ten Arab nations had given their support to the Obama administration in this mission – and more nations have joined following a Paris meeting that came at the end of Kerry’s trip.

Even as Obama set out his framework for action, he was very careful about what this would not become, saying, “We will not get dragged into another ground war.” Instead, Obama put down two cautionary notes – the first was how long it would take until “mission accomplished” can be whispered, as well as that there were real risks to US military personnel involved in this mission. Effectively, too, the Obama administration has now placed a burden on whoever becomes president in 2016 to finish this nasty work. This is a bitter irony for a president whose goal in his run for president had been to end the previous president’s overreach in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In making this decision, besides competing international crises in Gaza and Ukraine, the US president must also confront the domestic political context of this anti-IS strategy as well. While the public tenor has been clear for years there is little support for major military adventures in the wake of the Iraqi debacle, IS’s behaviour has begun to alter public perceptions.

The newest Pew Research Center report from just before Obama’s 10 September speech – noted, “the public has become more worried about Islamic extremism. Six-in-ten (62%) are very concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism around the world, which is the largest share dating back to 2007. A somewhat smaller majority (53%) is very concerned about the possibility of rising Islamic extremism in the US, which ties a record high….”

However, as yet, there has been little change in support for major troop commitments, despite a sense the threat levels in the world are rising – and this is the contradictory political universe the president must deal with while confronting IS. The US is also facing a mid-term election in less than two months’ time. Some Republican critics are charging Obama’s policies offer too little, but others warn he is pushing a Bush-style, discredited interventionist agenda. Among Democrats, because much of Obama’s original support came from people opposed to Bush’s wars. While Democrats are calling for stronger action, perhaps a majority are uneasy about anything that seems to smack of those old interventionist instincts.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney’s speech seemed to be designed to give strength to the Republican Party to demand a still-stronger response. Cheney said, “The situation is dire, and defeating these terrorists will require immediate, sustained, simultaneous action across multiple fronts… We should immediately hit them in their sanctuaries, staging areas, command centres and lines of communication wherever we find them…. We are at war [and] we must do what it takes, for as long as it takes, to win.”

Such Cheney holier-than-thou-ism is part of the political universe Obama must operate in. This includes efforts to respond to IS; to wade through the complex matrix of combatants in Syria; to stave off further IS-borne chaos; and, simultaneously, to avoid any new military engagement from inflaming the Middle East further. This will not be easy.

Brooks Spector is the Associate Editor at Daily Maverick and a retired American diplomat.

The post Obama’s ISIS Gambit For Dangerous Times And Dangerous People – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A New Defining Moment In India-China Dialogue – Analysis

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By P S Suryanarayana1

The strategic significance of economic diplomacy pulsates in the Sino-Indian Joint Statement issued on 19 September 2014 following extensive talks between India‟s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Ahmedabad and New Delhi in India. This marks a clear re-configuration of the difficult but dynamic engagement between these two mega-state Asian neighbours, known for their tense eyeball-to-eyeball military “face-off”, albeit without bloodshed, across the Himalayas in recent years. The reconfigured Sino-Indian engagement is designed to build “a closer developmental partnership”2 as a core feature of the existing “Strategic and Cooperative Partnership for Peace and Prosperity” in the bilateral sphere.

Not eclipsed by this new diplomatic paradigm of “developmental partnership” are the political and military-strategic aspects of Sino-Indian relationship which the two leaders have now addressed in a forward-looking fashion. The overarching context, going forward, is the expectation on both sides that they should be engaging each other in a positive ambience if the current 21st Century is to become an Asian Century. Xi told Modi that “the development of China and India is the key” to the global discourse that “the 21st Century is a century of Asia”.3

With the current Century, in which over a dozen years have already gone by, dominating the minds of both leaders, their perspectives over a final settlement of the long-simmering Sino-Indian border dispute seem to reflect a patient wait for the fullness of time to play out. However, this does not necessarily imply an acute urgency-deficit on both sides. In fact, Xi urged “friendly consultations” for a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement. In the run-up to that, the two countries should, in his view, “cooperate” and also “manage, and control” the dispute. Moreover, China and India should “safeguard peace and tranquillity in [the] border areas and prevent the border issues from affecting the [overall] development of the bilateral relations”, Xi emphasised.4

‘Clarification of Line of Actual Control’

Sharing Xi’s sentiments, Modi, for his part, struck a different, but not necessarily dissonant, note. Modi said he “suggested [to Xi] that clarification of Line of Actual Control [LAC, along the disputed Sino-Indian border] would greatly contribute to [the] efforts to maintain peace and tranquillity”. Going a step further, the Indian leader “requested President Xi to resume the stalled process of clarifying the LAC” and urged “an early settlement of the [basic] boundary question”.5 Modi indicated that he discussed with Xi all contentious issues including China’s reluctance to acknowledge Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir as integral units of India, as evident in Beijing‟s visa practices towards India. However, the bottom line in the Indian leader’s reckoning was this: “As we discussed how to strengthen [bilateral] cooperation, we have also exchanged views on outstanding differences in our relationship in a spirit of candour and friendship”.6 (Emphasis is added).

Obviously, a settlement of the decades-long dispute was neither attempted nor reached during the Xi-Modi meetings, widely seen as a summit of two strong political leaders. Xi and Modi are not counterparts, as a matter of diplomatic technicality. Hence the Joint Statement has not been issued in their names. However, the ground realities trump such protocol issues.

Xi is generally believed to have consolidated his political base in communist China as the most powerful helmsman in the ruling party and the state since Deng Xiaoping, the paramount Chinese leader. Modi, who hails from the “pragmatic‟ and “nationalist‟ stream of Indian politics, is at the helm as a result of his decisive democratic triumph in the recent general election. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the media reports of a fresh Sino-Indian military “face-off‟ at the Himalayan heights, which coincided with the Xi-Modi talks, did not punctuate or derail the summit itself. Not only that. Xi began his India-visit at Ahmedabad in Gujarat, Modi‟s home-province, on his birthday, providing the two leaders with a rare chance of meeting informally and looking at Sino-Indian relationship through their respective prism of practical possibilities. Xi’s accommodativeness towards Modi in this fashion can be traced to the Indian leader’s newly-acquired stature at the national level and his frequent visits to China as a destination of choice when he was earlier Chief Minister of Gujarat.

‘A Strategic Objective’

Relevant, in this unusual context, is the fine print of the Joint Statement with regard to the border issue as an agenda item. To be sure, there is not even a remote hint of any forward movement towards a final settlement. It has been simply stated that the two sides “reiterated their commitment to seek a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution”. This is nothing new at all. The two sides approvingly recalled their own 2005 Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the Boundary Question. A “commitment to an early settlement” has now been “reiterated” in this context of upholding the validity of the political parameters and guiding principles. Obviously, a commitment to an early settlement, too, is no forward movement. The pursuit of an early settlement has now been characterised as a strategic objective.7 (Emphasis is added, throughout).

In this perspective, surely not a dramatically new Sino-Indian insight, India and China have now retained their faith in all the hitherto-agreed forums for negotiation and stabilisation of the situation on the border – the framework of Special Representatives, agreed to in 2003, and the Working Mechanism, agreed to in 2012. While the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement of 2013 has not been formally cited in the latest Joint Statement, it stands to reason that the two countries have not abandoned this accord, too. In all, it can be argued, therefore, that the latest Xi-Modi talks have not at all broken new ground on the border issue, not to mention anything that could be remotely seen as real or potential breakthrough.

Also reaffirmed now – in a manner not reflective of a new leap of thought or action – is the Sino-Indian recognition that peace and tranquillity along the disputed border will be “an important guarantor for the development and continued growth of bilateral relations”. To be seen in a similar reality check is the latest affirmation that “improved bilateral military ties are conducive to building mutual trust and confidence”. The first round of “maritime cooperation dialogue”, first announced in principle in March 2012, is now slated for later in 2014 itself. This can be interpreted as a slim sign of some forward movement. Other aspects of some positivity are: (1) the latest accord to “hold navy/air force joint exercise at a proper time”,8 and (2) the agreement to “hold the fourth joint army training at a mutually convenient time”.

This catalogue of reaffirmations regarding the border issue and mil-to-mil cooperation does not reflect new progress. So, the political breakthrough on these issues is the simple but profound fact that Modi’s very first substantive interaction with China has been held with its highest-ranking leader. In protocol terms, substantive Sino-Indian dialogue is usually held at the level of the two prime ministers. Chinese Premier is the second-ranking chief executive in his country, while India’s Prime Minister is the country‟s highest-ranking political leader. The traditional protocol of substantive Sino-Indian summitry at the level of the two prime ministers is a sign of China‟s ranking of India at a lower level, relative to the major powers. While this protocol drill for Sino-Indian protocol might continue into the future, the fact that Modi has held his first full-scale summit talks with China’s highest-ranking leader is a plus for Sino-Indian dialogue, going forward.

In this perspective, Modi can be seen to have broken through the glass ceiling of politically significant protocol in Sino-Indian state-to-state engagement. However, the latest and benign Xi-Modi Joint Statement, which is bereft of real breakthrough, is somewhat reminiscent of the fine spirit and sentiments of the Jawaharlal Nehru-Zhou Enlai dialogue of the early- and mid-1950s. For a variety of reasons, the Nehru-Zhou spirit meandered towards the 1962 Sino-Indian Himalayan War. Let us fast-forward to the present.

For the first time since the 1960s, Modi‟s party, in no way associated with leading an ill-prepared India to defeat in that War, is now at the helm with a clear parliamentary majority. Seen in this light, Modi is in a position from where he can try to reconfigure India‟s relations with China in political- strategic terms as well, not just in the economic domain.

In political-strategic terms, Modi‟s “request” to Xi to resume the “stalled clarification” of the Line of Actual Control will directly impinge on China‟s relatively new claims on India’s Arunachal Pradesh state (province). China sees Arunachal Pradesh as “southern Tibet” and therefore as “Chinese territory”. Moreover, with Xi now maintaining golden silence in the public domain with regard to Modi’s “request” for an early clarification of the LAC, it becomes clear that India has its work cut out in engaging China on this particular issue. For India, a clarification of the LAC will help both sides to know each other‟s control-limits, pending a final settlement of the border dispute. For China, by contrast, the LAC-clarification might lead to pre-judging the „final status‟ of Arunachal Pradesh, which India has been administering as its integral part.

‘One-China, One-India’

Highly relevant to this aspect of LAC-clarification is a disclosure by India‟s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, before the latest Xi-Modi summit, that New Delhi had conveyed to Beijing that its “One-China” policy should be seen in the light of “One-India”9 reality. Her message, while speaking to reporters in New Delhi on 8 September, was that Beijing, which expects the world to accept the “One-China” doctrine, must be sensitive to New Delhi’s “One- India” policy. It was apparent from her message that Modi had conveyed this to Xi when the two had first met, on the sidelines of BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) summit in Brazil on 14 July.

