By Jaya Ramachandran

Education for Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development (EGCSD) is far from having become a buzzword. In fact, beyond the domain of experts, the concept has yet to gain currency. Though, while explaining it, even those well versed in the theme do not find it easy to drive home the message.

“As technology advances and governance is increasingly conducted beyond the parameters of the nation-state, the concept of global citizenship remains mysteriously absent. What does the term mean in historical terms and what practices might help its evolution into a coherent and democratic political practice?” asked Ron Israel, co-founder of The Global Citizens’ Initiative (TGCI), in a recent article.

A global citizen, he says, is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices. Sounds a simple definition. But the devil is in the detail.

Anwarul Karim Chowdhury, a Bangladesh diplomat most noted for his work on development in the poorest nations, global peace and championing the rights of women and children, is of the view that the concept of global citizenship is “an idea, a way of behavior” for individuals.

In fact, the basic change Ban Ki-moon wants in his Global Education First Initiative launched in September 2013, is to change the mindset, notes Chowdhury: “To prepare the younger generation, in this case, to feel that we are part of a bigger world, to feel that we cannot just think very parochially, we cannot achieve our broader objectives, objectives that are in the best interest of humanity, without feeling as a part of one whole world, that we are part of this bigger planet and we should feel the same way.”

Arsenio Rodriguez, Chairman and CEO of DEVNET International, who has worked with the World Bank and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), finds the essence of global citizenship in the fact that “when we are born we inherit a common home, a sun for energy, an Earth for all commodities, shelter and nourishment, a sustaining milieu for body, mind and spirit, and our fellow beings to share the extraordinary experience of life”.

Life is thus in its ultimate essence, a relationship between peoples and between people with the planet and its sustaining wealth. “To make this relationship a productive and fruitful one for all is our challenge. Whereas new concepts and models are beginning to sprout they have not yet taken hold to steer us fully into sustainability and global citizenship,” he adds.

Going into historical detail, Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations says, the concept of global citizenship has challenged the minds of humans for a very long time not only in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Universal acceptance evaded

Despite all the philosophical and religious exhortations, the concept of global citizenship has continued to evade universal acceptance. Historically, the world has witnessed the growth of many empires, which encouraged subjects to become accustomed to the common factors of being part of such empires.

“Perhaps, not as equals but as individuals who were subject to the same ruler. The result was not what most would imagine to be global citizenship,” argues Kohona.

Nevertheless, a much wider perception of the world became established in the minds of many as a consequence. Around 330 B.C., Alexander the Great expanded little Macedonia’s sway almost to the shores of the Indus River and left, as his legacy, a concept of oneness with the culture of Greece in the minds of his subjects.

Later a bigger empire centred in Rome brought under its umbrella vast areas of Asia Minor, North Africa and Europe. A type of political unity that did not exist in the Western world before now prevailed. The political and socio-cultural footprint left behind by Imperial Rome is a factor even today in the psyche of many.

Kohona recalls that a much bigger empire resulted from the expansion of the Caliphates of Baghdad and Damascus. The oneness of belonging to one regime, which encompassed economic relations, and religion and culture, was evident from Spain to Northern India during this period. The underpinning framework of religion was a tangible factor in this case.

In more recent times, says Kohona, the world witnessed the Portuguese and Spanish empires, which straddled the globe creating a sense of oneness among citizens and subjects. Religion, culture and trade relations were essential factors of these empires.

The Ottomans, the Dutch, the English, and the French created more recent empires. They said that that the sun never set on the British Empire and its legacy is far reaching. The Chinese empire which expanded, at one time to Poland and Syria under Genghis Khan and his sons, was so unified, that a laissez passer issued by an official in Khanbalik was honoured all the way to the Middle East.

“However, the oneness created by these empires, for various reasons, including geographical reality and the limits of physical power, did not encompass the whole world,” says Kohona.

Besides, one empire was often challenged by another and fell in due course. Nor did they create a feeling of global citizenship in a true sense. In fact, empires competed with each other and in certain empires the concept of oneness did not exist at all as there were different categories of subjects.

“One result, however, of these global empires was that they had the effect of bringing together different peoples, cultures, philosophies, religious beliefs, scientific ideas, political concepts and economic systems, helping to generate, at least in certain respects, feelings that there were common strands among us humans or the desire to bring them under one common umbrella,” says Kohona.

While the 20th century witnessed the emergence of sub-regional, regional and international organizations based on human rights and democratic norms – a process that has continued into the 21st century, experts believe that it is through education that the concept of global citizenship can be anchored in the minds and lives of people at several levels.

The post Driving Home The Concept Of Global Citizenship – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Amaani Lyle

Though U.S. and coalition airstrikes are destroying facilities and equipment controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the terrorist group ultimately will fail because the people it’s trying to control will reject its ideology, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in an interview broadcast today.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace,” Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey noted that the new Iraqi government is reaching out to Iraq’s Sunni tribes and has made inroads in the strategic effort against ISIL.

“A group that embraces such a radical ideology has to maintain momentum in order to succeed, in order to maintain its credibility with the very people it’s trying to influence,” Dempsey said.

ISIL’s Fate is Inevitable

Tactically, U.S. and allies forces have destroyed ISIL equipment, reversed some of its territorial gains and affected the terror group’s leadership, command and control and logistics, the chairman noted. But the fate of the terrorist regime is inevitable, he added, simply because people won’t accept it.

“It will collapse under its own contradictions, frankly, when the populations in which it tries to maneuver realize that ideology is not to their future benefit,” Dempsey said.

Though military efforts get the most attention, the chairman said, strides other areas such as in countering ISIL’s financing and messaging may be more important in thwarting the organization, Dempsey noted.

Campaign in Iraq Will Take Time

The campaign in Iraq will take time, Dempsey said, pointing out that U.S. and coalition forces are enabling the Iraqi government’s strategy. “It’s not our strategy,” he said. “And I’m telling you, that is an extraordinarily important distinction.”

Before it can mount its own offensive against ISIL, the chairman explained, the Iraqi government, with the help of trainers and advisors, must accumulate the appropriate level of force and have it followed by reconstruction and humanitarian relief so the government is providing real governance and not simply security. This, he added, could take months.

Syrian Opposition Under Pressure

Meanwhile, in Syria, the opposition to Bashar Assad’s regime is under “enormous pressure,” particularly in the north, Dempsey, said. That region brings the greatest concern in regard to the ability to attract, recruit and vet a moderate opposition, he added.

“And Iraq, because we have a credible partner there, is the most important thing for us right now,” Dempsey said, “while maintaining pressure through disruptive airstrikes inside of what was a safe haven in Syria.

“As that issue evolves in Iraq, we will then adapt the campaign,” he continued. “And in the meantime, we’re trying to build a credible partner on the ground in Syria … to take advantage of airstrikes should we ever turn our attention elsewhere. So it’s really about a bit of choreography to get this right and not find ourselves potentially doing more harm if we create vacuums and voids and greater instability in the region.”

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By Frank R. Gunter

The combination of the ISIS insurgency and low oil prices are producing an economic shock unprecedented in Iraq’s troubled history. The ongoing conflict will require a sharp rise in security expenditures at the same time that government oil export revenues are collapsing, forcing the government into deficit spending. This deficit spending, combined with a loss in reserves from the Central Bank of Iraq, calls into question the much-vaunted stability of the Iraqi dinar.

In the eleven years since the U.S.-led invasion overthrew Saddam Hussein, Iraq has faced brutal conflict and sharp drops in oil prices but – until mid-2014 – never both at the same time. Following the destruction of the Golden Mosque, Iraq descended into what many analysts saw as a full-fledged civil war in 2006-7. However, not only was a large proportion of Iraqi security expenses paid for by the United States but also world oil prices rose sharply. Combined with a gradual increase in oil export volume, this resulted in a substantial growth in government revenues. And when oil prices collapsed in 2009, the level of violence and associated expenses was the lowest since before the 2003 invasion. The recent combination of an acceleration in violence and an oil price collapse is unprecedented.

Dollar Flows in Iraq

The flow of dinars and dollars within Iraq is critical to dealing with the ongoing crisis and yet little understood even within the country. The figure below illustrates the pattern of these flows. As is well known, the primary source of government revenues – over 95% – is from oil exports. For over a decade, the dollars earned from these exports have been paid into the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which is held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The primary reason for having oil export payments paid to the DFI rather than directly to Iraq’s Ministry of Finance (MoF) is to avoid confiscation of these funds by foreign courts in settlement of Saddam-era lawsuits.

Upon request, dollars from Iraq’s oil exports are transferred from the DFI to the MoF. At this point, a divergence occurs. Over half – about 60% in 2013 – of the dollars flow out again to the rest of the world as payments for government imports, debt service, and miscellaneous transactions. The remaining dollars are sold to the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) for dinars at a rate of 1166 Iraqi Dinars per US Dollar. The MoF then uses these dinars to pay for the Government of Iraq (GoI) expenditures in the Iraq economy such as salaries, pensions, social safety net, security, etc. The dollars accumulated by the CBI through these dinar sales are, of course, the nation’s international reserves.

However, many of these dollars immediately flow out again. The CBI holds daily auctions to provide dollars to the Iraq economy. Financial institutions buy dollars from the CBI in order to provide them to individuals and organizations that want dollars as a more secure savings asset, to facilitate domestic transactions, to purchase legal and illegal imports, and for capital flight. This demand for dollars is quite large. For example, during the first 14 auction days of December 2014, CBI dollar sales totaled $2.25 billion. Those Iraq individuals or organizations that are forbidden by the CBI to directly access the currency auction must purchase dollars at a premium in the parallel currency market. On December 18, 2014, the exchange rate in the parallel market was 1199 Iraqi Dinars per US Dollar – about 3% higher than at the CBI auction.

In every year but one over the last decade, the inflow of dollars to the CBI from the MoF exceeded the outflow of dollars through currency auctions resulting in an increase in the country’s international reserves. For example, in 2013 the MoF sold about $55 billion to the CBI while about $53 billion flowed out again through the currency auctions resulting in about a $2 billion increase in international reserves. The large increase in international reserves since 2004 has been the major support for the country’s enviable exchange rate stability. However, the results for 2014 were grim.

Because of political disputes, Iraq never passed a 2014 budget. Instead, government expenditures in 2014 were based on an arguably unconstitutional extrapolation of the 2013 budget. And the Government of Iraq (GoI) has continuously delayed even a partial accounting of 2014 revenues and expenditures. However, recent data from the International Monetary Fund support the view that Iraq’s fiscal and monetary situation is deteriorating. At the same time that oil export earnings are declining, GoI security-related dollar imports have increased dramatically. One effect has been on fiscal reserves held at the DFI, which have fallen from almost $18 billion at the end of 2012, and $6.5 billion at the end of 2013, to about $4 billion at the end of November 2014 (IMF Press Release 14/560, 9 December 2014). Equally worrisome is the drop in the country’s international reserves.

From $77 billion at the end of 2013, the international reserves held by the CBI fell to about $67 billion at the end of November 2014. This is only the second year-over-year fall in international reserves in the last decade. In the absence of reliable data from the GoI, there are two possibilities. Either there has been a decrease in MoF sales of dollars to the CBI and/or a substantial increase in dollar auction sales to financial institutions. However, through November 2014, auction sales of dollars by the CBI have totaled about $47.4 billion, which is roughly in line with 2013 dollar sales. Therefore, the cause of the drop in Iraq’s international reserves is more likely a result of the collapse in oil export revenues combined with increasing security-related dollar expenditures by the Iraqi government and, possibly, accelerating capital flight. Thus in 2015, Iraq not only faces a fiscal crisis from falling oil export revenues but also a monetary crisis because of the loss of international reserves. The fiscal crisis might be best understood by distinguishing between the “break even” price of oil and the “crisis” price of oil.

