As electorates in Jharkhand start casting their ballot on 25 November, marking the beginning of the five-phase assembly elections spanning almost a month, the threat of left-wing extremism hangs heavy over the poll process. However, while the elections may pass without much violence, addressing the issue of extremism would remain important for the party assuming power.

Statistics reveal an improved security scenario since the last assembly elections. From 208 civilian and security force fatalities in 742 violent incidents recorded in 2009, 152 deaths in 387 incidents took place in 2013. This year, till the first week of November, less than 60 deaths have been reported. Police claim that the Maoists have retreated from the majority of their strongholds, leading to the return of normalcy in several areas.

However, media personnel covering the elections portray a different picture of a lacklustre campaign under a pervading regime of fear. In districts like Latehar, Gumla and Khunti, police personnel bury themselves under barricaded and fortified police stations advising civilians not to venture into the interior areas. The candidates and their supporters, as a result, have indulged in isolated efforts to seek support among the people. Rallies and open canvassing of votes have remained predominantly urban affairs. Prominent journalists from the state like Dayamani Barla have indicated that the results of the polls in several districts of the state are indeed being decided by the power of the gun, wielded by the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) and another three dozen splinter criminal groups, some of whom have been courted by the political parties.

Several incidents of recoveries of arms have given further credence to the fact that the CPI-Maoist that has been announcing the boycott of the polls through pamphlets and posters is determined to carry out some acts of violence targetting the security forces and political activists. Over 400 kilograms of local explosives and 1,740 detonators were among the items recovered in Latehar district on 10 November. On 15 November, an improvised explosive device (IED) weighing 40 kilograms was found dug under a road in Khunti district.

On 15 November, a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel was injured in an encounter with the Maoists in Gumla district. The apparent Maoist strategy before the polls has been to use forested areas such as Kumari and Saranda to launch attacks on the security forces and poll officials. These are indications that the reduced violence of the past months, mostly due to the monsoon rains, may not serve as a parameter of state success any longer. The general secretary of CPI-Maoist’s Bihar Jharkhand special area committee (BJSAC) Rupesh has indeed warned that the relative silence of the Maoists should not be confused with the disenchantment of the militia. “It could be a part of our strategy that we are not willing to waste our energy, forces and weapons but apt reply would be given to the security forces if they continue with their repression,” he said in a media interview published on 15 November. Thus, some attacks can be expected both during the polling process and also in the days following the exercise, when levels of preparedness decline.

However, sporadic acts of violence are not likely to disrupt the polls in a significant manner. The percentage of voters casting their ballot in the past elections indicate both a popular yearning to take part in the democratic exercise and also the ability of the forces to provide a reliable security cover. Latehar, for example, recorded over 55 per cent of voting in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and 58 per cent during the 2009 assembly elections. Tribal-dominated Khunti district recorded 61 per cent voter turnout in the Lok Sabha elections, whereas Singhbhum recorded a 63 per cent turnout. Over 40,000 security forces were on duty during the Lok Sabha elections. This time, the election commission has promised to treble the number of forces.

A violence-free election ensured by force saturation can only be the first step towards addressing the problem of left-wing extremism. The newly elected government must evolve a credible policy to address the problem. The manifesto and other political pronouncements of the main political parties, however, portray a gross lack of imagination on how to solve the problem. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) broadly promises in four sentences in its 56-page manifesto that it will “try to combine social as well as developmental solutions for extremism.” The JMM’s 16-page flaws-marred manifesto did not even mention the issue.

Given the state of left-wing extremism that assumes additional complexity in states like Bihar and Jharkhand owing to the caste dynamics as well as factionalism among outfits, an immediate solution to the extremism problem is unforeseeable. While its own police force has been found wanting, Jharkhand’s reputation of under-utilising the central forces has remained a matter of serious concern. The least the young state with 40 per cent of the national mineral wealth can hope for is to take forward steps towards the containment of the threat. The past has been disappointing. The future, one hopes, would be different.

This article was published at IPCS.

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Japan’s economy, the world’s third largest, has fallen into recession.

New data show the economy shrank at a 1.6 percent annual rate in July, August and September, after an even sharper decline in the previous quarter. Textbooks often define “recession” as two consecutive quarters of “negative growth.”

The shrinking economy follows a tax increase that apparently discouraged spending by consumers and businesses. Stories in the financial press say the bad economic news makes it likely that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will delay another planned tax hike and call an early election.

Abe took office promising to improve the slumping economy through massive public stimulus spending and reforms. The plan often is called “Abenomics.”

The shrinking economy surprised experts who mostly predicted modest growth for Japan. News of the recession caused stocks to decline in Tokyo and some other major markets.

The post Japan Slips Into Recession appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Dr Martin Salia, a surgeon who contracted the Ebola virus while working in Sierra Leone, has died at a hospital in Nebraska.

The 44 year-old was taken to hospital in Omaha on Saturday, but passed away on Monday according to hospital officials.

“We are extremely sorry to announce that the third patient we’ve cared for with the Ebola virus, Dr. Martin Salia, has passed away,” the hospital said in a statement, as reported by AFP. The other two patients who were treated at the facility were given clean bills of health.

The 44 year-old, who was a permanent US resident, contracted the virus while working at a hospital in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, according to his relatives. He was already suffering from advanced symptoms, including kidney and respiratory failure when he arrived at the Nebraska Medical Center, which is one of four US hospitals equipped to handle treatment of the disease, and has the largest bio-containment unit in the country.

While at the medical facility in Omaha, he was treated by Dr Phil Smith. Writing, on his Twitter page, the doctor explained that Salia had received a dose of convalescent plasma and ZMapp therapy. “We used every possible treatment available,” said Dr Smith.

Salia’s wife, Isatu Salia, said on Monday that she and her family were grateful for the efforts made by her husband’s medical team. “We are so appreciative of the opportunity for my husband to be treated here and believe he was in the best place possible,” Salia said, according to AP.

Salia, who was based in the state of Maryland, but spent a significant amount of time in Freetown, had originally been tested for the disease in early November. His test came back negative leading to jubilant celebrations and embraces from worried colleagues, the Washington Post reported. However, his symptoms did not go away and he took another test on November 10, which was positive forcing everyone who had been in physical contact with the 44 year-old into quarantine

“We were celebrating. If the test says you are Ebola-free, we assume you are Ebola-free,” said Komba Songu M’Briwa, who cared for Salia at the Hastings Ebola Treatment Center in Freetown, the Washington Post added. “Then everything fell apart.”

In an interview in April, Dr Martin Salia talked about how important it was for him to work in the land of his birth and help others. He worked as a surgeon at the United Methodist Kissy Hospital in Sierra Leone.

“I took this job not because I want to, but I firmly believe that it was a calling and that God wanted me to. That’s why I strongly believe that God has brought me here…and I’m pretty sure and confident that I just need to lean on him because he sent me here. And that’s my passion,” he said in a video posted on YouTube.

Salia, who was originally from Sierra Leone, was the 10th patient to be treated on US soil for the virus. He is the second person to have died in the United States from Ebola. In October, a Liberian man, Thomas Eric Duncan, died at a Texas hospital from the virus, which has killed thousands of people in West Africa.

The current outbreak of Ebola is the worst on record. It has so far killed at least 5,177 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization, as reported by Reuters.

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By Ravi Joshi

On September 11, 2014 at Jeddah, US Secretary of State John Kerry got together a rather reluctant bunch of 10 Arab States to sign up a Joint Communique in agreeing to fight the most savage terrorist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that had occupied one third of the territory of Iraq and Syria. The Joint Communique signed by Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and six Gulf states, including rivals Saudi Arabia and Qatar (that have recently patched up their differences on the latter’s support to Muslim Brotherhood – which had gone from being a ruling party in Egypt, post Arab-Spring, to being a terror group after the military take-over by Gen. Abdul Fateh Sisi), listed the following main tasks:

  •  Stopping the flow of foreign fighters

  •  Countering ISIS financing

  •  Repudiating their ideology

  •  Ending impunity

  •  Providing humanitarian relief

  •  Reconstruction of ISIS-hit areas

  •  Supporting states that face ‘acute’ ISIS threats, and

  •  ‘Appropriately joining in the many aspects of a coordinated military campaign’.

The US is the overall coordinator of the military campaign. Assistance was assured from a motley bunch of about 60 countries, from Albania to Australia and several West and East European countries that are generally happy to pay up some cash and let others do the job.

Secretary John Kerry clarified in an address to the Coalition of the Willing, in Paris on September 15, that “this is not the Gulf War of 1991 nor is it the Iraq war of 2003. We are not building a military coalition for invasion but a military coalition ….for the elimination of the ISIL (ISIS).” Now, two months down the line, how has the war progressed so far? How has the Coalition fulfilled the tasks?

Well, as for stopping the flow of foreign fighters, many Western countries have reported intercepting several young men and women from flying to Turkey and onward to the ISIS- held territory. Progress on this score is difficult to measure as no one is clear about the cadre strength of the ISIS, let alone how it has swelled after September. Rough estimates range from ‘18,000 hard core cadre’ according to Gen. Martin Dempsey to 30,000 soldiers as per the reported estimate of CIA.

However, the largest contribution of manpower to the ISIS comes from the Arab States themselves, particularly the Gulf monarchies and that is almost impossible to stem, in view of their open borders and acute frustration of the youth with their rulers. It may be recalled that 15 of the 18 terrorists that attacked the WTC and other targets in New York and Washington came from Saudi Arabia. And there were thousands fighting in Afghanistan too. In a direct appeal to this powerful constituency Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Caliph of the Islamic Caliphate, has called for ‘several volcanoes of jihad’ to be ignited in Saudi Arabia. Incidentally, no such call was made against the rulers of Saudi Arabia as long as the so-called ‘private donors’ kept up a steady flow of funds, arms and sparkling new SUVs to the ISIS.

Does that mean the Coalition has succeeded in countering ISIS financing? Hardly. The main source of funding for the ISIS comes from smuggling oil out of the oil wells it has seized and that revenue is estimated to be around $3 to 4 million per month. This is in addition to the huge funds it seized from banks and other private sources in the territory from Anbar to Fallujah to Tikrit. Turkey has been entrusted the task of stemming the oil smuggling, but how far it will go to disable the ISIS is a moot point.

On the tasks of repudiating their ideology, well, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and other prominent clerics of Gulf Kingdoms have all condemned the ‘Islamic State’ as un-Islamic and barbaric. This has, however, not curtailed its appeal to the discontented youth who, living under corrupt and despotic dictators and monarchs of the Islamic world, regard anyone fighting the ‘Satanic West’ as a just cause. Any amount of condemnation by the State-paid clerics will neither hurt the appeal of ISIS nor end its impunity.

On the task of providing humanitarian relief, the Coalition’s warplanes did a commendable job in saving the Yazidis perched on top of the Sinjar mountains, while its performance on saving the Kurds in Kobani was a mixed one. Turkey’s indifference to prevent the slaughter of Kurds in Kobani showed that it weighed its internal political calculations vis-à-vis the PKK.

Reconstruction of ISIS-hit areas is yet to be taken up, as there is hardly any area that has been fully and irrevocably liberated from the ISIS.

Coming to the more crucial task of ‘supporting the states that face acute ISIS threats’ how has the Coalition fared? It must be noted that the Coalition never promised ‘boots on the ground’ and that it had only assured aerial strikes against ISIS targets, and military advisers to assist the Iraqi troops. Plenty of arms, ammunition, vehicular and logistic support has been rushed in.

In Iraq, ISIS is partly or wholly in control of Mosul, Ramadi, Fallujah and Tikrit. Smaller towns such as Heet and Zawyet Albu-Nimr (north of Ramadi) and Al-Qaim (northwest of Ramadi, on the border with Syria) and Deir al -Zor in Syria are completely under control of ISIS. Since September, its power in these regions is being contested. The contest for power, however, has certainly not gone in favour of Iraqi troops so far. According to a senior US General, Iraq will need about 80,000 ‘good’ troops to vanquish the ISIS. Meanwhile, US President Obama has sent in 1500 military advisers to assist the Iraqi troops. They have failed to tilt the balance in favour of Iraqi troops, let alone “degrade and destroy” the ISIS forces.

While in Iraq, the Coalition forces have a clear-cut friend and foe, the situation in Syria is completely blurred. The State and the regime in Iraq are allies of the Coalition forces, while in Syria the regime is the enemy of the Coalition and so too are its enemies. The ISIS, although shown in all the Western media maps as having control of more than half of Syria, much of this is uninhabited desert land. It is actually in control of Raqqa (the capital of the Islamic Caliphate), Hassakeh, Deir al-Zor, Anbu-Kamal and a few important border towns on Syria-Turkey border including Kobani. While the north-western border towns are in the hands of ISIS and other rebel forces, the north eastern half is in control of the Kurdish forces.

However discredited President Bashar al-Assad is, the Army and his militias, instead of revolting against him, as long expected in the West, have still managed to keep control of Damascus (despite sporadic attacks in the outlying districts), Homs, Hama and the crucial port towns of Latakia and Tartous.

Aleppo and Idlib are severely contested, despite all the ruins, and it is a 3-way contest between the regime forces v/s the Jabhut ul-Nusra (an Al-Qaeda affiliate) and ISIS v/s the Free Syrian Army (now supported by the Coalition forces). Derra, south of Damascus, is under rebel control and they are reportedly pressing ahead with gains.

All in all, the picture is gloomy. The ISIS is unlikely to be pushed back as long as the Coalition’s War against it remains only aerial. The Iraqi troops battling them were trained by the Americans, who after spending billions of dollars on their training find that they are not up to the task. In northern Iraq, the ISIS confronts even poorly equipped and untrained Kurdish Peshmarga, which is likely to remain unequipped and untrained due to Turkey’s security concerns.

