(Civil.Ge) — Russia’s President Vladimir Putin signed an order giving go-ahead to a draft of a “treaty on alliance and integration” with breakaway region of South Ossetia, paving the way for its signature.

The agreement with the term of 25 years will be signed by Putin and breakaway South Ossetia’s leader Leonid Tibilov; the date has yet to be set.

It will come after Moscow signed treaty on “alliance and strategic partnership” with Georgia’s another breakaway region of Abkhazia in late November. Tbilisi condemns the both of the treaties as a step towards annexation of its occupied territories.

After revision of the initial draft of the treaty with Tskhinvali, the final text is now more similar to the one that was signed between Moscow and Sokhumi. It, however, contains clauses, which envisage deeper integration of the breakaway region with Russia than the one signed with breakaway Abkhazia.

According to the draft treaty “separate units of the armed forces and security agencies of the South Ossetian Republic will become part of the armed forces and security agencies of the Russian Federation.”

The draft also envisages “integration” of customs service of the breakaway region with the one of the Russian Federation.

Like in case of Abkhazia, treaty with Tskhinvali envisages setting up of Joint Information-Coordinating Center of law enforcement agencies for the purpose of “coordinating” fight against “organized crime and other grave crimes.”

Russia takes commitment to “co-finance” gradual increase of salaries of employees of the state-funded entities in breakaway South Ossetia to the level existing in Russia’s North Caucasus Federal District.

Russia also pledges to increase pensions for those residents of the breakaway region, which hold Russian passports, starting from 2016, according to the draft, which also envisages further easing of granting Russian citizenship to the residents of the breakaway region.

Meanwhile the Georgian Foreign Ministry said it is “extremely concerned” by what the Russian Ministry of Defense said was “large scale” military exercises launched in Russia’s Southern Military District. According to the Russian media reports drills, which will last till April 10, are ongoing at 12 firing ranges with the participation of 2,000 troops, including those stationed in breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The post Putin Endorses Draft Treaty On ‘Integration’ With South Ossetia appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Thomas F. Lynch III*

On October 1, 2014, the Obama Administration announced that it had concluded a long-awaited Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the newly-formed government in Kabul, Afghanistan.^[1]  The announcement of this ten-year security arrangement, which had languished for almost a year, alleviated fears that Afghanistan’s lingering political morass might require the full departure of American and western forces from that country by the end of 2014. But the details behind this agreement, one primarily focused on a post-2014 US counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan, remain a source for serious concern. A parallel bilateral deal struck between Kabul and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), where the United States is a member state, continues a heavily circumscribed post-2014 NATO mission of training, advising and equipping Afghan security forces.

Nothing in these agreements places a formal, low-threshold limitation on post-2014 US or western military forces in Afghanistan. Indeed, there are strong indications that the newly seated Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani would welcome a far more robust and capable extension of US and western military forces in the country.^[2]  Yet President Ghani inherited a situation where the Obama Administration – in partial concert with an alienated Karzai Administration – generated a self-limiting framework for BSA implementation in which US and NATO support troops in Afghanistan were voluntarily constrained to 12,500 in total beginning on January 1, 2015 – about 9,800 of them U.S. troops^[3] and another 2,700 NATO forces^[4] – with complete withdrawal of American military forces promised by President Obama for the end of 2016.^[5] On November 21, 2014, the Obama Administration announced a modest extension in to 2015 of some of the pre-2014 use-of-force authorities for remaining US military forces in Afghanistan. But this represented no revisit of the basic premise of comprehensive military and intelligence withdrawal from Afghanistan.^[6]

The Obama Administration has argued that the steady and steeply sloped withdrawal of American military forces constitutes a responsible transition to 350,000 Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) taking the lead for national security.  It asserts that the residual 12,500 member US/western military force left in early 2015, then tapered to around a couple thousand by late 2016 will be sufficient to facilitate ANSF responsibility for national security by 2017. It will assure American freedom of action in the conduct of counter-terrorism operations against any renewed presence of international terrorist outfits for the coming decade.^[7]

The assurances of a low risk transition to security in Afghanistan do not withstand scrutiny.  The residual force planned is too small to offset the major operational support shortcomings of the under-resourced ANSF, making it unlikely that outside financial donors or entrepreneurs will accept the risks of significant economic investment in Afghanistan. Its sizing constraints and operational limitations require confinement to locations insufficient to disrupt the inevitable rise in intra-regional militant and proxy outfit conflicts, with too little attention paid to intelligence collection and information fusion regarding the rapidly evolving South Asian terrorist threats.

Assessing the Environment: Afghanistan & the Wider Region

Undeniably, Afghanistan entered 2015 in a better place than it did 2002. The Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) completed formation in late 2014 a third democratically elected government and the first peaceful transition of power between outgoing and incoming administrations in Afghanistan’s modern history.  Enormous international attention and investments between 2003 and 2010^[8] have advanced Afghanistan’s capacity for self-governance, improved national health care, expanded schooling opportunities for Afghan youth, especially girls, and better connected Afghanistan to the outside world than ever before. Afghanistan also began 2015 with a 350,000-member security force consisting of an army, a limited air force, national police and border and customs forces.

These improvements and others are important. Yet Afghanistan remains significantly challenged in 2015 and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Economically, Afghanistan is extremely poor, landlocked and highly dependent on foreign aid. Almost 40 percent of the population is below the official poverty line. A similar percentage is unemployed. Most Afghans continue to suffer from shortages of housing, clean water, electricity and medical care. Assistance remains critical; as Afghanistan had a 9 percent budget deficit in 2012 that grew to a 13 percent in 2013 as the decade-long artificial economy fueled by international security-related investments rapidly contracted. The US and other international donors fund almost 60 percent of Afghanistan’s national budget.^[9] In 2014 GIRoA experienced two major budget crises. These halted critical infrastructure projects and required an international bailout of $537 (US) million to pay civil servant salaries including those for its military and police.^[10]  Few post-2015 donations, beyond those promised by India and China, now exist.^[11]  It seems clear that the international community anxiously awaits evidence that Afghanistan can provide acceptable domestic security and stability to warrant the investments.

Like international donations, international business investment in Afghanistan beyond 2015 awaits proof of stability and security. Serious investment also requires belief that the Kabul leadership is taking verifiable steps to curb the expansive corruption in Afghanistan.^[12] China and India have already contracted to invest billions in mining Afghan natural resource deposit areas, but security fears have dramatically limited the pace and cash-flow of these ventures.^[13]  Afghanistan’s viability between 2015 and 2024 relies upon an outside donor and investor perception that ANSF units, under direction from Kabul, can provide protection against major security threats.

The most dangerous threats to Afghan security have not changed much in the past twenty years. There are three main regional security dynamics that impact stability in Afghanistan, each also affecting major US/western security interests in preventing Afghanistan from again becoming an insurgent-riven nation, a civil war battle ground, an international terrorist safe haven or a combination of all three.

First, the Taliban insurgency remains Afghanistan’s most pressing security issue.  It is uncertain that the Afghan Taliban will be able to unseat GIRoA ever, much less in 2015. Although it is an indigenous insurgent group, the Afghan Taliban is substantively abetted by Afghanistan’s cross-border rival, Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban’s patrons, the Pakistani military and intelligence services, support Taliban militant operations (but not country-wide governance) against GIRoA forces and coalition support formations within Afghanistan.^[14] Such a presence challenges GIRoA authority and puts at risk Afghanistan’s major economic transit route, the Ring Road – a serious risk that can only negatively impact outside donor and investor confidence.

Second, the security dilemma competition between India and Pakistan weighs heavily on future Afghanistan internal security prospects.  India and Pakistan have a longstanding history of treating influence in Afghanistan as a zero-sum game.  The fear of being squeezed in an Indian security nutcracker has led Pakistan’s ISI to keep the Afghan Taliban in play as a security proxy in Afghanistan when it was placed under duress by US and NATO military forces from 2001-2012. Since 2012, Pakistan has increasingly come to fear a growing intelligence nexus between the Afghan national intelligence service (NDS) and the Indian foreign intelligence service (RAW).  Pakistani officials point to a growing number of reported contacts between NDS and anti-Pakistan Taliban insurgents (TTP) as evidence that GIRoA and India are colluding to topple the government in Islamabad.^[15]  While shrill, there appears to be modest substance behind these Pakistani complaints making it certain that Pakistani security concerns in Afghanistan will only grow worse as western forces meet drawdown timetables.

The mistrust between Kabul and Pakistani’s military-intelligence establishment runs deep and will not be overcome easily.  Pakistan’s ISI cannot be trusted to share fully with the Afghan NDS its interactions with an array of Pashtun militant groups operating from within Pakistan.  Faced with such an asymmetry in transparency, the Afghan NDS will not decouple from historic ties to the Indian RAW, leaving Pakistan’s ISI wary of NDS-RAW support for anti-Pakistan militant leaders and outfits that may be hiding in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

For its part, India has been relatively circumspect in security-based interactions with Afghanistan during the decade of US/NATO security leadership, preferring not to provoke Pakistan while the prospect for outside-generated security and stability in Afghanistan was present.  Nonetheless, Indian military and civilian leaders uniformly fear any Afghan Taliban return to power would carve-out a safe haven for Islamist militant training and staging for terrorism against Indian and Indian interests.  Increasingly, India has been offering more direct support to Afghan security forces – training, equipping and education – as western forces stand down.  At the same time, New Delhi has been expanding and extending its military and intelligence footprint at locations in Tajikistan that can be used to provide support for a GIRoA fight against militant groups, simultaneously setting the diplomatic conditions in Iran and the military-intelligence access conditions in Tajikistan to sustain organized militant resistance should GIRoA suddenly collapse under the weight of Pakistani-abetted insurgency.^[16]

Finally, Afghanistan will remain a top tier target for international terrorist organizations seeking safe haven from which to plan, plot and launch catastrophic global attacks against US and western interests.  Robust American counterterrorism activities on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border during 2008-2013 greatly disrupted the activities of a host of groups, killing dozens of prominent global jihadist outfit leaders and denying these areas for unfettered terrorism plotting.  In his September 2014 announcement of al Qaeda of the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri signaled to all Salafi jihadist groups in South Asia that their main calling should be to fully resource the Taliban-led effort to re-establish a Salifist emirate in Afghanistan as western military forces depart.^[17]  A growing array of South Asian based jihadist groups have been reported infesting eastern Afghanistan.  Afghanistan will remain a highly contested space for bruised but unrepentant international jihadist organizations – and in combinations that will be a challenge to even well-resourced and well-focused intelligence agencies to address.

The successful disruption of jihadi terror organizations from 2009-13 in Pakistan and Afghanistan emanated from eastern Afghanistan and functioned on the backbone of US military presence there.  A primary feature of the 2008-09 military uplift, this backbone enabled the coalition to independently generate rich and timely human, signals and electronic information about militant interactions on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.^[18]  While the size of this U.S. intelligence backbone was never sustainable indefinitely, the complexity of the challenges it faced in tracking a fluid cross-border terrorist and militant milieu has not diminished dramatically.  It is thus more than fair to ask how well the residual arrangements for a post-2014 Afghanistan accommodate the retention of this important intelligence capability.

Fully Appreciating the Security Risks

Disturbingly, signs abounded in 2014 that the US/NATO military drawdown has dramatically increased risk in all three areas of the Afghan security challenge. To begin with, the Afghan National Army (ANA)  has demonstrated considerable weakness in maintaining security against Taliban resurgence Afghanistan’s south, its east and in Kabul itself – areas where US/NATO combat troop presence had all but vanished by mid-2014. In the south and east, Afghan military units have lost many hard-won gains from the US/NATO uplift of 2009-11. By the end of October 2014, Afghan Army and National Police forces had suffered more than 4,600 deaths for the year – an unsustainable rate of attrition.^[19] ANSF field units lack sufficient aerial resupply, casualty evacuation capabilities, and intelligence support, as well as timely indirect fires or air strike support.^[20]  ANSF performance in late 2014 has eroded international confidence in Afghanistan as a secure environment for financial investments.

Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies exhibit no fundamental change in support for the Afghan Taliban and other anti-Indian jihadi outfits operating in Afghanistan. Despite late 2014 statements by US military officials in Afghanistan that Pakistan military operations into North Waziristan have disrupted the ability of the Haqqani Network to launch terrorist attacks on Afghan territory – statements dramatically amplified in Pakistani press – there is little to suggest that even if true, these will produce lasting effect.^[21]

Pakistan military-intelligence accusations that Afghan government and ANSF forces are unable to capture or kill escaping North Waziristan militants and that Afghanistan’s NDS is actually working with Indian intelligence services to “turn” fleeing Pakistani Taliban into agents for use against the Pakistan government grow greater every day.^[22]  The historic Indo-Pakistani animus is palpable in Afghanistan and the space for this animus to grow in size and scale increases with every withdrawn US/NATO military asset.

