The families of the three Muslims murdered in North Carolina are sharing the young victims’ stories with the world. But they’re also calling attention to discrepancies in coverage when Muslims are the victims of terrorism, rather than the perpetrators.

Linda Sarsour, a family spokeswoman and executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, spoke to RT’s Ben Swann about the tragic events on Monday when Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were gunned down in their Chapel Hill home.

46-year-old Craig Stephen Hicks turned himself in late Tuesday night and was arrested on suspicion of three counts of first-degree murder. Hicks lived next door to the family, in a condominium complex a few miles east of the University of North Carolina’s flagship campus.

“The family is absolutely convinced that this is a hate crime, based on conversations that the father had with his daughter about a very hateful neighbor,” Sarsour said. “She told her father, ‘I know that he hates me for who I am and what I’m wearing.’”

The FBI has opened a preliminary inquiry into whether or not any federal laws were broken related to the case, Reuters reported. Those laws could include civil rights violations or the committing of a hate crime.

“[Hicks] used to see them walking into the apartment complex and have his hand on a very visible gun in a holster,” she added. “And that plus very interesting social media posts, seems he’s a very extremist anti-theist, so he’s very anti- any religion or anti-religious people.”

Hicks is a self-described atheist who regularly posted content critical of religion on his Facebook account.

The father of the two women killed, psychiatrist Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, told the Raleigh News & Observer that one of his daughters had told the family a week ago that she had a “hateful neighbor.”

Hicks’ wife Karen denies her husband was motivated by Islamophobia, but rather by an ongoing parking dispute at the condominium complex.

“I can say with my absolute belief that this incident had nothing to do with religion or victims’ faith, but was, in fact, related to the long-standing parking disputes that my husband had with the neighbors, our neighbors of various religions, races and creeds,” she told reporters Wednesday.

But Dr. Abu-Salha said that the fact that his relatives were shot in the head “execution style” showed the shooter had an underlying animosity towards his daughters and son-in-law based on their religion and culture.

Sarsour said it was offensive for Hicks to brush aside the underlying hatred her husband harbored towards his victims.

“It’s actually quite offensive when you’re telling families that their three children were murdered ‒ execution style ‒ pronounced dead at the scene over a parking space. You have to have a lot of hate in your heart for you to be able to murder young students in the way that they were murdered,” she told RT.

Sarsour then criticized the media for its lack of coverage of the shootings until an outcry took place on social media – featuring #MuslimLivesMatter and #ChapelHillShooting – focused their attention on the crime.

“If the perpetrator was Muslim, we would be having non-stop coverage of his religion, who he’s affiliated with, where did he work, who did he speak to, and there really hasn’t been that much focus,” she said.

“I’m happy that the focus now has been on these three lives, on their beautiful lives — full lives that they’ve lived, on their families,” the spokeswoman added. “And that’s the story you want to tell because these were Americans. But not only were they Americans, they were extraordinary Americans who gave back to their community, were successful students — and that’s how their families want them to be remembered.”

The families of the three victims have received an outpouring of support from around the country and the world, not just with people sending condolences, but also with people offering to set up donation pages to helping Syrian refugees ‒ a cause very dear to Barakat.

But despite the silver lining that the support has revealed, the family still believes that Hicks’ actions were “absolutely an act of terrorism.”

“Terrorism is a crime that has political or religious motivations behind it. This guy was an anti-theist. If you look at some of his social media posts, he was anti-religion and anti-religious people,” Sarsour said. “These young women were wearing headscarves; they were identifiably Muslim. And we should be calling domestic terrorism, regardless of who the perpetrator is or who the victims are. And in this case, this is absolutely to me a domestic terrorism case.”

The post US: Family Of Slain Muslims Says Shooting ‘Absolutely Domestic Terrorism’ appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A massive sandstorm swept through the capital on Thursday, hampering visibility and causing traffic snarls and is expected to last for two days.

The dust storm, caused by strong winds, also affected other parts of the country including Makkah and Madinah, Al-Arabiya reported.

There has been no reported impact on air traffic. Oil export operations were also unaffected by the weather conditions, according to Reuters.

At the main crude export terminal in Ras Tanura, export flow was uninterrupted, Reuters quoted shipping sources as saying.

But in neighboring Kuwait, a similar dust storm has disrupted oil exports forcing the country to halt both its crude and oil production exports, Kuwait National Petroleum Company said.

The suspension in Kuwait will remain in place until weather conditions improve, KNPC spokesman Khalid Al-Asousi said.

Earlier this week, a similar storm struck Egypt, forcing delays to several flights at Cairo’s airports on Tuesday.

During the closure of Cairo’s airspace, four flights were diverted to another airport, while a fifth returned to Amman, Jordan, said Ihab Mohieddin, the head of the Egyptian aviation authority, to the Associated Press.

The post Saudi Arabia: Sandstorm Blankets Riyadh appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Aijaz Zaka Syed

Three Muslim university students were gunned down Wednesday in North Carolina, United States. After seeing the ‘breaking news’ alert on my phone, from the UK’s Independent newspaper, I switched on the TV to tune in to CNN. Nothing there. Instead, I saw a suitably stern Christiana Amanpour in conversation with French journalist Didier Francois about the latest ISIS terror. Then I turned to the old, ever dependable Beebs. Nothing there, either. Not even on the ‘fair and balanced’ Fox News or our own Al Jazeera.

In fact, the news about the shooting of the family of three, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Mohammed, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad, 19, all students of the North Carolina University, in their home trickled down on wires much later. And even when it did, the response from Western and international media outlets was limited and understated. No ‘Terror Alert’! No screaming headlines about the attack, or minute-by-minute live coverage.

President Obama did not rush to condemn the killings as he did following the recent attacks in Paris and elsewhere. As far as I know, the White House has yet to issue a formal statement on the killing. Much of the US and Western media has played it down as a ‘petty crime over a petty issue’ like parking.

An Associated Press report wondered if the killing had anything to do with ‘hate.’ It answered its own question saying the killer, Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, described himself as a ‘gun-toting atheist’ as if that explained the killings.

Ripley Rand, the US Attorney for North Carolina, said the “crime appears at this point to have been an isolated incident.” Hicks’ attorney said the man “was frustrated day in and day out about not being able to park where he wanted to.”

So there you have it. It was a minor parking issue. It wasn’t even a hate crime, it seems, let alone a terror attack. As someone quipped on Twitter, terrorism happens only if Muslims go berserk.

Comparisons are odious. But if all lives are equal in the eyes of the world, why do we not see the same global outrage and outpouring of grief and solidarity with the victims that one witnessed following the Charlie Hebdo carnage?

Where are the righteous statements from London, Washington and Paris, condemning the act of terror in this case?

After the Paris killings, an agitated David Cameron had vowed to ‘stand squarely for free speech and democracy.’ Mimicking Blair and Bush, Cameron had thundered: “These people will never be able to take us off those values.” What about the ‘freedom and democracy’ of those killed in North Carolina? Were they any less human? What makes the killing doubly tragic is the fact that the couple had only recently met, during a fund raiser for the Syrian refugees, briefly dated and married. The younger girl was visiting them. They were like any other regular American family. So why doesn’t their murder provoke the same response as other such killings and attacks have?

Truth be told, some are more equal than others, as Orwell would argue. Especially in these perilous times when the whole world seems to have gone stark, raving mad. Islamophobia in the West and around the world has touched unprecedented, alarming proportions. A new USA Today cartoon, picked up from a regional publication, this week portrayed Muslims as the new Nazis and Islam as equivalent of Hitler’s sick, jaundiced worldview founded on hate and hubris. Few eyebrows were raised though. Seems it’s now perfectly okay and cool to wear Islamophobia and worst racial and religious prejudices on your sleeve and get away with it.

So given the sweetness and light that is spread around these days by western media narrative and even by responsible, elected leaders, targeting a particular people and faith for all sins imaginable, should you be surprised by these killings?

As Mohammad Abu-Salha, the slain women’s father and a psychiatrist, said: “The media here bombards the American citizen with Islamic, Islamic, Islamic terrorism and makes people here scared of us and hate us and want us out. So if somebody has any conflict with you, and they already hate you, you get a bullet in the head.”

On the other hand, can you really blame the world if Islam and Muslims these days find themselves under fire everywhere? The shenanigans of lunatics like the IS, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and Pakistani Taleban, all in the name of the blessed faith of course, do not just repeatedly shame Muslims, they have played a critical role in fueling the mistrust, hatred and demonization that the faithful face across the world.

One incident like the Peshawar school massacre is enough to boost their already shining image. Even from its own glorious standards of savagery that the IS has established in a very short time, the manner in which the Jordanian pilot Maaz Al- Kasaasbeh was dealt with — caged, burned to death and bulldozed — was truly diabolic and horrific. What faith can sanction and condone such satanic acts of revolting brutality? Certainly, not ours. If these perverts can do this to a Muslim, imagine the potential of their intolerable cruelty against those considered beyond the fold! And how do Muslims expect to be viewed around the world after such bouts of casual, spine-chilling savagery by folks who claim to speak and act on their behalf? There are bound to be repercussions.

Of course, the tiny lunatic fringe that is IS and groups of its ilk do not and cannot represent a great faith with 1.6 billion followers and a long and proud history of tolerance. Persecuted minorities like the Jews found refuge in Islamic Spain and Turkey when they were being hunted like animals all across Europe.

As US talk show host Dean Obeidallah put it, “ISIS is about as Islamic as the Klu Klux Klan, the white supremacist, violent group, is Christian. They just use religion; their real agenda is political.”

Obama himself insisted, in an interview with Fareed Zakaria last week, that “99.9% of Muslims reject the terrorists’ understanding of Islam.” Top Islamic scholars have repeatedly rejected and condemned the extremist violence in strongest terms. In September, more than 120 Islamic scholars and clerics wrote a letter to IS denouncing it and its invoking of Islam to justify its shameful actions.

But clearly Muslims have to do more to confront the mindset and conditions that give birth to such nihilist extremism on the one hand and present the real face of Islam before the world on the other. We have to speak out more often and more forcefully and effectively to reject the barbarity, death and destruction being visited on the world in our name. How can anyone kill in the name of a faith that came as a blessing for the whole of mankind and preaches oneness of humanity? It’s the ultimate calumny and injustice to a religion that literally means ‘peace and salvation.’

For their part, Western societies need to do their bit to check the growing vilification of Muslims and other minorities in their midst. All said and done, it is not religion or dogma but historical injustices and double standards that lie at the heart of this conflict. Extremism and violence are born and thrive in the soil of injustice and oppression. Unless these are addressed, all grand solutions and coalitions will fail.

The post North Carolina Killings Not An Act Of Terror? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Last year, millions of mom and pop retailers across the country collected sales tax for state and local governments, as required under the law. Amazon, one of the largest retailers in the world, did not collect the same taxes in many states. The trick is that Amazon sells over the Internet and does not have a physical presence in many states. It is therefore able to claim an exemption from this legal obligation. The amount of the tax in most states is comparable to the profit margin in the retail sector.

This massive implicit subsidy for Amazon should infuriate supporters of the free market everywhere, even if it might have many conservatives applauding. After all, it is difficult to find a rationale for government subsidies to one of the largest corporations in the world to the detriment of local family-owned businesses.

