By Seyed Jalal Dehghani Firoozabadi*

More than a month has passed since the beginning of air strikes against Yemen by Saudi warplanes. Up to the present time, various analyses and speculations have been offered on the reasons and motivations behind this act of aggression. All of those analysts, however, are unanimous that, at least, one of the main goals behind the ongoing Saudi aggression against Yemen is to prevent further rise of Iran’s influence and power both in this Arab country and across the entire region. Saudi Arabia, for itself, has clearly announced that the goal of its attacks is to prevent domination of Iran over Yemen. Saudi Arabia, however, has apparently made a strategic mistake in this regard.

Saudi Arabia has correctly understood the regional power and influence of Iran. However, when it comes to reasons, motivations, and outcomes of that influence and the best strategy to confront it, Riyadh has clearly gone astray. On the one hand, Iran’s rising influence in the region has been a result of the adoption of a rational strategy and logical policies based on the generation and optimal use of smart power, diplomacy and rationality, not expansionism and militarism. Geopolitical factors in the region have also provided a good ground for Iran to play its role as the biggest power in the strategic regional of Persian Gulf.

On the other hand, adoption of incorrect and miscalculated strategies and implementation of wrong policies by Saudi Arabia as well as its international and regional allies in Syria and Iraq, which were based on supporting radical extremist groups, has been the main factor that has undermined their standing in the region. However, they are still insisting on their miscalculations and continue with their wrong policies.

Saudis have not a good understanding of Iran’s goals and motivations. From their viewpoint, Iran is trying to promote some sort of Shia sectarianism and, by doing this, is trying to consolidate its hegemony and dominance over the region in order to weaken Sunni countries in the Middle East. Meanwhile Iran, as a logical actor, which only seeks security in the region, is simply trying to ensure its own national security in totally peaceful ways. In fact, it is Saudi Arabia and its regional allies that have been spreading militarism and sectarian expansionism on the basis of purely sectarian motives. They have been doing this by lending their support to Takfiri groups in Iraq, Syria, and now, Yemen. Therefore, Iran’s goals is to protect its national security in line with establishing general security and stability in the region, but Saudi Arabia and its allies feel threatened by Iran’s moves.

More importantly, is the incorrect sense of threat that Saudi Arabia perceives from Iran and its rising regional power. Saudi Arabia mistakenly believes that Iran is a threat against it and the entire region. Such an erroneous perception has prompted Saudi officials to adopt illogical and sentimental strategies and policies toward Iran. Those strategies and policies are based on misunderstandings and miscalculations which have been already proved wrong through the Islamic Revolution in Iran and invasion of Iran by [the former Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein.

In 1980 and following the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Saudi Arabia orchestrated the establishment of the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council [(P)GCC] in order to rein in Iran’s regional clout. In continuation of his anti-Iranian efforts, Riyadh lent its support to Saddam Hussein and his blatant invasion of Iran in order to curb the progress of the Islamic Revolution and the revolutionary government of Iran. Saudi Arabia’s incorrect perception of threat caused it to ignore the real threat. As a result, after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1991, his regime posed a great threat to the very existence of Saudi Arabia as well. Now, once again, Saudi Arabia is plagued by its incorrect perception of threat. As a result, instead of perceiving the real threat, which is posed by the irrational Salafist extremism and lack of political legitimacy, the government of Riyadh assumes Iran to be a major threat. This unrealistic way of thinking has made Saudi Arabia try to build a new coalition in order to curb the influence of Iran as a regional power.

In addition to its misunderstanding about Iran, Saudi Arabia is also stalled by miscalculation. The first miscalculation on the part of Saudi Arabia is that it thinks air strikes will be able to change the balance of power on the ground, which is now in favor of Ansarullah fighters and Yemeni nation, in favor of Riyadh and its allies. However, the air strikes have so far backfired because the blatant aggression by Saudi Arabia has further bolstered Ansarullah and instigated anti-Saudi sentiments in Yemen. More importantly, war and insecurity in Yemen will finally strengthen Al-Qaeda in the country. This development will be more of a threat to Saudi Arabia than other countries because Al-Qaeda considers the Saudi government as a “near enemy” which lacks domestic legitimacy.

The second miscalculation by Saudi Arabia was about getting support from Turkey and Pakistan. Saudi rulers strongly believed that these two countries would help them in their aggression against Yemen. The governments of Pakistan and Turkey, however, were more realistic to get involved in an unwanted war, which has no benefit for them. On the one hand, both Turkey and Pakistan have correctly understood that they will have to interact with their major neighbor (Iran) both at present and in future. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia is considered a regional rival for both of them, which they should not help to strengthen. Therefore, it was quite rational for them not to bet on the wrong horse.

The third miscalculation by the new Saudi king and his newcomer aides is that they thought they would be able to stabilize their power within Al Saud family by winning an easy victory outside the country. The evidence on the ground, however, shows that their strategic mistake has worsened rifts among Saudi family to the extent that there are currently concerns about disobedience and even a possible coup d’état within the royal family.

Therefore, strategic rationality calls for Saudi rulers to correct their misunderstandings and miscalculations as soon as possible. Firstly, Saudi Arabia should not define its security strategy and policy on the basis of the power of transregional actors, especially the United States. On the opposite, it should base that policy on a realistic understanding of its own national expediencies as well as regional conditions and neighboring states, with Iran being one of the most important of those states. Secondly, Saudi Arabia should not consider power politics in the Middle East as a zero-sum game. This is true because increased power of Iran will not necessarily mean more insecurity to Saudi Arabia to justify Riyadh’s resort to military force to head off such threat. Thirdly, normalization of relations between Iran and the West will not necessarily pose a threat to the interests of Saudi Arabia, but on the contrary, can be in line with Riyadh’s interests as well, because it will put an end to interventionist efforts by transregional countries, which is currently a stumbling block on the way of regional cooperation. Fourthly, relative withdrawal of the US from the region will highlight the roles played by Iran and Saudi Arabia at the same time. In this situation, the region will need their cooperation and coordination instead of confrontation and hostility between the two regional powers. Fifthly, the security in the Middle East and Persian Gulf can be best maintained on the basis of the balance of defense forces, which requires cooperation and coordination among all regional powers because aggressive approaches aimed at promoting hegemony will not help regional states in this regard. Therefore, in order to ensure its own security and security of the entire region, Saudi Arabia should revise its anti-Iranian strategy and policies and instead of confrontation with Iran, engage in more interaction with the Islamic Republic.

* Seyed Jalal Dehghani Firoozabadi
Ph.D. in International Relations, Brussels University & Professor at the University of Tehran

Source: Tabnak News Website
http://www.tabnak.ir/
Translated By: Iran Review.Org

The post Erroneous Threat Perception Taking Saudi Arabia To Uncharted Seas – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Of late, checking the news has become monotonous. Every other day, in virtually all publications and verticals of repute, there is some “expert” or the other busy discussing ways in which Islam is in conflict with the rest of world, or how Islam is having trouble dealing with itself, etc.

None of these so-called “insights” are original, nor do they add any merit to the news in general. Yet, such opinions continue to remain in vogue, and are preferred by the common populace. You know, when you segregate people and talk about ‘us’ versus ‘them’, people enjoy taking sides.

So, I decided to dig deeper, and reflect on what exactly such viewpoints are trying to convey. Is Islam really at war with everyone? Or is Islam having a crisis within itself? Do Muslims need to react?

The Group of Neocons

First up, let us put the focus on neocons and ultra-conservatives. These are the folks who consider multiculturalism as a threat to their way of life, and are strong proponents of an aggressive policy against anything that they do not like (including Muslims).

So essentially, these bigots claims that Islam is at war with the West, and this war, according to their definition, is about survival. As such, either Islam or the West can make out of it safe and sound — in other words, for them to exist, Islam must vanish, or vice versa.

It won’t take you long to figure out that their logic is flawed. Assume, for a moment, that their claims have an element of truth, and Islam indeed is responsible for their tears. Now, further assume that they are able to accomplish their life-long dream of getting rid of Muslims.

What next? Won’t these folks be unemployed, with no one to hate?

Haters need someone to hate. Today it is Islam and Muslims, tomorrow it will be something else.

The “Experts”

However, the neocons and bigots do not worry me. What does matter, on the other hand, is how the liberal brigade, or rather the moderates and reformists and realists tend to perceive Islam.

This is how Roger Cohen tries to view Islam:

“Islam is in crisis, a religion at war with itself. The West is a spectator to this internal conflict and a victim of it. Up to now, the reaction of Muslims to the horrors committed in the name of an ideology of hate and death drawn from a certain reading of Islamic texts has been pitiful.”

And Thomas Friedman:

Muslims need to organise “a million-person march against the Jihadists across the Arab-Muslim world, organised by Arabs and Muslims for Arabs and Muslims, without anyone in the West asking for it.”

And while we are at it, let’s also mention Fareed Zakaria:

“There is a cancer of extremism within Islam today. A small minority of Muslims celebrates violence and intolerance and harbours deeply reactionary attitudes towards women and minorities. While some confront these extremists, not enough do so, and the protests are not loud enough.”

Well, alright.

My reaction to the above views?

One word: ridiculous.

First up, Islam is not at war with either itself or the West. The only thing, however, that troubles the West is that Islam is the only viable threat to its plans for world domination. For centuries, Islam has stood tall as the destroyer of imperialists and corrupt empires — the Romans, Egyptians, Persians, Mongols, you name it! Today, the neo-colonialism brigade realizes that Islam has the prowess to challenge them, and is thus trying to project Islam as the enemy.

Secondly, Muslims are not duty-bound to shout at the top of their lungs that they seek peace, not terror. Anyone with an ounce of sanity left in him or her knows that most of the Muslims are peaceful lot, much like most of the Christians or any religion for that matter. Why should we march around the globe telling anyone what we believe in and what we do not? More importantly, why should we be eager to justify ourselves every second day? When was the last time USA explained its treatment of the Hispanic and Black communities? When was the last time NATO apologized for its actions around the world? Also, when was the last time the West apologized for robbing Africans of their own continent?

Frustration Galore

Do I sound angry? You bet I am!

These repetitive accounts of what Islam needs to do in order to prove itself have become irritating. There is no originality in any of such narratives — Friedman, Cohen and Zakaria are just a small fraction of the many Western “experts” who write such stuff every second day.

The fun part? They bypass Western geopolitical blunders, the ways in which the Middle East was torn beyond repair, and just keep suggesting ways in which Muslims can say sorry.

As such, whilst they gladly claim that Muslims ought to rally against the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris, they do not bother to talk about the genocide that is ongoing in Islamic heartlands.

My point is simple: while the conservative definition of Islam is surely full of hypocrisy and racism, the liberals too tend to view Islam with a sense of superiority complex. They view the Islamic World through their imperial blindspot, and attempt to affix morality therein in order to avoid talking about Western misadventures in the Middle East and elsewhere. They claim that the problem lies “within” Islam, and expect Muslims to figure it out for themselves — little do they realize that the problems have all been manufactured by foreign forces.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with words of Rami Khouri:

“We suffer enough stress and danger in the Arab region from political violence, ageing tyrants, foreign invasions, local criminal and militia groups, colonial settler expansions, and frayed, haemorrhaging socioeconomic systems that we do not need this added intellectual bludgeoning by the international battalions of perplexity and confusion who find comfort in old-fashioned wholesale racism and reductionism [‘Islam is this, Islam is that’] that explains nothing other than their own bewilderment.”