Break Even and Crisis Prices

Despite the fact that the country’s 2015 fiscal year starts this month, the crucial assumptions underlying the budget are uncertain. Over the last several months, no sooner has the GoI announced a planning price for oil for the 2015 budget then world prices have fallen below this level. The most recent announcement on December 25th was for a $102.5 billion budget based on an annual average oil price of $60 per barrel resulting in a large deficit (Gulf Research Center, December 25, 2014). Expenditures of $102.5 billion in 2015 means that the GoI expects to spend almost $22 billion less than its actual expenditures in 2013! Where will the cuts occur? The drop in oil prices to similar levels in 2009 provides insight into both the reactions of the GoI and the effects on the Iraqi economy.

In 2009, as total revenues decreased by about 33%, salary and pension expenditures increased by about the same percentage. This necessitated sharp cuts in the other major expenditure categories, safety net transfers and public investment, in order to reduce expenditures. The remaining deficit was financed through the sale of GoI treasury bills and the MoF “clawing back” unspent government funds from the state owned banks. The economic effects of the draconian cuts in public investment were severe and long-lasting. Since public investment accounts for over 90% of Iraq’s fixed capital formation, the cuts in the investment budget caused most economic development activities to grind to a stop. Work on improving roads, increasing electricity generation, opening schools and clinics, increasing access to clean water, and so on was abandoned until oil prices finally recovered in 2010. And when the projects were eventually restarted, it was often discovered that previous work had to be completely redone due to looting, vandalism, environmental damage, or planned revisions. By some estimates, it was not until 2011 that public investment returned to the levels achieved at the end of 2008.

Of course, if 2015 oil prices turn out to be higher than expected, the GoI might be able to restore some of the cuts. However, rather than have the reader chase daily changes in oil price predictions, it might be more useful to consider the implications of two oil prices: the break-even price and the crisis price.

Assuming oil exports of about 3.3 million barrels per day, Iraq needs an oil price of about $80 a barrel in order to break-even and to be able to pay for its sharply reduced 2015 expenditures without running a budget deficit. An oil price this high would provide sufficient revenues to pay not only for current expenditures and security costs but also for essential infrastructure investment. Since world oil prices are already less than $60, it is extremely unlikely that Iraq will be able to break-even in 2015. But at what price of oil will the required reductions in GoI expenditures become politically destabilizing?

That depends on the crisis price of oil. The crisis price is the lowest oil price that will allow the GoI to pay salaries and pensions, purchase the necessary supplies for the police and army, maintain a minimum social safety net, pay interest on its debts, pay war reparations, and continue the absolute minimum infrastructure maintenance and construction to allow a steady increase in the volume of oil exports. If the world price of oil falls below the crisis price for an extended period of time and other revenue sources are not available, then the necessary expenditure cuts can be expected to be politically destabilizing. In 2009, this crisis price was an estimated $50 a barrel. Therefore, while the world price of oil in 2009 was below Iraq’s break-even price, it was above the crisis price.

However, in 2015, the crisis price of oil is expected to be much higher. Not only has there been a steady increase in government salaries and pensions since 2009, but also the GoI expects to sharply increase its security expenditures to fight ISIS. As a result, the 2015 crisis price of oil is an estimated $70 a barrel. Since world oil prices are expected to remain below the crisis price in 2015, the GoI faces a difficult challenge – either find another source of revenue, borrow the needed funds, or make politically unacceptable cuts in salaries or pensions. The latter option can be expected to lead to widespread political protests by government employees and retirees as well as threats of a government shutdown.

If world oil prices average $60 per barrel in 2015, then the GoI needs at least an additional $12 billion to fund its minimal crisis budget and an additional $12 billion – $24 billion in total – to rise to the break even point. While its international and domestic options to raise these funds are limited, the GoI has a high probability of funding its crisis budget. However, the GoI faces a much lower probability of being able to fund its 2015 break-even budget.

Options for international lending are limited. Government to government loans from the United States and other countries involved in the current war on ISIS are likely to face strong opposition in Washington and other world capitals. It will be argued – with an element of truth – that Iraq’s budget problems are mostly self-inflicted, the result of GoI mismanagement and corruption. In addition, it will be pointed out that the U.S. and other states have already forgiven 80% or more of their Iraqi debt and that these countries have spending needs at home. Iraq’s regional neighbors such as the UAE and Kuwait – who generally did not participate in the loan forgiveness program – are facing their own budget challenges resulting from the collapse in oil prices. However, it is likely that the GoI will be able to borrow several billion dollars. In addition, it appears that Kuwait has agreed to a one-year suspension of war reparations. These reparations were imposed under an agreement with the UN, where Iraq agreed to pay Kuwait 5% of its gross earnings from oil exports to compensate for the damages incurred during the Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990. With a world price of $60 a barrel, a one-years suspension will free up about $3.6 billion.

There are at least five other sources of funds to meet the fiscal deficit. First, the GoI can readily access the funds held at the Development Fund on Iraq that were an estimated $4 billion at the end of November 2014. Second, in 2009, the GoI was able to transfer about $7.7 billion from state-owned banks back to the MoF. These funds represented amounts that had been budgeted but not yet spent. In view of the constraints on spending in 2014, it is unlikely that more than several billion can be clawed back from state-owned banks in 2015. Third, the GoI could attempt to borrow domestically although the amount raised would probably be less than $1 billion. While there have been several bond issues since 2003, demand for such instruments is limited especially since there is no liquid secondary market for government debt. Fourth, although the country has an income tax system, tax revenues in previous years have been de minimis. It is unlikely that increasing the tax rate will raise substantial revenues in 2015. Finally, and most controversially, it has been proposed that the MoF obtain part of the country’s $67 billion in international reserves by encouraging/forcing the CBI to buy dollar denominated bonds from the MoF. Until a few years ago, it was believed that the CBI could resist such GoI pressure to monetize its debt, but former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was able to remove the head of the CBI without the approval of the National Council of Representatives and replace him with a Maliki loyalist. This event severely undermined the perceived independence of the CBI.

Adding together these various sources of funds, the GoI should be able to raise or borrow enough to pay not only for its crisis budget in 2015 but also move part of the way towards its break-even budget. However, if sub-$60 per barrel oil prices continue into 2016, then the GoI will face an even wider budget gap while having exhausted its borrowing options. It may be impossible for the GoI to even pay for its crisis budget in 2016. But a more immediate challenge than the future price of oil is the increasing stress in early 2015 on the Iraqi exchange rate.

Exchange Rate Options

A great source of pride for the CBI has been its ability to maintain a relatively stable exchange rate despite intense conflict in 2006-7. In fact, the CBI actually allowed a 20% appreciation of the dinar during this period. However, as discussed above, CBI reserves are falling as a result of lower dollar sales to the CBI by the MoF combined with large auctions of dollars by the CBI to financial institutions. In addition, there is the possibility that the GoI will attempt to relieve its current fiscal crisis by encouraging or forcing the CBI to buy GoI dollar denominated bonds. This would replace liquid assets in the CBI accounts with illiquid assets, GoI bonds. If either or both of these events occur, then there will be a loss of confidence in the ability of the CBI to maintain the current exchange rate of 1166 Iraqi Dinars per US Dollar. Anticipating a depreciation of the dinar, speculation against this currency can be expected to increase. The CBI and GoI have few options to curb this speculation and prevent a loss of the nominal anchor of the Iraqi economy – its stable exchange rate.

One possibility is to further restrict access to the daily currency auctions. This was the primary policy response when the exchange rate came under attack in February 2012. Buyers of dollars were required to be registered and provide documentation for the precise purpose of the dollar purchases. Further restricting access can be expected to lead to a widening gap between the official exchange rate of 1166 Iraqi Dinars per US Dollar and the rate in the parallel currency market. An expansion of a dual exchange rate system can be expected to increase corruption as institutions use their political influence to gain access to the more favorable currency auction rates. In addition, by restricting access to dollars for less favored groups – primarily in the private sector – it can be expected that there will be a further slowdown in the growth of the country’s non-oil economy, exacerbating the economic crisis.

A more cynical or possibly realistic policy response to the loss of the country’s international reserves would be a sharp pre-emptive depreciation of the Iraqi dinar. This would not only lead to an increase in import prices and a decrease in the prices of non-oil exports boosting domestic production but also reduce – at least temporarily – speculative pressure on the dinar. The experience of countries in similar situations over the last several decades show that if the depreciation option is chosen, then it is better is to depreciate sooner rather than later and by a larger rather than smaller amount. One view is that the GoI should immediately announce a return to the pre-2006 exchange rate of about 1470 Iraqi Dinars per US Dollar – roughly a 25% depreciation. However, with a new government, it is unlikely that there will be an aggressive dinar depreciation. Typically, governments wait until a crisis brought about by a substantial loss of reserves occurs before depreciating their currency. And there is the fear that without fundamental changes in the Iraqi economy, any depreciation will only be the first of many.

A more long-term solution to the country’s loss of reserves and accompanying exchange rate crisis would be a return to using a currency board such as the one that provided Iraq with a stable exchange rate during the tumultuous period of 1930-49. Unlike the CBI, the former Iraq currency board guaranteed full dollar convertibility of dinar notes and coins only. This immunized the currency board from the speculative attacks that are often the downfall of fixed exchange rates such as Iraq’s. However, the adoption of an orthodox currency board can be expected to face serious political opposition since it would reduce the GoI’s ability to divert financial resources in order to favor particular economic sectors or to benefit friends of government officials.

Iraq’s Perfect Storm

The combination of falling world oil prices and the ISIS conflict has resulted in the most serious fiscal and exchange rate challenges since the 2003 invasion. It is tempting for the new government of Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi to seek only limited modifications of fiscal and exchange rate policies so as not to run the risk of further destabilizing an already complex situation. And if low – sub-$100 a barrel – oil prices are a temporary phenomenon with higher oil prices returning in 2016, then this limited strategy should work. However, if deceased oil demand from the BRIC countries combined with an increased oil supply driven by both the fracking revolution in the United States and Saudi Arabian attempts to rein in the world oil market, then Iraq may face several years of oil prices substantially below $100 a barrel. It should be noted that, even after adjusting for inflation, the world recently experienced two decades, 1985-2005, of sub-$60 a barrel oil. A future of low oil prices will require difficult and, to a great extent, irrevocable decisions about both fiscal and exchange rate policies. Rich countries with long histories of stable government can afford to make stupid decisions. Iraq cannot.

About the author:
Frank R. Gunter is a Professor of Economics at Lehigh University and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. This study is based on discussions at the November 2014 Iraq Economics, Development, and Policy program at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. However, the opinions expressed are entirely those of the author. The Arabic version of the author’s book The Political Economy of Iraq: Restoring Balance in a Post-Conflict Society (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013), based on his two years in Iraq as an economic advisor, will be published in early 2015.

Source:
This article was published at FPRI.

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The recent horrible massacre of 132 school children and some staff members in Peshawar by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) reflects nothing else but Pakistan’s consistent failure of tackling terror. That said, the larger question that remains is whether South Asian giants like India, China or Pakistan are seriously thinking of uprooting terrorism together or just willing to keep witnessing one horror after another without any idea of working in cooperation. Such a horrible incident reflects the use of violence in its absolute form by small numbers (terrorists) against Pakistan’s most powerful institution — the Army, as the school hit was an Army-run school — and the act was clearly in retribution to the Army’s role in the Zarb-e-Azb operation that has killed hundreds of guerrillas in North Waziristan and the ongoing operation Khyber 1 that is haunting terrorists in he KPK belt.