This is the situation that we face with Uber and other “sharing economy” companies. Uber is using the Internet to disrupt the taxi market. In most cities this market has been dominated for decades by a small number of well-entrenched incumbents who used their control over the regulatory apparatus to limit competition. The result was higher prices and often bad service.

Uber and other new entrants to this market have already led to a substantial improvement in the quality of taxi service in many cities. In addition to the increased supply of taxis, many incumbents have responded to the challenge by improving service quality in the form of newer cars and the adoption of Internet apps. This is good news.

However, the incumbent cab companies are still largely subject to a set of regulations that Uber is trying to evade. Many of these regulations serve legitimate public purposes, even if they may not be the best way to achieve the goal intended.

For example, taxis are required to undergo regular safety and brake checks. This is both expensive and time-consuming. (In many cities the checks require going to understaffed city facilities.) It is certainly arguable that the safety requirements could be relaxed in many cases (e.g. do brand new cars need to be inspected every year?), but it is reasonable to have regulations that ensure an out-of-town traveler who gets a cab at the airport at 2:00 in the morning will find it has working brakes. Of course, this traveler could research on the web, and seek out a cab company that has a record of high standards, but many people may not want to go through this effort after a long day of traveling.

Similarly, drivers for incumbent cab companies typically have to get special chauffer licenses and also go through a criminal background check. The former ensures driver quality and the latter guarantees the safety of a passenger. Again, these requirements both involve time and money. Uber has largely avoided such requirements, although it is now doing some screening of drivers in some cities.

Incumbent taxi services also typically have to carry substantial insurance policies to protect passengers who are involved in accidents. Many Uber drivers are effectively uninsured when they are working because standard policies do not cover commercial driving. Here too, Uber is moving to provide insurance to passengers and drivers.

In addition to this set of regulations, incumbent taxi cab companies generally face some requirement to serve the handicapped. This usually means having a minimum number of handicap accessible vehicles. There is also an issue of serving cash-paying customers. Uber is designed as a credit card only service. Those without credit cards would not be able to use Uber. This would effectively exclude a substantial portion of the population from using taxis, if Uber came to dominate the industry. Since lower income people disproportionately do not have credit cards, this could leave many poor people unable to make trips to the doctor or other necessary travel.

There are also labor market regulations that often apply to incumbent taxi services. They are required to pay for workers’ compensation if a driver is injured on the cab. They also have to pay towards unemployment insurance if a worker loses their job. And they have to meet minimum wage and other labor standards. (This is not always the case with incumbent taxi services, since many treat drivers as independent contractors.)

In all of these cases, regulations serve a public purpose. It may not be necessary to maintain the same scope of regulation in all cases, and it certainly is not necessary to maintain the regulations in their current form, but it does not make sense to have one set of rules that apply to incumbent taxi services and a whole different set that applies to Uber. The appropriate policy going forward should be to modernize the regulatory structure and establish rules that apply equally to Uber and incumbent taxi services.

This should not in principle be a difficult task, but it requires some good faith from the parties involved. Amazon argued for years that it should not be required to collect sales tax because its programmers were not smart enough to keep track of the tax rates in different states. We saw similar silliness from Uber when it shared its data with Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist and former head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Krueger used the data to analyze the gross pay of Uber drivers and compare it to the government data on the net pay of drivers for traditional cab companies. However, he was not able to go beyond this apples-to-oranges comparison because Uber chose not to share its data on miles driven. Without some data on miles driven it is not possible to produce estimates of drivers’ costs, and thereby convert gross revenue into actual earnings.

Presumably Uber didn’t make this data available to Professor Krueger because it knew that it would lead to earnings numbers that looked bad compared to those of drivers of traditional cabs. We can only speculate on this question, since Uber is sitting on the data.

But if we scrap the “sharing” nonsense, the basic story is relatively straightforward. We need rules that ensure that cabs are basically safe, that drivers are competent, and without a recent history as dangerous felons. We need to make sure that people with physical handicaps can count on getting taxi service in a timely manner and that we have a system in place so that people without credit cards have access to cab service.

We also need to make sure that both the drivers and passengers are insured in the event of an accident. This includes worker compensation for drivers. In addition, drivers should be able to bargain collectively if they choose, if not as a union covered by the National Labor Relations Act, then as some other entity that would serve the same purpose.

And minimum wage and overtime laws should apply to taxi services. This means that drivers should be assured of earning at least the minimum wage net of expenses and one and a half times the minimum if they work more than a 40-hour week. If it is too complicated for Uber to make such calculations then they will be replaced by firms with more numerate management.

Finally, it is reasonable to have an overall limit on the number of cabs in a city. When congestion and pollution are factored in, the optimal wait time for a cab is not zero. It is likely the case that many cities have set these limits too low in the past, but that does not mean that no limits are the best policy.

Uber deserves credit for ending the dominance of the taxi cartels and modernizing the industry. That’s worth a positive newspaper column. The idea that Uber should be able to operate by its own rules may be the dream of its top executives and holders of Uber stock, but it is not sound public policy.

This article originally appeared in Cato Unbound and is reprinted with permission.

The post How Uber Disrupts The Taxi Market – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Ash Carter, a former deputy defense secretary who today received a 93-5 affirmative vote by the U.S. Senate to succeed Chuck Hagel as defense secretary, received a welcome back and praise from President Barack Obama.

“Ash Carter served as a key leader of our national security team in the first years of my presidency, and with his overwhelming bipartisan confirmation by the Senate today, I’m proud to welcome him back as our next secretary of defense,” Obama said in a White House statement issued today. “With his decades of experience, Ash will help keep our military strong as we continue the fight against terrorist networks, modernize our alliances, and invest in new capabilities to keep our armed forces prepared for long-term threats.”

As secretary of defense, the president continued, “Ash will play a central role in our work with Congress to find a more responsible approach to defense spending that makes the department more efficient, preserves military readiness, and keeps faith with our men and women in uniform and their families.

“We have the strongest military in the history of the world,” Obama added, “and with Secretary Carter at the Pentagon and our troops serving bravely around the world, we’re going to keep it that way.”

Hagel will remain in office as defense secretary until Carter is sworn in.

The post Carter ‘Will Help Keep Our Military Strong,’ Obama Says appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Mitchell Orenstein*

As Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his military into Ukraine in 2014, people were quick to compare him to Adolph Hitler, whose annexation of Austria and invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland set off World War II. Hillary Clinton commented in March 2014 that if Putin’s justification for taking Crimea to protect ethnic Russians sounded familiar, it was because, “it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s. . . . Germans by ancestry were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, [and] Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people.” Since that time Ukrainian Euromaidan supporters have published dramatic images of Putin as “Putler,” mashups that have trended wildly on social media and become a staple of public protests.

Yet, Putin’s approach to world affairs is more similar to that of another Austrian, Prince Klemens von Metternich. Like Metternich, the dominant force in post-Napoleonic era diplomacy, Putin is a conservative imperialist who seeks to create a balance or “concert” between the great powers in Europe, while suppressing liberal democratic politics and the aspirations of small nations. By comparing Putin’s worldview with that of Metternich, one can gain more insight into Putin’s approach to world affairs than can be understood from much contemporary debate. Putin has indeed returned to 19th century diplomacy in 21st century Europe, so it makes sense to brush up on the major figures of that time and how their strategies played out. No one was more influential in shaping European diplomacy in the 19th century than the great man of Austria, Prince Klemens von Metternich.

Putin’s career, like Metternich’s, was defined by the trauma of democratic revolution. Metternich, the scion of a noble diplomatic family, had just begun university in Strasbourg, France when the French revolution broke out in 1789. In 1790, he was unable to return to university and forced to transfer. Metternich sympathized greatly with the sufferings of the nobility in France. Like the great British conservative Edmund Burke, Metternich saw the revolution as a calamity. He sought throughout his career to restore the grandeur of monarchical Europe over the challenges posed to it by radical democracy, liberal nationalism, and constitutional government.

Similarly, Putin’s worldview was shaped by his early career as KGB officer in Dresden, East Germany, where he experienced the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disruption caused by democratic revolutions in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. While Putin rose to power in the Yeltsin years, he came to believe in the restoration of the former empire and to oppose the disruption caused by democracy. Putin has called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe in history and he regards democracy in Russia as an existential threat. He supports conservative authoritarian governments of the smaller states, including Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, and refuses to abide by the rule of law. He seeks to restore the grandeur of Russia.

In Metternich’s time, the democratic turmoil of the French revolution, with its attacks on the church and nobility, were followed by the Napoleonic invasions, which sought to expand French domination of Europe under the guise of spreading democracy. As Austrian ambassador to France, Metternich tried to persuade Napoleon to leave off invading Austria, and when unsuccessful, helped to organize the triple and then quadruple alliance that ultimately stopped Napoleon and forced him into exile. One of Metternich’s key allies was Tsar Alexander I of Russia, along with Prussia and the United Kingdom.

Putin tends to see the expansion of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as Napoleonic in their ambitions. Democracy is not peaceful, in this view, but wildly messianic and territorially expansionist. This time, it is not the multi-national armies of Napoleon threatening to cross the Berezin River, but the multi-national European Union and NATO – backed by the US – that promise to convert Russia and its allies to democracy at the barrel of a gun. This explains why Russia’s defense strategy emphasizes threats emanating from the West.

Metternich’s greatest achievement, after helping to defeat Napoleon, was to create and manage a balance of power system in Europe for more than 30 years. In 1806, he was appointed Austrian Foreign Minister (he formally assumed the office only in 1809) and in 1821 Chancellor. He dominated Austrian statecraft for a generation. He organized the Congress of Vienna that established a post-Napoleonic order in Europe that lasted from 1815 to 1848. The Congress of Europe, as it became known, rested on a series of accords between the monarchical rulers of Europe’s great empires and states, mainly Russia, Prussia, Austria, the United Kingdom, and France.

Managing Europe’s complex affairs through frequent meetings, the Congress managed to ensure relative peace by restraining the empires’ territorial ambitions and combining to tamp down democratic and national aspirations, such as the rise of Greek nationalism, agitation for an independent Poland, or Italian self-rule. Some have lauded the Congress of Europe for protecting the peace in Europe for more than 30 years. Others have criticized it for stifling growing demands for democracy and national autonomy that erupted across Europe throughout this period, culminating in the liberal revolutions of 1848, when Metternich, the architect of the Congress system, was forced to resign.

Vladimir Putin is only an aspirant Metternich, in this sense. While he shares Metternich’s view of the need for a balance of power system in Europe, and in November unveiled a monument to Alexander I, the Russian Tsar who worked with Metternich to form the Congress of Europe, Putin has been unable to impose a similar system himself. Although, it must be said that this has not stopped him from trying. It was notable that throughout the Ukraine crisis, Putin disparaged the national aspirations of the Ukrainian people and opposed direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. He sought instead to resolve the conflict through great power talks with Germany, France, the UK, and the US. This, he believes, is how peace can and should be achieved. The rest of Europe, which respects national self-determination, finds Putin’s thinking archaic. Yet, since 2008, Russia has explicitly advocated for a “new security architecture” in Europe based on a version of Metternich’s balance of power system.