Finally, the American draw-down of 2013-14 has already badly compromised the linchpin of a successful future counter-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan: a robust and autonomous intelligence backbone.  But most of this backbone has been lost already – a direct casualty of the Obama Administration’s move to a skeletal military footprint by December 2014. CIA officials made it clear that while intelligence assets and contractors are used to guard its bases, it relies on military transportation, logistics and emergency medical evacuation and cannot risk significant deployment in Afghanistan’s rural areas without US troops nearby. Without another 3,000-3,500 US troops – about a military intelligence brigade with supporting logistical and force protection forces – the American contingent will wind through 2015-16 increasingly unable to monitor, anticipate and counteract what certainly will remain a rapidly evolving and increasingly complex set of terrorist interactions.

The worrisome security indicators in Afghanistan during 2014 must give one pause – and especially in light of the outcomes witnessed in Iraq and Syria. There, Iraqi-demanded US/western military departure clearly contributed to a too-late discernment of a major terrorist-insurgent threat requiring a taxing and expensive US military response.^[23] Two lessons from Iraq/Syria stand out.  First, the nexus between insurgents and Salafi jihadist terrorism is pernicious and fast-moving.  A robust, autonomous US/western intelligence network is vital as local intelligence agents cannot be counted on for unbiased collection and transmission of important nuances of network interactions. Second, once lost in a country, a viable US military-interagency intelligence nexus is very costly and time-consuming to reconstruct.^[24]

Into 2015:  It’s Late – But Not Too Late

A truly serious level of security commitment by the US and its allies in Afghanistan and for the wider region must meet three main objectives, none of which are sufficiently accommodated as of late 2014 in the announced implementation framework for the US-Afghan BSA and the NATO-Afghanistan security pact.

First, any serious commitment must include independent and robust intelligence and strike assets to track in detail and act swiftly against international terrorist organizations looking to establish sanctuary in Afghanistan. Second, it must provide ANSF with sufficient direct operational support in the key counterinsurgency capabilities these units inherently lack: aero-medical casualty evacuation, aerial troop transport to crisis areas, heavy indirect fire support from air and artillery, rapid and reliable logistical resupply, and reconnaissance and intelligence support down to brigade and regimental levels.  Finally, it must sustain sufficient training and operational military presence in Afghanistan to dampen the incentives for proxy militia agents sparking internecine war in Afghanistan or cross-border war in Pakistan.

In November 2014, new American forces commander, US Army General John Campbell, publicly signaled a desire to revisit the severe limitations of the Obama Administration drawdown plans, telling American media outlets that he was conducting a review to make sure it, “….still made sense.”^[25]  This review is overdue, and its conclusions already clear.

This post-2014 residual American military presence should be composed of 20,000 personnel, augmented by 4,500-5,000 NATO trainers and advisors.  This force should remain at a 20,000 level until political and security accommodations between Pakistan and Afghanistan and Pakistan and India mature to the point where regional collaboration on Afghan stability is assured.  Such an American force could easily be sustained with an annual budget of $20B.

Three thousand of these Americans would provide multi-dimensional air and ground logistical support for tactically capable but operationally limited ANA. Another 10,000 Americans are necessary for advise and assist missions with the ANA and with selected Afghan National Police (ANP) formations down to the levels of divisions and brigades – a far more robust undertaking than the present limitations to ANA corps level and above. There is no way to fight a credible counter-insurgency in the inhospitable and mountainous terrain of Afghanistan without indirect fire support, timely aerial strike support, aero-resupply, and aero-medical evacuation. A modest commitment supplementing Afghan Air Forces of a US Army helicopter lift battalion, an attack battalion and a dedicated US Air Force Fighter wing would comprise about 3,500-4,000 of this 10,000 person package.

A robust U.S. Special Operations element of 3,000 members must remain to assure responsive and capable counter-terrorism capability. These will assist Afghan special units against threats to Afghan sovereignty and must conduct autonomous counter-terrorism operations against potential encroachment by international terrorist organizations. Finally, some 4,000 military intelligence troops must remain to assure quality and timely tracking of the threats faced by Afghan and American forces; and, more importantly, to autonomously track the complex interplay of jihadist outfits across Afghanistan and Pakistan, assuring rapid US operational responsiveness to metastasizing threats and an robust independent capability to assess what will surely be biased assessments from the Afghan NDS and Pakistan ISI.

The U.S. also would be wise to fashion a recurring annual (or biannual) field training exercise featuring an Afghan division paired with an American brigade rotated in from the United States – thereby demonstrating continuing commitment and U.S.-Afghan interoperability. Major American force concentrations would best base from Bagram, Kabul, Kandahar and points north and west, with only those advise-assist troops, autonomous intelligence and Special Forces assets necessary for the south and east basing within compounds there run by the ANA. The composition, disposition and authorities of a post-2014 American residual force are the most important aspects of leverage available now for American policy in a very dangerous portion of the world. The United States cannot ‘fix’ the region or eliminate the three major challenges to security most dominant within Afghanistan. However, America can be better postured to deter the worst threats, better enable support to already faltering ANSF units, be better informed than it might otherwise be about the evolving nature of Indo-Pakistani proxy hostilities, be better assured that it has timely and relevant intelligence and the evolving nature of international jihadist outfits.   The promised post-2014 US/NATO military presence and operational authorities are insufficient to meet these major requirements.

Residual American bases and forces in South Korea have been performing precisely such a crisis deterrence and crisis response capability for at least the past 40 years. The absence of US intelligence and operational forces in Iraq from 2011-14 surely blinded America and her allies from the dangerous convergence of resurgent jihadist groups and politically disaffected Iraq and Syrian Sunni tribes, denying a timely or effective early response.  American security interests in South Asia are no less demanding than in Northeast Asia or the northern arc of the Middle East. Thus, why not scope the residual American military presence in Afghanistan to size and a posture able to address the intractable dilemmas that remain? The hour is late, but the means to reduce presently unacceptable local, regional and international security risks in Afghanistan are clear. With sober reflection on aftermath of too-dramatic exit from Iraq, a comprehensive policy and strategy review for post-2014 military-intelligence support to Afghanistan needs be conducted in early 2015.

About the author:
*Thomas F. (Tom) Lynch III is a Distinguished Research Fellow for South Asia and the Near East at the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies. He was also the Special Assistant for South Asian security matters for then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen from 2008-10, an Army regional support commander with responsibilities in Afghanistan from 2005-07, A Special Assistant to the US CENTCOM Commander for South Asia security matters from 2004-05, and a Military Special Assistant to the US Ambassador to Afghanistan to Kabul in 2004. The opinions expressed in this commentary represent his own views and are not those of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense or the United States Government. This is a condensed version of an article that will appear in Orbis, Spring 2015.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

[1] Marherita Stancati and Nathan Hodge, “U.S.-Afghan Bilateral Security Agreement Signed,” The Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2014 at http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-afghan-bilateral-security-agreement-signed-1412076436.

[2] “Afghan lower house approves 12,500 NATO-led troops remaining,” Agence Francais Presse (AFP) in The Japan Times, November 23, 2014 at http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/11/23/world/politics-diplomacy-world/afghan-lower-house-approves-12500-nato-led-troops-remaining/#.VH9okDGkPME; Clar Ni Chonghaile, “Afghanistan: what will happen when the troops – and their dollars – depart,” The Guardian (UK), November 27, 2014 at http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/nov/27/afghanistan-nato-troops-withdraw-ashraf-ghani; and. Rod Nordland and Taimoor Shah, “Afghanistan Quietly Lifts Ban on Night Raids,” The New York Times, November 23, 2014 at   http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/world/asia/afghanistan-quietly-lifts-ban-on-night-raids.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1.

The post There Is Still Time To Keep Afghanistan From Going The Way Of Iraq – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

At least 46,000 Twitter accounts have been linked to supporters of the Islamic State in late 2014, a research report released in Washington showed.

The study released by the Brookings Institution found that even though many accounts were suspended by the messaging platform, the numbers remained high.

“From September through December 2014, the authors estimate that at least 46,000 Twitter accounts were used by IS supporters, although not all of them were active at the same time,” the report said.

Authors JM Berger and Jonathon Morgan said an analysis of the social media efforts of the militant Islamic group needs to go beyond the core leadership.

“Previous analyses of IS’ Twitter reach have relied on limited segments of the overall ISIS social network,” they wrote in the report commissioned by Google Ideas.

“The small, cellular nature of that network — and the focus on particular subsets within the network such as foreign fighters — may create misleading conclusions.”

Analyzing the location embedded in the tweets, the researchers found the largest number of IS supporters in the Gulf, followed by Syria, Iraq and the US.

Nearly one in five of the IS supporters tweeted in English, they found, with three quarters tweeting in Arabic.

The supporting accounts had an average of about 1,000 followers each, higher than most Twitter users. Accounts that tweeted most often and had the most followers were most likely to be suspended.

The authors said social media companies and the US government “must work together to devise appropriate responses to extremism on social media.”

They noted that “although discussions of this issue often frame government intervention as an infringement on free speech, in reality, social media companies currently regulate speech on their platforms without oversight or disclosures of how suspensions are applied.”

Twitter said this week it was working with law enforcement officials on unspecified threats, amid reports that the social network had been targeted for blocking accounts linked to the Islamic State.

A page on the online bulletin board Pastebin showed an image of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey in what appear to be the crosshairs of a rifle scope and a message in Arabic.

SITE Intelligence, a US group that monitors militant threats, said the post was made by Al-Nusra Al-Maqdisiya, a pro-Islamic State media group.

A translation of the message by SITE said that Dorsey and Twitter are now being targeted by Islamic militants for suspending certain accounts.

“You began this failed war, and we have told you from the beginning that it is not your war! But you did not understand. You shut down our accounts and we quickly return, but when our lone lions shut down your breathing there will be no return!” the message said.

The post 46,000 Twitter Accounts Linked To Islamic State appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said that the presentation of the implementation of UNHRC resolution 25/1 on accountability and reconciliation in Sri Lanka be deferred until the 30th session of the Human Rights Council in September based on the assessment of the changing context in Sri Lanka, the broad signals of cooperation received from the Government, and the possibility that new information will become available for the report.

Delivering the Opening Statement at the 28th Session of UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva yesterday, the High Commissioner said “”After serious reflection, and acting upon the suggestion of the investigation’s group of experts, I recommended that the presentation of this report be deferred until the 30th session of the Human Rights Council in September”.

“This was based on my assessment of the changing context in Sri Lanka, the broad signals of cooperation I have received from the Government, and the possibility that new information will become available for the report,” he added.

Zeid told the Council that the Sri Lankan Government has agreed to invite the Special Rapporteur on Truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence, and the Working Group on enforced and involuntary disappearances, as well as himself, to visit Sri Lanka before the September session.

During this period, OHCHR staff also plans to engage on the ground with all stakeholders to advance transitional justice issues, he noted.

“This is a singular opportunity for the Government to lay the foundations in justice for lasting peace and reconciliation. I urge the authorities to consult deeply with the people, particularly victims, in order to design mechanisms that will work and not repeat the failures of the past,” the UN official said.

The post UN Delays Sri Lanka Report Based On Cooperation From Government appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Ohio man accused of plotting a deadly attack on Capitol Hill told a local news station that he would have shot President Barack Obama in the head had he not been arrested.

Twenty-year-old Christopher Cornell, who was arrested made the incendiary remark – threatening to kill the president – to local Fox affiliate WXIX during a telephone interview from jail. Generally, that crime is classified as a Class D felony.

Cornell was arrested in January for allegedly plotting to attack the US Capitol and kill legislators.

Cornell said that, had he had not been arrested by FBI agents, he would have carried out an alleged plot to plant pipe bombs at the Capitol and at the Israeli Embassy – a plan that he says was organized by the Islamic State.

“What would I have done? I would have took my gun, I would have put it to Obama’s head and I would have pulled the trigger,” Cornell told WXIX in a telephone interview from a Boone County, Kentucky jail that aired on Friday.

“Then I would have released more bullets on the Senate and the House of Representative members, and I would have attacked the Israeli Embassy and various other buildings full of kafir (a Muslim term for infidel) who want to wage war against us Muslims and shed our blood. That’s what would happen.”

Cornell was arrested by the FBI on January 14 after he reportedly researched how to make pipe bombs, purchased a rifle and 600 rounds of ammunition, and made plans to travel to Washington to carry out the plot.

He went on to say he believes there are more attacks to come and there are many others like him throughout the United States – specifically naming Texas, Ohio, New York City, the District of Columbia and more.

