By Prof. Dr. Anand Menon*

The British General Election of May 2015 will be significant in many ways. Polls indicate it will represent a shift away from traditional British two-party politics towards something far more fluid and less predictable. The outcome will also exert a significant impact on the future of the United Kingdom itself, with the Scottish Nationalist Party poised to make large gains north of the border. As importantly, the popular vote will shape the future of the UK’s role and place within the European Union in the medium term. The outcome could be a referendum on British membership in the Union.

In one sense, the claim that the election will have a bearing on UK relations with the EU is paradoxical. The EU hardly features in the list of those issues seen as most important by the electorate, according to the ‘Issues Index’ regularly produced by the polling organization Ipsos MORI.

Yet the great success of the eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP) has been to link the issue of Europe with that of immigration, which was perceived as the most important issue facing Britain for much of 2014, and is still mentioned by a third of the public as the most important. The principle of free movement enshrined in the EU Treaties means that no member state can exercise full control over its borders, linking the issue of immigration inextricably to that of EU membership.

Rising support for UKIP, which won the European Parliament elections of 2014 (the first time in modern history that neither Labour nor the Conservatives have won a national election), has served to reinforce eurosceptic tendencies within the Conservative Party. Revealingly, ninety-five Conservative backbench members of parliament signed a letter in January 2014 calling for parliament to be able to block and repeal EU laws via the repeal of the 1972 European Communities Act in relation to specific pieces of legislation.

The rising eurosceptic tide amongst his backbenchers pushed David Cameron towards promising a referendum on EU membership before the end of 2017 in his 2013 Bloomberg speech. The Prime Minister promised to put the issue of British membership to a referendum following a ‘renegotiation’ of the UK’s position within the Union.

In the short term, the likelihood of a referendum on membership being held at all hinges crucially on the outcome of the General Election. The Conservatives are committed to holding a referendum in 2017. The Labour leadership, for its part, has refused to make such a pledge, with Ed Miliband arguing that leaving the EU would be bad for Britain, and that a popular vote would only be necessary in the event of new powers being given to the EU.

Even in the event of a Labour victory, however, the Europe issue will not disappear from the political agenda. Should David Cameron fail to establish even a coalition government, it is likely that his days as leader of the Conservative Party will be numbered. In that event, the EU will feature prominently on the agenda of a leadership contest. Just as Cameron himself offered to withdrawal the Conservatives from the European People’s Party in the European Parliament as bait to tempt party members and MPs to back his leadership bid, so too would any future candidates for the leadership have to offer some ‘red meat’ to ensure their election to office. Not only, then, will Europe continue to haunt the party, but a new leader is likely to adopt significantly more sceptical positions than his or her predecessor.

Should Mr Cameron be reelected as prime minister, the fundamental problem he will face is that of coming up with a reform agenda that would be acceptable to Britain’s partners, while convincing sufficient numbers of his backbenchers to support it. Britain’s partners have shown a willingness to be sensitive to British demands, falling short of repudiating the principle of freedom of movement. The dilemma facing David Cameron will be whether his more truculent backbenchers would accept such a deal.

At some point in the medium term it seems inevitable the UK will hold a referendum on its membership in the EU. It is hard to conceive of circumstances in which another Conservative Government could come to power without promising one. Obviously, given the highly unpredictable nature of British politics at the moment, and the potentially long period before any referendum is held, it is difficult to anticipate what the outcome of any such popular vote might be. The data are nothing if not contradictory. As UKIP continues to score well, support for UK membership in the EU has strengthened noticeably in recent months.

Crucial to the outcome of any referendum will be the issue of those campaigning on each side. In the event that a Conservative Government were to campaign in favour of membership, all the major national political parties would be arrayed against UKIP, which, under normal circumstances, might be expected to tilt the vote against the Brexit, not least as many businesses will line up to portray the potentially dire implications of such a step. Caution and fear might then prove a powerful combination in prompting a vote in favour of continued membership. Should the Conservative Party by the time of any vote be committed to campaigning against membership, this will clearly alter the calculus, particularly if, as is possible, a significant proportion of the popular press aligns itself with the pro-Brexit camp.

All this will be made clear in the future. For the moment, we shall wait and see what the election produces, and whether, as a result, Britain moves towards a vote on its EU membership.

*Anand Menon is Professor of European Politics and International Relations at King’s College London.

The post Britain And EU After General Elections – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Hamid Ahmadi*

Following months of intense and unprecedented negotiations, at last seven global and regional powers, including Iran and the member states of the P5+1 countries, managed to find relative solutions to their differences and issued a statement, which has come to be known as the Lausanne statement. The Lausanne statement, in fact, sets the framework for a comprehensive agreement between the two sides, whose writing has not started yet. The statement has its own hopeful supporters and anxious opponents; staunch opponents who can be found from Tehran to Washington. The common denominator of all these opponents is their insistence on the idea that one of the sides in the nuclear negotiations must go down on its knees. They ignore the fact that the art of diplomacy is to shake hands standing, not to shatter the pride of one of the negotiating sides. Actually, if it was about going to war and bringing somebody to their knees, they would have not embarked on negotiations in the first place.

There is no doubt that the Lausanne statement is the sign of a special and positive development in contemporary international relations. This is an agreement which will reduce chances of another war in an already tumultuous Middle East region. Therefore, it cannot be anything, but an auspicious development. The importance of this agreement can be only understood when we would imagine a situation in which negotiations totally failed, the diplomacy raised its hands as a sign of surrender, and the two sides returned to their capitals with no result. Or just imagine who would have been happy in the chaotic region of Middle East if these negotiations grounded to a failure. As an Iranian, these two assumptions would be sufficient to make us content with what the Iranian negotiating team has achieved after months of talks and perseverance.

One week after the release of the Lausanne statement and at a time that early waves of happiness as well as domestic opposition at the statement have relatively ebbed, it is perhaps a better opportunity now to judge it and assess positive and negative reactions shown to it. The reaction shown by the public opinion in Iran and across the world to the Lausanne statement clearly proves that what happened in Lausanne has been generally welcomed, though regional reactions have been varied. It is evident that for ordinary people in Iran, there are three reasons why the Lausanne agreement, and the general course of talks in recent months, has been pleasing:

1. The fact that Iran has finally achieved an agreement with the P5+1;
2. A clearer prospect for the final lifting of anti-Iran sanctions; and
3. The relatively peaceful language that has been used by both Iran and the United States in recent months.

In fact, the positive social feedback and general satisfaction with the Lausanne agreement can be seen as a result of the aforesaid three reasons. Perhaps, the majority of the society is not sensitive about fine details of the negotiations and even what will be agreed in later stages of the talks. The public opinion’s attention to these three factors shows that an overall improvement in Iran’s foreign relations with the world, which can have a positive effect on everyday life of people, is much more important to them than the details of the negotiations.

On the opposite, the critics, some of whom are outright opponents of the Lausanne agreement, rely on four issues to cast doubt on the efforts made by the Iranian negotiating team:

1. The perceived difference between the content of Persian and English texts of the statement as read out by Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini;
2. Final fate of Fordow and Arak nuclear sites;
3. The number of centrifuges at Natanz facility; and
4. The timetable for the removal of sanctions.

Unlike the supporters, the opponents of the Lausanne statement have made premature judgments about the details of the agreement. The opponents and critics of the Lausanne agreement have resorted to the general principles on which a preliminary agreement has been reached in order to attack details that will be specified in coming months, when a comprehensive agreement is to be formulated. During the short period that has passed since the Lausanne statement was read out, Iran’s foreign minister has been trying to give answers to the above four questions that have been raised by the opponents. This comes despite the fact that the foreign minister has also to focus on other issues related to the country’s foreign policy and has also to cope with major developments with which Iran’s diplomatic apparatus has to deal with other than the nuclear talks. His answers should both satisfy the domestic public opinion, which supports the agreement, and reduce opposition to the statement, and most importantly, prevent opponents from doing or saying anything that may damage the future course of the negotiations. Fordow is to be converted into an advanced center for research and development in the field of nuclear science and Arak reactor will be redesigned while the number of active centrifuges at Natanz facility will stand at 5,000. All these changes mean that Iran will be able to take advantage of international cooperation in its nuclear activities, and also show that big powers have come to realize Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities and withdraw from their past stance, which called for total dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program.

Unlike what the opponents of the Lausanne agreement say, perhaps one of the most important strengths of the general agreement reached through the Lausanne statement is to put all kinds of nuclear-related sanctions, including international, multilateral and unilateral ones, within a single category and ask for their removal en masse once a comprehensive agreement is achieved.

The nuclear-related sanctions encompass a complicated and intertwined collection of restrictive measures, which have turned into an indispensable part of Iran’s interactions and communications with the world. Despite unjust nature of these sanctions, many of them draw their legitimacy from resolutions adopted by the United Nations Security Council. Now, all of them have been seen as one and all of them will be removed through a predefined process after a final agreement is reached. This is, perhaps, the most important achievement of the Lausanne statement and the latest round of nuclear talks. The importance of this issue will be clear when one takes into account that Iran’s nuclear program will continue after the final deal.

In a positive take on the differences that opponents of the Lausanne agreement claim to exit between its English and Persian texts, one may say that most of those differences is the result of linguistic discrepancies between English and Persian, or their different understanding of the Persian translation of the English statement, which was read out by Mogherini. It is very unlikely that the texts read out there were translations of each other. I mean, it is unlikely that one of the two texts, Persian or English, were drawn up as the main text and the other one was its translation. In addition, it should be noted that when an agreement is reached, it is only natural for each side to announce their own desirable interpretation of the agreement in their statement. Both sides should answer to their public opinion and tell people what they have gained through the negotiations.

Iran and the P5+1 group will start drafting the text of their final comprehensive agreement soon. In this very important stage and based on the frameworks and general outlines that the two sides have agreed upon, all details will be discussed through technical negotiations before being written. As a result, many ambiguities and questions that are now raised by the opponents of the statement will be answered when the final text of the comprehensive agreement is written. The subject that is being discussed by Iran and the P5+1 group is of such a high importance to regional and international security that allowing ambiguities in it will not benefit any of the two parties to the negotiations and, certainly, none of them wants to leave any vague points in the written text.

Existence of anxious opponents, along with a wide spectrum of those who support the Lausanne agreement, is quite natural. Just in the same way that the support accorded to the Iranian nuclear negotiators can motivate them and keep their spirits high, domestic opponents can be considered a good asset on which negotiators can reckon in their resistance against illegal demands of the opposite negotiating parties, especially the United States. Let’s not forget that the American negotiators are, in turn, under pressure from an unbending and inflexible Congress and they will use the staunch opposition of the Congress members as an asset to take concessions from Iran in their talks over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Perhaps, if some of those people who are critical of the performance of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team had the experience of only one hour of talks at this level, they would have taken a different position on what Iranian negotiators have achieved after many months of intense talks.

*Hamid Ahmadi
Expert on International Issues

Source: Khabaronline
http://khabaronline.ir/
‏Translated By: Iran Review.Org

The post Lausanne Statement: Positive And Negative Views – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to lift a ban on the sales of S-300 air defense systems to Iran, the Kremlin press service said in a statement Monday.

“The decree lifts the ban on the transfer of the S-300 air defense systems to the Islamic Republic of Iran outside the boundaries of the Russian Federation with the use of Russian-flagged vessels and aircraft,” the press service said. The $800-million contract to supply Iran with the missile system was signed at the end of 2007. Moscow was to supply five S-300PMU-1 battalions to Tehran.

However, on September 22, 2010, then President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree cancelling the contract in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1929, which bans supply to Iran of conventional weapons including missiles and missile systems, tanks, attack helicopters, warplanes and ships.

Iran’s Defense Ministry and The Aerospace Industries Organization responded by launching a $4-billion lawsuit against Rosoboronexport in an international arbitration court in Geneva in April 2011.

The post Putin Approves Delivery Of S300 Defense System To Iran appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The January 2015 meeting between China and South Korea on boundary delimitation in the Yellow Sea offers a chance to improve bilateral relations and the prospect of extending agreement to other seas, in particular the South China Sea.

By Sukjoon Yoon*

The leaders of China and South Korea agreed in July 2014 to launch a working-level group on boundary delimitation in the Yellow Sea. The first meeting took place on 29 January 2015, discussing Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and continental shelves. Contentious issues, including fisheries, the environment, scientific research, and resource development need to be resolved in a way which secures the long-term interests of both countries, and further working meetings will be held this year.

Since the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) was ratified by China and South Korea in 1996, it has been clear that applying it to the semi-enclosed seas of the Yellow Sea would be impractical, but it does provide a legal framework which might be adapted. In November 2013, China included the Ieodo area in its unilaterally declared air defence identification zone. But both countries have agreed that the scientific research station established on Ieodo by South Korea should be considered as part of the maritime boundaries talks rather than as a territorial dispute.

Drivers for the delimitation talks

Illegal fishing in the Yellow Sea by Chinese vessels is not a misdeed by one party, but a bilateral issue resulting from the depletion of fishery resources and structural problems within the fisheries industry. To ensure stability, China and South Korea have agreed to create the China-South Korea Provisional Measure Zone at the overlap of their EEZs, since the maritime boundary has yet to be delimited, and also the South Korea-China Joint Fisheries Committee.