Russian proposals for a balance of power security architecture in Europe arose suddenly in 2008. In June 2008, then President Dmitry Medvedev made a set of proposals for a new European security architecture that surprised and confused the West. Medvedev advocated doing away with NATO (and all other security alliances) and replacing them with a principled legal agreement to resolve all conflicts peacefully while respecting each country’s security interests. These proposals were met with confusion in the West, which failed to understand how such an arrangement would actually work, viewed the lack of an institutional structure as bewildering, and opposed the “spheres of influence” thinking that seemed to lay behind it. Medvedev’s proposals were rejected out of hand. They never got a serious hearing. However, they have resurfaced periodically as a concept in Russian track two diplomacy, most recently in Foreign Affairs where two independent Russian security experts mooted many of the same ideas in an article on what it would take to resolve the Ukraine crisis peacefully. The authors proposed a “grand bargain” in which NATO would be dissolved, replaced by a grand alliance with Russia and other Northern hemisphere powers.

Putin wants a new balance of power system in Europe for two reasons: first because he feels Russia is fundamentally excluded from the current security architecture of Europe, built on NATO and the EU, and second, because he believes Russia could play a major role in a new system, just as Metternich used the Congress of Europe to enhance Austria’s power.

Putin rightly feels that Russia is excluded from the current European security system based on NATO and the EU. His hatred of NATO is well-known. He believes that NATO is an anti-Russian organization that has outlived its purpose. His hostility to the European Union is less well understood. For most in the West, the European Union is seen as the other lynchpin of peace and security in Europe. The EU has become the dominant political organization in Europe by forcing its members to resolve conflicts peacefully among themselves, to govern themselves democratically, and to respect the opinions of all member states, large or small.

Yet, while most European leaders have come to see the EU as indispensable, from Putin’s point of view, the European Union is deeply flawed because it excludes Russia. Russia, under Putin, can never become as democratic as necessary to become a full member of the European Union – or of NATO. It will always, therefore, have second-class status. Russia’s perspective will never be fully respected on a continent governed by the EU. Therefore, the EU must go.

This explains why Putin seeks to undermine European unity at every turn and seeks to use Russia’s relations with middle and weaker powers such as Italy, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey against European Union policy. It explains why Putin supports anti-democratic and anti-EU politicians such as Hungary’s Victor Orban in Hungary or France’s Marine LePen, as well as funding a wide variety of anti-EU far-right parties. He wishes to weaken the EU, make it unable to fulfill its mission of peace and democracy, and ultimately replace it with a balance of power system.

Putin aspires to reshape Europe, as Metternich did after the Napoleonic wars, into a balance of power system in which Russia is not only included, but a central player that helps to construct the rules of the game. When Putin proposes a “new security architecture,” he is actually recommending himself as the Metternich of a new Europe. His ideal is a Congress Europe in which great powers meet to resolve security issues on the continent while respecting and containing one another’s spheres of influence. Putin is happiest when dealing directly with those whom he regards as the real leaders of Europe, the heads of the other great powers on the continent, Europe’s big three. If we look at Putin as an aspirant Metternich, a lot of his seemingly hard to understand foreign policy behavior comes into clear view.

Putin’s audacity has proven difficult for Western leaders to understand, but here it also makes sense to point to a few similarities between Putin’s character and that of Metternich. Putin, like Metternich, considers himself a genius of international affairs and tends to regard most other leaders with contempt. They simply do not meet his standards of greatness. Putin’s arrogance has been expressed, most recently, by his showing up late to important international meetings, such as his recent meeting in Milan with Angela Merkel or his early departure from the G20 summit in Brisbane. Famously conceited, Metternich once stated, “I cannot help telling myself twenty times a day, ‘O Lord! How right I am and how wrong they are.'” One can imagine President Putin having similar sentiments. His body language in conversations with US President Barack Obama indicate a person who cannot bear that he is less powerful than a man he regards as possessing much lower abilities.

While the idea of a new balance of power Europe seems bizarre to many world leaders, who cannot understand why Putin supports 19th statecraft for a 21st century Europe, he does have some European politicians on his side. Marine LePen’s Front Nationale, for instance, has long proposed replacing the Euro-Atlantic security system in Europe with a continental alliance between France, Germany, and Russia. This may be why she has been singled out as the European leader Putin most seeks to cultivate. He has treated Marine LePen’s visits to Moscow with the pomp and circumstance of a state visit. And a Russian bank has agreed to finance LePen’s Presidential election campaign to a tune of 40 million Euros. While many apologists have suggested that the bank was acting independently, no Russian bank gets involved in high politics without the support of the Kremlin. Indeed, the intermediary who helped set up the loan is a parliamentarian from Putin’s party. Opinion polls show LePen is likely to enter the second round of voting in a run-off with one other candidate for President of France.

Marine LePen’s idea of a grand alliance between Russia, France, and Germany is akin to the idea propounded by other European far-right groups of a “Europe of nations” to replace the detested European Union. The far right hates the liberal Brussels bureaucracy, which it portrays as elitist and distant from the average national voter. They recommend replacing Brussels with a much looser alliance of nation states guided by their own national priorities. The basic idea is similar to Metternich’s Congress of Europe. The previous German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder also showed signs of agreeing to a balance of power Europe in which Germany would play a large role through a coalition with Russia. His dealings with Russia’s Gazprom gave the impression that Germany could be bought off and drawn into a special relationship with Russia, ignoring its smaller neighbors. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has also fed Putin’s belief that a balance of power Europe led by great leaders was within his reach.

There are a number of problems, however, with this vision of a “Europe of nations.” In contrast with the European Union, it is far less institutionalized and therefore far more prone to failure. No mechanisms are prescribed for formal working out of policy issues, beyond discussions between great leaders. What if leaders are less than great? What if they differ from one another? Conflict can result, as it did during Metternich’s time. Second, and perhaps more fundamental, every country’s nationalism in Europe is another country’s potential repression. This basic principle can be seen most vividly in Ukraine, where it is fine to talk of a “Europe of nations,” but when it comes down to it, one must decide between Ukraine’s national aspirations and Russia’s. European countries are forced to take sides and the outcome looks a lot like the start of World War I. The idea of a “Europe of nations” is fundamentally unstable. At worst, it marks a direct path to war. At best, it enables the larger, more militarized nations to dominate the small. That is hardly the Europe that most Western leaders want.

Certainly not German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the now acknowledged leader of the European Union, who has cast her and Germany’s lot with the EU. Germany under Merkel has not fallen for Putin’s attempts to detach it from Europe and encourage it to behave as a great power, dividing and conquering the smaller countries in between. Merkel, like most other European leaders, feel deeply that Europe has already found the right model for dealing with common crises on the continent of Europe. It is called the European Union. And, despite the EU’s slow response to the global financial crisis, there are plenty of reasons to think that the EU managed to resolve this crisis, like others, with a high degree of success. Europe has reached its nadir and is on the upswing, while Russia with its dependence on the historically high oil prices of the past post-Iraq decade, is on the way down.

Putin faces fundamental problems in his attempt to create a 19th century balance of power in a 21st century Europe. A study of Metternich’s fall from grace shows why.

Ultimately, Metternich’s lifelong crusade against democratic liberalism and national self-determination in Europe came to naught. He was deposed during the 1848 revolutions in Europe that celebrated the national and constitutional aspirations of numerous states in Europe, such as Hungary, Poland, and a unified Germany – aspirations that had been suppressed under the Europe of empires. Some historians have questioned whether Metternich might have done more to accommodate these national and liberal aspirations within the Austrian empire and thereby prevent the debacle of the First World War. Yet, Metternich remained throughout his life a vigorous proponent of a conservative, imperial Europe dominated by a few great states: Austria, Prussia, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France. He saw the times changing, but was unable to change with the times.

President Putin may prove to be equally anachronistic. The political and economic system he has built in Russia cannot provide an adequate basis for the future of Europe. Russia’s extraordinary oil wealth during the 2000s, a product of the Iraq war and other unusual circumstances, have masked the effects of his corrupt and kleptocratic system of rule. It is hard to see Putin’s rise as a sign of anything but an unintended consequence of the failed pursuit of the war on terror and a global financial crisis that temporarily weakened the West.

The forces of democratic liberalism, national self-determination, and international cooperation remain strong. Neither Putin nor any other world leader has been able to propose an international system that would work better than the liberal internationalism of the West. Metternich’s glorious Congress of Europe is nothing but an anachronism. It was a second-best solution at the time, a way of preventing war in a chaotic Europe at the expense of liberty. It has been surpassed by a European Union that provides peace, liberty, and common prosperity and that few leaders or most people will willingly abandon. Russia cannot be a core member, but its best hope is to undertake the difficult work of economic modernization and the steps towards political liberty that will enable Russia to integrate with the most successful European state system the continent has ever known. Just as France had to give up its Napoleonic territorial ambitions to join the Congress of Europe, Russia will have to give up its grander ambitions to join the European club.

About the author:
*Mitchell A. Orenstein is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Northeastern University in Boston and an affiliate of both the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and the Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies at Harvard University.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

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In the midst of economic crisis and after years of draconian austerity measures, Syriza has made a dramatic leap to power under the gaze of the international media. The rise of Syriza appears to be a backlash against mass unemployment, cuts and privatization; a pendulum swing left away from the coalition. Is Syriza a dangerous populist force gaining ground in the wake of Greek anger and despair?

Upon this backdrop, an article in The Journal of Political Ideologies explores Syriza as a populist force, the realms of populism and repercussions for the Eurozone.

Many linked Syriza’s success to so-called ‘underdog culture’; economically weak and exposed to attack, the Greek nation was perfectly predisposed to populist leadership. Syriza’s pre-election campaigns directly appealed to ‘the people’. Tsipras in his speeches directly addressed them, baiting them against their enemies; the political establishment and the banks. With campaign strap lines such as ‘either us or them: together we can overthrow them’, the Syriza rhetoric is compliant with Laclau’s definition of populism as “an appeal to ‘the people’ against…established structure of power and … dominant ideas and values of the society…revolt…in the name of the people.”

Syriza however rebuffs populist status; ‘populism’ historically synonymous with authoritarian, far-right, racist, politically irresponsible extremists, in Greece and the wider European context. Syriza champions democracy, gender equality, LGBT rights, inclusion, and rejects association with other populists. So should populism be hand in hand with extremism?

Yannis Stavrakakis and Giorgos Katsambekis’ article Left-wing populism in the European periphery: the case of Syriza looks at how Syriza’s radical aims to break lender agreements, overhaul banking, scrap salary cuts and hike big business tax stands accused as recklessness. The Syriza vision is feared to send Greece on an economic and social downward spiral, spreading ripples of political and financial instability to Europe. Syriza seeks the people’s emancipation hence the populist label but mainstream politicians discredit Syriza as a dangerously populist force putting European democracy at risk. Is this a tactic from the political elite to target leftists and regain privilege?

The authors observe that “It is, perhaps, time to take seriously into account the complexity and historical/political variability of populism(s) as well as its progressive democratic potential…seen…in…dynamic emergence of left-wing populism(s) within the context of the European crisis, such as the one articulated by Syriza.”