It is also obvious that Modi wants China to recognise Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part of India just as New Delhi had, in 2003, acknowledged the Tibet Autonomous Region as an intrinsic part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Following that in 2003, the Chinese side had indicated to this author that Beijing would continue to monitor New Delhi’s political attitude towards Taiwan, which has “trade” links with India. For the PRC, Taiwan, currently a non-sovereign and non-state entity near Chinese eastern seaboard, is as much an integral part of China as Tibet is. In addition to these issues are the 1963 China-Pakistan agreement regarding a part of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state, and the current military deployments and patrols in the relevant western sector of the disputed Sino-Indian border. Given these complexities, it is anybody’s guess whether the LAC can be clarified or defined before a final settlement of the Sino-Indian border dispute becomes possible.

As for other issues, the latest Xi-Modi summit has not resulted in Beijing accommodating India‟s long-term concerns over China‟s utilisation of the Brahmaputra (Yarlung Zangbo) waters. However, the two countries have not struck a discordant note either on this issue. More significantly, the two leaders have struck some positive notes on civil nuclear cooperation and amity in the outer space.

Reaching for the Sky

Modi and Xi met just a few days before the successful climax in India’s scientific mission of placing a spacecraft in orbit around the Mars. India is now the first Asian country to have accomplished this feat, that too, in the very first attempt. It is indeed of much significance, therefore, that officials from India and China, another major space-faring nation, signed, in the presence of Modi and Xi, a Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in the Peaceful Use of Space. Interestingly, Michael Sheehan, a scholar on politics and the outer space, has positively assessed India’s overall space policy in these terms: “India’s space programme is in some ways the most cost-effective and successful space programme in the world”.10

Amplifying, he has written that “the technological feats achieved by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are dramatic achievements for a developing country that at the end of the Cold War was still one of the poorest in the world. Even more impressive than that, however, is the consistent way in which India has sought to use space as a crucial mechanism for lifting India’s people out of poverty through education and social and economic programmes”.11

Significant, too, in this context is the fact that some of the activities cited in this particular MoU relate to Sino-Indian research-and-development of scientific-experiment satellites, remote-sensing satellites and communications satellites.12 Long before this MoU, India as well as China had independently pledged to work for the non-militarisation of the outer space, although the two countries are widely believed to possess extra-terrestrial capabilities that could be put to military use. It will, therefore, be interesting to monitor how the promised Sino-Indian cooperation in the outer space will actually develop.

As for Sino-Indian civil nuclear cooperation, the two countries have already had some positive engagement a few decades ago. However, the new context, going forward, is the decision, a few years ago, by the Nuclear Suppliers Group to normalise India‟s access to the worldwide civil nuclear market. In a sense, therefore, the promise of Sino-Indian cooperation in this clean-energy domain and in the outer space will be seen as test cases of smart friendship between these two Asian neighbours.
This aspect, by itself, and the overall Sino-Indian cooperation in a host of other spheres, including developmental and military-related engagement, should be seen in the evolving context of an emerging Asian Arc of Power Politics. China will be at the geographical and geopolitical centre of this arc that might extend from Japan in Northeast Asia to India in South Asia. The United States, which regards itself as the “resident” external power in the relevant Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific regions, will figure prominently in this emerging arc.

The Economic Dimension

Modi’s diplomacy, since he assumed office on 26 May 2014, has had a conspicuous economic dimension. During his visit to Kyoto and Tokyo from 30 August to 3 September, he succeeded in securing Japanese pledges of US$ 35 billion worth investments in India over the next five years. Right now, Xi has pledged US$ 20 billion worth Chinese investments in India’s infrastructure sector over the next five years. China has also agreed to set up two industrial parks, one each in Gujarat and Maharashtra provinces of India. It is not immediately clear whether the proposed investments of the total order of US$ 6.8 billion in these two industrial parks, as now planned, will be subsumed under the pledge of US$ 20 billion investments in India’s infrastructure projects.

What is clear, though, is that Modi has sought to encourage China and Japan to develop strong economic stakes in India’s long-term political stability. China may have, as quid pro quo, sought to encourage a traditionally “nonaligned” India to refrain from becoming a US- friendly swing-state in the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific regions in strategic-military and political terms. India’s potential emergence as a US-friendly swing-state will disturb Beijing’s position relative to Washington in these two overlapping regions. In such behind- the-scene expectations, which will not be publicly spelt out by the leaders, it stands to reason that India may also hope that China, if it develops strong economic links with India, might even restrain Pakistan‟s “anti-India” agenda over time. A counter-argument will be that China’s India-investments of the order of US$ 20 billion or more cannot exactly serve as India’s firewall against Pakistan, China’s “all-weather friend”. However, the key point to be noted is that investments and trade can help create a political ambience of some care and caution in state-to-state diplomacy. The latest Sino-Indian move to raise their bilateral trade value to the US$ 100 billion mark, as quickly as possible, can also be seen through such a strategic prism, in addition to the intrinsic economic value of trade to the two countries.

In any case, all major and emerging powers, including China and India, are expected to keep their powder dry in strategic-military terms, going forward. For Japan, strong ties with India can be of some strategic value in the emerging Asian Arc of Power Politics.

The emergence of this arc is being driven by four factors: (1) ascendant China’s efforts to set regional and global security-related and economic norms; (2) the persistent China-Japan tensions; (3) the unsettled Sino-Indian equation; and (4) America‟s continuing efforts to stay ahead of all other countries in Asia and everywhere.

Soft Diplomacy As Well

Such hard-core politics and economics apart, the latest Xi-Modi summit did reveal some soft diplomacy as well. The relaxed ambience in which Xi and his wife, China’s First Lady, toured the Sabarmati Ashram and took a stroll along the riverfront in Ahmedabad, accompanied by Modi, has been amply captured in video for public diplomacy. Moreover, the MoU on China‟s willingness to open an additional route for Indian pilgrims to Kailash Mansarovar, a holy Hindu site in Tibet, is a soft gesture that India has appreciated. Another aspect, this relating to soft-power as such – namely, people-to-people exchanges – is sought to be promoted through the designation of (1) India‟s Gujarat and China’s Guangdong as sister-provinces, (2) India‟s Ahmedabad and China’s Guangzhou as sister-cities, and (3) India’s Mumbai and China’s Shanghai as sister-cities. In all, such a comprehensive Xi-Modi summit has surely turned into a new defining moment in Sino-Indian ties – a positive story, for now.

Notes:
1. Mr P S Suryanarayana is Editor (Current Affairs) at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), an autonomous research institute at the National University of Singapore. He can be contacted at isaspss@nus.edu.sg. Opinions expressed in this paper, based on research by the author, do not necessarily reflect the views of ISAS.
2. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, Joint Statement between the Republic of India and the People‟s Republic of China on Building a Closer Developmental Partnership, www.mea.gov.in/bilateral- documents.htm?dtl/24022/Joint+Statement+between+t… (Accessed on 19 September 2014)
3. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, People‟s Republic of China, Xi Jinping Holds Talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India Building Closer Partnership for Development and Achieving Peaceful Development and Cooperative Development Together, 2014/09/18, www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_6 62805/t1193332.shtml. (Accessed on 22 September 2014)
4. Xi’s dialogue with Modi, as outlined in the document cited in Note 3 above and as monitored in Singapore over China‟s state television.
5. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, Press Statement by Prime Minister during the visit of President Xi Jinping of China to India (September 18, 2014), www.mea.gov.in/Speeches- Statements.htm?dtl/24014/Press+Statement+by+Prim… (Accessed on 22 September 2014)
6. Ibid
7. Same source as in Note 2 above
8. Same source as in Note 2 above
9. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, Transcript of External Affairs Minister‟s first formal interaction with the media (September 8, 2014), http://www.mea.gov.in/media- briefings.htm?dtl/23982/Transcript+of+External+Affairs+Ministers+first+formal+interaction+with+the+med ia+September+8+2014 (Accessed on 10 September 2014)
10. Michael Sheehan, The International Politics of Space, Routledge, London and New York, 2007. p 142
11. Ibid
12. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, List of Documents signed during the State Visit of
Chinese President Xi Jinping to India (September 18, 2014), www.mea.gov.in/bilateral- documents.htm?dtl/24012/List+of+Documents+signed… (Accessed on 19 September 2014)

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Taliban Kills Australian Citizen: Reports

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An Australian citizen has been captured and killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan, his family told Guardian Australia in an interview.

“I want the government to find out how the Taliban knew how my dad was going back to Kabul. It is obvious they got a report about him, because they went onto the minibus and said “Sayed Habib, get up,'” Kubra Mosawi, daughter of Sayed Habib who was killed, said Sunday. “He wasn’t anything to do with the government there. They just wanted to stop him coming back to Australia. I don’t want anyone else to experience this. Every minute we think of my brother’s family who are still there, I can’t study or work because of the stress of it.”

Sayed Habib, a 56-year-old Australian citizen was captured by Taliban militants on 20 September on his way from Jaghori to Ghazni province in southern Afghanistan.

According to his family, Habib went to Afghanistan in May to visit the wife and children of his son. Since then he has been waiting for a safe moment to travel from Kabul to Jaghori.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has announced Australians should not travel to Afghanistan because of the “extremely dangerous security situation and the very high threat of terrorist attack.”

The Taliban is an insurgency movement in Afghanistan fighting against the government and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. Sayed Habib was of Hazara origin, ethnic group in Afghanistan persecuted by the Taliban.

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ISIS And USA: Expansion And Resistance By Decapitation – OpEd

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To overcome massive US and world public opposition to new wars in the Middle East, Obama relied on the horrific internet broadcasts of ISIS slaughtering two American hostages, the journalists James Foley and Steve Sotloff, by decapitation. These brutal murders were Obama’s main propaganda tool to set a new Middle East war agenda – his own casus belli bonanza!

This explains the US Administration’s threats of criminal prosecution against the families of Foley and Stoloff when they sought to ransom their captive sons from ISIS.

With the American mass media repeatedly showing the severed heads of these two helpless men, public indignation and disgust were aroused with calls for US military involvement to stop the terror. US and EU political leaders presented the decapitations of Western hostages by the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) as a direct and mortal threat to the safety of civilians in the US and Europe. The imagery evoked was of black-clad faceless terrorists, armed to the teeth, invading Europe and the US and executing innocent families as they begged for rescue and mercy.

The problem with this propaganda ploy is not the villainy and brutal crimes celebrated by ISIS, but the fact that Obama’s closest ally in his seventh war in six years is Saudi Arabia, a repugnant kingdom which routinely decapitates its prisoners in public without any judicial process recognizable as fair by civilized standards – unless tortured ‘confessions’ are now a Western norm. During August 2014, when ISIS decapitated two American captives, Riyadh beheaded fourteen prisoners. Since the beginning of the year the Saudi monarchy has decapitated more than 46 prisoners and chopped off the arms and limbs of many more. During Obama and Kerry’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, horrendous decapitations were displayed in public. These atrocities did not dim the bright smile on Barak Obama’s face as he strolled with his genial royal Saudi executioners, in stark contrast to the US President’s stern and angry countenance as he presented the ISIS killing of two Americans as his pretext for bombing Syria.

The Western mass media are silent in the face of the Saudi Kingdom’s common practice of public decapitation. Not one among the major news corporations, the BBC, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, CBS and NPR, have questioned the moral authority of a US President who engages in selective condemnation of ISIS while ignoring the official Saudi state beheadings and the amputations.