China and South Korea are continuing to build up their successful strategic cooperative partnership, with further economic integration and closer diplomatic cooperation; and the Yellow Sea represents an essential medium for the future development of their relationship. Unfortunately it is also subject to some serious historical baggage: China and Japan have fought sea battles adjacent to Chinese territory, and there have been naval skirmishes between the two Koreas near the Northern Limit Line. There are also regular joint naval drills conducted by the South Korean and US Navies, to which China is very sensitive, since China’s major cities, including Beijing, and military installations are concentrated in this area.

These historical and geopolitical legacies often impede the economic and social interactions between China and South Korea. For example, the possible US deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system on South Korean soil has disrupted the pending ratification of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between China and South Korea. There is thus an urgent need to reach agreement on maritime cooperation, and this should preferably encompass all of Maritime East Asia, rather than being confined to China and South Korea.

China as a maritime power and implications

President Xi Jinping has declared his intention that China become a “true maritime power”, and the realisation of his “21st century Maritime Silk Road” will require the Yellow Sea as its northern avenue. China therefore has an interest in demonstrating its good faith, by entering into comprehensive maritime cooperation with South Korea. For China then, the Yellow Sea represents an opportunity to be seen as playing a constructive role, in contrast to its over-assertive behaviour in the East China Sea (ECS) and the South China Sea (SCS).

For its part, South Korea is most concerned by illegal Chinese fishing activities in the Yellow Sea, which have led to a series of physical conflicts between the Korean coast guard and Chinese fishing vessels in recent years. South Korea sees a delimitation agreement for the Yellow Sea as a catalyst to encourage further development and to strengthen its strategic cooperative partnership with China; and an agreement might also usefully influence South Korea’s maritime boundary delimitation negotiations with Japan.

The current talks should not simply deal with the long-term preservation of maritime peace and good order, but also address the concerns of China’s neighbours. ASEAN is worried about the South China Sea, where it seems that China is seeking to make its own rules and ignore international norms. An agreement on maritime delimitation in the Yellow Sea would allow China to demonstrate its readiness to respect the international legal framework, which may prove reassuring for China’s neighbours.

Way forward

China has numerous maritime disputes in the ECS and SCS, with Japan and ASEAN members respectively, but its only successful maritime boundary agreement is with Vietnam. China is also blocking agreement on a binding “Code of Conduct” applying to China-ASEAN maritime cooperation. Understandably, both ASEAN and Japan have interpreted Chinese claims to ECS and SCS territories as revealing an intention to restore the regional order which prevailed during the Middle Kingdom era.

The Chinese government acknowledges that the maritime territorial disputes of the South China Sea should be resolved bilaterally, without prejudicing the ultimate resolution of delimitation issues. Progress in the current meetings on the Yellow Sea would therefore imply that China may be willing to work towards compromises with its neighbours in other seas, which would be a very significant change.

China and South Korea must take this opportunity to agree a definitive delimitation of their maritime boundary. The obvious benefits over the longer term should convince them to act in good faith to secure a political settlement. China is currently taking a more assertive stance in the South China Sea, building up existing islands to create a helipad on one and an airfield on another.

These working meetings on the Yellow Sea are laying the foundations of a peaceful sub-region for many generations to come, and an agreement could potentially encourage a broader shift in Chinese maritime policy and lead to better maritime cooperation throughout the region, including in the South China Sea.

*Dr. Sukjoon Yoon is a retired Captain of the Republic of Korea Navy. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for Maritime Strategy (KIMS), and a visiting professor at the Department of Defence System Engineering, Sejong University, Seoul, South Korea.

The post South Korea-China Maritime Boundary Talks: Implications For South China Sea – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Srecko Latal

A leading Serb party’s announcement that it will adopt a resolution about a free and independent Bosnian Serb entity has sparked allegations of separatism and attempted political destabilisation.

The statement from Nebojsa Radmanovic, a senior leader of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, sparked a heated debate in Bosnian media over the weekend, with opponents claiming that it could unsettle the ethnically-divided country’s stability.

“The resolution that was anounced directly threatens peace and stability in our country,” said a statement from an opposition Social Democratic Party, SDP.

The SDP called upon “all pro-Bosnian forces to jointly and clearly stand on the path of such politics”.

Sejfudin Tokic, the president of the Bosniak Movement for the Equality of People in Republika Srpska, urged the international community to act to stop Serb separatist movements developing.

If such movements do emerge, Tokic said, then Bosniaks “in the name of their own protection and the protection of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, gain the legitimate right to undertake all available measures and activities towards the abolition of Republika Srpska”.

The row erupted after Radmanovic, a senior leader of the SNSD and one if its deputies in the state House of Peoples, told Bosnian Serb daily Press RS that the party leadership will adopt a resolution about a “free and independent Republika Srpska” at its congress scheduled for April 25.

Radmanovic declined to provide significant details until the text of the declaration is finalised, but said that it came in reaction to what he described as the growing practice of other ethnic groups deciding about Bosnian Serb representatives in key institutions.

His statement is a part of the growing tensions between ruling coalitions on the state level and in Republika Srpska, after Bosniak and Croat parties established a ruling coalition on the state level with the block of Bosnian Serb opposition parties and kicked out the SNSD, which however remains in power in Republika Srpska.

Concerned about weakening of its position both at the state level and in Republika Srpska, the SNSD has been blocking the work of the state House of Representatives since the beginning of the year and boycotting sessions of the state House of Peoples for the past few weeks.

The SNSD’s planned resolution has also raised concerns among international representatives in the country.

The US embassy in Sarajevo said in a statement to local media that Bosnia’s status “was not an issue of an opinion but the fact established by the international law”.

“Territorial integrity and sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina are guaranteed by the Dayton peace accord,” the embassy said, adding that neither the Dayton accord nor Bosnia’s constitution envisage the possibility of any of its entities breaking away from the rest of the country.

“Any activitiy aimed towards the dissolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina represents violation of the Dayton peace accord,” the statement said.

The Office of the High Representative and the EU delegation in Bosnia stressed in their statements that the SNSD leadership has pledged its allegiance to Bosnia’s territorial integrity in a recent declaration that was signed by the party’s leaders and the other 13 main Bosnian parties.

After the signing of this declaration, the EU leadership gave the green light to the activation of Bosnia’s Stabilisation and Association Agreement and the continuation of its EU accession process.

The post Serb Party’s Resolution ‘Threatens Peace’ In Bosnia appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The New York Times reports: A Texas-born man suspected of being an operative for Al Qaeda stood before a federal judge in Brooklyn this month. Two years earlier, his government debated whether he should be killed by a drone strike in Pakistan.

The denouement in the hunt for the man, Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, who was arrested last year in Pakistan based on intelligence provided by the United States, came after a yearslong debate inside the government about whether to kill an American citizen overseas without trial — an extraordinary step taken only once before, when the Central Intelligence Agency killed the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.

Mr. Farekh’s court appearance also came as the Obama administration was struggling to fashion new guidelines for targeted killings. The decision to use an allied intelligence service to arrest Mr. Farekh has bolstered a case made by some that capturing — rather than killing — militant suspects, even in some of the world’s most remote places, is more feasible than the orders for hundreds of drone strikes might indicate.

“This is an example that capturing can be done,” said Micah Zenko, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies counterterrorism strikes.

The Obama administration’s discussions about the fate of Mr. Farekh, who used the nom de guerre Abdullah al-Shami, began in earnest in 2012, and in the months that followed the C.I.A. and the Pentagon ramped up surveillance of his movements around Pakistani tribal areas.

Drones spotted him several times in the early months of 2013, and spy agencies used a warrant issued by the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor his communications. The Pentagon nominated Mr. Farekh to be placed on a so-called kill list for terrorism suspects; C.I.A. officials also pushed for the White House to authorize his killing. [Continue reading…]

What is left out of this analysis is consideration of the basic premise that any individual suspected terrorist can pose a national security threat.

The hysteria surrounding terrorism that has become embedded in the American worldview, presupposes that anyone who can be labelled a terrorist is inherently dangerous.

If the same line of thinking was applied across criminal law, then someone could be accused of being a murderer without committing murder.

The task of law enforcement would be to track down individuals who supposedly had a proclivity to commit crimes and could thus be convicted of being murderers, thieves, frauds, and so forth, because criminality was seen to be invested in the person rather than their actions.

This is what makes trials for terrorism difficult: prosecutors often seem to have more conviction that the accused is a terrorist than they have evidence to back up that claim.

Another issue lurking behind the Obama administration’s debate on the expediency of assassination is that the U.S. government and apparently many Americans have far fewer qualms if the targets are non-Americans.

If President Obama was to sign an executive order prohibiting the assassination of American citizens, would the ACLU commend him for doing so?

Why should the assassination of Americans be treated as a graver issue than the practice of targeted killing itself?

The post Obama Administration Still Weighing Merits Of Assassinations Vs. Trials – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By B. Z. Khasru*

Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s prime minister, has been under bulldozer at home and abroad to hold talks with her opponents who have been campaigning violently since January for fresh polls under a neutral interim government. So far, the battle has cost the nation more than 100 lives and bruised its thriving economy, but she has vowed not to budge.

What made her so defiant? Who can make her blink?

Acrimony between Hasina and Khaleda Zia, who leads the main opposition group, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, dates to 1975. That was when Hasina’s father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated in a military coup. Hasina thinks Khaleda’s late husband, military ruler Gen. Ziaur Rahman, masterminded the putsch in which Bangladesh’s founder was killed, along with most of his family members.

Hasina put her venom toward Khaleda on public display way back in 1987 at a National Democratic Institute dinner in San Francisco. Both the ladies, who were then jointly fighting to topple Gen. H.M. Ershad’s regime, graced the banquet. They were sitting in the same row, with their American host in between them. When Hasina was asked to introduce herself, she said: “I am Sheikh Hasina. The woman on your left, her husband assassinated my father.”

Her latent covenant to wipe off the BNP from the land of the Bengalis took center stage recently after Khaleda’s son and heir apparent, Tarique Rahman, hurled personal insults at Hasina’s father and family earlier this year. Tarique, who lives in exile in London, called Hasina’s father, who championed Bengali causes all his
life, a “friend of Pakistan,” and refused to accept him as Bangladesh’s founder. He described Hasina as “wrong-headed,” and her family as a “curse for Bangladesh.” His remarks stoked Hasina’s already poisoned mind, prompting her to rebuke Tarique in parliament and admonish Khaleda to rein in her son.

Khaleda, who was prime minister twice and is as iron-willed as Hasina, started the current round of protests to force the government to resign and hold new polls, saying last year’s elections were fraud. Hasina is blowing an air of defiance.

Hasina Emboldened

Several domestic factors have fortified Hasina to dare to ignore both domestic and foreign pressures. After her 2008 election victory, she renamed Zia International Airport to wipe off BNP founder Ziaur Rahman’s legacy; she threw out Khaleda from a military palace given to her by the government after her military-strongman-turned-president husband’s assassination in a 1981 failed mutiny. Hasina hanged several ex-military officers for murdering her father. Most recently, she sent to the gallows two Islamist opposition politicians for atrocities committed during Bangladesh’s liberation war in 1971. She got bad press abroad for dispensing what has been termed as flawed justice, but encountered no recriminations at home.

Furthermore, she deftly handled a bloody rampage by Bangladesh’s border guards who slaughtered more than 50 top army bosses in 2009. In its wake, Hasina displayed nerves of steel by venturing into the army headquarters in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, ignoring advice from her cabinet colleagues to face howling military officers. She has appeased the armed forces by opening up the purse strings for their spending spree. For the first time since the South Asian nation’s birth, a ruler spends less time worrying about being toppled by the military than ruling the country.

On top of all this, Hasina has been blessed by emerging regional power configurations. India has replaced the United States as the arbiter in the nation of 165 million Bengalis. With Bangladesh’s economy humming and food production keeping up with demand, Hasina no longer needs to trek to Washington with a bowl in her hand.

India, for its part, has made abundantly clear its preference for Hasina over Khaleda. Delhi worked hard to put her back to power in 2008. Nonreligious political philosophy of Hasina’s Awami League and her government’s India-friendly posture have helped her win Delhi’s hearts and minds. India detests Khaleda for she played the
China card and pursued anti-India politics when she was prime minister. She has also built a Great China Wall between herself and Delhi by banding with Jamaat-e-Islami, the potent proponent of a theocratic Bangladesh.

India has other reasons, too. It has been under fire at home for failing to assert its regional supremacy. Stung by such virulent attacks, Delhi has assumed an assertive role in Bangladesh affairs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hell-bent upon upholding India’s primacy. Delhi fears Beijing’s inroads into Dhaka, which abuts
seven restive Indian states where China can foment trouble. So India now single-mindedly pursues its interests, even if it means defying America. India stumped for Hasina when she decided to go ahead with elections last year excluding Khaleda despite stiff U.S. opposition.

Diplomatic Stalemate

So, efforts by the United States or European Union are unlikely to succeed in ending Bangladesh’s political mayhem without India’s seal of approval. The road to Dhaka now goes through Delhi bypassing Washington. Even though EU is Bangladesh’s largest trading partner, the government will ignore European diktat if it hurts the prime minister’s political interest. By going solo, the United States will be unable to sway Hasina, who deeply distrusts Washington. Only Delhi can push Hasina to get off the ground. America can impress upon India that a vibrant multiparty system will make the Bengali nation a fortress of democracy and that a stable Bangladesh will serve both Delhi and Washington well in the long run. The reverse may spell doom and gloom for all.

It, however, remains doubtful at this juncture if India and the United States will see eye- to-eye on Bangladesh in this matter. America thinks Bangladesh can be a well-balanced democracy by having two major political groups in the mold of the United States or Britain. In America’s view, such a system should also give space to those seeking to play by the rule, including religious outfits.