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Two research groups of Heidelberg astronomers have independently of each other discovered a rare planet. The celestial body, called Kepler-432b, is one of the most dense and massive planets known so far.

The teams, one led by Mauricio Ortiz of the Centre for Astronomy of Heidelberg University (ZAH) and the other by Simona Ciceri of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, report that the planet has six times the mass of Jupiter, but about the same size. The shape and the size of its orbit are also unusual for a planet like Kepler-432b that is revolving around a giant star. In less than 200 million years, this “red giant” will most likely swallow up the planet. The results of this research were published in “Astronomy & Astrophysics”.

“The majority of known planets moving around giant stars have large and circular orbits. With its small and highly elongated orbit, Kepler-432b is a real ‘maverick’ among planets of this type,” says Dr. Davide Gandolfi from the state observatory Königstuhl, which is part of the Centre for Astronomy. Dr. Gandolfi is a member of the research group that discovered the planet. He explains that the star around which Kepler-432b is orbiting has already exhausted the nuclear fuel in its core and is gradually expanding. Its radius is already four times that of our Sun and it will get even larger in the future. As the star is reddish in colour, astronomers call it a “red giant”.

The orbit brings Kepler-432b incredibly close to its host star at some times and much farther away at others, thus creating enormous temperature differences over the course of the planet’s year, which corresponds to 52 Earth days. “During the winter season, the temperature on Kepler-432b is roughly 500 degrees Celsius. In the short summer season, it can increase to nearly 1,000 degrees Celsius,” states astronomer Dr. Sabine Reffert from the state observatory Königstuhl. Kepler-432b was previously identified as a transiting planet candidate by the NASA Kepler satellite mission. From the vantage point of the Earth, a transiting planet passes in front of its host star, periodically dimming the received stellar light.

Both groups of researchers used the 2.2-metre telescope at Calar Alto Observatory in Andalucía, Spain to collect data. The group from the state observatory also observed Kepler-432b with the Nordic Optical Telescope on La Palma (Canary Islands). Thus, they were able to acquire the high-precision measurements needed to determine the planet’s mass. “The discovery of Kepler-432b was possible only thanks to the flexible scheduling of observation time on the telescopes and the outstanding support provided by the technicians and telescope operators on the two sites,” stresses Dr. Gandolfi.

“The days of Kepler-432b are numbered, though,” adds Mauricio Ortiz, a PhD student at Heidelberg University who led one of the two studies of the planet. “In less than 200 million years, Kepler-432b will be swallowed by its continually expanding host star. This might be the reason why we do not find other planets like Kepler-432b – astronomically speaking, their lives are extremely short”.

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Closing the high seas to commercial fishing could be catch-neutral and distribute fisheries income more equitably among the world’s maritime nations, according to research from the University of British Columbia (UBC).

The analysis of fisheries data indicates that if increased spillover of fish stocks from protected international waters were to boost coastal catches by 18 percent, current global catches would be maintained. When the researchers modeled less conservative estimates of stock spillover, catches in coastal waters surpassed current global levels.

“We should use international waters as the world’s fish bank,” said U. Rashid Sumaila, director of the UBC Fisheries Economics Research Unit and lead author of the study. “Restricting fisheries activities to coastal waters is economically and environmentally sensible, particularly as the industry faces diminishing returns.”

The findings appeared  in Scientific Reports, published by Nature Publishing Group and will be presented February 13 at the 2015 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The study also indicates that a high-seas moratorium would improve fisheries income distribution among maritime nations. Currently, 10 high seas fishing nations capture 71 percent of the landed value of catches in international waters.

Under all scenarios considered by the researchers, European Member States, Group of Eight nations, and least developed fishing nations would benefit the most from a closure. Under a catch-neutral scenario, the United States, Guam and the United Kingdom would benefit the most, each with potential increases in landed values of more than $250 million (USD) per year. Canada would see an increase of $125 million (USD) per year.

While closing the high seas would benefit some countries, others stand to lose significant fisheries income. South Korea, Taiwan and Japan would each see a decrease in catch values of at least $ 800 million (USD) per year in a catch-neutral scenario. Countries that sail vessels under flags of convenience would also be hard hit. While this figure is not insignificant, Sumaila points out that the high seas belong to the world and currently only a few countries benefit from the fish resources. Countries fishing in the high seas will have to give something up to achieve higher levels of food security and profits globally.

The authors acknowledge that implementing a high seas ban would be a major undertaking, but argue that the ongoing expansion of human activities into the oceans may soon require major reform to the governance of international waters regardless. Penalties imposed on illegal fishing could offset administrative and operational costs.

Methods

The study examined global fish catch and landed value data to determine how much fish is caught in the high seas and how much is caught in coastal waters (nations’ 200-mile exclusive economic zones). The researchers then used models to compare likely increases in coastal catches driven by increased biomass spillover from protected areas and losses from the closure of high seas fisheries.

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It’s known that dogs can discriminate human faces on pictures, as was demonstrated by Ludwig Huber and colleagues at the Messerli Research Institute in 2013.

But are dogs also able to discriminate human emotional expressions? To date, no study could answer this question convincingly.

Now the answer to that question appears to be a resounding, “yes.”

Dogs discriminate human emotions on a touchscreen

Corsin Müller and Ludwig Huber from the Messerli Research Institute investigated this skill together with colleagues at the Clever Dog Lab at the Vetmeduni Vienna. They presented photos of happy and angry women’s faces side by side on a touchscreen to 20 dogs.

During the training phase, dogs from one group were trained to touch images of happy faces. The other group was rewarded for choosing angry faces.

To exclude the possibility that the animals were making their decisions based on conspicuous differences between the two pictures, such as teeth or frown lines, the researchers split the images horizontally so that during the training phase the dogs saw either only the eye region or only the mouth region.

Most of the dogs learned to differentiate between the happy and angry face halves. They subsequently also managed to identify the mood in novel faces as well as in face halves that they had not seen during the training phase.

Approaching happy faces is easier

Dogs trained to choose the happy faces mastered the task significantly faster than those who had to choose the angry faces. “It seems that dogs dislike approaching angry faces,” study director Ludwig Huber said.

“We believe that dogs draw on their memory during this exercise. They recognize a facial expression which they have already stored,” first author Corsin Müller said. “We suspect that dogs that have no experience with people would perform worse or could not solve the task at all.”

Dogs’ visual abilities are underestimated

Dogs have a much better sense of smell and hearing than humans, but the spatial resolution of their vision is about seven times lower. “It had been unknown that dogs could recognize human emotions in this way. To better understand the development of these skills, we want to perform similar tests also with wolves at the Wolf Science Center,” Huber said.

As part of the WWTF project “Like me”, the team led by Ludwig Huber has spent the past three years investigating whether dogs are able to understand the emotions of conspecifics or of people. Project partners at the University of Vienna and the Medical University Vienna are performing similar research on the empathic abilities of people.

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People with back pain who have low expectations of acupuncture before they start a course of treatment will gain less benefit than those people who believe it will work, according to new research from the University of Southampton.

Conversely, those people who have a positive view of back pain and who feel in control of their condition experience less back-related disability over the course of acupuncture treatment.

The University of Southampton’s Dr Felicity Bishop, an Arthritis Research UK career development fellow, carried out the research to find out why some people with back pain gain more benefit from acupuncture than others.

The findings of the study, which has been funded by Arthritis Research UK, are published in The Journal of Clinical Pain.

“The analysis showed that psychological factors were consistently associated with back-related disability,” explained Dr Bishop. “People who started out with very low expectations of acupuncture – who thought it probably would not help them – were more likely to report less benefit as treatment went on.

“When individual patients came to see their back pain more positively they went on to experience less back-related disability. In particular, they experienced less disability over the course of treatment when they came to see their back pain as more controllable, when they felt they had better understanding of their back pain, when they felt better able to cope with it, were less emotional about it, and when they felt their back pain was going to have less of an impact on their lives.”

Acupuncture is one of the most established forms of complementary therapy. Recommended in clinical guidelines, there is evidence from clinical trials to show that it can help to reduce pain.

Previous research has established that factors – other than the insertion of needles – play a part in the effectiveness of acupuncture, such as the relationship that the patient develops with the acupuncturist and the patient’s belief about acupuncture.

Dr Bishop recruited 485 people who were being treated by acupuncturists onto the study, and they completed questionnaires before they started treatment, then two weeks, three months and six months later. The questionnaires measured psychological factors, clinical and demographic characteristics and back-related disability.

Dr Bishop added that to improve the effectiveness of treatment, acupuncturists should consider helping patients to think more positively about their back pain as part of their consultations.

Future studies are needed to test whether this could significantly improve patients’ treatment outcomes.

Dr Stephen Simpson, director of research at Arthritis Research UK, said: “This study emphasises the influence of the placebo effect on pain. The process whereby the brain’s processing of different emotions in relation to their treatment can influence outcome is a really important area for research.

“Factors such as the relationship between practitioner and the patient can inform this and we should be able to understand the biological pathways by which this happens. This understanding could lead in the future to better targeting of acupuncture and related therapies in order to maximise patient benefit.”

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Fighting between ethnic Kokang rebels and government forces in northeastern Myanmar’s Shan state has left 47 troops dead and 73 wounded in the past three days, the Myanmar army said in a statement on Thursday.

The latest casualty numbers were revealed as Myanmar’s President Thein Sein met with leaders of armed ethnic groups in the capital Naypyidaw to sign a preliminary peace agreement with four rebel armies amid the country’s Feb. 12 Union Day celebrations.

The army said it had imposed martial law in Laukkai, the capital of the Kokang region in the northern part of Shan state near Myanmar’s river border with China. Fighting erupted Monday between government forces and rebel troops, known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA).

The army statement said the casualties included five officers and 42 of “other ranks” killed, and 11 officers and 62 other troops wounded, including a lieutenant colonel. No casualty figures were given for the MNDAA or civilians.

The army said it had engaged in 13 clashes with “renegades” since Feb. 9, and called up heavy artillery and air support from helicopter gunships in five of the battles.

More than 100 refugees had fled villages in the combat zone and taken shelter at Mansu monastery in Lashio, the monastery’s abbot told RFA’s Burmese Service.

The Irrawaddy online newspaper reported on Wednesday that thousands of residents of Kokang had fled into neighboring China’s Yunnan province to escape fighting.

Local Myanmar media reports earlier this week said the MNDAA and allied rebel groups were fighting to retake the Kokang self-administered zone, which the MNDAA had controlled until 2009.

The MNDAA was formerly part of a China-backed guerrilla force called the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), and became the first of about a dozen factions to sign a bilateral cease-fire agreement with the government after the group broke apart in 1989.

However, the agreement faltered in 2009 when armed groups came under pressure to transform into a paramilitary Border Guard Force under the control of Myanmar’s military—a move the MNDAA resisted.

In December, seven soldiers from Myanmar’s military were killed and 20 others wounded in an attack by the MNDAA on an army outpost in Shan state around 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Chinese border.

Union Day agreement

The latest casualty numbers were revealed as Myanmar’s President Thein Sein met with leaders of armed ethnic groups in the capital Naypyidaw to sign a preliminary peace agreement with four rebel armies amid the country’s Feb. 12 Union Day celebrations.