The fact remains that after the Zarb-e-Azb siege, the Islamist TTP was in suffering an existential and identity crisis fearing that their pseudo-identity might vanish fast from the frontiers. Therefore, by committing such a massacre they were in a way justifying their socio-political space and reassuming for themselves the role as significant stakeholders in the power conflict game in the frontier regions. Reasons that can be for why TTP butchered innocent children is obviously found in their (TTP’s) own statement that says, “We want them (army and the establishment) to feel the pain” as Zarb-e-Azb has caused pain to TTP families. Secondly, such attacks are always a success for terrorists as Pakistan thus remains a country governed by two dichotomous institutions that is the, government and the army leading to a perpetual political and policy chaos. The Army and the government have hardly reached a consensus on the methodology of tackling terror and have failed in both negotiations and the siege.

Thirdly, now even massacres have turned a sick sort of fashion since ISIS started slaughtering humans in lined in queues in Iraq, and the killing of hundreds may have turned into yet another craze among the guerrillas in Pakistan who are taking inspiration from their Middle East terrorist friends.

The other fact is that Pakistan’s security apparatus is not learning anything from its violent past where it witnessed the brutal killings of people like former PM Benazir Bhutto, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, thousands of Shia Muslims and scores of other innocent human beings at the hands of terrorists.

Unless and until Pakistan does devise a practicable and massive counter terrorism apparatus (first by shunning its support in the process of exporting terror to neighbors) with maximum public support, operations like Zarb-e-Azb or Khyber 1 will yield bitter experiences such as the recent school massacre (including threats to the children of politicians). It would not be wrong to say that there are still some Pakistani sections of  society that support extremist tendencies which is  thereby gradually shaping an alarming geography of terror, radicalism and chaos.

The idea of domestic war on terror in Pakistan has gradually turned to the domestic pyaar (love) of terror — and the state, despite being the worst hit, has not stopped its vicious instrument of supporting terror toward her neighbors. The lessons that should be learned from such a heavy fallout of Zarb-e-Azb are firstly, that women and children of even the opposite fighters (militants) must be safeguarded and not harassed by Army. Also the State should not give up on talks, and briskly prefer direct attacking on guerrillas for such an ideology creates an unending atmosphere of revenge — and we should remember that such people don’t even care about their own lives. The third lesson that should be learned is that the major intelligence agencies around the world should cooperate in tackling terror for the sake of humanity.

The need of the hour in Pakistan is to prefer fruitful negotiations over visionless and abrupt army operations or hasty executions. The time is ripe to join hands with the other Asian powers to develop a workable policy on tackling terror in South Asia along with supporting the global war on terror (GWOT), but not without conditions.

From the Peshawar massacre it is obvious that Pakistan as a state has also brutally failed in perception management in her vulnerable frontiers and the issues of social injustice, human rights abuse, state apathy, lack of reach out to masses, poor delivery in services, poor security apparatus, poor intelligence, poor social security measures along with poor surveillance, etc, has escalated the problem thereby improving the terror industry. The continuous drone attacks resulting in the killings of innocents day in and day out have proved the last nail in the coffin and the state of Pakistan is responsible for that constant terror against her own citizens.

Moreover, religious radicalism has not been curbed and religious scholars have hardly played any role in peace building, rather the indoctrination and lessons of radicalization have started their deadly repercussions on the larger society. When Mumtaz Qadri — a bodyguard who murdered the then Punjab governor Salaman Taseer (killed in 2011 in Islamabad) in broad daylight — the erring soldier was showered with roses, hailed and praised by a larger section of the society, and proving nothing but the growth of religious fanatics. Such drastic thinking has engulfed a lot of minds and radicalism and extremism has gradually shaped into a full grown faith with serious impact on the overall stability of Pakistan.

Last Word

Obviously the beginning of seriously tackling terror should start with Pakistan itself, by uprooting the wider terror base to decrease  never ending socio-political instability. Such attacks prove that Pakistan besides manufacturing terror is the victim of the same — for it is said that you cannot contest terror on one side and keep nourishing and harboring the same on the other.

Pakistan’s flawed policy on tackling terror is responsible for the massacre of school children and the poor souls have paid the heavy price of the messes in Zarb-e-Azb and Khyber-1, and yet, Pakistani’s just know of one type of honour by showering on any victim every time, i.e. by immediately branding the killed as ‘Shaheed’ (martyrs). The painful question is, how many Shaheeds would they like to see every day instead of uniting against terror and sincerely eradicating it? Also, will hanging some of the incarcerated terrorists uproot the TTP or other extremists, or how long will Pakistan resort to a blame game accusing its neighbors for its internal chaos and would such a melodrama or comedy of errors make Pakistan secure for its people remains a question before its army and the government? The killing of 148 innocents  by TTP clearly reflects their ideology, which is that they can go to any limit to make themselves exist — and this idealogy should be a last wake up call for the whole of Pakistan.

The Pakistan Army’s routine firing at borders and continuous “killing game” in the frontiers in revenge of the  Peshawar tragedy can never be a solution, but instead will contribute to a never-ending era of killings. The Man of the Millennium Mahatma Gandhi rightly said, “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent”.

The post Peshawar Massacre: Zarb-E-Azb Fallout Or Pakistan’s Perpetual Security Dilemma – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Growing radicalization, fundamentalism and extremism demand a renewed emphasis of Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals – both spiritual and political, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in Gujarat Sunday, pledging the ongoing commitment of the United Nations to promote tolerance, and ensure justice and dignity for all.

“Divisive politics and sectarian incitement have no place in our modern world. As Gandhi reminded us, ‘There will be no lasting peace on earth unless we learn not merely to tolerate but even to respect the other faiths as our own,’” said Mr. Ban in remarks at Sbarmati Gandhi Ashram, which houses a library and museum chronicling the life, work, and teachings of the legendary leader of India’s independence movement and pioneer of the philosophy and strategy of non-violence.

Indeed, continued the Secretary-General, there is great strength in diversity – and countries that celebrate diversity and embrace every single individual are the ones to shape a secure and stable world, and he looked to India – “a large, diverse and vibrant democracy – to be a champion of the rights, dignity and equality of all people.”

Mr. Ban said that like so many people around the world, he has long admired Mahatma Gandhi and has been personally guided by his teachings, especially his description of “Seven Social Sins”: politics without principles; wealth without work; pleasure without conscience; knowledge without character; commerce without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.

“This vision transcends all borders. Gandhi’s compassion embraces all people. I myself have been putting in my best efforts and asking all leaders, far and wide, to live by his teachings,” said Mr. Ban, adding that Gandhi’s emphasis on the poor is reflected today in the work of the United Nations to end poverty and build a peaceful world of dignity for all.

“We will succeed only if the memory of Gandhi’s unyielding fight against injustice burns bright in our hearts,” he said, noting that the United Nations marks Gandhi’s birthday as the International Day of Non-Violence – “and we defend his ideals every day of the year.”

Touching on Gandhi’s inspiring and enduring legacy, Mr. Ban said that he would never forget seeing well-worn copies of Gandhi’s books at an exhibition of the papers of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Nelson Mandela also deeply admired Gandhi. Mandela said Gandhi symbolized hope that when all South Africans are treated as equals, the country would be at peace.”

“The same holds true for our world,” said the Secretary-General, emphasizing: “Mahatma Gandhi preached and followed the message of peace, non-violence and communal harmony. It is a common value that the United Nations promotes and asks leaders near and far to put into practice – from here in Gujarat to the world.”

The ashram is one of the first stops on his three-day visit to India, and later in the day, as he addressed the 7th Vibrant Gujarat Summit, a bi-annual event that brings together political and business leaders, investors, and corporations, Mr. Ban expressed the hope that the participants and all the world’s people would be inspired by Gandhi’s vision and teachings.

He also stressed that 2015 must be a year for global action. “We must change course if we are to avoid even greater damage to ourselves and to our planet,” said Mr. Ban, explaining that like the gathered leaders, he too must emphasize the importance of his mandate, and, as UN Secretary-General, he must spotlight 2015 as “most important and crucial for humanity.”

This is because there are three important priorities that must be achieved during the year, which also marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations: making the final push to achieve the landmark UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); crafting a post-2015 development agenda with a set of sustainable development goals; and agreeing on a universal and meaningful climate change agreement in December in Paris.

With all this in mind, the Secretary-General said the world had a very important enabling factor that would help in reaching those objectives: the upcoming UN conference on financing for development, set to be held in July in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. That and other meetings throughout the year would aim at mutually reinforcing goals: to map out a new era of development that strengthens equity and fosters inclusive growth and climate action.

On the margins of the Summit, the Secretary-General met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mr. Ban thanked India for its significant contribution to UN peacekeeping operations, as well as to the Organizations conflict prevention and humanitarian efforts. The two also discussed, among others, the need for action on climate change, the post-2015 development agenda, and regional issues.

The UN chief also met with United States Secretary of State John Kerry, and the two leaders discussed international peace and security issues, including UN efforts to address the crisis in Libya, the urgency of returning to negotiations to achieve a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the need for progress on nuclear disarmament of the Korean Peninsula.

Also today, Mr. Ban inaugurated in Gujarat the Canal Top Solar Power Plant, where, looking out over the massive facility, he said: “I saw more than glittering panels – I saw the future of India and the future of our world. I saw India’s bright creativity, ingenuity and cutting-edge technology. And I saw the leadership on sustainable development of Prime Minister Modi when he was the Chief Minister in Gujarat.”

Speaking to reporters, the UN chief commend India for having made significant strides in meeting MDG targets, particularly in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, in eliminating polio, and in reducing child and matrernal mortality. “But…we have to admit, that most of the developing countries have not fully accomplished the [Goals].”

“That’s why the Member States are now very seriously working to find another set of goals, what we [call] the sustainable development goals. These…goals [are] aiming to address three dimensions of the world and our lives – the economic dimension, social dimension and environmental dimension. [They] cover all spectrums of our lives,” he said, noting that Member States are shortly set to begin final negotiations on the new taregts in the months leading up to a major UN summit in September 2015.

The post India: Ban Pledges UN Commitment To Gandhi’s Vision Of Peace, Tolerance, Dignity For All appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Hayat Boumeddiene, dubbed as France’s most wanted woman, is in Syria and went there before this week’s deadly attacks, French media report.

Reports in French dailies Le Monde, Le Figaro and other French media said on the Saturday that Boumeddiene, wife of Amedy Coulibaly, who had killed 4 hostages at a supermarket in Paris, has been in Syria since January 2.

Quoting police forces, media cited that Boumeddiene, wanted by French authorities for being an accomplice in recent attacks that left 17 people dead, left French soil on the January 2, and through Madrid and Istanbul, arrived in Syria on the 8th.

French Interior Ministry spokesperson Pierre Henry Brandet’s office didn’t answer phone calls for more detail.

Three suspected gunmen, involved in the worst terror attacks France saw in decades, were killed Friday, according to authorities.

“Said Kouachi, 34, Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Amedy Coulibaly, 32 were killed in the two operations,” Paris Prosecutor Francois Mollins told a press conference in the city Friday.

According to the French daily Le Monde, Prosecutor Mollins said Boumeddiene was only 26 and once worked as a cashier. She is suspected of helping plan the deadly attacks in the country.

The Paris prosecutor confirmed media reports that the brothers and Coulibaly were associates, and said an examination of telephone conversations of the suspects revealed that Cherif’s wife, Izzana Hamyd, made more than 500 calls in 2014 to Boumeddiene.

Mollins said the figure demonstrated “consistent and sustained ties between the two couples.”