There are reports of President Obama doubling the number of US military advisers to 3100. US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey who is currently on a visit to Baghdad has spoken of the war against ISIS possibly going on ‘for years’. He has repeatedly stressed the need for ground troops to push back the ISIS. Will the newly empowered Republicans support the Pentagon and push President Obama into a full-fledged war in Iraq? Or will he let Iraq and Syria disintegrate and be permanently divided on ethnic lines?

(The writer is a Visiting Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi)

The post War Against ISIS: The Picture Is Gloomy – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

That radicalism, extremism, and terrorist organizations like ISIS experienced an upswing as the Arab Spring came to a deadlock is no surprise at all. Terrorist organizations that emerged throughout the region represent the practical consequence of ideological bankruptcy and hopelessness coupled with hate speech. But the experience of Tunisia points to an encouraging, hopeful alternative that is quite the opposite of such a trend.

By Ihsan Bal

The incident that triggered the Arab Spring took place in Tunisia. The self-immolation of a university graduate whose wares were confiscated by a state official led to a sudden outburst of public grievances that had accumulated throughout the years. The fire that was ignited in Tunisia spread to other Arab countries in the years to follow.However, this process, which began with the hope of a revolution and was later called the ‘Arab Spring’, did not last long. Hundreds of books were written, and even a greater number of articles were drafted on the subject. Why the flames of hope died down so rapidly is still a widely discussed matter.

Assessing the chain of developments through a lens that takes into account the human capital, the social and economic dynamics, and the cultural infrastructure behind the context may help in allowing one to understand why such a process, which began with great expectations, ended in nothing but tragedy and disaster. But the most interesting aspect of the story we need mention at this point is the fate of the process following the Tunisian revolution, which stands in stark contrast to those of the other popular movements all across the Arab world. Identifying the developments that rendered Tunisia different from the other countries in question will therefore present the most needed answers and provide a practical hint on how to counter the woes that continue to scourge the Arab world today.

Political consensus in the Tunisian experience

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali left Tunisia on January 14, 2014, without putting up much resistance in the face of mass protests and the resulting turmoil that ravaged the streets in 2010. Tunisia went to the polls right after the revolution. Rashid Ghannouchi’s conservative Ennahda Party, employing a political discourse marked with overwhelming religious undertones, won the elections by a landslide. But Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, which won 37% of the vote and 89 seats out of a total 217 in the Tunisian Parliament, successfully avoided succumbing to political rapacity. On the contrary, Ghannouchi and the leaders of the other leading political parties preferred to see the political stage as a means to generate solutions for the future of the nation as a whole. To this end they put into practice a successful model of power-sharing and consensus-building, two basic principles which are essential to democracy. This was an extremely important phase for Tunisians on their quest to establish a functioning democracy and assure long-term stability in their country. After consensus was reached, Hamadi Jebali, the general secretary of Ennahda, took over the prime ministerial office; Moncef Marzouki, the leader of the ‘Congress for the Republic’ Party became the president; and Mustapha Ben Jafar, leader of the Ettakatol Party, became the speaker of the parliament. As a matter of fact, Tunisians strongly objected to the idea of any external actor shaping their own revolution. Even though they were certainly open to external influences, they saw their cultural accumulation, as far as politics is concerned, as sufficient enough to conceptualize a home-grown revolution. What others called the ‘Jasmine revolution’, Tunisians insisted on referring to as the ‘Revolution of Honor’.

The importance of the political coalition that was formed right after the revolution became evident in the years to follow. Even the assassinations of several prominent political figures, among whom were opposition leaders Mohamed Brahmi and Chokri Belaid, and the many similar provocations which were left in the dark were unable to bring the revolution to its knees thanks to the solid resolve for national consensus that had manifested itself in the political mindset of the leaders. Nonetheless, political assassinations and provocations were not the only tests faced during the interim period. Tunisia was successful in overcoming difficulties that stood in the way of it carrying out a variety of necessary reforms, particularly with regard to the constitutional vote, which was of the utmost procedural importance in terms of drafting an all-encompassing social contract and accurately describing the agreed-upon qualities of the state. Eventually, the challenging period in question culminated in 5.2 million Tunisian voters taking to the polls on October 26, 2014, and democratically electing their new parliamentarians. Both sides’ acceptance of the election results with no objections was the ultimate gain for Tunisian democracy. Here, the Tunisian people not only averted election fraud, despite the country’s limited experience with democracy, but also demonstrated their self-confidence and excitement regarding democratic progress with a turnout rate 10% higher than that of the previous election.

The second most important trend that stands out in the Tunisian experience is the decreasing share of the vote held by interim parties. It is meaningful that Call of Tunisia, or Nida Tounes, a secular political party which didn’t partake in the previous elections, came in first with 38% of the vote while the conservative Ennahda Party came in second with 31%. The election results are significant because they clearly demonstrate that the electorate penalized the ruling Ennahda Party due to its mismanagement of the economy, regardless of its success in reforming the country’s institutions, maintaining political stability, and drafting a new constitution in the interim period that ensued the revolution. Considering that one of the core factors behind the ‘Revolution of Honor’ was poverty and economic failure, the latest election results came as no surprise. Even though projects aimed at political transformation and structural reform that had successfully been carried out in the last three years were well received by the Tunisian public, setbacks in the economy were apparently reflected in the polls in the form of a 6% fall in the ruling party’s share of the votes. In fact, it was also under the Ennahda administration that IMF reforms and austerity policies, which were widely despised by the people, were brought into effect. It was unfortunate for Ennahda that Tunisia went to polls before the IMF’s bitter prescriptions came to fruition.

Social and economic dynamics that distinguish Tunisia

There are certain dynamics in the country which steered the process following the ‘Revolution of Honor’ in the right direction, paving the way for a constructive era despite serious political turmoil. 70% of Tunisia’s total population lives in urban areas, and the country’s literacy rate is over 80%, both of which qualify Tunisia as a unique country in its neighborhood. What makes Tunisia’s uniqueness all the more salient is the industrial infrastructure of the country, which brings with it a working class and unions. In comparison with other Arab examples, Tunisia’s social fabric harbors a more productive, educated, and urban segment that inevitably adopts a rather inquisitive, constructive, and participatory political style. Together, the country’s close ties with Europe, its determination to become integrated into the global economic system, and its large tourism sector improve its democratic credentials thanks to increased people-to-people contact with the West. From this point forth, if Tunisian people can make further progress and receive positive feedback in return, the next phase of their democratic experience could very well give way to an exciting model for the whole Middle East.

Tunisia and the fight against ISIS

That radicalism, extremism, and terrorist organizations like ISIS experienced an upswing as the Arab Spring came to a deadlock is no surprise at all. Terrorist organizations that emerged throughout the region represent the practical consequence of ideological bankruptcy and hopelessness coupled with hate speech. But the experience of Tunisia points to an encouraging, hopeful alternative that defies this trend. Discussions of how many bombs the coalition forces will drop on ISIS targets or with whom they will cooperate on land are not the same as proposals suggesting a permanent solution that addresses the root of the problem. All the parties involved repeatedly expressed that they see violence perpetrated by ISIS as a result, rather than a cause – which is actually true. Within this context, the permanent strategy which will allow us to wipe out the despair, disappointment, and abasement that led to ISIS being seen as a promising alternative in the eyes of its supporters seems to lie in the Tunisian experience. The EU and the U.S. should do more than just passionately applaud the success of the democratic election that put an end to Tunisia’s interim period. They could show Tunisia at least one-tenth, or even one-hundredth of the interest that they devoted to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, or any other former Eastern Bloc country in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War; and they could provide some assistance to the Tunisian people in their quest for democratic progress. By doing so they could help the Tunisian experience become a permanent success story. Those who are currently working under intense pressure to find an answer to the question of how to handle the ISIS problem would do well to try to answer the question of how we can render the Tunisian experience consistent and successful, if they really want to contribute to the solution.

On the other hand, in which direction the course of events will carry the ‘Revolution of Honor’ is still being feverishly discussed, and for good reason. Looking at Tunisia’s performance up to the present, the promising transformation of the political context and the democratic manner in which political debates and decision-making processes are handled support the idea that consensus will be sustained. Even though it is uncertain whether Beji Caid el Sebsi, the leader of Nida Tounes, will adopt the compromising approach of Marzouki and Ghannouchi, it is certain that the dynamic civil society of Tunisia will react strongly if the political consensus in question is challenged.

Ihsan Bal, Head of USAK Academic Council

This article was first published in Analist Monthly Journal on October, 2014.

The post Is Remedy For ISIS To Be Found In Tunisia? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Emre Tunç Sakaoğlu

U.S. President Obama made a two-night trip to Myanmar on the occasion of the East Asian Summit and the coinciding ASEAN Summit on November 13-14, 2014. This is the second visit by Obama to Myanmar after his landmark trip in 2012 when he landed in Yangon as the first sitting U.S. President to set foot in the country.

The U.S. President held a brief meeting with Myanmar’s champion of democracy and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on the sidelines of the 9th East Asia Summit on Thursday, November 13, in Naypyitaw, Myanmar’s capital. On Friday, November 14, the two Nobel laureates met once again, this time for more substantial talks at Suu Kyi’s lakeside home in Yangon, the largest city and commercial hub of Myanmar.

Suu Kyi, a 69-year-old activist, spent 15 years under house arrest until she was released in 2010. Today, she is a parliamentarian who has oversight of the reforms instated by the government and is the most popular politician in Myanmar according to public polls.

The Rohingya impasse

The government of Myanmar has been widely criticized, especially in recent months, due to its increasing negligence vis-à-vis people’s demands for democracy and its persistent violation of human rights. Therefore, discussions and quarrels on this subject cast a shadow over other headlines which were expected to shine out during Obama’s visit. In this regard, it was also noteworthy that President Obama held his news conference in Myanmar with the opposition leader, rather than with the president of the country.

Admitting the reform process is currently passing through a problematic phase, U.S. President Obama nevertheless once again expressed confidence in the government’s willingness and capacity to overcome major obstacles that interfere with reform.

“We recognize that change is hard and it doesn’t always move in a straight line… But I am optimistic about the possibilities for Myanmar,” Obama said during a brief press conference with his Burmese counterpart Thein Sein in Naypyitaw on Thursday, November 13.

On the tragedy of the Rohingya minority which has long hindered democratization in Myanmar, President Obama stated that “Discrimination against the Rohingya or any other religious minority I think does not express the kind of country that Burma over the long term wants to be… Ultimately, that is destabilizing to a democracy.”

This was the first time that Obama bluntly raised concerns about the backsliding of political and human rights in Myanmar. It is possible to suggest that Obama’s comments indicate the possibility of a new push for further reforms in Myanmar in the forthcoming period.

But hopes remain rather dim in the eyes of many U.S. officials. Interpreting the pace and future of democratization in Myanmar, White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes was quoted by several American media outlets as saying that unless the government of Myanmar addresses the Rohingya issue forthwith, the country’s democratic progress, which is already rather questionable, will stall altogether.

Suu Kyi expected to take initiative

The torch-bearer of democratization in Myanmar is facing increasing criticism over the low profile she has assumed with regard to the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority in the country. Media reports from all around the world suggest she is expected by the international community to put aside political motivations and raise her voice for the Rohingya as well, just as she speaks out over the persecution of other minorities and the overall pace of democratization in her country.

It is certain that unless she, as a domestic figurehead, takes a tougher stance against former military leaders in the country, the entire democratization process will be placed in jeopardy as the U.S., a distant and external actor, will not be able to pressure Myanmar’s government alone.

According to local sources, Suu Kyi is reluctant to reconsider her position on anti-Muslim violence due to the fear of losing her domestic popularity which is derived from the Buddhist majority that also happens to deeply disdain the Rohingya Muslim minority. If true, Suu Kyi, long depicted as a pro-democracy icon, runs the risk of becoming an establishment politician who prioritizes rank and status over principle in the eyes of her international admirers.

The post East Asian Summit Eclipsed By Rohingya Question As Obama Meets Suu Kyi – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

How can Bahrain stop Iran’s almost constant meddling in its domestic affairs? Mitchell Belfer thinks Manama should strengthen its alliances with international and regional partners, speed up much-needed political reforms, and develop a media strategy that counters the rhetoric coming out of Tehran.

By Mitchell Belfer

Observers and media commentators remain divided over the role that Iran has played in stoking political tensions inside Bahrain. While some are convinced that geostrategic calculations are undoubtedly behind Tehran’s encouragement of sectarian violence between Bahrain’s Shia and Sunni communities, others think that Manama has exaggerated the extent of Iran’s involvement in the Kingdom’s political crisis. Either way, this small and sparsely populated Middle Eastern state remains more than capable of keeping Iran’s seemingly growing influence over its domestic affairs in check – provided that it sticks to a three-point plan.

The View from Tehran

Iran’s historical and strategic interests in Bahrain predate the emergence of the Islamic Republic. Tehran has never fully accepted the independence of the Kingdom (formally declared in 1971) and continues to maintain that the island state is one of Iran’s 14 provinces. Underpinning this sentiment is the fact that approximately 50% of Bahrainis are Shia Muslims, some of which share close sectarian affinities with Iran. Proximity is also an important factor. Given that Bahrain is located close to the sensitive Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is wary of the role that the Kingdom could play in applying pressure on Iran. With its modern port facilities and related infrastructure, Bahrain offers the ideal staging post for international powers seeking to project power throughout the Persian Gulf and safeguard access to its oil and gas reserves.