And then they wonder why the average Muslim has a feeling of suspicion towards them…

The post Discussing Islam: Western Logic Is Flawed – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Theodoros Papadopoulos*

With the announcement that Greece’s impetuous game theorist turned finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has been pushed to the sidelines of Eurogroup negotiations to secure a 7.2 billion euro bailout package for Greece, markets and leaders alike have expressed optimism that a compromise can be found to stave off Athens’ looming default. While Varoufakis denies being pushed aside in the negotiating process, the talks are now largely being spearheaded by the Oxford-educated deputy foreign minister, Euclid Tsakalotos, and negotiations with international creditors in Brussels are being led by the finance ministry’s chief economist Nikos Theoharakis. In light of the new changes, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras expressed confidence that a deal could be reached by May 9, just three days before Greece must repay 750 million euros to the IMF to avoid a default and a potential exit from the Eurozone.

Despite the much welcomed reshuffle, many of the underlying disagreements between the far left Syriza-led government and its creditors over pensions, labor wages, privatizations and deregulations haven’t gone anywhere. The finance ministry, in an attempt to illustrate its commitment to securing aid and speed up negotiations, has promised to present a draft reform legislation bill which will largely include concessions already discussed with lenders, mainly, reforms to battle corruption and tax evasion. However, this meager initiative is unlikely to satisfy an increasingly frustrated Eurogroup and will likely create further anger over Greece’s lack of will to undertake real structural reforms in the country.

Indeed, the current Syriza government appears to have missed many opportunities to revamp its economy by privatizing key industries, attracting foreign investors, and tapping into its vast resources to encourage growth and employment. While former Greek Prime Minister Samaras underscored the importance of Greece joining the “elite club of East Mediterranean energy actors”, Tsipras has undermined such goals and halted the privatization plans of Hellenic Petroleum and the Public Power Corporation. But with 4.7 trillion cubic meters of gas within its waters, or in other words 25% of European demand, Greece has the potential to become a valuable offshore producer and transport hub for the European continent. Although Athens’ blossoming relationship with Moscow and talks of a multi-billion pipeline deal to transport gas from Russia to Greece may be a politically dangerous tango, the importance of such an initiative to spur foreign investment into the country should not be understated. With an unemployment rate of 28%, privatizations of key sectors and the creation of a business friendly environment can play a valuable role in spurring growth and creating jobs.

The shipping industry, once a symbol of national pride and job creation, has largely fallen to pieces during the economic crash and shows little signs of rebounding unless the government attracts much needed investment to the sector. With annual inflows to the economy ranging between €13 and €19 billion, foreign firms have been keen to invest heavily into the shipping industry and revive it to its prior glory. China’s Cosco Group, which already operates two container terminals in the port of Piraeus – a hub for the Greek shipping industry that employs over 1,500 people – has been shortlisted to acquire a 67% stake in the state owned port. While the port was set to become a “gateway from China to Europe” and whose privatization was a key requirement for the EU-IMF 240 billion euro bailout, Syriza officials suspended talks upon their arrival in government.

As the Greek government barely managed to secure payments for pensions and salaries worth 1.7 billion euros this month, and was forced to gather funds from state entities and local authorities, it has become increasingly clear that it does not have the resources to invest into its strategic industries to restart growth and create jobs for its struggling population. By enacting some of the reforms that the Eurogroup has been demanding, such as privatizing key state assets and creating a business-friendly environment, not only can Greece give the economy and job market a boost, but in return the EU may loosen some of its other demands, such as changes to Greece’s labor laws and pension systems, in the essence of striking a deal.

What’s more, while the May 12 deadline is key to ensuring that Greece gets the last installment of its bailout and avoids a default, come June the EU and Greece will lock horns again, this time to reach an agreement on restructuring Greece’s debt, which currently stands at 175% of GDP. While many have been quick to point out that it is unrealistic for Greece to ever pay back its immense debts and that further austerity will cripple the economy further, future negotiations will largely be dependent upon the Syriza led government’s ability to show its dedication to reform key sectors to allow the economy to grow faster. By compromising their stance now and giving in to privatization and allowing foreign investors to save some strategic industries, notably energy, shipping, and ports, Greece can approach June’s second round of the high stakes game with a much higher hand than it holds today.

*Theodoros Papadopoulos is a consultant and researcher based out of London, specialized in the institutional evolutions of Eastern Europe and Africa.

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US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived on a surprise visit Tuesday in Mogadishu, Somalia, as the nation continues struggling to restore stability after a two-decade civil war.

Kerry arrived from Nairobi, where he was on a visit to discuss cooperation with the Kenyan ally in the fight against the Somali al Shabab insurgent group. He will meet with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the prime minister, local officials and civil society representatives. The US State Department did not disclose the venue of the meetings for security reasons.

In a news conference yesterday from Nairobi, Kerry had stressed that “Kenya will be safer if Somalia is more stable, Kenya will be safer if South Sudan can resolve its problems”.

Kenya’s troops launched a military offensive in Somalia in 2011 against al Shabab, later joining the African AMISOM mission, deploying some 3,664 soldiers.

Al Shabab has since targeted Kenya in a series of attacks, such as that against Nairobi’s Westgate Mall in 2013 that left at least 67 dead and last month against the University of Garissa, near the border with Somalia, which left 148 dead.

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Saudi Arabia’s Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman warned on Tuesday that a nuclear deal with Iran that does not have clauses to safeguard other nations would spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

“Seeking nuclear weapons represents a very serious threat,” said King Salman during his address to the consultative summit of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

King Salman urged Gulf leaders to stand up to Iran. He called on the international community, especially the Group 5+1 negotiating with Iran, “to set stricter rules that guarantee the region’s security and prevent it from plunging into an arms race.”

He said that any final agreement with Iran must include unambiguous security guarantees. King Salman said that the GCC consultative summit comes amid mounting international concerns over a host of regional conflicts including Iran, Yemen, Syria and Palestine.

Those who attended the gathering included French President Francois Hollande, heads of the Gulf states, several members of the Saudi royal family and high-ranking Saudi officials. Prominent among them were Crown Prince Mohammed bin Naif, deputy premier and minister of interior; Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, second deputy premier and minister of defense; Adel Al-Toraifi, minister of culture and information; and Adel Al-Jubeir, minister of foreign affairs.

King Salman also announced the establishment of a major humanitarian center in Riyadh to coordinate relief operations, and invited the UN to assist. He called on all factions to lay down their arms and start peace talks in the Saudi capital, in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2216.

In a clear reference to Iran, King Salman said there was a need to confront an external threat that “aims to expand control and impose its hegemony,” threatening regional stability and creating “sectarian sedition.” He said the Saudi-led coalition had launched its operation after an appeal for help by the legitimate government and the refusal of the coup leaders to comply with GCC and international peace initiatives.

He pledged to extend all possible aid to Yemen, and said that he has instructed Saudi government agencies to legalize the status of hundreds of thousands of Yemeni workers who are living and working in the Kingdom, to help them “overcome the current crisis.”

On the question of Palestine, King Salman called on the international community to find a solution to the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is the “core issue” in the Arab and Islamic world. On the Syrian crisis, he lambasted the Syrian regime and said “the current Assad regime should not have a role in the future of Syria.”

A statement released after the summit reiterated that all states have a responsibility to restore stability in Yemen. It also said that France fully supports the Saudi-led coalition’s operations. The statement added that the normalization of relations between the GCC and Iran must be based on the principle of non-intervention in the affairs of the Arab countries and the region.

Speaking on the sidelines of the summit, Hollande, who became the first Western leader to attend such a Gulf gathering, said “the security of the Arab world is tantamount to the world’s security and the dangers of terrorism threaten all countries.” Hollande said his country was working to boost “strategic ties” with Saudi Arabia.

Others who attended the summit were Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Qatar emir; Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, vice president of the UAE, prime minister and ruler of Dubai; Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait; and King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa of Bahrain.

The event concluded with a lunch hosted by King Salman in honor of the GCC leaders at Diriyah Palace.

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President Barack Obama isn’t exactly riding high on public support, but for the first time in two years more Americans approve of the job he is doing than disapprove.

The news comes courtesy of a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll that was released Monday. It found that 48 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing as president, while 47 percent disapprove.

Obama is only one point into positive territory and hasn’t hit 50 percent since February 2013, but it’s the highest number the president has seen in this survey since June 2013.

It’s also marked improvement over his standing with the American public last year. In August and September 2014, Obama dipped down to a 40 percent approval rating, with 54 percent of Americans disapproving of his performance as the country’s chief executive.

Last month’s CNN/ORC poll also found Obama in positive territory for the first time since May 2013, with a 48 percent approval rating. Forty-seven percent disapproved of his performance.

Elsewhere in the WSJ/NBC poll, 49 percent of Americans approved of his handling of the economy, while 47 percent disapproved. Obama’s handling of foreign policy, meanwhile, rose from 36 percent to 40 percent, though 53 percent still disapproved.

Notably, the survey found that while Obama’s ratings had generally risen, those of his potential successor, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, had begun to dip. Forty-two percent of respondents said they had a favorable impression of Clinton, and the same number said they had an unfavorable impression. During the same time last year, she was standing at a 48 – 32 percent favorable rating.

Despite sliding since leaving her post as secretary of state, Clinton still currently leads the field of potential conservative opponents in head-to-head matchups, according to the poll.

The post Obama’s Approval Rating Improves appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(EurActiv) — Commission President Jean Claude Juncker said that if Greece left the single currency area, the “Anglo-Saxon world” would try everything to break it up.

Speaking at the KUL, the Catholic University of Leuven on Monday (4 May) on the occasion of the launch of the Wilfred Martens Fund, Juncker made it clear that a ‘Grexit’ was not an option, because it would be an existential threat to the 19-member economic and monetary union.

Juncker, who chose French to deliver his 40-minute speech at the Flemish university, said:

“The world wants to know which way we are going. We should make sure that everyone understands that the economic and monetary union is irreversible, that the euro is a currency that is here to stay, which is not going to be abolished or suspended. “

Juncker added that he had discussed the issue the same day with former Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who was also present at the event.

“Grexit is not an option. If Greece would accept it, if the others would accept it, that the country would exit the zone of security and prosperity constituted by the eurozone, we would be exposed to huge danger, because the Anglo-Saxon world would do everything to try to decompose, at a regular rhythm, by (the) sale, apartment by apartment, of the eurozone,” he said.

Later, in the Q&A session, Juncker returned to the issue, speaking this time in English.

“We have to know that Greece was misbehaving in the past, that the government of Mr. Samaras was doing the right things, that those who were contesting these right things won the elections. Now they are confronted with their election promises, and we have to deal with that,” he said, referring of the leftist government of Alexis Tsipras.

“My concern is not the Greek government. My concern is the Greek people. We don’t have the right to deal with the Greek people as if they were the neglected part of Europe. The Greek people have great dignity. This is a great nation, although being from time to time a weak state, and we have to show solidarity with the Greeks. And the [present] Greek government has to know that at the level of the eurozone, we have to deal with 19 democracies, not only with one, not only with Greek democracy,” he said.

One of the questions referred to the UK, and the push of the present government to renegotiate its status in the EU.

“I want a fair deal with Britain, but Britain is not in a situation to impose its exclusive agenda to all the other member states of Europe”, Juncker said.

“I’m a strong defender of the freedom of movement of workers”, he continued, alluding to the rhetoric against workers from the Eastern European countries in the UK . He added:

“This is a basic principle of the EU laid down in the Treaty of Rome. So the British are kindly invited to present a list of their requests, we’ll take this under exam, with friendly attention, and then we will see. I don’t want Britain to leave the EU, but I don’t want the EU to follow an exclusive British commandership.”