Decapitation and Dismemberment: By Dagger and Drones

The ISIS internet videos showing gaunt, orange-suited Western prisoners and their lopped-off heads have evoked widespread dismay and fear. We are repeatedly told: ‘ISIS is coming to get us!’ But ISIS is open and public about their criminal acts against helpless hostages. We cannot say the same about the decapitations and dismemberments of the hundreds of victims of US drone attacks. When a drone fires its missiles on a home, a school, wedding party or vehicle, the bodies of living people are dismembered, macerated, decapitated and burned beyond recognition – all by remote control. The carnage is not videoed or displayed for mass consumption by Obama’s high commend. Indeed, civilian deaths, if even acknowledged, are brushed off as ‘collateral damage’ while the vaporized remnants of men, women and children have been described by US troops as ‘pink foam’.

If the brutal decapitation and dismemberment of innocent civilians is a capital crime that should be punished, as I believe it is, then both ISIS and the Obama regime with his allied leaders should face a people’s war crimes tribunal in the countries where the crimes occurred.

There are good reasons to view Washington’s close relation with the Saudi royal beheaders as part of a much broader alliance with terror-evoking brutality. For decades, the US drug agencies and banks have worked closely with criminal drug cartels in Mexico while glossing over their notorious practice of decapitating, dismembering and displaying their victims, be they local civilians, courageous journalists, captured police or migrants fleeing the terror of Central America. The notorious Zetas and the Knights Templar have penetrated the highest reaches of the Mexican federal and local governments, turning state officials and institutions into submissive and obedient clients. Over 100,000 Mexicans have lost their lives because of this ‘state within a state’, an ‘ISIS’ in Mexico – just ‘South of the Border’. And just like ISIS in the Middle East, the cartels get their weapons from the US imported right across the Texas and Arizona borders. Despite this gruesome terror on the US southern flank, the nation’s principle banks, including Bank of America, CitiBank, Wells Fargo and many others have laundered billions of dollars of drug profits for the cartels. For example, the discovery of 49 decapitated bodies in one mass in May 2014 did not prompt Washington to form a world-wide coalition to bomb Mexico, nor was it moved to arrest the Wall Street bankers laundering the ‘beheaders bloody booty’.

Conclusion

Obama’s hysterical and very selective presentation of ISIS crimes forms the pretext for launching another war against a predominantly Muslim country, Syria, while shielding his close ally, the royal Saudi decapitator from US public outrage. ISIS crimes have become another excuse to launch a campaign of ‘mass decapitation by drones and bombers’. The mass propaganda campaign over one crime against humanity becomes the basis for perpetrating even worse crimes against humanity. Many hundreds of innocent civilians in Syria and Iraq will be dismembered by ‘anti-terrorist’ bombs and drones unleashed by another of Obama’s ‘coalition’.

The localized savagery of ISIS will be multiplied, amplified and spread by the US-directed ‘coalition of the willing decapitators’. The terror of hooded beheaders on the ground will be answered and expanded by their faceless counterparts in the air, while delicately hiding the heads rolling through the public squares of Riyadh or the headless bodies displayed along the highways of Mexico … and especially ignoring the hidden victims of US-Saudi aggression in the towns and villages of Syria.

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An Evening With Nicolas Maduro – OpEd

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In the Bronx, New York, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro reminded black Americans what they have lost as a result of following misleaders and worshipping Barack Obama. Before corporate dollars and Barack Obama delivered a crippling blow to black politics, African Americans were in the forefront of opposition to United States foreign policy.

More than any other group in the country, black people could smell a foreign policy rat as soon as it was spawned by Washington. Any claims of dangers to American interests were met with skepticism and outright disdain. Every declaration of criminality from the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to Operation Just Cause to Operation Iraqi Freedom were known to be frauds meant only to keep the rest of the world under America’s thumb.

The late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was the great liberator of his country and as such earned the enmity of the United States government. Venezuela was an independent nation but not independent of the dictates of imperialism. This country never rejected Manifest Destiny or the Monroe Doctrine and still sees itself as entitled to rule over all of North America and South America and indeed the whole world.

Nicolas Maduro has made mighty efforts to continue the Chavez legacy. He has been met with terrific opposition from the same domestic interests who tried to undo Chavez and by the United States and its allies. Maduro’s enemies at home have declared war on their own government and people in an attempt to make Venezuela ungovernable and bring down the Bolivarian revolution.

“This country never rejected Manifest Destiny or the Monroe Doctrine.”

Maduro is to be applauded for not succumbing to United States pressure and protecting his nation from intrusions and interference. At the same time he has continued the Chavez tradition of making common cause with people here in this country who also want to see a just world free from imperialism and the inequality that creates so much suffering.

Chavez began the practice of using the Venezuela owned Citgo oil company to help not only his countrymen and women but impoverished people here as well. In this country, so often called “the richest country in the world” the safety net is frayed and in some places non-existent. Many people in this rich land live without adequate heat or in places like Detroit, even without water. If Venezuela had an extra supply of that, they would surely lend a helping hand.

Maduro does the same and he used the annual United Nations meeting in New York as an opportunity to speak to Americans who understand and support the need for people around the world to be free of United States domination. At Hostos Community College in the Bronx, Maduro explained his presence there.

“This meetings enable us to see us, to talk, about social struggle …in essence we are the same, you people here in the Bronx and in the United States, and in Venezuela, we´re the same, these meetings let us see that, recognize it.”

 

So many lies they tell about Venezuela, whose only crime is to … try to transcend capitalism, they declare us sinners because of our right to dream, to build humanist socialism.”

“In essence we are the same, you people here in the Bronx and in the United States, and in Venezuela.”

Maduro has reason to reach out to Americans as the United States continues its tradition of subverting the institutions it claims to support whenever they deliver an unwanted result. Venezuela should have no trouble taking its rotating seat on the United Nations Security Council representing Latin America and the Caribbean, but in 2006 the Bush administration pressured other nations to vote no. Venezuela was deprived of the rights that a United Nations member state is supposed to have.

Now the corporate media are following the Obama administration in attacking Venezuela. The Washington Post called Maduro “the economically illiterate former bus driver.” Maduro quite rightly responded by labeling the paper’s assertion racist and made it clear that their little barbs would not dissuade his country from exercising its rights which the United States feels no need to respect. The New York Times urged that another nation challenge Venezuela’s seat. Without a hint of irony the Times claims to want to spare the world from “petty theatrics” should Samantha Power have to sit next to Maria Gabriela Chavez.

The path to liberation is not just national, but international. High crimes are committed here and abroad and all of them must be exposed and opposed. On the same day that Maduro came to the Bronx, Barack Obama began bombing Syria and Iraq. A Venezuelan voice on the Security Council, even temporarily, would expose American crimes. That is why leaders like Nicolas Maduro are important and why black people must reclaim their history of supporting them.

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Russians Feel Better – OpEd

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By Viktoriia Demydova

Russian society seems to be satisfied with and even happy about its living conditions and domestic situation despite the Ukrainian crisis. According to recent public opinion surveys, the happiness index in Russia has grown in 2014, reaching a 25-year high.[1] Moreover, recent surveys conducted by VCIOM revealed that the majority of Russians see their country as a place that offers a wealth of opportunities.

Despite the military conflict on the border with Ukraine, rising prices, striking nationalism, and the conservatism of the Russian leadership, Russians believe that it is still better to live in Russia than in Western Europe or the US. In this vein, 52% of the respondents of the VCIOM survey say that in Russia, one has more opportunities for personal security and freedom. 53% of participants say it is easier to bring up children in Russia as well as to protect them from negative influences and 44% state that it is easier in Russia than in Europe or the US to obtain a good education and to find a job. At the same time, 41% of those surveyed think Russia provides more opportunities than the US and Europe when it comes to the financial well-being and housing of its citizens. Russia was identified as the best place to start a business by 39% of the respondents, with only 23% answering this question in the positive for the US and Western Europe. Perhaps most illustrative of the enigmatic Russian spirit was that Russia was found to be the most convenient place for sincere communication with kind people (by 67% of Russians) as well as the country that offers the most opportunities for joyful and interesting leisure (by 47% of the population).[2]

Experts point to the rise in patriotism following Russia’s acquisition of Crimea as a reason for such sentiments expressed by the survey. According to General Director of VCIOM Valery Fedorov, people are excited given that it is the first time within the last 25 years that Russia has enlarged its territory. Similar trends were seen in 2008 – which can be attributed to the economic growth and the victory in the Georgian war being seen as just and liberating – and in the beginning of the 2000s – when Putin managed to stabilize Russia’s political and economic standing, thus prompting a tremendous surge in patriotic attitudes. Nowadays, Fedorov says that Russians are still seeing stars after the annexation of Crimea and cannot realize the consequences of the government’s decisions.[3]

Still Not Mature

It is hard to expect a critical analysis of the situation from the respondents as only 40% there of follow current events in Russia and abroad, and 53% are not at all interested in politics.[4] The picture becomes much bleaker when it is added that those who do show any interest in politics receive most of their information from TV news.

Sociologist Lev Gudkov, head of the Levada Center, calls Russian society “immature”. To evidence this statement he uses the results of the VCIOM survey of the Russian society that show the growing and chronic dissatisfaction of the Russians: they believe the government is cheating them. As per their social contract with the state of Russia, citizens pay taxes, conscribe in the army and support state policies, yet they feel that the state does not fulfill its duties. Surveys taken between 2012-2014 reveal that 40-50% of Russians feel that the state does not take care of them. Gudkov argues that instead of expressing their discontent and following the processes of policy implementation, Russians prefer to complain and avoid participation in politics altogether.[5]

Nationalistic Euphoria

The euphoria experienced by Russians after the annexation of Crimea seems to be waning despite the positive sentiments expressed in the VCIOM survey. However, the support of the idea that Crimea should be part of the Russian Federation increased from 64% of respondents in March to 73% in August. At the same time, Levada Center research shows that the approval of and happiness over the annexation decreased. Despite the wide support the government’s actions afforded by the Russian population, 60% of those questioned confess they do not understand what is going on in Ukraine.[6]

The fading euphoria seen after the victory is now complemented by a growing understanding of the consequences of the war raging in Ukraine, Gudkov says. As was already mentioned, growing prices are a concern and Russians only expect the worsening of economic conditions due to the sanctions. However, 53% of Russians believe that only government officials and political leaders will be affected by the sanctions, thus taking the brunt of the responsibility for the cause there of. This shows that the Russian citizens still do not affiliate themselves with the state and society in general and do not feel responsible for state policies.

To conclude, the results and analyses of recent public opinion surveys show that Russian society can be characterized as politically uneducated and immature. Russians seem to not be aware of their rights and duties and instead prefer to stay indifferent. As it can be extrapolated from the surveys, economic well-being, which has always been an issue of prime importance for Russian citizens, has taken a backseat due to the rise of patriotism after the annexation of Crimea. People in Russia feel secure despite the conflict on its border. Now, however, the people’s attention has begun to be drawn to external issues such as the war in Ukraine and Europe’s reaction thereto. Since the initial euphoria is beginning to wear off, Russians have started to consider the consequences of the conflict, especially in economic terms. At the same time, conservative and patriotic values are on the rise in the country while most citizens remain change-averse and therefore only support government policies in extreme cases. Nonetheless, strong propaganda guarantees support of government action despite its negative effects, thus propagating that feeling of happiness that introduced this article.