The casualties in Shan state, the greatest death toll since Thein Sein took office in 2010, put a damper on government efforts to sign a nationwide cease-fire agreement with armed ethnic groups on Myanmar’s 68th Union Day, which marks a 1947 deal ahead of independence from British colonial rule that provided autonomy for major ethnic minority areas in exchange for remaining part of the country.

Thein Sein met with around a dozen armed ethnic groups for hours during a Union Day banquet Thursday in the capital, but was able to win a commitment to work towards peace from just four rebel groups: the Karen National Union (KNU), the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA), the KNU-KNLA Peace Council and the Southern Shan State RCSS-SSA.

Under the agreement, according to results from political dialogue which would follow any nationwide cease-fire, the government and its opponents will build a union based on democracy and a federal system which includes national equality, justice, and autonomy.

They also agreed to sign a nationwide cease-fire agreement “as soon as possible,” to be followed by political discussions focusing on giving greater representation to ethnic groups as Myanmar transitions into a democracy following nearly five decades of military rule.

Thein Sein called the pledge—which was also signed by speaker of the lower house of parliament Shwe Mann, upper house speaker Khin Aung Myint, and representatives of the military—“an important milestone” for the country’s peace process, despite nine of the attending rebel groups refusing to take part.

KNU chairman Mutu Say Poe told RFA he signed Thursday’s agreement because he wanted to “forge ahead” with the nation’s peace process.

Senior advisor for the government-affiliated Myanmar Peace Center Hla Maung Shwe, who took part in the signing event, called the pact “a promise,” rather than a treaty.

“This is the beginning of the political dialogue. We can say it’s a ‘pre-political dialogue,’” he told RFA.

“I understand that today we made a promise so that we can all march toward a federalism that is truly peaceful and pleasant. This is not an agreement or treaty. Therefore, in legal terms, it is ‘non-binding.’ It is a promise.”

Non-participants

Representatives of armed ethnic groups which did not sign the agreement said they had been given no advance warning and felt they could not proceed without first discussing the proposal internally.

“It’s not that we won’t sign this agreement—we agree to it—but all of our ethnic brothers, including those who have misunderstandings, should participate in signing,” Khun Myint Tun, chairman of the Pa-Oh National Liberation Organization (PNLO), told RFA.

“Whether developing a roadmap for the country or developing policy, I don’t want that we, on the one hand, are fighting [against the government], while others are in agreement. I want a policy where no one is arguing, but everyone is acting in unison,” he said.

Aung Myint, a spokesperson for the United Wa State Army (UWSA), which also attended the meeting but did not sign, said that he would have to present the proposal to his group before proceeding.

“The invitation simply asked for us to attend a Union Day event—nothing else was mentioned, so we don’t have a decision from our central committee,” he said.

“We will have to present it to the central committee first.”

Representatives from the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) or MNDAA were absent from the celebrations, as was another rebel group known as the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP).

The Burmese government has reached bilateral ceasefire agreements with more than a dozen armed groups since 2011, with the notable exception of the TNLA, the KIO and the MNDAA, which was involved in clashes with the army this week.

Ongoing talks

Myanmar’s government says signing a nationwide cease-fire agreement is central to the success of reform and development in the nation, which saw Thein Sein’s nominally civilian government take power from the former junta following elections in 2010.

Last September, the Nationwide Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT), which represents more than a dozen rebel groups, and the government’s Union Peace Working Committee (UPWC) failed to reach a nationwide cease-fire agreement after five days of talks.

The meetings ended following disagreements over military issues and a format for talks on providing greater power to ethnic states, although they agreed in principle to a new draft accord.

Sporadic attacks by armed ethnic groups and government forces in various hotspots around the country have also prevented significant progress in the ongoing talks between government and rebel negotiators.

Myanmar’s ethnic groups have been seeking a federal system since the former British colony known as Burma gained independence after World War II, but the country’s former military rulers have resisted their efforts because they equate local autonomy with separatism.

Reported by Myo Thant Khine and Kyaw Htun Naing for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane and Than Than Win. Written in English by Paul Eckert and Joshua Lipes.

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IRGC Commander Qassem Soleymani, in a rare official statement, says ISIS and other “terrorist” groups in Syria are “approaching their end.”

IRNA reports that Soleymani, the head of the Qods forces, the IRGC’s extraterritorial operations, said on Thursday February 12: “In view of the heavy defeats that Daesh (ISIS) and other terrorist groups have faced in Iraq and Syria, I am certain they are approaching their end.”

ISIS forces have recently faced serious defeats from protectors of the City of Kobani on the Syrian border and the villages surrounding it and have finally retreated from the region. The battle lasted over four months.

Soleymani stated that the very existence of such groups as Daesh (ISIS) is “a tactic used by the World Arrogance to defile the face of Islam and create internal strife and war among Muslims.”

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By Anakhanim Hidayatova

The implementation of the second stage of developing the Azerbaijani gas condensate Shah Deniz-2 field was mainly discussed during the first meeting of the Advisory Council of the Southern Gas Corridor project, held in Baku Feb. 12, Georgian Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze told Trend Feb. 12.

“TANAP and TAP projects were discussed,” the minister said. “In general, we talked about the problems that may arise during the Southern Gas Corridor implementation. Georgia has promised that it is ready to resolve any issues that may arise during the project implementation in the country.”

The Southern Gas Corridor envisages the delivery of gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas condensate field to Europe.

A final investment decision was made on Dec.17, 2013 on the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz offshore gas and condensate field’s development. The gas produced at this field will first go to the European market (10 billion cubic meters), while six billion cubic meters of gas will be annually delivered to Turkey.

The contract for development of the Shah Deniz offshore field was signed on June 4, 1996. The field’s proven reserve is equal to 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas and 240 million metric tons of condensate.

As part of the second stage of the field’s development, gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus gas pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian (TANAP) and Trans-Adriatic (TAP) gas pipelines.

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By Peter Certo*

At long last, the Obama administration has submitted a draft resolution to Congress that would authorize the ongoing U.S.-led military intervention against the Islamic State, or ISIS.

The effort comes more than six months after the U.S. began bombing targets in Iraq and Syria. Since then, some 3,000 U.S. troops have been ordered to Iraq, and coalition air forces have carried out over 2,000 bombing runs on both sides of the border.

Better late than never? Maybe not.

The language proposed by the White House would authorize the president to deploy the U.S. military against the Islamic State and “associated persons or forces” for a period of three years, at which point the authorization would have to be renewed.

In an attempt to reassure members of Congress wary of signing off on another full-scale war in the Middle East, the authorization would supposedly prohibit the use of American soldiers in “enduring offensive ground combat operations.” It would also repeal the authorization that President George W. Bush used to invade Iraq back in 2002.

The New York Times describes the draft authorization as “a compromise to ease concerns of members in both noninterventionist and interventionist camps: those who believe the use of ground forces should be explicitly forbidden, and those who do not want to hamstring the commander in chief.”

As an ardent supporter of “hamstringing the commander in chief” in this particular case, let me count the ways that my concerns have not been eased by this resolution.

1. Its vague wording will almost certainly be abused.

For one thing, the administration has couched its limitations on the use of ground forces in some curiously porous language.

How long is an “enduring” engagement, for example? A week? A year? The full three years of the authorization and beyond?

And what’s an “offensive” operation if not one that involves invading another country? The resolution’s introduction claims outright that U.S. strikes against ISIS are justified by America’s “inherent right of individual and collective self-defense.” If Obama considers the whole war “inherently defensive,” does the proscription against “offensive” operations even apply?

And what counts as “combat”? In his last State of the Union address, Obama proclaimed that “our combat mission in Afghanistan is over.” But only two months earlier, he’d quietly extended the mission of nearly 10,000 U.S. troops in the country for at least another year. So the word seems meaningless.

In short, the limitation on ground troops is no limitation at all. “What they have in mind,” said California Democrat Adam Schiff, “is still fairly broad and subject to such wide interpretation that it could be used in almost any context.”

Any context? Yep. Because it’s not just the ISIS heartland we’re talking about.

2. It would authorize war anywhere on the planet.

For the past six months, we’ve been dropping bombs on Iraq and Syria. But the draft resolution doesn’t limit the authorization to those two countries. Indeed, the text makes no mention of any geographic limitations at all.

That could set the United States up for war in a huge swath of the Middle East. Immediate targets would likely include Jordan or Lebanon, where ISIS forces have hovered on the periphery and occasionally launched cross-border incursions. But it could also rope in countries like Libya or Yemen, where ISIS knockoff groups that don’t necessarily have any connection to the fighters in Iraq and Syria have set up shop.

This is no theoretical concern. The Obama administration has used Congress’ post-9/11 war authorization — which specifically targeted only the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and their patrons and supporters — to target a broad array of nominally “associated forces” in a stretch of the globe reaching from Somalia to the Philippines.

In fact, the administration has used the very same 2001 resolution to justify its current intervention in Iraq and Syria — the very war this new resolution is supposed to be authorizing.

How does the new resolution handle that?

3. It leaves the post-9/11 “endless war” authorization in place.

Yep. That means that even if Congress rejects his ISIS resolution, Obama could still claim the authority to bomb Iraq and Syria (not to mention Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Libya, and beyond) based on the older law.

It also means that if Congress does vote for the war but refuses to reauthorize it three years from now, some future president could fall back on the prior resolution as well.

Obama is explicit about this point. In his accompanying letter to Congress, the president claims that “existing statutes provide me with the authority I need to take these actions” against ISIS.

Yes, you read that right: Obama claims he doesn’t even need the authority he’s writing to Congress to request. And he’s saying so in the very letter in which he requests it.

So what does that say about this authorization?

4. It’s a charade.

Obama says that the war resolution is necessary to “show the world we are united in our resolve to counter the threat posed by” ISIS. Secretary of State John Kerry added in a statement that an authorization would send “a clear and powerful signal to the American people, to our allies, and to our enemies.”

But as any kid who’s taken middle school civics could tell you, the point of a war resolution is not to “show the world” anything, or “send a signal” to anyone.

The point is to encourage an open debate about how the United States behaves in the world and what acts of violence are committed in our name. Most importantly, it’s supposed to give the people’s representatives (such as they are) a chance to say no. Without that, it’s little more than an imperial farce.

Which is a shame. Because an empty shadow play about the scope of the latest war leaves out one crucial perspective…

5. War is not going to stop the spread of ISIS.

ISIS has flourished almost entirely because of political breakdown on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border. That breakdown has been driven by a mess of factors — local sectarian tensions and a brutal civil war in Syria, assuredly, but also the catastrophic U.S. invasion of Iraq, ongoing U.S. support for a sectarian government in Baghdad that has deeply alienated millions of Sunnis, and helter-skelter funding for a variety of Syrian rebel groups by Washington and its allies.

Military intervention fixes precisely none of these problems, and indeed it repeats many of the same calamitous errors that helped to create them. A better strategy might focus on humanitarian assistance, strictly conditioned aid, and renewed diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire and power-sharing agreement in Syria, equal rights for minority populations in Iraq, and a regional arms embargo among the foreign powers fueling the conflict from all sides.