Adding to Iran’s sense of strategic vulnerability are Bahrain’s relations with the other Gulf monarchies. With its close military and political ties to the West, Tehran has long viewed Saudi Arabia as a formidable rival and a major obstacle to its own bid for regional hegemony. As part of its attempts to offset the challenge posed by Riyadh, Iran has consistently sought to apply pressure on Bahrain. Tehran’s strategies have ranged from shunning bilateral dialogue and confidence-building measures with Manama, to using Bahrain’s political crisis to keep the embers of violent sectarianism burning.

Party Support

In the case of the latter, Iran’s attempts to manipulate Bahrain’s domestic politics might have been aided by its close ties with some of the Kingdom’s main opposition parties. These include the al Wefaq bloc, a legitimate Bahraini political organization with a seemingly credible agenda. The al Wefaq bloc’s current Secretary General (and original founder) Ali Salman was hand selected for a leadership post by one of Bahrain’s leading Shia clerics Issa Qassim. In 1979, Qassim offered his spiritual support to Ayatollah Khomeini’s leadership of the Iranian Revolution in return for Tehran’s support for his bid to assume religious authority over Bahrain under very similar circumstances.

During the 2011 unrest, Qassim called on his followers to crush Bahrain’s security forces, while Ali Salman openly agitated for the demise of the al Khalifa government. Around the same time, the al Wefaq gave orders to its fringe group, the radical Youth of 14 February movement, to launch attacks on public and private properties belonging to the Kingdom’s Sunni and expatriate communities. These included the targeted killing of police officers and Shia opposition figures loyal to Manama, as well as car bombings and arson attacks. Speculation also continues to grow over the Youth’s links to Hezbollah and Iran’s al-Quds Force, ties that are thought to have facilitated arms smuggling networks, military training and financial assistance.

Three Steps Forward

Hard evidence of support for the most radical wing of al Wefaq will undoubtedly add substance to arguments that Iran has helped to turn Bahrain’s long-standing political tensions into a low-intensity insurgency. If so, then Manama must show that it is up to the task of countering Tehran’s influence over Bahrain’s Shia community and address the conditions on the ground that make political dissent such an attractive proposition. It can do so by focussing on three core issues.

To begin, Bahrain must acknowledge that it can only counter the threat posed by Iran by maintaining its alliances with regional and international partners. First and foremost, Manama should look to the security apparatus provided by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), particularly if it can offer assistance along the lines of 2011’s Peninsular Shield Force deployment. However, the GCC members are by no means united on the threat posed by Iran, given that Oman and Qatar have far better relations with Tehran than the likes of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

With this firmly in mind, Manama should also look at constructing a second ring of strategic partners to complement – and possibly even replace – its relations with the GCC. Two potential allies stand out. Turkey’s status as a frontline NATO member in the battle against the Islamic State – not to mention its general opposition to Iran’s nuclear program – undoubtedly offers Bahrain a completely different sense of strategic depth. And then there’s Azerbaijan, a predominately Shia but nonetheless secular state that has experienced its fair share of border tensions and diplomatic spats with Iran. Both states could provide Manama with opportunities to build up strategic ties that could place further pressure on Iran’s northern and western frontiers. If this occurs, Tehran might then have to revisit and rethink its aspirations for regional hegemony.

To complement what is effectively a strategy of containment, Bahrain must also limit Tehran’s ability to agitate inside the country. In this respect, Manama should redouble its efforts to address Bahrain’s deep-seated socio-political and economic disparities and construct a deeper sense of national identity. The signs seem encouraging. In the aftermath of the 2011 violence, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa set up the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), a body which made 26 recommendations on how to reduce the country’s domestic tensions through reforms. Since then, however, the Bahraini government has been criticized for slowing down on implementing key reforms and is accused of glossing over human rights issues. Consequently, Manama must do more and continue to develop a political system that reflects the needs of all citizens, irrespective of their ethnic or religious background. It should also take the bold decision to exclude the al Wefaq and its associates from the reform process. This would send a powerful message to ordinary Bahrainis that the government is not prepared to work with political organizations that receive the type of external support that effectively undercuts the Kingdom’s law and order mechanisms.

Finally, Bahrain needs to realize that it is currently losing the information war with Iran. Since the mid-1990s, Tehran has expended tremendous energy and resources on developing a tech-savvy propaganda campaign to flood cyberspace and traditional media with messages that reinforce Iran’s regional power aspirations while at the same time debasing the rule and legitimacy of its adversaries. These include multimedia channels with a distinctly Arabic component, such as Al Alam and Al Vefagh. Admittedly, such channels are difficult to counter in an information age. However, Bahrain’s practically non-existent counter-propaganda strategy is puzzling and needs to be reversed. Put simply, the Bahraini government needs to do more in terms of projecting its narratives not just for countering Iran, but also for the sake of national identity and cohesiveness.

The (Uncertain) Road Ahead

There’s no guarantee that these steps will completely eradicate Iran’s strategic interest in Bahrain. They will, however, demonstrate that Manama is prepared to up the ante against Tehran. In addition, this approach undoubtedly reinforces that the Iranian-Bahraini relationship is asymmetrical by nature. Bahrain will never have the military muscle or geopolitical clout to counter Iran’s regional aspirations on its own. However, by paying due care and attention to its precarious domestic situation and working in concert with its international and Middle Eastern allies, Manama should be able to weather whatever regional storm that awaits it in the years ahead.

Mitchell Belfer is editor of the Central European Journal of International and Security Studies at the Metropolitan University Prague.

The post Unequal Power, Unequal Reach: Reflecting On Iran-Bahrain Relations – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(EurActiv) — A recent study published by the Foundation for Political Innovation has dealt a blow to the legitimacy of France’s National Front, establishing a strong relationship between the NF and anti-Semitism in France. EurActiv France reports.

The study of anti-Semitism in French public opinion, published by the Foundation for Political Innovation (Fondapol) threatens to undermine attempts by the National Front to enter the French political mainstream. Anti-Semitism has little foothold in French society as a whole, but the study found a strong undercurrent of anti-Semitic feeling among the NF electorate.

“We can say that French society as a whole is relatively unaffected by anti-Semitic prejudice, with four major areas of exception: the National Front electorate, French Muslims, supporters of the Left Front and videos on the sites YouTube and Dailymotion, where anti-Semitism is more visible than in other media,” the director of Fondapol, Dominique Reynié, explained.

No integration for the NF

A sample of 1005 French citizens over the age of 16, and a further 575 people born into Muslim families, were surveyed for the study by the organisation IFOP.

The study was based on the observation that anti-Semitism accounts for over half the acts of racially motivated violence in France, while people of Jewish descent make up only around 1% of the French population. The authors arrived at the opposite conclusion to a 2004 study carried out by Jean-Christophe Rufin, which identified an inverse correlation between the extreme right and anti-Semitic feeling.

While 84% of those questioned thought that a French Jew was just as French as any other French citizen, the figure is 61% among NF supporters, and 91% among French Muslims. 53% of National Front voters would not be happy to vote for a Jewish President, compared to 21% of the overall population, and 22% would actively avoid having Jewish neighbours, compared to 6% of all French citizens.

Rejection of European Institutions

Dominique Reynié said that “the NF is the only section of French society to reject all forms of otherness, not only the Jews, to such an extent: even the Corsicans are not exempt”. He added that the conclusions of the study were completely “at odds with the mainstreaming of the NF”.

He also identified a relationship between anti-Semitic feeling and the National Front’s anti-EU politics. While 32% of all those questioned said they had confidence in the EU Institutions, the figure among those who claimed to believe in the existence of a global Zionist conspiracy was only 20%.

The post French National Front Plagued By Anti-Semitism appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Michael Lelyveld

Illicit trade practices and currency speculation could provide an early challenge to China’s “rule of law” campaign.

In October, President Xi Jinping launched his drive for legal reforms and obedience to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at the Central Committee’s fourth plenary session, vowing to “comprehensively advance the rule of law.”

Yet, within days, reports of rampant trade fraud surfaced, citing the familiar ruse of filing fake invoices to hide flows of “hot money” and evade China’s currency rules.

The flagrant use of phony export documents may raise doubts about how much has changed and whether the rule of law will extend to lucrative but surreptitious arbitrage deals.

On Oct. 27, Bloomberg News reported obvious signs from September trade figures that speculators had moved large sums of cash into China to profit from exchange rates and the strengthening yuan, reviving a practice that regulators tried to stamp out early last year.

According to Bloomberg, China’s official trade figures for the month showed a 34-percent surge in exports to Hong Kong valued at U.S. $37.6 billion (229.9 billion yuan), but Hong Kong’s corresponding record of imports rose just 5.5 percent to U.S. $24.1 billion (147.3 billion yuan).

The difference of over U.S. $13 billion (79 billion yuan) is believed to reflect the amount of disguised currency inflows, represented as payments for phantom exports with forged invoices, reported as legitimate trade.

“This is definitely another important piece of evidence of over-invoicing exports to Hong Kong to facilitate money inflow into the mainland,” said Shen Jianguang, chief Asia economist at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. in Hong Kong, as quoted by Bloomberg.

Investigators from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) and the General Administration of Customs (GAC) were reportedly sent to southern Guangdong province to probe the huge discrepancy.

But previous crackdowns on bouts of phony invoicing from late 2012 have done little to deter the use of fake documents, which have been openly advertised and sold for years.

“We’ll take corresponding regulatory measures, if necessary,” a GAC spokesman vowed in April 2013.

“Companies and banks who break the regulations face being fined or closed, and their practices exposed to the public,” said the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) a month later.

Despite the threats, the profitable practice has persisted, allowing speculators to dodge China’s currency controls, while others may claim export tax rebates for goods never sold.

The scam not only fills the pockets of forgers and speculators. It also distorts China’s trade figures, giving false readings of the country’s economic growth.

China’s total exports for September jumped 15.3 percent from a year earlier, their best performance in 19 months, according to official figures.

On Nov. 8, the GAC reported that October exports rose at a slower 11.6-percent rate, but how much invoicing played a part was hard to say.

Campaign goal

The question is whether the rule of law drive will bring an end to such common crimes or whether it will be used primarily to enforce CCP authority and prosecute selected officials for corruption.

Derek Scissors, an Asia economist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said that past government anti-crime campaigns have had little impact on activities like export fraud.

“There have been lots of ‘strike hard’ campaigns, corruption crackdowns and the like, and none have ever affected false invoicing,” said Scissors.

“False invoicing comes and goes for commercial reasons, not because of the current political theme,” he said.

Aside from export reporting, China’s leaders have been facing apparent resistance to government authority and party discipline on several fronts.

In the run up to Beijing’s showcase Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit earlier this month, for example, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) publicly summoned the mayor of Anyang city in central Henan province for defying cleanup plans.

The official Xinhua news agency said the city, some 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the capital, had failed to implement anti-smog rules for high-polluting cement plants, steel mills and other manufacturers despite MEP monitoring since June.

“Some factories have even secretly discharged pollutants at night,” the report said.

In preparation for the APEC summit, Beijing authorities and the central government imposed an expanded list of measures for the city and surrounding region in an effort to improve air quality for the event, including traffic restrictions, enforced “holidays” for workers, factory shutdowns and suspension of construction projects.

The extraordinary steps may have put some of the central government’s muscle behind MEP enforcement, which has often been criticized as toothless.

Some 28,000 police officers and 800,000 civilians were mobilized for the event to ensure security and enforce emergency rules, Xinhua said.

But even in Beijing, some of the rules were blatantly disobeyed.

On Nov. 4, the city’s environmental protection bureau found 16 cement mixing plants and construction sites were continuing to work as usual despite a ban on activity that was supposed to last through the summit ending on Nov. 11, the official English-language China Daily said.

Construction workers were unhappy with the stoppages because they only receive half-pay when their projects are suspended, the paper reported.

Inspectors also found dozens of enterprises and construction projects in Shijiazhuang, capital of neighboring Hebei province, ignoring the business bans, The New York Times said.

Effect on business

There may be nothing extraordinary about violations of environmental rules, but they may raise questions about whether the rule of law campaign has had any effect on everyday business, even under the spotlight of an international event.

Recent reports on China’s steel industry suggest manufacturers are continuing to defy orders to cut production under the government’s five-year anti-smog plan announced in 2013, despite the additional threat from the rule of law push.

In October, the China Iron and Steel Association (CISA) said industry output rose to record levels in the first nine months of the year, plunging prices to an 11-year low, Xinhua reported.

Total crude steel production rose 2.3 percent to 618 million metric tons (681 million tons) in the period, accounting for over half the world’s output, CISA said.

The overproduction prompted the CPP flagship paper People’s Daily to complain that steel is now “almost as cheap by weight as Chinese cabbage,” Reuters reported.

On Oct. 20, Xinhua blamed the lack of a rule of law for a host of economic problems, including “overcapacity, real estate bubbles, risks of local government debts and shadow banks.”

But whether the government will crack down on industry resistance to its policies under the rule of law remains to be seen.

Although Xinhua cited shadow banking as one of “the pains currently suffered by the Chinese economy,” it was also unclear whether the rule of law would be used to close down the avenue of alternative financing offered by China’s big banks.

Last month, a report by the Financial Stability Board of the Group of 20 leading industrialized nations said China’s shadow banking sector had grown rapidly to become the third-largest in the world.

The post Trade Tricks Defy China’s Rule Of Law Campaign – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

As President Obama visited China, he insisted that the United States welcomed China’s rise and wanted that country to play a bigger role in regional and global affairs; but that rhetoric is largely hokum. The United States has been either the premier superpower or the only superpower in the world since World War II, exercising an outsize role in global and East Asian Affairs. In world history, many times rising powers have had tensions or conflict with status quo or declining powers, because the latter resist a more equal relationship with the new “upstart.” America is no exception.