Cornell said he was fighting against “the continued American aggression against our people and the fact that America, specifically, President Obama, wants to wage war against the Islamic State.”

He added that while people may call him a terrorist, he and others like him view American troops the same way. He accused US soldiers of “coming to our lands, invading, stealing our resources and killing our people, raping our women.” He also criticized US support for Israel, saying they are being used to “kill our children in Palestine every single day.”

WXIX reported that Cornell’s recent statements have saddened his parents John and Carmen Cornell, both of whom previously stuck by him in January.

“Everybody is making him out to be a terrorist and they keep on calling him a terrorist. He is not a terrorist, he is a great person. He is a great son and I love him and I’m going to stick by him,” said Carmen at a hearing for Cornell at the time.

But after they heard the interview, John Cornell said it was his son speaking and added, “The kid has totally lost his mind. If he wants to sink himself for life, then we need to move on.” It is not only his parents who might see things differently. The comments might also affect the outcome of Cornell’s case.

“The prosecution in this case got a lot easier. When this defendant made those taped admissions, that evidence is clearly admissible in court,” Geoffrey Mearns, Northern Kentucky University President and former prosecutor in the Timothy McVeigh case, told the news outlet.

According to court documents, the FBI said Cornell began plotting the attack in August 2014. He met with an FBI informant to discuss his plans and was arrested after he posted on Twitter that he supported the Islamic State.

The high school graduate was indicted on three felony counts, including attempted murder of government employees and officials, solicitation to commit a crime of violence and possession of a firearm in furtherance of an attempted crime of violence. If found guilty, two of the charges carry 20 year-sentences and one carries a lifetime imprisonment.

“I’m with the Islamic State,” Cornell told WXIX. “I’m very dedicated to establish the Sharia in America, to wage war on the kafr (an Islamic term for ‘unbeliever’) and raise the word of Allah above all.”

“I’m so dedicated that I risked my whole life.”

Cornell, who is being held without bail, pleaded not guilty on Jan. 21. He is expected back in court in April.

The post Capitol Hill Terror Suspect Says He Would Have Shot Obama appeared first on Eurasia Review.

SUDDENLY IT reminded me of something.

I was watching The Speech by Binyamin Netanyahu before the Congress of the United States. Row upon row of men in suits (and the occasional woman), jumping up and down, up and down, applauding wildly, shouting approval.

It was the shouting that did it. Where had I heard that before?

And then it came back to me. It was another parliament in the mid-1930s. The Leader was speaking. Rows upon rows of Reichstag members were listening raptly. Every few minutes they jumped up and shouted their approval.

Of course, the Congress of the United States of America is no Reichstag. Members wear dark suits, not brown shirts. They do not shout “Heil” but something unintelligible. Yet the sound of the shouting had the same effect. Rather shocking.

But then I returned to the present. The sight was not frightening, but ridiculous. Here were the members of the most powerful parliament in the world behaving like a bunch of nincompoops.

Nothing like this could have happened in the Knesset. I do not have a very high opinion of our parliament, despite having been a member, but compared to this assembly, the Knesset is the fulfillment of Plato’s dream.

ABBA EBAN once compared a speech by Menachem Begin to a French souffle cake: a lot of air and very little dough.

The same could be said about The Speech.

What did it contain? The Holocaust, of course, with that moral impostor, Elie Wiesel, sitting in the gallery right next to the beaming Sarah’le, who visibly relished her husband’s triumph. (A few days before, she had shouted at the wife of a mayor in Israel: “Your man does not reach the ankles of my man!”)

The Speech mentioned the Book of Esther, about the salvation of the Persian Jews from the evil Persian minister Haman, who intended to wipe them out. No one knows how this dubious composition came to be included in the Bible. God is not mentioned in it, it has nothing to do with the Holy Land, and Esther herself is more of a prostitute than a heroine. The book ends with the mass murder committed by the Jews against the Persians.

The Speech, like all speeches by Netanyahu, contained much about the suffering of the Jews throughout the ages, and the intentions of the evil Iranians, the New Nazis, to annihilate us. But this will not happen, because this time we have Binyamin Netanyahu to protect us. And the US Republicans, of course.

It was a good speech. One cannot make a bad speech when hundreds of admirers hang on every word and applaud every second. But it will not make an anthology of the world’s Greatest Speeches.

Netanyahu considers himself a second Churchill. And indeed, Churchill was the only foreign leader before Netanyahu to speak to both houses of Congress a third time. But Churchill came to cement his alliance with the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who played a big part in the British war effort, while Netanyahu has come to spit in the face of the present president.

WHAT DID the speech not contain?

Not a word about Palestine and the Palestinians. Not a word about peace, the two-state solution, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem. Not a word about apartheid, the occupation, the settlements. Not a word about Israel’s own nuclear capabilities.

Not a word, of course, about the idea of a nuclear-weapon–free region, with mutual inspection.

Indeed, there was no concrete proposal at all. After denouncing the bad deal in the making, and hinting that Barack Obama and John Kerry are dupes and idiots, he offered no alternative.

Why? I assume that the original text of The Speech contained a lot. Devastating new sanctions against Iran. A demand for the total demolition of all Iranian nuclear installations. And in the inevitable end: a US-Israeli military attack.

All this was left out. He was warned by the Obama people in no uncertain terms that disclosure of details of the negotiations would be considered as a betrayal of confidence. He was warned by his Republican hosts that the American public was in no mood to hear about yet another war.

What was left? A dreary recounting of the well-known facts about the negotiations. It was the only tedious part of the speech. For minutes no one jumped up, nobody shouted approval. Elie Wiesel was shown sleeping. The most important person in the hall, Sheldon Adelson, the owner of the Congress republicans and of Netanyahu, was not shown at all. But he was there, keeping close watch on his servants.

BY THE way, whatever happened to Netanyahu’s war?

Remember when the Israel Defense Forces were about to bomb Iran to smithereens? When the US military might was about to “take out” all Iranian nuclear installations?

Readers of this column might also remember that years ago I assured them that there would be no war. No ifs, no buts. No half-open back door for a retreat. I asserted that there would be no war, period.

Much later, all Israeli former military and intelligence chiefs spoke out against the war. The army Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, who finished his term this week, has disclosed that no draft operation order for attacking Iran’s nuclear capabilities was ever drawn up.

Why? Because such an operation could lead to a world-wide catastrophe. Iran would immediately close the Strait of Hormuz, just a few dozen miles wide, through which some 35% of the world’s sea-borne oil must pass. It would mean an immediate world-wide economic breakdown.

To open the Strait and keep it open, a large part of Iran would have to be occupied in a land war, boots on the ground. Even Republicans shiver at the thought.

Israeli military capabilities fall far short of such an adventure. And, of course, Israel cannot dream of starting a war without express American consent.

That is reality. Not speechifying. Even American senators are capable of seeing the difference.

THE CENTERPIECE of The Speech was the demonization of Iran. Iran is evil incarnate. It leaders are subhuman monsters. All over the world, Iranian terrorists are at work planning monstrous outrages. They are building intercontinental ballistic missiles to destroy the US. Immediately after obtaining nuclear warheads – now or in ten years – they will annihilate Israel.

In reality, Israel’s second-strike capability, based on the submarines supplied by Germany, would annihilate Iran within minutes. One of the most ancient civilizations in world history would come to an abrupt end. The ayatollahs would have to been clinically insane to do such a thing.

Netanyahu pretends to believe they are. Yet for years now, Israel has been conducting an amiable arbitration with the Iranian government about the Eilat-Ashkelon oil pipeline across Israel built by an Iranian-Israeli consortium. Before the Islamic revolution, Iran was Israel’s stoutest ally in the region. Well after the revolution, Israel supplied Iran with arms in order to fight against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (the famous Irangate affair). And if one goes back to Esther and her sexual effort to save the Jews, why not mention Cyrus the Great, who allowed the Judean captives to return to Jerusalem?

Judging by its behavior, the present Iranian leadership has lost some of its initial religious fervor. It is behaving (not always speaking) in a very rational way, conducting tough negotiations as one would expect from Persians, aware of their immense cultural heritage, even more ancient than Judaism. Netanyahu is right in saying that one should not trust them with closed eyes, but his demonization is ridiculous.

Within the wider context, Israel and Iran are already indirect allies. For both, the Islamic State (ISIS) is the mortal enemy. To my mind, ISIS is far more dangerous to Israel, in the long run, than Iran. I imagine that for Tehran, ISIS is a far more dangerous enemy than Israel.

(The only memorable sentence in The Speech was “the enemy of my enemy is my enemy”.)

If the worst comes to the worst, Iran will have its bomb in the end. So what?

I may be an arrogant Israeli, but I refuse to be afraid. I live a mile from the Israeli army high command in the center of Tel Aviv, and in a nuclear exchange I would evaporate. Yet I feel quite safe.

The United States has been exposed for decades (and still is) to thousands of Russian nuclear bombs, which could eradicate millions within minutes. They feel safe under the umbrella of the “balance of terror”. Between us and Iran, in the worst situation, the same balance would come into effect.

WHAT IS Netanyahu’s alternative to Obama’s policy? As Obama was quick to point out, he offered none.

The best possible deal will be struck. The danger will be postponed for ten years or more. And, as Chaim Weizmann once said: “The future will come and take care of the future.”

Within these ten years, many things will happen. Regimes will change, enmities will turn into alliances and vice versa. Anything is possible.

Even – God and the Israeli voters willing – peace between Israel and Palestine, which would take the sting out of Israeli-Muslim relations.

The post The Speech – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

In this week’s address, US President Barack Obama discussed an issue close to his heart: education for adolescent girls around the world. Earlier this week, he and the First Lady announced “Let Girls Learn,” a whole of government initiative that will build on investments we have made and successes we have achieved in global primary school education, and expand them to help adolescent girls complete their education and pursue their broader aspirations. 62 million girls around the world – half of whom are adolescent – are not in school and therefore have diminished economic opportunities. Yet when a girl receives a quality education, she is more likely to earn a decent living, raise a healthy, educated family, and improve the quality of life for herself, her family, and her community. That’s why the President and First Lady have made addressing this problem a priority because every girl has so much to offer to the world, and no girl should be denied her chance to learn.

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
March 7, 2015

Hi, everybody. Sunday is International Women’s Day — a day to celebrate remarkable women and girls worldwide, and to re-dedicate ourselves to defending the fundamental rights and dignity of all people.

That’s why, this week, Michelle and I launched a new initiative on a topic that’s close to both our hearts: girls’ education.

It’s called “Let Girls Learn.” And its goal is to help more girls around the world go to school and stay in school. Right now, 62 million girls who should be in school, are not. And that’s not an accident. It’s the direct result of barriers, large and small, that stand in the way of girls who want to learn.

Maybe their families can’t afford the school fees. Maybe the risk of being hurt or kidnapped or even killed by men who will do anything to stop girls from learning is just too great. Or maybe they aren’t in school because they’re expected to get married and become mothers while they’re still teenagers — or even earlier. In too many parts of the world, girls are still valued more for their bodies than for their minds. That’s just plain wrong. And we all have to do more to stop it.

That’s the idea behind “Let Girls Learn.” We’re making it clear to any country that’s our partner — or that wants to be our partner — that they need to get serious about increasing the number of girls in school. Our diplomats and development experts are already hard at work. Our Peace Corps volunteers will play a big role, too. And we’re putting our partnerships with NGOs, businesses and foundations to work on behalf of girls everywhere.

I come to this issue as the leader of the world’s largest economy, and Commander-in-Chief of the world’s most powerful military, and I’m convinced that a world in which girls are educated is a safer, more stable, more prosperous place. When girls are educated, their future children are healthier and better nourished. Their future wages increase, which in turn strengthens their families’ security. National growth gets a boost, too. And places where women and girls are treated as full and equal citizens tend to be more stable and more democratic.

But I also come to this issue as the father of two wonderful young women. And I know that there are lots of girls just like Malia and Sasha out there — girls who are funny and caring and inquisitive and strong, and have so much to offer the world.

It’s a privilege to be the parent of girls. And we want to make sure that no girl out there is denied her chance to learn — that no girl is prevented from making her unique contributions to the world. Because every girl — every girl — deserves our respect. And every girl deserves an education.

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

The post Obama: Let Girls Learn – Transcript appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Nigerian militant group Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, according to reports citing an audio message.

The message, published on Boko Haram’s Twitter account cannot be immediately verified. According to reports, it was likely to have been recorded by the group’s leader.

Jihadist monitoring group SITE, which observes extremist websites, said that it was Boko Haram leader Abu Bakr Shekau who formally pledged the allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the Islamic State, Reuters news agency reported.