Le Monde also said police records showed that “the wives of the three gunmen frequently exchanged visits during 2010.”

Police on Friday published photos of Coulibaly and Boumediene in connection with the killing of 27-year-old police officer Clarissa Jean-Philipp in Montrouge a day earlier.

Boumeddiene then was described as “armed and dangerous.”

Original article

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Iranian Parliament fell into turmoil when Ali Motahari stood up to question the house arrest of MirHosein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Zahra Rahnavard, and the session was finally brought to an end by the order of the deputy speaker.

Ali Motahari began his speech saying “I consider the house arrest of Mousavi, Karroubi and Rahnavard following the street riots without a court ruling to be against various provisions of the constitution.”

The statement was received with various slogans such as “death to seditionist”. Mousavi, Karroubi and Rahnavard have been under house arrest since February of 2011 for challenging the vote-count in the 2009 presidential election and triggering mass street protests. They are labeled as “elements of sedition” by the conservative establishment but so far they have never been formally charged or brought to trial.

Motahari was told by the head of the session, deputy speaker Mohammad Aboutorabi: “You are aware of the true atmosphere of the country, and these individuals have in effect been spared from death by Islamic mercy and forgiveness.”

Some conservative figures have suggested that if put on trial, the three leaders under house arrest would in effect get a death sentence for their alleged charges. Therefore, their current treatment, according to this interpretation, should be seen as “Islamic mercy and forgiveness”.

Motahari refused to accept Aboutorabi’s statement and once again stated that the treatment of three figures is unconstitutional.

The post Iran: Parliament Erupts Over Talk Of Detained Opposition Leaders appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Terrorist attacks around the world continue to grow in scope and severity. In the aftermath of such attacks, authorities are usually quick to address the needs of victims and their relatives. But what about terrorism’s impact on a general public seemingly distant from the scene of attacks — “indirect” victims of terror?

A new Tel Aviv University study, published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, addresses for the first time the direct link between terrorism and increased incidence of job burnout over time. The research, led by Dr. Sharon Toker of TAU’s Faculty of Management, in collaboration with Dr. Gregory A. Laurence of the University of Michigan and Dr. Yitzhak Fried of Syracuse University and Texas Tech University, examines how the fear of terrorism can lead to insomnia, a major player in job burnout — the state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion. The study suggests that fear of terror should be considered as a major job stressor and it also explores the positive contribution of workplace colleagues in reversing this troubling trend.

“Terror brings the saliency of death into our awareness,” said Dr. Toker. “One tends not to be reminded of death on a daily basis, but terrorism every day drives home the idea that one can die at any moment. With terror attacks, there is nothing to be done, and that is really frightening.”

Defining terror

The study was conducted in Israel, and the first measurements took place between 2003-2004, the peak of the Second Intifada, during which 550 attempted terrorist acts led to the deaths of 880 civilians. The researchers defined terrorism as a “sudden, rare, violent and destructive event capable of targeting anyone at any time,” and characterized job burnout according to physical exhaustion, cognitive weariness, and emotional lethargy.

A random sample of 670 Israeli employees underwent routine checkups at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center as part of the Tel Aviv Medical Center Inflammation Survey led by Prof. Itzhak Shapira and Prof. Shlomo Berliner, and completed questionnaires to assess the incidence of insomnia, fear of terror, fear for personal safety, tension experienced in public places, level of workplace support, and signs of job burnout. Employees were followed from 2003 to 2009, and completed two additional questionnaires through the duration of the study. This extended follow-up period provided insight into the improvement and/or deterioration of their condition.

“We found that the higher your levels of fear of terror at baseline, the higher your risk of developing insomnia — and those who were more likely to develop insomnia were also most likely to experience job burnout several years later,” Dr. Toker said. “Burnout is a direct outcome of depleted resources, so those who consistently don’t get enough sleep report job burnout. Interestingly, we found that those who reported support from colleagues – but not managers – developed significantly less insomnia and little incidence of job burnout after several years.”

While the researchers found that managerial support was not helpful in assuaging workers’ fears of terror, the emotional and technical support provided by colleagues was instrumental in reversing insomnia and resulting job burnout as a result of the fear of terror.

Managers, take heed

But the research still bears a take-home message for those managers, Dr. Toker believes.

“A workplace environment that is conducive to a strong social support network has the power to substantially alleviate the effects of fear of terror,” she said. “Managers can promote interventions for healthy sleep habits, initiate retreats, and launch employee assistance programs, particularly in peak periods of terrorism. We believe these measures are very productive in alleviating symptoms of worker burnout.”

Dr. Toker is currently working on developing interventions aimed at reducing burnout and enhancing well being, as well as identifying barriers to participating in such interventions.

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(EurActiv) — A large portion of Muslims in Germany share the country’s democratic values, a Bertelsmann study shows, but unfortunately this fact is not recognised by a majority of the population, which views Islam as a threat. EurActiv Germany reports.

In the aftermath of the deadly attack on editorial offices of the Paris-based satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, the Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) has seized the opportunity to conduct more right-wing, populist, campaigning.

“Anyone who has so far ignored or laughed at people’s worries over the imminent threat of Islamisation, are belied by this bloody deed,” said AfD vice chairman Alexander Gauland. His comments were in reference to the growing anti-Islamist movement “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident” (Pegida), which has recently staged protests in several major German cities.

In making such incendiary statements, Gauland fanned the flames of a general hostile mood towards Islam in Germany, sentiment that is growing according to the Bertelsmann Foundation’s religion monitor. The most recent survey shows 57% of non-Muslim German citizens consider Islam a threat. In 2012, 53% answered in this way.

“For Muslims, Germany has become a home. But they see themselves being confronted by a negative image, defined by a minority of radical Islamists,” said Yasemin El-Menouar, an Islam analyst at the Bertelsmann Foundation.

1 in 4 support an entry ban for Muslims

Meanwhile, 61% of German citizens believe Islam does not fit in the Western world. In 2012, only 52% shared these feelings. 40% of those surveyed said Muslims have caused them to feel foreign in their own country. 1 in 4 respondents even supports a ban on immigration of Muslims to Germany.

A trend that becomes clear in the study, is that the less often people come into contact with Muslims, the higher their scepticism and rejection. In North Rhine-Westphalia, where one-third of Muslims live, 46% of Germans feel threatened. In the states of Thuringia and Sachsen, where hardly any Muslims live, 70% showed a negative response.

On the other hand, widespread Islamophobia is in stark contrast to the strong solidarity felt by Muslims in Germany. A majority of the 4 million believers in Islam in Germany consider themselves a part of the nation. Their mindsets and views are strongly oriented according to the basic values of the Federal Republic of Germany, such as democracy and plurality.

90% of highly religious Muslims consider democracy to be a good form of governance. Of those surveyed, 9 out of 10 are in contact with non-Muslims in their free time. 1 in 2 even had as many contacts outside of their religious community as they did Muslim contacts.

According to the authors of the Bertelsmann study, the majority of German society is “anti-Islamist”. In their view, the growing rejection is no longer a peripheral phenomenon.

“Even if it is not accompanied by a concrete agenda against Muslims, anti-Islamism as a socially acceptable trend creates a societal climate in which right-wing populist parties can find fertile soil and discrimination of minorities, such as Muslims, is tolerated,” explained El-Menouar.

The Bertelsmann Foundation’s religion monitor regularly examines the meaning of religion for societal cohesion of religious and culturally diverse societies in a representative and internationally comparative way. It is based on representative surveys of the population in various states. On behalf of the Bertelsmann Foundation, five researchers used this data to analyse how Muslims live in Germany and how Islam is perceived by the majority.

Le Pen calls for reintroduction of the death penalty

Even France’s influential and right-wing extremist Front National is attempting to take advantage of the Paris attack. The party’s leader Marine Le Pen on Twitter called for a reintroduction of the death penalty and is calling for a referendum on the issue.

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Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena invited all political parties represented in the parliament to join him to form a national unity government.

Addressing the nation in Kandy on Sunday, Sirisena said he intends to obtain the support of all political parties to establish a country with good governance, democracy and rule of law for the future of the people and the country.

Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe and other political leaders on the way to Kandy stopped at the Bandaranaike monument in Horagolla to pay respects to the late Prime Minister and founder of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike.

Sirisena along with other leaders and supporters paid homage to the Temple of the Tooth Relic and met with the Chief Prelates of Malwathu and Asgiri Chapters before addressing the nation.

Addressing the nation the new President pledged to implement the 100-day plan as presented in his policy manifesto and transfer the power of the executive presidency to the parliament, cabinet and independent commissions. Sirisena requested all parties to join him to form a National Government to ensure good governance, democracy, development and to eradicate poverty.

Sirisena said the first task of the new government is to take measures to rebuild the economy for a debt-free prosperous country. He pledged to work to ease the high cost of living to provide relief to the people and alleviate poverty.

Sirisena stressed that it is essential to secure national identity of the people and to build a wider reconciliation among the communities. Relations with the international community will be enhanced. The relations with the international organizations will also be strengthened.

Sirisena pledged to build a disciplined and developed nation enhancing religious and ethnic reconciliation. He said his government is committed to ensure the wellbeing of the Buddha Sasana and protect the freedom and rights of other religious communities as well.

Sirisena said he will take steps to uplift agricultural sector and empower farming community. The public service eroded with corruption will be transformed into an efficient service and an environment conducive for the public servants to do their duty with satisfaction will be created. Bribery, corruption and malpractices in the process of development will be eliminated and the police will be made an unbiased and independent service.

Reiterating that he will not run for another term for presidency as promised in his speech after winning the election, Sirisena said at this time the country needs an authentic leader not a king.

Sirisena said he will make the supreme sacrifice to fulfil the aspirations of the people and the country and urged all Sri Lankans to live peacefully without taking revenge from the opponents.

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By Miguel Otero-Iglesias*

With President Xi Jinping’s arrival to power, many international investors are excited about the prospect of China’s economic rebalancing. They were impressed by Xi’s open recognition that China’s 2008 state-led stimulus plan was like an adrenalin shock. It was necessary to reanimate the patient, but it had severe negative side effects: overcapacity in many sectors; an excessive real estate boom; environmental degradation; increased inequality; a worrying rise in local government and corporate debts, and an emerging shadow banking system.

Many commentators in the West say China’s rebalancing should be measured by its capacity to move from an export and investment-led growth model to one based on consumption-led growth. The ultimate yardstick should not only be a reduction in the trade surplus (which has gone from 10 percent in 2007 to just over 2 percent in 2014) but to see China loosen its domestic finance grip so that the Chinese consumer can be the driving force of the economy.

Therefore, these are the reforms that the Chinese leadership should undertake: liberalize the financial sector; let the renminbi float; open the capital account; and roll back the state and unleash market forces in every sector of the economy.

Those waiting for this to happen soon would be disappointed. China is rebalancing but on its own terms and at its own pace. A further marketization of the economy will be developed the traditional Chinese way based on gradual experimentation. On paper, China will soon have a completely marketized pricing mechanism for resources in key sectors such as water, oil, natural gas, power, transportation and telecommunications, as envisioned in the Third Plenum in November, 2013, but liberalizing the pricing system does not imply the creation of a competitive free market. This is especially the case in the financial sector, which ultimately is the lifeblood of the Chinese economy and hence the conductor of its development strategy.

The Chinese government has already introduced some important reforms in this sector. It has tolerated the shadow banking system, in which deposit and loan rates are set freely by market actors. This could be seen as another Chinese experiment in dual-track pricing like the one used in the agriculture sector in the 1980s. Furthermore, the daily floating band of the yuan against the dollar has been widened to 2 percent. The capital account has also been progressively opened with new foreign and domestic international investment schemes. There is also excitement in international markets about the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect program, yet another step toward Beijing’s ambition to make Shanghai a global financial hub.