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has recently spoken of a “new type of great power relations” with the United States. This is diplomatic speak for China wanting its own sphere of influence in East Asia—much as other great powers have had a security buffer in the past. The American foreign policy elite self-servingly dismiss this Chinese desire as “so 19th century”; of course, they would howl if any country tried to encroach on the U.S. spheres of influence Europe (why the United States is very nervous about Russian activities in Ukraine) and Latin America (traditionally enforced vigorously with the Monroe Doctrine).

In East Asia, a similar situation exists. The United States has a far forward security position—the Chinese would likely call it a neo-imperial containment policy of China—using formal or informal bilateral military alliances left over from the Cold War (with Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan); a forward naval presence based out of Japan, Guam, and Hawaii; and U.S. troops stationed in Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Furthermore, the United States is negotiating an ambitious pan-Asian free trade agreement leaving out China. Lastly, the United States is discouraging its allies from entering into an Asian development bank run by China.

If all of this doesn’t strike an objective observer as fulfilling Obama’s welcoming rhetoric, that should be no surprise. Great powers regularly issue friendly pronouncements and then coldly act in what they perceive to be their own interests.

Yet the United States really should back off a bit and let China have a security buffer. No reason exists that both powers cannot live together peacefully, given the broad Pacific Ocean moat that separates them. They are not like France and Germany, powers with a contentious common border in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, but more like the United States and Britain, which allowed its breakaway rogue colony to rise peacefully primarily because of the broad Atlantic Ocean buffer between them.

An even bigger reason exists today for the United States to let China peacefully expand its sphere of influence than existed in the late 19th when Britain tolerated the rise of the United States: Both China and the United States are already nuclear powers. Would the United States really want to sacrifice its cities in an atomic conflagration if one of China’s minor border disputes with East Asian neighbors, some of which are U.S. allies, exploded into war, and then went nuclear? The dirty little secret is that the U.S. public is being endangered to defend wealthy East Asian allies that should spend more money on their own security and could band together to be the first line of defense against a rising China. However, none of these allies has any incentive to spend more on their defenses while under the shield of U.S. conventional and nuclear forces. Essentially, the ridiculous situation has arisen whereby China loans the United States the money to help other wealthy countries defend themselves against… well, China.

Yet, in the future, the United States won’t possess the relative resources needed to contain China, as it did when it contained the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The sclerotic communist economy of the USSR was never more than half the size of the U.S. GDP. As China’s rapidly growing economy becomes equal to or exceeds that of the United States, continuing the containment policy will become ever more costly and could strain even the large U.S. economy. The sluggish economic growth that the United States has been experiencing has been induced by the already huge $18 Trillion public debt, a significant portion of which is attributable to U.S. wars and other unneeded efforts to act as the world’s neo-imperial policemen, including in East Asia.

More positively, the huge intertwining of the Chinese and American economies via trade, investment, and lending probably acts as somewhat of a brake against conflict between the two countries—note President George W. Bush’s apology during the episode in 2001 of a Chinese fighter jet buzzing and damaging a U.S. reconnaissance plane in international waters—that wasn’t there during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the United States should rethink its forward-based military presence that is designed essentially to quarantine China and prevent this great power from creating a sphere of influence for its own security. The Chinese may be authoritarians and the Americans may be more pluralistic, but China does have legitimate security concerns, and the U.S. military is in China’s face, not vice versa. A pull back of all U.S. forces to Hawaii and Guam would give China some breathing room and reduce the danger of a dangerous confrontation between two nuclear-armed powers.

This article was published at The Huffington Post and is reprinted with permission.

The post US Should Give China Breathing Room To Rise Peacefully – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A decision by the handball federations of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to boycott the 2015 World Men’s Handball Championship to be hosted by Qatar in January signals the failure of efforts to reconcile the idiosyncratic Gulf state with its regional detractors and casts further doubts on the prospects of a Gulf Cooperation Council (GGC) scheduled to be held in Qatar in December.

The boycott by Bahrain and the UAE, which together with Saudi Arabia withdrew their ambassadors from Doha in March in protest against Qatar’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood, follows the indefinite postponement last week of a meeting of GCC foreign ministers in Doha in preparation of the summit. The GCC groups Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and the UAE.

Kuwaiti emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah travelled to Doha last week for talks with his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, in a failed bid to mediate between the feuding Gulf states. Sheikh Tamim has also met several times with Saudi King Abdullah.

In a speech this week, Sheikh Tamim said he looked forward to welcoming Gulf leaders to the Doha summit. “Regarding our foreign relations, the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf remains the main regional home. Supporting it and strengthening our relations with all its sisterly countries, and deepening the bonds of fraternity among us, come at the forefront of our foreign policy priorities,” Sheikh Tamim said.

Kuwaiti media reported that Gulf leaders may meet in advance of the Doha summit in an effort to smooth over their differences. Saudi papers however said that the Doha summit was likely to be moved to either Kuwait or Riyadh.

The boycott of the handball championship by the UAE and Bahrain against the backdrop of a UAE campaign to undermine Qatar’s reputation and credibility as well as the failure of miniscule Qatari gestures to appease the Saudis and Emiratis suggests that positions are too entrenched for Gulf states to achieve a compromise. Qatar moreover is likely to feel more assertive in sticking to its guns now that an investigation by world soccer body FIFA into its World Cup bid has concluded that there are no grounds for sanctioning the Gulf state.

The International Handball Federation said it would discuss the Bahraini and UAE boycott of Qatar at a meeting next week of its council in which it could decide to sanction the two states for their boycott of Qatar. A spokesman for the Bahrain Handball Association said ‘we were told by top officials that political tension between the two countries is the reason for not taking part.” Bahrain, beyond its differences with Qatar over the Brotherhood, has accused Doha of offering citizenship to Bahraini nationals.

Qatar has asked several prominent Muslim Brothers resident in Doha to leave the country in a bid to smooth over differences with Saudi Arabia and the UAE who are on the war path against political Islam and see their campaign against the Brotherhood as a cornerstone of efforts to stymie calls for change in in the Arab world. The request was not accompanied by a cancellation of the residence permits of the seven Brothers and some of their families remain resident in Qatar.

Ironically, Bahrain unlike Saudi Arabia, which banned the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, and the UAE, whose hostility to the group is longstanding, has been reluctant to crackdown on its Brothers because of their support for the island’s minority Sunni regime in its battle with a restless majority Shiite population.

By contrast, Qatar’s differences with Saudi Arabia and the UAE run deep. The refusal of Qatar, alongside Saudi Arabia the only country that adheres to Wahhabism, the puritan version of Islam developed by the 18th century warrior-preacher Mohammed Abdul Wahhab that dictates life in Saudi Arabia since its creation, to bow to Saudi pressure has effectively displayed the limitations of Saudi power. Qatar, moreover, has emerged as living proof that Wahhabism, can be somewhat less repressive and restrictive. It is a testimony that is by definition subversive and is likely to serve much more than for example freewheeling Dubai as an inspiration for conservative Saudi society that acknowledges its roots but in which various social groups are increasingly voicing a desire for change.

The Gulf states’ failure to reign in Qatar has prompted the UAE to step up pressure on Qatar as part of its more activist foreign policy aimed at countering political Islam. In July, the UAE backed the establishment of the Muslim Council of Elders (MCE) in a bid to counter the Doha-based International Union of Muslim Scholars headed by prominent Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi, widely viewed as a major spiritual influence on the Brotherhood. 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, despite publicly backing Qatar against calls that it be deprived of its right to host the 2022 World Cup because of alleged wrongdoing in its successful bid and the sub-standard working and living conditions of foreign workers, has covertly worked against the Gulf state. Qatar in September briefly detained two British human rights activists who were investigating human and labour rights in the Gulf state. The detentions exposed a network of apparently Emirati-backed human rights groups in Norway, including the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), 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, a Norway-based group with alleged links to the UAE.

The New York Times and The Intercept have reported 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 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.”

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.

The post Qatar’s Hosting Of GCC Summit In Further Jeopardy Following Gulf States’ Handball Boycott – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

World chokepoints for maritime transit of oil are a critical part of global energy security. About 63% of the world’s oil production moves on maritime routes. The Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca are the world’s most important strategic chokepoints by volume of oil transit.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) defines world oil chokepoints as narrow channels along widely-used global sea routes, some so narrow that restrictions are placed on the size of the vessel that can navigate through them. Chokepoints are a critical part of global energy security because of the high volume of petroleum and other liquids transported through their narrow straits.

In 2013, total world petroleum and other liquids production was about 90.1 million barrels per day (bbl/d).1 EIA estimates that about 63% of this amount (56.5 million bbl/d) traveled via seaborne trade.2 Oil tankers accounted for 30% of the world’s shipping by deadweight tonnage in 2013, according to data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).3

International energy markets depend on reliable transport routes. Blocking a chokepoint, even temporarily, can lead to substantial increases in total energy costs and world energy prices. Chokepoints also leave oil tankers vulnerable to theft from pirates, terrorist attacks, shipping accidents that can lead to disastrous oil spills, and political unrest in the form of wars or hostilities.

The seven chokepoints highlighted in this report are part of major trade routes for global seaborne oil transportation. Disruptions to these routes could affect oil prices and add thousands of miles of transit in alternative routes. By volume of oil transit, the Strait of Hormuz, leading out of the Persian Gulf, and the Strait of Malacca, linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, are the world’s most important strategic chokepoints. This report also discusses the role of the Cape of Good Hope, which is not a chokepoint but is a major trade route and potential alternate route to certain chokepoints.

Oil tanker sizes

Ships carrying crude oil and petroleum products are limited by size restrictions imposed by maritime oil chokepoints. The global crude oil and refined product tanker fleet uses a classification system to standardize contract terms, to establish shipping costs, and to determine the ability of ships to travel into ports or through certain straits and channels. This system, known as the Average Freight Rate Assessment (AFRA) system, was established by Royal Dutch Shell six decades ago, and is overseen by the London Tanker Brokers’ Panel (LTBP), an independent group of shipping brokers.

AFRA uses a scale that classifies tanker vessels according to deadweight tons, a measure of a ship’s capacity to carry cargo. The approximate capacity of a ship in barrels is determined using an estimated 90% of a ship’s deadweight tonnage, and multiplying that by a barrel per metric ton conversion factor specific to each type of petroleum product and crude oil, as liquid fuel densities vary by type and grade.

The smaller vessels on the AFRA scale – the General Purpose (GP) and Medium Range (MR) tankers – are commonly used to transport cargos of refined petroleum products over relatively shorter distances, such as from Europe to the U.S. East Coast. Their smaller size allows them to access most ports around the globe. A GP tanker can carry between 70,000 barrels and 190,000 barrels of motor gasoline (3.2-8 million gallons), and an MR tanker can carry between 190,000 barrels and 345,000 barrels (8-14.5 million gallons).

Long Range (LR) class ships are the most common ships in the global tanker fleet, as they are used to carry both refined products and crude oil. These ships can access most large ports that ship crude oil and petroleum products. An LR1 tanker can carry between 345,000 barrels and 615,000 barrels of gasoline (14.5-25.8 million gallons) or between 310,000 barrels and 550,000 barrels of light sweet crude oil.

A classification used to describe a large portion of the global tanker fleet is AFRAMAX. AFRAMAX vessels refer to ships between 80,000 deadweight tons and 120,000 deadweight tons. This ship size is popular with oil companies for logistical purposes, so, many ships have been built within these specifications. Because the AFRAMAX range exists somewhere between the LR1 and LR2 AFRA scales, the LTBP does not publish a freight assessment specifically for AFRAMAX vessels.

Over the history of AFRA, vessels grew in size, and newer classifications were added. The Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) and Ultra-Large Crude Carrier (ULCC) were added as the global oil trade expanded and 95 larger vessels provided better economics for crude shipments. VLCCs are responsible for most crude oil shipments around the globe, including in the North Sea, home of the crude oil price benchmark Brent. A VLCC can carry between 1.9 million and 2.2 million barrels of a West Texas Intermediate (WTI) type crude oil.

Strait of Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s most important chokepoint with an oil flow of 17 million barrels per day in 2013, about 30% of all seaborne-traded oil.

Located between Oman and Iran, the Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s most important oil chokepoint because of its daily oil flow of 17 million barrels per day in 2013. Flows through the Strait of Hormuz in 2013 were about 30% of all seaborne-traded oil.

EIA estimates that more than 85% of the crude oil that moved through this chokepoint went to Asian markets, based on data from Lloyd’s List Intelligence tanker tracking service.6 Japan, India, South Korea, and China are the largest destinations for oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz.

Qatar exported about 3.7 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) per year of liquefied natural gas (LNG) through the Strait of Hormuz in 2013, according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2014.7 This volume accounts for more than 30% of global LNG trade. Kuwait imports LNG volumes that travel northward through the Strait of Hormuz.

At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide, but the width of the shipping lane in either direction is only two miles wide, separated by a two-mile buffer zone. The Strait of Hormuz is deep and wide enough to handle the world’s largest crude oil tankers, with about two-thirds of oil shipments carried by tankers in excess of 150,000 deadweight tons.

Pipelines available as bypass options

Most potential options to bypass Hormuz are currently not operational. Only Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) presently have pipelines able to ship crude oil outside of the Persian Gulf and have additional pipeline capacity to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz. At the end of 2013, the total available unused pipeline capacity from the two countries combined was approximately 4.3 million bbl/d (see Table 2).

Saudi Arabia has the 746-mile Petroline, also known as the East-West Pipeline, which runs across Saudi Arabia from its Abqaiq complex to the Red Sea. The Petroline system consists of two pipelines with a total nameplate (installed) capacity of about 4.8 million bbl/d. The 56-inch pipeline has a nameplate capacity of 3 million bbl/d, and its current throughput is about 2 million bbl/d. The 48-inch pipeline had been operating in recent years as a natural gas pipeline, but Saudi Arabia converted it back to an oil pipeline. The switch increased Saudi Arabia’s spare oil pipeline capacity to bypass the Strait of Hormuz from 1 million bbl/d to 2.8 million bbl/d, but this is only achievable if the system operates at its full nameplate capacity.