In his speech the Boko Haram leader reportedly said the group would “hear and obey” the Caliph “in times of difficulty and prosperity”.

Boko Haram has grown from a small terror group to a mini-country with its own territory, which can be compared to gains made by the Islamic State (IS). Boko Haram now controls an area the size of Slovakia.

The militant group’s territory now totals about 52,000 square kilometers, according to an estimate released by The Telegraph.

One of the latest towns to be captured by the group was Baga in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, close to Lake Chad. According to witness estimates, Boko Haram militants killed at least 2,000 people there, although the Nigerian military later put the figure at 150.

Last April the group attracted unprecedented global attention with an abduction of nearly 300 schoolgirls in the town of Chibok. The incident was globally condemned.

Boko Haram’s attacks have caused great concern not only in Nigeria, but also in neighboring countries. The African Union Peace and Security Council have authorized a force of 7,500 troops from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Benin to fight the militants. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also approved the plan.

Boko Haram atrocities are estimated to have left at least 13,000 dead since the insurgency began in 2009. Around 1.5 million people have become internal refugees due to the violence, soaring from 600,000 in the past six months, according to the UN.

The group was founded in 2002 but its increasing radicalization started after an uprising in 2009 when the militants began carrying out massacres, kidnappings and raids.

The post Boko Haram Reportedly Pledges Allegiance To Islamic State appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(RFE/RL) — Islamic State (IS) militants have reportedly destroyed the ancient town of Hatra in northern Iraq.

The act is the latest in a string of attacks on Iraq’s cultural heritage, including in the ancient Assyrian city Nimrud and Mosul.

Hamid al-Jaburi, the head of the archaeology department at Mosul University, was quoted as saying militants had blown up Hatra’s ancient ruins and artifacts with explosives on March 7.

Hatra, a UNESCO-listed site, lies about 110 kilometers northwest of Mosul. It was founded more than 2,000 years ago and is famed for its temples.

The alleged destruction comes two days after the Iraqi government said Islamic State militants bulldozed the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in northern Iraq. The UN labeled Nimrud’s destruction a “war crime.”

Last month, video footage circulated of militants smashing massive 2,600-year-old stone statues at a museum in Mosul.

The post Islamic State Destroy Another Ancient Iraqi Site appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By N Sathiya Moorthy*

It may be too early to jump to conclusions, or even say that an end is in sight to the current political imbroglio/deadlock in Maldives. Yet, the perceived willingness of President Abdulla Yameen’s leadership for talking to the Opposition combine, comprising the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and the Jumhooree Party (JP), should mean that there may be some light at the end of the tunnel – and that it may also be the only hope.

The hopes about possible negotiations have been kindled after President Yameen’s Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) welcomed the idea in public. Without acknowledging it, the PPM was reacting or reaching out to the MDP-JP joint commission’s revived call for talks. The Opposition combine had formed the commission about a month ago, for talks with the Government ‘in defence of the Constitution’ but went ahead and started daily rallies without giving the Government much time.

On Monday, 2 March, President Yameen delivered his customary annual address to Parliament, Foreign Minister Dunya Maumoon talked tough, again, on ‘outside interference’ in internal affairs of the country, and former MDP President Mohammed Nasheed was also produced before the Male court on ‘terrorism charges’. Late evening, Tourism Minister Ahmed Adeeb, considered a confidant of President Yameen, met with JP leader Gasim Ibrahim and held talks.

Held at the instance and residence of low-profile, highly influential businessman, Mohammed ‘Champa’ Moosa ‘Uhchu’, the meeting has since been followed by a ruling combine parliamentarian withdrawing an amendment bill, seeking to fix a 65-year upper age-limit for presidential candidates. Moved a couple of months ago, it was said to have been aimed at Gasim, who would have crossed the age before the presidential polls of 2018. They were also reported to have discussed the Government’s $ 100-m dues from Gasim, who however has denied it. According to local media reports, Champa had another visitor a day later, in Zuhaira Umar, a sister of President Nasheed’s father and mother of MDP parliamentarian Eva Abdulla.

In his address to Parliament, President Yameen defended the Government’s position on implementing constitutional reforms. As was to be expected and indicated in advance, the MDP and the JP staged a protest inside the House, with some media reports indicating that the two parties did so independent of each other. However, the protest did not turn unruly as was the case when then President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik came to address the House on 1 March 2012 – when the entire exercise had to be put off.

Talking tough, this time at the UNHRC meeting in Geneva, Minister Dunya indicated that Maldives needed time to strengthen its institutions, which were yet to find their roles. Possibly addressing nations and international institutions that had taken exception to President Nasheed’s arrest and next day’s court episode, she asked why they were all silent when a sitting judge and earlier the present-day President were arraigned likewise.

President Nasheed’s term in office was the reference point, and Minister Dunya was pointing to the arrest of Criminal Court Chief Judge Abdulla Mohammed, which has now led to ‘terrorism trial’ against the former. In the day’s proceedings, however, Nasheed’s lawyers asked why the Prosecutor-General had belatedly brought up ‘terror’ charge against him, that too after withdrawing the earlier criminal charge, pending for nearly three years.

Nasheed’s lawyers did not get a favourable order from the three-Judge Bench on their submission for two of them recusing themselves as they were present when Judge Abdulla was arrested. The Bench ruled unanimously that the judges concerned could choose hear the case, and not wanting to appear as witnesses, instead. Together, Monday’s three events, coupled with Friday evening’s Opposition rally may have signalled the continuing impasse that the nation’s polity would have to break, if there has to be all-round forward movement for Maldives. It’s this realisation that also seemed to have encouraged the Opposition combine to move away from street-protests and focus on negotiations with the Government.

Round one for Gasim?

In the normal course, Nasheed’s arrest and the dramatic court episode should have deflected the domestic political focus on to him, and away from President Yameen and his half-brother and ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) chief, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. To an extent, yes, it did. Now, however, Nasheed may have to share the limelight with JP’s Gasim, his re-discovered ally from the pro-democracy era, when President Gayoom was in power.

A presidential aspirant, who has helped the winner with his substantial vote-share in the first round in the presidential polls of 2008 and 2013, Gasim, like the rest, has already set his eyes on the one due in 2018. And like the rest, he too may have launched his early, mid-course campaign for the presidential polls. His in absentia leadership of the climaxing joint Opposition rally in ‘Defence of the Constitution’ on Friday, 27 February, was that and more.

In prison, facing ‘terrorism’ trial in the ‘Judge Abdulla abduction case’, Nasheed had directed his party to take orders from Gasim at the rally rather than naming one of his second-line leaders to take charge. It would have been untenable too, to expect Gasim to take orders from other MDP leaders in Nasheed’s absence.

As coincidence would have it, Gasim too was away in Colombo, leading an MDP-JP team, meeting with the Sri Lankan leadership and foreign diplomats co-accredited to Maldives. He took his job seriously with the result Gasim’s message went to the protestors at Male that evening. With some of the MDP leaders with him returning home to join the protest, Gasim also seemed to have done a few rounds of meetings without them, notably with Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena.

Going by media reports, Gasim announced a few startling decisions/directives to the protestors who had gathered at Male. First, the protests would begin at 4 pm and end peacefully at 6 pm, coinciding with the Islamic evening prayers. Two, and more important, the rally was not aimed at any regime-change in the country. This implied that Gasim was not for demanding President Abdulla Yameen’s exit and early polls. The latter was a scaled down version of MDP’s original demand for President Yameen to hand over power to Gasim.

An ambitious politician all along, Gasim would have to part ways with the Yameen-Gayoom leadership before the 2018 presidential polls, if he were not supported by the ruling combine. By forcing him to quit through a succession of political moves and governmental decisions, including denial of support for Gasim in the Speaker’s election after last year’s parliamentary polls, the ruling PPM-led combine clearly showed whom they would not back for the presidency, whatever way it came.

By timing his formal exit from the ruling combine and joining hands with the MDP, Gasim may have shared the Opposition limelight that was exclusively the MDP’s. Should the parties get closer still, Gasim might become their main voice when Nasheed is in prison. If per chance, the terror-trial leads to Nasheed’s disqualification from contesting elections, then the question might arise should the MDP field another nominee, or back Gasim in 2015.

Nasheed, most charismatic

All this do not mean much in the normal or even abnormal course. The MDP continues to be the single largest political party in the country. Going by Election Commission entries, every eighth, if not seventh, Maldivian is a party member – a high figure for any democracy. Nasheed is the nation’s most charismatic leader, maybe for all time. Even when he lost the 2013 presidential polls in the second round, close to half the nation’s voters had backed him.

In such a scenario, independent of what the court verdict could be in the ‘Judge Abdulla case’, any disqualification of Nasheed from contesting the elections based on any such verdict, could see the politically-polarised nation even more sharply divided. But for the sagacious intervention of the twin-party leaderships on Friday, 27 February, too end the rally when it was still under their control, most protestors had arrived with the expectation/promise that they would continue it until President Yameen exited office – and President Nasheed was out of prison.

On return from Colombo, Gasim told the media that some members of the international community could impose sanctions, if the Government did not reverse some of its undemocratic and anti-democratic decisions. Should the international community get involved more than at present, it would then remain to be seen how President Yameen and his Government would act and react – as much to President Nasheed’s arrest as to the overall scenario.

‘No orders from above’

Should the ‘Judge Abdulla case’ proceed without interventions of any kind, then Nasheed and his co-accused may have a problem on hand. In such a scenario, the closest that President Yameen could come to if Nasheed were to be convicted and sentenced in the case is to grant him ‘presidential pardon’ under the Constitution. Accepting such a course take away Nasheed’s right to contest the presidential poll, however. It being a terrorism case, the alternate course, would be for him to suffer in silence, a sentence that could be anywhere between ten and 15 years.

However, things do not seem to be too bleak for President Nasheed. In his own preliminary defence, then army chief, Maj-Gen Moosa Ali Jaleel, a co-accused in the ‘Judge Abdulla case’, has since told the trial court that neither did he receive any orders from above, nor did he issued any orders down the line for Judge Abdulla’s arrest. With President Nasheed and then Defence Minister Tholath Ibrahim alone above him, Jaleel seemed to imply that neither of them had given him any instructions. In his recent court appearance, Nasheed too had declared that he had not ordered anyone to arrest Judge Abdulla. Local media reports indicated that the prosecution was likely to depend on President Nasheed’s public statements after Judge Abdulla’s house to establish their case. But then a periodic trial of Nasheed and a series of appeal court hearings can cut both ways for President Yameen’s politics, the popularity of President Yameen – and of the PPM by extension.

However, the latter too would all still be intrigued about the politico-constitutional political possibilities and constitutional logic behind the MDP asking President Yameen to hand over power to JP’s Gasim, rather than calling for advancing the presidential poll. Yet, the possibilities on the domestic front, starting now with the feeble Opposition protests, which could get fuelled en route if allowed to linger and last, and the current hesitation of the international community after early condemnation of President Nasheed’s arrest and/or the court episode may have encouraged the Yameen-Gayoom leadership to consider negotiating with the Opposition from a position of strength – and keeping it all a ‘domestic affair’.

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

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The head of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, has spoken out against banning women from sports stadiums, urging Iran to end the prohibition of women from entering sports venues.

In FIFA’s weekly magazine, Blatter says that when he travelled to Iran in November 2013, he encountered the ban on the presence of women in sports stadiums.

He adds that he asked the Iranian president to put an end to this policy but so far has seen no result. Blatter stressed that the situation cannot continue and the doors of stadiums must be opened up to female spectators.

Iran is vying to host the Asian Football Cup games in 2019 along with UAE, and it is said that the restrictions on women’s presence in stadiums significantly reduce Iran’s chance of winning this bid.

Blatter also criticized the absence of Iranian women on the FIFA Executive Committee.

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By Hamdi Fırat Büyük

Croatia’s President, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, paid an official visit to Sarajevo as her first official foreign visit. Grabar-Kitrovic stressed her opinions on Bosnian Croats’ status within the country. Her visit and statements, as well as recent developments in the country, make the Croat question in Bosnia more apparent.

“No one can complain about the president of Croatia being interested in the position of the Croatian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Grabar-Kitrovic said, “but the way I approach Bosnia and Herzegovina is [with respect to its] sovereignty,” she told the media after her meetings.

Kitarovic’s visit has drawn much attention in light of her sometimes conflicting statements about the situation of Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In one of her first official interviews, she promised to support Bosnian Croat initiatives, even if they included the creation of a separate Croat entity within Bosnia to add to the existing two. Later, contrary to expectations, she changed her tone and she started to stress respect for Bosnia and its territorial integrity.