On the contrary, India believes its interests are best served by having a political party in power that espouses secular philosophy and adopts a Delhi-friendly policy. Hasina’s party -— the Awami League — perfectly fits the bill. So there is no incentive for Delhi to reach out to Khaleda, who tilts toward China. India will be rather happy to see Hasina crushes Khaleda and erases Jamaat-e-Islami. Delhi won’t mind at all if Bangladesh ends up with a political system that pretty much resembles the setup that existed in India under Congress.

The United States, meanwhile, has shifted its gear to realpolitik and softened attitude toward Hasina. America no longer at least publicly presses her too hard to accommodate Khaleda. This strategic rethinking stemmed from setbacks the U.S. administration suffered in diplomatic war games with the prime minister. But the new strategy will hardly impress Hasina. To make any headway, Washington must persuade Delhi that it is in India’s as well as America’s long-term interest to help Bangladesh find a durable mechanism to conduct fair elections and transfer power without street violence.

Durable Solution

A key component in devising such a lasting governance system will be changing the country’s constitution to share power with the parliamentary opposition party in the form of a shadow cabinet. Bangladesh’s existing winner-takes-all setup leaves the opposition high and dry, which breeds discontent and street protests. By giving the opposition privileges and perks, the government can defuse prospects for mass agitations and ensure its smooth functioning.

In fact, in the wake of her massive election victory in 2008, Hasina expressed her willingness to share power with the opposition. “As winners, we have to deal with everything with a sense of forgiveness and accommodation, instead of vengeance, to take the country forward,” she told journalists in Dhaka in her victory speech. She was prepared to give opposition members parliamentary and ministerial posts if they were willing to cooperate with her government.

With the current national and international climates in her favor, Hasina will be less generous. There are also other reasons for her to be a hard nut to crack. She figures Khaleda’s ongoing movement will fizzle out. On top of that, her grip on civil service and military as well as judiciary is firm enough to enable her to sail through, as long as the economy marches on at a healthy clip. These realities make the prime minister even more steadfast.

Nevertheless, one may see optimism in the words of a former Bengali diplomat. “Many of the newly independent developing countries are fledgling democracies and perhaps need more time to attain political maturity,” Humayun Kabir, Bangladesh’s ambassador to Washington, told the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs in 1996. “We regret our inexperience. This may be described as our teething period. What is a mere 25 years in a nation’s history? It took the West over 200 years to get to where it is now.”

*B. Z. Khasru, is author of “Myths and Facts Bangladesh Liberation War” and “The Bangladesh Military Coup and the CIA Link.” He is working on a new book, “The King’s Men, One Eleven, Minus Two, Secrets Behind Sheikh Hasina’s War on Yunus and America.”

The post Making Prime Minister Hasina Blink: The Delhi Route – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By D. S. Rajan*

There has been a faceoff between the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops and Indian soldiers in Burtse and Depsang in northern Ladakh, as late as March 20 and 28, 2015, according to press reports.

The two locations had been the targets of the PLA patrolling in the past also. The involved Chinese troops withdrew to their areas after being challenged by the Indian side.[1]  The reports are disquieting from India’s point of view. The development, if confirmed, comes at a time close to the scheduled visit to China of the Indian Prime Minister Modi in May 2015. Modi had told China that if bilateral relations were to improve then border intrusions by PLA troops had to cease. Going by the India-China Joint Statement issued at the end of President Xi Jinping’s visit to India (September 2014) which laid stress on border tranquility, it appeared that  the PRC  understood what Modi said. Even then, the latest incident in Ladakh has happened.  It will therefore be incumbent on the Chinese side to explain why there is still no let up in its transgressions across Indian borders.

2. India- China borders remain rather quiet without any serious military incident since last several years. The last major standoff between the troops of the two sides took place in 1987 in Sumdorong Chu valley in Arunachal Pradesh. It followed the veteran Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s threat in October 1986, as reported in the press, to teach a lesson to India if it continued nibbling across the border.[2] This being so, Chinese PLA intrusions into India’s borders have been a regular feature in recent periods; the reported March 2015 border happenings are a case in point.

3. Are the continuing border incidents in the India-China border ‘transgressions’ or ‘intrusions’? Each side interprets the border happenings differently.  India alleges that the Chinese troops are carrying out ‘transgressions’ into the border[3]  which according to it  means that  they cross over to Indian territory only to eventually retreat to their side. India  at the same time admits Chinese ‘intrusions’ are  occurring  some times which it sees as their  crossing  over to Indian side, but staying  put. It says that no ‘intrusion’ has been reported or taken place on the border including Sikkim, during the five years since 2010  [4]  The People’s Republic of China (PRC), on its part, refers in general only to occurrences of “isolated incidents” in the border.[5]  It however feels that India is also transgressing along the LAC  and that such ‘violations’ against China could be more than double than that has been alleged by India. [6] The intentions of the two parties in any case look to downplay the tensions along the LAC; both seem to be against attaching too much importance to border crossings in the interest of overall bilateral ties.  Importantly, they agree on one point, i.e.   Differing perceptions of each other on the LAC are contributing to border tensions.

4.  Given below, is data on notable Chinese intrusions into Indian borders in recent years, including on the PRC’s relevant prominent statements and cartographic positions:

Feb 1997: Chinese PLA intruded 6 kms across India’s Himachal Pradesh. It happened subsequent to former PRC President Jiang Zemin’s visit to India in November 1996. The incident happened despite the 1993 India-China agreement for maintenance of peace and tranquility along the LAC and the November 1996 agreement on Confidence Building Measures in the Military Field along the LAC in the India-China Border areas.

26.6.2003: The PLA intruded in the Asaphila region of the upper Subansiri District of Arunachal Pradesh, which is one of the eight known pockets of dispute ( In  Arunachal:  Thag La, Sumdorong Chu and Yangshi in Kameng, Asaphila in Subansiri and Madan Ridge in Lohit;  in Ladakh and Uttarakhand: Trig Heights, Yakla and Barahoti[7]). The incident happened when Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee was on an official visit to Beijing. 10 Indian soldiers were abducted by Chinese military according to reports.

May 2005: Chinese troops intruded into Asaphila again. The incident happened after former Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s visit to India in April 2005 and despite India-China Protocol on “Modalities for the Implementation of CBMs in the Military Field along the LAC in India-China Border Areas”, signed during Wen’s visit. As per protocol, settled population in the border is not to be disturbed. (The Chinese side denied the incident).

November 2006:  The then PRC President Hu Jinato visited India. Prior to that, the PRC Ambassador to India Sun Yuxi affirmed that “the whole of the so-called state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory. Tawang is only one of the places in it. We are claiming all of that”.

2009:   Chinese Foreign Ministry protested the then Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh.

December 2010:  Former Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited India. Prior to that, Beijing denied visa to India’s Northern Army Commander and began issuing stapled visas to residents of Jammu and Kashmir.

2012:  Chinese Foreign Ministry protested the visit to Arunachal Pradesh by the then Indian Defence Minister.

2013: Chinese Foreign Ministry protested the visit to Arunachal Pradesh by the Indian President Pranab Mukherjee.

April 2013 – early May 2013: Chinese intruded in Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO), Ladakh region, and   Depsang plains of Aksai Chin. They set up camps in tents in Depsang valley. The PLA also intruded in Chaglagam area in Arunachal Pradesh. All such intrusions happened prior to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s first visit to India (19-21 May 2013). Indian officials say Chinese Depsang intrusion was 19 km deep inside Indian Territory, ahead of even the Chinese perception of the LAC.

June 2014: Coinciding with Indian Vice President Ansari’s visit to China, the PRC published a map showing the entire Arunachal Pradesh and large chunks of Jammu and Kashmir as Chinese territory.

24.6. 2014: The PLA intruded into Pangong Lake, Ladakh; Chinese troops made a 6 km deep incursion. Stayed for 2 hours in the high speed boats and went back.

September 2014:  The Chinese troops intruded in Chumar area of Ladakh. Intrusion by Chinese civilians at Demchok along the LAC also took place. 1000 Chinese troops intruded into 3 kms inside India’s Chumar territory. Chumar incident lasted for a week. It reflected a Chinese claim on a new area. It happened ahead of, during and beyond Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to India (17 – 19 Sep. 2014). China however withdrew its troops from Chumar finally. China’s objection was reportedly to India’s construction of a road in the area.

January 2015: Chinese Foreign Ministry protested Japanese minister’s recognition of Arunachal Pradesh as part of India (Japanese foreign minister Fumio Kishida, New Delhi, January 2015)

20.2.2015: China  protested  Indian Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh; Chinese Vice Foreign Minister summoned Indian envoy to protest; Chinese Foreign Ministry and the PRC embassy in New Delhi , also protested.

8.3.2015:  Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that the Sino-Indian border dispute “has been contained. At the moment, the boundary negotiations are in the process of building up small positive developments. It is like climbing a mountain and the going is tough because we are on the way up.”

20.3.2015 & 28.3.2015: The PLA intruded in Burtse and Depsang in Northern Ladakh.

2.4.2015: The PRC Foreign Ministry spokesperson said at a regular press briefing that China is ready to work with India to find a comprehensible and reasonable solution to the border dispute, adding that the dispute is a “huge” one in the eastern sector of the Sino-Indian border and is undeniable fact”.

5.  Useful data for reference are also the numbers of Chinese transgressions/intrusions across the Indian border, as given below[8] : 2010- 228; 2011- 213; 2012- 426, 2013-411 and 2014 (till 4.8.2014) – 334.

Intrusions- Broad Trend

6. A close examination of data given in paragraphs 4 & 5 above reveals a broad trend with respect to China’s intrusions across Indian borders, as listed below:

• It can be seen that the intrusions have happened during or close to the periods of exchanges of high level visits between India and China. No doubt, the PRC’s  primary  motive behind such acts is to  reinforce its border claims against India on such important occasions; more importantly, China  might also  be hoping  that  the intrusions could push India into defensive positions during the crucial bilateral talks taking place during these  visits  on various  strategic issues dividing them  including the border.
•  China’s intrusions seem to be extending to new areas; this would mean expansion of its border claims. So far, there  have been  8 areas of dispute in its thinking – Thagla, Sumdorongchu, Yangshi, Asaphila and  Madan ridge (all in Arunachal Pradesh) and Trig Heights and  Yakla  (both  in Ladakh region) and Barahoti (Uttarkhand). New additions being noticed are Chumar, Pangong, DBO and Depsang, all in Western Sector.  Reports quoting Indian experts say that   through incursions, China has been able to occupy 640 Sq kms of Indian territory in Eastern Ladakh .[9]   They have since been denied by the Indian government.
• 90% of Chinese intrusions since 2012 have happened in the Western Sector. This suggests China’s priority to the defence of its perceived borders in the Western Sector in comparison to that of Eastern Sector. The PRC, in particular, may like to defend its position in the Aksai Chin region of the Western Sector, already being occupied by it, but claimed by India.  The  importance was also noticed in the  PRC’s past  ‘swap’ formula  which provided  for its giving up  claims in the Eastern Sector in return for India’s recognition of  Aksai Chin in the Western Sector ( China no longer mentions this formula). For China, the Western Sector is of significant strategic value; the key Western Highway connecting Xinjiang and Tibet falls in it. Also, the PRC’s intrusions into and apparent efforts to establish permanent facilities in the Indian border, may be aimed at linking the Aksai Chin with Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir where the Chinese military is engaged in construction activities. Another point with regard to  China’s importance to  Western Sector, are some claims, not so far official,  noticed in the PRC that  Ladakh is a part of China’s Tibet[10].
• It appears that the Chinese intrusions across Indian border have been gaining momentum ever since India carried out its nuclear tests in 1998 suggesting China’s inclination to link the border dispute with India with geo-politics. Notable in the current context is that they almost doubled in 2012 in comparison to the figure for the previous year. The 2012 level has continued in 2013 and for 2014, the situation could be the same.  A reason could be new compulsions being felt by China to respond to India’s heightened activity close to the border, in particular to stop the latter’s acceleration of military infrastructure up gradation in the border   – troop buildup, establishment of new border posts, putting air strips into operations again such as DBO, building of border roads etc.  Departing from their past practice, Indian security forces are now more aggressive with daily patrolling along certain areas on the border and ready to forbid Chinese troops along the LAC.
• Some Chinese intrusions have happened deep inside Indian Territory, for e.g. in the DBO sector, the presence of Chinese military is kilometers ahead of even the Chinese perception of the LAC. This and staying of Chinese   troops in the intruded land in tents could mark a new trend and reveal the PRC’s long term intentions.  Indian experts (like Srikanth Kondapalli) feel that these intrusions could be meant for probing Indian defences and testing of India’s vulnerabilities along the LAC. Indian experts (like Brahma Challaney) think that China may try to gain more Indian territory in the process, change ground realities in the border and redraw map in its favour.  They call this as China’s ‘Salami Slice’ strategy aimed at taking control of Indian territories by small maneuvers.
• On the question as to why the Chinese intruded while  President Xi Jinping’s visit to India was still in progress, a possible explanation could be that after Mr Modi’s landslide election victory in India , the PRC was unhappy with  his government’s foreign policy moves; in particular, the Chinese could have been  unhappy with Mr Modi’s implied condemnation of it  for having  “ 18^th century expansionist mindset, encroaching upon other countries, intruding in other’s waters, invading other countries and capturing territory”. India’s boost to ties with Japan and Vietnam, two China-wary nations, during days before Mr Xi’s visit to Arunachal could also have contributed to China’s unhappiness. Some analysts have raised a question whether or not the Chinese intrusion in September 2015 was known to President Xi Jinping who was still in Indian soil; they have argued that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) influences the country’s foreign policy course.  But it has to be acknowledged that the whole party and government including the military in China function under a unified command which decides the foreign policy of the country; any idea of isolating the PLA in the process could be wrong.
• The continuing Chinese intrusions across Indian border may mean the ineffectiveness of the signed India-China Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA). It is possible that the PRC is taking advantage of the BDCA’s silence about deployment of troops in the LAC and in particular on from how many kilometers from the LAC, the two countries are required to exchange information on troop movements. India may think that not all its troop movements near the border are its troop build ups.
• China’s protests over visits of Indian leaders to Arunachal Pradesh could be because of another factor- the stand of the Dalai Lama set up in India on Arunachal Pradesh. The Dharamsala-based Tibetan government in exile has said that “they recognize the McMahon Line as international border and that as such, Arunachal Pradesh is a part of India. It is bound by the Simla Agreement signed with the British India in 1914 and that there is no reason to deviate from the agreement.” [11] Beijing seems to be wary of any attempt to link the Tibet issue with that concerning Sino-Indian border; it considers the former as an internal problem. For the outside world, however, the linkage is obvious.