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with a bipartisan US Congress delegation on Tuesday. The delegation was led Representative Michael McCaul, the chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security.

The Prime Minister discussed the US-Israel relationship, stating “The support and the alliance with the United States is a foundation of our national security. It’s a bipartisan position. It’s also bipartisan here. I think there’s complete unanimity about the importance of the relationship with the United States.”

Congressman McCaul spoke on behalf of the delegation. He said, “Today we don’t stand as Democrat, Republican; We stand as Americans in support of Israel, our strongest ally and friend in the region – a democracy, a true beacon of hope in the region.”

Original article

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China’s president has dominant role in foreign policy, but coordination on decision-making could be lacking.

By David M. Lampton*

When Xi Jinping came to power, he sought considerable adjustment in foreign and internal security policy, as suggested in interviews. He wanted to be the prime mover toward a vision of a rejuvenated China more active on the world stage, and he was less comfortable with the professional foreign policy bureaucracy that previously defined, shaped and conducted policy. Xi is less at ease than predecessors with the relatively independent internal security apparatus that now-disgraced minister Zhou Yongkang had consolidated and with the free-wheeling corruption and untethered military Hu Jintao had tolerated. Xi seeks to make the Chinese Communist Party the key instrument in developing, and perhaps implementing, policy.

China established the National Security Commission, or Zhongyang guojia anquan weiyuanhui, in January 2014 and announced its pending formation in connection with the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of November 2013. The NSC is a work in progress.

The commission aims at alleviating Beijing’s longstanding coordination problem. Coordinating Chinese foreign and security policy has become progressively more difficult because the number of countries having established formal diplomatic relations with China has about tripled since 1971; globalization has extended the nation’s interests and reach; the spatial domains of PRC operations have expanded from being a land power to increasingly present on and under all oceans, and in the air, space and cyberspace; the number of domestic security, diplomatic and international security policy-relevant bureaucracies has expanded; and transnational issues such as climate change have increasing salience. China has moved from being an irrelevance in global trade and finance to center stage.

All this requires a broadly conceived central foreign and security policy coordination mechanism of increasing sophistication, a mechanism that can provide top leaders with options, help establish priorities, evaluate costs and gains, and enforce implementation on a fractious bureaucracy and society.

Another central aspect of the coordination problem is the tight linkage between external and internal security in Chinese thinking. The maintenance of internal cohesion and stability is the indispensable core of Chinese national security. Key to this is effectively dealing with periodic attempts of the outside world to subvert China, to weaken it from within, through “stability maintenance,” or wei wen.

Both foreign and domestic observers have noted that sometimes China’s bureaucratic left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. One ministry or organization does not know about another’s activities, or one province competes with others. Senior Chinese leaders do not always receive accurate or timely information, and faithful implementation does not always occur.

The idea of an NSC, inspired in part by President Jiang Zemin after his 1997 exposure to the US National Security Council while in Washington, DC, was debated in his administration and thereafter in the era of Hu and Wen Jiabao. Chinese analysts have studied various countries’ models for NSCs.

In the year after the Commission’s January 2014 establishment, the domestic and foreign security, military and diplomatic bureaucracies have sought to hammer out a National Security Law to give statutory definition to the NSC, its mission and scope of action, its composition, and its relationship to other organs – a draft of this law was submitted to the National People’s Congress in December. Given the divergent interests there’s been protracted debate over this legislation.

At the NSC’s first meeting on 15 April 2014, Xi articulated the concept of “holistic” or “overall national security,” or Zongti guojia anquanguan, mentioning 11 broad areas of concern. On 6 May 2014, the first National Security Blue Book was published, reportedly explaining the issues “Beijing sees itself facing in internal security – including Western nations’ cultural hegemony threatening China’s socialist values, terrorism, and the ‘export’ of Western democracy threatening Chinese ideology . . .” (1) National security has in considerable measure become regime security.

Beyond this, four NSC functions were identified in a People’s Daily article and summarized by Yiqin Fu, cited above: First and arguably most important is developing a national security strategy that is bigger than simply military strategy; promulgating a legal framework for national security that embraces military, economic, foreign policy, technology, intelligence and other considerations; defining and adopting national security policies, focusing on terrorism, sovereignty, maritime, space and cyber concerns; and addressing specific national security threats and incidents, the most worrisome of which involve Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as Hong Kong. According to Beijing, incidents in these places have “profound connections to international actors, so relying on only a few powerful domestic organs is not enough. Intelligence and foreign affairs organs should cooperate closely.”

The post Xi Jinping’s High-Risk Policy Needs A National Security Commission – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Michael A. Reynolds*

The identification of two young Chechen males as the alleged perpetrators of bombing of the Boston Marathon has caused Americans to ask a great many questions about the alleged perpetrators.  Those questions range from the ineffable—what could drive the brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to commit such willful acts of violence?—to the seemingly straightforward—where is Chechnya? For understandable reasons, many commentators have been quick to downplay or disavow altogether any causal link between the brothers’ ethnic background and their acts of terrorism.  To be sure, the actions of any individual or even group of individuals can never be reduced to identity.  Identity most assuredly is not destiny.  Moreover, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were hardly typical of Chechens, and one might justifiably question whether they can even be properly described as Chechen.  Their mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaev, was an ethnic Avar. Both brothers were born outside of Chechnya, Tamerlan in Kyrgyzstan and Dzhokhar in Dagestan, and they grew up outside of Chechnya. Indeed, it is not even clear that either ever spent an appreciable amount of time inside Chechnya.

Nonetheless, we know from the brothers’ trails on the Internet that they both identified strongly and self-consciously as Chechens. It is, indeed, a common pattern of members of diasporas to form, and cling to, romanticized visions of their homeland and its traditions. The Tsarnaevs’ selection of books, videos, and discussion groups all bore witness to the fact that they understood being Chechen to be a central part of their lives. The sports they chose to excel in, boxing and wrestling, are highly revered in Chechnya and are sources of national pride. When one examines the Tsarnaevs’ past and present, one can see how the political, cultural, and religious tensions of the North Caucasus indelibly stamped their lives, shaping their worldview and self-understanding and pointing them in the direction they took.

WHO ARE THE CHECHENS?

Location of Chechnya in Russia. Credit: Wikipedia Commons.

The Chechens are an indigenous people who live in the northeast Caucasus Mountains, what is the southern edge of today’s Russian Federation. They are wholly unrelated to Slavs, Turks, or Persians (Iranians), the major ethno-linguistic groups who bound the Caucasus, and they have resided on their territory from at least the beginning of recorded history. Chechnya is a heavily forested and mountainous land, and throughout history was remote from major centers of population and power. Up until the nineteenth century the Chechens lived free of centralized government and outside control. They instead relied on their own codes of customary law and institutions like blood feud to mediate and moderate conflict and to provide order. Like many mountain peoples, the Chechens developed a culture that prized self-reliance, honor, and the martial virtues and that tied individuals tightly to their clans and clans to their members.

The Chechens are Sunni Muslims. Islam reached the North Caucasus in 654 AD when the Arab-Muslim armies of the original Caliphate captured the town of Derbent in neighboring Dagestan. Dagestan eventually became a major center of Arabo-Islamic civilization and learning, but due to the rugged geography of the Caucasus, however, it took several centuries for Islam to spread through Dagestan and then to Chechnya. It is believed that by the sixteenth century, however, most Chechens had adopted Islam. Nonetheless, their knowledge of Islam was basic and their practice of Islam was relatively lax. The Chechens’ customary law and traditions, known as adat from the Arabic word for custom to distinguish them from the sharia, continued to define life.

EMPIRE, RESISTANCE, AND ISLAMIZATION

The place of Islam in Chechen society underwent a fundamental change in the nineteenth century.  In response to the steady encroachment of the Imperial Russian state, Cossacks, and Slavic settlers on the lands of the high landers, a powerful revivalist Islamic movement emerged among the Dagestanis and Chechens. These highlanders saw their salvation in Islam. One struggle was to impose a stricter, more purely Islamic order on their communities. They therefore strove to eliminate adat and to destroy the munafiqun, those highlanders whom they judged hypocrites for professing Islam but not properly practicing it. The other struggle was to drive out the infidel Russians.

The Avars, a people living in the highlands of Dagestan, provided the three imams who led this movement. Unlike the Chechens, whose knowledge of Islam was comparatively rudimentary, the Avars had developed a formidable culture of Islamic learning and produced accomplished scholars of Arabic, Islamic law, and the Islamic sciences.  To this day, the Avars as a whole take great pride in their tradition of Islamic scholarship and leadership of the highlander resistance. They tend to see themselves as the “top dogs” of not just Dagestan, but of the Caucasus as a whole.

Together, the Avars, other Dagestanis, and the Chechens held off the massive Russian Army for three decades of desperate and cruel warfare. The most famous of the three imams was Shamil, a legendary commander who led the jihad for a quarter century. The highlanders’ bravery and valor deeply impressed the Russians, both military officers and authors such as Pushkin, Lermontov, and Bestuzhev. Leo Tolstoy immortalized the Chechens in his novel Hadji Murat. The Chechens, by virtue of their numbers and martial skill formed a key part of Shamil’s coalition of Muslim mountaineers.  They chafed under Shamil’s insistence on strict adherence to the Sharia, including bans on drinking, smoking, music and dancing, but the experience of waging an extended jihad against a merciless Russian Army fused the Chechens’ religious and national identities.  By contrast, the neighboring Ingush, with whom the Chechens share ethno-linguistic ties, only completed their conversion to Islam in the nineteenth century and largely stayed aloof from Shamil’s struggle.

Although Shamil surrendered in 1859, the Chechens never reconciled themselves to outside domination. In 1878, they rebelled en masse, albeit unsuccessfully. The abrek, formerly a renegade highlander, became a folk hero and symbol of resistance. As one Chechen revolutionary put it, “The authorities terrorized the people, and the abreks terrorized the authorities.”

UNBOWED BEFORE SOVIET POWER

The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the collapse of the Russian empire saw a brief anarchic period of freedom in the North Caucasus, but the Red Army conquered the region in 1919.  Bolsheviks initially sought to accommodate Chechen sensitivities by tolerating Islam and reinterpreting the abrek as a progressive anti-colonial figure. They also introduced for the first time a fixed territorial entity called Chechnya, creating in 1922 a Chechen Autonomous Oblast (province) inside the Russian Soviet Socialist Federative Republic.  Chechnya was not accorded the status of republic for two reasons.  One was that unlike the Georgians and Armenians, the Chechens had no extensive written literature in their own language. Arabic, as in Dagestan, was the language of learning and record keeping. Thus, the Bolsheviks classified the Chechens as a backward nation. And, second, unlike the Azerbaijanis, the Chechens were too few and located on the Russian side of the Caucasus.

Theses nominal concessions notwithstanding, the Bolsheviks retained deep suspicions of the Chechens as an unreliable population and in any event were intent on transforming their culture into a Soviet Socialist one. Communist oppression quickly proved as severe in Chechnya as it was elsewhere in the Soviet Union. That oppression peaked in February 1944 when Stalin ordered the mass deportation of the entire nation of roughly 400,000 Chechens to Central Asia and Siberia. Loaded onto cattle cars and dumped on the steppe in the winter, an estimated one-third of the population perished. The official pretext for the deportations was Chechen collaboration with the Nazis. Yet the Nazis had never reached Chechnya, and by 1944 were no longer in a position to threaten the Caucasus. The more likely reason was that Stalin was preparing for a potential war with Turkey and sought to clear his southern border of troublesome and potentially disloyal nations. Already in January 1944, the Kremlin had begun reviewing the possibility of altering the border with Turkey, and the following year Stalin made territorial and other demands on Turkey. Chechens in 1918, 1878, and earlier had posed threats to Russia during wars with the Turks.