The tension on Bosnian Croats’ position was also tightened last week after a meeting of the Croatian People’s Council (HNS), which is an association that congregates the country’s Croat parties.

At the meeting, not surprisingly, Bosnia’s Croat leaders adopted a declaration that rejected Bosnia’s current state system and its constitution. Additionally, they called for changes to guarantee Croatian rights in Bosnia that are equal to those of the Bosniaks and Serbs.

Dysfunctional state system

Many experts think that Bosnia’s most important and fundamental political problem is the dysfunctional state system that was imposed on it from an airbase in Dayton. This state system is called the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the war between Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia. Bosnia is divided into two entities by Dayton. 49% of the country belongs to the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska led by Milorad Dodik, who wants it to either become an independent state or be annexed by Serbia.

The other entity of Bosnia, called the Federation, was divided into ten cantons that are either dominated by Bosniaks or Bosnian Croats. Each canton has its own government, parliament, and policies in addition to local, city, and town councils. Also, there is the autonomous town of Brcko in the northern part of the country. Tim Judah, a distinguished Balkans expert, says Dayton created a country that is an administrative giant with a dysfunctional state system.

All ethnic groups have voiced different demands with regard to their governmental rights. These demands have begun to exhibit a higher degree of significance after the preliminary results of the 2013 census, because the ethnic distribution of the population has undergone a major change compared to the war-time statistics.

Until 2013, no census had been taken since 1992. Bosniaks constitute almost half of the population and, consequently, demand more rights in the government. Croats represent the smallest ethnic group in the country, and their population has a downward trend, which is why they fear to lose their constituent position in the country. Serbs, on the other hand, always demand more than can be feasibly achieved considering the size of their population. In this sense, the constant backdrop of different aspirations persists in Bosnia: whether it is Republika Srpska seeking greater autonomy, Croat parties angling for a third entity, or several Bosniak parties hoping for a more centrally governed country.

Bosnian Croats and Croatia

Bosnian Croats’ claims and Croatia’s protectionist policies for Croats in Bosnia are not new trends. Croatia has been taking a protectionist role since Bosnia’s independence, and afterward like Serbia did for the Serbs in Bosnia. In addition to Croatia’s newly elected President Grabar-Kitarovic’s statement, there are also some other initiatives from Croatia. For instance, last year after the mass protests in Bosnia, former Croatian President Stjepan Mesic called for a new international peace conference on Bosnia and its future. In the semi-Croat Bosnian city of Mostar, which is considered the capital for Bosnia’s Croats, he held a press conference where he strongly stated that the Dayton Agreement should be revised immediately in order to maintain peace and security in Bosnia.

He insists on keeping the ethnically divided cantonal system with a central government. He supports that the three constituent nations –Muslim Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats— should have their own cantons under a country-level, central government without excluding others, instead of two entities of Bosnia.

In conclusion, the Bosnian Croats demanded a third entity or another state model that gives equal rights. The three constituent nations of the country are becoming more and more apparent within the dysfunctional state system and there are many problems that arise from it, such as a government crisis, the financial situation, last year’s mass protest of the country and many others.

Despite the fact that within Bosnia’s three constituent nations there exist different demands on the state system, it seems that no one including the country itself, countries in the region, the EU or the US, is eager to change Dayton’s state system. Furthermore, it also seems that they are not capable to make the necessary changes because of their own inner problems and issues in other regions. However, rising demands of Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs threaten peace and stability both in Bosnia and the region as a whole.

The post Ascending Croat Question In Bosnia – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

While the catastrophic consequences of failing to establish a lasting peace in Afghanistan loom larger than any time before, it seems that the US has started to reformulate its strategy amid criticism from opposition Republicans that the Democratic commander in chief was beating a hasty and risky retreat. The US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said during his first visit to Afghanistan that the US was considering slowing its military withdrawal by keeping larger troops than planned because the new Afghan government was proving to be more reliable partner. He also said at a news conference with Ghani that President Obama had plans to discuss a range of options for U.S. military withdrawal when Afghan president Ashraf Ghani visits the White House in March.

A more active and larger US military presence in Afghanistan will not only demoralize the terrorists, but will also help Afghanistan and Pakistan deal with insurgency on both sides, in an effective manner. This presence will also provide some guarantee towards the fulfillment of the commitments made by Pakistan and Afghanistan aimed at improving their relations.

The move by President Ghani to enter into direct talks with the Pakistan Army Chief, which did not go well with some in Afghanistan, was hailed by the international community as a clever and honest step towards building trust. Pakistan on its part reciprocated this goodwill gesture through some visits by Chief of Army Staff Gen. Raheel Sharif and ISI Chief Gen. Rizwan Akhtar. As a result of these positive developments, signs of improvement in Pakistan-Afghanistan relations are more visible.

Factors such as brutal attacks by the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the realization of the gravity of the threat posed by the extremist ideology in the region have contributed in bringing Afghanistan and Pakistan closer. These challenges have also prompted China, which has growing concerns about the training of extremist Chinese Muslims and their infiltration to China, to take part in the process by supporting Kabul-Taliban reconciliation while representatives of Afghan Taliban have visited Beijing. This is in addition to the role Afghanistan can play as a land bridge between Pakistan and Central Asian countries, which can help Pakistan increase its export and business, and import the energy that it seriously needs.

In his address on National Teacher’s Day in Kabul, President Ashraf Ghani referred to Taliban and militant groups as “Political Opposition” while Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah in a meeting with the commanders of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police has asked the government to clearly define the terms “enemy” and “friend” fearing the continuation of uncertainty in dealing with insurgents and their supporters. These statements may resonate with the change in US’s reclassification of Taliban from “a terrorist group” to “an armed insurgency”. This policy shift has resulted in separate but coordinated US backed peace initiatives with Taliban by the UAE, Qatar, Turkey and Pakistan.

Fears and concerns

The changes come at a price, and this is no exception. Pakistan and Afghanistan need to be ready to give necessary concessions to make the process succeed. They also need to deal with the internal pressures and opposition from some powerful quarters.

Although recent developments show that Islamabad is helping Kabul to hold talks with the Afghan Taliban but these efforts would be judged by the outcome. The leadership of the Taliban still continue to make the same maximalist demands such as foreign troops withdrawal and changing the Afghan constitution.
Some even believe that Pakistan has not yet done much to reciprocate the goodwill initiatives of Afghanistan. While President Ghani has been under immense pressure of being accused of making a clandestine deal with Pakistan without taking the Afghan people into confidence, Afghanistan did not stop short of fulfilling its commitments. He has been quoted saying that he does not want to deal with the matter through public diplomacy.

This situation has led some analysts to fear the exploitation of loopholes of the deal by Pakistan and in order to give elements from Taliban and Hekmatyar Group some share in the government in Kabul without ending insurgency.

Mr. Ghani is losing popularity based on the fact that he is giving too much away including suspension of a 400 million dollar tank and aircraft refurbishing plant funded by India, agreeing to greater military cooperation with Pakistan and fighting Pakistani Taliban in Kunar Province of Afghanistan without gaining anything in return.
Moreover, as a result of operations against militants in Waziristan, the security challenges of Afghanistan have multiplied as terrorists are being pushed into Afghanistan.

While some Afghan and Western officials have been quoted blaming the military junta as well as some powerful political and religious parties in Pakistan for supporting insurgency in Afghanistan, it is now time for Pakistan to go beyond its conventional rhetoric. As the influence of such networks remains intact with the inner circles of pro-Taliban (and Al-Qaeda) groups, the situation gets more complicated for Afghanistan to aspire for a brighter future.

Islamic State (IS) as common threat

These developments take place when militants of Islamic State (IS) are making inroads in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al-Qaeda and Taliban may have some rivalries with IS, but the proximity between their ideologies, goals and methodologies and tactics will bring them all under the black flag of IS.

Adding fuel to the fire, the speedy growth of the Islamic State in Afghanistan has filled some insurgents particularly those unwilling to join the peace deal, with hope and energy to win the war. The IS has recently announced its expansion into the land of Khorasan which mainly refers to Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan.

In Afghanistan, many among the Taliban and Al-Qaeda either have pledged to IS openly or clandestinely or plan to do so, though there have been reports of clashes between Taliban fighters and IS militants. In southern Zabul and Helmand provinces Mullah Abdul Rauf, a former Taliban commander who was recently killed, was actively recruiting fighters for IS while in Kunar and Farah provinces the Group has established training camps. Similarly Afghan government officials reported about the activities of IS militants in Ghazni and Kunduz provinces in central and northern Afghanistan.

Police Chief of Kunduz Province has confirmed that 70 IS militants were operating in the province and planned to expand their activities to other provinces. Some 30 members of Hazara ethnic community have recently been abducted on Kabul-Kandahar highway by the gunmen believed to be IS militants wearing black clothing and black masks.

A spokesman of the Islamic State, in an audio tape published on January 26, 2015 announced the appointment of Hafez Saeed Khan a former Commander of the Pakistani Taliban (Tahreek Taliban Pakistan) as the “governor” of Khorasan province and Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadi a former senior Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan as the deputy governor. The Islamic States in Khorasan has claimed that the group has deployed over 10000 troops on the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

This poses a common threat to both the countries. They have to cooperate and stand together against the enemy. In the meantime, in order to overcome this security and ideological threat, a regional cooperation which should also include China, Central Asian countries and Gulf States, and Iran is of paramount importance.
The rapid expansion of Islamic State in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, casts serious doubt over the relevance of any peace deal with the Taliban. If not pre-empted well in advance, the Islamic State has the potential to challenge peace initiatives by take the insurgency in Afghanistan to a higher level.

The post Afghanistan Peace Hopes And The Islamic State Threat – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The human brain can select relevant objects from a flood of information and edit out what is irrelevant. It also knows which parts belong to a whole.

If, for example, we direct our attention to the doors of a house, the brain will preferentially process its windows, but not the neighboring houses. Psychologists from Goethe University Frankfurt have now discovered that this also happens when parts of the objects are merely maintained in our memory.

“Perception and memory have mainly been investigated separately until now”, explained Benjamin Peters, doctoral researcher at the Institute for Medical Psychology in the working group of Prof. Jochen Kaiser. There are close parallels, for in the same way as we can preferentially process external stimuli, we are also able to concentrate on the memory content that is currently the most important. These are essential skills of our brain, which are closely connected to intelligence and which are impaired in various psychiatric illnesses.

In their study, Peters and colleagues examined “object-based attention”, a well-known phenomenon in perception research. This refers to the fact that we automatically extend our attention to the whole object when we attend only part of an object – like the front door and the windows. In the experiment the subjects were asked to direct their attention alternately to one of four screen positions, which formed the ends of each of two artificial objects.

In accordance with the principle of object-based attention the subjects were able to shift their attention more quickly between two positions that belonged to the same object than between those that were part of different objects. It was discovered that this effect also occurred when the subjects envisaged these positions only in short-term memory.

The researchers were able to describe the effect physiologically by examining the neuronal activity using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). As expected, they initially found increased activity at those positions in the cerebral cortex where the currently focused position was represented (visual and parietal cortex). However, this increased activity also extended to the areas in the brain that represent the relevant associated position of the same object, despite the fact that the subject was not concentrating on it.

Peters explained the results of the experiment by saying: “It is remarkable that this effect was observed in regions of the brain that are normally involved in perception, despite the fact that here, objects and positions were only maintained in memory”.

On the other hand, the regions in which the equidistant positions of the other object are represented remained unchanged.

This concordance of an underlying principle of attention in perception and in memory suggests that it may be possible to attribute many functions of human cognition to a few basic mechanisms.

The post Brain Treats Real And Imaginary Objects Same Way appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Soybean oil accounts for more than 90 percent of all the seed oil production in the United States. Genetically modified (GM) soybean oil, made from seeds of GM soybean plants, was recently introduced into the food supply on the premise that it is healthier than conventional soybean oil.

But is that premise true?

Just barely, say scientists at the University of California, Riverside and their colleagues at UC Davis. The researchers compared the effects of both oils in experiments performed in the lab on mice. They found that the GM soybean oil is just as unhealthy as regular soybean oil in that it also induces obesity, diabetes and fatty liver. GM soybean oil does, however, have one advantage: it does not cause insulin resistance – the inability to efficiently use the hormone insulin.

“While genetic modification of crops can introduce new beneficial traits into existing crops, the resulting products need to be tested for long-term health effects before making assumptions about their impact on human health,” said senior investigator Frances Sladek, a professor of cell biology and neuroscience at UC Riverside.

Naturally high in unsaturated fats, vegetable oils were once thought to be healthy, and were hydrogenated to increase their shelf-life and temperature stability. The hydrogenation, however, generated trans fats – now widely recognized as being unhealthy.