PRC’s suspicions of the roles of US and Japan on the border issue

7.  Of special interest to observers are signs suggesting that the PRC may be becoming suspicious of the US support to India on the question of border issue.  Influential Chinese writers (Professor Zhang Li, South Asia Research Center, Sichuan University) have said that the support of Washington “led to a hardening of India’s position on disputed border with China like that in Aksai Chin, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh”. They (Prof Wang Dehua) have remarked that the Indian army’s intrusions into the Chinese side were encouraged by the US so as to make some noise to distract China from the South China Sea, where it is in a spat with its sea neighbors such as the Philippines and Vietnam over the disputed islands. But India is neither on the US side nor on China’s side, but has its own agenda[12].”  Scholars ( like Zhang Mi of the Independent Dujia Network based in Beijing, www.dooo.cc) have alleged ( 9.4.2015) that the US is provoking India in the latter’s relation with China, by offering the bait of support to India’s permanent membership in the UN Security Council, adding that  India remains unmoved.

8. Chinese suspicions on US as above need to be understood in another context. For the first time, Japan has sided with India on Arunachal issue (Foreign Minister Kishida, New Delhi, January 2015, while offering Japan’s support to India’s development projects in the Eastern Sector). Also, for the first time in recent years, a foreign power seems to have come in open support of India on the issue. With apparent concern over any internationalization of Arunachal issue, the Chinese foreign ministry promptly conveyed its ‘serious concern’ to Japan on this count. A PRC scholar[13] affirmed that  Kishida’s words had “unveiled Japan’s intent of ‘uniting’ the countries that have territorial disputes with China, in an attempt to create a strong impression that Japan, along with China’s other neighboring countries, is bullied by a rising China.”

9.  In connection with what has been said above, it will be useful to have a look into the existing official positions of the US and Japan on the Sino-Indian border issue. The official US line is that it accepts the McMahon line as defining the Sino-Indian border, as observed by former US Ambassador to India J.K. Galbraith in October 1962[14]. Washington is however non-committal on the status of Aksai Chin. Japan’s official position is that it does not take sides on the Sino-border issue; but definitely marking a departure from this position is the de facto recognition of the country’s foreign minister that Arunachal Pradesh is part of India. Relevant is his clarification – India “basically and effectively controls [Arunachal], and China and India are continuing consultations on the border issue, I made the remark taking these facts into account”[15].  One can expect that at a time when the US and Japan are engaged in a geo-political contest with China in Asia-Pacific region, they may not like to further annoy China by giving open support to India on the Sino-Indian border issue; however, the two official positions mentioned above, seem to contain a message – US and Japan may not be averse to adopt a pro-India stand on the issue when the time comes.

10. India may have to watch closely for any evidence towards China’s official perception about the intentions of the US and Japan on the Sino-Indian border issue. As a consequence of any PRC feeling that the two powers are working in tandem with India on that issue, regional geopolitics may become a factor in Beijing-New Delhi relations, posing a challenge to the two sides on how to manage it.

Intrusions in a wider context

11.   It will be a mistake to look at China’s border transgressions into India in isolation; they need contextualization taking into account China’s historical views of its boundaries, which expose the country’s expansionist outlook. The PRC believes that it has ‘historically lost’ territories to foreign countries; it however says that it is not making such claims in the modern sense.  Beijing connects the country’s external boundary as existed during Qing dynasty period to the contemporary borders. The maps published in the PRC in end eighties and in first decade of the century encompassed vast areas belonging to neighboring countries (The Historical Atlas of China, 1982-1987 and History of China’s Modern Borders, vol. 1, 2007). Parts of India’s Northeast and Andamans were shown in the maps as ‘historically lost territories’ of China.

12.  Meriting close attention is also the impact on the Chinese stand on border intrusions coming from the PRC’s “core interests’-based foreign policy framework, visible since middle of 2008.  Under this framework, China aims to promote ‘win-win cooperation   with outside world, but would not compromise its ‘core interests’, i.e on all matters concerning the country’s territorial sovereignty.  China says that friendship and the ‘no compromise’ position are two ‘pillars’ of its diplomatic strategy.  India should therefore expect China’s adoption of a two pronged approach towards it, which simultaneously mixes elements of both cooperation and assertion. At this juncture, signs seem to be emerging towards a  beginning by China to readjust its foreign policy through according priority to economic interests in comparison to core interests; India  may have to wait for the impact of such readjustment on China’s policy on borders with India; it may have to examine  the probability of the level of PLA intrusions into the Indian border coming down as China starts reducing  the importance of  assertiveness and according   priority to economic interests while making its foreign policy.

13. Can 1962 be repeated? The answer could be yes, but not in that scale. Despite the apparent success of several mutually agreed confidence building measures in keeping the borders peaceful,   India should be alert on  the eventuality of  intrusions  expanding  further, leading to  an India-China ‘local war’. The PRC visualizes occurrence of ‘local wars under informatisation conditions’. The belief is that such wars can be short and happen in China’s periphery, enabling China to realize limited political objectives. Can China use force to settle borders with India? The answer is affirmative considering that China’s ‘Active Defence’ strategy does not rule out the military resorting to ‘offensive operational postures’.  Forceful recovery of ‘Southern Tibet’ (as China calls Arunachal) and fighting a ‘partial war’ with India were topics in the Chinese blogs not very long ago.  China’s use of force to turn territorial conditions in its favor has precedence. Beijing launched ‘counter attacks in self-defense’ against Vietnam, India and former Soviet Union in 1979, 1962 and 1969 respectively. In the current period, China is indulging in a show of force in East and South China seas.

14.  Bilaterally, China’s keenness to get closer to India and vice versa at the present moment is beyond question. President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Modi are taking a lead in this direction. The motivating factors for the two countries are obviously are mutual economic benefits. At the same time, they require to face the fact that the strategic mistrust between them is not going to disappear soon. A Chinese blog aptly describes such situation. It [16] identifies the roots of misunderstandings between China and India and wants their removal. It says, “The Chinese people suspect that India is using US and Japan to contain China and the Indians believe that China is restraining India through its moves in Indian Ocean and building of ports in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka etc. India also fears that China opposes India’s nuclear policy”.

15. India will have to be prepared for the Chinese border intrusions /transgressions to continue as it is not going to be easy to bridge the perceptional differences among the two on the LAC quickly.  More important will be to find a permanent solution to the border issue;  India and China find that it is complex and will be  time consuming. This explains their current inclination to conduct bilateral relations looking beyond the border dispute and  concentrate on working together in other fronts, especially by strengthening  mutual economic cooperation. India-China border talks may prolong indefinitely as the PRC is going to persist with its principled position of not compromising on all sovereignty-related issues including that of “Southern Tibet”, as it calls India’s Arunachal Pradesh. In such a situation, the best way for India would be to continue the border talks with China, but without expecting any quick breakthrough in them. Its long term plans should take into account the likelihood of future border conflicts with China and the need to build its defense preparedness as an insurance against any misadventure by China, howsoever it may look illogical at present.

*The writer D.S.Rajan, is Distinguished Fellow, Chennai Centre for China Studies, Chennai, India. This is an updated version of  his talk on the subject at a  seminar on “ China’s Asian Challenges and Opportunities”,  organized by the Defence Services Staff College- DSSC , Wellington, on 26-27 March 2015.  Email: dsrajan@gmail.com

The post Will Chinese Intrusions Into India’s Borders Ever End? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

US President Barack Obama should place Iraq’s abusive sectarian militias at the top of his agenda for his meeting with the Iraqi prime minister, Human Rights Watch said Monday in a letter to the president. Prime Minister Hayder al-Abadi is scheduled to meet with Obama on Tuesday in Washington, DC.

Abadi is seeking more arms from the US, including Apache attack helicopters and ammunition, media reports have said. But Obama should make clear that US security assistance to Iraq will be linked to the Iraqi government’s progress in reining in pro-government militias that have committed serious abuses against civilians in areas retaken from the extremist group Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

“ISIS poses a terrible threat to civilians in Iraq, but that’s no reason to pretend that paying lip service to human rights is an adequate response to the militia abuses,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “President Obama needs to tell Prime Minister Abadi that militia revenge attacks won’t be tolerated.”

Sectarian militias have increased their influence on the battlefield and in Iraq’s government since ISIS captured Mosul in June 2014. The militias have routinely carried out abductions; summary executions, including beheadings; torture; and forcible displacements of thousands of families in areas recaptured from ISIS. Recent statements from Abadi appear to walk back from earlier commitments to address accountability for these serious abuses by reining in the militias.

Senior US officials have expressed concern about militia abuses and their implications for Iraq’s long-term security, but the US policy of providing unfettered military aid to Iraq undermines the US criticism, Human Rights Watch said. Obama should make clear that security aid to Iraqi security forces hinges on the government taking steps to disband abusive militias; improve protection of civilians in areas where militias are deployed; and hold accountable commanders responsible for serious crimes through a fair criminal justice process.

The administration should ensure that the US embassy in Baghdad has sufficient personnel and resources to closely monitor how US arms and training are being used, Human Rights Watch said.

“US-backed Iraqi military operations have been severely tarnished by serious militia abuses,” Stork said. “Obama needs to send a clear message that US support for Iraq requires more serious efforts by Baghdad to protect all Iraqis’ basic rights.”

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(EurActiv) — Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s National Front (FN), pulled out of regional elections on Monday after a fierce public spat with his daughter, who now leads the far-right party.

The move promises to ease tensions both within the Le Pen family and the anti-European, anti-immigration FN, which has enjoyed considerable electoral success in recent years as Marine Le Pen seeks to clean up its racist and anti-Semitic image.

Le Pen senior, 86, incurred his daughter’s wrath earlier this month by repeating an assertion that the Nazi gas chambers were a “detail of history”. He then followed that up with a defence of France’s World War II leader Philippe Petain, who collaborated with the Nazis. This appeared to be the last straw for Marine, who accused her father of committing “political suicide” and said she would not support his standing in regional elections in December.

After days of sniping that have dominated the headlines in France, Le Pen senior appeared to fall on his sword on Monday 13 April. He told Le Figaro magazine he would not be standing in the southeast of France for the party, even though “I think I was the best candidate for the National Front”.

New dig at daughter

But in stepping down, the 86-year-old appeared to aim another dig at his daughter. Asked who should stand in his place, he anointed his granddaughter Marion-Marechal Le Pen, 25, a rising star in the party with views considered more conservative than Marine’s.

“If she accepts, I think she would head a very good list [of candidates]. She is certainly the best,” he told the magazine. “If I have to make the sacrifice for the future of the [FN] movement, it will not be me who has caused the damage,” he said, in an apparent reference to Marine.

In a later statement, he said he would “not be party” to a “serious crisis” that has hit the FN because of his recent comments. The interviews “do not justify the racket that has been set off in our ranks which could weaken our movement to a dangerous degree,” he said.

Jean-Marie had previously said that he would not go quietly, accusing his daughter of “shooting herself in the foot”. His anointed successor Marion has kept a studious silence on the squabbles, although she did voice disagreement with her grandfather’s Holocaust comments.

Some analysts see a deliberate “good cop, bad cop” strategy in place: Jean-Marie shocks and Marine slaps him down, enabling her to burnish her credentials as a relative moderate. While jettisoning Jean-Marie is likely to rile the party hardliners, it may also attract those disenchanted with the two main parties who had previously seen the veteran provocateur as an impassable barrier to voting FN.

Battle stations

In a poll published on Sunday, more than two-thirds (67 percent) of FN voters said they were in favour of Jean-Marie’s departure while 74 percent said they believed his media sorties were harming the party. “After the comments of Jean-Marie Le Pen… the National Front finds itself yet again plunged into crisis,” said polling group Ifop.

The party’s deputy, Florian Philippot, hailed what he described as a “wise” decision from Jean-Marie. Under Marine Le Pen, the FN has enjoyed a series of election successes, notably coming first in last year’s European elections. Prime Minister Manuel Valls has warned the far-right party is at the “gates of power” and insists its policies would be a “disaster” for the country. The FN advocates that France, a founding member of the European Union, withdraw from the bloc, pull out of the euro and reintroduce the franc.