 

1. Chumley, Cheryl K., Russia’s happiness index hits 25-year high, despite Ukraine crisis, – The Washington Times – Friday, May 2, 2014

2. Russia is the Country of Opportunities, VCIOM press-release #2672, September 16, 2014

3. Why Russians Do not Fear Anything, VCIOM, August 27, 2014

4. The Will to Participate in Politics, Levada Center press- release, September 11, 2014

5. Gudkov, Lev, The Russian Society Has not Got Mature Yet, Levada center press release, September, 11, 2014

6. Erosion of the Mutual Hatred, Levada Center press release, September 16, 2014

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On Target In Syria? – Analysis

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By Ahmed al-Buleili

We pray to God that these air strikes miss their targets, because there are a lot of prisoners in Islamic State’s prison,” said Doaa, 25. “One of them is my father.”

Doaa, from the ISIS stronghold of Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria, is among the many residents for whom this latest twist in the conflict has caused yet more anxiety.

For Doaa and hundreds more like her, the air raids bring plain fear that their relatives in ISIS captivity will become collateral damage.

The attacks announced by the United States and its Arab allies after a series of ISIS outrages have sharpened loyalties and animosities, and made perceptions of Western intentions more complex than ever.
.
They have also created a new wave of politics-watchers and analysts in Syria. Why only now? Why are other Islamist groups being targeted, not just the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)? And why not President Bashar al-Assad’s forces – has the West decided he is a good thing after all?

Deir al-Zor, an ISIS stronghold, was hit in the early waves of airstrikes that began at dawn on September 23. The same day, 20 locations were hit in al-Bukamal, closer to the border with Iraq, including an ISIS checkpoint and an outpost in a school, as well as oil-industry and other infrastructure. Several militants and civilians were killed or injured.

Haj Abu Abdullah, 55, voiced anger at the attacks, saying the US and its allies wanted to cripple those who were fighting Assad and to destroy what was left of Syria and.

“If they came to fight terrorism, then Assad’s terrorism is the worst. If they are here to fight terrorism, why are they targeting Jabhat al-Nusra, and why are they targeting oil refineries in Deir al-Zor?” he asked.

Abu Abdullah pledged support for both ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, saying “We would all sacrifice our lives for them. They are men in the true sense of the word.”

Some Syrians at opposite ends of the scale from Abu Abdullah would agree with him on one thing – that attacking rebel groups like Jabhat al-Nusra risks strengthening Assad’s hand.

“These coalition airstrikes are not like what we were asking for when we called on Obama and the world for military intervention against the terror of the Assad regime,” journalist Ayman Thiab, 20, said. “It looks as though America is punishing those who revolted against Assad.”

Others, though, say ISIS deserves everything it gets.

Dr. Osama, a 38-year-old media activist in the Syrian revolution. “We will not forget the massacres committed by ISIS. We will not forget Dr. Roaa Ziab [Deir al-Zor female medic abducted and killed by ISIS], we will not forget the nooses, we will not forget the execution scaffolds, and we will not forget the blood of the al-Sheitat [tribal group killed wholesale],” he said.

“Yes, errors may occur in this war, but only a very small percentage. Maybe the intelligence information wasn’t accurate enough, and that resulted in oil refineries in Deir al-Zor being bombed.”

Although the Jabhat al-Nusra group has fought against ISIS in Deir al-Zor and elsewhere, Osama argues that the US-led coalition is right to target it, too.

“Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra share the same jihadist ideology, although they differ in how they enforce it on urban residents. The American administration is convinced that if they doesn’t target Jabhat al-Nusra, the group will fight side by side with ISIS against the coalition and launch attacks on the Turkish or Jordanian borders,” Osama said.

Ahmed al-Buleili is a journalist in Syria. This article was published by IWPR.

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Russia-US INF Treaty Dispute May Be Solved Only Through Extensive Talks – Analysis

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On September 11, 2014, Russia and the United States conducted mutual consultation dedicated to the future adherence to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF) that was signed in 1987.

The closed-door talks between the Russian delegation led by Mikhail Ulyanov, director of Russian Foreign Ministry arms control department, and the White House representatives along with Rose Gottemoeller, Under Secretary of State, lasted 5 hours.

After the talks, Russia has stated it received no satisfying answers to the existing questions, and that Moscow’s concerns on the United States’ actions – namely the use of target practice missiles that mimic the INF munitions, field use of combat drones, and plans to install ground-based universal vertical launch systems in Romania in 2015, and in Poland in 2018, – were left unresolved.

According to Mikhail Ulyanov, the issues in question can be described as improper adherence to the treaty, “unless you choose more stern wording.”

In its turn, the United States said that the Russian talks failed to dispel Washington’s concerns on INF treaty violations. Earlier, the US Department of State had published a report that accuses Moscow of breaking the points of the treaty. At the same time, Russia stresses the fact that the White House officials provided no proof of the alleged violations and was unable to formulate and provide evidence to the claim that Russia used a ground-based cruise missile with a range of over 500 km.

According to Jim Walsh, Research Associate at the Massachussets Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program, the United States has not published any detailed information because it does not want to reveal its sources.

“I agree that Russia needs evidence of the violation, but it’s also true that the US is not positioned to reveal all its intelligence-gathering secrets, or it will lose the value of those. It provides the other side exactly what intelligence you have and gives them a roadmap for trying to cover up future violations,” he pointed out in an interview to “PenzaNews” agency.

From his point of view, Russia’s concerns have almost completely unjustified; however, this alone should not make one believe that Washington has made absolutely no wrong steps. For example, according to Jim Walsh, the US has made a great mistake when it left the ABM treaty in 2001.

At the same time, the analyst highlighted the differences in Moscow and Washington’s strategy that recently have begun to take shape. While the US makes efforts to reach eventual global zero in the near future, Russia’s tendency to rely on the nuclear missiles becomes more noticeable with time.

However, according to the expert, the claims made by the US Department of State in relation to the INF treaty are not as serious as one might think.

“It’s an accusation about a missile that has not yet been deployed. It’s not as if it’s in the Russian force structure,” Jim Walsh stressed.

From his point of view, this situation makes the talks between the parties of the INF treaty not only timely, but also vital.

“They started this process, and the September 11 meeting was part of this process. I think what we are going to see now is a series of meetings between the two as they try to negotiate some resolution of the mutual dispute,” the expert suggested, noting that one should not expect swift solutions and exceptional progress after the consultations, due to recent decline in US-Russian relations.

Meanwhile, Ian Anthony, Interim Director of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and head of European Security Program, said that both states expressed their intention to continue to follow the principles of the treaty.

“That treaty was part of the process of creating the positive and cooperative dialogue in Europe about how to promote and safeguard our security, collectively. If the decision had been taken by either party to withdraw from the INF treaty, it would have been a further blow to the European security system,” he explained.

Having said that, the expert welcomed Moscow and Washington’s determination to continue the dialogue, noting that both sides must strive to achieve the mutual adherence to the principles of the 1987 document.

“The value of the treaty is not only in its legal and technical elements, but also in its underlying principles. We need to make sure that the discussion is not restricted to technical issues, but is true to the objective of the treaty which was to eliminate and permanently ban certain weapon types,” Ian Anthony urged.

From his point of view, an exchange of concerns is an essential part of a healthy conflict resolution procedure.

“I think that’s exactly why countries created mechanisms for dialogue – so that they could explain to each other what their concerns about compliance are, have an opportunity to listen to the other side and to respond,” the expert explained.

In his opinion, during the closed-door talks, the parties could have exchanged the arguments behind their claims that have not yet been made available to the public.

“We don’t know whether they provided this information in the bilateral consultations or not. It may well be the chief element of the discussion,” Ian Anthony suggested.

In his turn, Greg Thielmann, Senior Research Fellow at the Arms Control Association, expressed his belief that Russia and the USA will be able to find the compromise for their existing concerns. According to him, the countries have achieved several mutual diplomatic victories in the past.

“Concerns and accusations are not fatal to the treaty. There has to be serious effort on the part of the Treaty members to work on those differences,” the analyst stressed.

In his opinion, Moscow’s decision to continue following the INF treaty is a positive signal that contrasts the popular vision of Russian military forces outside Russia.

“From the American perspective, we read a lot about the Russian military being unhappy with the Treaty complaints,” the expert added.

Discussing Moscow’s claims on Washington’s alleged violations, Greg Thielmann doubted that target practice missiles and combat drones can be considered violations of the 1987 agreement.

“Even though they [target practice missiles] mimic the performance of actual missiles in the banned range category, the target missiles themselves have never been tested to land and explode: they have never been tested with that part of the trajectory, they are separate systems. I do not think this is a reasonable suspicion that they could be used or are being used for INF systems,” the expert clarified. At the same time, he noted that Russia could also have used similar munitions while developing and testing their own anti-ballistic missile launch systems.

According to the analyst, combat drones are also treaty-compliant, because a drone takes off from a runway, not from a silo, and does not self-destruct after striking the target.

However, Greg Thielmann said that Moscow’s concerns about the ground-based launch systems are not unjustified and must be discussed.

“I’ve written an analysis which says that if the US were in the position of Russia and Russia were deploying a vertical launch system that the manufacturers say is also suitable for launching Tomahawk cruise missiles, I think the US would have a complaint to raise with the Russians,” he stressed. At the same time, he added that the modifications in the launch systems’ hardware and software that prevent their combat use can be located only during a thorough inspection.

According to the researcher, one of the ways to resolve the issue may be establishment of several inspections of the US launch systems by Russia, as well as further continuation of the dialogue.

Meanwhile, Pavel Podvig, Director of Russian Nuclear Forces Project, suggested that the violations which led to the consultations on September 11 will eventually be resolved without many difficulties.

“It’s hard to say how serious or not serious it is: my guess is that it’s more like a technical violation. If both sides negotiate it, I don’t see why this issue would not be resolved,” he explained.

At the same time, Pavel Podvig urged both sides to push towards adhering not only to the letter of the treaty, but also to its spirit, and also be much more open to each other during the dialogue.

“If the US would be more open with the nature of the Russian violation, eventually you could find a way for Russia to provide the US some insurances that it is in compliance with the Treaty. To do that, you have to talk, you have to discuss the issues,” he stressed.

At the same time, James Acton, Carnegie Endowment Senior Associate, noted that successful discussion requires serious dedication from both parties, as well as mutual cooperation, since both the US and Russia have issues to resolve.

In his opinion, Moscow’s concerns on combat drones and target practice missiles are unjustified; however, Washington have not yet published the details of the violations reported in July 2014.

According to the expert, the US must assure Russia that the new ground-based missile complex are safe, as well as publish more data on Russia’s alleged INF treaty violations. At the same time, Moscow must assist Washington in resolving the existing disagreements and push towards achieving mutual understanding in the voiced concerns.