Even the inhumanity of Stalin, however, could not break the Chechens, whose exceptional character made a lasting impression on yet another famous Russian author, the Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn encountered the Chechens when he was a political prisoner, or zek, in the Soviet state concentration camps. Solzhenitsyn’s words are routinely recited in discussions of the Chechens, and for good reason. His words vividly convey the extraordinary strength of the Chechens:

There was one nation that would not give in, would not acquire the mental habits of submission—and not just individual rebels among them, but the whole nation to a man. These were the Chechens.

I would say that of all the special settlers, the Chechens alone showed themselves zeks in spirit. They had been treacherously snatched from their home, and from that day they believed in nothing…

The Chechens never sought to please, to ingratiate themselves with the bosses; their attitude was always haughty and even openly hostile. They treated the laws on universal education and the state curriculum with contempt, and to preserve them from being corrupted would not send their little girls to school nor indeed all their boys. They didn’t send their women to the kolkhoz. And they themselves did not toil in the fields

During the 1990s, when the Chechens were again waging a desperate and seemingly hopeless war against Russia, Western commentators were fond of citing Solzhenitsyn’s foregoing words, but typically left out the less flattering aspect of his quote:

They tried whenever possible to find themselves jobs as drivers: looking after an engine was not degrading, their passion for rough riding found an outlet in the constant movement of a motor vehicle, and their passion for thieving in the opportunities drivers enjoy. This last passion, however, they also gratified directly. ‘We’ve been robbed,’ ‘we’ve been cleaned out’ were concepts that they introduced to peaceful, honest, sleepy Kazakhstan. They were capable of rustling cattle, robbing a house, or sometimes taking what they wanted to by force. As far as they were concerned, the local inhabitants, and those exiles who submitted so readily, belonged more or less to the same breed as the bosses. They respected only rebels.

And here is an extraordinary thing—everyone was afraid of them. No one could stop them from living as they did. The regime that had ruled the land for thirty years could not force them to respect its laws.

As Solzhenitsyn testifies, not even the world’s most sophisticated totalitarian regime could compel the Chechens to submit, and by this the Chechens distinguished themselves from the other nations of the Soviet Union. Thirteen years after the deportation, the Chechens won the right to return to their homeland. Not surprisingly, the Communist Party never had much success in penetrating Chechen society, and when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Communist Party effectively evaporated instantly in Chechnya.

THE END OF COMMUNISM AND THE EMERGENCE OF AN INDEPENDENT CHECHNYA

The years from 1991 to 1994 marked another period of anarchy in Chechen history. Chechnya, joined together with neighboring Ingushetia, constituted a territorial-administrative entity inside the Russian Federation. The recently formed populist National Congress of the Chechen People displaced the Communist functionaries during the August 1991 attempted coup in Moscow and declared Chechnya’s separation from Ingushetia and its independence from Russia. The nationalists coalesced around a former Soviet Air Force General Dzhokhar Dudaev and chose him as Chechnya’s president. Dudaev’s military background won him respect while the fact that he came from a small clan assuaged concerns about the centralization of power.

Under Dudaev, the Chechens had no real success in forming a functioning state.  They had few experienced civil servants, and, being a fiercely egalitarian people, they had little inclination to listen to Dudaev or anyone else. “Every Chechen is his own president,” lamented one Chechen politician in 1993. Dudaev recognized the right to bear arms to be an inviolable part of the patrimony of every Chechen male. It was a popular measure, but one hardly conducive to building a state. Chechnya, moreover, became a favored place for stolen car rings and smuggling of all sorts of goods ranging from heroin through consumer goods to arms. International flights flew into and out of Chechnya at will. Russian President Boris Yeltsin made a number of ham-handed, semi-covert attempts to rein in or overthrow Dudaev, but succeeded only giving a volatile Dudaev fodder to publicly humiliate him.

THE FIRST CHECHEN WAR AND THE ARRIVAL OF INTERNATIONAL JIHADISTS

Finally, in December 1994, a frustrated Yeltsin, having listened to his defense minister’s boastful promise to subdue the Chechens in a matter of hours, ordered Russian tanks to take Grozny and to restore “constitutional rule” in Chechnya. It was a disastrous decision. Although the Chechens themselves had grown weary of Dudaev’s administrative incompetence and the disorder, Yeltsin’s bid at intimidation could guaranty only war from a people who prided themselves as warriors and rebels and who possessed living memories of Stalin’s deportations.

The sight of the outgunned and outnumbered Chechens fighting to defend their homes and families generated tremendous sympathy around the world. It also sparked immediate interest among jihadists. From the battlefields of Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia, they began making their way to the North Caucasus. The most famous of these was a young Saudi known as Amir al-Khattab.  Along with their arms, the jihadists brought to the Caucasus a rigorous and austere interpretation of Islam known as Salafism.

Chechnya would seem to be an unpromising terrain for Salafism. Among other things, Salafis vigorously condemn Sufism, a mystical form of Islam that formed the basis of popular Chechen religion. Salafis despise in particular Sufi prayer rituals, including the signature communal circle prayer dance of the Chechens that Lev Tolstoy described in Hadji Murat.

Seven decades of Communist suppression of religious practice, however, had left the vast majority of Chechens ignorant about the practice and doctrines of their faith but eager to learn more. The jihadists’ knowledge of Arabic and ability to cite in the original the sources of Islam such as the Quran and hadiths coupled with their willingness to put their own lives on the line in jihad proved persuasive to many young Chechens at war. Among those swayed was Shamil Basaev, namesake of the Imam and the most capable and famous of the Chechens’ field commanders. These commanders saw in the idea of holy war a means to make sense of their personal experience and the Chechens’ struggle. Basaev steadily adopted more strident religious rhetoric and poses and began to collaborate with Khattab. Others, such as Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, a poet who succeeded Dudaev as president when the latter was killed by a missile in April 1996, saw in Salafi Islam a way to overcome the clan loyalties that had hampered Chechens’ efforts to build a state under Dudaev.

The Chechens fought the Russian Federation to a standstill and in the summer of 1996 the two sides signed a peace agreement. The agreement’s ambiguity on whether or not Chechnya was part of the Russian Federation or not served both sides, and the Russian Federal forces withdrew. Chechnya was now, de facto at least, independent.

The Chechens’ stunning victory proved a major boon to the cause of jihad. Coming on the heels of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 and the American pull out from Somalia, the Chechens had provided an even more vivid demonstration of the promise of violent jihad, of how even small groups of Muslims could, with enough courage and faith, defeat a major world power.  Militants from around the world flocked to Chechnya and began to talk of liberating Muslims elsewhere in the Caucasus, along the Volga River, and beyond. Among those attracted to Chechnya was Ayman al-Zawahiri, a founder and now leader of al-Qaeda.  Al-Zawahiri was detained in Dagestan in December 1996 before he could enter Chechnya. Uncertain as to whom they were holding, Russian authorities released him six months later.

In January 1997, the Chechens held elections and selected as their new leader Aslan Maskhadov, another former Soviet military man and the architect of their victory, in 1996. Undermined by clan rifts and boxed in by a new class of young, truculent, and unruly warlords, however, Maskhadov found himself unable to create order. Chechnya quickly slipped into disarray. Gangs of kidnappers and criminals roamed the land and across borders in search of victims. Often these gangs worked in tandem with the jihadists. In exchange for financial support, jihadists sanctioned in the name of God crimes against infidels and so-called apostates, i.e. Muslims who made lucrative targets. It was a variation of a principle formulated by Lenin, “The worse, the better.” The more chaos in and around Chechnya the greater the popular desire for some order, even that of a crudely applied sharia. Chechen warlords, bored in peacetime, found the jihadist message appealing. Seeking to recover his authority by bolstering his credentials, the once secular leaning Maskhadov declared sharia the law of the land, but he had already lost control.

It is important to note that the experience of Chechnya in the 1990s did not demonstrate the immutable character of Chechen culture.  Sovietization, the deportations, urbanization, and the war itself all profoundly affected Chechen cultural norms. For example, the cult of the elders, by which Chechens, like most North Caucasians, would routinely accept the opinions of the older males as law, declined precipitously. The new class of young, sometimes glamorous, warlords felt little obligation to pay heed to the old who had not fought. In this the jihadists encouraged them, teaching that what should merit public respect was one’s beliefs, not one’s birth. The masculine ideal of the Chechen as an irrepressible warrior remained, but much of the culture that had nourished that ideal and bounded it with obligations to others had withered away.

THE SECOND CHECHEN WAR AND THE CONTAINMENT OF JIHADISM

In August 1999, in an attempt to deliver on their promise to spread jihad, Basaev and Khattab invaded the neighboring Republic of Dagestan. Basaev brought with him as his deputy the famed Dagestani Avar poet, sixty-seven year old Adallo Aliev in a bid to rally the Avars to his cause and rekindle the alliance that had worked so well under Shamil. Whereas the Dagestanis in the first war had sympathized strongly with their fellow Muslim highlanders in Chechnya, the wave of kidnappings originating from Chechen territory had so thoroughly alienated them that Dagestani volunteers now massed with their own arms in readiness to repulse the invasion. Basaev and Khattab’s failed attack, followed shortly by bombings of apartment buildings in Buinaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk, touched off the second Chechen War and the rise to prominence of Vladimir Putin, then a relatively unknown intelligence officer.

The invasion triggered a split within Chechnya. Akhmat Kadyrov, the mufti of Chechnya, went over to the Russian side. Kadyrov was no Russian-stooge or opportunist. Under Dudaev he had declared jihad against the Russians and he had been one of three Chechen negotiators at the 1996 peace talks. Kadyrov in the post-war years he had grown increasingly alarmed by the crude theology, bellicose rhetoric, and aggressive behavior of those whom he termed “Wahhabis” to better underscore the foreign, Gulf Arab origins of their theology and financing. He came to see the foreign fighters as the greatest threat to the Chechens’ culture and well-being.

Kadyrov’s switch was a momentous development, as it made it vastly easier now for self-respecting Chechens to do the formerly unthinkable and side with the Russians. Wisely, Putin embraced the former rebel, put him in control of Chechnya, and funded him generously. Faced with the choice either to join an increasingly extreme and desperate band of Islamists to fight a rejuvenated, resolute, and even more ruthless Russian Army, Chechen rebels slowly but steadily began to align themselves with Kadyrov. Whereas outside observers directed relentless—and often justified—criticism of the needless cruelty of the Russian forces, they overlooked Putin’s steady and effective pursuit of a policy of “Chechenization.” The jihadists grew steadily weaker, and even multiple acts of terror, the seizures of a Moscow theater in 2002 and a school in Beslan, North Ossetia in 2004 being the most spectacularly horrid, failed to change the course of the conflict. Khattab was killed in 2002, and Basaev fell in 2006. In 2009, Moscow declared its “counter-terror” mission fulfilled and withdrew it troops, leaving local Chechen forces to maintain order.

Although the jihadist movement, which now refers to itself grandly as the “Caucasus Emirate,” is incapable of overthrowing the Chechen government, there is no reason to expect it to fade away entirely any time soon. After Akhmat Kadyrov was assassinated in 2004, Moscow backed his son Ramzan, eventually installing him as the ruler of Chechnya. The son distinguished himself with a resolve and barbarity that match those of the jihadists. He has coopted Islam, even going so far as to perversely cite the figure of Kunta Hajji, a Chechen Sufi sheikh from the 19^th century, who preached an introspective mystical Islam, as a spiritual mentor instructing him to wipe out his opponents. On the streets of Chechen cities Kadyrov’s supporters enforce their own eclectic form of Islamic order through coercion and intimidation.