Political opponents sought to extract every last advantage out of the affair. Gerald Darmanin, an MP from the right-wing UMP opposition party, tweeted: “The grandfather’s not standing. So the granddaughter stands instead. We don’t know about the aunt yet”. “This isn’t politics, it’s ‘Dallas’,” he said in reference to a US soap about a back-stabbing oil dynasty.

But despite throwing in the towel in this latest battle, the political veteran, known as the “Menhir” both because of his Breton roots and his immovability, does not appear to be losing his appetite for a fight. “As long as God gives me breath, I will remain at battle stations,” he said.

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By Minga Negash, Seid Hassan, Mammo Muchie and Abu Girma*

On March 23, 2015, Egypt, Ethiopia and the Sudan signed a declaration of principles on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam[1] (GERD). Since then, an intense debate has been going on regarding the modalities and core principles which were spelled out in the Declaration. Unfortunately, the principles contained in the Declaration have invited unhealthy rhetoric, particularly within Egypt, Ethiopia and among the Ethiopian diaspora.

There are two fundamental reasons for the negative discourses. The first one involves the non-cooperative, zero-sum game strategic behavior that is inherent within the actions of the parties. Game theorists, political scientists and economists very well know that shared watercourses invite unilateral and self-interest maximizing actions – the well-known zero-sum positions being the dominant solution. Added to this is the emotive nature of the Nile River that was instigated and imposed upon the peoples of the region by colonialism. The second has to do with Egypt’s long-held historical ambitions to control the sources of Nile and colonial era position that is still reflected in the Declaration. On closer examination, we find that several of the current stipulations of the Declaration include many of the key elements of the 1929 and 1959 “Nile Water Agreements” that Ethiopia was not a part to. Consequently, the Declaration is framed not in a positive-sum game- “win-win” manner.

Cognizant of the fact that the construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam has become a game changer, with its strong potential to lead to cooperation, we attempted to show that Egypt’s policy towards Ethiopia has been unsustainable. We did so in our April 30, 2014 commentary. Even though we did not have the full and official Declaration in hand at the time of writing, we also attempted to raise awareness as well as our concerns using a short commentary that we disseminated on 23 March, 2015. In particular, we called for (i) the translation of the actual Agreement into various Ethiopian languages; (ii) the revision of certain clauses; and (iii) as Egypt’s President was heading to address the Ethiopian Parliament and request for ratification, we called upon the Government of Ethiopia to defer this process to allow time and space for reflection. After the release of that commentary, Aiigaforum.com[2] , a website that is close to the Government of Ethiopia, posted a document which purports to be the final and authentic version of the Agreement. Except for the location of the signing, and singular-plural uses of certain terms, see for example “resources” versus “resource” in the preamble, and the sequence of the numbering of Principles III and IV of the Agreement, when compared to other versions available on the internet, the document appears to be authentic.[3] Though speculations are rife that the final agreement is still a secret, because of the importance of the matter, for this commentary we have used the version that was made available by Aigaforum.com.

Many have opined and welcomed the recent Egyptian diplomatic overture towards Ethiopia, and its acceptance of the construction of the GERD, in particular. Even though the current tripartite Agreement seemed to have temporarily eased the recent tension among the parties, and despite some of the positive aspects of the Egyptian diplomatic overtures and its intent to cooperate as spelled out in the Declaration, we observe that the Agreement is unsustainable in its current form.

In fact, our examination of the Declaration of principles leads to the conclusion that the clauses are designed to re-assert the 1929 and 1959 water sharing agreements and the much criticized Framework for General Co-operation Between the Arab Republic of Egypt and Ethiopia, July 1993, Cairo, Egypt[4] that was signed by the then Presidents of Egypt and Ethiopia. In this follow up commentary on GERD, we independently examine, in a non-technical manner, the elements of the tripartite Agreement which was signed in Khartoum on March 23.

We do so by identifying omissions, sticky points and mistakes that need attention. Consistent with our April 30, 2014 commentary on this topic, we attempt to decouple political posturing within Ethiopia from the trans-boundary water issues that are facing the country. In doing so, we focus on the substantive issues so that the country avoids the repeat of the mistakes in the Algiers Agreement of 2000 between Eritrea and Ethiopia and the series of diplomatic maneuvering that created a landlocked country in 1993.[5] We decided to incorporate the clauses that are contained in the Declaration for the reader’s convenience.

ANALYSIS OF THE AGREEMENT

There are ten principles stated in the current Agreement. Below we provide comments for each element in the Agreement. For convenience, we juxtapose the Agreement (as published in www.aigaforum.com) and our comments follow the article. Concluding remarks are provided in section III.

I. PRINCIPLE OF COOPERATION

• To cooperate based on common understanding, mutual benefit, good faith, win-win, and principles of international law;
• To cooperate in understanding upstream and downstream water needs in its various aspects.

OUR BRIEF ASSESSMENTS

(1) This article is not very different in spirit from the framework for cooperation that was signed between Egypt and Ethiopia in 1993. The intent of this principle appears to invoke clauses in the UN’s Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses that was adopted on 21, May, 1997[6] and the Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, G.A. res. 2625, Annex, 25 UN GAOR, Supp. (No. 28), U.N. Doc. A/5217 at 121 (1970). It is however important to note that 17 years after its adoption, other than the United Kingdom no major power has signed the non-navigational use of international waters Convention. By the end of 2014, only 38 countries (out of about 194 Member States) have signed/accepted and ratified it[7] . It is also interesting to note that 11 of the 38 countries are located in the African continent. None of the three countries (Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan) have signed, accepted or ratified this Convention.

(2) The most controversial element of the 1997 UN Convention is Article 7 which deals with “not to cause significant harm” by upstream countries on downstream countries. Concerned by the ramifications of this clause, many upstream countries that have important trans-boundary rivers are either shying away from ratifying the Convention or are openly objecting to it as the Convention: (i) does not provide for compensation to upstream countries for lost opportunities, and (ii) exposes them to an indeterminate and uninsurable risk. As we shall see below, Article 7 features in both the recently signed tripartite Agreement (without recognition of opportunity costs and damage limitation clause) and in Article 5 of the 1993 agreement between Egypt and Ethiopia.

(3) The Phrase “principles of international law” neither implicitly nor explicitly recognizes the existence of Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement. Hence it fails to guide a comprehensive agreement pertinent to the region.[8]

(4) The phrase “in its various aspects” suggests that downstream countries need additional waters or if they decide to develop new habitations, the upstream countries may have to give up their development opportunities. Research shows that downstream countries are usually densely populated and industrialized, have flatter topographies and hence their water needs are higher than upstream countries. Furthermore, even though the Agreement is about the GERD (see the heading and the preamble of the Agreement), the Article is sweeping and covers the entire river system as we shall see below.

II. PRINCIPLE OF DEVELOPMENT, REGIONAL INTEGRATION AND SUSTAINABILITY

• The purpose of GERD is for power generation, to contribute to economic development, promotion of trans-boundary cooperation and regional integration through generation of sustainable and reliable clean energy supply.

OUR BRIEF ASSESSMENTS

The text states that the purpose of the project is to generate “sustainable and reliable clean energy supply”. There are no auxiliary purposes and can be interpreted to exclude, for example, the use of the waters for fishing, recreation, education and small scale industrial and irrigation projects around the dam. We do think that there are costs (risks) in agreeing to this clause by the upstream country. There are no provisions for planting trees (timber, coffee, etc.), for example, to mitigate the erosion and evaporation, capture the carbon and/or put the soil into better use. This clause is, therefore, devoid of shared benefits and responsibilities.

PRINCIPLE EQUITABLE AND REASONABLE UTILIZATION

• The three countries shall utilize their shared water resources in their respective territories in an equitable and reasonable manner
• In ensuring their equitable and reasonable utilization, the three countries will take into account all the relevant guiding factors listed below, but not limited to the following outlined:

a) Geographic, hydrographic, hydrological, climatic, ecological and other factors of a natural character;

b) The social and economic needs of the Basin States concerned;

c) The population dependent on the water resources in each Basin State;

d) The effects of the use or uses of the water resources in one Basin State on other Basin States;

e. Existing and potential uses of the water resources;

f) Conservation, protection, development and economy of use of the water resources and the costs of measures taken to that effect;

g) The availability of alternatives, of comparable value, to a particular planned or existing use;

OUR BRIEF ASSESSMENTS

(1) Even though this principle appears to be normal, it obligates Ethiopia to continue honoring Article 5 of the 1993 cooperation framework between Egypt and Ethiopia.

(2) Sub-article III (e), which deals with the existing and potential uses of the water resources, is a sticky point. It shall continue to be a source of tension as it is the focal point of the relationship between upstream and downstream countries. It needs to be examined in the light of the principles that are enshrined in the Nile basin framework.

(3) Sub-article III(f) does not sufficiently obligate downstream countries to invest in water conservation and rationalization. The laxity in this sub-article legitimizes the increased demand for water by downstream countries.

(4) The scope of the Agreement does not include ground water resources available in downstream countries.

PRINCIPLE OF NOT TO CAUSE SIGNIFICANT HARM

• The Three Countries shall take all appropriate measures to prevent the causing of significant harm in utilizing the Blue/Main Nile.
• Where significant harm nevertheless is caused to one of the countries, the state whose use causes such harm shall, in the absence of agreement to such use, take all appropriate measures in consultations with the affected state to eliminate or mitigate such harm and, where appropriate, to discuss the question of compensation.

OUR BRIEF ASSESSMENTS

As indicated above, this clause is taken from Article 7 of the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses 1997- (effective as of April, 2014). The “obligation not to cause significant harm” is related to the age-old economic theory of externality which features in European trans-boundary waters and environmental agreements, in the form of the “polluter pays principle”. The UN Convention states that:

“(a) Watercourse States shall, in utilizing an international watercourse in their territories, take all appropriate measures to prevent the causing of significant harm to other watercourse States.

(b) Where significant harm nevertheless is caused to another watercourse State, the States whose use causes such harm shall, in the absence of agreement to such use, take all appropriate measures, having due regard for the provisions of articles 5 and 6, in consultation with the affected State, to eliminate or mitigate such harm and, where appropriate, to discuss the question of compensation.”

Article #2 of the 1997 Convention defines the term “watercourse” as follows:-

“Watercourse” means a system of surface waters and ground waters constituting by virtue of their physical relationship a unitary whole and normally flowing into a common terminus.”

It is interesting to note that the tripartite Agreement avoids the use of the term “watercourse” and hence excludes the ground water resources in Egypt and Sudan that recent geoscience studies are indicating.[9] Furthermore, it is important to note that the “international law” is selectively used here to strengthen the position of the initiator-originator of the current text.

(1) The opening paragraph of the tripartite Agreement starts with a rather misleading sentence. It states that “the three countries shall take all appropriate measures….” The article specifically deals with damages and not “causing significant harm in utilizing the Blue/Main Nile”. The Blue/Main Nile originates from the highlands of Ethiopia and contributes approximately about 85 percent of the water to the Nile River system, and hence this clause is about Ethiopia.

Downstream countries are not affected by this clause as Ethiopia is. The clause is unambiguous in giving downstream countries right to “take appropriate measures to prevent significant damage” by the upstream country. The obvious issue that emerges here is sovereignty over the waters of the Blue/Main Nile, and the issue is more than likely to be a sticky point in that neither sovereign equality nor territorial integrity clauses (see Principle # IX below) are sufficient to protect Ethiopia. In fact there is concern that it can be construed as a voluntary ceding of sovereignty by Ethiopia.

(2) The phrase “significant harm is not defined” and there are no thresholds about water sharing, physical damages arising from faulty construction/management of the dam and Act of God. Hence it is subject to various interpretations.

(3) The clause refers to the Blue Nile/Main River. The Blue Nile/Main River has tributaries. In the absence of an exclusion clause for the tributaries, the clause maybe used to restrict Ethiopia from developing irrigation projects on any of the tributaries of Blue Nile.

PRINCIPLE TO COOPERATE ON THE FIRST FILLING AND OPERATION OF THE DAM

• To implement the recommendations of the International Panel of Experts (IPoE), respect the final outcomes of the Technical National Committee (TNC) Final Report on the joint studies recommended in the IPoE Final Report throughout the different phases of the project.
• The three countries, in the spirit of cooperation, will utilize the final outcomes of the joint studies, to be conducted as per the recommendations of the IPoE Report and agreed upon by the TNC, to:

a) Agree on guidelines and rules on the first filling of GERD which shall cover all different scenarios, in parallel with the construction of GERD.

b) Agree on guidelines and rules for the annual operation of GERD, which the owner of the dam may adjust from time to time.

c) Inform the downstream countries of any unforeseen or urgent circumstances requiring adjustments in the operation of GERD.

d) To sustain cooperation and coordination on the annual operation of GERD with downstream reservoirs, the three countries, through the line ministries responsible for water, shall set up an appropriate coordination mechanism among them.

e) The time line for conducting the above mentioned process shall be 15 months from the inception of the two studies recommended by the IPoE.

OUR BRIEF ASSESSMENTS

(1) Implicit in Article V is that the project is going ahead. Only the filling of the reservoir and operational/functional matters of the dam are to be negotiated. The presumption is that the pace of the filling should be slow enough to supply water to downstream countries but fast enough to satisfy Ethiopia’s needs as the NPR’s reporter has put it.