“In the case of the vertical launch systems being installed in Europe, I think that Russia has a point that the US does need to engage seriously with, just as I believe it’s very important that Russia engages seriously with the US concerns about a new cruise missile,” James Acton explained.

From his point of view, both parties can reach the compromise in the current situation only through dialogue and cooperation.

“The only way forward is for the two sides to talk about these issues and to agree a mutually acceptable plan with additional transparency and confidence building measures, so that each side can be assured by the other one that its concerns are being addressed,” the expert concluded.

On July 30, the US Department of State has published a worldwide arms control compliance report that included claims that Russia violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty signed between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987.

According to the document, the Russian Federation is in violation of its obligations under the INF Treaty not to possess, produce, or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile with a range capability of 500 km to 5,500 km, or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles.

However, the US officials provided no evidence of such violations.

In return, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (MFA) has published an official statement, in which it rejected all the raised accusations and accused Washington itself of breaking the INF treaty.

According to several experts, the current INF treaty situation may cause additional tensions on the worldwide scale: therefore, it requires mutual cooperation between Moscow and Washington.

Source: Penza News

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Show-And-Tell Exposé: Education Fraud In Mexico – Analysis

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By Amanda Kelsey

Along Mexico City’s bustling Periférico Sur avenue, a massive electronic dashboard display blares out a number at drivers and passersby alike. This number, currently already in the billions of pesos, relentlessly continues to increase every minute of every day. The meter’s count, calculated by a Mexican advocacy group, began on August 17th this year, when classes resumed, to portray the exact amount to date of federal education funds that have been diverted or wasted.

Mexicanos Primero (Mexicans First), the Mexican organization responsible for maintaining the display, refers to it as the abusómetro. Based on the 2013 Censo de Escuelas, Maestros y Alumnos de Educación Básica y Especial (CEMABE,Census of Schools, Teachers and Students of Basic and Special Education), the organization calculated that almost $35 billion pesos ($2.65 billion USD) are not dispersed directly for core or ancillary services.[1] This calculation amounts to 14 percent of Mexico’s education budget, and while the amount may seem incredible, leading Mexican authorities actually consider it a conservative estimate of all fraud and abuse.[2] The number on the abusómetro increases $1,000 pesos per second, and it has brought unprecedented public attention to this drainage in government spending.[3] The billboard has turned attention this summer to the use of federal funds in the education sector, but this issue has actually plagued Mexico for years.

The Dunce of the Class: Mexico’s Abysmal Education Record

In 2000, The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) established a study conducted every 3 years called Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) whose function is to monitor student performance on an international basis. The latest PISA revealed that Mexico was the lowest performing OEDC country, handing in the worst score with an average of 417 points.[4] This average is about 125 points lower than the highest performing countries Korea (543) and Japan (540), which is in effect the equivalent of Mexican students lagging two years of school behind their counterparts in top performing countries.[5] While some might attribute Mexico’s lackluster performance to a scarcity of funds required to improve its education sector, that is certainly not the case. Mexico’s public spending on education is 20.6% of its total public expenditure; this is the greatest percentage that any OECD country spends on education, surpassing New Zealand (20%) and Chile (17.7%).[6] The issue, therefore, is not simply a lack of funds but where these funds are actually being allocated. Mexico devotes 83.1 percent of its education budget to teachers’ salaries and 93.3 percent to compensation of staff all together, the highest proportions among OECD countries.[7] The vast majority of the funds in the education budget therefore go towards salaries, leaving little to no room for funds to improve school infrastructures, to buy supplies, to offer transportation, or to acquire any other vital resource.

According to Mexicanos Primero, the census reveals that many people are receiving unwarranted income from the reserves the education budget has earmarked towards salaries. The diverted funds pay the incomes of 298,174 individuals, the equivalent of 13.3 percent of the country’s elementary and high school educators.[8] 113,259 of them are not known at the schools with which they are associated because they have never physically been there, supposedly operating from “another center of work.”[9] Furthermore, there are 114,998 educators who are retired but remain on a list of active teachers, or are in fact dead.[10] Almost 70,000 individuals receive salaries as “commissioned” teachers or “aviadores;” these terms refer to “teachers” on temporary leave to complete assignments to administrative or political positions within the teachers unions.[11] Although public records label these people as teachers, they exist as such only on paper.

The Mexican government allocates a substantial amount of funding towards staff compensation in this sector, and yet an ample percentage of it is clearly not going to the bona fide educators. These discrepancies demand a closer look at the role of the national teachers’ union that has been mired in a history of corruption and has maintained for decades a stranglehold over the education sector. Claudio X. González, President of Mexicanos Primero, specifically named the unions as the culprit, stating: “The federal government and we are financing the enemy because we are paying the political operators of the union’s upper echelon, who are the ones that block the means of protesting for education reform.”[12] This statement, while bold, represents an opinion with which very few Mexicans would disagree. Since the beginning of his presidency, President Peña Nieto’s actions reveal that he agrees with that statement as well, ready to implement reforms to crack down on the national teachers’ union’s rampant abuse of power and capital. The interaction between the President and the union has caused an upset in the education sector, causing traditional practices to be questioned and creating space for other voices to be heard.

President Peña Nieto’s New Role as Hard-line Principal

Sindicato Nacional de los Trabajadores de la Educación, SNTE, (National Union of Education Workers) is the largest labor syndicate in all of Latin America. The union itself was created by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI, (Institutional Revolutionary Party) to reward those loyal to the party, and until recently the union maintained exceptionally close ties with the PRI, providing political support in exchange for strong control over the teaching sector.[13] Since 1989, Esther Alba Gordillo has led SNTE as president of the union; referred to countrywide as “La Maestra,” her influence and reach knew no bounds. Friend and foe alike knew her as “Jimmy Hoffa in a dress;” powerful and fearsome, she could turn politicians and enemies into sniveling schoolboys. Under her lead, SNTE took charge of appointing and retaining teachers, a capacity that led to widespread abuse and acts of malpractice of allowing teaching positions to be inherited or purchased.

The 2012 elections resulted in Enrique Peña Nieto’s victory, which after a twelve-year interim restored the presidency to the PRI. Until 2000, the PRI spent 71 years in power by relying on cronyism, corruption, and repression to maintain its control. PRI’s firm hold on the presidency and its protective relationship with the union fostered SNTE’s stronghold on the education sector and allowed it to rule in an almost unchecked manner, outside of any domestic force to control it. Despite the previously close ties of the PRI and the SNTE, Peña Nieto wanted to establish his version of the party as distinct from the one of the past and to make education reform a priority. Shortly after taking office, Mexico’s Congress equipped Peña Nieto with the ability to move forward with his plans to restructure the education sector through new legislation. In February 2013, Congress passed a constitutional amendment that eliminated the decades-old practice of buying and selling teaching positions by replacing it with a standardized national teaching exam as well as the creation of an education census (the very one that was the source of information for Mexicanos Primero).[14]

Despite the intense and at times violent protests from union members, Peña Nieto went a step further and arrested Gordillo for systematic acts of embezzlement. This is reminiscent of a similar attempt to fight union corruption and inefficiency when, in 1989, then President Carlos Salinas de Gortari arrested the leader of the oil workers’ union, Joaquin Hernández Galicia, for illegal possession of weapons and for acts of corruption. While Salinas’ move was seen more as a way to demonstrate the government’s political force, Peña Nieto’s decision to arrest Gordillo, coupled with the education reforms, seemed to indicate a legitimate attempt to gain control of and improve the education sector.

Remedial Classes: “Only Quality Education Changes Mexico”

Civil society has never forced itself into the conversation about education to the extent that Mexicanos Primero has. This may be due to the fact that as González has stated, the unions previously prevented any sort of protests or backlash to their actions. The new reforms seem to have abated the power of SNTE, thus allowing for civil society’s nearly silenced voice to finally come to the forefront. Peña Nieto’s reforms, however, exhibit a clear move to increase the power of the state in the education sector. The reforms were necessary to remove SNTE’s corrupt hold from the sector’s leadership, but it would not serve the interests of the nation to trade one domineering force for another. Overall though, it seems that Peña Nieto has in fact worked towards more transparency through the creation of CEMABE as well as fostered greater commitment to quality control with the establishment of the standardized teachers test. Andrew Selee, director of Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, has commented that Peña Nieto was raised by the PRI of old, but to his credit, he has reached out to the new generation.[15]

It is perhaps this dedication to the energy and determination of a new generation that caused him to turn to the reformation of the education sector, but more action is still being demanded of him. To Mexicanos Primero, though the government may not be at fault for the present situation, it is responsible for ending the abuse. “What we ask from the President, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Education, and legislators from all parties …is very simple: that the law that they designed and approved be upheld.”[16] Peña Nieto created the census that revealed the discrepancies; now he must act to remedy them. The government has not responded as yet to the abusómetro, apparently deciding to take measured steps on an issue that has become so visible to the public eye. The initial step that might make the most sense would at least be to investigate the list of these phantom teachers who receive money from the education budget, and ensure that they no longer receive those funds. The meter specifically portrays the diverted or stolen funds that are siphoned off to such individuals; but there are other issues it does not address that also demand attention. CEMABE information indicates that 11 percent of the country’s schools don’t have bathrooms, 31 percent don’t have potable water, and 45 percent don’t have proper sewer drainage.[17] Once these funds are no longer misdirected, they can be funneled directly to addressing these basic needs.

At the end of the day, however, eliminating those from payroll that do not provide legitimate services remains a financial reform that doesn’t attack key issues dealing with the quality of the education. The recapturing of funds to then appropriately distribute to the country’s schools would serve as a short-term remedy with which to provide the Mexican constituency as a means of showing an immediate change. This measure, however, would not address all the public’s demands, and eventually they will insist on further tangible action. The government must therefore simultaneously begin working on long-term reform projects that enhance and institutionalize quality control within the sector. As Mexicanos Primero’s slogan states, “Only quality education changes Mexico,” and it is the fruition of this ultimate goal that the group as well as the rest of civil society wants to witness, and soon.

Amanda Kelsey, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

References

[1] “Mexico City’s ‘abuse-meter’ tracks waste of education funds” http://latincorrespondent.com/education/mexico-citys-abuse-meter-tracks-wasted-education-funds/

[2] “Proyecto de Presupuesto de Egresos de la Federación 2013: Ramo 11 Educación Pública” http://www.cefp.gob.mx/publicaciones/nota/2012/diciembre/notacefp0962012.pdf

[3] As explained on their website, Mexicanos Primero used the information provided in the Education Census in order to determine the total amount of stolen or diverted funds and thus how fast the abusómetro must run. The organizationassigned a value of $10,000 pesos per month per position for each of the 298,174 irregular positions that receive funds from the education budget. This thus implies that $95 million pesos are wasted every day, and more than $1,000 pesos per second.