This sort of cooptation of Islam, however, has not defused Islamic radicalism so much as it has redrawn the lines of conflict. Intense desire for revenge born of personal reasons motivates some Chechens to take up arms against Kadyrov. Other fighters inspired more purely by the cause of Sunni radicalism have arrived from lands as far away as Buryatia and Canada, not to mention the Middle East. Next door to Chechnya in Dagestan, where the Tsarnaevs have roots and family, a highly complex insurgency has been simmering for a decade and a half.  The breakdown of the economy, the near collapse of the Russian state, and the ensuing struggle for resources in the 1990s reinvigorated the role of clan and ethnic ties.  Indeed, the need for protection from and the desire for revenge against poorly trained, corrupt, and occasionally sadistic police breathed new life into institutions like vendetta.

Much of the violence in Dagestan thus lacks real ideological content.

Yet not unlike earlier in Chechnya where some saw a unitary Islamic law as the best remedy to the endemic conflicts of a polity divided along clan lines, in the ethnic mosaic of Dagestan one finds jihadists and their supporters who point to the austere Islam of the Salafis as the solution to their society’s multiple challenges. For many, Salafi Islam’s chief appeal lies in its promise of a black and white standard of justice and a mechanism, Islamic law, by which to achieve it. Among this group is a subset of Islamists who find the linkage that Salafi Islam draws between theology and politics compelling, and these join an explicitly religious war. As a result, layered over the quotidian violence of gangs and reprisals, one finds a campaign waged against Sufi Islam and its practitioners.  Indeed, assassinations of religious figures known for their opposition to Salafism have become routine in Dagestan. Meanwhile, Salafi preachers on YouTube and elsewhere rail against Sufism in the Caucasus as a repugnant and contemptible distorting innovation in Islam.

One of those preachers, Sheikh Abu Malik Abdulhamid al-Juhani, is a favorite of Salafis in Dagestan, and was a favorite of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in particular. In his sermons on YouTube, the Saudi preacher categorically rejects Sufism as a polytheistic corruption. He also denounces those who follow Caucasian traditions of Islam, warning that the Quran condemns those who imitate the non-Islamic practices of one’s fathers. Other burning concerns of al-Juhani’s followers and of other Salafis in the Caucasus is the internet’s ability to facilitate immoral relations between young males and females and the lascivious nature of pop music in Dagestan. According to some reports, worry over what she perceived as her son Tamerlan’s dissolute lifestyle was what provoked Zubeidat Tsarnaeva to embrace a more rigorous practice of Islam and to pressure her son to follow.  This is a story as old as religion itself. But the path that led the Tsarnaevs to militant Islam passed through the North Caucasus.

The sources of violence in the North Caucasus are thus complex, inter-related, and mutually reinforcing.  A theme of radical Islam worth highlighting is that of uncompromising resistance to injustice. Jihadist rhetoric and imagery in the North Caucasus celebrates bold defiance of iniquitous authority. This theme, a romantic one in its essence, is powerfully seductive to North Caucasian males who are socialized to revere courage and men who assert themselves fearlessly.  For frustrated young men facing lives of circumscribed options, jihad offers a chance to demonstrate their manhood and even possibly attain glory.

Whether or not Tamerlan Tsarnaev ever had direct contact with the North Caucasian jihadist underground is unclear, although Russian sources report that in 2012 he was known to have met multiple times with a Salafi who maintained active ties to that underground. But it is clear that he and Dzhokhar identified closely with Chechnya and that the violence and ideological struggles ongoing in the North Caucasus exerted a profound impact on their worldviews.

CONCLUSION

The Tsarnaevs’ North Caucasian roots, of course, did not cause them to attack the population of the United States.  But their choice to embrace a radical and militant interpretation of Islam and to carry out bombings and attack the police becomes more comprehensible when placed into the historical and cultural context that helped form them.  The peculiar historical legacy and the current state of the North Caucasus render it especially vulnerable to jihadism. It is not a coincidence that, alone in the post-Soviet space, this region has been a site of chronic jihadist insurgencies. The highlanders’ distinctive culture of defiance and the formative struggle they waged in the name of Islam against the Russian empire coupled with the suppression of traditional religious authorities in the Soviet era, the devolution of the region’s economic and political institutions, and a system of governance that stifles constructive initiative provide favorable conditions favorable to militant Islam.  Current conditions give young men in the North Caucasus, of whom there are many, limited prospects. These conditions will persist for another generation, perhaps longer. Today, rebellion in the name of Islam offers these men a simulacrum of highlander tradition, a reassuring reaffirmation of roots at a time when so much of that tradition has evaporated, while also holding out the possibility of glory. The North Caucasus will, therefore, likely remain an incubator of jihadism for some time to come.

This is a grim picture. The one piece of good news, and it is not an insignificant one, is that the bulk of the people of the North Caucasus has rejected, and continues to reject, the jihadi program. When Salafi jihadists finally delivered on their promise to kill the eminent Sufi sheikh Said Afandi in August 2012, over one hundred thousand Dagestanis, an astounding number, came to his funeral in a popular rebuke to the jihadis. Thus, although it is highly likely that jihadism will continue to simmer in the North Caucasus for some time, it is unlikely to boil over.

There is relatively little the United States can do directly to improve the situation in the North Caucasus. Suspicion in Russian security circles is strong that the United States, acting through partners such as Saudi Arabia and Georgia, has at various times obliquely supported the jihadists in order to weaken Russia and undermine its control of energy supplies in the region.  Similarly, the United States has few potential local allies.  The peoples of the North Caucasus have little trust or sympathy for the United States. Trapped in the crossfire between implacably self-righteous, violent, and cruel jihadists and ineffective, corrupt, and often brutal government institutions, they are profoundly skeptical of the intentions of any outside actor.

There are three steps that the United States might consider taking to reduce threats emanating from the North Caucasus. The most obvious would be to pay greater attention to the various North Caucasian diasporas. Those diasporas are not especially large, although intelligence, security, and immigration professionals will have to make judgments regarding how many, if any, more resources should be devoted to such tasks.

A second and related step would be to expand cooperation and information sharing with Russian intelligence and police services. Needless to say, Russia has far more experience and far more at stake in the North Caucasus. Whereas many Westerners have focused on the perceived failings of the Russians in Chechnya and the North Caucasus, American analysts might benefit from closely studying also what the Russians and their local allies have done right. Needless to say, any expanded cooperation with Russia should be pursued only with the utmost diligence.

Finally, the United States might consider what, if anything, it might do to support investment in the region. Although an improving economy will not necessarily undercut jihadists, it would certainly give their opponents more resources and a greater stake in defeating them. Such investment need not come only from Russia. In recent years, Azerbaijani businessmen have been making increasing investments in neighboring Dagestan. Any steps the United States can take to enhance productive economic activity in the region would be helpful.

About the author:
*Michael A. Reynolds, an FPRI Senior Fellow, is an Associate Professor in Princeton’s Department of Near Eastern Studies where he teaches courses on modern Middle Eastern and Eurasian history, comparative empire, military and ethnic conflict, and secularism. He is author of Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2011), co-winner of the 2011 American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize, a Choice outstanding title, and a Financial Times book of the summer. In addition to his historical research on the Ottoman and Russian empires and their successor states, Reynolds works on contemporary issues related to Turkey, the Kurds, Azerbaijan, and the North Caucasus. He holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton, an M.A. in Political Science from Columbia, and a B.A. in Government and Slavic Languages from Harvard.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

The post The Northern Caucasus, The Tsarnaevs And Us – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Bhaskar Roy*

There is a lot of talk, and writings, that China’s minorities have become a huge challenge to the Chinese Communist Party and the security and integrity of the nation. How correct is this assessment? The party leadership is convinced that the Tibetans and the Muslim Uighurs pose this threat, encouraged and abetted mainly by the west.

Beijing believes that after the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, the west, led by the USA have trained their focus on China. It is true that the west would want to change China’s political system, but China’s boundaries are firm. A disintegrated China with more than 1.3 billion people would be a nightmare for the west. But keeping the hardliner Chinese leadership on their toes is not a bad idea for the west, either. At the same time China is not doing anything good for its own cause.

The recent White Paper on Tibet – “Tibet’s Path of Development is Driven by an Irresistible Historical Tide” issued by the State Council is only a regurgitation of old accusations against the 14th Dalai Lama. Certainly, the Dalai Lama demanded independence for Tibet after he escaped in 1959, fearing for his life. The Chinese communists had literally torn up the written agreements with the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama was strongly in favour of development of Tibet, and that included abolition of the serf system. He was not inimical to the idea of socialism, either. Mao Zedong had given him a concise lesson on the subject. But he was not agreeable to abolition of religion. He also did not see any conflict with socialism. The Dalai Lama apparently still holds that view in his offer of the “middle way” compromise with limited autonomy for the Tibetan areas under the Chinese constitution.

In a press statement on June 20, 1959 in Mussoorie, the Dalai Lama referred to ‘reform’ as follows:

“At this point I wish to emphasize that I and my government have never been opposed to reforms which are necessary in the social, economic and political systems prevailing in Tibet. We have no desire to disguise the fact that ours is an ancient society, and that we must introduce immediate changes in the interest of the Tibetan people……….”

The above is only a short portion of a longer statement of the Dalai Lama where he explained his efforts towards raising Tibet from a backward agrarian society to a modern one as far as possible under the conditions. For nine years after the military invasion of Tibet the Chinese stonewalled all his initiatives towards reform.

The Chinese did not liberate Tibet. They invaded Tibet which was a free country since antiquity. There was no evidence of Han people in Tibet when Indian Buddhists visited China through Tibet, and Chinese scholars came to India through Tibet. The Chinese communists did not allow the Dalai Lama to carry out reforms precisely because they wanted to blame him for the backwardness of Tibet. The Chinese spun the story that without them Tibet would have remained backward.

The White Paper gives figures of increase in life expectancy, per-capita net income and gross regional production. These are truths, half-truths and non-truths. Chinese regional statistics are notorious for their exaggeration, and this is well known. This has been admitted by the central government. In Tibet’s case inflated figures are useful for propaganda.

For one thing, social indices have improved the world over, including in China. Rural China was in deep backwardness, steeped in inexplicable customs like binding of women’s feet, superstitions and cults. Conditions improved greatly after Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening up strategy. The Han Chinese have been the main beneficiaries, and only some of the modernization has trickled down to the minorities.

Next, how much of the development assistance have really gone down to the Tibetans? It is the Hans who have been moved to Tibet with special incentives who are the real beneficiaries. Studies made by independent Chinese NGOs pointing out these fallacies have been banned and the NGOs disbanded. Hiding the truth is never going to help.

Neither the Dalai Lama, nor the Tibetan Administration in Exile (TAE) or the USA deny that the CIA came in to help the Dalai Lama in the 1950s. Notwithstanding the fact the American effort had very little force to bring about any tangible result, it is natural that a small country invaded and taken over by a much stronger power will look for assistance. China, too, has taken assistance form outside to counter an adversary. After the fall out with the Soviet Union during the cold war China entered into an unstated alliance with Washington to counter Moscow. China can deny this as it claims it never enters into alliance with any country against a perceived or real adversary but circumstances dictate policies, and very compelling circumstances forced the young and inexperienced Dalai Lama to go along with an overwhelming tide at that point of time. There is no evidence, however, to prove that the Dalai Lama either conceived the idea of CIA intervention or actively participated in any of the moves.