Soybean oil, the most common vegetable oil used in the United States, contains about 55 percent linoleic acid, a polyunsaturated fat.

“Our previous results on mice showed that replacing some of the fat in a diet high in saturated fats from coconut oil with soybean oil – to achieve a level common in the American diet – causes significantly more weight gain, adiposity, diabetes and insulin resistance than in mice fed just the high-fat coconut oil diet,” Sladek said.

To determine whether linoleic acid was responsible for the metabolic effects of soybean oil, the researchers designed a parallel diet in which regular soybean oil was replaced, on a per gram basis, with GM soybean oil. The GM soybean oil has a fatty acid composition (low linoleic acid) similar to that of olive oil. The GM plants were developed by DuPont to reduce trans fat production, increase soybean oil shelf life and create a generally healthier cooking oil.

“The GM soybean oil has 0 grams trans fat and more of the monounsaturated fats that are considered heart healthy,” Deol said. “But it had not been tested for long term metabolic effects until our current study.”

Deol and the rest of the research team found to their surprise that the parallel diet containing GM soybean oil induced weight gain and fatty liver essentially identical to that of a diet with regular soybean oil, with the exception that the mice remained insulin sensitive and had somewhat less adipose (fat) tissue.

“These results indicate that linoleic acid may contribute to insulin resistance and adiposity but that another as yet unidentified component of the soybean oil affects the liver and overall weight gain,” Deol said.

In their experiments, the researchers gave four groups of mice different diets for 24 weeks. Each group was comprised of 12 mice. The control group received a low-fat diet (5 percent of daily calories from fat). The other groups received a diet with 40 percent of daily calories from fat, an amount common in the American diet. One diet was high in saturated fat from coconut oil, and one had 41 percent of the saturated fat replaced with regular soybean oil. The fourth group had 41 percent of the saturated fat replaced with the GM soybean oil. The body weights, food intake, glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity of all the mice were tracked.

What the researchers found was that mice fed a diet with either of the soybean oils had worse fatty liver, glucose intolerance and obesity than the group that got all their fat from coconut oil. But the mice whose diet included the GM soybean oil had less fat tissue than the animals that ingested regular soybean oil. These mice weighed about 30 percent more than the controls that ate a low-fat diet, while the group on the diet containing regular soybean oil weighed 38 percent more than controls. The mice on the diet that was primarily coconut oil weighed only about 13 percent more than controls. Unlike the diet with regular soybean oil, the diet with the new GM soybean oil did not lead to insulin resistance.

“While the GM soybean oil may have fewer negative metabolic consequences than regular soybean oil, it may not necessarily be as healthy as olive oil, as has been assumed by its fatty acid composition, and it is certainly less healthy than coconut oil which is primarily saturated fat,” Sladek said. “It is important to understand the metabolic effects and health impact of the GM soybean oil before it is widely adopted as a healthier alternative to regular soybean oil. It is equally important to understand the health effects of regular soybean oil, which is ubiquitous in the American diet and seems to be much more detrimental to metabolic health than saturated fat.”

Sladek and Deol were joined in the research by Jane R. Evans, Antonia Rizo and Cynthia Perez at UCR; and Johannes Fahrmann, Dimitry Grapov, Jun Yang and Oliver Fiehn at UC Davis who performed extensive analysis on the liver and blood samples from these mice.

“To our knowledge this is the first in-depth analysis of the metabolic effects of GM soybean oil, and the first metabolomics analysis comparing soybean oil – regular and GM – to coconut oil,” Deol said.

The post How Healthy Is Genetically Modified Soybean Oil? appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Muhammad Umar*

Tim Craig pushes the envelope for irresponsible reporting in his latest article on the construction of civil nuclear reactors in Karachi, Pakistan.

Last year, US Secretary of State John Kerry said, “Pakistan’s nuclear assets are in safe hands, its command and control is exemplary, the entire world should follow Pakistan’s example.” And earlier this year, Tero Varjoranta, Deputy Director General Safeguards, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), also said that Pakistan has an exceptional record of nuclear safety. Following Varjoranta’s visit, Secretary Kerry issued another statement saying, “The United States has full confidence in nuclear security in Pakistan and appreciates Pakistan’s proactive engagement with the international community including through its hosting of IAEA training activities at its Nuclear Security Centre of Excellence and its active participation in the Nuclear Security Summits.”

The point is that Pakistan’s nuclear assets are as safe as any other countries nuclear assets. There is no record of a nuclear accident ever occurring in Pakistan, which is something the US cannot claim.

Craig talks about the risks for accidents, and security breaches, what he forgets to add is that one of the first-ever nuclear accidents happened in the United States in 1958 at the Y-12 National Security Complex, since then there has been a case of weapon grade uranium material mishandling at Y-12, and last year the site made headlines when a nun broke into the facilities, there have been dozens of other near catastrophic incidents in the United States. The most catastrophic accident was the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor near the State capital of Harrisburg in Pennsylvania. Despite their terrible history with nuclear accidents, and security breaches, the Americans remain the highest producers of nuclear energy.

Craig also argues that the ACP-1000 reactors being installed in Karachi are “new and untested,” this is not entirely true. The reactor design passed a thorough yearlong safety review conducted by the IAEA.

Citing concerns from the opposition, Craig says that the 20-mile proximity of the reactors to a civilian population is a concern. The fact is that the Karachi reactors are as far as they need to be for safe operations. The ACP-1000 has a double containment structure, making a radiation leak impossible, even if it were struck directly with a commercial airplane, as correctly reported in his article. Even if that wasn’t the case, what Craig forgets to mention is that in the United States, over 18 million residents live within a radius of 20 miles from nuclear power plants, and some as close as three miles.

In the article Craig claims that the world is moving away from nuclear power after Fukushima, this again is not accurate. The US, UK, Japan, China and South Korea are looking at increasing their nuclear energy production. While developing states like India, Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt are also moving in the direction of nuclear energy. So, it’s okay if they expand their civil nuclear capabilities, but it’s bad if Pakistan does it?

The next point that Craig makes is that the Chinese sale of nuclear reactors to Pakistan is illegal as per the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) guidelines because Pakistan is not a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Let me remind Mr. Craig that China committed to selling Pakistan nuclear reactors before becoming members of the NSG, second, why don’t you ask how the US is able to sell to India? India is also not part of the NPT, and worse, they used the Cirus reactor, a civil nuclear reactor installed by Canada for peaceful purposes to develop their first nuclear bomb. Pakistan has never done that, and has a perfect non-proliferation record, unlike India. How can we be sure that the American reactors will not be used for military purposes?

So is Craig trying to say that nuclear energy is good for India, but not for Pakistan? How can he justify his position? India not only violated its agreement with Canada, and misused a civil reactor for military purposes, but has also had many close calls with nuclear accidents. During the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, Kalpakkam was forced offline when the water overtook its cooling intake system, similar to what happened at Fukushima. Pakistan has ensured that this will not happen at the Karachi reactors, because they chose the ACP-1000, this reactor is capable of keeping the core cool for 72-hours even with total power failure in the unlikely scenario of being struck by a natural disaster, which Craig accurately mentions in his report.

Is everything overlooked where India is concerned because of American interests in the region? Craig cannot justify his report. Pakistan has an excellent history operating nuclear power plants; it has never violated any international laws, or norms. And all of Pakistan’s nuclear reactors are under IAEA safeguards, for which many prominent world leaders, and diplomats have praised Pakistan.

If Craig wants to discuss a threat, and an illegal deal, he should do a story on the US-India deal, and on the India’s turbulent past with nuclear issues. The focus on Pakistan, especially Karachi is unjustified.

The Pakistan government has taken all concerns seriously. Pakistan has been operating nuclear reactors since 1966, and has an excellent safety record. Pakistan is also a member of CERN. It is wrong to portray Pakistan as an inexperienced country dealing with nuclear power for the first time; it shows the clear bias of the author.

If Pakistan’s excellent scientists and technicians can operate a nuclear power plant without vendor support for over four decades – operating the ACP-1000 with Chinese support will be easy as pie.

The fact of the matter is that Pakistan is facing an extreme shortage of energy. As the population grows, so does the demand for energy. Nuclear is the cheapest, most efficient, and environmentally friendly source of energy, and Pakistan must make an investment in it to ensure a bright future. Pakistan’s economy cannot grow until the energy crisis is resolved. Tim Craig has unfairly singled out Pakistan and either does not want to see a prosperous Pakistan, or has failed to accurately report the truth.

*The writer is an assistant professor at the National University of Sciences and Technology. He tweets @umarwrites.

The post Nuclear Pakistan – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

South-East Europe on the edge of civilization: Depending who you ask

The youth of South–East Europe have lost their virginity. How has that has happened? Before we try to answer that question, let us develop a proper story as a background for the confirmation of this announcement.

To start with, during the last decade almost 300,000 thousand young people from the area of South-East Europe fled towards a “better place for work and life” and headed towards the West (Europe). That figure of 300,000 young people can roughly be evenly divided between Croatia (approximately 100,000), Serbia (100,000) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (100,000). And that number, instead of decreasing, actually increases and within the last couple a years it has been rapidly rising. Why?

The answer is very simple — it rests within the Head office of each political party (it doesn’t matter whether they may be left or right, depending on the election year) within those three mentioned countries (There is no difference in Montenegro and/or Macedonia and especially Kosovo, which increases the above-mentioned number almost up to 500,000). Again, why is it that the answer is within the above-mentioned parties, regardless if they are “national” and/or “international”?

This is because, whatever party is in power does not need smart and intelligent, educated and hard-working people, and especially if they are young. This is because it is the youth who ask the hard questions, who want to see changes made, and who would like to challenge the decisions. In this regard, the young minds are liberal and open-minded (of course, only if they are not educated under the overcoat of the ruling and/or opposition party). Also, on other hand, the ones who stay behind are poor, non-educated, and blinded and who, as sheep, are still looking for their Sheppard’s (forgetting that the political leaders know exactly what they are doing – just check who are the richest people in the abovementioned countries) who will again vote for the belloved leader(s) while he/she (especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina) love more countries like Croatia, Serbia and/or Turkey than Bosnia and Herzegovina itself.

So, why we have mentioned “virginity” at the beginning?

Because, instead of losing their political virginity from the direct contact with own countries, they will lose with “eyes wide open”, the real virginity of life in a direct combat within the civilized and developed countries of the West.

But, at the same time this will bring from the Balkans to the cold West the hot and strong genetic material of educated people. Please, just turn around and check among those more than 5 million who fled the Balkan area because of the wars (1991-1999) how many of them have succeeded and became even influential people in the countries that accepted them as refugees. Is it because they had weapons and/or knives?

No….No…No…

It is because of their knowledge and their clear minds that visualized the openings of the possibilities for further development of their being, but also the being of the whole society where they live now.

So, what will happen with South-East area and their youth? Within that question there are two sub-question issues:

1. South – East
2. Youth

The answer for Number One can be found within the sentence of Mrs. Latinka Perović, 82, a former politician who was Secretary of the Communist Party of Serbia (within former Yugoslavia, back in 1972 replaced from the position by Tito and local comrades because of “anarchic liberalism”) who stated in an interview for Radio B92 in Belgrade, Serbia, back in 2012: “The nation/people is not an eternal, everlasting category”.

What is the answer for Number Two? I will try answer that through a poetic thought:

Thought, that is not in consonance with my thought is not a thought because I think so.

Can you guess who are behind those words? Every Serbian, Macedonian, Croatian, Bosnian and Herzegovinian, Montenegrian and/or Kosovarian politician (in power or in opposition) invented that sentence and cursed every young soul from this area of South-East Europe.

So, what is the way out?

We must unifying the diversities of the smart – open-minded young people from this region. How? Painfully easy it might be done, through the network of knowledge, the understanding of differences and the improvement of connections — within the area of the same and/or similar languages and culture — for the benefit of all.

Like musketeers –- one for all, and all for one — but this time the Musketeers of 21 Century who will, after losing their virginity, at the same time do their best to become a new Empire that will strike back so hard that they will bloody the “new royalties from Eastern Europe” who promised golden spoons to the people back in 1990 after the fall of Socialism (those “new royalties – tycoons” destroyed the positive thoughts for a better future) will become a forgotten past, while those in future power will come, through the souls of youth: knowledge, understanding and mutual respect – for the benefit of all, regardless if you are Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim or even Atheist and/or Gnostic.

Utopia?

Might be, but is there really any other option?

The post ‘Virginity’ In XXI Century – Essay appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the removal of the UN Security Council’s sanctions on Tehran is contingent upon “political will,” adding the two sides are likely to clinch a final deal.

“Lifting the Security Council’s sanctions has no complications and only depends on political will,” Zarif said.