Saudi Arabia also operates the Abqaiq-Yanbu natural gas liquids pipeline, which has a capacity of 290,000 bbl/d. However, this pipeline is currently running at capacity and cannot move any additional oil.

The UAE operates the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline (1.5 million bbl/d) that runs from Habshan, a collection point for Abu Dhabi’s onshore oil fields, to the port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, allowing crude oil shipments to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz. The pipeline can transport more than half of UAE’s total net oil exports. The government plans to increase this capacity in the near future to 1.8 million bbl/d.

Other pipelines are currently unavailable as bypass options

Saudi Arabia also has two additional pipelines that run parallel to the Petroline system and bypass the Strait of Hormuz, but neither of the pipelines currently has the ability to transport additional volumes of oil if the Strait of Hormuz is closed.

The 1.65 million bbl/d, 48-inch Iraqi Pipeline in Saudi Arabia (IPSA), which runs parallel to the Petroline from pump station #3 (there are 11 pumping stations along the Petroline) to the port of Mu’ajjiz, just south of Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, was built in 1989 to carry 1.65 million bbl/d of crude oil from Iraq to the Red Sea. The pipeline closed indefinitely following the August 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. In June 2001, Saudi Arabia seized ownership of IPSA and converted it to transport natural gas to power plants. Saudi Arabia has not announced plans to convert the pipeline back to transport crude oil.

Other pipelines, such as the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (TAPLINE) running from Qaisumah in Saudi Arabia to Sidon in Lebanon, or a strategic oil pipeline between Iraq and Turkey, have been out of service for years because of war damage, disuse, or political disagreements. These pipelines would require extensive renovation before they can transport oil. Relatively small quantities, several hundred thousand barrels per day at most, could also be transported by truck if the Strait of Hormuz is closed.

Strait of Malacca

Figure 3. Map of the Strait of Malacca

The Strait of Malacca, linking the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, is the shortest sea route between the Middle East and growing Asian markets.

The Strait of Malacca, located between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, links the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea and Pacific Ocean. The Strait of Malacca is the shortest sea route between Persian Gulf suppliers and the Asian markets—notably China, Japan, South Korea, and the Pacific Rim.

Oil shipments through the Strait of Malacca supply China and Indonesia, two of the world’s fastest-growing economies. It is the key chokepoint in Asia, with an estimated 15.2 million bbl/d flow in 2013, compared with 13.5 million bbl/d in 2009. Crude oil generally makes up about 90% of total oil flows per year, and petroleum products make up about 10% (see Table 3).

At its narrowest point in the Phillips Channel of the Singapore Strait, the Strait of Malacca is only about 1.7 miles wide, creating a natural bottleneck with potential for collisions, grounding, or oil spills.9 According to the International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Centre, piracy, including attempted theft and hijackings, is a threat to tankers in the Strait of Malacca, although the number of attacks has dropped since 2005 after nearby countries increased patrols in the area.10

If the Strait of Malacca were blocked, nearly half of the world’s fleet would be required to reroute around the Indonesian archipelago, such as through the Lombok Strait between the Indonesian islands of Bali and Lombok, or the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra.11 Rerouting would tie up global shipping capacity, adding to shipping costs and potentially having a significant impact on energy prices.

There have been several proposals to build bypass options and reduce tanker traffic through the Strait of Malacca. In particular, China and Burma (Myanmar) commissioned the Myanmar-China natural gas pipeline in 2013 that stretches from Myanmar’s ports in the Bay of Bengal to the Yunnan province of China. The pipeline has a capacity of 424 billion cubic feet per year. The countries are constructing a parallel oil pipeline to serve as an alternative transport route for crude oil imports from the Middle East to potentially bypass the Strait of Malacca.12 The oil pipeline was set to open in late 2014 and to have a capacity of about 440,000 bbl/d, according to IHS Energy.13 However, political opposition in both countries to the pipeline may delay its opening until 2016.

The Strait of Malacca is also an important transit route for liquefied natural gas from Persian Gulf and African suppliers, particularly Qatar, to East Asian countries with growing LNG demand. The biggest importers of LNG in the region are Japan and South Korea.

Suez Canal/SUMED Pipeline

The Suez Canal and SUMED Pipeline are strategic routes for Persian Gulf oil and natural gas shipments to Europe and North America. These two routes combined accounted for about 8% of the world’s seaborne oil trade in 2013.

Suez Canal

The Suez Canal is located in Egypt and connects the Red Sea and Gulf of Suez with the Mediterranean Sea. In 2013, total petroleum and other liquids (crude oil and refined products) and LNG accounted for 20% and 3% of total Suez cargoes, measured by cargo tonnage, respectively. The Suez Canal is unable to handle Ultra Large Crude Carriers (ULCC) and fully laden Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC) class crude oil tankers. The Suezmax was the largest ship capable of navigating through the canal until 2010 when the Suez Canal Authority extended the canal depth to 66 feet to allow more than 60% of all tankers to use the Suez Canal, according to the Suez Canal Authority.15

In 2013, nearly 3.2 million bbl/d of total oil (crude oil and refined products) transited the Suez Canal in both directions, according to the Suez Canal Authority. This is the largest amount ever shipped through the Suez Canal. The majority of the oil was sent northbound (1.9 million bbl/d) toward European and North American markets, and the remainder was sent southbound (1.3 million bbl/d), mainly toward Asian markets.

Oil exports from Persian Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Oman, Qatar, and Bahrain) accounted for 79% of Suez Canal northbound oil flows. The largest importers of northbound oil flows through the Suez Canal in 2013 were European countries (68%) and the United States (16%). Oil exports from European countries made up the majority (66%) of Suez southbound oil flows, followed by North Africa (Algeria and Libya combined made up 16%). The largest importers of Suez southbound oil flows through the Suez Canal were Asian countries (74%).

Total traffic through the Suez Canal fell in 2009, and total oil flows dropped to 1.8 million bbl/d, their lowest level in recent years. The decrease in oil flows during that time reflected the collapse in world oil market demand that began in the fourth quarter of 2008, followed by OPEC production cuts (primarily from the Persian Gulf), which caused a sharp fall in regional oil trade starting in early 2009. Egypt’s 2011 revolution did not have any noticeable effect on oil transit flows through the Suez Canal. Over the past few years, oil flows through the Suez Canal have increased, recovering from previous lower levels during the global economic downturn.

SUMED Pipeline

The 200-mile long SUMED Pipeline, or Suez-Mediterranean Pipeline, transports crude oil through Egypt from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. The crude oil flows through two parallel pipelines that are 42 inches in diameter, with a total pipeline capacity of 2.34 million bbl/d. Oil flows north starting at the Ain Sukhna terminal along the Red Sea coast to its end point at the Sidi Kerir terminal on the Mediterranean Sea. SUMED is owned by the Arab Petroleum Pipeline Co., a joint venture between the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (50%), Saudi Aramco (15%), Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Company (15%), multiple Kuwaiti companies (15%), and Qatar Petroleum (5%).16

The SUMED Pipeline is the only alternative route to transport crude oil from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea if ships were unable to navigate through the Suez Canal. Closure of the Suez Canal and the SUMED Pipeline would necessitate diverting oil tankers around the southern tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, adding approximately 2,700 miles to transit from Saudi Arabia to the United States, increasing both costs and shipping time, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.17 According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), shipping around Africa would add 15 days of transit to Europe and 8-10 days to the United States.18

Fully laden VLCCs going toward the Suez Canal also use the SUMED Pipeline for lightering. Lightering occurs when a vessel needs to reduce its weight and draft by offloading cargo to enter a restrictive waterway, such as a canal. The Suez Canal is not deep enough for a fully-laden VLCC and, therefore, a portion of the crude is offloaded at the SUMED Pipeline at the Ain Sukhna terminal. The now partially-laden VLCC goes through the Suez Canal and picks up the offloaded crude at the other end of the pipeline at the Sidi Kerir terminal.

In 2013, 1.4 million bbl/d of crude oil was transported through the SUMED Pipeline to the Mediterranean Sea, which was then loaded onto a tanker for seaborne trade. SUMED crude flows decreased over the past few years, but the decrease has been offset by more oil transiting northbound via the Suez Canal. Total oil flows via SUMED and the Suez Canal were 4.6 million bbl/d in 2013, 0.1 million bbl/d higher compared with the previous year. Total oil flows via the Suez Canal and SUMED pipeline accounted for about 8% of total seaborne-traded oil in 2013.

Liquefied natural gas (LNG)

Figure 4. Map of Suez Canal/SUMED pipeline

LNG flows through the Suez Canal in both directions were 1.2 Tcf in 2013, accounting for 10% of total LNG transported worldwide.

LNG flows through the Suez Canal in both directions were 1.2 Tcf in 2013, accounting for around 10% of total LNG traded worldwide. Southbound LNG transit mostly originates in Egypt and Algeria and is largely destined for Asian markets, while northbound transit is mostly from Qatar mainly destined for European markets. The rapid growth in LNG flows through the Suez Canal after 2008 represents the use of multiple LNG trains in Qatar in 2009-10.

LNG flows through the Suez Canal in both directions have declined from their peak of almost 2.1 Tcf in 2011. The decrease mostly reflects the fall in northbound LNG flows and is consistent with LNG import data for the United States and Europe, which show that total LNG imports into both areas decreased, particularly from Qatar. U.S. LNG imports from Qatar fell by 63% from 2011-2012 and again by 78% in 2013. The changes reflect growing domestic natural gas production in the United States, a decrease in LNG demand in some European countries, and strong competition for LNG in the global market. As a result, total Suez LNG flows as a share of total LNG traded worldwide fell to 10% in 2013, compared with 18% in 2011.

Bab el-Mandeb

Figure 5. Map of Bab el-Mandeb

Closing the Bab el-Mandeb Strait could keep tankers in the Persian Gulf from reaching the Suez Canal and the SUMED Pipeline, diverting them around the southern tip of Africa.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is a chokepoint between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, and it is a strategic link between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. The strait is located between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea, and connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Most exports from the Persian Gulf that transit the Suez Canal and SUMED Pipeline also pass through Bab el-Mandeb.

An estimated 3.8 million bbl/d of crude oil and refined petroleum products flowed through this waterway in 2013 toward Europe, the United States, and Asia, an increase from 2.9 million bbl/d in 2009. Oil shipped through the strait decreased by almost one-third in 2009 because of the global economic downturn and the decline in northbound oil shipments to Europe. Northbound oil shipments increased through Bab el-Mandeb Strait in 2013, and more than half of the traffic, about 2.1 million bbl/d, moved northbound to the Suez Canal and SUMED Pipeline.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is 18 miles wide at its narrowest point, limiting tanker traffic to two 2-mile-wide channels for inbound and outbound shipments. Closure of the Bab el-Mandeb could keep tankers from the Persian Gulf from reaching the Suez Canal or SUMED Pipeline, diverting them around the southern tip of Africa, adding to transit time and cost. In addition, European and North African southbound oil flows could no longer take the most direct route to Asian markets via the Suez Canal and Bab el-Mandeb.

Turkish Straits

Figure 6. Map of Turkish Straits

Increased oil exports from the Caspian Sea region make the Turkish Straits one of the busiest chokepoints in the world. Oil through these straits supplies Western and Southern Europe.

The Turkish Straits, which includes the Bosporus and Dardanelles waterways, divide Asia from Europe. The Bosporus is 17-mile waterway that connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara. The Dardanelles is a 40-mile waterway that links the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas.20 Both are located in Turkey and supply Western and Southern Europe with oil from Russia and the Caspian Sea Region.

An estimated 2.9 million bbl/d flowed through the Turkish Straits in 2013. About 70% of this volume was crude oil and the remainder was petroleum products. These Black Sea ports are among the primary oil export routes for Russia and other Eurasian countries, including Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

Oil shipments through the Turkish Straits decreased from more than 3.4 million bbl/d at its peak in 2004 to 2.6 million bbl/d in 2006 as Russia shifted crude oil exports toward the Baltic ports. Traffic through the Turkish Straits increased from 2010-2011 as crude production and exports from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan increased.

Only half a mile wide at the narrowest point, the Turkish Straits are among the world’s most difficult waterways to navigate because of their sinuous geography. About 48,000 vessels transit the straits each year, making this area one of the world’s busiest maritime chokepoints.21

Commercial shipping has the right of free passage through the Turkish Straits in peacetime, although Turkey claims the right to impose regulations for safety and environmental purposes. Bottlenecks and heavy traffic also create problems for oil tankers in the Turkish Straits. Turkey has raised concerns over the navigational safety and environmental threats to the Turkish Straits, and the country has suggested that an alternate route could be developed between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara.22

Panama Canal

Figure 7. Map of Panama Canal

The United States is the primary country of origin and destination for all commodities going through the Panama Canal; however, it is not a significant route for U.S. petroleum trade.

The Panama Canal is an important route connecting the Pacific Ocean with the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The Canal is 50 miles long and only 110 feet wide at its narrowest point – the Culebra Cut – at the Continental Divide.23 More than 13,000 vessels transited the Canal in fiscal year 2014, representing more than 200 million tons of cargo.24 Goods either originating from or destined for the United States accounted for 43% of the total shipments passing through the Panama Canal during that period.25

Alternatives to the Panama Canal include the Straits of Magellan, Cape Horn, and Drake Passage at the southern tip of South America, but these routes would significantly increase transit times and costs, adding about 8,000 miles of travel.