A more mature Dalai Lama changed track in the 1980s to opt for the “middle way”. On the issue of autonomy the Dalai Lama conceded much ground to make it acceptable to the Chinese. Many existing autonomy models across the world were studied by the Dalai Lama to formulate an offer. It is true that the Dalai Lama’s representatives made 13 visits to China between 1979 and 2002, and ten visits from 2002 to January 2010 to discuss and arrive at an amicable settlement of the Tibet issue.

China’s paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping had conveyed to the Dalai Lama in 1982 that anything other than independence could be discussed. Deng Xiaoping was a man with immense foresight. Had it not been for Deng, the Gang of Four would have reigned supreme after Mao’s death and the nation would have been wallowing in “continuous revolution”, and today’s rich and powerful China would have been a distant dream.

Hardline Chinese leaders reneged on Deng Xiaoping’s words and decided to force the Tibetans in Tibet into submission. Finally, the Dalai Lama resigned as the head of the Kashag of the Tibetan government in exile and has devoted himself to spreading the message of love and peace. He never blamed the Chinese people for the Communist Party’s position.

The Chinese should learn to accept that their propaganda against the Dalai Lama has no takers in the outside world, and even many Han Chinese are beginning to see the Dalai Lama in a positive light. The Dalai Lama had nothing to do with the Lhasa riots in 2008, and the self-immolation by monks, nuns and even some lay Tibetan people in Tibetan areas outside Tibet since 2011. It does not help the Dalai Lama to have Tibetans inside China destroy themselves. Tibetans are a patient and peaceful people, but when the Chinese authorities push iron into their souls, some of them react.

Tibet Autonomous Region’s (TAR’s) party Chief, Chen Quanguo has embarked (April 2015) on a new campaign to create “Model harmonious monasteries” as well as “patriotic, law-abiding monks and nuns”. These words mean allegiance to the Communist Party and to the authorities. It will be compulsory for monasteries to fly the national flag. The Tibetan flag and the Dalai Lama’s photograph, of course, remain banned. They may fly the flag under duress but the mind and soul cannot be trapped by the authorities even if the monks and nuns are made to mouth dictated words during patriotic education sessions.

There is no contact between the Tibetan government in exile, now headed by Harvard educated Lobsang Sangay and China. They will only accept talks if they are recognized as the Tibetan government in exile. The Chinese cannot accept this.

At 80 the 14th Dalai Lama may not have much time left, though his health is still good. It appears that a section of the Chinese leadership understands this.

There is another group that thinks after the Dalai Lama passes away, China will have their own Dalai Lama and the problem will be resolved. This is unlikely to work. The 11th Panchen Lama selected by the Chinese have been rejected by the Tibetan people.

The 14th Dalai Lama may not leave signs for his reincarnation and the Dalai Lama line will end. The 15th Dalai Lama may be found outside China. In either case all bets are off.

The Chinese want the 14th Dalai Lama to accept that Tibet was a part of China since antiquity. The term antiquity denotes the middle ages – 1000 AD to 1453 AD. This will be difficult for the Dalai Lama because the Chinese case is simply not true.

There is still time for the Chinese authorities to review their approach. One man that can possibly do it is President Xi Jinping. Thereby, they will be able to secure their western borders. A happy and contented 14th Dalai Lama retiring to Lhasa to spend the rest of his days there will be a windfall for China. The matter is in Xi’s hands.

*The writer is a New Delhi based strategic analyst. He can be reached at e-mail grouchohart@yahoo.com

The post China’s Dalai Lama Dilemma: Pursuing The Wrong Path – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Foreign diplomats in Chad express concern about the brutality of the Chadian police force, but the Chadian military enjoys an international reputation for its efforts to fight Boko Haram and neither France, the UK or the US seems willing to do anything about the human rights abuses committed by the police.

By Ketil Hansen*

Chad has seen numerous popular rallies since the end of 2014. On 11 November, important rallies started in the southern town of Moundou. People were protesting against the lack of gasoline and diesel in the town, and in a symbolic move, some attacked an empty Total petrol station.

People here live very close to rich, oil-producing land, with Chad pumping up 130,000 barrels a day. Yet for much of the time they have no access to petrol. When it is available, consumers must pay a local price which has increased dramatically since August 2014 – having watched the global price of oil decrease in the same period.

There are stories of significant quantities of oil refined at the Djermaya plant, north of the capital Ndjamena (and designated for the national market) being smuggled and sold in northern Cameroon and the Central African Republic – at much higher prices than the local cost in Chad. The shortages this has created have led to the development of a black market in Chad, with even higher prices for the locals.

As such, ordinary citizens are experiencing few benefits from Chad’s oil boom, which has led to Chad’s overall economy growing faster than many others in Africa.

Protests and the police – demonstrations met with violence

Other protests about local conditions quickly followed, in Ndjamena and elsewhere, in Chad’s southern Sahr region. Some demonstrations began with teachers protesting against the non-payment of their promised exam fees. Others focused on rising food prices.

These fluctuate according to season and location. However, generally speaking, food prices increased heavily throughout Chad during 2014. In Ndjamena, a 25 kilo sack of corn cost CFA 14,000 CFA ($24) in January, while in July the same amount was CFA 25,000 CFA ($41). Cooking oil was up by 50 per cent. And even the price of sugar – produced in Chad by a subsidised state firm, specifically to keep prices low – has increased by half.

These are significant rises in Chad, where 80 per cent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day. Some of the protests turned violent, and according to local observers, the Chadian police force killed four people, two in Ndjamena and two others in Sahr. However, as is often the case in Chad, official authorities deny the killings. In fact, Chad is renowned for both a brutal police force and for a significant discrepancy between what people report happening, and what the official Chad recognises as facts.

New protests and rallies, this time led by students, took place in Ndjamena in March. Originally started as a protest against a new law which requires everyone to wear a helmet when riding a small motorcycle, the protests erupted when police forces killed student Hassan Massino Daouda on March 9. Videos filmed by participating students, showing the brutality of the police forces, spread swiftly on the internet. Protests in Ndjamena continued for another week, and were followed with solidarity marches by the Chadian diaspora in France and Germany.

Foreign diplomats in Chad express concern about the brutality of the Chadian police force, but the Chadian military enjoys an international reputation for its efforts to fight Boko Haram and neither France, the UK or the US seems willing to do anything about the human rights abuses committed by the police in Chad. In fact, Chadian president Idriss Deby actively and consciously uses the political space created by the world’s attention on Boko Haram, and Chad’s involvement in fighting the group, to strengthen the control of his repressive regime over the Chadian population.

Ketil Hansen is associate Professor of African History at the University of Stavanger.

This article was originally published by Insight on Conflict and is available by clicking here. 

The post Chad: Petrol, Price Protests And Police Brutality – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Researchers have uncovered a unique connection between diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, providing further evidence that a disease that robs people of their memories may be affected by elevated blood sugar, according to scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

While many earlier studies have pointed to diabetes as a possible contributor to Alzheimer’s, the new study – in mice – shows that elevated glucose in the blood can rapidly increase levels of amyloid beta, a key component of brain plaques in Alzheimer’s patients. The buildup of plaques is thought to be an early driver of the complex set of changes that Alzheimer’s causes in the brain.

The research is published May 4 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

“Our results suggest that diabetes, or other conditions that make it hard to control blood sugar levels, can have harmful effects on brain function and exacerbate neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease,” said lead author Shannon Macauley, PhD, a postdoctoral research scholar. “The link we’ve discovered could lead us to future treatment targets that reduce these effects.”

People with diabetes can’t control the levels of glucose in their blood, which can spike after meals. Instead, many patients rely on insulin or other medications to keep blood sugar levels in check.

To understand how elevated blood sugar might affect Alzheimer’s disease risk, the researchers infused glucose into the bloodstreams of mice bred to develop an Alzheimer’s-like condition.

In young mice without amyloid plaques in their brains, doubling glucose levels in the blood increased amyloid beta levels in the brain by 20 percent.

When the scientists repeated the experiment in older mice that already had developed brain plaques, amyloid beta levels rose by 40 percent.

Looking more closely, the researchers showed that spikes in blood glucose increased the activity of neurons in the brain, which promoted production of amyloid beta. One way the firing of such neurons is influenced is through openings called KATP channels on the surface of brain cells. In the brain, elevated glucose causes these channels to close, which excites the brain cells, making them more likely to fire.

Normal firing is how a brain cell encodes and transmits information. But excessive firing in particular parts of the brain can increase amyloid beta production, which ultimately can lead to more amyloid plaques and foster the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

To show that KATP channels are responsible for the changes in amyloid beta in the brain when blood sugar is elevated, the scientists gave the mice diazoxide, a glucose-elevating drug commonly used to treat low blood sugar. To bypass the blood-brain barrier, the drug was injected directly into the brain.

The drug forced the KATP channels to stay open even as glucose levels rose. Production of amyloid beta remained constant, contrary to what the researchers typically observed during a spike in blood sugar, providing evidence that the KATP channels directly link glucose, neuronal activity and amyloid beta levels.

Macauley and her colleagues in the laboratory of David M. Holtzman, MD, the Andrew B. and Gretchen P. Jones Professor and head of the Department of Neurology, are using diabetes drugs in mice with conditions similar to Alzheimer’s to further explore this connection.

“Given that KATP channels are the way by which the pancreas secretes insulin in response to high blood sugar levels, it is interesting that we see a link between the activity of these channels in the brain and amyloid beta production,” Macauley said. “This observation opens up a new avenue of exploration for how Alzheimer’s disease develops in the brain as well as offers a new therapeutic target for the treatment of this devastating neurologic disorder.”

The researchers also are investigating how changes caused by increased glucose levels affect the ability of brain regions to network with each other and complete cognitive tasks.

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By Dr Subhash Kapila*

US-Japan New Guidelines for Defence Cooperation released on April 27 2015 marks the momentous advent of Japan asserting the right of collective self-defence as part of its National Security Strategy and Japan’s readiness in conjunction with the United States to play a proactive role in Asian security.

Japan under the ‘collective self -defence’ reinterpretation of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution initiated by Prime Minister Abe, is now open to assist its allies and even partners/ friends who are subjected to armed aggression which has a bearing on Japan’s own national security.

Japan’s Prime Minister Abe was already moving in the direction of strengthening Japan’s national security postures and architecture. This involved both conceptualisations of Japan’s strategic and military capabilities required to cope with Japan’s rapidly threatening security environment, realignment of Japanese force deployments and firming plans for the requisite military hardware acquisitions.

In true Japanese traditions, Prime Minister Abe has not shirked to take hard and bold decisions on Japan’s national security imperatives at a critical juncture. Not doing so would have sent a wrong message to those who in the last two years had resorted to political and military coercion of Japan. Japan would be the last nation to enter into any appeasement policies of nations adversarial to it.

As one surveys the Indo Pacific security environment the foremost strategic concern of the United States, Japan, India,, Vietnam and Philippines besides others is the conflict escalation in the South China Sea and East China Sea by China as a ‘revisionist power’. China instead of playing by the conventional rules of responsible international behaviour is hell-bent to write its own rules and coerce the nations of Asia Pacific into toeing them.

So while China has not been explicitly named in the US-Japan New Defence Guidelines, it is abundantly clear that the stimulus for revising these Guidelines after nearly twenty years is China’s emergence as a destabilising factor in East Asia specifically and Asia Pacific as a whole.