There is no legal complications, either, for the lifting of sanctions, he added.

He said parties to the negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program are likely to reach an accord.

“I believe there are more chances of success than failure,” said the top diplomat.

“The odds of reaching a final deal is more than 50 percent,” he said.

“I feel both sides believe it will be more useful if the talks yield an agreement rather than break down,” he underscored.

Nevertheless, he emphasized that everything should be agreed on before a final deal is to be struck.

“Nothing is agreed upon unless everything is agreed on,” said the foreign minister.

“The negotiations will go on, and as long as Iran and the P5+1 have not agreed on all details, there is the possibility of the talks breaking down,” Zarif pointed out.

Iran’s Foreign Minister also said the Islamic Republic will not accept any limitations on its nuclear program if the P5+1 group of world powers fails to reach a deal with the Islamic Republic.

“I don’t know why people do not want to have an agreement. Because if we don’t have an agreement, then we don’t accept anything. Then we go back to the posturing of more pressure on Iran and more centrifuges. We’re not going to develop nuclear weapons. But if they put more pressure on us, they won’t get more transparency,” Zarif said.

The top Iranian diplomat, however, said that Iran is “willing to accept limitations” on its nuclear activities “in order to reach an international agreement. We are willing to accept extra transparency measures in order to ease the concerns that we believe are misplaced. We believe these are the concerns that have been fanned by the hysteria that has been fanned by people like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and company.”

Referring to the remarks made by US President Barack Obama that Iran should freeze sensitive nuclear activity for at least ten years if it wants a deal, Zarif said, “I’m not negotiating publicly. We are discussing various measures, both transparency measures, as well as limitations – voluntary limitations on our nuclear program… with 5+1, basically… primarily the United States, but other members of 5+1.”

“We believe these are not necessary. But we are prepared to take… to go the extra mile in order to convince the international community that our nuclear program is exclusively peaceful,” he said.

“And we are engaged in very serious, high technical, discussions in which many nuclear physicists are involved, including the heads of… our atomic energy organization, and the US Secretary of Energy, both of them nuclear physicists, who are trying to make sure that Iran’s nuclear program will always remain peaceful. And we have no problem with that, because we want our nuclear program to be… we know that it’s peaceful.”

The Iranian foreign minister reiterated that the sanctions imposed on Iran by the US and its allies are “illegal.”

“Sanctions were there. I mean we considered them illegal. We considered them ill placed. But those who believed in sanctions believed they were there to reach an agreement. Now, if we have an agreement, which we don’t yet, we’re trying to, if we can [have] an agreement, then why you need sanctions?” Zarif said.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Zarif said the Israeli regime is supporting al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front militants operating in Syria’s Golan Height.

He said that Israelis are “interesting bedfellows with Jabhat al-Nusra in the Golan. And if you look at Syria’s intelligence, you will see that. That is the problem that needs to be addressed.”

Iran’s senior nuclear negotiator has also reiterated its call for the removal of all sanctions before a final nuclear deal with the P5+1 group as the country wraps up another round of nuclear talks with six world powers.

“Our principle position is that all sanctions are lifted at once,” Abbas Araqchi said.

Araqchi, who is also deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, stressed that an agreement could be achieved with the world powers “only if sanctions are lifted.”

Noting that the lifting of the sanctions is a “very important aspect” in the negotiations, he added, “No sanctions should be remained in place.”

The Iranian diplomat called on the world powers to decide between achieving a “deal” and continuing to “pressure” Iran through sanctions.

He said Iran and the world powers are trying their best to reach a sort of “understanding” by the end of the month, noting that “major issues” still remain to be resolved.

Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also said the agency’s recent report on Iran’s nuclear program verifies Tehran’s “full transparency” in its nuclear program.

Reza Najafi said the report shows the country’s goodwill and strong determination to reach further agreements with the UN nuclear agency.

Najafi further rejected as “false and baseless” claims about the country’s Marivan site, saying that Iran is waiting for the agency’s response to investigate allegations of experiments on explosives there.

He has once again announced Iran’s readiness to allow the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEA) to visit a site in the country’s western region of Marivan.

Iran’s envoy to the IAEA, said in a statement that Tehran has already asked the agency to visit the site to clear allegations of large-scale experiments on explosives.

According to the statement, the international body rejected the offer.

Najafi said the agency cannot cover up its mistake regarding false accusations against Iran by simply rejecting the Islamic Republic’s offer.

He said Iran has repeatedly dismissed the accusations as baseless and fabricated.

The post Iran Says Likely To Reach Nuclear Deal appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Two suspects in the high-profile murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov have been detained, the Federal Security Service (FSB) reported.

According to FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov, the suspects were identified as Anzor Gubashev and Zaur Dadayev.

Bortnikov said both suspects come from Russia’s southern region of the North Caucasus, a restive place with insurgency and crime problems.

The Investigative Committee confirmed the two detainees are implicated in both organizing and executing the hit on Nemtsov.

“We are continuing our work to establish which individuals may be involved in this crime,” the committee’s spokesman Vladimir Markin said.

Nemstov, a former Russian governor and deputy prime minister, who became a prominent opposition figure in the early 2000s, was gunned down in central Moscow on February 27. The assassination triggered worldwide condemnation and calls for swift investigation.

The politician was killed on a bridge over the Moscow River near the Kremlin as he was returning home with a female companion. The shooter hit Nemtsov in the back four times and fled in a getaway car.

The crime is being investigated by a joint task force, which includes the police, the FSB and the Investigative Committee.

Investigators are looking into five possible motives behind Nemtsov’s assassination. According to Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the Investigative Committee, the murder may have been a provocation to destabilize the political situation in Russia.

It could also be linked to threats Nemtsov received over his stance on the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, or the current war in Ukraine. The politician’s business activities and a possible assault related to his personal life are also being looked into.

The prime witness to the crime, Ukrainian model, Anna Duritskaya, who was accompanying Nemtsov, has since returned to Kiev. She told the media she was unable to identify the killer.

The killing happened two days ahead of an opposition rally Nemtsov helped organize. The rally was replaced with a mourning march in central Moscow, which drew tens of thousands of people.

The post Russia: Two Suspects Detained In Nemtsov Murder appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Norshahril Saat*

On 17 July 2014, the Selangor Islamic Religious Council (MAIS) issued a fatwa (Islamic legal opinion) declaring groups promoting liberal Islam or religious pluralism to be “deviant.” It specifically mentions Sisters in Islam (SIS), an NGO that struggles for women’s rights and gender equality, as falling outside of mainstream Islam.2 In many Muslim societies, fatwas are non-binding religious opinions issued by Islamic religious scholars (ulama). However, in Malaysia, fatwas published in state’s (negeri) gazette are legally binding, and Muslims are liable to imprisonment, fine, or both for violating them.3 This fatwa, published in the Selangor gazette on 31 July 2014, is an example of the Malaysian “official” ulama’s (religious scholars functioning in state-sponsored institutions) attempts to silence progressive groups that challenge their authority. In fact, SIS is not the only group that has been targeted. Another progressive NGO, the Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF), also fell into the official ulama’s bad books. Between 2011 and 2014, JAKIM (Department of Islamic Development), the federal Islamic bureaucracy, stopped two IRF seminars because the speakers were “liberals” and were not approved by the Department.4

In contrast, the authority of the Indonesian official ulama — represented by members of the Ulama Council of Indonesia (MUI) — remains debatable. I make this claim even though existing writings consider the institution’s fatwas as having a significant impact among Indonesians, and forming the basis for vigilante groups to attack religious minorities such as Shias, Ahmadiyahs, and liberals.5 These writings also suggest that the institution has departed from its original position as a “lackey” of the Suharto’s New Order regime to become one that is assertive towards government policies.6 They often point to MUI’s 2005 declaration that secularism, liberalism, and pluralism are deviant ideologies as having encouraged extremist groups to attack so-called “deviant” Muslims. Nevertheless, I argue that MUI’s fatwas have little influence on Indonesian Muslims. Mass-based Islamic organizations Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, which also issue fatwas for their members, remain powerful at the grassroots level.7 For example, every year, NU and Muhammadiyah members opt to follow their respective organization’s decision in determining the important dates in the Islamic calendar instead of MUI’s.8 In addition, whenever MUI issues a fatwa, progressive groups and intellectuals are quick to scrutinize it. Furthermore, writings that portray MUI as a “powerful, influential, and united” Islamic institution fail to see the divisions among its members. MUI’s leadership comprises of conservatives, progressives, liberals, and Salafi ulama, who at times give contradictory statements in the media. Although MUI made several inroads during the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono government (2004-2014), such as securing a formal role in overseeing shariah banking and finance in 2008 and getting the state to restrict Ahmadiyahs in the country, MUI’s role in the religious domain remains marginal.

The following paragraphs highlight several plausible reasons for the diverging degrees of official ulama authority in the two countries. To be sure, the contrasting policies Suharto and Mahathir adopted in dealing with rising Islamic piety from the 1970s onwards help explain these varying outcomes. In a nutshell, Suharto invested greatly in Islamic modernism, which included co-opting progressives into the religious bureaucracy to counter the traditionalists. Modernists emphasize the use of reason in approaching religious traditions, are cosmopolitan in their religious outlook, and oppose blind faith (taqlid).9 On the other hand, traditionalists argue that Islamic jurisprudence must adhere to rulings by four classical jurists Hanafi, Maliki, Hanbali and Shafie as closely as possible, even though they passed on a millennium ago. In Indonesia, the traditionalists outnumbered the modernists, the biggest traditionalist organization being NU (the others being Nahdlatul Wathon and Al-Washliyah). Mahathir, by contrast, co-opted traditionalist ulama into the religious bureaucracy, with the hope that they would represent UMNO on Islamic matters, support the party ideology of ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy), and counteract PAS. Mahathir’s authoritarian leadership single-handedly kept the official ulama in check, something that his successors Abdullah Badawi (2003-2009) and Najib Razak (2009 to the present) have much less success with.10

INDONESIA: NEUTRALIZING THE TRADITIONALISTS

Suharto considered domestic circumstances and social cleavages in responding to the Islamic resurgence. He did it in three ways: Uniting all Islamic political parties into the United Development Party (PPP); uniting religious scholars into Ulama Council of Indonesia (MUI); and uniting intellectuals into the Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI).

In 1973, Suharto re-aligned all Islamic parties into PPP and it became one of three parties allowed to contest in the Indonesia 1977 elections. Although an opposition party, it received funding from the state. It was in fact an amalgamation of all Islamic parties in the country.11 In 1975, Suharto formed MUI as the country’s fatwa-making body and as an advisory body to the state. Most of its fatwas during the New Order period were either neutral or supportive of the state ideology. For this, it earned the derogatory label Majelis “Ular” Indonesia (Indonesian Council of Snakes).12 In 1990, Suharto formed ICMI when the military’s support for Suharto’s Golkar (Party of the Functional Groups) waned. This was his attempt to Muslims’ support to counterbalance the military.

While the three institutions came into being under different political circumstances, Suharto had a common purpose in forming them: to curb traditionalist influence, to appoint modernists to lead religious institutions, and to internally fragment the Muslim political leadership. Suharto considered NU to be unconforming to his Islamic and modernization ideals, and wished for Islamic groups to be apolitical. And so, in the 1970s and early 1980s, the relationship between NU and the Suharto government was cold. By contrast, the Muhammadiyah avoided any form of politics and made peace with the New Order regime. This explains why Suharto favoured Muhammadiyah before NU. Hence, only state-friendly NU members were allowed to hold key positions in PPP, and in other institutions. Between 1975 and 1998, NU only held the chairmanship of MUI for three years (1981-1984).13 Since 1971, Suharto did not appoint any NU member as the Religious Minister, even though that had been the practice, and most employees in the ministry were traditionalists. In the 1980s, the relationship between Suharto and the traditionalists improved after NU accepted Pancasila as its ideology and it ceased to be a political party. This, however, did not alter his preference for modernists over traditionalists.

Besides restricting traditionalist influence, Suharto also developed neo-modernist thinking among young Muslim activists. He encouraged them to study in Western Universities. These included personalities such as Nurcholis Madjid and Amien Rais, both of whom studied under prominent Muslim thinker Fazlur Rahman, who was a professor based in Chicago. Progressive thinkers such as Dawam Raharjo, Bachtiar Effendy, Azmumardi Azra, and Abdurrahman Wahid not only developed pluralist values in Indonesia, but also spurred democratization of the country during the post-New Order period. These intellectuals continue to play important roles in contemporary Indonesia in checking conservative thinking among the ulama camp. Some served in MUI’s advisory board.