Although petroleum and petroleum products represented 18% of the principal commodities that crossed through the Panama Canal,26 it is not a significant route for global petroleum and petroleum product transit. In 2013, 1.4% of total global maritime petroleum and petroleum product flows went through the Panama Canal. According to the Panama Canal Authority, 877,000 bbl/d of petroleum and petroleum products were transported through the canal in fiscal year 2014, of which 748,000 bbl/d were refined products, the remainder being crude oil.27 About 78% of total petroleum, 688,000 bbl/d, went southbound from the Atlantic to the Pacific.28

The relevance of the Panama Canal to the global oil trade has diminished, as many modern tankers are too large to travel through the canal. Some oil tankers, such as the ULCC (Ultra Large Crude Carrier) class tankers, can be nearly five times larger than the maximum capacity of the canal. The largest vessel that can transit the Panama Canal is known as a Panamax-size vessel (ships ranging from 60,000 to 80,000 deadweight tons and no wider than 106 ft).

To make the canal more accessible, the Panama Canal Authority undertook an expansion program planned to be completed by 2015. The expansion will be able to accommodate a fully loaded Aframax tanker at 120,000 deadweight tons,29 but will not be able to accommodate carriers the size of VLCCs or larger. The Panama Canal Authority website features a description of the expansion program and progress reports.

Trans-Panama Pipeline

The Trans-Panama Pipeline (TPP), operated by Petroterminal de Panama, S.A. (PTP), is located outside the former Canal Zone near the Costa Rican border. It runs from the port of Charco Azul on the Pacific coast to the port of Chiriqui Grande in Bocas del Toro, Panama on the Caribbean Sea. The pipeline began operating in 1982, with the original purpose of facilitating crude oil shipments from Alaska’s North Slope to refineries in the Caribbean and in the U.S. Gulf Coast.31 However, in 1996, the TPP was shut down as oil companies began shipping Alaskan crude along alternative routes. Since 1996, there have been intermittent requests and proposals to use the TPP. In August 2009, the TPP completed a project to reverse its flows so the pipeline could transport oil from the Caribbean to the Pacific. The pipeline’s capacity is about 600,000 bbl/d.32

In 2012, BP and PTP signed a seven-year transportation and storage agreement, allowing BP to lease storage facilities located on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts of Panama and to use the pipeline to transport crude oil to U.S. West Coast refiners. According to PTP, BP has leased 5.4 million barrels of PTP’s storage and committed to east-to-west shipments through the pipeline averaging 100,000 bbl/d. The route reduces transport time and costs of ships having to go around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America to get to the U.S. West Coast.33

According to Lloyd’s List Intelligence, 95,000 bbl/d of crude oil was transported through the pipeline to the port of Charco Azul in 2013, an increase of more than 20,000 bbl/d from the previous year.

Danish Straits

The Danish Straits are an important route for Russian oil exports to Europe.

The Danish Straits consist of a series of channels that connect the Baltic Sea to the North Sea. They are an important route for Russian oil exports to Europe. An estimated 3.3 million bbl/d of crude oil and petroleum products flowed through the Danish Straits in 2013.

Russia shifted a significant portion of its crude oil exports to its Baltic ports after opening the port of Primorsk in 2005. In 2011, Primorsk oil exports accounted for more than half of all exports through the Danish Straits, although the volume fell to 42% in 2013. A small amount of oil (less than 100,000 bbl/d), primarily from Norway and the United Kingdom, also flowed eastward to Scandinavian markets in 2013.

Cape of Good Hope

Although not a chokepoint, the Cape of Good Hope is a major global trade route. Crude oil flows around the Cape accounted for about 9% of all seaborne-traded oil.

The Cape of Good Hope, located on the southern tip of South Africa, is a significant transit point for oil tanker shipments around the globe. EIA estimates about 4.9 million bbl/d of seaborne-traded crude oil moved around the Cape of Good Hope in both directions in 2013, accounting for about 9% of all seaborne-traded oil. EIA does not currently estimate petroleum product flows around the Cape of Good Hope.

In 2013, 3.6 million bbl/d of crude oil around the world moved eastbound, originating mostly from Africa (2.1 million bbl/d) and from South America and the Caribbean (1.3 million bbl/d). Eastbound crude oil flows were nearly all destined for Asian markets (3.5 million bbl/d). In the opposite direction, nearly all westbound flows originated from the Middle East (1.3 million bbl/d), mostly destined for the Americas, with the United States making up a majority of the total.

The Cape of Good Hope is also an alternative sea route for vessels traveling westward seeking to bypass the Gulf of Aden, Bab el-Mandeb Straits, and/or the Suez Canal. However, diverting vessels around the Cape of Good Hope would increase costs and shipping time. For example, closure of the Suez Canal and the SUMED Pipeline would necessitate diverting oil tankers around the Cape of Good Hope, adding approximately 2,700 miles to transit from Saudi Arabia to the United States, increasing both costs and shipping time, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.34

Notes

• Data presented in the text are the most recent available as of November 10, 2014.
• Data are EIA estimates unless otherwise noted.

Endnotes

1. U.S. Energy Information Administration, International Energy Statistics.
2. U.S. Energy Information Administration analysis based on United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD/RMT/2013), Review of Maritime Transport 2013, Annex I: World seaborne trade by country group (December 2013). http://unctad.org/en/pages/PublicationWebflyer.aspx?publicationid=753; Cedigaz, Statistical Database (August 29, 2013); Lloyd’s List Intelligence, Analysis of Petroleum Exports (APEX) database; BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2014.
3. UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 2013, p. 37
4. Lloyd’s List Intelligence, Analysis of Petroleum Exports (APEX) database; Panama Canal Authority, Annual Report 2013; Eastern Bloc Research, CIS and Eastern Europe Databook 2014;Suez Canal Authority, Traffic Statistics; UNCTAD/RMT/2013.
5. U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Oil tanker sizes range from general purpose to ultra-large crude carriers on AFRA scale”, Today in Energy (September 16, 2014). http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=17991
6. Lloyd’s List Intelligence, Analysis of Petroleum Exports (APEX) database.
7. BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2014 (June 2014). http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html
8. Lloyd’s List Intelligence, Analysis of Petroleum Exports (APEX) database.
9. National Defense University, “Chokepoints: Maritime Economic Concerns in Southeast Asia”, Institute for National Strategic Studies (1996), p. 2
10. International Chamber Of Commerce (ICC) International Maritime Bureau, Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships – 2013 Annual Report, p. 21
11. National Defense University, 1996. “Chokepoints: Maritime Economic Concerns in Southeast Asia”, Institute for National Strategic Studies, pp. 80-81
12. Larson, “China’s Oil Pipeline Through Myanmar Brings Both Energy and Resentment.” Bloomberg Businessweek (February 04, 2014). http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-04/chinas-oil-pipeline-through-myanmar-brings-both-energy-and-resentment
13. IHS Energy, “Myanmar to receive 40,000 b/d of crude from Myanmar-China pipeline.” Oil & Gas Risk Service (July 26, 2013)
14. Lloyd’s List Intelligence, Analysis of Petroleum Exports (APEX) database; Cedigaz, Statistical Database (August 29, 2013);BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2014 (June 2014).
15. Suez Canal Authority, Suez Canal Future Plans.
16. SUMED Arab Petroleum Pipelines Company, SUMED system: Main Pipelines and Share Holders.
17. U.S. Department of Transportation, Economic Impact of Piracy in the Gulf of Aden on Global Trade, (2010).
18. International Energy Agency, Oil Market Update, (January 31, 2011).
19. Suez Canal Authority, Annual Report 2013 and Suez Canal Traffic Statistics; Lloyd’s List Intelligence, Analysis of Petroleum Exports (APEX) database.
20. Association of French Ship Captains, The Turkish Straits Vessel Traffic Service (TSVTS), http://www.afcan.org/dossiers_techniques/tsvts_gb.html
21. Ibid
22. Sam Jones, “Istanbul’s new Bosphorus canal ‘to surpass Suez or Panama'”. The Guardian (April 27, 2013). http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/27/istanbul-new-bosphorus-canal
23. Panama Canal Authority, This is the Canal (February 22, 2013). http://www.pancanal.com/eng/acp/asi-es-el-canal.html
24. Panama Canal Authority, Transit Statistics Fiscal Year 2014.http://www.pancanal.com/eng/op/transit-stats/2014/2014-Table01.pdf
25. Panama Canal Authority, Transit Statistics Fiscal Year 2014. http://www.pancanal.com/eng/op/transit-stats/2014/2014-Table09.pdf
26. Panama Canal Authority, Transit Statistics Fiscal Year 2014. http://www.pancanal.com/eng/op/transit-stats/2014/2014-Table07.pdf
27. Ibid, Table 7. http://www.pancanal.com/eng/op/transit-stats/2014/2014-Table07.pdf
28. Ibid.
29. U.S. Energy Information Administration, Liquid Fuels and Natural Gas in the Americas (January 2014). http://www.eia.gov/countries/americas/pdf/americas.pdf
30. Lloyd’s List Intelligence, Analysis of Petroleum Exports (APEX) database; Panama Canal Authority, Annual Report 2013.
31. Fielden, “The Crude from Transpanama – Pipeline Shipments from the Gulf to the Pacific Coasts”, RBN Energy (August 15, 2013). https://rbnenergy.com/the-crude-from-transpanama-pipeline-shipments-from-the-gulf-to-the-pacific-coasts
32. Ibid; Burkhardt and Galouchko, “BP to Ship Crude on Trans-Panama Pipeline to U.S. West Coast,” Bloomberg (February 2, 2012). http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-02/bp-to-ship-crude-on-trans-panama-pipeline-to-u-s-west-coast-1-.html
33. Smith, “BP begins east-west crude pipeline shipments across Panama”, Oil & Gas Journal (February 3, 2012). http://www.ogj.com/articles/2012/02/bp-begins-east-west-crude-pipeline-shipments-across-panama.html
34. U.S. Department of Transportation, Economic Impact of Piracy in the Gulf of Aden on Global Trade, (2010).
35. Lloyd’s List Intelligence, Analysis of Petroleum Exports (APEX) database

The post World Oil Transit Chokepoints – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By MD Al-Sulami

A special criminal court in Riyadh has sentenced to death three members of a terror cell for killing 20 people and injuring 35 others at the Oasis Residential compound in Alkhobar in the Eastern Province, and the Al-Mohayya complex in Riyadh in separate attacks. Five were each handed 30-year jail terms.

The victims of the terror attacks included BBC photographer Simon Cumbers. His colleague Frank Gardner was critically wounded and is now wheelchair-bound. There were also Saudi civilians and policemen among the victims.

The first defendant, N. Boqami, chief of Cell 86, said Al-Qaeda had assigned him and others to storm the Oasis complex in 2004. They had been told that US forces had kidnapped and detained several Sunni Iraqi women during the 2003 invasion.

However, he denied all other 27 charges against him, including storming into a facility of the APICORP and the Oasis compound carrying grenades, assault rifles and revolvers on May 29 and holding 45 hostages. The state contends that he was accompanied by Al-Qaeda members Turki Al-Motairi and Abdullah Al-Sobaie during the operation.

The charge sheet accused them of killing 10 people of various nationalities including two industrial security officers and a cop. It was also claimed that they were party to the assault and murder of 12 and injuring 20 security officers in an encounter at the Waha compound. The state also accused Boqami of ascribing to the takfiri ideology — to declare other Muslims non-believers — questioning the Holy Qur’an, Sunnah and the creed of the early Muslim ummah.

The state also contends that he rebelled against the ruler by switching his allegiance to Abdul Aziz Al-Muqrin, the chief of Al-Qaeda in the Kingdom, and taking up membership in an Al-Qaeda subsidiary called “Deterrence and Defense Cell,” which undertook the task of spying on and assassinating civilian officials.

The court accused him of killing a British man, tying his body to a car and dragging it along a road. The other charges include shooting and killing three Indians and a Japanese citizen, and murdering an Italian hostage and breaking the news to an Arabic television news channel.

The court found that he had slit the throat of a Swedish citizen after shooting and killing him. His other victims included 12 others, among them Indian, Swedish, Egyptian, South African, Sri Lankan, and Filipino citizens, the court stated.

He was also accused of leading the terror attack at the Al-Mohayya residential complex in Riyadh in November 2003. The court found that his gang had accompanied two other Al-Qaeda members. They had thrown hand-grenades and opened fire at security guards at the complex to make way for an explosives-laden car. The car was disguised as a military vehicle and carried 300 kg of powerful explosives. They had detonated it, killing 17 people and wounding 122 others of various nationalities.

The post Saudi Arabia: 3 Sentenced To Death For Riyadh, Alkhobar Terror Attacks appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Police in the Democratic Republic of Congo summarily killed at least 51 youth and forcibly disappeared 33 others during an anti-crime campaign that began a year ago, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. “Operation Likofi,” which lasted from November 2013 to February 2014, targeted alleged gang members in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa.

The 57-page report, “Operation Likofi: Police Killings and Enforced Disappearances in Kinshasa,” details how uniformed police, often wearing masks, dragged kuluna, or suspected gang members, from their homes at night and executed them. The police shot and killed the unarmed young men and boys outside their homes, in the open markets where they slept or worked, and in nearby fields or empty lots. Many others were taken without warrants to unknown locations and forcibly disappeared.

“Operation Likofi was a brutal police campaign that left a trail of cold-blooded murders in the Congolese capital,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Fighting crime by committing crime does not build the rule of law but only reinforces a climate of fear. The Congolese authorities should investigate the killings, starting with the commander in charge of the operation, and bring to justice those responsible.”

Human Rights Watch conducted interviews in Kinshasa with 107 witnesses, family members of victims, police officers who participated in Operation Likofi, government officials, and others. Human Rights Watch also released new video footage and photographs, including of suspected kuluna who were killed during Operation Likofi and interviews with their relatives.