(2) This article however crucially depends on a report that is yet to be produced. The leaked IPoE report vindicates Ethiopia on many fronts and as we indicated in our April 30, 2014 commentary the deficiencies are not insurmountable. It remains to be seen whether the TNC report will be different from the one produced by IPoE. Notwithstanding this, the environmental aspect of the TNC report is expected to echo Egyptian concerns. It is important that the environmental impact assessment of the project be comprehensive and linked to (i) current and potential ground water resources in downstream countries and (ii) the rather wasteful use of the resource in downstream countries and pollution around the delta.

(3) Sub-article V(b) refers to the “owner” of the dam, in the singular, and resolves the speculation about joint ownership, at least for the moment. As a result of the sensitivity of the project, we encourage the Government of Ethiopia not to allow either equity or linked participation at this time.[10]

PRINCIPLE OF CONFIDENCE BUILDING

• Priority will be given to downstream countries to purchase power generated from GERD.

OUR BRIEF ASSESSMENTS

(1) Clean energy production and sale reduces the downstream countries’ dependency on fossil fuel generated energy. Hence, this is not just a “confidence building” issue. It has direct and measurable economic consequences, and hence needs to be imputed in the pricing of electricity for the proposed sale.

(2) In many economies electricity falls within rate regulated industries. Hence, pricing for domestic use will be different from pricing for export. International pricing will be a more complicated issue and may not be easily decoupled from the type of intergovernmental relationships that emerge in the region.

(3) The word “will” is equivocal since it has several meanings in the legal lexicon as in thesaurus, and hence may serve as a point of future contention.

PRINCIPLE OF EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION AND DATA

• Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan shall provide data and information needed for the conduct of the TNC joint studies in good faith and in a timely manner.

OUR BRIEF ASSESSMENTS

(1) As indicated earlier, the IPoE had already stated that the social and environmental aspects of the project in downstream countries need an additional study. The availability of such information should enable Ethiopia to complete the study. As indicated above, the study however needs to be comprehensive, and does not have to be confined to the project.

(2) Data accuracy, completeness and integrity can be sticky problems.

(3) Certain technical (engineering design, formulae, etc.) information might be proprietary and therefore confidential. The parties need to determine the minimum level of disclosure.

PRINCIPLE OF DAM SAFETY

• The three countries appreciate the efforts undertaken thus far by Ethiopia in implementing the IPoE recommendations pertinent to the GERD safety.
• Ethiopia shall in good faith continue the full implementation of the Dam safety recommendations as per the IPoE report.

OUR BRIEF ASSESSMENTS

(1) Dam safety is as important for Ethiopia as it is for downstream countries. Notwithstanding this it is important to ensure that “best practice” is followed so that habitations and civilizations in downstream countries are not threatened by faulty construction and substandard operations.

(2) Downstream countries are formally acknowledging Ethiopia’s compliance effort, and it is good.

PRINCIPLE OF SOVEREIGNTY AND TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY

• The three countries shall cooperate on the basis of sovereign equality, territorial integrity, mutual benefit and good faith in order to attain optimal utilization and adequate protection of the River.

OUR BRIEF ASSESSMENTS

(1) The concept of “sovereign equality” features in many international agreements, conventions and constitutive acts (example the African Union), and is defined in the UN 1990’s Declaration on Principles.[11] It states that “sovereign equality” includes the following elements: (a) States are judicially equal; (b) Each State enjoys the rights inherent in full sovereignty; (c) Each State has the duty to respect the personality of other States; (d) The territorial integrity and political independence of the State are inviolable; (e) Each State has the right freely to choose and develop its political, social, economic and cultural systems; (f) Each State has the duty to comply fully and in good faith with its international obligations and to live in peace with other States.[12]

(2) This article is fairly standard and also features in the 1993 framework. However, it is unlikely to override the articles the dealt with damages and rights that appear to have been voluntarily ceded to downstream countries in connection with the Blue/Main Nile and its tributaries.

PRINCIPLE OF PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES

• The Three countries will settle disputes, arising out of the interpretation or implementation of this agreement, amicably through consultation or negotiation in accordance with the principle of good faith. If the Parties are unable to resolve the dispute through consultation or negotiation, they may jointly request for conciliation, mediation or refer the matter for the consideration of the Heads of State.

OUR BRIEF ASSESSMENTS

This article is also fairly standard. It evolves from the UN 1990 Convention and that of the UN Charter. When this article is read together with Principle 1 of this tripartite Agreement, it brings back the 1997 Convention and the mediation, arbitration and determination role of the International Court of Justice. Ethiopia’s experience with arbitration has not been good and the Algiers Agreement and the ruling made by the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission[13] are too fresh to be forgotten. Despite this fact, with lopsided clauses stacked against Ethiopia and in the absence of sound rules and principles governing the Nile water allocation and management, a “third party”, particularly in the context of the Nile Basin Cooperation Framework Agreement may lead to a better outcome.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

In summary, when the recent tripartite Agreement on the GERD is compared with the 1993 bilateral agreement, though in many respects the spirits of the two agreements appear similar, there are also important differences. The current Agreement reaffirms Article 5 of the 1993 agreement which favored Egypt, includes terms about compensation for damages, restricts the scope of the dam project, recognizes “rights” to take action on the Blue/Main Nile, is sloppy on water utilization in downstream countries, and the non-exclusion of the tributaries from the Agreement cumulatively puts Ethiopia at a disadvantage.

The obvious and fundamental question that arises in the minds of many observers is whether a reasonable government representative of an independent upstream country, irrespective of his/her political credo, would sign without duress, the tripartite Agreement in its present form. In light of the above analysis and consistent with our initial reaction of March 24, 2015, we reiterate our statement that no free nation should be subjected to be a party to such a lopsided and risky Agreement.

We also think the shared Nile waters represent opportunities for all riparian counties. However, the good fortunes emanating from the Nile could only be leveraged if all riparian countries are able to overcome the seemingly self-interest maximizing but counter-productive zero-sum game actions. The Nile Basin can facilitate the much needed African regional integration if all parties know how to share both the cost and benefit from this rich resource. Hence, the central point of departure for making bilateral, tripartite, quadripartite (as the case may be) agreements should be the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement, which includes all the riparian states and centers around the equitable sharing of the trans-boundary watercourses. Egypt must not be allowed to divide and maintain its supremacy by undermining the regional cooperation framework that is already in motion.

Hence, in the interest of equitable, fair, sustainable, comprehensive solution that guarantees shared benefits and responsibilities, we, therefore, call upon:

• Policymakers and stakeholders of all riparian counties to understand that trans-boundary water flows, by their nature, are susceptible to the tragedy of the commons- that attempts by individual nations acting independently or in a dominant manner could only damage the common resource, and recognize that only shared responsibilities could guarantee shared benefits;
• The parties to the current Declaration rectify the unfair, unequitable and unsustainable clauses that are damaging to any party, Ethiopia, in particular;
• All political parties in the riparian states refrain from using the shared waters of the Nile for their self-preserving interests;
• The Declaration and future negotiations should evolve from the laudable Nile Basin Cooperative Agreement;[14]
• Any signed treaties and declaration of principles be immediately translated into major Ethiopian and other riparian states languages so that the general public is aware of what is going on;
• Hydrologists, economists, lawyers, ecologists, geoscientists, sociologists, water engineers and diplomats etc., in the region to make professional contributions so that the water sharing problem is resolved for the benefits of all in the region.

*About the authors:
Minga Negash, Professor of Accounting at MSU Denver (U.S.A) and the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

Seid Hassan, Professor of Economics at Murray State University (U.S.A)

Mammo Muchie, Professor of African Innovations at Tshwane University of Technology (South Africa), Visiting Professor, Shanghai University (China)

Abu Girma, TMDC, Oxford University

Notes
[1] http://tinyurl.com/nog4o7c
[2] http://tinyurl.com/plwmx46
[3] http://tinyurl.com/kz6vd4z
[4] http://unmee.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=57
[5] http://tinyurl.com/ohz7qf3
[6] http://www.internationalwaterlaw.org/documents/intldocs/watercourse_status.html
[7] http://www.nilebasin.org/
[8] See for example http://sajg.geoscienceworld.org/content/117/1/97.abstract
[9] http://www.tigraionline.com/articles/ethiopia-rejects-egypt.html
[10] “Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, G.A. res. 2625, Annex, 25 UN GAOR, Supp. (No. 28), U.N. Doc. A/5217 at 121 (1970)”.
[11] https://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/principles1970.html
[12] http://www.haguejusticeportal.net/index.php?id=6162
[13] http://www.nilebasin.org/

The post Beyond The Politics Of The Nile – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Islamic State militant group in Syria is using heavy weaponry and artillery in ongoing fighting in the beleaguered Yarmouk refugee camp, a PLO official said Sunday.

Ahmad al-Majdalani, the PLO envoy to Syria, told Ma’an that despite heavy fighting with the Syrian army IS have maintained their positions in the camp and have redeployed to arrange future attacks.

“Political solutions regarding the Yarmouk crisis are over as IS has closed all doors on any political solution and is currently gathering its forces in the Yalda area in Syria in preparation to attack the camp,” the official said.

Al-Majdalani, who returned from Syria at the weekend, will meet with President Abbas upon his return from Moscow to discuss the crisis.

Pierre Krahenbuhl, who heads the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, on Monday called on all sides to respect the beleaguered civilians trapped inside Yarmouk.

“The Syria conflict has a human face. These are individuals with a dignity and destiny that must be at the center of our responses as we grapple with the complexities of protecting civilians, in Yarmouk and beyond.”

Yarmouk, which is Syria’s largest refugee camp lying seven kilometers south of Damascus, was initially attacked by IS on April 1, and the group subsequently took over the majority of the camp.

Although hundreds of residents have been evacuated, up to 18,000 residents remain trapped inside the camp, which has been besieged by the Syrian army for more than a year.

The camp was once home to 160,000 people, Syrians as well as Palestinians, but its population has dwindled since the uprising erupted in March 2011.

Although the PLO has publicly rejected Palestinian involvement in a military campaign, citing a longstanding policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of Arab nations, on Saturday Majdalani said the situation was out of the hands of the Palestinian leadership.

He told Ma’an that the resort to military action had been imposed on Palestinian groups inside the camp.

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Khaled Mahfoudh Bahah was  sworn in on Monday a Yemen’s vice president at a ceremony in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh.

Following the ceremony, Bahah accompanied Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi in a meeting with Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, where, according to the Saudi state news agency SPA, “they discussed issues of common interest as well as the developments in Yemen.”

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on Monday welcomed the decision of Hadi’s appointment, who will also keep his post as Prime Minister.

According to the Bahrain News Agency, the GCC council described the appointment as an important step to strengthen the efforts of Hadi to restore security and stability to Yemen.

In a statement, GCC Secretary General Dr. Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani said that member states would continue supporting President Hadi and Vice President Khaled Bahah, as well as other political forces adhering to the constitutional legitimacy for the completion of the political process in accordance with the Gulf initiative and its executive mechanism, the outcome of the comprehensive national dialogue, and the relevant resolutions of United Nations Security Council, reported BNA.

Relatedly, Al Bawaba reports that Saudi Arabia has claimed to have conducted over 1,200 airstrikes against the Houthis and followers of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh since March 25th, 2015.

The post Saudi Arabia: Bahah Sworn In As Yemen’s Vice President appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A young woman has been arrested after hitting a man over the head with a baseball bat after deciding she didn’t want to be his girlfriend.

Haley Fox, age 24, of Turner, Oregon (US) has been arrested and charged with Assault I after she struck an Alabama man with a baseball bat in the head. Samuel Campbell, age 26, of Adger, Alabama, began a relationship with Fox via the internet, sometime in 2013.

According to detectives, in April of 2015 Campbell agreed to move to Oregon and live with Fox.

On April 8, Campbell went to Fox’s residence to meet her for the first time in person. When he arrived Fox led him to a table outside of the residence where he sat down to drink wine.

It is when Fox asked Campbell to close his eyes that things took what could have been a deadly turn. Detectives determined that while Campbell had his eyes closed, Fox walked behind him and struck him in the head, with a baseball bat, reports the Marion Co. Sheriff’s Office.

As a result of the attack Campbell suffered cuts to the head that required staples and a fractured skull.

Fox told investigators that she decided to hurt Campbell because she did not want to be his girlfriend.

During the assault investigators learned that an additional party was present and may have witnessed the assault. That person has been interviewed and her exact involvement is still being determined, according to the Sheriff’s office.

On April 9, Ms. Fox was arrested and later charged with Assault I, since her arraignment she has posted bail and was released from custody. Campbell has been treated and released from Salem Hospital.

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Bangladesh’s Education Ministry on Sunday issued a circular making swimming lessons mandatory in schools in an attempt to save the lives of thousands of children who drown every year in a nation prone to flooding during the monsoon rain season.

Around 18,000 children between the age of five and 17 drown in low-lying Bangladesh every year because they do not know how to swim, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which stresses that it is a much higher rate in respect to other nations.

The problem has heightened over the past years due to the population growth in urban areas, where not only swimming, but even cricket, the national favorite sport, or soccer is impossible for the great majority, unless practiced along the less busy alleyways. Gyms and sports centers are a rarity in the new overcrowded urban areas, where even private schools are often situated in city buildings. Public swimming pools are few and expensive and, in a Muslim majority nation, inaccessible to girls, if not in particular circumstances and situations.

UNICEF already introduced a programme to provide swimming lessons, which in the capital take place in portable pools to allow lower-income children to learn how to swim, while lessons in rural areas take place in ponds and bamboo structures. The project however has so far involved a limited number of students.