MALAYSIA: BUREAUCRATIZING ISLAM AND OUT-ISLAMIZING PAS

In Malaysia, Mahathir propelled the country’s Islamization in response to the dakwah (the call to spread the message of Islam) movement, or the Islamic resurgence. This period saw the emergence of Islamic civil society groups such as Darul Arqam and ABIM, which drew a popular following.14 So influential were these groups that Mahathir had to ensure that their leaders were given some role in the state administration. In 1982, Mahathir famously co- opted Anwar Ibrahim—who was ABIM president—into UMNO. Initially, Mahathir was tolerant of Ustaz Ashaari Mohammad, the Darul Arqam’s spiritual leader. But by the early 1990s, Ashaari had become more critical of UMNO, which led to Mahathir banning the movement for promoting deviant Islamic teachings. The government claimed it acted on the National Fatwa Committee’s Fatwa (Jawatankuasa Fatwa Kebangsaan).

In the 1980s, the most important challenge posed to the Mahathir administration came from PAS, which had become more Islamist in its orientation. Inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, PAS ulama called for the formation of an Islamic state and implementation of shariah laws in the country, challenging the secular notion of the federal constitution. PAS also altered the party’s constitution, leading to the formation of the Dewan Shura as the highest decision-making body of the party. With these changes, PAS became more successful in recruiting ulama into its fold, including ABIM members. The politics of Islamisation between UMNO and PAS saw the government expanding its Islamic bureaucracies in an effort to demonstrate its commitment to Islam to an increasingly religious electorate.

Mahathir reacted to the Islamic resurgence and Islamist PAS by an array of policies. He set up the Islamic Bank, upgraded the Islamic Centre, forbade importation of non-halal meat, prevented Muslims from entering the casino at Genting Highlands, and built mega mosques. In 1988, the upgraded the shariah courts and introduced the dual-legal system in the country. Civil courts cannot for example hear cases dealing with Muslim personal laws of marriage and inheritance.

The introduction of this dual legal system created a major conundrum especially in deciding cases where there are overlaps between the shariah and civil courts. One example is the Lina Joy controversy, which began in 2001. Lina converted to Christianity but was not allowed to remove the word “Islam” from the identity card without the approval from the Shariah Court. Another example reflecting the overlap between civil-shariah courts jurisdiction was in the conversion of a minor by one parent. The constitution states that the religion of a minor (under the age of 18) can be decided by his or her parent or guardian. Since the constitution also states that singular terms also refer to the plural, some politicians and legal scholars interpret it to mean that both parents’ or guardians’ consent are required in deciding the religion of minors.

Nevertheless, the official ulama insist that one Muslim parent can unilaterally convert the minor to Islam without his or her spouse’s approval. In 2002, a divorce case between Shamala Sathiyaseelan v Dr Jeyaganesh demonstrated this conundrum. The couple were Hindus when they married, but when Jeyaganesh later converted to Islam, he secretly converted their two minor children to Islam without his wife’s consent. This meant that Shamala would not be able to convert the two children out of Islam later without the approval from the Shariah Court. This created a tussle over which courts have the authority to hear cases involving a Muslim and a non-Muslim.

Compared to the amount of resources committed towards the religious infrastructure, Mahathir invested little on ideological and intellectual aspects. On the one hand, Mahathir’s writings and speeches show that he is a modernist and progressive Muslim. When he was prime minister, he prevented the PAS governments in Kelantan and Terengganu from implementing hudud laws. He was also critical of Islamic conservatism throughout his rule. On the other hand, he did not develop an ulama class that could master Islamic traditions, social sciences, and modern philosophy akin to those in Indonesia. Instead, he allowed resurgent ideas, championed by the likes of Professor Syed Naquib Al-Attas, to penetrate religious institutions and universities. Al-Attas mentored ABIM members when he was teaching in Malaysian universities. These ideas are utopian and call for an alternative social order that is not in-sync with modern realities.15 Yet, it was these ideas that became the foundations of universities and think tanks that Mahathir founded such as International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (ISTAC) and Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia (IKIM), which now train young religious elites in the country, as well as those from neighboring Singapore. Calls for the Islamization of knowledge, science, laws, economics and culture in Malaysia are thus commonly made. Most recently, these appeals were extended to calls for Islamic entertainment and cars. In short, the group wants to establish an Islamic “alternative” to the existing social order. While in essence Islam promotes universal values and principles such as justice, equality, and democracy, what exactly is un-Islamic about modern laws is rarely discussed by these institutions.

CONCLUSION

The Indonesian and Malaysian experience shows the contrasting impact of contrasting strategies of state co-optation of the ulama. Leaders in these countries had been committed to keeping Islamization in check and in line with the goals of the state. Suharto and Mahathir envisaged Islam to be respectful of their respective countries’ multi-racial and multi-religious societies and wanted the ulama to conform to their ideals. But some of their policies led to opposite outcomes instead: conservative and intolerant religious establishment.

There are merits and demerits in Suharto’s and Mahathir’s Islamization policies and in their co-optation of the ulama. In terms of laying down the religious infrastructure, Mahathir aced compared to Suharto. Suharto could have better clarified the powers of MUI and the religious ministry. In the post-New Order, the question of which institution has authority over Islamic banking, halal-certification industry, books and entertainment censorship were not resolved, and some of these have yet to be clearly defined. In Malaysia, the government had clarified the roles assigned to ulama institutions since the country’s independence, but saw them hugely expanded under the Mahathir government. Today, JAKIM is an effective religious bureaucracy overseeing the Islamic administration of the country such as in matters of halal certification, Islamic banking and finance, books censorship, research and dakwah programs. Internationally, Malaysia has become one of the major players in Islamic banking, finance, and insurance. The Malaysian Central Bank figures indicate that in 2007, the total assets of the takaful sector (Islamic insurance) amounted to US$2.8 billion (SGD$3.9 billion). In 2010, Islamic banking assets were valued at US$65.6 billion (SGD$88.6 billion).16 Similarly, the 2013 Nikkei Asian Review estimated that Malaysia exported RM 10 billion (SGD$3.74) in halal products.17

Yet, Malaysia is far behind Indonesia in terms of its development of Islamic intellectualism. The ulama Mahathir co-opted into the religious institutions were not only conservative in their religious outlook, they rarely engaged with universal norms such as human rights, freedom of responsible expression, and rights to privacy. Malaysian Muslims shun works written by progressive scholars such as Chandra Muzaffar, Hashim Kamali, and Norani Othman because they are considered “liberals,” even though these scholars are well regarded internationally. Furthermore, the official ulama have indirectly consented to the behavior of the conservative religious bureaucrats. With the exception of a few, such as Perlis Mufti Dr Mohd Asri, other Malaysian muftis have kept silent about religious bureaucrats raiding churches, hotels, and parks. Such vigilante groups are not absent in Indonesia, however. Groups such as Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI), The Liberation Party of Indonesia (HTI) and Islamic Forum (FUI) have been acting on their own to curb “deviant” teachings. However, these groups act on their own accord and their actions are illegitimate in the eyes of law. They are not in the service of the MUI. In contrast, Malaysian religious bureaucrats draw their authority from existing state laws, institutional powers, and consent from Malay rulers.

Can the Indonesian and Malaysian governments today control the official ulama as well as had been done during the Suharto and Mahathir years? I am inclined to say Yes for Indonesia, but half No for Malaysia. In Jakarta, the new Joko Widodo administration has retained Lukman Hakim Saifuddin as the country’s religious minister. Lukman was appointed by Yudhoyono in the final months of his presidency. Unlike his predecessor Suryadharma Ali, Lukman is known for his pluralist and liberal values, as well as his integrity. So far, Lukman has demonstrated his desire to restrict MUI’s Islamization drive and keep its role only to the realm of fatwa. Under this new government, it remains doubtful if MUI can become as powerful as the Malaysian official ulama in the near future. It still lacks the statutory recognition Mahathir accorded to the Malaysian ulama institutions.

In Malaysia, the Najib government may still be able to control the ulama to some degree, as it can determine the expansion and reduction of their jurisdiction. The Prime Minister also has a say in the appointment of top JAKIM personnel. At the same time, Najib faces the arduous task of controlling the muftis, who mainly answer to the Malay rulers. Today, the muftis are publicly commenting on social and political issues, including federal matters. While most of their comments tend to be pro-UMNO, there have been instances where they have been critical of UMNO politicians as well.

Furthermore, the Malaysian government’s lack of investment in progressive Islamic thought has enhanced conservatism in the bureaucracies. In February 2015, the Najib government attempted to pander to its Islamic bureaucracy by launching the Malaysian Syariah Index. This index is to benchmark whether the various government departments are behaving in line with Islamic principles.

About the author:
*Norshahril Saat is Research Officer at ISEAS, currently completing his PhD degree at the Australian National University (ANU).1

Source:
This article was published by ISEAS as ISEAS Perspective No. 11, 2015 (PDF)

Notes:
1. I wish to thank Dr Lee Hock Guan for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
2. Chandra Muzaffar, “Understanding Liberalism and Religious Pluralism”, in Sisters in Islam Website, 4 November 2014, http://sistersinislam.org.my/news.php?item.1302.27 (accessed 27 January 2015).
3. In Selangor, those found violating a gazetted fatwa can be fined up to RM3000 (SGD 1116) or be jailed for up to two years. In Sabah, such persons can be fined up to RM 1000 (SGD 372) or jailed for six months.
4. JAKIM stopped the 2011 forum The Future of Islamic Feminism because it considered the speakers liberal Muslims. In 2014, it stopped the Religious Fundamentalism Threat in this Century because it featured Indonesian liberal Muslim activist, Ulil Abshar Abdalla.
5. See Syafiq Syafiq, H. (2011). The Council Of Indonesian Ulama (Majelis Ulama Indonesia, MUI) and Religious Freedom. Notes de l’Irasec-Discussion Papers no 12. IRASEC c/o French Embassy; Moch Nur, I. (2013). Towards a Puritanical Moderate Islam: The Majelis Ulama Indonesia and the politics of religious Orthodoxy. In M. V. Bruinessen (Ed.), Conteporary Developments in Indonesian Islam: Explaining the “Conservative Turn” (pp. 60-104). Singapopre: ISEAS.
6. In 1975, Suharto formed MUI not only as a fatwa-making body, but an institution that translates government policies to the people.
7. Mun’im, S. (2013). Fatwas and Their controversy: The Case of the Council of Indonesian Ulama (MUI). Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 44(1), 100-117.
8. Muslims generally follow the decisions made by these mass organisations even though MUI is made up of NU and Muhammadiyah members.
9. This is not to say modernists and traditionalists are homogenous entities.
10. Discussing how Suharto’s and Mahathir’s Islamization policies contributed to existing ulama-state-society relations does not deny the role of policies undertaken by colonial powers, the contrasting geographical size of the two countries, political culture, and other historical factors.
11. The other two parties were PDI (Indonesia’s Democratic Party) and Golkar. PPP was made up of four Islam- based parties: NU, PSII (Parti Sarekat Islam Indonesia or Indonesian Sarekat Islam Party), PERTI (Pergerakan Trabiyah Islamiyah or Islamic Tarbiyah Movement) and Parmusi. (Partai Muslimin Indonesia or Indonesian Muslims Party)
12. Feillard, A. (2010). From Handling Water in a Glass to Coping with an Ocean: Shifts in Religious Authority in Indonesia. In A. Azra, K. V. Dijk & C. J. G. Kaptein (Eds.), Varieties of Religious Authority: Changes and Challenges in 20th Century Indonesian Islam (pp. 157-176). Singapore: ISEAS and IIAS, p.172.
13. Syukri Ghozali was made Chairman after Hamka’s resignation in 1981.
14. For Darul Arqam’s influence, see Ahmad Fauzi, A. H. (2005). The Banning of Darul Arqam in Malaysia. Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs (RIMA), 39(1), 87-128. For ABIM, see Ahmad Fauzi, A. H. (2008). Islamist Reallignments and the Rebranding of the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia. Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs, 30(2), 215-240.
15. See Shaharuddin, M. (2005). Religion and Utopian Thinking among the Muslims of Southeast Asia In R. Hassan (Ed.), Local and Global: Social Transformation in Southeast Asia: Essays in Honour of Professor Syed Hussein Alatas (pp. 315-330). Leiden and Boston: Brill.
16. Bank Negara Malaysia. (2010). Overview of Islamic Finance in Malaysia. Retrieved 14 February 2015,from http://www.bnm.gov.my/index.php?ch=fs_mfs&pg=fs_mfs_bank#Overview
17. Tan, C. (2014). Halal expo bolsters Malaysia’s status as gateway to Muslim market. Retrieved 28 January, 2015, from http://asia.nikkei.com/print/article/25820

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