The Congolese government launched Operation Likofi on November 15, 2013, following a public commitment by President Joseph Kabila to end gang crime in Kinshasa. Kuluna had been responsible for a surge of armed robberies and other serious crimes across Kinshasa since 2006.

During the three-month operation, police conducted widespread raids, targeting many who had nothing to do with the kuluna. Some were street children, while others were youth falsely accused by their neighbors in unrelated disputes. Some happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In all the cases investigated by Human Rights Watch, those who were killed posed no imminent threat to life that would have justified the police using lethal force.

Initially the police appeared to use their brutal tactics as a warning to others. Many victims were beaten and humiliated by the police in front of a crowd before being killed, and the police sometimes called people to come look at the body after executing a suspect. In many cases, they left the body in the street, perhaps to frighten others, and only later collected it for transfer to the city’s morgues.

When the United Nations and local human rights organizations publicly raised concerns, the police changed their tactics: instead of executing their suspects publicly, they took those arrested to a police camp or an unknown location. According to police officers who participated in Operation Likofi, as well as a confidential foreign government report, some of the suspected kuluna abducted by the police were later killed clandestinely.

Police warned relatives of victims and witnesses not to speak about what happened, denied them access to the bodies, and prevented them from holding funerals. Congolese journalists were threatened when they attempted to document or broadcast information about Operation Likofi killings. Police told doctors not to treat suspected kuluna who were wounded during the operation, and government officials instructed morgue employees not to talk to anyone about the bodies piling up in the morgue, because it concerned a “confidential government matter.”

A military magistrate who wanted to open a judicial investigation into a police colonel who allegedly shot and killed a suspected kuluna detained during Operation Likofi received oral instructions from a government official to “close [his] eyes” and not follow up on the case.

“The evidence implicates senior officials in the killings and disappearances, as well as the subsequent cover ups,” Bekele said. “Family members deserve to know the fate or whereabouts of their children who were taken away or killed by the police. Congolese authorities should immediately make this information available and ensure that the victims’ families are able to seek justice and organize funerals without fear of reprisal.”

Command of Operation Likofi officially alternated between Gen. Célestin Kanyama and Gen. Ngoy Sengelwa. Police officers who participated in the operation and a senior police official interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that, in practice, Kanyama was the primary commander of Operation Likofi who gave the orders on how the operation should be conducted. Police officers said Kanyama gave orders to kill suspected kuluna and was present during some of the attacks.

Kanyama, in a meeting with Human Rights Watch in August 2014, rejected these allegations and said the reports of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances were “rumors.”

Other senior government and police officials acknowledged to Human Rights Watch that there were cases of police misconduct during Operation Likofi, including killings. However, magistrates assigned to the operation said that no police officers who took part in Operation Likofi were arrested or convicted for killings or abductions, although some were convicted for extortion and other lesser offenses.

Human Rights Watch called on the Congolese authorities to immediately suspend Kanyama and launch a judicial investigation into his alleged role in the abuses committed during the operation.

On November 13, family members of 25 victims who were killed or forcibly disappeared during Operation Likofi called for justice in a letter to Congo’s national prosecutor. They urged the government “to inform us as soon as possible on the fate of our missing children, to tell us where those who were killed are buried, and to allow us to organize funerals with dignity and in accordance with our customs.” They also called for investigations and requested that “the highest civilian and police officers involved in the operation are brought to justice … and that reparations are given at the end of the trials.”

On October 15, the UN published a 21-page report documenting summary executions and enforced disappearances committed by police taking part in Operation Likofi in Kinshasa. Two days later, the Congolese government told the UN human rights director in Congo, Scott Campbell, to leave the country.

“The expulsion of a senior UN official for exposing police abuses during Operation Likofi shows that Congolese authorities are not serious about tackling the crimes committed by the police,” Bekele said. “The government should focus on investigating and prosecuting those responsible for the crimes, not continue to cover them up.”

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Why is Jamaica, with a population smaller than that of Los Angeles, home to so many of the world’s elite sprinters – runners who compete in the 100, 200, 400 and 800-meter races?

Robert Trivers, an evolutionary biologist and professor of anthropology and biology in the School of Arts and Sciences, set out with his colleagues to find out if there was something about the symmetry of their knees that might partly explain this phenomenon. They already knew from their earlier research that the symmetry of children’s knees at age 8 predicts how fast a person runs 14 years later in life.

“We then asked, “Is the degree of symmetry positively associated with sprinting ability among the very best sprinters?’” Trivers says. The answer to that question is yes.

Within all sprinters, those with the most symmetrical knees have the best times and this was particularly true of the 100-meter sprinters.

“You can easily imagine why,” Trivers says. “If you watch someone running a 100-meter race, you can see his or her knees continually churning up and down, propelling the sprinter forward. Symmetry is very efficient.”

Trivers and his co-authors – Bernhard Fink of the University of Gottingen in Germany; Kristofor McCarty and Mark Russell of Northumbria University in England; Brian Palaestis of Wagner College in Staten Island, New York; and Bruce James of the MVP Track and Field Club in Kingston, Jamaica — have published their work in the journal PLOS ONE.

For their study, the researchers measured the knees of 74 elite Jamaican sprinters and a control group of 116 non-sprinting Jamaicans of the same age and sex and similar in size and weight. They discovered that the sprinters’ knees were much more symmetrical than the knees of people in the control group.

The 74 sprinters were all members of the MVP Track and Field Club, and included Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce, who holds two Olympic gold medals in the 100-meter sprint, and Nesta Carter, the man with the fifth fastest 100-meter runs ever recorded.

The 30 sprinters who specialized in the 100-meter race, which does not require turns, had the most symmetrical knees of all. Trivers attributes this finding to the fact that sprinters in longer races have to make left turns each time they run, and this turning may lead to or favor asymmetry over time, just as unbalanced wheels may lead to uneven tire wear on a car.

“So far as we know, this is the first time anyone has isolated a variable that predicts sprinting speed in the future as well as among the very best adult sprinters now,” Trivers says.

While this study establishes a relationship between knee symmetry and running speed in elite sprinters, it does not establish a causal relationship.

“We don’t know for sure whether the sprinters are great sprinters because their knees are symmetrical, or whether their knees are symmetrical because of all the time they spend practicing,” Trivers says.

In the future, he wants to study the differences in the strength of sprinters’ right and left legs, to see whether the symmetry between them changes over time, and whether the race times of the sprinters change over time. Farther into the future, Trivers is interested in isolating the particular genes that make for great sprinters. People of West African genetic origins, including many Jamaicans, are known to have more “fast-twitch” muscle fibers, which produce energy from the body’s sugar rather than oxygen, and are good for short, intense bursts of activity.

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Museum biological collections are the records of life on Earth and as such, they are frequently used to investigate serious environmental issues. When public health officials were concerned about the levels of mercury in fish and birds, for example, scientists studied museum specimens to assess historical changes in mercury contamination.

Eggs in museum collections were analyzed to establish the connection between DDT, thinning eggshells, and the decline in bird populations. And now, specimens from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) have helped explain the mysteriously sudden appearance of a disease that has decimated sea stars on the North American Pacific Coast.

In a paper published Monday, November 17, 2014 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cornell University microbiologist Ian Hewson and colleagues identify the Sea Star Associated Densovirus (SSaDV) virus as the microbe responsible for Sea Star Wasting Disease (SSWD). NHM Curator of Echinoderms Gordon Hendler and Collections Manager Cathy Groves, along with scientists from universities and aquariums along the coast (including NHM neighbor, the California Science Center), collaborated in the study.

Since June 2013, the largest die-off of sea stars ever recorded has swept the Pacific Coast. At least 20 different species of sea stars have been affected — including iconic species like the “ochre star” and the multi-armed “sunflower star” — and many populations of sea stars from Southern Alaska to Baja California have already disappeared.

Their large-scale disappearance is anticipated to have a serious and long-lasting ecological impact on coastal habitats, because sea stars are voracious predators, with a key role in regulating the ecology of the ocean floor.

Museum samples prove that the virus has existed at a low level for at least the past 72 years — it was detected in preserved sea stars collected in 1942, 1980, 1987, and 1991. The study suggests the disease may have recently risen to epidemic levels because of sea star overpopulation, environmental changes, or mutation of the virus.

The study detected the virus on particles suspended in seawater, as well as in sediment, and showed that it is harbored in animals related to sea stars, such as sea urchins and brittle stars. Likely it can be transported by ocean currents, accounting for its rapid, widespread dispersal in the wild. Since the die-off began, the disease has caused a mass mortality of captive sea stars in aquariums on the Pacific Coast, although it did not spread in aquariums that sterilize inflowing seawater with UV light.

“There are 10 million viruses in a drop of seawater, so discovering the virus associated with a marine disease can be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Hewson said. In fact, the densovirus is the first and only virus identified in sea stars. However, its discovery will enable scientists to study how the virus infects sea stars and trace it in the ocean. Further research could reveal how the virus invades its host, why kills some sea stars, and why other species are unaffected.

Research might also identify factors that triggered the ongoing plague and help to predict or forestall similar events in the future.

“A recent publication highlighted examples of innovative studies for which museum time-series were integral in identifying responses to environmental change and bemoaned general decline in the growth of museum collections,” said NHM’s Hendler. “Fortunately, we bucked the trend and intentionally collected common, local species of sea stars, which made it possible to detect SSaDV in specimens from NHM!”

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The everyday use of a GPS device might be to find your way around town or even navigate a hiking trail, but for two physicists, the Global Positioning System might be a tool in directly detecting and measuring dark matter, so far an elusive but ubiquitous form of matter responsible for the formation of galaxies.

Andrei Derevianko, of the University of Nevada, Reno, and his colleague Maxim Pospelov, of the University of Victoria and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, have proposed a method for a dark-matter search with GPS satellites and other atomic clock networks that compares times from the clocks and looks for discrepancies.

“Despite solid observational evidence for the existence of dark matter, its nature remains a mystery,” Derevianko, a professor in the College of Science at the University, said. “Some research programs in particle physics assume that dark matter is composed of heavy-particle-like matter. This assumption may not hold true, and significant interest exists for alternatives.”

“Modern physics and cosmology fail dramatically in that they can only explain 5 percent of mass and energy in the universe in the form of ordinary matter, but the rest is a mystery.”

There is evidence that dark energy is about 68 percent of the mystery mass and energy. The remaining 27 percent is generally acknowledged to be dark matter, even though it is not visible and eludes direct detection and measurement.

“Our research pursues the idea that dark matter may be organized as a large gas-like collection of topological defects, or energy cracks,” Derevianko said. “We propose to detect the defects, the dark matter, as they sweep through us with a network of sensitive atomic clocks. The idea is, where the clocks go out of synchronization, we would know that dark matter, the topological defect, has passed by. In fact, we envision using the GPS constellation as the largest human-built dark-matter detector.”

Their research was well-received by the scientific community when the theory was presented at renowned scientific conferences this year, and their paper on the topic appears today in the online version of the scientific journal Nature Physics, ahead of the print version. It can be found here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nphys3137.

Derevianko is collaborating on analyzing GPS data with Geoff Blewitt, director of the Nevada Geodetic Laboratory, also in the College of Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. The Geodetic Lab developed and maintains the largest GPS data processing center in the world, able to process information from about 12,000 stations around the globe continuously, 24/7.

The two are starting to test the dark matter detection ideas by analyzing clock data from the 30 GPS satellites, which use atomic clocks for everyday navigation. Correlated networks of atomic clocks such as the GPS and some ground networks already in existence, can be used as a powerful tool to search for the topological defect dark matter where initially synchronized clocks will become desynchronized. The time discrepancies between spatially separated clocks are expected to exhibit a distinct signature.

Blewitt, also a physicist, explained how an array of atomic clocks could possibly detect dark matter.

“We know the dark matter must be there, for example, because it is seen to bend light around galaxies, but we have no evidence as to what it might be made of,” he said. “If the dark matter were not there, the normal matter that we know about would not be sufficient to bend the light as much as it does. That’s just one of the ways scientists know there is a massive amount of dark matter somewhere out there in the galaxy. One possibility is that the dark matter in this gas might not be made out of particles like normal matter, but of macroscopic imperfections in the fabric of space-time.

“The Earth sweeps through this gas as it orbits the galaxy. So to us, the gas would appear to be like a galactic wind of dark matter blowing through the Earth system and its satellites. As the dark matter blows by, it would occasionally cause clocks of the GPS system to go out of sync with a tell-tale pattern over a period of about 3 minutes. If the dark matter causes the clocks to go out of sync by more than a billionth of a second we should easily be able to detect such events.”

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By Barbara Slavin

With only one week to go before a self-imposed deadline, the nail-biting is accelerating over whether Iran will reach an agreement with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) that curbs its nuclear program for years to come in return for sanctions relief.

Negotiations formally resume Tuesday in Vienna following intensive talks last week in Oman among Secretary of State John Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton that apparently failed to achieve a breakthrough.

But the gaps between the sides are narrowing. Progress was made on key issues, including agreeing to send out Iran’s stockpile of low enriched uranium to Russia – which would turn it into fuel for current and envisioned civilian power reactors. Meanwhile, an Iranian source told VOA on condition of anonymity that Iran might accept an initial suspension – rather than revocation – of U.N. sanctions that have provided the legal basis for economic penalties imposed against the Islamic republic since 2006.

“Any joint plan of action has to be durable over a period of time,” a senior Barack Obama administration official said Monday in response to a question about the Iranian report. The official added that a comprehensive deal would be similar to the interim accord reached last year with an Iranian action followed by relief of sanctions “not just in one instance.” Negotiators “have continued to make progress but we still have some gaps to close,” the official said. “It is still possible to do it all [by Nov. 24] – difficult but possible.”