Expectedly, China has gone viral in its reactions of opposing the unveiling of the US-Japan New Defence Guidelines. China’s strident criticisms are surprisingly not aimed at the United States but at Japan. China is fully aware of Japan’s military asymmetries with China and also that Japan poses no threat to China.

But China is also aware that Japan is no ordinary nation which can be pushed around. Japan is a powerful contender of China along with India for Asian security primacy. Japan has on present reckonings one of the finest and powerful Navy in the Asia Pacific designed to deter any hostile power attempting to interdict Japan’s sea-lanes that traverse the South China Sea and East China Sea and further afield into the Indian Ocean and also the Pacific.

Japan’s Coast Guard is a ‘Second Navy’ of Japan in its own right to supplement the Japanese Navy in safeguarding Japan’s maritime interests.

When to the above is added the massive dedicated naval power of the US Pacific Navy and its Aircraft Carrier Groups, the combined naval forces of the United States and Japan surpass those of the Chinese Navy in all fields.

It is this awesome naval combination when exercised with Japan’s right of collective self-defense further afield which has the potential to checkmate China’s expansive maritime ambitions.

So what is new in the US-Japan New Defence Guidelines that is agitating China so much? The earlier Guidelines also covered virtually the same ground in terms of US-Japan joint responses and integrated and calibrated responses to maritime threats to Japan and United States security, basically earlier were Soviet Union-centric. Revisions took place with changing security environment in 1997 but in all these revisions, Japan’s role was limited to security of maritime expanses in Japan’s vicinity.

The US-Japan New Defence Guidelines are now China-centric in their conceptualisation and operationalisation. Two significant and major departures from the past need to be highlighted:

• The United States has given an ‘Iron Clad’ guarantee to bring under the ambit of Article V of the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty that the United States is committed to protect Japan against any aggression against the Senkaku Islands which China disputes. Two years back China resorted to political coercion and military brinkmanship, which may have resulted in a limited conflict due to Chinese military provocations against Japan.
• Japan’s new strategies of ‘Dynamic Defence’ and ‘Extended Deterrence’ combined with the reinterpreted ‘Right of Collective Self Defence’ have been ‘strategic enablers’ for Japan to assist Japan’s allies and Japan’s friends against aggression from any quarter, when Japan perceives that such aggression could affect Japan’s national security.

The clear implication of the first named above factor is that it should impose abundant caution and deterrence on China to resort to use force in the Senkaku Islands of Japan.

The major implication of the second named factor is that Japan’s right of “Collective Self Defence” is not restricted geographically to the Asia Pacific though it has particular reference to the South China Sea and the East China Sea. In the spirit of what has been asserted in the public domain when the Guidelines were unveiled last month, it stands to reason that the South China Sea brinkmanship and conflict escalation by China might emerge as the first litmus test for the United States and Japan.

With the new strategic enunciations Japan has asserted its ‘strategic coming-out’ not only on the Asia Pacific stage but also to undertake global roles and power responsibilities. The new Guidelines will also focus joint attention by the United States and Japan on enhancing their military capabilities in cyber-warfare and space-warfare; both these domains have received special attention by China.

All in all, setting aside China’s opposition to these New Guidelines, two things need to be said on analysis. First that no opposition to this development is visible from anywhere across East Asia or South East Asia. Second, the US-Japan New Defence Guidelines would contribute greatly to Asian security as in its purist implementation it does not threaten the security of the smaller nations of East Asia and South East Asia militarily dwarfed by China’s not so peaceful rise. In intent, though not publicly stated, these New Guidelines would hopefully impose much needed restraint on China’s increasing military brinkmanship in the Indo Pacific.

Japan’s “Strategic Coming out” when viewed in positive terms, and not through China’s distorted prism, adds a long overdue asset to correct the balance-of-power disequilibrium which was creeping in Asian security.

Concluding, it can be anticipated that China does not intend to be an idle spectator to the recently announced US-Japan New Defence Guidelines which challenge China’s intended and unrestrained sway in the Indo Pacific. China is likely to push the envelope to test the credibility of United States and Japan’s assertions arising from the US-Japan New Defence Guidelines. We can expect some China-generated turbulence and military brinkmanship both in the South China Sea and the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea in times ahead.

*Dr Subhash Kapila is a graduate of the Royal British Army Staff College, Camberley and combines a rich experience of Indian Army, Cabinet Secretariat, and diplomatic assignments in Bhutan, Japan, South Korea and USA. Currently, Consultant International Relations & Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. He can be reached at drsubhashkapila.007@gmail.com

The post US-Japan New Defence Cooperation Guidelines Contributes To Asian Security – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The learning mechanism of neurones has inspired researchers at the University of Valladolid (Spain) to create algorithms that can predict whether a bank will go bust. The model was correct for 96% of the banks that went bust in the USA in 2013 after analyzing their financial indicators from the previous decade, marked by the economic crisis. The most vulnerable were those which had accumulated loans from the construction sector and grown rapidly without sufficient provisions.

Since the economic crisis started in 2008 more than 300 banks have gone bust in the US, a country which has an extensive database of its 7,000 financial entities and where bankruptcies are published daily. This information, provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, has helped to validate the model which two economists from the University of Valladolid (Spain) have developed to calculate the probability of banks going bust.

The researchers used financial indicators or ratios from North-American entities for the period between 2002 and 2012. From this data and operating in a different time period, the model managed to deduce how many would go bankrupt between May 2012 and December 2013. According to the study published in the journal ‘Expert Systems with Applications’, the results were correct 96% of the time.

“There are many analyses which can predict bankruptcy one year in advance, which is too short a timeframe to take preventative action,” as one of the authors, Iván Pastor, told SINC. Pastor highlights the predictive capacity of their short, medium and long-term algorithms, which relate respectively to one, two and three years.

The researcher points out that they created the model using neuronal networks, a set of algorithms which function by imitating the behavior of the human nervous system and which are very useful in detecting patterns. These are what predict the possibility of bankruptcy.

“This methodology also generates a two-dimensional map which will help bank authorities and regulators to visualize the whole financial system and identify problematic entities in the very short-term, as well as solvent entities which could present problems in the long-term,” said Pastor.

Thanks to these analyses the different routes which could lead a financial entity to bankruptcy could also be observed. By applying the model it is clear that those which presented a greater risk were those with a high concentration of construction-related loans, those which grew very rapidly, did not have a proper market capitalization and had low levels of provisions.

Potential to predict for other dates and countries

“The results that we obtained for December 2013 demonstrated that the US financial system had improved compared to the darkest moments of the economic crisis, but there were still entities at high risk of going bankrupt, although they were generally minor entities,” added Pastor, who recognizes that the model has not yet been updated with 2015 data, “although, given enough time, it could be done”.
The expert confirms that this methodology could be applied to learn the bankruptcy potential of financial entities in other countries, with the necessary readjustments and modifications to each nation’s characteristics.

“For example, some financial ratios employed in the US are not available in Spain, given that less information is public in our country,” adds Pastor, although he comments on another study currently in progress: “We are waiting for a study to be published on Spanish savings banks, where we analyze how many of them ended up bankrupt or bailed out, as well as identify the factors differentiating healthy and failed entities”.

The post Neural Network Model Predicts Whether A Bank Can Go Bust appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Proper facilities will be provided to local and foreign tourists visiting the historic Anuradhapura historic city in Sri Lanka. This will see an increase in tourists visiting the area, North Central Chief Minister Peshala Bandara Jayarathna said.

He was speaking at the opening of a provincial tourist information centre build at Rs. 30 million in the Anuradhapura city.

It had taken around 11 years to complete the building complex.

“Proper facilities such as comfortable accommodation, transport, security, food and correct guidance should be provided to tourists flowing to Anuradhapura historic city. Sri Lanka is a tiny island but has earned a name in the international tourist industry for centuries,” he said.

The North Central Province has a large number of monuments of archaeological, historical, cultural and religious importance, coupled with natural resources and scenic beauty, he said. “The tourist industry if administered and maintained in the correct way, adhering to international tourism norms with our traditional hospitality, it would generate a lucrative income to our people”, Jayarathna said.

Plans are underway to promote foreign and local tourism in collaboration with the private sector as shown in the case of the newly opened Anuradhapura Tourist Information Centre, the Chief Minister said.

The post Sri Lanka Government Promises More Facilities For Anuradhapura Pilgrims appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Although the use of cannabis as a medical drug is currently booming (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109: 495–501), researchers suggest we should not forget that leisure time consumption—for example, smoking weed—can cause acute and chronic harms. These include panic attacks, impaired coordination of movement, and nausea, as Eva Hoch and colleagues show in a topical review article in Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2015; 112: 271–8).

The symptoms depend on a patient’s age, the amount of the drug consumed, and the frequency of drug use. It also matters in which form the cannabis is consumed—for example, as a joint, bong, or hash cake.

Cannabis is the most popular illegal drug in Germany and was consumed by almost one in 20 adults in Germany last year. An estimated one in 10 consumers will become dependent. This is critical especially for adolescents, because they are more prone to becoming dependent than adults. Addiction treatment is mostly provided on an outpatient basis.

Currently, combination therapy—consisting of motivational support, cognitive behavioral therapy, and contingency management (learning via systematic rewards)—is the most promising approach, as the authors emphasize. They recommend combination therapy, together with a family therapeutic intervention, especially for adolescents with dependency problems.

The post Research Looks At The ‘Dark Side’ Of Cannabis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Armenian authorities released five political opposition activists on May 4, 2015, pending investigation into controversial charges of plotting street violence in the capital, Yerevan, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. The authorities should independently review the charges, which reflect possible interference with the activists’ rights to freedom of thought, expression, and assembly.

On May 4, the prosecutor general’s office ordered the release of five members of the Founding Parliament political movement: its chairman, Garegin Chukaszyan, founding member Jirair Sefilyan, and Varuzhan Avetisyan, Pavel Manukyan, and Gevorg Safaryan. The activists had to sign a pledge not to leave Yerevan for the duration of pending investigation into “mass disturbances.”

“The Armenian authorities’ decision to release the activists after almost a month of pretrial custody is a positive step,” said Giorgi Gogia, senior South Caucasus researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Now the authorities should make sure that these charges were not brought in violation of the right to assembly and expression.”

In an April 27 letter to the Prosecutor General, Human Rights Watch expressed concern about the charges against, and pretrial detention of, the opposition members and called for their release pending the investigation. Yerevan police arrested the five men on April 7, searched their homes and Founding Parliament’s office, and seized wooden bats, kitchen knives, a stun gun, and a publicly available Founding Parliament pamphlet published last year.

On April 9, the Special Investigation Service charged all five men with planning a mass disturbance and preparation to commit a crime. The authorities claimed that the men plotted to provoke street violence in Yerevan during the April 24 commemoration of the 100-year anniversary of the Armenian genocide. The group had applied and received approval from the Yerevan municipality to hold the peaceful rally near the Erebuni Library, in Yerevan’s southeast district. However, on April 10, the Kentron Nork-Marash District Court in Yerevan approved the investigation’s request to send all five men to pretrial custody.

In the letter, Human Rights Watch expressed concern that the Founding Parliament members were being targeted for their peaceful political beliefs and affiliation and that the charges were intended to interfere with their right to freedom of thought, expression, and assembly, as protected under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, to which Armenia is a party. Founding Parliament’s booklet and advertisement for the rally called for civil disobedience and peaceful political change.

In the letter, Human Rights Watch also highlighted possible punitive nature of putting the opposition members in prisons with convicted prisoners, some in overcrowded cells, and withholding the detainees’ right to family visits.