However, the fact is that China’s development model is based on a number of institutional complementarities. If one of these parts is taken away, the whole structure becomes fragile. Financial repression acts as an umbilical cord between the Chinese saver, state-owned banks, state-owned enterprises and the government that make sure the savings are used to invest in the long-term development of the country. Naturally, this strategy creates perverse incentives. It generates corruption and overcapacity, and encourages sophisticated savers to put their money either in real estate or in the shadow banking system, which offers higher returns. This has accelerated the indebtedness of the country from 147 percent in 2008 to 251 percent of GDP in 2014.

There is a pervasive moral hazard in China because investors know that the state is behind most of the local government and corporate debtors. The state, for its part, by controlling the credit circuit (including great parts of the shadow banking system) and the other key levers of the economy, knows that it has the capacity, as it did in the early 2000s, to restructure the debt overhang in a politically and socially less-disruptive way than in Western economies. Of course, the Party is also aware that this capacity would weaken if more private and foreign capital enters the mainstream credit circuit of the economy. This is the reason that China remains a strong net external creditor. It also explains why 92 percent of the formal banking system (which fuels the informal one) is controlled by the state, and only 2 percent is in foreign hands.

It is important to understand China’s developmental model. With a GDP per capita at slightly under $7,000, and just over 50 percent of the population living in urban areas (this share is around 80 percent in the United States and Europe), for a great number of Chinese economists China needs to continue to rely on gross capital formation in order to continue to develop upon solid industrial and technological pillars. From this point of view, it would be a mistake to divert the national savings too swiftly toward private consumption. Thus, China needs to continue to invest. It just needs to invest better. It has to move away from highly polluting capital intensive sectors to greener, high-tech, service-related and labor intensive businesses.

Services and consumption will gradually represent a larger part of China’s GDP, but to undertake this transformation on solid ground the Chinese leadership is convinced that it still needs to develop its infrastructural, industrial, institutional, and technological capabilities. Only by doing so will it enhance the productivity of the Chinese worker to produce the higher-added-value goods and services that are necessary to generate higher wages, consumption capacity and the modern tax system necessary to fund key public services. To pursue this strategy, the leadership will attract more private and foreign capital to garner the productive and innovative power of these forces, but this “alien” capital will most likely not be able to buy more than 20 percent of the ownership of companies in strategic sectors.

China’s rebalancing act will therefore follow Chinese characteristics. Will the ride be smooth? Certainly not. There will be some serious bumps ahead (a banking crisis is a real possibility). But the most likely scenario is that China will continue its development path based predominantly on investments and exports, and that the US and Europe will have to deal with an increasingly stronger competitor both economically and politically.

(The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily where this article was published)

About the author:
* Miguel Otero-Iglesias is Senior Analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute and Associate Researcher at the EU-Asia Institute at ESSCA School of Management | @miotei

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute

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As the prison at Guantánamo Bay begins its 14th year of operations, I am in the US for a short tour calling for the prison’s closure — and, specifically, in Washington D.C. for a protest outside the White House on the actual anniversary of the prison’s opening — January 11.

With 28 men freed in the last year, and just 127 men still held, there are reasons for cautious optimism that the end is now in sight for the prison, a reviled symbol of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 overreach and disdain for the law, and of President Obama’s difficulty in placing principles above political expediency.

Two good reviews of where we stand on Guantánamo’s 13th anniversary were published last week in the New York Times. In the first, “The Path to Closing Guantánamo,” Cliff Sloan, who has just resigned as the State Department’s envoy for closing Guantánamo (a role he has held since 2013), praised the progress made in the last 18 months — with 39 prisoners released, compared to four in the previous two years, when Congressional obstruction was at its most potent, and President Obama’s political will at its weakest.

In addition, as Cliff Sloan noted, “We also worked with Congress to remove unnecessary obstacles to foreign transfers,” and “began an administrative process to review the status of detainees not yet approved for transfer or formally charged with crimes” — the Periodic Review Boards, which have, to date, reviewed the cases of nine prisoners not already approved for release by a task force President Obama established in 2009, and recommended six for release.

As Cliff Sloan also noted, 59 of the 127 men still held have been “approved for transfer,” and as he proceeded to explain:

This means that six agencies — the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence — have unanimously approved the person for release based on everything known about the individual and the risk he presents. For most of those approved, this rigorous decision was made half a decade ago. Almost 90 percent of those approved are from Yemen, where the security situation is perilous. They are not “the worst of the worst,” but rather people with the worst luck. (We recently resettled several Yemenis in other countries, the first time any Yemeni had been transferred from Guantánamo in more than four years.)

Looking to the future, Cliff Sloan also noted that, although there has been “great progress” towards closing Guantánamo, it “will take intense and sustained action to finish the job.” As he explained, “The government must continue and accelerate the transfers of those approved for release. Administrative review of those not approved for transfer must be expedited.” Crucially, he added, “The absolute and irrational ban on transfers to the United States for any purpose, including detention and prosecution, must be changed as the population is reduced to a small core of detainees who cannot safely be transferred overseas.”

As Cliff Sloan also explained:

The reasons for closing Guantánamo are more compelling than ever. As a high-ranking security official from one of our staunchest allies on counterterrorism (not from Europe) once told me, “The greatest single action the United States can take to fight terrorism is to close Guantánamo.” I have seen firsthand the way in which Guantánamo frays and damages vitally important security relationships with countries around the world. The eye-popping cost — around $3 million per detainee last year, compared with roughly $75,000 at a “supermax” prison in the United States — drains vital resources.

Cliff Sloan’s op-ed ended with an important statement: “Imprisoning men without charges for this long — many of whom have been approved for transfer for almost half the period of their incarceration — is not in line with the country we aspire to be,” which is certainly the opinion of all Americans who respect the rule of law above the fearmongering that has eaten away at the country’s values since 9/11.

In another New York Times article last week, “Obama Nears Goal for Guantánamo With Faster Pace of Releases,” Helene Cooper looked in further detail at what might happen in the months to come. Firstly, she noted, the Pentagon is “ready to release two more groups of prisoners in the next two weeks,” although officials “will not provide a specific number.”

She added that President Obama’s goal, before leaving office, is “to deplete the Guantánamo prison to the point where it houses 60 to 80 people and keeping it open no longer makes economic sense.”

Officials explained that the president expects that Ashton B. Carter, nominated to be the next defense secretary, will “move more aggressively on emptying Guantánamo” than Chuck Hagel, whose caution evidently frustrated the White House, and ultimately led to his resignation. Carter’s colleagues told the Times that he is attuned to President Obama’s “desire to be part of the last chapter of the Guantánamo prison.”

Officials also told the Times that they “hope to keep up the current pace,” although they acknowledged that, “after the planned two groups of transfers, the releases may slow down,” because officials at the Pentagon and the State Department have to find countries prepared to take in the Yemenis approved for release, who make up 52 of the 59 men approved for release, in the absence of any confidence that the security situation in Yemen is sufficiently secure to allow any prisoners to be repatriated.

Ian Moss, the State Department’s spokesman for Guantánamo issues, said, “I can tell you that in the world of Gitmo transfers and our conversations with foreign governments, momentum matters.” He added, “We are aggressively reaching out to a wide variety of countries. This language was echoed by Paul Lewis, the Pentagon’s special envoy for the closure of Guantánamo, who said that “the Defense Department continues to aggressively pursue the transfer” of low-level prisoners who have been declared eligible for release. He added, “we take our obligation to assess the potential threat of detainees seriously prior to transfers,” but he also stated that in 2015 there could be “an increase of detainees eligible to transfer” — presumably through the Periodic Review Board process.

All decent people can only hope that, as 2015 — and the 14th year of Guantánamo’s operations — unfolds, the 59 men approved for release — including Shaker Aamer, the last British resident and the focus of my most recent campaign, We Stand With Shaker — will be freed, and serious efforts made to approve others for release through the Periodic Review Boards (because few of the 68 others genuinely pose any kind of threat, and only ten are facing trials), and to persuade Congress that the remaining prisoners must be transferred to the US mainland so that Guantánamo can be closed for good.

This is because, as I never tire of saying (although I look forward to the day I no longer have to say it), the prison at Guantánamo is a legal, moral and ethical abomination, and every day it remains open — with its arbitrary system of indefinite detention, its prisoners cleared for release but still held, its brutal force-feeding, and its essential nature as a prison built on torture — ought to be a source of profound shame for all decent Americans.

Some opponents of Guantánamo fear that such a move will enshrine the indefinite detention policies of Guantánamo on the mainland, but I don’t agree. I think there would be new legal challenges, and ones with real teeth, because, to be blunt, far more rights exist on the US mainland than in Guantánamo, and, although sentencing rules and prison conditions are punitive and disgraceful, there is no precedent for imprisoning people without charge or trial, as at Guantánamo, and, I believe, any effort to establish a precedent would attract fierce and, I am sure, successful opposition by lawyers and judges.

The post As Guantánamo’s 14th Year Of Operations Begins, This Must Be Year It Closes – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Of all the hurdles to peace negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, perhaps the largest is the 150 or so Israeli settlements in the West Bank. These communities, considered illegal by the UN, are fracturing Israel’s relationship even with its allies: The pro-Israeli head of the UK parliament’s foreign affairs committee this year declared that a decision to develop a new settlement “outraged me more than anything else in my political life”.

Despite an unofficial freeze on settlement planning, in late December the Jerusalem Planning and Budget Committee set the stage for approving building permits for some 400 homes on Palestinian land in Jerusalem, and approved a plan for 1,850 more homes in a neighbourhood that sits on the border.

While they are often thought of as the result of a religious quest by Jews to claim new territory, in fact for most settlers the reasons for moving are economic – encouraged through government-planned incentive schemes to relocate. But for some, the process of living in a settlement may have a radicalizing effect.

“Quality of life”

It’s a weekday in the West Bank town of Ariel. Students share a cigarette break on the university campus. Two women walking their dogs chatter in Russian-accented Hebrew. Nothing suggests this is anything other than an ordinary Israeli town.

But while it is not known for a strong ideological bent or violent attacks on its Palestinian neighbours, jutting out some 16km east of the Green Line that divides Israel from the Occupied West Bank, this town of 19,000 is very much a settlement.

In Ariel, many residents live the Israeli commuter lifestyle. There is a direct motorway to Tel Aviv, less than 40km away, with buses running frequently to the city and less often to Jerusalem, 50km away.

“People come here looking for different things,” said Avi Zimmerman, head of Ariel’s Development Fund and the de facto spokesperson for its municipality. As an observant Jew, he came eight years ago looking for a heterogeneous community.

“You’ll find people who came for the quality of life, even for the relief from the humidity of Tel Aviv.”

But the financial benefits are top for many. House prices in Israel have risen rapidly for the last seven years, with the high cost of living and food prices sparking mass protests in the summer of 2011. The average apartment in Ariel costs 1,098,774 NIS (US280,537), a far cry from the Tel Aviv average of 2,363,268 NIS ($603,386).

Cheap rent made Noa and her boyfriend temporary settlers in 2009 when they started looking for a place near her Jerusalem university. “We were both students and we needed a cheap place to live,” explains Noa, a dance teacher in her late twenties. They couldn’t find anything in their price range in Jerusalem, but in Anatot, a community of 1,000, 7km over the Green Line, the price was right.