If a final deal is not reached, the parties have several options including “banking” the terms already agreed to and attempting to finalize an accord within the next few months. Negotiators could also agree to extend an interim deal, reached a year ago, which has already been renewed once last July.

Nuclear deal could be game-changer

One of the reasons that the negotiations have taken so long is because much more is riding on these talks than just the size and scope of Iran’s nuclear facilities. An agreement could alter the balance of power in the Middle East and challenge the Iranian regime’s narrative about its identity and role.

Hard-line Iranian officials – especially Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – portray their country as a pillar of “resistance” against a U.S.-led world order. To sign an agreement with the P5+1 that verifiably caps Iran’s nuclear program for another decade or so would affirm the legitimacy of that order.

As Robert Litvak, a non-proliferation expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars has written, the nuclear issue is a proxy for the broader conflict between the U.S. and Iran that dates to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“The issue is not one of a simple tradeoff between nuclear technology and transparency,” Litvak says. “Nuclear diplomacy with America, the ‘Great Satan,’ goes to the heart of Iran’s unresolved identity crisis: is the Islamic Republic a revolutionary state or an ordinary country?

This tension helps explain the vehemence of opponents of a deal in Iran as well as in the U.S., Israel and Iran’s Arab adversaries. While the latter see the problem as the Iranian government and worry as much or more about its interventionist policies in the region as about the number of centrifuges it has spinning, some in Iran see a nuclear deal as starting down a slippery slope of subservience to the “Great Satan.”

The hardline Keyhan newspaper believes that Iran has already conceded too much. It editorialized last week, according to a translation by the Mideast Mirror service, that officials from President Hassan Rouhani’s administration are projecting “an image of helplessness… In the middle of nuclear negotiations, the remarks of one member of the government link the country’s future with the economic sanctions, while others shout that the treasury being empty and still others claim that the U.S. can destroy the country’s infrastructure in few minutes. What message is being sent to the enemy? Does it achieve anything besides making them bolder?”

Other Iranians say it’s time to ease the rift with the U.S. given the instability roiling Iran’s neighbors and the pressure that is placing on Iranian finances and allies.

“America has been able to enter a new phase of relations with Iran, which has at least resulted in reducing the wall built by 35 years of distrust,” wrote the reformist paper Arman in an editorial also translated by Mideast Mirror. However, it also said that “speaking about the normalization of Iran/U.S. relations is an overstatement.”

Its funds depleted by sanctions and lower oil prices and its forces over-extended trying to shore up governments in Iraq and Syria from the threat of Sunni fundamentalists, many Iranian officials have come to the conclusion that they have to shed their country’s outlier status to be part of a broader security dialogue about the fate of the Middle East. The Barack Obama administration has made clear that the entry ticket to more high-level diplomacy is a nuclear agreement – or at the very least a framework that continues to limit Iran’s nuclear advances.

President Obama’s recent letter to Khamenei reportedly discussed the mutual challenge faced by the U.S. and Iran from the group that calls itself the Islamic State. The White House denies that Obama offered to soften terms on the nuclear issue but the implication was that a nuclear agreement could facilitate cooperation against the terrorist group and on other matters.

Negotiations aren’t the final step

If an agreement is reached, both Khamenei and Obama will need to publicly endorse it to stave off domestic critics – including a conservative-dominated parliament in Iran and a soon-to-be Republican-led Congress in the U.S.

Last week, future Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said he would wait until Nov. 24 to see if an agreement is reached – or the interim deal is extended — before supporting any of several bills threatening new sanctions against Iran.

Obama has sufficient authority to waive most U.S. sanctions of concern to Iran without having to go to Capitol Hill. He can also re-impose them if Iran does not faithfully implement an agreement.

With so much effort already expended, both the U.S. and Iran should summon the political will to make whatever final compromises are necessary. The best answer to the critics in both countries is an agreement that delivers tangible benefits and resolves at least one of the crises tearing apart the Middle East.

Barbara Slavin is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center and a correspondent for Al-Monitor.com, a website specializing in the Middle East. She is the author of a 2007 book, Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the US and the Twisted Path to Confrontation, and is a regular commentator on U.S. foreign policy and Iran on NPR, PBS, C-SPAN and the Voice of America.

The post Crunch Time For Iran Nuclear Talks – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Shankari Sundararaman

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the Myanmar endorses that all is well with India’s policy to the countries that lie to the east. Since he took office in May 2014, there were some views among observers that India’s Look East Policy (LEP) was not receiving the merit it should. Much of this was centered on the debate as to why Myanmar, a close and significant neighbour was not invited to the swearing-in ceremony of the prime minister. However, given the fact that the invitation was extended to the South Asian countries, Myanmar technically did not fit into this category. Another view was that the invitation was extended only to full democracies, which would then explain why Pakistan was present, given that there is currently a democratic intermission in the country.

But Modi’s three-day visit to Myanmar this month changed the perceptions and brought the ASEAN region back into the centre-stage with the focus shifting from the LEP to the Act East Policy (AEP). While this does not really signal a departure from the LEP, it does highlight a more nuanced position of acknowledging the need to `act’ or to `get one’s act together’, to move ahead on the implementation of projects and proposals that have been initiated in principle but are lagging in practice. So the shift to the AEP should be viewed as an attempt to provide an impetus to the regional integration that India has with its eastern neighbours. The ASEAN countries have often expressed a lot of concern on the slow pace of reform in India. Added to this is the issues of the signing of several agreements that need to come into force to hasten the implementation. These are the critical areas that drive policy into the action-oriented phase.

The highlight of the visit was the focus given to the three C’s: culture, commerce and connectivity. In this context, India’s cultural ties with Southeast Asia are being considered as a significant one that will help push critical ties forward. The recent opening of the Nalanda University is an example of this dynamic. Furthermore, an emphasis on tourism too was made. Tourism is a vital component of relations and the industry needs to be revamped in order to make India a tourist destination for Southeast Asian visitors and vice versa. The Open Skies Agreement is therefore among the key areas to focus on, to provide any momentum to the tourism industry. At present, even direct flights from India to all ten Southeast Asian countries and vice versa are unavailable.

Complementary to boosting tourism, there is also a potential to integrate cities that can be linked as sibling cities. In this context, one of the options could be to link Bodhgaya, Lumbini and Yangon, Shwedagon Pagoda together as the Buddhist circuit. Another potential option would be the linking of cities like Jogjakarta, Siam Reap and Thanjavur together as potential tourist hubs. This would make a critical impact in terms of revitalising the tourism sector and would also act as a boost in bringing about greater people-to-people contact between the regions.

The second focus, on commerce, is already an area India has made considerable strides in; and that is expected to progress even further. Projecting a new economic environment in which India has embarked upon targeted attracting investments into the country under the banner of the Make in India slogan. Currently the India-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement in (FTA) in goods has been operationalised, and the FTA in services and investments, though signed with all but one (the Philippines) country, is expected to be ratified by the respective countries’ parliaments soon. This is one area where India has an advantage since, globally, it ranks 9th in the services sector.

As the move to integrate with the region is further enhanced through regionally driven initiatives like the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), there is likelihood of widening linkages across the region. The RCEP links the ASEAN and its dialogue partners into a regional economic grouping that will be critical since it will bring the three Asian economic giants – China, Japan and India – together. The Chinese move to enhance regional integration via the Asian Infrastructural Investment Bank and the enhancement of the Maritime Silk Route to link the Indian and the Pacific Oceans into an economic chain are clearly moving the commercial side of the regional agreements forward.

Finally, on the issue of connectivity, there is an urgent need to move forward with the plans that have been in the pipeline. Projects such as the India-Myanmar-Thailand trilateral highway and the Imphal-Mandalay road are extremely important towards linking the region via land, and opening up the border areas to facilitate the easy movement of people and goods. While both Myanmar and India are focusing on the development of the border regions, these projects will act as vital catalysts to deliver on the proposed outcomes.

Shankari Sundararaman
Chairperson, Centre for Indo-Pacific Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

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A spate of fuel-syphoning attacks on small tankers in the Straits of Malacca and South China Sea is helping to perpetuate a misleading narrative of resurgent piracy in Southeast Asia. However, they reveal transnational dimensions to maritime crime that require a concerted stakeholder response.

By Euan Graham

A statistical increase in the number of predations on shipping reported by the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP) in the first half of 2014 has fed concerns – amplified by media and private security firms – that piracy is in the ascendant in and around Southeast Asia.

While ReCAAP’s inter-governmental, coast-guard led Information Sharing Centre (ISC) reported a year-on-year “surge” in first-half incidents, from 61 in 2013 to 90 in 2014, many of these involved petty theft. Failure to differentiate serious attacks from relatively minor incidents commonly overstates the threat. However, perceptions matter where confidence is concerned.

Tanker targets and syndicated syphoning?

ReCAAP’s third quarter report reveals a marked overall improvement since July. Incidents dropped to 39, from 58 in the April-June period. Predations in Indonesian ports and anchorages have fallen continuously throughout 2014. Most serious incidents involve illegal fuel syphoning in the Straits of Malacca and South China Sea. Ten small tankers were hit between April and September: Sri Phang Nga, Orapin 4, Budi Mersa Dua, Ai Maru, Moresby 9, Oriental Glory, VL14, Orapin 2, Pentrader and Naniwa Maru. To put this in perspective, since 2011 a total of 18 syphoning attacks have been reported of which 13 were successful.

Most syphoning attacks occur at night, well outside Singapore’s port limits frequently in the less-policed waters north of Indonesia’s Bintan island. Small product tankers under 5,000 tons are boarded by small groups of lightly armed pirates and taken into the South China Sea; their names sometimes re-painted and communications equipment disabled en route to a rendezvous point with a second vessel. Once alongside, the fuel can be offloaded within hours.

Shipments of Marine Gas Oil (MGO) are targeted for several reasons. First, MGO sold illicitly is lucrative, fetching above US$500 per tonne. Illegal bunkering is a perennial problem beyond port limits. In remote areas, the black market may be the easiest way to obtain marine fuel. Second, loaded product tankers present inviting targets, being low, slow and easily trackable. Third, many attacks betray the hallmarks of preplanned, syndicate involvement: syphoning operations are well organised, conducted with apparent foreknowledge of the cargo fuel type and how to dispose of it. Crews are normally unharmed.

ReCAAP’s most recent report notes: “(t)he possibility of conspiracy between the crew of the vessel and pirates; between the shipping company and pirates cannot be ruled out”. Suspicions that “piracy” is being used as a cover for insurance fraud have mounted as some operators feature disproportionately in the statistics.

Targeted syphoning attacks, with strong indications of insider involvement, do not pose a generalised threat to shipping or the energy trade, although attacks do still occur on vulnerable vessel types elsewhere within the Straits of Malacca Traffic Separation Scheme. Product tankers are at higher risk with syphoning incidents continuing to occur roughly on a monthly basis.

Coordinated response

Supply-demand market factors inform this risk. The recent collapse of the bunkering firm OW has stoked fears of shortages triggering more syphoning attacks. However, Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority has announced efforts to maintain adequate supplies of marine fuels. Lower oil prices (already boosting crude shipments via Malacca to China) should temper any inflationary effect beyond the immediate short-term.

Syphoning attacks, lasting longer than most pirate boardings in Southeast Asia, have tested the response capabilities of ReCAAP’s ISC and the mainly inter-naval Information Fusion Centre (IFC), both hosted in Singapore. While ReCAAP’s ISC acts as a piracy information sharing node between designated national focal points and the shipping industry, the IFC’s direct line to operations centres in the region brings an additional “cueing” function.

All three littoral states have deployed navy or coast guard vessels to the scene. When the Ai Maru, a product tanker carrying 1,500 tonnes of MGO, was boarded while transiting the South China Sea in June, a prompt response from Singaporean and Malaysian navy ships disrupted the syphoning before it could be completed, although the perpetrators escaped. Information provided by shipping companies to IFC and ISC, which also share with each other, has played a valuable supporting role.

Coordinated law enforcement responses at sea and effective information sharing may help account for the declining incidence of syphoning attacks in the third quarter. However, the successful attack on MT Sunrise 698, hijacked in October off Anambas island in the South China Sea en route from Singapore to Vietnam demonstrates that the threat to product tankers remains active. Moreover, no suspect has been apprehended in connection with the syphoning attacks.

More measures needed

Therefore, further measures may be warranted in three areas:

• First, arresting pirates at the scene operating on a “for-hire” basis will not seriously disrupt fuel-smuggling syndicates, whose centre of gravity is land-based and transnational. Interpol’s beefed-up regional presence in Singapore could play a useful role by galvanising maritime law enforcement cooperation. Identification and prosecution of individuals within the syndicate hierarchy would be a powerful deterrent. September’s break-up by Singapore’s Police Coast Guard of an MGO-smuggling ring using modified tugs represents a step in the right direction, including the arrest of local financiers.

• Second, product tanker owners inside or outside the major shipping associations could mitigate risk by adopting a regional version of Best Management Practices (BMP), which prescribe self-help onboard security measures originally designed to “harden” merchant ships against piracy threats in the Indian Ocean. This would encourage smaller vessels to maintain better security standards and avoid unnecessary risks like anchoring outside port limits. For coastal states in Southeast Asia, BMP is preferable to the use of armed guards onboard merchant ships. To incentivise compliance, insurers should be encouraged to factor BMP into their actuarial assessments.

• Third, in the lead-up to a regional BMP rollout, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia could agree to extend the Malacca Strait Patrols to “tag-team” a continuous constabulary presence in the southern reaches of the South China Sea during the hours of darkness. This would send a collaborative, deterrent signal to the pirates and reduce reaction times considerably.

Euan Graham is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.

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