But as Sarah Lazare writes for Foreign Policy In Focus, saying yes to any of those things requires saying no to war. That means not just rejecting the ISIS authorization the administration wants now, but also the 2001 law it’s used to justify the war so far.

If you feel similarly, I’d encourage you to write your member of Congress immediately and let them hear it: No more rubber stamps. No more shadow play.

*Peter Certo is the editor of Foreign Policy In Focus.

The post Five Reasons Congress Should Reject Obama’s ISIS War – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Timothy Keen and Paul Gioia*

“The issue of Guantanamo is not on the table”, testified the U.S. State Department official leading negotiations with Cuba, Roberta Jacobson, in an upfront, and obstinate message meant to be heard all the way in Havana at a House of Representatives congressional hearing. [1]

A long-awaited revival of U.S.-Cuban relations following the Obama Administration’s gradual easing of the half-century embargo against Cuba has kick-started a modest dialogue surrounding the normalization of economic relations between the two countries. While it is certainly an impediment to an agenda on any U.S.-Cuban relations, the economic embargo is not the only factor that inhibits a diplomatic rapprochement. Another long-standing obstacle in the contentious relationship between Washington and Havana that fuels the simmering indignation among Cuban authorities is the continued U.S. occupation of Guantanamo.

Addressing a boisterous crowd of supporters on the anniversary of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, first Vice-president José Ramón Machado Ventura exclaimed: “We will continue to fight such a flagrant violation…Never, under any circumstance, will we stop trying to recover that piece of ground”. [2] The longstanding impasse on this issue signifies a clear obstruction to the normalization of relations. But with statements coming from Congress expressing no interest whatsoever in resolving the issue of the base, can the United States truly advocate for the reestablishment of relations with Cuba while simultaneously ignoring a territorial dispute that predates the economic embargo and remains of monumental importance?

History of Guantanamo Bay: The Cuban Revolution Still Matters

The U.S. Guantanamo naval base in Cuba presents a stark paradox as the U.S.’s oldest overseas naval base, and also the only U.S. naval facility in a country with which the U.S. has no formal diplomatic relations.[3] The naval base in Cuba represents a broader struggle between the remnants of a former Cuban colonialist government that was entirely submissive to Washington, and a post-revolutionary Castro government that refuses to let the United States interfere in silence as the rest of the Cuban political sphere boils in dissent.

In fact, the history of the Guantanamo base echoes the quarrel between the rising American empire and the withering away of the Spanish Empire. In an effort to restrict Spanish ambitions in Cuba, Washington seized official control at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898.[4] From then on, there was a series of conditional amendments and treaties that confirmed the American presence in the region. Washington issued the notorious Platt Amendment in 1901, allowing the United States to retain its military presence while claiming to be an advocate of Cuban independence. The core of the agreement reserved the right of the United States to intervene in Cuban affairs and annexed land to the United States.[5] Subsequently, the Treaty of 1909, a lease agreement signed by the United States and Cuba, authorized the use of Guantanamo for naval and coaling stations under the presumption that a U.S. military presence could maintain stability in the region and deter further Spanish incursion.

Similar to many countries in the Western Hemisphere, the U.S. government claimed that stepping on the sovereignty of its neighbors to the South was justified in order to achieve greater hemispheric stability. This sentiment is highlighted in article VII of the treaty which, “Enables the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defense.”[6]

The conditions issued from the lease agreement were unequivocally tailored in favor of the United States, granting Washington inextricable autonomy in the area. The U.S. openly admits to this stark contradiction in Article III stating:

“While on the one hand the United States recognizes the continuance of the ultimate sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba over the above described areas of land and water, on the other hand the Republic of Cuba consents that during the period of the occupation by the United states of said areas under the terms of this agreement the United states shall exercise complete jurisdiction and control over and within said areas.[7]

Furthermore, a second treaty that was ratified in 1934 allowed for greater autonomy of the U.S. Guantanamo base by canceling the termination date of the lease. This means that, even if the Cuban government unilaterally calls for the return of the Guantanamo territory, they will never be able to cement this policy unless the U.S. is in mutual agreement. Therefore, this arrangement protects U.S. economic interests as well as reserving U.S. rights in the territory.

But once the regime transitioned in Cuba, after Fidel Castro’s successful revolution, Guantanamo was brought to the forefront as another grievance among many against U.S. foreign policy in the region. The territorial dispute, in fact, was an inadvertent impetus that ignited the revolution against U.S. imperial ambitions in Cuba.[8] Castro subsequently called for the territory to be returned to Cuba, cautious of a continued U.S. presence that could serve as a base to spy on Cuban officials and present a pretext for further military incursion. The U.S. responded by prohibiting U.S. personnel stationed in Guantanamo from entering into Cuba, which in turn further segregated the area, fueling isolationist tendencies of the Cold War.

Developments in the territorial battle were stagnant until the Clinton Administration enacted the Helms-Burton Law in 1996, in which it was implied that the U.S. would only return the territory of Guantanamo to Cuba if Havana met its demands of regime change, replacing the Castro government with a politic more akin to the United States.[9]

Thus, with Castro unwilling to comply with such conditionalities, and Washington unwilling to accept the sovereignty of the Cuban government, the issue remained unresolved. This dispute also attracted international visibility due to the U.S. government’s decision to transform the naval base into an extrajudicial detention facility far from U.S. courts in order to freely practice torture on the proclaimed prisoners of the “War on Terror.”[10] It maintained the argument that because it was not on U.S. territory, it had the right to operate the facility under unofficial discretion irrespective of U.S. constitution and law. This contemporary global fixation on the Guantanamo Bay detention center effectively distracts international attention away from the root territorial legal battle between Washington and Havana.

The Cuban Perspective: A Catalyst for U.S. Opposition

Governmental officials not only opposed the U.S. annexation of Guantanamo Bay, but the base also faced opposition from ordinary Cubans. This was greatly emphasized in the protests that ensued following the Platt Amendment arrangement between Havana and Washington in the early 1900s. This stark display of U.S. dominance in the region sparked outrage throughout the nation, further galvanizing support for an alternative to U.S.-led governance. In fact, in December 1933, demonstrators destroyed three trains with government supporters onboard, resulting in the deaths of at least two people.[11] Mainstream opinion amongst Cubans regarding the legality of the U.S. and Guantanamo is that the Cuban revolution, which overthrew the former pro-U.S. Batista government, invalidated any previous agreements or treaties with the United States. Since the Cuban revolution was partly fought to reverse the pro-U.S. stance of the former government, all previous agreements with the U.S. are presumed nullified following the revolution. Because the pre-Castro regime of Fulgencio Batista was regarded as too dictatorial and illegitimate, agreements with the U.S. prior to the revolution are further justified as void. As a matter of fact, Batista was notoriously passive in letting the U.S. continue to exercise jurisdiction over the territory, provoking waves of resentment throughout Cuban society.[12]

However, the U.S. continues to pay the yearly lease of $4,085 USD while the Cuban government discards checks sent from the U.S. in an act of protest and defiance towards the presumed outdated treaty. Given that the United States still sends their checks to the “Treasure General of the Republic”—a pre-revolutionary position that was dismantled after the Castro government took power—the checks are essentially meaningless as addressed to a non-existent institution.[13]

Additionally, the 1977 treaty signed by the Carter Administration to secede official jurisdiction of the Panama Canal to the Panamanians established a precedent of demand for similar action in Guantanamo.[14] The leasing of the Panama Canal occurred around the same time as the leasing of Guantanamo under the Roosevelt Administration, adding chronological legitimacy to the Cuban argument. Pointing to U.S. hypocrisy, some have been left wondering why the Panama Canal lease was nullified and returned to Panama while the Guantanamo lease remains under absolute U.S. authority.[15]

Internationally controversial activities currently occurring in Guantanamo serve as yet another source of legitimacy for the Cuban authorities and their oppositional stance. Because the United States has extended their operations in the territory from a naval base to an extrajudicial detention facility, and has established commercial activities in the base, Cuban authorities hold that the current state of the territory has transcended its primary purpose.[16]

United States Perspective: Is it Still a Lease if Nobody Gets Paid?

The U.S. government believes that due to its continued payment of the lease, it still maintains the right to use the land for military purposes. As previously stated, the Cuban government refuses to accept these checks, and refutes U.S. claims that the acquisition of the land is legitimate. The U.S. contends that the Castro government did in fact cash one of the checks to secure the lease of the land following the revolution. Castro reacted to this claim by explaining that he had merely signed the first lease of the newly formed government by mistake.

Current politicians opposing negotiation with Cuba regarding the naval base, such as Senator Marco Rubio, retain the conviction that “Guantanamo Bay plays an integral part in our ongoing effort to safeguard America, and it is critical that this facility remain open and operating.” His statement conveys the reoccurring sense of U.S. ownership of the territory that is frequently justified by national security concerns.[17]

International Law: An Opportunity for Legal Appeal

The Cuban government claims that the retention of the Guantanamo territory violates international law. In fact, UN Ambassador to Cuba Bruno Rodriguez Parilla appealed to the UN Human Rights Council in May 2013 regarding the illegality of the continued military base on Cuban land, advocating that it should be rightfully returned to Cuban control. [18]This international legal debate is essentially a conflict of interest regarding treaty provisions. Since 1959, Castro’s government has based their argument on article 52, section 2 of the Vienna Conventions on the Laws of Treaties, which states: “a treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations.” [19] Therefore, the original Platt Amendment can be considered as a threat, given that it was an ultimatum, and refusal to sign the document would mean a complete infiltration of the island.

Secondly, the Cuban government could invoke the Rebus Sic Santibus clause of section 3, article 62 which states that a treaty cannot be withdrawn due to a fundamental change of circumstances, unless “the existence of those circumstances constituted an essential basis of the consent of the parties to be bound by the treaty.”xx Because a revolution occurred that altered the previous government, the aforementioned bilateral consent necessary for the validity of the treaty could be considered nullified.

However, article 4 states the “non-retroactivity of the present convention”:

“Without prejudice to the application of any rules set forth in the present Convention to which treaties would be subject under international law independently of the Convention, the Convention applies only to treaties which are concluded by States after the entry into force of the present Convention with regard to such States.”[20]

This means that all the international treaties contracted before the Vienna Convention are not bound by the rules of the Vienna Convention. Therefore, a State could not invoke an article of the Vienna Convention to claim anything regarding preexisting treaties prior to the convention.

Legally speaking, and without reference to the Vienna convention, it is possible to claim that Cuba is no longer tied by the treaty due to the reciprocity principle, an element of international law that does not consider the juridical effect of a treaty applicable until all the contractors respect its rules simultaneously. If a state fails to respect a section of a treaty, the other signatory state may invoke this detail to free itself from any obligation pertaining to the treaty. With this in mind, it is important to note that the 1903 Cuban-American treaty only authorizes the settlement of an American Naval base, and not the construction of a detention camp. Accordingly, the United States is in violation of the international agreement. Even if the latter argument does not hold, it is necessary to emphasize that Cuba does not recognize international law as its highest source of the law.[21]Therefore, an international treaty remains valid so long as Cuba recognizes its application.