Amit, a 34-year-old mother of one, sees her settlement – although she doesn’t call it by that name – 5km over the Green Line as just another suburb of Jerusalem. She and her husband had lived in the city, but when they went looking for a home she wanted “a house, a garden and a parking lot… and the green parks and closeness to Jerusalem were a big thing.” She commutes to Jerusalem for work, and her husband to Tel Aviv: “I don’t see this as contested land,” she emphasizes, but “for me it’s a suburb of a big city and I come back at night.”

Government incentives

According to the Yesha Council, an organization that represents and campaigns for West Bank settlements, at last count in June 2014 there were 382,031 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, not including East Jerusalem, which Israel does not consider occupied. This draw across the Green Line has been encouraged by consecutive Israeli governments.

Much of the state’s help comes through the definition of roughly three-quarters of settlements as “national priority areas”, along with other areas that are deemed to need a boost – communities close to the borders with Lebanon or Gaza, or otherwise peripheral and underdeveloped.

National priority areas receive discounts on land and grants for mortgages, and those areas recognized by the Construction Ministry as national priority areas receive state investment in apartment infrastructure. In areas designated as the highest level of priority, there are discounts on land costs and development expenses.

Investment in settlement infrastructure such as roads is also key, and teachers who live in settlements receive generous assistance, including what the Israeli NGO B’tselem reports as 15-20 percent salary boost and government coverage for 75 percent of travel and 80 percent of home rental expenses. As national priority areas, the settlements also receive extra investment in education, including increased school hours and more funding.

Direct benefits to individuals have mostly been eliminated, with an income tax break lifted in 2003, allowing many in the settlement community to argue that that the settlements should be considered like any other Israeli city.

Avi Zimmerman, head of Ariel’s Development Fund and the de facto spokesperson for its municipality, disputes the idea of unfair economic incentives drawing people onto Palestinian land. “People talk and talk about incentivization because of the past.” Now, “there are no direct incentives – you don’t get a bank loan, [for example].”

Natan Sachs, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy and an expert on Israeli politics, agrees that there are “no direct incentives in the sense that there aren’t grants.”

But “there are lot of ways” to encourage settlement, “in particular the cost of land and permits… There is no overt incentivizing but there is still dramatic incentivizing in real terms.”

Radicalization

The increase in “quality of life” settlers is a major shift from the settler movement’s origins in the late 1960s, when after its victory in the 1967 war with Egypt, Jordan and Syria, Israel began moving its citizens into what it refers to as Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for the occupied West Bank.

Many early settlers hoped to reclaim what they saw as biblical Israel, as Elie Pierpz, director of external affairs for the Yesha Council, explains.

“Religious consideration was a major driver of growth in the 70s and 80s. There is an ideological capacity – this is the last Zionist frontier; 100 years ago it was Tel Aviv, 60 years ago it was the Negev [desert in the south of Israel] and the … [northern part of the country], and for the last 47 years it has been Judea and Samaria.”

The phenomenon of the economic settler is a mixed bag. Ariel, for example, is a blend of immigrants from the former Soviet Union – secular and religiously observant but non ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Dror Etkes, an expert on settlements, argues that the difference in terminology between economic or quality of life settlers and their more ideological counterparts can’t really be justified – all are part of the larger occupation project, whether they like it or not.

“When ideology meets economy its always nicer, and the ideology eventually comes to align with self interest. People tell themselves stories … it’s very easy to be a settler. Whatever you don’t want to see, you don’t have to see.”

Yet settlements, even those dominated by economic migrants, can shift beliefs towards the right.

Etkes notes that several recent violent attacks on Palestinians have come from these so-called “non ideological” settlements. Last month, a bilingual Hebrew-Arabic school in Jerusalem was set ablaze. Two of the three suspects, who have confessed to the crime, hail from Beitar Illit, not previously known for its far right wing beliefs.

And even as economic settlers may see themselves as nonpolitical or even left wing – Noa says she’s “centre left, sometimes left” – by moving to the settlements, settlers’ voting patterns may change out of self-interest.

Ultraorthodox settlers are the paradigm of this change – largely poor, in the past 15 years many have moved to areas like Beitar Illit or Modi’in Ilit for cheap housing and a homogenous atmosphere, with plenty of space for their high birth rate. Historically, they were not interested in settlement or Zionist activism.

Neve Gordon, professor of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University and the author of Israel’s Occupation, points out that the parties who represent this sector have shifted its policies. “In the early 1990s the Orthodox parties were in favour of a land compromise – today, much less so, because a large percent of their constituency lives in the occupied territories: space changes consciousness.”

Obstacle to peace

The “quality of life” settler came into public consciousness after the 1993 Oslo agreement between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, when there was serious talk of territory swaps. It has long been assumed that large settlement blocs, either those close to Jerusalem such as Ma’ale Adumim, Beitar Ilit, Modi’in Ilit, or those too big to move, and strategic places like Ariel, would be included in any future two-state solution.

But continuous surveys have suggested that a large percentage of non-ideological settlers would be prepared to leave their homes and move inside the Green Line, for a price.

At the moment though, said Sachs, “there’s a perverse disincentive to leave.” The Israeli public largely sees its government as having bungled the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, with some former settlers who were dragged from their homes on TV complaining about poor compensation and the government’s inability to properly relocate them.

This makes those who might be willing to move from the West Bank, Sachs says, understandably wary. One group founded by a former Shin Bet director, Blue Light Future, advocates a unilateral and voluntary evacuation of settlers by payment.

Amit purchased her house right around the time of the Gaza pullout, and said the possibility of an eventual evacuation “was something that we did think about”. Her area was often mentioned as one that was close enough to Jerusalem to eventually be included in Israel-proper, and that was a selling point.

“If there was some compensation [as part of a peace deal] I don’t see us saying ‘we’re staying under a Palestinian government.’”

But large settlement blocs like Ariel are also unlikely to go anywhere, even in the event of an eventual peace settlement with the Palestinians. In some ways, they are simply too big to move.

To Zimmerman, who has been in Ariel for eight years, the concept of a payoff is irrelevant, as he doesn’t see the Israeli government even attempting an evacuation of Ariel. “That’s going to be handled by the elected government… they’re going to make the policy on that and the consensus in Israeli politics is that Ariel is part of Israel, period.”

It’s perhaps this certainty that has led to house prices in Ariel shooting up: In the six years up to 2013, prices of new and secondhand homes increased by 104 percent. Other settlements saw increases, including Beitar Ilit (80 percent) largely secular Efrat (77 percent), and Oranit (65 percent). While house prices in Israel proper have still outpaced those in the settlements, rising prices increase the pressure to find new settlements.

Pierpz is enthusiastic about the future of the settler project. “The extremely tight-knit communities (where hitchhiking is a way of life, doors often remain unlocked, young kids are safe on streets unsupervised late at night), are some of the reasons why people want to stay and raise multiple generations here.”

Palestinian officials have said they will take into account the motivations of settlers in negotiating the boundaries of a future Palestinian state. In the end, they see all settlements as encroaching on Palestinian land, whether the settlers have come for the fresh air and cheap accommodation or because of religious fervour.

The post The Economics At The Heart Of Israeli Settlements – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ronojoy Sen*

More than two weeks after the results of the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Assembly elections in India were declared, a government is still not in place in the state. The reason is the nature of the verdict where no party has come close to a majority in the 87-member Assembly.

The Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has won the most seats with 28 followed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with 25. But both parties are well short of the 44- seat mark to form government. The other two players are the National Conference (NC) with 15 seats and the Congress with 12. By virtue of being the single largest party, the PDP has the first shot at forming government. Given the electoral verdict, the PDP’s options are somewhat limited. While the Congress is the PDP’s most natural ally, the combined tally of the two parties does not add up to a clear majority in the assembly.

Similarly, a BJP-NC combination could possibly muster the numbers, if a few independents threw their lot with the two parties, but the alliance would be an unstable one. Indeed, the BJP would prefer this alliance since it would be the senior partner. A PDP-NC alliance would just about have enough seats to form government, but it is almost inconceivable that the two regional rivals would form a coalition.

A PDP-BJP Partnership?

The most viable option in J&K seems to be a PDP-BJP government. While the numbers of both parties comfortably add up to well over a majority, the attempt to form a partnership though has been a tortuous one. One of the hurdles is the ideological differences between the two parties, especially on the issue of Article 370 of the Constitution of India which gives special status to Jammu and Kashmir. The scrapping, or at least revision, of Article 370 has always been high on the BJP’s agenda. In this election it strategically chose to keep the issue on the backburner, preferring instead to focus on development. This makes it somewhat easier for the BJP and the PDP to get together.

Another obstacle is the issue of chief ministership. While the PDP believes that it should have the chief minister’s chair since it is the single largest party, the BJP has been pushing for a rotation system with the chief ministership being shared between the two parties. This is not an unusual arrangement and there is a precedent in J&K itself when Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, the chief patron of the PDP, shared chief ministership with the Congress’ Ghulam Nabi Azad. Under the agreement, Sayeed was CM from 2002-2005 and Azad from 2005-2008.

A rotation agreement makes good sense due to the arithmetic of the electoral verdict. The PDP and the BJP have won almost an identical vote share with the BJP at 23% and the PDP at 22.7%. Besides, the two parties enjoy a geographical majority in the two distinct regions of Jammu and Kashmir respectively, with the BJP having won 25 of the 37 seats in Jammu and the PDP 25 of the 46 seats in Kashmir.

The BJP’s Performance

Though the BJP failed in its much-publicised goal of ‘Mission 44’ — achieving a majority on its own in J&K — it performed far better than in the 2008 elections where it won 11 seats. The continuing hold of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the electorate was a factor in the BJP’s impressive showing. However, a significant aspect of the BJP’s performance was that it won 22 of its 25 seats and 48% of the vote from the Hindu-dominated seats of the Jammu region. Incidentally, this region also had the highest voter turnout which possibly helped the BJP.

In contrast, the BJP could not open its account in the Kashmir Valley winning only 2.2% of the vote there. This despite the BJP giving 40% of its tickets to Muslims in the state. High profile Muslim BJP candidates like Hina Bhat, who contested from the Amira Kadal constituency in Srinagar, performed poorly. However, for the first time a Muslim candidate, Abdul Gani Kohli, won on a BJP ticket. Kohli won from the Kalakote constituency in the Muslim-majority Rajouri district in Jammu.

In Ladakh, too, the BJP performed poorly being unable to win any of the four seats in the region. In fact, the BJP’s overall vote share in J&K fell by over nine percentage points from 32.4% in the 2014 national elections going to show that state elections do not always mirror the national polls.

While the BJP was able to consolidate the Hindu vote in Jammu, the Muslim vote was divided in Kashmir. The PDP, the NC and the Congress all vied for the Muslim vote preventing the PDP from fully capitalising on the anti-incumbency sentiments against the outgoing Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and his NC party. Despite anti-incumbency and the effect of the floods that ravaged the state not long before the elections, the NC did not do as badly as expected winning nearly 21% of the vote. Though this translated into only 15 seats, in effect the NC managed to keep the PDP’s tally down. Given the circumstances, the Congress too did reasonably well winning 12 seats, five fewer than what it had won in 2008.

Conclusion

Though the PDP and the BJP have been in talks over the last fortnight, an agreement has proved elusive. The BJP is keeping all options open, including Governor’s Rule. One section within the BJP believes that the party will benefit from being in government while another feels that the ideological differences with the PDP cannot be bridged. The PDP, too, is split with many of its members and constituents uneasy about an alliance with a party which they perceive as “anti- Muslim”. But a substantial section within the PDP is keen to form government and believes that a tie-up with the BJP will ensure benefits, including a smooth flow of funds from the Centre for the state’s development.