The directive has however raised questions, considering that the majority of the nation’s school structures are inadequate. The hope is that teachers and parents join in the effort, offering the children a basic education that includes swimming lessons, also as a prevention measure in case of flooding.

The post Bangladesh Imposes Mandatory Swim Lessons In Flood-Prone Nation appeared first on Eurasia Review.

In addition to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, yet another U.S. military intervention is in shambles: the U.S. drone war against al Qaeda’s most potent regional affiliate—al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Heretofore, despite the rise of the perhaps even more brutal Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), mainly a threat to the Middle East region, the U.S. government has continued to regard AQAP in Yemen as the most severe terrorist threat to the United States. Although the group hasn’t been very active recently, it was involved in the Paris attacks a while back and in foiled bomb plots against U.S.-bound aircraft, including the underwear bombing, even further back.

After the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush expanded his “War on Terror” from the Afghanistan/Pakistan region and started attacking Islamist militants in Yemen from the air. In 2006, AQAP was born after 23 militants escaped from prison in Yemen. Journalists, both locally in Yemen and from the West, have documented that the U.S. drone war under Bush and now Obama has actually increased the numbers of AQAP fighters.

Now, because the Shi’ite Houthi group, financed by Shi’ite Iran, has taken over large parts of Yemen in a civil war, Sunni Saudi Arabia, with critical U.S. military aid, has begun a bombing campaign to attempt to halt the Houthi offensive on the ground and to destroy U.S. weapons earlier given to the now defunct Yemeni government, which are now in the hands of the Houthis. (Can any pattern be seen with U.S. military support of the Shah’s Iran when the current Shi’ite Islamist government overthrew that monarchy in the late 1970s, getting all the U.S. weapons, or U.S. military support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s that morphed into al Qaeda, or the more recent debacle in Iraq in which U.S. trained and equipped Iraqi forces cut and ran in the face of an ISIS offensive that captured much advanced U.S. armament?) In addition, Yemeni counterterrorism forces trained by the United States are in disarray because of the ongoing civil war. Yet the ill-advised, U.S.-assisted Saudi bombing campaign has not only not halted the Houthi offensive on the ground, but has increased chaos and suffering in the country, thus allowing, many experts say, a space for the Sunni AQAP to strengthen itself.

Initially, we can hope that AQAP is preoccupied with fighting the Shi’ite Houthis, but a strengthened AQAP, in its competition with ISIS, might eventually want to score publicity by another attempted attack on the United States or the West. As CNN’s foreign policy analyst Fareed Zakaria noted, the United States has a habit of fighting local or regional militant Islamist groups by supporting autocratic governments, thus turning the groups’ focus to attacking the United States.

The average U.S. voter or taxpayer doesn’t realize this important point and thinks that the U.S. government is merely swatting away bad guys who are attacking us because we love freedom. Politicians, such as George W. Bush and Barack Obama, purposefully obscure the decades of U.S. meddling in the Middle East and Islamic countries prior to any terrorist attack on the United States, including that of 9/11. And after that fateful day, the U.S. doubled down on what most inflames militant Islamist radicals—non-Muslim attacks on and occupation of Muslim soil—by attacking or invading at least seven Muslim countries. Bush and Obama have told the world that we are not at war with Islam, but Muslims may think differently from the other side of the gun barrel.

If it seems like Islamist terrorism has recently gotten worse (with the proliferation of groups—AQAP and other regional al Qaeda affiliates, ISIS, al Nusra, Boko Haram, al Shabab, the Pakistani Taliban, etc.—you really need a scorecard), the U.S. military intervention-retaliatory terrorism cycle is the cause of much of it. This link has been deliberately disguised or diffused by American politicians.

So the average American citizen should ask himself or herself, why do we need to intervene militarily and covertly so much in the Middle East if it is generating all of this terrible blowback? The reasons, also unstated, are the twin pillars of U.S. policy there—Israel and oil. Israel is now a wealthy country to which the United States still, embarrassingly, gives more than $3 billion per year in military aid. In contrast to the public perception that Israel is a small democracy surrounded by hungry Arab wolves, the country has always been militarily stronger than its neighbors, is the only country in the region with nuclear weapons, and has major enemies that have been weakened by either civil war (Syria) or a peace treaty (Egypt). Weaker enemies, such as the groups Hezbollah and Hamas, are not existential threats to Israel and are motivated by Israel’s refusal to give back territory it won and occupied in its attack on Arab countries in 1967.

As for oil, in my book No War for Oil: U.S. Dependency and the Middle East, I use economic principles to debunk the need to send U.S. military forces to the Middle East in a neo-imperial attempt to keep a U.S. thumb on the world’s oil supplies. Economically, it is still cheaper to pay the market price for oil, even if goes higher, than it is for the taxpayer to fund a constant and unneeded U.S. military presence in the region to “defend” oil. Yemen has little oil, but neighboring Saudi Arabia is swimming in it, and thus the United States tries to coddle that country. My book goes into detail about why that is also unnecessary.

Unfortunately, polls indicate that a couple of American heads lopped off by ISIS have suddenly made the American public more hawkish—how quickly they have forgotten the military quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq and may not even be aware of the chaos and civil war that the U.S. intervention in Libya has caused—when the actual U.S. policy should go the other way. Terrorism and instability in the Middle East will always exist, but if the United States lessens its martial activities there, terrorist groups will not focus their efforts on attacking the United States. We could be safer and save a whole lot of taxpayer dollars at the same time.

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

The post Yemen: Another Failed US Military Intervention – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

There is a continuing virulent campaign in the US media to keep painting the unsubdued commie of yesterday, Russia, as America’s archenemy… occasionally adding an eventual adversary in China.

For now, however, Russia is made to appear as the single imminent threat to America’s military dominance across the Seven Seas.

As reckless as the leadership in these two dominant nuclear superpowers, Russia and the United States, might appear at times, it would be irrational to think that mutually assured destruction would be allowed to prevail. Anti-ballistic defense missile systems required are, at least for now, a fantasy alternative, an idea buried with Ronald Reagan; something economically unrealizable, even if technologically feasible.

No; neither Russia nor China is an imminent threat to the US, but a cataclysmic event is looming in the economic front, one which will forever change the perception of America by the rest of the world; or how we, Americans, perceive ourselves. It’s back to what that great cartoonist (and sociopolitical commentator), Walt Kelly, told us a half century ago as America struggled during the Vietnam War: “We have met the enemy and they are us.” It was true in the 1960’s, and it is true in a magnified way today.

In my view, the US Council of Economic of Advisers has not served this nation well in the past six decades, subjugating its advice to what was deemed acceptable to the ultimate political power in the land (White House, Congress and the Pentagon), disregarding or diminishing all too often the long term consequences for the nation’s economy. Little surprise we find ourselves with a swarm of latter day economic prophets who since the global economic crisis of 2008 are warning us of a doomsday scenario in the US, with obvious negative economic consequences for much of the planet as well. The advent of a currency crisis, and the demise of the dollar, is already a foregone conclusion; not if but when. Books galore are being peddled advising us how to invest our money before doomsday’s arrival… money that most of us do not have.

There is a multi-fused bomb ready to explode, one unequivocally capable of creating an implosion that will bring down the weak economic structure we have been erecting for the last three generations starting at the end of World War II. It would be logical to expect growth in developing nations to bring down US’ share of the world’s economy from almost one-half to about one-fifth. What is not logical, however, is the path that the US has taken to maintain itself economically viable, looming to become a country in economic decline that could sink into third-world status with 80-plus percent of the population “on the dole,” entirely dependent on the magnanimity of the other 20 percent, the only surviving middle class.

There are a number of lagging economic indicators which, when combined, can give us more than just a clue as to where the economy is headed in the long term, directionally if not quantifiably. They represent levels of spending as percentage of GDP in Defense (Military), Education, Health Care, and Infrastructure [Information available from the World Bank]. If percentages are added for Health Care and Defense; and the total compared to the sum in percentages spent on Infrastructure and Education, the ratio could be coined, for lack of an existing term, as the Index of Economic Atrophy. To be meaningful, however, the component figures used must correspond to a statistical period of at least 3-5 years. Although there are many variables that come into play, there is reasonableness in assuming that greater seeding in Infrastructure and Education relative to “infertile” expenditures in Defense and Health Care, the smaller the atrophy (shrinkage or deceleration) in the economy.

Using post-2008 data from the World Bank, in a selective grosso modo fashion, the computed Index of Economic Atrophy for eleven countries yielded the following results: United States, .84; Israel, .53; Canada, .53; Japan, .49; Germany, .37; Australia, .35; Russia, .34; Brazil, .33; India, .32; France, .27; and United Kingdom, .25. [World Bank did not have infrastructure data for China or Iran, but index for both nations, given their other percentages, is unlikely to be, in the worst case scenario, higher than .40. Also US war expenditures not included by the World Bank were estimated (and added) to compute the US index.]

It’s rather obvious that the US has become economically unviable, healthcare and military spending accounting for one-quarter of the GDP, a percentage twice as high as that of each of all other G-7 nations.

Of course, the AMA, Big Pharma, and the Pentagon will tell us how lucky we are to be in their hands… and the duopoly that runs Washington will readily attest to it.

The post Doomsday For America Through Economic Atrophy – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

“The interventions of US imperialism, with the direct collaboration of the Saudi monarchy, have plunged the entire Middle East into chaos and bloodshed—from the destruction of Iraq, to the transformation of Libya into a militia-ravaged “failed state,” to the ongoing carnage inflicted upon Syria … This predatory imperialist offensive threatens to ignite a region-wide conflagration, even as Washington deliberately ratchets up military tensions with both Russia and China. The threat of these separate conflicts coalescing into a third world war grows by the day.”

– Bill Van Auken, Obama’s criminal war against Yemen, World Socialist web Site

“Will the reactionary rulers of Saudi Arabia manage to break the legitimate hopes and enthusiastic dreams burning in the hearts of thousands of young people of the Arabian Peninsula? Never!”

– Gamal Abd al-Nasser, President of Egypt 1956 to 1970

In its ongoing effort to prevent the rise of “any popularly supported government in the region”, the US has joined Saudi Arabia’s savage war of annihilation against Yemen’s northern tribal rebels, the Houthis. The Pentagon has expedited the delivery of bombs, ammunition and guidance systems to assist the Saudi-led campaign and is providing logistical support to maximize the impact of its bombing raids. The US has also set up a “joint fusion center”, provided “aerial re-fueling platforms” and “advanced US-made weaponry” with the explicit intention of suppressing a militant group that overthrew the US-backed puppet government in the capital of Sanaa in the fall of 2014. The level of coordination between the makeshift Arab coalition (The Gulf Cooperation Council or GCC) and the US suggests that Washington is not only fully aware that food depots, water facilities, refugee camps and critical civilian infrastructure are being deliberately targeted and destroyed, but that the White House has given the green light to actions that will inevitably lead to widespread famine and social collapse. Here’s a little background from an article in The National:

“Yemen Economic Corporation, one of Yemen’s largest food storage centres, was destroyed by three coalition missile strikes in Hodeidah last Tuesday, according to the Houthi-controlled defence ministry. The corporation had enough food for the entire country. The government’s military food storage centre in Hodeidah was also targeted and destroyed on Tuesday, according to the defence ministry.

Also in Hodeidah, country’s second largest dairy plant was hit by five Saudi missiles on Wednesday, killing at least 29 people, mostly employees, and injuring dozens of others.” (Yemeni civilians struggle to get by amid conflict, The National)

This is from Channel News Asia:

DUBAI: Warships from the Saudi-led coalition have blocked a vessel carrying more than 47,000 tonnes of wheat from entering a Yemeni port, demanding United Nations guarantees that the cargo would not go to military personnel, shipping sources said on Thursday.” (Saudi-led coalition bars wheat ship from entering Yemen port – sources, Channel News Asia)

This is from WSWS:

“Airstrikes as well as fighting on the ground has knocked out electrical infrastructure, cutting off power in many urban areas and stopping the operation of crucial pumps that supply Yemen’s cities with drinking water. “We’re worried that this system will break down shortly; Aden is a dry, hot place, and without water people will really suffer,” UNICEF representative Harneis told reporters…

The no-fly zone and blockade enforced by Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners has effectively blocked the delivery of medical aid and supplies for the last two weeks, exacerbating the developing crisis.” World Socialist Web Site

Live reports on the ground confirm that food depots have been bombed across the country; ” in Asr (west) hit as well as Urdhi complex (center) & Noqum (east).

This is how America fights its wars, by precipitating massive humanitarian crises that help it to achieve its political objectives. If that isn’t terrorism, then what is?