[4] “PISA 2012 Results: What Students Know and Can Do” http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/46619703.pdf

[5] “PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary” http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/46619703.pdf

[6] “Education at a Glance 2013 OECD Indicators” http://www.oecd.org/edu/eag2013%20(eng)–FINAL%2020%20June%202013.pdf

[7] Education at a Glance 2013: Country Note – Mexico” http://www.oecd.org/edu/Mexico_EAG2013%20Country%20Note.pdf

[8] “Censo de Escuelas, Maestros y Alumnos de Educación Básica y Especial (CEMABE)” http://www.uv.mx/personal/kvalencia/files/2013/09/INEGI-2014-Censo-Escolar.pdf

[9] Ibid

[10] Fin al Abuso – El Abusómetro informa” http://finalabuso.org/index.php/fin-al-abuso/el-abusometro

[11] “Mexico City’s ‘abuse-meter’ tracks waste of education funds” http://latincorrespondent.com/education/mexico-citys-abuse-meter-tracks-wasted-education-funds/

[12] “OPPENHEIMER: Viva el ‘abusómetro’ educativo!” http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2014/08/20/1824846/oppenheimer-viva-el-abusometro.html

[13] “Peña Nieto and the Unions” http://www.iop.harvard.edu/peña-nieto-and-unions

[14] “Mexico Education Reform: President Enrique Peña Nieto Faces Teachers’ Revolt “ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/14/mexico-education-reform-president-enrique-pena-nieto-teachers-revolt_n_3081442.html

[15] “For Mexico’s President-Elect, a Strategic Journey” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/world/americas/pena-nieto-savors-long-plotted-victory-in-mexico.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0

[16] “Fin al Abuso – El Abusómetro informa” http://finalabuso.org/index.php/fin-al-abuso/el-abusometro

[17] “Abusómetro” http://www.vanguardia.com.mx/columnas-abusometro-2160216.html

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New Gambles In Ladakh – Analysis

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By P. Stobdan

Given the high degree of national mandate Xi and Modi carried, people had expected statesmanship from the two leaders to break the ice on the India-China standoff. The opportunity seems missed and instead mistrust has grown. One reads the familiar media overtone ‘we told you so’, ‘China can’t be trusted’, ‘India takes tough stance’, ‘Chinese troops back down’, so on and so forth. These sound apologetic. Sign of a failure?

To begin with both leaders exuded self-confidence, despite misgivings, they seemed serious and upbeat about forging a win-win partnership, deepening trade and investment links. Xi saw opportunities to build upon on Modi’s economic agendas, sought reciprocities and India-China congruence to build a “multipolar” world.

Until they walked the Sabarmati bank things looked fine. But, when media suddenly stirred up Chumur and Demchok crises, enthusiasm started to wane. One is not clear whether Modi and Xi even anticipated the flare up but both came out with foul mood after their press briefings – they were clearly being trapped into a narrative that is neither Chinese nor Indian.

To be sure, while President Xi came with the aim to focus on economics but sensing the Indian toughness, he would have come prepared with a Plan B. This is where things started to drift. It appeared the visit was fixed; it was a game of nerve. Xi had inkling into India’s new perspective on China. A number of Chinese experts visited New Delhi and tested the waters in advance through their interface with think-tanks like VIF, ORF and India Foundation.

Beijing may have taken Modi’s Bhutan and Nepal visits into its strategic calculations, but also carefully observed a series of other actions – Arunachal leader Kiren Rijiju’s entry into Cabinet; appointing former Army Chief to oversee border infrastructure; inviting Tibetan leader Lobzang to Modi’s oath taking function; Prakash Javadekar, the environment minister, giving clearances to building roads within 100-km of the LAC; decision to install a radar station at Narcondam Island; decision to set up additional 54 ITBP posts along borders; Modi’s “expansionist mind-set” swipe in Tokyo; Sushma’s “One-India” thought and finally Pranab Mukherjee’s Vietnam visit close on the heels of Xi’s visit.

Modi’s assertive style, his ability to spring surprises through duality of friendship and toughness, like he did on Pakistan, may have gone into the making of Xi’s India strategy. But most critically, Beijing would have certainly calculated on India’s shift in thinking on the ground in Ladakh, where the Army adopted “assertive posturing” to “interdict” Chinese troops along LAC. Daily border patrolling since the last two months led to increased face-offs, frequencies going up from once or twice a month to almost daily. The transgressions figure is over 400 already this year.

But the crisis at Tibli (Chumur) began on September 8, 2014 when the Indian army erected a storage hut near the zero-border on the Indian side of the International Border (IB). No official statement came from the government though the media reported extensively about the PLA incursions since September 10. Xi’s order to pull back PLA troops did not work and since September 21, the Chinese workers have entered at 31-R point to build a road up to Tible Mane (a mini Stupa) located inside the IB.

Another flash point in Demchok erupted simultaneously after the J&K authorities suddenly ordered on August 18 to construct a small irrigation canal at Nilung Nalla under the NREGA scheme that had been a sour point with the Chinese. Surprisingly, the PLA this time mobilized villagers from Tashigong to pitch Rebos (tents) at Charding-Ninglung Nallah (CNN) Track Junction to protest Indian action.

It all appears that the Indian army this time got clear orders to hold the ground and undo what the previous UPA government did – dismantled huts, bunkers and observation posts in exchange of PLA moving back from the Indian territory. The Depsang crisis last year triggered off after 77 Brigade constructed a fortified post in Chumar. The stand-off was resolved after the structure in Chumur was removed.

The Chumur crisis relates to China’s strong objection to the erection of a hut at Tible. But the NDA government is unwilling to repeat UPA’s ambiguity in dealing with repeated Chinese intrusions. All these years, China drew the red-line but this time India upped the ante by sending a tough message that it would not dismantle its fortified positions. Having been used to browbeat the Indian army in the past, the PLA may have been surprised by India’s swift counter build-up and firmness at the commander’s flag meetings.

Modi through his talks with Xi made it clear that India can no longer have uncertainty along borders. China though is more focused on the Scottish referendum and gives no attention on border face-offs in Ladakh. However, Chinese experts accused India of “instigating” and using “offensive” approach to gain leverage on the border. It viewed India’s toughness “superficial” and “symbolic”. So far, the flag meetings at Spanguur has failed, diplomacy has not worked either. Escalation is likely and the Indian forces seem well prepared.

China has long moved to make economics central to its foreign policy, but showed unwillingness to compromise on territorial claims and does not fear danger of a confrontation in the South China Sea with the US, Japan and others. It is a game of nerves and for India dealing with the Chinese demands adroit thinking. Phraseologies and nice acronyms will not suffice. Surely, the handling so far portends less strategy but more tactics, it reflects less diplomacy but more operation.

Author is a former Ambassador and honorary President of Ladakh International Centre

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

Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/NewGamblesinLadakh_pstobdan_250914.html

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Militarizing The Ebola Crisis – OpEd

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By Joeva Rock

Six months into West Africa’s Ebola crisis, the international community is finally heading calls for substantial intervention in the region.

On September 16, President Obama announced a multimillion-dollar U.S. response to the spreading contagion. The crisis, which began in March 2014, has killed over 2,600 people, an alarming figure that experts say will rise quickly if the disease is not contained. Obama’s announcement comes on the heels of growing international impatience with what critics have called the U.S. government’s “infuriatingly” slow response to the outbreak.

Assistance efforts have already stoked controversy, with a noticeable privilege of care being afforded to foreign healthcare workers over Africans.

After two infected American missionaries were administered Zmapp, a life-saving experimental drug, controversy exploded when reports emerged that Doctors Without Borders had previously decided not to administer it to the Sierra Leonean doctor Sheik Umar Khan, who succumbed to Ebola after helping to lead the country’s fight against the disease. The World Health Organization similarly refused to evacuate the prominent Sierra Leonean doctor Olivet Buck, who later died of the disease as well. The Pentagon provoked its own controversy when it announced plans to deploy a $22 million, 25-bed U.S. military field hospital—reportedly for foreign health workers only.

One particular component of the latest assistance package promises to be controversial as well: namely, the deployment of 3,000 U.S. troops to Liberia, where the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) will establish a joint command operations base to serve as a logistics and training center for medical responders.

According to Think Progress, this number represents “nearly two-thirds of AFRICOM’s 4,800 assigned personnel” who will coordinate with civilian organizations to distribute supplies and construct up to 17 treatment centers. It’s unclear whether any U.S. healthcare personnel will actually treat patients, but according to the White House, “the U.S. Government will help recruit and organize medical personnel to staff” the centers and “establish a site to train up to 500 health care providers per week.” The latter begs the question of practicality, and where these would-be health workers will be recruited from.

According to the Obama administration, the package was requested directly by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. (Notably, Liberia was the only African nation to offer to host AFRICOM’s headquarters in 2008, an offer AFRICOM declined and decided to set up in Germany instead). But in a country still recovering from decades of civil war, this move was not welcomed by all. “Every Liberian I speak with is having acute anxiety attacks,” said Liberian writer Stephanie C. Horton. “We knew this was coming but the sense of mounting doom is emotional devastation.”

Few would oppose a robust U.S. response to the Ebola crisis, but the militarized nature of the White House plan comes in the context of a broader U.S.-led militarization of the region. The soldiers in Liberia, after all, will not be the only American troops on the African continent. In the six years of AFRICOM’s existence, the U.S. military has steadily and quietly been building its presence on the continent through drone bases and partnerships with local militaries. This is what’s known as the “new normal”: drone strikes, partnerships to train and equip African troops (including those with troubled human rights records), reconnaissance missions, and multinational training operations.

To build PR for its military exercises, AFRICOM relies on soft-power tactics: vibrant social media pages, academic symposia, and humanitarian programming. But such militarized humanitarianism—such as building schools and hospitals and responding to disease outbreaks—also plays more strategic, practical purpose: it allows military personnel to train in new environments, gather local experience and tactical data, and build diplomatic relations with host countries and communities.

TomDispatch’s Nick Turse, one of the foremost reporters on the militarization of Africa, noted that a recent report from the U.S. Department of Defense “found failures in planning, executing, tracking, and documenting such projects,” leaving big questions about their efficacy.

Perhaps more importantly, experts have warned that the provision of humanitarian assistance by uniformed soldiers could have dangerous, destabilizing effects, especially in countries with long histories of civil conflict, such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. At the outset of the crisis, for example, efforts by Liberian troops to forcefully quarantine the residents of West Point, a community in the capital of Monrovia, led to deadly clashes. Some public health advocates worry that the presence of armed troops could provoke similar incidents.

The U.S. operation in Liberia warrants many questions. Will military contractors be used in the construction of facilities and execution of programs? Will the U.S.-built treatment centers be temporary or permanent? Will the treatment centers double as research labs? What is the timeline for exiting the country? And perhaps most significantly for the long term, will the Liberian operation base serve as a staging ground for non-Ebola related military operations?

The use of the U.S. military in this operation should raise red flags for the American public as well. After all, if the military truly is the governmental institution best equipped to handle this outbreak, it speaks worlds about the neglect of civilian programs at home as well as abroad.

Joeva Rock is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at American University in Washington, DC focusing on colonial legacies in West Africa. Follow her on Twitter: @southsidetrees.

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US-Led Anti-IS Coalition To Fail Without Iran’s Help, Official Says

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By Milad Fashtami

Head of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council of the System Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani says that without Iran’s help, the international coalition against the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIL or ISIS) militant group will certainly fail.