Conclusion: Guantanamo Blocks Reestablishment of the U.S.-Cuba Relationship

Following President Obama’s recent initiative to reestablish cordial relations with Cuba, the status of the Guantanamo naval base is likely to be a critical subject in the talks between the two states. White house officials, however, have made it clear that they are not willing to make concessions with Cuba regarding the current status of the military base, explicitly stating that Guantanamo is “not part of the bargain”.[22] Continuing in the footsteps of his predecessors, President Obama remains adamant that the retention of the Guantanamo naval base is integral to U.S. national security with no modicum of shifting rhetoric that suggests a more conciliatory approach. The Obama administration has, however, dedicated time and effort to close the Guantanamo detention facility, which remains a necessary first step in the disengagement process. Barack Obama initially expressed his desire to close Guantanamo in 2008, but has never managed to gather the required support from Republicans in Congress, who routinely block progress on the issue. Furthermore, the legal status of prisoners remains problematic given that very few of the 155 detained have ever been granted a proper trial, creating a legal grey area.[23]

Nonetheless, these efforts must not be misinterpreted as the return of territory to Cuba. This detail presents a dichotomy within the negotiation process. On one hand, Obama’s campaign to soften the economic embargo is a step in the right direction for the peace process; contrarily, failure to recognize the incongruity of the longstanding territorial dispute will only undermine any comprehensive ambitions of reconciliation. Professor Jeffery A. Engel, expert on U.S. diplomatic history at the Southern Methodist University of Dallas, argues the territorial dispute has “been a sore point in the national psyche for the Cubans. In some ways the base is a reminder of Cuba’s broader colonial legacy, which fueled much of the communist revolution to start with.” [24]

While the conventional debate regarding the human rights concerns in Guantanamo Bay is certainly imperative, its larger contextual impact on U.S.-Cuban relations should not be overlooked. Former U.S. Foreign Service Officer Michael Parmly notes that this issue is “intimately related to Cuban nationalism, to Cuban identity, to Cuban self-image, to the present-day Cuba and, most importantly, the Cuba of tomorrow.” With such a deep sentiment for the Cuban sense of independence, the retention of the naval base has inevitably created perpetual rifts that undermine any sort of comprehensive effort to reconcile relations between Washington and Havana. [25] If the Obama administration capitalizes on this opportunity to improve relations by recognizing the rightful return of the territory to Cuba, then perhaps a Cuban government highly skeptical of U.S. motivations could place more trust in the United States.

At a recent summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, President Raul Castro responded to U.S. ambitions of improving bilateral relations stating that “diplomatic rapprochement wouldn’t make any sense” if the Guantanamo naval base issue is not included in the negotiations.[26] When asked about the President’s intentions regarding the base at a White House press-conference following Castro’s statements, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said “the president does believe that the prison at Guantánamo Bay should be closed down. … But the naval base is not something that we believe should be closed.”[27] If proceedings on the gradual lifting of the embargo continue as planned, Washington must inevitably face the road-block that Guantanamo presents. Reevaluating its preconceived territorial claim on Cuban land would demonstrate to the Cuban government that the United States can finally recognize Cuba’s right to self-determination. All in all, the U.S. occupation of the Guantanamo naval base represents an archaic colonial relic that is incongruous with a post-colonial era of independence and sovereignty.[28]

*Timothy Keen and Paul Gioia, Research Associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

References:
[1] Associated Press, “U.S. Won’t Return Guantanamo to Improve ties with Cuba”, The Washington Post, accessed February 9, 2015

[2] Associated Press in Havana, “Cuba President Raul Castro willing to hold no-limits talks with America,” The Guardian, accessed January 27, 2015

[3]“Notes on Guantanamo Bay”, HistoryofCuba, accessed January 27, 2015

[4] “Guantanamo Bay’s Peculiar History”, PBS, accessed January 27, 2015

[5]U.S. Department of State, “The United States, Cuba, and the Platt Amendment, 1901,” Office of the Historian, accessed January 27, 2015

[6]“Agreement Between the United States and Cuba for the Lease of Lands for Coaling and Naval stations; February 23, 1903″, Yale Law School: Lillian Goldman Law Library, accessed January 27, 2015

[7] Michael Froomkin, “Even if US courts Don’t have Jurisdiction Over Guantanamo, There is No Recourse to Cuban Courts”, Discourse.net, accessed January 27, 2015

[8]Martinez, Michael, “In the waters between the Us and Cuba lies a long history”, CNN, accessed January 28, 2015

[9]“Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996″, Title 22, Sections 6021-6091 of the U.S. Code, accessed January 28, 2015

[10] “Report on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment of Prisoners At Guantanamo Bay, Cuba”, Center For Constitutional Rights, accessed January 29, 2015

[11]“Cuban Protest Platt Amendment”, The Free Lance Star, accessed January 28, 2015

[12] Parmly, Michael, “The Guantanamo Naval Base: The United States and Cuba—Dealing with a Historic Anomaly”, accessed February 2, 2015

[13]Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, “Getting the Cuban Perspective of Guantanamo Prison”, National Public Radio (NPR), accessed January 28, 2015

[14] Parmly, Michael, “The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base: The United States and Cuba—Dealing with a historic anomaly”, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, accessed January 29, 2015

[15] Gerts, Bill, “Obama Cuba Initiative Prompts New Fears of Gitmo Naval Base Giveaway”, The Washington Free Beacon, accessed January 28, 2015

[16] “Carter agrees to transfer Panama Canal to Panama”, History, accessed January 28, 2015 ; “Statement by the government of Cuba to the national and international public opinion”, Grandma International, accessed January 28, 2015

[17] Moody, Chris, “Marco Rubio visits Guantanamo Bay in Cuba”, ABC News, accessed January 28, 2015

[18] “General Assembly Demands End to Cuba Blockade for Twenty-Second Year as Speakers Voice Concern over Impact on Third Countries”, United Nations: General Assembly, accessed February 2, 2015

[19] “Vienna Convention on the law of treaties (with annex). Concluded at Vienna on 23 May 1969”, United Nations, accessed February 2, 2015

[20] Ibid.

[21] Carlos Justo Bruzón Viltres y Iraida R. Tamayo Blanco, “Jurisprudence in Cuba: Recognition Within the Sources of Law and Possible Consequences”, Scielo, accessed February 2, 2015

[22] Javier Cordoba and Michael Weissenstein “Raul Castro: US must return Guantanamo for normal relations”, Miami herald, accessed January 29, 2015

[23] “The Prison that Won’t Go Away”, New York Times Editorials, accessed February 2, 2015

[24] Bryant, Jordan, “Here’s What The Cuba Deal Could Mean For The US Base At Guantanamo Bay”, Business Insider, accessed January 28, 2015

[25] Parmly, Michael, “The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base: The United States and Cuba—Dealing with a historic anomaly”, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, accessed January 29, 2015

[26] Javier Cordoba and Michael Weissenstein “Raul Castro: US must return Guantanamo for normal relations”, Miami herald, accessed January 29, 2015

[27] “US Rejects giving Guantanamo back to Cuba”, Democracy Now video 2:55, accessed February 2, 2015

[28] Associated Press in Havana, “US Admits: we’re not sure if new Cuba approach will work”, The Guardian, accessed January 28, 2015 ; Gerts, Bill, “Obama Cuba Initiative Prompts New Fears of Gitmo Naval Base Giveaway”, The Washington Free Beacon, accessed January 28, 2015

The post The Guantanamo Base: A US Colonial Relic Impeding Peace With Cuba – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The passing of Nik Aziz Nik Mat, the late Spiritual Leader of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party PAS, has left an enormous void in the party and the political landscape of Malaysia. Though his religious educational background was traditional and conservative, he was one of the more pragmatic and realistic leaders of the party, who transformed PAS into what it is today.

By Farish A. Noor*

TUAN GURU Nik Aziz Nik Mat was one of the most well-known and familiar political-religious leaders in Malaysia, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that he was known throughout the country. His popularity began to rise from the 1980s when he, along with a number of religious scholars (Ulama) took over the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party PAS after deposing its leader Asri Muda. Thus began the rise of the ‘Ulama faction’ and the re-orientation of the party in the direction of political Islam in step with the global emergence of Islamism from the 1980s to the late 1990s.

In Malaysia today he was also known as the Murshid’ul Am or Spiritual Leader of PAS and the one who was most supportive of the reformist-modernist wing within the party, sometimes referred to as the ‘Erdogan faction’. The question arises as to how and why a traditional and conservative religious scholar such as Nik Aziz could have lent his support to the party’s moderate-reformist wing, who in turn brought the party into the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance) coalition led by Anwar Ibrahim. To understand the rationale behind Nik Aziz’s thinking, it is important to revisit the man’s past and consider his early religious education abroad, and his experiences in Malaysia and overseas.

Product of madrasah education

Nik Aziz first attended madrasahs (religious schools) in Malaysia, but was then sent to India to further his studies. In India, he studied at the Darul Uloom madrasah of Deoband, Uttar Pradesh and it was there that he was first exposed to currents of religio-political thought in the Indian subcontinent. After graduating from Deoband in 1957, he proceeded to Lahore, Pakistan where he studied Tafsir (Quranic exegesis), and then to Egypt where he studied Fiqh (religious jurisprudence) at the well-known al-Azhar university in Cairo.

It has to be noted that in India, Pakistan and Egypt Nik Aziz did not merely study religious subjects but was also exposed to the currents of political Islam of the time: The 1950s and 1960s were the decades where political Islam was on the rise, with prominent Muslim scholar-activists such as Syed Abul Alaa Maudoodi, Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna becoming better known. In the course of several interviews that I had conducted with him, Nik Aziz admitted that he was less inclined towards the more poetic and/or spiritual variants of Islam that were found in India: On one occasion he was invited to perform a religious missionary tour with the spiritually-inclined Tablighi Jama’at movement in India, but declined on the grounds that he found their practice of Islam ‘world-denying and life-negating’.

Nik Aziz also spoke fondly of his time in Egypt, where he professed an admiration for the nationalist project of Gamal Abdel Nasser who had tried to modernise the country and who was seen as one of the leaders of the Pan-Arab nationalist movement. It was during this period – until his return to Malaysia in 1962 – that Nik Aziz developed his own approach to political Islam.

Alliance of Islamists and professionals

Nik Aziz’s educational background was traditional and conservative, and in many of the religious schools he studied, the teaching was based on the standard Dars-I Nizami curriculum that was introduced in the 11th century. Yet notwithstanding his conservative leanings, his personal experience of living in India, Pakistan and Egypt in the 1950s and early 1960s exposed him to contemporary currents of Muslim activism that later inspired and shaped his own political approach.

After taking over the Islamist party PAS in 1982, he, along with other Islamist-activist leaders like Yusof Rawa, began the internal transformation of the party and actively courted the membership and support of young Muslim professionals and technocrats into PAS.

It was from the 1980s that PAS became a truly modern organisation with strong mobilisation and communications capabilities, as a result of the alliance between the Ulama and professionals that Nik Aziz and Yusof Rawa promoted. Nik Aziz understood the need for a new kind of leadership and membership for the party that would allow it to mobilise faster and respond better to both domestic and international challenges.