According to latest reports, the J&K Governor N N Vohra has written to the Indian President about the continuing political impasse in the state. He has suggested several options, including Governor’s Rule. The picture will only become clear by January 19, the deadline for formation of government in J&K.

About the author:
* Dr Ronojoy Sen is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), an autonomous research institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and at the Asia Research Institute at the NUS. He can be contacted at isasrs@nus.edu.sg. Opinions expressed in this paper, based on research by the author, do not necessarily reflect the views of ISAS.

Source:
This article was published by ISAS as ISAS Insights No. 273 – 9 January 2015 (PDF).

The post India: Divided Verdict In Jammu & Kashmir – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Terence Corrigan*

The post An Agenda For African Business – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Jayshree Sengupta*

The year 2015 is likely to be rosy for India. There is no more doomsday scenario awaiting the country on the economic front in the year. There will be problems but India will remain a global giant with its huge, mostly young, population, a big market and vast resources. Since there is no real social safety net, people are resilient and adapt to adverse situations. Political upheavals are thus unlikely.

There will, however, be no spectacular rise in the economic growth because the way things are going, the government will not be able to control either the fiscal deficit (in December 2014, the fiscal deficit had reached 98.9 per cent of the budgeted total) or the current account deficit ( at 2.1 per cent of the GDP in December’14). Managing the twin deficits will not allow the government to keep its tall promises about bringing ‘achche din’ (good days). The economy will grow at 5 or 5.5 per cent which is not high enough for harmonious and equitable growth or a steep reduction in poverty.

First of all, from all indications, the revenue shortfall will be massive (Rs 1,05,000 crore). To bridge the revenue gap the government may have to cut expenditure where it is most needed — in the social sectors. It is already apprehended that health sector will be the first to receive the cut which will of course have its repercussions on the healthcare of the poor. Already, the public healthcare is below par and it will be more so. The poor will be the ones who will have to bear the brunt and sink further into poverty.

Similarly, the current account deficit will remain a problem with the continuing heavy import of gold and flat export growth. Prime Minister Modi’s exhortation to the people to put their money in banks and not buy gold will only work when people are sure about the continuity of low inflation. Even with a fall in petroleum prices, there are problems in imports and more problems in exports. Global markets are not recovering strongly and India’s exports to EU, Russia, Japan and the Middle East will be lower.

People will also not forget that the black money remains stashed abroad and this could have been brought back and used for development. People will also remain perplexed why the big industrialists who remain the biggest defaulters of bank loans and still flaunting a high life style, are not being made to pay back debts. When public sector banks are in such bad shape (NPAs at Rs.2.16 lakh crore), how is it that these industrialists are allowed to go scot free? All this may not generate confidence in the governance of the country which Prime Minister Modi promised to improve.

The pledged FDI will hopefully improve the manufacturing growth and this may lead to a rise in the employment of youth. It will depend on the techniques chosen for manufacturing by the foreign investors. As the recent Annual Survey of Industries point out, job growth has slowed down and companies have been shedding labour to keep their bottom lines up. If Modi is not able to give jobs to the youth, the NDA government will become unpopular in 2015. A lot of young people voted for him on his promise to generate jobs. Around 10 million job seekers are looking for work every year.

High interest rates have been blamed for slow manufacturing growth. Interest rates will come down in 2015, but it is not a magic wand for raising industrial growth. There are many twists in the story as to why investment is flagging in industry and one scenario is the nexus between the politicians and the industrialist promoter which leads to money being raised by the promoter for equity purposes but diverting it elsewhere with the connivance of politicians.

The land acquisition act is being amended by an ordinance. It will stir up a lot of opposition and rightly so. As long as this area remains ambiguous with potential for trouble from especially small land owners, the investors may want to wait and watch. This is likely to stall the growth of SEZs.

In agriculture, huge reforms are needed where 52 per cent of the population is employed. Agriculture is likely to grow at 2 per cent due to the impact of a deficient monsoon. Agricultural productivity has to be improved through better irrigation, seeds, fertilizers and mechanization. This has to be supported with better marketing and storage. Small farmers will be looking for support and a drastic change in the credit structure. The ‘Jan Dhan Yojana’ has been started with bank accounts created for 98.4 per cent of the population but the actual money that can be accessed by the people will matter most. Around 75 per cent of the accounts have no money in them. Unless agriculture productivity improves, there will be rise in rural unemployment and migration to the cities will continue where unskilled labour will flock to the informal sector and live in shanty towns and slums in cities.

Modi’s talk of smart cities will remain a pipe dream if the existing towns/cities are left untouched and remain unmanageable. Smart cities will take time and will require huge expenditure. It will not be possible to establish them overnight by magic. Implementation of the dream will prove to be more difficult than conceptualizing it.

The service sector may face less problems and it may be poised for high growth of 7 per cent. Much will depend on the global demand also. But most likely the IT services will see positive growth because the demand will remain high.

Low income people will continue to struggle in 2015 as before with problems in housing, transport, health and education. Their incomes will not rise except incrementally. The super-rich and very rich will continue with their high lifestyles. The inequalities are likely to widen. Small scale industry will remain inventive and innovative trying to beat the competition from China and some may switch to trading than manufacturing, reversing Modi’s dream of ‘Make in India’. The ‘Achche Din’ are not likely to be here soon except for the rich and the famous.

* The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi

The post India In 2015: Bringing In ‘Achche Din’ Not Going To Be Easy – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Salman, deputy premier and minister of defense, held talks with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at his palace in Riyadh on Sunday.

The talks focused on enhancing bilateral relations in various fields, the declining oil prices, the Palestinian issue, the Syrian crisis, and fighting international terrorism.

Maduro, lauded the Kingdom’s achievement internally and globally under the wise leadership of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah and wished the king good health and long life.

The president arrived from Tehran Saturday night at King Khaled International Airport accompanied by a number of ministers. He was received at the airport by Prince Muqrin, deputy crown prince and second deputy premier, Riyadh Gov. Prince Turki bin Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and Venezuelan Ambassador to Riyadh Joseba Achutegui.

Maduro left Riyadh for Qatar from where he will fly to Algeria on his way back home.

Maduro has visited the Kingdom three times, the first two times as his country’s foreign minister — one to attend an OPEC meeting in Riyadh in 2007 and the other on an official visit in 2010.

The post Saudi Arabia And Venezuela Discuss Declining Oil Prices appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Some theories suggest that the threat of revolution plays a pivotal role in democratisation. This column provides new evidence in support of this hypothesis. The authors use democratic transitions from Europe in the 19th century, Africa at the turn at the 20th century, and the Great Reform Act of 1832 in Great Britain. They find that credible threats of revolution have systematically triggered pre-emptive democratic reforms throughout history.

By Toke S. Aidt, Gabriel Leon, Raphael Franck and Peter S. Jensen*

The threat of revolution hypothesis

The wave of violent protests that swept across north Africa and parts of the Middle East during the Arab spring between 2010 and 2012 coincided with the fall of several long-established autocracies; in those that survived, policy reforms and redistributive policies aimed at calming the masses were hastily implemented. A century and a half before, something similar happened in western Europe. The revolutions in France and parts of Germany in 1848 were followed by democratic reforms in Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Episodes like these lend credence to the hypothesis that revolutions, riots, and other types of violent protest can trigger democratic change. The hypothesis is appealing because it resolves the franchise extension puzzle, namely why would incumbent autocrats with a monopoly on political power, and often on economic resources, agree to share their power with broader segments of the population whose goals they do not share? The threat of revolution hypothesis, developed in the work of Acemoglu and Robinson (2000, 2006) and Boix (2003) amongst others, suggests that autocrats might do so when they face a credible threat of revolution that, if successful, would eliminate their entire power base. Seen in this perspective, the reactions of autocrats in the Arab world today, and of monarchs in western Europe 150 years ago, are pre-emptive responses to a credible threat of revolution.

Not everyone agrees with this interpretation, however. In his discussion of democratic reforms between 1830 and 1930, Roger Congleton (2010, p. 15), for example, argues that: “In essentially all cases [countries], liberal reforms were adopted using pre-existing constitutional rules for amendment. In no case [country] is every liberal reform preceded by a large-scale revolt, and in most cases, there are examples of large-scale demonstrations that failed to produce obvious reform”.

Democratisation is a multi-faceted process and the challenge is to gauge the boundaries between the threat of revolution hypothesis and alternative explanations of the root causes of democracy. Establishing how far the threat of revolution hypothesis explains democratic transitions is, however, difficult for two reasons.

• Firstly, it is the threat of revolution that matters and that is hard to quantify.
• Secondly, if observed social protest is used as a proxy for the underlying threat, it is hard to establish if the threat causes democratisation or if both occur because of something else.

In a series of papers (Aidt and Jensen 2014, Aidt and Leon forthcoming, Aidt and Franck 2013, forthcoming), we use historical and recent data and a variety of identification strategies to engage with these issues. The picture that emerges from these studies, as well as from previous work by Przeworski (2009) and the recent study by Dorsch and Maarek (2015), is clear:

• The threat of revolution is one of the causal drivers of democratisation.

New evidence of the threat of revolution

To answer the question posed in the title, it would be ideal to study the entire universe of democratic transitions. Since this is not possible, as researchers we must focus on particular time periods, countries, or even on specific reforms. By studying many of these, it is possible to learn a great deal about the link between violence, riots, and revolutions and democratisation. Our work has so far studied three ‘cases’: Europe during the long 19th century, sub-Saharan Africa at the turn of the 20th century, and Great Britain in the 1830s.

Each case identifies observable events which demonstrate to the relevant incumbent rulers that the collective action problem associated with launching an effective challenge against their hold on power has been temporarily resolved. We then track how they react to these events, and, in particular, if they adopt democratic reforms. Of course, it remains to establish a causal link between the two and each case needs a context-specific identification strategy.

International transmission of information about regime contention is one way to capture variation in threat perceptions. Kurt Weyland (2014, p. 120), writing about the European revolutions of 1848, uses the example of Denmark to illustrate this logic: “the Danish King had more time [than the Prussian King] to see the wave of contention coming and noticed the costly clashes in Vienna (March 13-15) and Berlin (March 18-19); on March 21, he therefore offered these changes [a liberal democratic constitution] to the crowds gathering outside his palace in order to pre-empt violence”. In Aidt and Jensen (2014), we study a panel of European countries during the first wave of democratisation (1820-1938). We explore the idea that actual revolutions in neighbouring countries served as signals to monarchs and potential revolutionaries in other countries about how threatening the situation was. We find a very robust relationship between these revolutionary events and suffrage reforms, which is stronger for countries that were linguistically or geographically close to the epicentres of the revolutions.

• Our estimates show that a revolution somewhere in Europe was associated with a 75% increase in the odds of a suffrage reform in the neighbouring countries.

Our work on democratic change in sub-Saharan Africa between 1990 and 2007 demonstrates that the link between the threat of revolution and democratisation is not unique to the first wave of democratisation in Europe (Aidt and Leon forthcoming). Here, we quantify the extent of regime contention with data on domestic riots. Since riots and political change are driven by multiple causes, we employ instrumental variable techniques to uncover the true effect of riots on democratic change. Inspired by Brückner and Ciccone (2011), Burke and Leigh (2010) and Franck (forthcoming), we use weather shocks (droughts) to instrument for political action. There are many reasons why droughts might lead to riots; for instance, the temporary reduction in income lowers the opportunity cost of contesting power, drought creates hardship in the countryside and leads to migration into cities that exacerbates existing tensions and worsens overcrowding, among others. We find that the probability of democratic change increases by 16.7 percentage points as a consequence of the impact drought has on riots.