“The Americans have admitted that the coalition will fail to destroy the ISIL, unless Iran helps in the fight,” he said, IRNA news agency reported Sept. 28.

“Air strikes can not destroy a terrorist group. As we can see, despite the air strikes, the ISIL managed to attack [the city of] Kobane,” Rafsanjani said.

“Western reports suggest that another 235 new militants joined the ISIL since the beginning of the coalition’s attack on the group. This proves that it is not a proper way to fight a terrorist group,” the official noted.

He went on to note that only Iran made a difference in the crisis.

“The Iraqi forces managed to free Amerli town and dam after consulting with Iran,” Rafsanjani concluded.

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A Geopolitical Pawn Named ‘ISIS’? – OpEd

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The mere mention of the name ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or Sham) frightens Muslims and no-Muslims senseless, and there are plenty of reasons for that. But, who are they, and where does their campaign of terror lead to?

Before we can objectively decipher the mysteries surrounding this group, we must rely less on sound bites, packaged definitions, and media sensationalism, and more on historical facts. Granted, it is easier said than done.

Its True Nature

Contrary to its declaration of being the first movement to successfully found an Islamic caliphate since the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the group known as ISIS simply part of a misguided fraternity of extremists whose violent ideology has been proliferating in the world for a number of domestic and foreign factors.

Like al-Qaida, al-Shabaab and Boko Haram, ISIS justifies its existence by way of ill-interpreted or perverted Islam, and advances its cause through the use of gruesome violence.

Though each group proclaims Prophet Muhammad as their guiding light, ironically, none of them apply his spiritual curriculum—the well documented model of gradual and peaceful transformation— nor his hallmark mercy and compassion that he used to win over the hearts and minds of even his staunchest enemies.

Muslims around the world, especially the younger more impressionable generation, must remember two things. First, nothing affirms the authenticity of a claim more than the actions and outcomes associated with it. Second, as underscored by the Qur’an, no movement or system that is devoid of mercy and compassion could ever be essentially Islamic. Prophet Muhammad’s entire mission was based on mercy and compassion. However, to ISIS and the likes, mercy and compassion are nothing more than the two sides of meekness, hence weakness. To them, neither Muslims nor non-Muslims deserve mercy and compassion and they have established a horrific record to amplify that ideological stance.

So the lingering question is, can such groups be defeated in battlefields with narrowly defined and increasingly militarized strategies?

Rampant Cynicism

For a few months now I have been casually monitoring opinions and editorials of mostly independent analysts and intellectuals on ISIS. Other than those helpless victims who suffered as a result of their Genghis Khan-like invasion and at their criminal hands, most of the Sunni Muslims question this latest intriguingly fantastical terrorist phenomenon. Mainly because the region has paid hefty price—both in lives and material resources—since it has been the epicenter of the global war on terror (GWOT) for a decade and a half.

ISIS is generally seen as nothing more than a Frankenstein’s monster made of deal-making criminal elements released from terrorist detention centers such as its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Other than the fact that he was released from prison in 2009 and founded ISIS a year later, no one knows anything about a man broadly considered as the world’s most dangerous terrorist. Other elements are revenge-seeking Ba’athists, misguided Iraqi and other Sunnis lured into partaking a quixotic movement determined to establish an Islamic caliphate by the edge of a hunter knife.

Here are some of the most common arguments used by independent commentators and intellectuals in the Middle East to dismiss ISIS as a convenient card used by elements within the West to manipulate  balance of power and for their geopolitical interests:

  • In a patently Western style that is virtually alien in the Arab culture, ISIS uses name abbreviation in Arabic (DA’ISH).
  • They are oddly brand-conscious. Their name had to be changed to ‘IS’ once people started to ridicule its striking similarity to the Ancient Egyptian goddess of health, marriage, and love, and, when read backwards, to the strongman of Egypt, Abdel Fatah Sisi who has been eagerly connecting ISIS to the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Why would a terrorist organization that considers the concept of nation-state as an un-Islamic Western construct that must be abolished call itself Dawlah (State in Arabic)?
  • They are reported to have unusually large number of foreign fighters and seem to be at ease and readily trusting of this growing population.
  • Their military, intelligence, and propaganda sophistication is in a stark contrast with their eagerness to spread themselves too thin, encircle themselves with enemies, and perpetual desire to pick unnecessary fights.
  • Their tactics and strategic moves seem to be in synchrony with the geopolitical interests of countries such as US, Egypt, and Israel and against countries such as Turkey and Iran. [The latter two are the x factors of what Newsweek magazine calls the Coalition of Unwilling and Unsavory]

Cake-walking Throughout Iraq and Syria

ISIS’ sadistic reality TV has been striking profound psychological terror in the hearts of many Muslims and non-Muslims.

According to an expert estimate, ISIS has some 30,000 fighters. Ironically, this supposedly ragtag group has somehow managed to easily overrun a “highly trained” Iraqi army that is ten times its size (270,000 soldiers) that has 300 tanks and whose 2013 budget was $17 billion. Meanwhile, their considerable military advances and strategic recklessness remain paradoxical, to say the least.

Take its strategic move in Syria as a case in point. Instead of consolidating all its manpower, arsenal and financial resources to score a decisive defeat to the current brutal regime or to oust the tyrant that they have been fighting, Bashar Al-Assad, the group opted to send a large number of its fighters to Iraq.

Moreover, in what seems as a suicidal move, they decided to go on a slaughtering rampage northward in Ayn Al-Arab bordering Turkey which is the geographical polar opposite of the capital city Damascus thus forcing over 130,000 civilians to cross into Turkey within three days. Making the matter even more dangerous, ISIS continued its seemingly haphazard strategy of spreading itself too thin and advancing to take over the Syria side of the Golan Heights- a stone throw away from the Israeli border.

Under these seemingly synchronized provocations, Turkey—an essential partner if the aforementioned coalition were to defeat ISIS—which wanted to stay out of the coalition to fight ISIS due to its political composition would be pressured to join in for its own economic and political survival. Likewise, Israel which was deliberately kept at bay due to the same political dynamic would now be secured a backdoor entry to a coalition that it eagerly wanted to be part of.

Meanwhile, smuggling oil and gas out Iraq and Syria continue in their uninterrupted flow to the international black markets. Sellers are widely understood as ISIS but the buyers still remain a mystery.

Defeating ISIS and Defusing Violent Extremism

Defeating ISIS and groups like them requires honest talk and when necessary direct action. Though assassinations or ‘targeted killings’ of top leadership are often celebrated as the ultimate solution; other than certain political dividends, it does not deliver a fatal blow to the terrorist organization.

More often than not, triumphant euphoria and false sense of security following each successful operation are often abrupted overshadowed by newer, more horrific, realities.

It happened in Somalia – the US aerial assassination of al-Shabaab leader Aden Ayroin 2008 produced a more radical leader in Ahmed Godane who wreaked bloody havoc till he was assassinated a few weeks ago . One can argue the same in assassination of al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden in 2012 and how that paved the way for ISIS’ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to fill the vacuum and declare a heartless caliphate.

The current US-led model to fight terrorism is nothing more than stealth GWOT- a reinvention of that failed model that ultimately plays into the hands of the terrorists.

Al-Qaida had a baiting strategy to exhaust and drain the human and financial resources of the U.S. In one of his old videotapes, Osama Bin Laden is quoted to have said, “Our strategy has to be we wave the flag of jihad and call it al-Qaida anywhere in the world, and that will get the American generals to come running to fight us.”

There is no cookie-cutter approach to defeating violent extremists as their needs and motivations are not always the same. Their various motivations are found within a wide spectrum of factors such as festering grievances or political disenfranchisement, delusional sense of Divine entitlement, lust for power and control, exploitation due to board-based ignorance and isolationism, and real or perceived external or hegemonic threats.

The defeat of violent extremists such as ISIS could be achieved with a multifaceted strategy that includes religious based de-radicalization, counter-terrorism measures, addressing all legitimate grievances, reconciliation, etc.

Where there is good faith effort, defeating such groups should not be a problem. They often are their own worst enemies by often repeating that all too familiar fatal mistake of taken for granted human-beings’ God-given innate desire to resist suppression, despotism, and tyranny in all their manifestations.

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Gulf Proxy War: UAE Seeks To Further Damage Qatar’s Already Tarnished Image – Analysis

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The United Arab Emirates and Qatar are locked into a propaganda war with public relations agencies and front organizations as proxies that is backfiring on both Gulf states.

Disclosures of the proxy war have hit Qatar at a time that its image as the host of the 2022 World Cup is under renewed fire. In contrast to Qatar, the UAE has sought to counter revelations about its efforts to shore up its image through the creation of a network of human rights groups and negatively influence international media coverage of Qatar by touting the fact that its lead fighter pilot in allied attacks on the Islamic State, the jihadist group that controls a swath of Iraq and Syria, is a woman.
Tension between long-standing rivals Qatar and the UAE has been mounting for more than a year.

The UAE has detained and/or sentenced Qatari nationals on charges of espionage, one of which has been dubbed a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. It also earlier this year withdrew its ambassador to Doha alongside the envoys of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The rupture in diplomatic relations was part of a so far failed effort to force Qatar to halt its support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

The UAE, whose animosity towards Qatar predates the current multiple crises in the Middle East and North Africa, kicked into high gear with the realization that Qatar may make minor concessions but was unlikely to bow to Gulf pressure.

Qatar earlier this month asked several Muslim Brothers to leave the country in a nominal gesture but has not cancelled their residence permits. Moreover, family members of some of the departed Brothers remain resident in Qatar as does Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, one of the world’s most prominent Muslim clerics who has close ties to the Brotherhood. Similarly, Qatar has rejected pressure to expel Khalid Mishal, the leader of Hamas, the Islamist militia with close ties to the Brotherhood that controls the Gaza Strip.

The UAE is waging its proxy war against the backdrop of its adoption of a more activist foreign policy that aims to counter political Islam. The UAE took the lead in recent weeks in confronting the Brotherhood and other Islamists with air attacks on Islamist forces in Libya in cooperation with the Gulf-backed Egyptian government of general-turned-president Abdul Fattah al Sisi. At home, alleged Brothers were sentenced to lengthy prison terms in legal proceedings that have been condemned by human rights groups.

At the same time, the UAE has been touting its image as a forward-looking, progressive Muslim society by emphasizing the fact that a woman, Maj. Mariam al-Mansouri, led the UAE squadron in recent US-led attacks on Islamic State targets in Syria. Photos of Ms. Al-Mansouri released by WAM, the state-run Emirati news agency, went viral on social media. They highlighted the fact that the UAE is one of the few Arab states to include women in its military and allow them to rise to prominence.

As with much of its response to widespread international criticism, Qatar’s response to the campaign against it has been a combination of too little too late, less willingness than its opponents to engage highly priced public relations agencies and lobbyists, and bungled efforts of its own to influence media coverage. The Qatari effort has been further stymied by the recent designation as international terrorists by the US Treasury of four men with links to the Gulf state accused of fundraising for jihadist groups. Qatari sources say at least two of the men had been arrested prior to their designation.