The younger generation of professionals on the other hand valued the religious knowledge and moral credibility of men like Nik Aziz as they rejected the capital-driven developmental model they saw in Malaysia and other parts of the post-colonial world.

Nik Aziz’s passing thus leaves behind an enormous void in the leadership of PAS, and raises questions about where the party might head in the near future. But in recounting his personal history, it is instructive to note that even conservative-traditionalist scholars like him were able to appreciate the importance of networks and pragmatic coalitions as part of political praxis.

*Farish A. Noor is Associate Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University and author of The Malaysian Islamic Party PAS 1951-2013, Amsterdam University Press, 2014.

The post The Passing Of Nik Aziz Nik Mat: Legacy Of PAS’ Spiritual Leader – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A Pakistan army spokesman said Thursday that soldiers have captured or killed the majority of a 27-member local Taliban cell that orchestrated and carried out the December 16 massacre of 141 people, 132 of them children, at a school in Peshawar.

Maj Gen Asim Bajwa, director-general of the army’s public relation’s department, announced at a media briefing that 12 were arrested and nine killed in clashes with troops in tribal areas.

“Six militants, including Pakistani Taliban head Mullah Fazlullah, who is in Afghanistan, are still at large,” he said.

The attackers, all of them Pakistanis, were trained in border areas before being sent to Peshawar via Jamurd town, he said.

The spokesman said that one of the facilitators was an imam, who sheltered the militants in Peshawar for four days before the assault was launched. The imam was a government employee in the Irrigation Department.

The cell had also been involved in several others terrorism incidents in Peshawar and Rawalpindi, he added.

Maj Gen Bajwa also said Pakistani officials were receiving support from Afghan authorities in the hunt for Mullah Fazlullah.

The repatriation or death of Mullah Fazlullah is Pakistan’s number one demand, he said.

“This point is being raised in every meeting … he’s a recognized terrorist … we are optimistic and hopeful,” he said, adding that since the attack took place cooperation had grown between the two neighboring countries.

The spokesman said 226 troops and more than 2,000 terrorists have been killed in operations in tribal areas since June 2014.

He said most parts of North Waziristan and Khyber Agency have been cleared except a couple of small pockets along the Afghan border.

More than a million people were displaced after the Pakistan military launched the offensive in North Waziristan in June last year.

Maj Gen Bajwa said resettlement of the displaced would begin in March.

The post Pakistan: Govt Says Has Captured, Killed Army School Attackers appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Waleed Abu al-Khair

Egyptian journalist Assayed Abdel Fattah Ali, director of the Cairo Centre for Kurdish Studies, took a field tour at the end of last year to the front lines in Syria and Iraq to meet with Kurdish fighters and their “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) prisoners.

He told Al-Shorfa the ISIL gunmen he met had committed war crimes and lacked any true understanding of Islamic principles and texts.

Al-Shorfa : When did you go on the field tour and where did you go specifically?

Assayed Abdel Fattah Ali: The visit took place from November 14th to December 5th, and included both Iraq and Syria, in particular [the Kurdish region] in Iraq and the provinces of Kirkuk, Diyala, as well as [Syria’s Kurdish region].

The goal of the visit was to reach the battlefronts with ISIL in both countries and attempt to penetrate the borders of the alleged ISIL “state”, and that is [exactly] what happened. I witnessed the battles in which the victorious Kurdish Peshmerga and Iraqi army forces liberated the cities of Jalula and al-Saadiya in Iraq from the ISIL terrorist group. I also visited the front lines in Daquq district in Kirkuk province and the front in south-western Kirkuk near Maktab Khaled and the village of Maryam Bek, which were the nearest fronts in terms of the distance separating the forces of the two sides. There, I stood about 20 metres from ISIL fighters’ positions in the village of Maryam Bek.

In Syria, I visited the front lines of the battlefield in Tel Hamis and Serêkaniyê and met with ISIL prisoners held by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).

Al-Shorfa : Were you apprehensive about being in hot spots with ISIL in order to carry out your press coverage, what with the news about the crimes committed by this group against those who fall into their hands?

Ali : A journalist is not intimidated by danger. He cares only about finding the truth and knowing and presenting the real picture to the public. In our case, this can only be achieved by being present in the theatre of operations and at the battlefronts in the war against ISIL.

Naturally, I did feel fear, but my belief in the mission and the message was greater than any fear, and I had prepared for this mission very methodically and meticulously and received strong and effective assistance and support from the Kurdish side in Iraq and Syria. In addition, many facilities ensured its [the mission’s] success and my safe return.

Al-Shorfa : What struck you during your coverage?

Ali: First, that I was able to get acquainted with a large part of the real picture of things and the on-going war, and second, the high fighting spirit and great faith that characterise the fighters of the Kurdish Peshmerga in Iraq and the YPG forces in Syria.

I also got acquainted with the unique experience of female Kurdish fighters, who amazed the world with their heroism, sacrifices and patriotism in their fierce defence of their land and the cause in which they believe. This is what I observed in the female fighters of the Democratic Union Party.

It can be said there is significant co-operation between the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces on several fronts in the war on ISIL, and I saw that on the Diyala front during a joint military operation between the Iraqi army and the Peshmerga to liberate the cities of al-Saadiya and Jalula, preceded by airstrikes from the Iraqi air force.

Al-Shorfa : What about the ISIL prisoners you met?

Ali : I was determined during my mission to meet fighters and members of the terrorist group, to hear from them and see them up close, instead of quoting [others]. With the help of YPG fighters, I met a number of captured [ISIL] fighters on the Tel Hamis front and conducted press interviews with them, during the course of which I learned about the way they think and what their lives were like inside the group, as well as their assessment of this experience and the crimes they have committed against humanity. The interviews were rife with surprises and new information.

One of those I met said he was a Syrian national in his twenties. His name was Amir al-Ali. He told me he received his training at the hands of fighters of various nationalities at an ISIL camp near the Turkish border, after which he was transferred to al-Raqa. Then at the onset of the battles with the Kurds he was moved to the front lines. He said the group’s emirs told them the Kurds were infidels and must be fought so they would become Muslims. I also learned from the prisoner that ISIL entices them with money and [promises] of taking care of their families by providing them with money, medical care and in-kind assistance.

Al-Shorfa : Did you notice any similarities between the prisoners you met?

Ali : In the course of my meeting with al-Ali and another Syrian prisoner, both of whom were from the area around the Tel Hamis front, I realized the extent of their intellectual, cultural and educational shallowness, which facilitated their recruitment and enrolment in the group. They also do not know the Qur’an by heart, nor the hadith, which indicated their religious background and education were weak and that it would be easy to indoctrinate them on the group’s brutal principles and creed. I saw they were confused about the definitions of terms such as jihad, war, non-Muslims and takfir.

The two prisoners admitted during the interview that they, like all other gunmen in the group, receive daily lessons from the emir who focuses on lessons indoctrinating them on the principles of jihad and concern for the afterlife to earn paradise, and [the notion] that the establishment of an Islamic state and caliphate is a duty.

They said they are fighting this war until the whole planet becomes “Muslim” and that they must fight anyone who hinders the establishment of this state, even if he was a Muslim. They also admitted to carrying out mass killings of prisoners, particularly non-Muslims, as well as destroying churches and mosques that housed shrines of pious worshipers. They described captured women as “slaves” they own and have the right with which to do anything they wish, including use them for sexual pleasure. […]

The fighters also admitted to taking narcotics before going to battle, and also when carrying out slaughter and killing operations, with sharia law justification provided by the emir.

The post Egyptian Journalist Gives First-Hand Account Of Battlefronts With ISIL – Interview appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Nadin Bahrom

Tajik authorities are bracing for anything extremists might try along their country’s 1,206-kilometre border with Afghanistan.

“Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) militants have stepped up their activity in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan, which borders Tajikistan, Governor of Kunduz Province Muhammad Umar Safi recently said, according to Khaama Press.

“About 70 ISIL members have been presently observed in the Dashti Archi and Chahar Dara districts of Kunduz Province,” he said. “The militants also intend to step up activity in Badakhshan, Takhar, Baghlan, and Faryab provinces in the north. Earlier reports came in about ISIL militants turning up in the [southern] Zabul and Helmand provinces, as well as Ghazni Province.”

Though the Taliban and ISIL usually appear to be competitors more than allies, a number of Afghan Taliban militants have switched their allegiance to ISIL, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Afghan service reported January 20, quoting Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi.

“A number of militants have begun to operate as [ISIL] members, but we have not established whether they have ties to [greater] ISIL, which is primarily based in Iraq and Syria,” the Interior Ministry reported.

Cracking down on border zone criminals

Meanwhile, Afghan forces are conducting a security operation in the Imam-Sohib and Dashti Archi districts along the Tajik border.

“Evidence collected by [Tajik] intelligence shows that the militants number from 500 to 1,000,” a Tajik border guard officer told Central Asia Online on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

“Tajikistan is in a state of combat readiness,” he said. “Border forces have prevented illegal border crossings from Afghanistan several times this year already. We have also seen several cases of smuggling of drugs into Tajikistan.”

Tajik forces clashed with drug traffickers January 18 and January 25, both times in Khatlon Province. Three Afghan drug smugglers were killed in the first incident and two Tajik drug smugglers were killed in the second.

One border guard was wounded in the first incident in Shurabad District but is recovering, the officer said, and authorities seized munitions and 2kg of heroin at the scene of the clash.

“Since the enemy has little money, it sends drugs to Tajikistan to raise funds,” the anonymous officer said. “We have strengthened border security because of reports of militants amassing on the border as well as of drug trafficking from Afghanistan.”

All of the above evidence has prompted an investigation and operations to apprehend illegal border-crossers.

Co-operating with Afghanistan

Tajikistan is strengthening security co-operation with Afghanistan in response to growing threats of terrorism and drug trafficking.

The two interior ministries last March 23 signed a co-operation agreement to combat trans-national crime, terrorism and human trafficking.

“Last December, the Tajik government approved a budget [for the project], and soon Tajik Interior Ministry [liaison] offices will open in Afghanistan,” Tajik Interior Minister Ramazon Rahimzoda told Central Asia Online in an interview January 15. “The ministry works to protect Tajiks. Our units on the border are always combat ready so that we can protect our citizens. We have a joint [Tajik-Afghan] headquarters, and we work day and night in the border zone.”
Tajikistan able to fight off ISIL, analyst says

Tajikistan and other concerned countries in the region are capable of defending their borders from ISIL, some observers say.

ISIL’s combat operations take place far from Tajikistan, and the global community is hardly going to let ISIL expand to Central Asia, Dushanbe-based security analyst Haydar Soliyev said.

“The role of Central Asians in fighting for ISIL and their appearance on the Afghan-Tajik border, as well as on the Afghan-Turkmen border, where they put up the ISIL banner, still do not mean [ISIL] is engaging in large-scale activities,” he told Central Asia Online. “The only reason for concern is that Tajiks are fighting for ISIL … They could return home someday soon and start up extremist activities.”

“It is encouraging that the populations of these countries generally do not support terrorism,” he said. “I doubt ISIL can achieve its goals in Central Asia, but targeted terrorist attacks to destabilise Central Asia cannot be ruled out.”

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