While our studies of democratisation in Europe and Africa explore cross sections of countries over time, our study on the Great Reform Act of 1832 focuses on a major episode of democratic change in Great Britain (Aidt and Franck 2013, forthcoming). We explore the geographical dispersion of a rural uprising – the so-called Swing Riots – that took place in between the last two elections conducted under the rules of the ‘unreformed parliament’ in 1830 and 1831, respectively. We estimate the effect of riots that happened in the immediate neighbourhood of a constituency on the likelihood that it elected a reform-friendly politician to serve in the 1831 parliament which adopted the Great Reform Act. Of course, any correlation between local riots and the electoral success of reform-friendly politicians could be caused by many factors. We, therefore, explore that the riots spread through local social interaction effects along the pre-existing road network to isolate the exogenous variation in exposure to local riots. Our instrumental variable and matching estimates suggest that the two reform-friendly parties would not have obtained a majority in the House of Commons had it not been for the Swing Riots. Without such a majority, the reform process would have most likely been stopped.

Conclusion

The threat of a revolution plays a pivotal role in the theory of democratisation developed by Acemoglu and Robinson in a sequence of papers and in their book, The Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. The theory emphasises that democratisation happens at critical junctures in history. Our evidence supports this interpretation. However, our studies, and the threat of revolution theory itself, do not rule out that complex interactions between underlying, slow-moving economic processes, e.g., industrialisation, urbanisation, income growth, international trade, and inequality, and democratic triggers could be important. The ‘revolutionary shocks’, e.g., revolutions in other countries, exposure to local riots, or drought-induced protest, may push a country over a threshold and induce rulers to implement democratic reforms, but only if the underlying fundamentals of the economy are ‘close’ to the threshold to begin with.

* About the authors:
Toke S. Aidt
Senior University Lecturer in the Faculty of Economics at University of Cambridge and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge

Raphael Franck
Lecturer at the Department of Economics, Bar Ilan University

Peter S. Jensen
Professor at the Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark

Gabriel Leon
Lecturer in Political Economy in the Department of Political Economy, King’s College London

References:
Acemoglu, D and J A Robinson (2000), “Why Did the West Extend the Franchise? Democracy, Inequality, and Growth in Historical Perspective”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(4), 1167-1199.

Acemoglu, D and J A Robinson (2006), Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Aidt, T S and R Franck (2013), “How to Get the Snowball Rolling and Extend the Franchise: Voting on the Great Reform Act of 1832”, Public Choice 155 (3), 229-250.

Aidt, T S and P S Jensen (2014), “Workers of the World, Unite! Franchise Extensions and the Threat of Revolution in Europe, 1820-1938”, European Economic Review, 72, 52-75.

Aidt, T S and G Leon (forthcoming), “The Democratic Window of Opportunity: Evidence from Riots in sub-Saharan Africa”, Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Aidt, T S and R Franck (forthcoming), “Democratization under the Threat of Revolution: Evidence from the Great Reform Act of 1832”, Econometrica.

Boix, C (2003), Democracy and Redistribution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brückner, M and A Ciccone (2011), “Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity”, Econometrica, 79 (3), 923-947.

Burke, P J and A Leigh (2010), “Do Output Contractions Trigger Democratic Change?”, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2, 124-157.

Congleton, R D (2011), Perfecting Parliament, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dorsch, M T and P Maarek (2015), “Inefficient Predation and Political Transitions”, European Journal of Political Economy, 37, 37-48.

Franck, R (forthcoming), “The Political Consequences of Income Shocks: Explaining the Consolidation of Democracy in France”, Review of Economics and Statistics.

Przeworski, A (2009), “Conquered or Granted? A History of Suffrage Extensions,” British Journal of Political Science, 39, 291-321.

Weyland, K (2014), Making Waves. Democratic Contention in Europe and Latin America since the Revolutions of 1848, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The post Democracy And The Threat Of Revolution: New Evidence – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Vijay Shankar*

Armageddon is the mythical site of gathering of armies for battle that will end all. Its geographical location is shrouded in biblical lore and considerable controversy exists of its mercatorial coordinates, but its implications of the eventual catastrophic destiny of mankind (as revealed) are becoming less indistinct. Our study is far removed from eschatology; it is however keenly concerned with the settings and geography of an impending geopolitical upheaval caused by the withdrawal of American forces from the Af-Pak region. Inconclusive American abdication leaves in its wake a weak, nuclearised and failing Pakistan unable to reconcile a will to modernity with Jihadi aspirations; an Afghanistan whose writ does not prevail beyond the edgings of Kabul; a resurgent Iran that seeks domination over west and northern Afghanistan; Central Asian Republics whose civilisational, ethnic and cultural roots in northern Afghanistan exert fissiparous pressures; and an incensed and isolated Russia that sees in the region an opportunity to impel its own influence as a limiting factor to that of the US and the Saudis. Such competing external dynamics and interferences will work against central control from Kabul rather than in support of it, leaving bare a ‘gathering of armies’ driven by motivators in persistent friction with each other.

Warring Worlds

When states involve themselves for years on end in irregular, decentralised warfare such as the Afghan-Pakistan situation which has been in a state of violent chaos since 1979, the idea of central control is anaemic. The breakdown of the region into several ‘Tolkienesque’ warring worlds for causes that can only be termed antediluvian has opened the geography of the expanse to historical fractures that the politics of the last century failed to reconcile. Today, a simmering Baluchistan finds little mutuality in a Punjab-dominated Pakistan; Pakthunwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) ferociously cling to religio-ethnic links with eastern Afghanistan that refute the modern idea of statehood within Pakistan; inside the rest of Pakistan is a smouldering Jihadist sentiment against India and the West; and finally, Afghan resistance to US occupation in the post-al Qaeda defeat has left an insurgency engorged with modern weapons and enabling technologies.

Iran’s Intriguing Inclination

In understanding Iran’s contemporary posture towards Afghanistan, it is long forgotten that it was an early supporter of the 2001 invasion, played a key role in the ‘Bonn’ process that gave a constitution to the latter and has been historically wary of the radical militant ways of the Taliban and the manner in which it has been sponsored, fuelled and given sanctuary by Pakistan. While the seemingly endless supply of narcotics across the porous Baluchistan border and through the Nimruz and Herat sectors, along with linked violence, remains an abiding source of societal distress, illegal finances and arms trade, all of which has generated a strong impulse in Iran to control and affect stability in the Western region of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan and Iran have long been tied by culture and geography over centuries. Approximately one-fifth of Afghanistan’s population is Shia – a focal point for strife – for Iran views itself as the guardian of Shiites. During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Khomeini dispensation created a sphere of influence by organising and materially supporting the Shia community there. Soviet inabilities permitted Iran to form a network of Afghan Shia organisations in the Hazarajat region.

When the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, the country became a battleground for a proxy war between Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The Saudi’s sought the spread of their brand of Islam throughout Central Asia and Pakistan connived to install a Sunni-dominated government and gain “strategic depth” against India. Iran, having ended its eight-year war with Iraq, sought to establish a friendly government in Kabul, encouraging non-Sunni groups to form a united front. These contrary interests spurred a civil war, frustrating Iran’s policies in the region. This time of confusion that saw the rise of the Sunni Taliban. In 1996, the Taliban seized Kabul and overthrew President Rabbani, arousing the creation of a military front comprising Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and Pashtuns, called the Northern Alliance, that sought to counter the Taliban. Iran, India, Russia, Tajikistan, and the US supported the Northern Alliance with material, training and sanctuaries.

It was only after 9/11 that support for the Northern Alliance extended to military intervention by the US to defeat the Taliban (and al Qaeda) and establish a new Afghan government. Iran’s interests in Afghanistan are in conflict with Pakistan’s single-track preference of an Islamist regime in Kabul (the purpose being to foster its misshapen policy of “Strategic depth” both geographically and ideologically to confront a rising India.) Pakistan also believes a weak and fundamental Islamist government in Kabul may be the best way to keep ethnic, irredentist claims at bay, while at the same time expanding its own influence. Such a policy only paves the way for increased military involvement by all parties including Iran.

Russia’s Part in the ‘Novaya Great Game’

There is a veiled attempt by Russia to fill the current void in Afghanistan despite the probability that destabilisation of the region may be the outcome. Greater competition between neighbouring powers, in Russian perceptions, may set the stage for a new “great game” for the so-called heart of Asia. Russia has need to enter this contest and vie for influence in Afghanistan against other, more motivated external players, not only to reawaken and accentuate its great power status (as it has done in Ukraine and in Syria) but also, understanding the positions these countries hold and taking their conflicting postures into consideration, the unfolding situation in Afghanistan will affect Russia’s security indirectly by way of Moscow’s allies in Central Asia. Central Asian nations fear the possible consequences of destabilisation in Afghanistan, which may include an influx of refugees or an upsurge in Islamic extremism, drug trafficking, and tran-border crime, and they may well turn to Moscow for help. It is also difficult to portray a Russia of the immediate future, blind to the emerging Chinese influence in the region by way of their grand scheme of the ‘Continental Silk Route’ and their efforts to corner strategic mineral resources (1400 mineral fields including rare earth elements and over three trillion USD in untapped deposits) that Afghanistan abounds in. The probability of competing politico-socio-economic interests morphing into security concerns is real.

The Central Asian Republics

The Central Asian Republics (CARs) worry about how instability in Afghanistan affects the survival of their own political regimes. These concerns are also symptomatic of their existential weaknesses. But reality would suggest that Central Asia’s economic prospects depend more on China, Russia and India rather than on Western military presence in Afghanistan, if only internal stability could be assured. And here lies the rub: CARs have historically depended upon centrally administered authoritarian rule such that even today they are unable to view a globalised world through any prism other than that provided by a distant Moscow, advancing a possible return of a Russian Domain 2.0. Recent moves by Putin to build greater security cooperation among the CARs particularly with Kazakhstan (key regional player) and consolidating military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan would underscore the prospects of revisiting privileged partnerships and the return of the Super (Capitalist) Commissar. More worryingly, the stage will be set for enhanced friction in the region.

The Thing about Gathering Armies

The thing about ‘gathering armies’ is that it puts in stark relief the dangers that a policy drift can inflict upon a designated region. India cannot treat the post-2014 situation in Afghanistan as a potential Armageddon for its security in South Asia. An Islamist takeover of Afghanistan and the country’s subsequent turn into a hotbed of international terrorism is not a certainty. India will have to take more responsibility for regional security. This heightened responsibility must first close out the possibility of armed intervention and put in place a dispensation that promotes cooperative engagement in economic development and institution-building. Under all conditions the use of geography to further strategic security interests by any of the stakeholders must be abhorred. This approach is consistent with idea of placing strategic stability above strategic competition.

* Vijay Shankar
Former Commander-in-Chief, Strategic Forces Command of India

The post The Af-Pak Entity: Seduction To Armageddon? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

U.S. Central Command officials today released a statement detailing what they called “cybervandalism” affecting two of the command’s social media sites.

The full statement reads:

Earlier today, U.S. Central Command’s Twitter and YouTube sites were compromised for approximately 30 minutes. These sites reside on commercial, non-Defense Department servers and both sites have been temporarily taken offline while we look into the incident further.

Centcom’s operational military networks were not compromised and there was no operational impact to Centcom. Centcom will restore service to its Twitter and YouTube accounts as quickly as possible. We are viewing this purely as a case of cybervandalism.

In the meantime, our initial assessment is that no classified information was posted and that none of the information posted came from Centcom’s server or social media sites.

Additionally, we are notifying appropriate DoD and law enforcement authorities about the potential release of personally identifiable information and will take appropriate steps to ensure any individuals potentially affected are notified as quickly as possible.

The post Centcom Confirms Social Media Sites ‘Compromised’ appeared first on Eurasia Review.