The weak Qatari counteroffensive got into further hot water with revelations last week by Britain’s Channel 4 that Qatar had engaged Portland Communications founded by Tony Allen, a former adviser to Tony Blair when he was prime minister. Channel 4 linked Portland to the creation of a soccer blog that attacked Qatar’s detractors by Alistair Campbell, Mr. Blair’s chief communications advisor at Downing Street Number Ten and a former member of Portland’s strategic council.

Channel 4 accused the blog that projected itself as “truly independent” and claimed to represent “a random bunch of football fans, determined to spark debate” of “astro-turfing,” the creation of fake sites that project themselves as grassroots but in effect are operated by corporate interests. Portland admitted that it had helped create the blog but asserted that it was not part of its engagement with Qatar.

The UAE has been waging its propaganda war on multiple levels. In July, the UAE backed the establishment of the Muslim Council of Elders (MCE) in a bid to counter Sheikh Qaradawi’s International Union of Muslim Scholars as well as Qatar’s support for political change in the Middle East and North Africa as long as it does not include the Gulf. The MCE promotes a Sunni Muslim tradition of obedience to the ruler rather than activist elements of the Salafis who propagate a return to 7th century life as it was at the time of the Prophet Mohammed and his immediate successors.

The UAE’s efforts to tarnish Qatar’s image contrast starkly with its official support for Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup. The Emirate’s targeting of Qatar’s hosting became evident with this month’s detention in Qatar of two British human rights activists who were investigating human and labour rights in the Gulf state. Their detention also highlighted Emirati efforts to shape international public opinion in response to mounting criticism of the UAE’s own human and labour rights record.

The detentions exposed a network of Emirati-backed human rights groups in Norway and France that seemingly sought to polish the UAE’s image while tarnishing that of Qatar. The Brits of Nepalese origin were acting on behalf of the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), a Norway-based group with alleged links to the UAE.

Established in 2008 “to enhance and support both human rights and development by adopting new strategies and policies for real change,” GNRD is funded by anonymous donors to the tune of €3.5 million a year, according to veteran Middle East journalist and author Brian Whitaker.

The group’s International Human Rights Rank Indicator (IHRRI) listed the UAE at number 14 as the Arab country most respectful of human rights as opposed to Qatar that it ranked at number 94. The ranking contradicts reports by human rights groups, including the United Nations Human Rights Council (OHCHR), which earlier this year said it had credible evidence of torture of political prisoners in the UAE and questioned the independence of the country’s judiciary. Egypt’s State Information Service reported in December that GNRD had supported the banning of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization and called for an anti-Brotherhood campaign in Europe.

An Emirati human rights activist told Middle East Eye: “They are supported by the UAE government for public relations purposes. The GNRD published a fake human rights index last year that wrongly praised the UAE.”

More recently, The New York Times and The Intercept revealed that the UAE, the world’s largest spender on lobbying in the United States in 2013, had engaged a lobbying firm to plant anti-Qatar stories in American media. The firm, Camstoll Group, is operated by former high-ranking US Treasury officials who had been responsible for relations with Gulf state and Israel as well as countering funding of terrorism.

The successful effort to portray Qatar as a prime backer of jihadist terrorists coincided with a similar campaign by Israel calling for Qatar to be deprived of its right to host the World Cup because of its support for Hamas. The campaign is designed to counter Qatari efforts, according to Palestinian sources, to coax Hamas into accepting full-fledged peace talks with Israel and agreeing to surrender much of its authority in Gaza to the Palestine Authority headed by Hamas rival, President Mahmoud Abbas.

The New York Times reported that Camstoll’s public disclosure forms “filed as a registered foreign agent, showed a pattern of conversations with journalists who subsequently wrote articles critical of Qatar’s role in terrorist fund-raising.” The Intercept asserted that Camstoll was hired less than a week after it was established in late 2012 by Abu Dhabi-owned Outlook Energy Investments, LLC with a retainer of $400,000 a month.

“The point here is not that Qatar is innocent of supporting extremists… The point is that this coordinated media attack on Qatar – using highly paid former U.S. officials and their media allies – is simply a weapon used by the Emirates, Israel, the Saudis and others to advance their agendas,” The Intercept said.

UAE opposition to Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood dates back at least a decade. Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed bin Zayed Al Nahayan warned US diplomats already in 2004 that “we are having a (culture) war with the Muslim Brotherhood in this country,” according to US diplomatic cables disclosed by Wikileaks. In 2009. Sheikh Mohamed went as far as telling US officials that Qatar is “part of the Muslim Brotherhood.” He suggested that a review of Al Jazeera employees would show that 90 percent were affiliated with the Brotherhood. Other UAE officials privately described Qatar as “public enemy number 3”, after Iran and the Brotherhood.

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Thousands Occupy Hong Kong For Second Night In Row

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Thousands of demonstrators continued a second day of sit-ins and protests at key intersections in downtown Hong Kong on Monday amid growing popular anger over the use of tear gas and pepper spray against unarmed protesters and calls for chief executive C.Y. Leung to resign.

Drone footage released online by the Apply Daily newspaper showed thousands settling down for another evening of protest, in what is being dubbed Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Revolution,” their numbers swelling visibly as people left work for the day.

Organizers handed out food and bottled water as thousands of seated protesters chanted “Leung Chun-ying, step down!” on Nathan Road in Kowloon’s shopping district of Mong Kok, after hundreds of protesters slept overnight on major highways in the downtown business districts of Central and Admiralty and the Causeway Bay shopping district on Hong Kong Island.

On Monday evening local time, thousands had already descended on Connaught Road in Central, wearing black T-shirts and yellow ribbons, a somber change of mood from the white and yellow of the previous week’s student strike.

Pupils at a number of high schools across Hong Kong showed up in school but boycotted their classrooms on Monday morning in a show of solidarity and protest over last night’s use of force by riot police, social media reports said.

Later on Monday, police were still out in force, but many lacked full protective riot gear, while police appeared to have suspended, at least temporarily, the use of tear gas and pepper spray amid widespread public criticism.

However, racks of umbrellas were standing by on Connaught Road between Central and Admiralty for protesters to use in the event of further pepper spray attacks.

Light up the sky

As camera drones swept across the crowds, protesters lit up the night sky with thousands of lights from individual smart-phone torches as students, office workers, teachers and social workers swelled their numbers further.

A large paper effigy of Leung with demonic teeth drew boos from the crowd, while protesters in Admiralty decked out an abandoned double-decker bus as a mock ancestral “shrine” to Leung, complete with floral tributes and photograph.

In the crowd near the Centre for the Performing Arts between Central and Wanchai, a second-year university student surnamed Wong said he had no regrets about the disruption.

“We may be inconveniencing some people who need to get to work, or somewhere else, but we are hoping that the majority will take part in this civil disobedience movement, so we can have an even bigger impact and put even more pressure on the government,” Wong said. “[We want them to] genuinely listen to our demands.”

“Everyone here has the same aim, and that is to fight for genuine universal suffrage and public nomination of election candidates,” he said.

Pro-democracy activists and pan-democratic politicians have dismissed as “fake universal suffrage” a framework under which the general public cannot nominate candidates.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party, which took charge of Hong Kong in 1997 under the terms of a treaty with the U.K., said via its National People’s Congress (NPC) on Aug. 31 that any candidate standing in the poll must be vetted by a pro-Beijing committee, making the election of any pan-democratic candidate highly unlikely.

Meanwhile, a university student surnamed Chan said she was fully in favor of civil disobedience.

“I am in support of peaceful action, without creating too much chaos,” she said. “We should do everything we can to use peaceful methods to fight for what we want to fight for.”

Assistant police commissioner Cheung Tak-keung meanwhile defended the use of tear gas, which was deployed on 87 “occasions” throughout the previous night’s protests that brought traffic to a standstill on major highways and saw schools and businesses close on Monday in the worst-hit areas.

Cheung indicated that many more rounds than 87 might have been fired, adding that police had used “minimum force” in a bid to clear the area, but occupiers remained in position in most major locations through the night.

He said people couldn’t be injured by tear gas, only made uncomfortable, saying it was brought in after the pepper spray proved ineffective.

“After repeated warnings, police used the minimum force in order to maintain a distance between the protesters and the police so that injuries would be prevented,” Cheung told a news conference on Monday evening local time.

However, Cheung declined to say whether the use of force had been personally approved by Leung.

The Hong Kong government has announced it will cancel a public fireworks display in the city’s iconic Victoria Harbor on Wednesday to celebrate the founding of the People’s Republic of China under late supreme leader Mao Zedong.

Officials said they may also postpone a public consultation on electoral reform proposals that sparked pro-democracy protests in the first place.

It was unclear whether police planned the further use of force to clear the occupied areas on Monday. Officers in regular uniform maintained a discreet presence around protesters, but local media reports showed many more police in full riot gear waiting in side-streets and alleyways, ready for deployment.

The people’s demands

Occupy Central co-founder Chan Kin-man called on local people to sustain the occupation until the government addresses the people’s demands for public nomination of candidates in 2017 elections for the chief executive, and the resignation of C.Y. Leung.

But he said if anyone started to get hurt, the crowds should retreat.

Occupy’s founders had previously only envisaged a mass civil disobedience rally in Central, and Chan said the occupations of other districts had been spontaneously decided on by citizens.

“Hong Kong people are fearless towards tear gas and think it is manageable,” he said. “So I would not suggest that protesters retreat for the time being,” Chan said, adding that the Occupy organizers didn’t consider themselves the arbiters of how long the protests would continue.

However, the influential Hong Kong Federation of Students said via Twitter on Monday: “Violence won’t scare us away. It only makes us stronger and more determined.”

In London, a Foreign Office spokesman said the government is monitoring events in the former British colony closely.

“The British government is concerned about the situation in Hong Kong,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying in a statement posted on the Foreign Office website.

“Hong Kong’s prosperity and security are underpinned by its fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right to demonstrate,” it said, adding: “These freedoms are best guaranteed by the transition to universal suffrage.”

But it gave no indication of whether or not it considered Beijing’s electoral plans for Hong Kong genuine universal suffrage.

In Washington, the State Department said on Sunday that it supports Hong Kong’s well-established traditions and fundamental freedoms such as peaceful assembly and expression.

China’s official media has already dubbed the protests “illegal,” saying they have spoiled the financial hub’s international image.

“The radical activists are doomed,” the tabloid English-language Global Times wrote in an editorial on Monday. “Opposition groups know well it’s impossible to alter the decision of the [NPC] on Hong Kong’s political reform plan.”

It echoed chief executive Leung’s promise that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), billeted in the former British colony since 1997, would not be involved in any operation to clear the city’s streets.

It said comparisons with the PLA crackdown on unarmed student-led protesters in June 1989 were “groundless” and designed to stir up trouble.

“China is no longer the same nation it was 25 years ago,” the paper said. “The country now has more feasible approaches to deal with varied disturbances.”

On Monday, the Office for Hong Kong and Macau Affairs under China’s cabinet, the State Council, said it was “resolutely opposed” to “illegal behaviors” in Hong Kong.

Reported by Wen Yuqing for RFA’s Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

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