Here’s more from the Washington Post:

“As tons of desperately needed medical supplies await clearance to be flown into Yemen, aid workers warned Tuesday of an unfolding humanitarian crisis, saying at least 560 people, including dozens of children, have been killed, mostly in a Saudi-led air campaign and battles between Shiite rebels and forces loyal to the embattled president. More than 1,700 people have been wounded and another 100,000 have fled their homes as fighting intensified over the past three weeks, the World Health Organization said.” (560 dead amid fears of humanitarian collapse in Yemen, Washington Post)

The Saudis launched this latest aggression invoking the thinnest of pretexts, that it wanted to “restore the legitimate government” and protect the “Yemeni constitution and elections.” As CNN’s Ali Alahmed sardonically quipped:

“The need to protect constitutions and elections is a rather strange message from the representative of an absolute monarchy … The kingdom’s real motives seem clear if one looks at Saudi monarchy’s history of not allowing regional competition of any kind, while consistently combating efforts to build democratic governments that empower the people…

The Saudi goal is simple: Prevent the rise of any popularly supported government in the region that seeks self-determination. And the excuse of “resisting Iran’s influence,” meanwhile, appears to be nothing but sectarian bluster.” (What Saudi Arabia wants in Yemen, CNN)

While we agree with Alahmed’s basic thesis, we think the rule applies more to the United States than Saudi Arabia. After all, it’s the US that has gone from one country to the next, toppling governments, installing puppets, and spreading anarchy wherever it goes. Whatever role the Saudis might have played in Washington’s grand plan to redraw the map of the Middle East and project US tentacles into Eurasia, it is quite small by comparison. It’s the US that refuses to allow an independent government to emerge in a region that it’s committed to control. And it’s the US that is facilitating the attacks on innocent Yemenis by providing the bombs, weaponry and logistical support to the reactionary Saudi leadership. Check this out from Gregory Johnson at Buzzfeed:

“A consensus appears to be building in Riyadh, Cairo, and Islamabad toward inserting ground troops into the conflict in Yemen. One Egyptian military official told BuzzFeed News the decision had already been made. “Ground forces will enter the war,” the official said on condition of anonymity in order to discuss classified military operations.

The timing of such a move, which would be a significant escalation in the Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen, is still being discussed. But the Egyptian military source said it could happen as soon as “two or three days.” (Ground Forces Seen Joining Bloody War In Yemen, Buzzfeed)

So after two weeks of nonstop bombing, the coalition is now planning to intensify the conflict by putting boots on the ground. But that will only prolong the hostilities and plunge the country deeper into crisis. It will also increase the risk of Houthi retaliation, which appears to already be taking place. According to Al Arabiya English, fighting broke out in the Southern Saudi city of Narjan on April 11. (#BREAKING Asiri: Houthi militias are amassing close to the Saudi-Yemeni border… #BREAKING: Asiri: clashes reported near the Saudi city of Najran)

While no one expects the Houthis to invade their northern neighbor, there are some analysts who think the monarchy has taken on more than it can chew and will eventually suffer blowback from its incursion. One such critic is Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of the Lebanese paramilitary organization Hezbollah. In a recent interview, Nasrallah suggested that the Houthis have the means to curtail vital energy supplies, strike a blow against Saudi Arabia, and send financial markets tumbling at the same time. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

“There is now a demand on the Yemeni leaders… who have not taken the decision to close (the strategic Strait) of Bab al-Mandeb, which they could do at any time. (It is only 20 kilometres-large, they are quite capable of it.) And they could also hit targets inside Saudi Arabia with missiles, or even enter the interior of Saudi Arabia, although they have not yet made this decision, so far … There is currently a Yemeni popular demand: “Let us go to Saudi Arabia.” Leadership thus far has not taken such a decision. I wanted to indicate this.”…

Nasrallah again: “I am absolutely certain that Saudi Arabia will undergo a major defeat. And its defeat will impact its internal situation, the royal family … and the entire region.” (“Hassan Nasrallah: The war in Yemen announces the end of the House of Saud”, The Vineyard of the Saker)

So the Houthis could close the Bab Al Mandeb straits and prevent millions of barrels of oil from getting to market? That changes the calculus entirely. How would that effect Washington’s plan to crash Russia’s economy with plunging oil prices? How would it impact global stock markets which are already jittery over the Fed’s projected rate hikes? What effect would it have on al Nusra, ISIS and other Al Qaeda-linked groups that would then seek to launch similar attacks against critical energy infrastructure as the best way to achieve their aims?

There are things the Houthis can do to discourage Saudi aggression. They can take matters into their own hands and strike where it hurts most. Washington is so convinced of its own invincibility, that no one has even thought of this. Without the slightest hesitation, the Obama troupe has embroiled a key ally in bloody conflagration that could backfire and seriously undermine US interests in the region. Saudi Arabia is the cornerstone of US power in the Middle East, but it is also its Achilles heel. By supporting the attack on the Houthis instead of seeking a political solution, Washington has strengthened Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) which poses the greatest single threat to the monarchy. As Nasrallah notes: “they (the US and SA) protect Al Qaeda and Daesh in Yemen, and more, they drop them weapons by air. This is an achievement? This goes against the interests of Saudi Arabia.”

Indeed, it does. Al Qaeda has much greater ability to infiltrate Saudi Arabia and either launch terrorist attacks or foment popular revolution. The Houthis present no such security threat, they’re only interest is to maintain their own sovereignty, borders, and independent foreign policy. A 2003 article in the Atlantic by CIA Bureau Chief Robert Baer titled “The Fall of the House of Saud” provides a window into Riyadh’s vulnerabilities and draws the ominous conclusion that the kingdom’s days are numbered. Here’s a clip from the article:

“Saudi oil is controlled by an increasingly bankrupt, criminal, dysfunctional, and out-of-touch royal family that is hated by the people it rules and by the nations that surround its kingdom…

Signs of impending disaster are everywhere, but the House of Saud has chosen to pray that the moment of reckoning will not come soon—and the United States has chosen to look away. So nothing changes: the royal family continues to exhaust the Saudi treasury, buying more and more arms and funneling more and more “charity” money to the jihadists, all in a desperate and self-destructive effort to protect itself.

The most vulnerable point and the most spectacular target in the Saudi oil system is the Abqaiq complex—the world’s largest oil-processing facility, which sits about twenty-four miles inland from the northern end of the Gulf of Bahrain. All petroleum originating in the south is pumped to Abqaiq for processing. For the first two months after a moderate to severe attack on Abqaiq, production there would slow from an average of 6.8 million barrels a day to one million barrels, a loss equivalent to one third of America’s daily consumption of crude oil. For seven months following the attack, daily production would remain as much as four million barrels below normal—a reduction roughly equal to what all of the opec partners were able to effect during their 1973 embargo…

I served for twenty-one years with the CIA’s Directorate of Operations in the Middle East, and during all my years there I accepted on faith my government’s easy assumption that the money the House of Saud was dumping into weaponry and national security meant that the family’s armed forces and bodyguards could keep its members—and their oil—safe … I no longer believe this …  sometime soon, one way or another, the House of Saud is coming down.” (The Fall of the House of Saud, Robert Baer, The Atlantic)

Neither the United States nor Saudi Arabia have any right to interfere in Yemen’s internal affairs or to install their own political puppets to head the government. That is the right of the Yemeni people. And while the current process of regime change might be messy and violent, the Houthi rebels better represent the interests of the indigenous population than anyone in Riyadh or Washington. The Saudi-US war is merely aimed at controlling the outcome so Yemen remains within the imperial grip. As Nasrallah says, “The real goal of the war is to retain control and domination of Yemen (but) the Yemeni people will not put up with this aggression and humiliation. They will fight to defend their dignity, their existence, their families, and their territory. And they will be victorious.”

The post Saudis Face Defeat In Yemen And Instability At Home – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Richard H. Anderson
CEO, Delta Airlines
P.O. Box 20980
Department 980
Atlanta, GA 30320-2980

Dear Mr. Anderson,

We have received communications from people within your company expressing concerns about your aging MD-80 aircraft fleet. As you know, Delta is a principal user of this McDonnell Douglas aircraft. We understand that the FAA, together with manufacturers and airlines is developing criteria to establish when individual aircraft of certain model years or an entire aging fleet model needs to be considered for retirement and/or stricter inspections.

What is Delta Airlines’ criteria for retiring aging passenger aircraft like the MD-80? Please inform us of the number of MD-80s you have and the date of their manufacture, and if any of the MD-80s have flown more than 50,000 take-offs/landings.

It is surprising that you have not replaced these aircraft given their comparative fuel inefficiency with more modern and efficient aircraft models that are being purchased by your competitors. Delta charges enough for airfares, baggage and changed reservations to warrant providing your passengers with more modern and safer passenger aircraft. We look forward to your response at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely yours,

Ralph Nader

Paul Hudson
President, Flyers Rights
*Member of the FAAs Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee

*Mr. Hudson is a member representing the public and advising the FAA on air safety regulation.

The post Ralph Nader Sends Letter To Richard Anderson, CEO Of Delta Airlines appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The population of Syria’s Palestinian Refugee Camp, Yarmouk — whose population once exceeded 250,000, dwindling throughout the Syrian civil war to 18,000 — are a microcosm of the story of a whole nation, whose perpetual pain shames us all.

Refugees, who escaped the Syrian war or are displaced in Syria itself, are experiencing the cruel reality under the harsh and inhospitable terrains of war. Many of those who remained in Yarmouk were torn to shreds by the barrel bombs of the Syrian army, or victimized by the malicious, violent groupings that control the camp, including the Al-Nusrah Front, and as of late, IS.

Those who have somehow managed to escape bodily injury are starving. The starvation in Yarmouk is also the responsibility of all parties involved, and the “inhumane conditions” under which they subsist — especially since December 2012 — is a badge of shame on the forehead of the international community in general, and the Arab League in particular. There are some of the culprits in the suffering of Yarmouk.

Israel bears direct responsibility in the plight of the refugees in Yarmouk. The refugees of Yarmouk are mostly the descendants of Palestinian refugees from historic Palestine. The camp was established in 1957, nearly a decade after the Nakba — the “Catastrophe” of 1948, which saw the expulsion of nearly a million refugees from Palestine. It was meant to be a temporary shelter, but it became a permanent home. Its residents never abandoned their right of return to Palestine, a right enshrined in UN resolution 194.

Israel knows that the memory of the refugees is its greatest enemy, so when the Palestinian leadership requested that Israel allow the Yarmouk refugees to move to the West Bank, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a condition: That they renounce their right of return. Palestinians refused. History has shown that Palestinians would endure untold suffering and not abandon their rights in Palestine. The fact that Netanyahu would place such a condition is not just a testimony to Israel’s fear of Palestinian memory, but the political opportunism and sheer ruthlessness of the Israeli government.

The PA was established in 1994 based on a clear charter where a small group of Palestinians “returned” to the occupied territories, set up a few institutions and siphoned billions of dollars in international aid, in exchange for abandoning the right or return for Palestinian refugees, and ceding any claim on real Palestinian sovereignty and nationhood.

When the civil war in Syria began to quickly engulf the refugees, and although such a reality was to be expected, President Mahmoud Abbas’ authority did so little as if the matter had no bearing on the Palestinian people as a whole. True, Abbas made a few statements calling on Syrians to spare the refugees what was essentially a Syrian struggle, but not much more. When IS took over the camp, Abbas dispatched his labor minister, Ahmad Majdalani to Syria. The latter made a statement that the factions and the Syrian regime would united against IS — which, if true, is likely to ensure the demise of hundreds more.

If Abbas had invested 10 percent of the energy he spent in his “government’s” media battle against Hamas or a tiny share of his investment in the frivolous “peace process,” he could have at least garnered the needed international attention and backing to treat the plight of Palestinian refugees in Syria’s Yarmouk with a degree of urgency. Instead, they were left to die alone.

When rebels seized Yarmouk in December 2012, President Bashar Assad’s forces shelled the camp without mercy while Syrian media never ceased to speak about liberating Jerusalem.

The so-called Free Syria Army (FSA) should have never entered Yarmouk, no matter how desperate they were for an advantage in their war against Assad. It was criminally irresponsible considering the fact that, unlike Syrian refugees, Palestinians had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. The FSA invited the wrath of the regime, and couldn’t even control the camp, which fell into the hands of various militias that are plotting and bargaining amongst each other to defeat their enemies, who could possibly become their allies in their next pathetic street battles for control over the camp.

The access that IS gained in Yarmouk was reportedly facilitated by the Al-Nusrah Front which is an enemy of IS in all places but Yarmouk. Nusrah is hoping to use IS to defeat the mostly local resistance in the camp, arranged by Aknaf Beit Al-Maqdis, before handing the reins of the besieged camp back to the Al-Qaeda affiliated group. And while criminal gangs are politicking and bartering, Palestinian refugees are dying in droves.

Cries for help have been echoing from Yarmouk for years, and yet none have been heeded. Recently, the UN Security Council decided to hold a meeting and discuss the situation there as if the matter was not a top priority years ago. Grandstanding and concerned press statements aside, the UN have largely abandoned the refugees. The budget for UNRWA, which looks after the nearly 60 Palestinian refugee camps across Palestine and the Middle East, has shrunk so significantly, the agency often finds itself on the verge of bankruptcy.

The UN refugee agency, better funded and equipped to deal with crises, does little for the Palestinian refugees in Syria. Promises of funds for UNRWA, which frankly could have done much better to raise awareness and confront the international community over their disregard for the refugees, are rarely met.

The Arab League is even more responsible. The League was largely established to unite Arab efforts to respond to the crisis in Palestine, and was supposed to be a stalwart defender of Palestinians and their rights. But the Arabs too have disowned Palestinians as they are intently focused on conflicts of more strategic interests.

The Syrian conflict has introduced great polarization within a community that once seemed united for Palestinian rights. Those who took the side of the Syrian regime wouldn’t concede for a moment that the Syrian government could have done more to lessen the suffering in the camp. Those who are anti-Assad insist that the entire evil deed is the doing of him and his allies.

Both of these groups are responsible for wasting time, confusing the discussion and wasting energies that could have been used to create a well-organized international campaign to raise awareness, funds and practical mechanisms of support to help Yarmouk in particular, and Palestinians refugees in Syria in general.

But we ought to remember that there are still 18,000 trapped in Yarmouk and organize on their behalf so that, even if it is untimely, we need do something. Anything.

The post Deafening Silence Over Yarmouk – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.