Article 9(3) of the ICCPR states that, “It shall not be the general rule that persons awaiting trial shall be detained in custody.”

“Freeing the activists was the right thing to do, in light of Founding Parliament’s nonviolent views and in the absence of a lawful and credible basis for their detention,” Gogia said. “The authorities should now also ensure the activists’ right to freedom of thought, expression, and assembly.”

The post Armenia Releases Opposition Activists appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The presidential and legislative polls scheduled for 2016 are a potential watershed for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); they could be the first elections held without an incumbent protecting his position, said the International Crisis Group in a new report (PDF).

The prospect of these elections is testing nerves on all sides of the Congolese political spectrum and has already caused deadly violence. There is an urgent need for President Joseph Kabila to commit to the two-term limit contained within the constitution and ready himself to leave power. Consensus is also needed on key electoral decisions, in particular regarding the calendar and the voter roll. This will require high-level donor and international engagement. Absent agreement and clarity on the election process, or should there be significant delays, international partners should review their support to the government.

The fragmented governing majority is running out of options to avoid the 2016 deadline. The government’s attempts to amend both the constitution to allow Joseph Kabila to run for a third term and election laws face strong, including internal, opposition, as was evident in the January 2015 mini-political crisis over proposed changes to the electoral law. This mini-crisis, which triggered deadly violence and repression against pro-democracy activists, gave a first hint of what could be in store for 2016. In this tense domestic context, engagement by international actors is met with an increasing insistence on national sovereignty that affects in particular the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO).

Local and provincial polls planned for 2015, despite a technically insufficient and non-consensual voter list, could undermine credible national elections in 2016. In addition to an overly ambitious and costly electoral calendar, the government is hastily pushing through an under-resourced and ill-prepared decentralisation process, including the division of eleven provinces into 26 as provided for in the 2006 constitution. It aims to finalise in six months what was not achieved during nine years. Trying to pursue decentralisation while implementing the electoral calendar could aggravate local tensions, trigger security troubles ahead of next year’s polls and make the country highly unstable.

For the government, buying time by capitalising on potential delays seems to be the highest attainable objective it can presently agree on. The disjointed opposition is incapable of forming a united front, but there is a broad agreement to oppose any political manoeuvring to extend President Kabila’s rule beyond 2016. In addition to President Kabila’s ambiguous signals about whether he will respect his two-term limit, problems experienced during the 2011 elections remain; they include a lack of confidence in the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) and a disputed voter list.

The democratisation process launched a decade ago is reaching its moment of truth, as the excessive hopes raised by the 2006 elections have not materialised. These were the first, and so far only, reasonably free and fair democratic polls to take place since the country’s independence. In their wake, reform of the nature of politics and government in DRC has been limited. However, at this stage, delaying the 2016 presidential and legislative elections would be equivalent to an unconstitutional extension of the regime. The January 2015 violence in Kinshasa was a clear demonstration of the Congolese population’s aspirations for political change. If the electoral process is not allowed to move forward unhindered, international actors, with a large UN mission in place, risk supporting a regime with even less legitimacy than is currently the case.

All efforts have to focus on creating conditions for credible polls in 2016. To that end, Congolese political actors and the CENI should revise the electoral calendar and delay local elections until decentralisation has been fine-tuned, and provincial polls should be organised to closely coincide or be combined with the national elections. A serious conflict prevention and dispute resolution strategy is required, in particular at the local level. Such efforts cannot be only with the electoral horizon in mind. Successful elections do not equal democracy and good governance; the transformation of the Congolese political system has a long way to go and requires a change in governance practices that will be the work of many years.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To avoid a descent into crisis and organise a consensual electoral process

To the government of DRC:

1.  Affirm its commitment to respecting the constitution, in particular the two-term limit for President Kabila, and the timeframe for presidential and legislative elections.

2.  Guarantee the right of free expression for the people, civil society and the opposition and abstain from arresting and harassing opponents.

3.  Make available to the CENI the necessary financial resources in a transparent manner.

4.  Reinforce judicial structures that have election responsibilities, such as the tribunaux de grande instance (civil court) and the Constitutional Court.

5.  Open an inclusive dialogue on the nature and speed of decentralisation, in particular the installation of local authorities that will organise local elections in the future.

To the government of DRC, opposition parties, civil society and the CENI:

6.  Establish a permanent and institutionalised working dialogue, with the aim of reaching consensus on the electoral calendar, the voter list, the opening of political space, among other issues.

7.  Amend the electoral calendar and cancel the completion of the 2011 electoral cycle (provincial, Senate and local elections). Concentrate instead on the organisation of the presidential and legislative polls on 27 November 2016, possibly in combination with provincial elections.

8.  Establish in close cooperation with international actors, in particular MONUSCO, an inclusive conflict prevention, security and dispute resolution strategy (including MONUSCO force deployment and local monitoring) as a pre-condition for local elections.

To the CENI:

9.  Prioritise building and maintaining maximum consensus on the entire electoral process.

10.  Communicate regularly and with full transparency its decisions, progress and challenges implementing the electoral calendar through a publically accessible platform and the media.

11.  Work transparently with the opposition, electoral experts, civil society and the government on the creation of legitimate and comprehensive voter rolls.

12.  Collaborate closely with the media, civil society, the government, opposition and international partners on a public awareness and voter education campaign.

To the opposition political parties:

13.  Create an inter-party structure to improve coordination on electoral issues.

To key donors and international partners (UN, African Union, Southern African Development Community, International Conference for the Great Lakes Region, European Union, U.S., France, UK and Belgium):

14.  Send a ministerial delegation composed of UN, African Union (AU), EU and U.S. representatives to initiate a dialogue with the president and relevant Congolese stakeholders about the electoral process. Follow up this dialogue with the group of special envoys. The key message should be full commitment to the constitution by the president and government, highlighting that non-compliance would have a serious impact on international support.

15.  Streamline the positions of and communication by the ambassadors’ working group coordinated by the special representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) in Kinshasa.

16.  Provide consistent backing to the mandated good offices efforts of the UN special envoy for the Great Lakes Region and the SRSG with regard to the elections.

17.  Concentrate financial and material support on voter registration and training of election officials to help ensure the timely and well-organised 2016 presidential and legislative polls, as well as civil society monitoring and voter education.

18.  Send adequately staffed, long-term observation missions and ensure close communication and collaboration between them.

19.  Assess and review progress in the electoral process, as is foreseen in Security Council Resolution 2211, and suspend support to the electoral process and the Congolese security forces if the president and government continue to prevaricate on the two-term limit. In case of important delays and blatant disregard for the two-term limit, review public development aid and consider revising MONUSCO’s mandate.

The post Congo: Is Democratic Change Possible? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Today, the ‘poorest of the poor’ are superfluous to empire and thus the policy of genocide. The current world war between the classes has become a war between exterminators and those who would fight to survive!

‘The war and its results have turned Yemen back a hundred years, due to the destruction of infrastructure . . . especially in the provinces of Oden, Dhalea and Taiz.’ — Izzedine al-Asbali, Yemeni Human Rights Minister

‘Yemen is devastated. There are no roads, water or electricity. Nobody’s left but thieves.’ — A resident of Sana (Yemen)

Introduction

The Euro-American and Japanese ruling classes, as well as their collaborators in the Afro-Asian and Latin American countries, have accumulated vast profit. This has occurred through a complex stratified system re-concentrating the world’s wealth through: 1. The exploitation of labor in the First World (North America and Western Europe); 2. super-exploitation of labor in the Second World (China, ex-USSR); 3. dispossession of peasants, native communities and urban dwellers to grab resources, land and real estate in the Third World; and 4. wars of genocide against the poorest of the poor in the ‘Fourth World’. Besides all the forms of brutal exploitation and dispossession, which enrich the Euro-US ruling classes, by far the most sinister and threatening to humanity is the concerted worldwide effort to literally exterminate the poorest-of-the poor, the hundreds of millions of people no longer essential for the accumulation and concentration of imperial capital today.

This essay will begin by mapping the genocidal wars against ‘the wretched of the earth’, identifying the geography of genocide, the countries and subjects under attack, and the trajectory, which has been chosen and executed by the leaders of the Euro-American regimes.

Then we will examine the reason for genocide within the dynamics and forms of contemporary capitalism. In particular, we will develop the genocide hypothesis: that imperial genocide of the poorest of the poor is a deliberate policy to reduce the growing surplus labor, which is no longer needed or wanted for wealth accumulation but is increasingly feared as a potential political threat.

In the last section, we will discuss how the ‘wretched of the earth’ are responding to this policy of imperial genocide and what is to be done.

Mapping Genocide Against the Poorest of the Poor

It is no coincidence that the most violent assaults and invasions by the Euro-American powers have taken place against the poorest countries in each region of the world. In the Western hemisphere, the Euro-US regimes have repeatedly invaded the absolutely poorest country, Haiti, overthrowing the popularly elected Aristide government, decimating the population via a cholera epidemic spread by UN mercenary ‘peace-keepers’, killing tens of thousands of poor Haitians and rounding up thousands of protestors. The occupation continues. Honduras, the second poorest country in the region, experienced a US-backed coup d’état deposed their recently elected president and imposed a terrorist puppet regime, which regularly assassinates dissidents and landless rural workers. Peasants are dispossessed; the economy and society are in shambles with tens of thousands of Hondurans (especially children) fleeing the violence.

Today, the Euro-American powers actively support the absolutist regime of Saudi Arabia as it bombS and slaughters thousands of Yemeni civilians and resistance fighters. Yemen is the poorest country in the Gulf region.

In South Asia, the US invaded and occupied Afghanistan; its coalition of puppets and NATO allies have massacred and displaced millions of poor farmers and civilians. Afghanistan is the poorest of the poor countries in the region.

In Africa, the Euro-American powers and their local collaborators have invaded, bombed and occupied Somalia, Chad and Mali – among the poorest of sub-Sahara countries.

After the US-NATO campaign of destruction against Libya, 1.5 million sub-Saharan Africans and black citizens of Libya lost their stable employment and became the victims of ethnic slaughter. Their attempts to escape the violence and starvation by fleeing to Europe are blocked by the leading powers (the same powers that destroyed the Libyan economy and society). Those, who do not drown in their flight, are detained and returned to their devastated countries and early deaths.

In Western Europe, millions of Greeks, Spaniards and Portuguese, inhabiting the poorest countries in the region, have faced massive job losses, widespread impoverishment and spiraling suicides – all induced by austerity programs designed to pillage their economies and enrich their Euro-US creditors.

In the United States, 1.5 million black (mostly male) Americans, are ‘missing’ – products of early death, industrial-scale incarceration and police assassinations. American Indian communities are subject to depredations and early death from the policies of the Federal and State governments. Their lands have been handed over to mining (and now fracking) to serve the interests of the mining and agro-business elite. Throughout the US Latino agricultural workers are increasingly viewed as ‘expendable’ with technology and the effects of global climate change (such as the severe drought in California) depriving them of livelihood.

In the Levant, Palestinians, now the poorest of the poor and the most disenfranchised, face continued Israeli land grabs, pillage and violence in the West Bank and genocidal attacks in Gaza. Iraq and Syria have experienced millions of deaths and displacements, reducing previously prosperous, educated and sophisticated multi-ethnic populations into impoverished, uprooted and desperate people deliberately driven backwards to tribal loyalties.

Why Imperialism ‘Genocides the Poorest of the Poor’

With the exception of Iraq and Syria, all of the violated countries have been poor in resources and markets, and possess large unskilled labor. The people are targeted and savaged because they no longer serve as ‘labor reserves’ – they are now excess-surplus labor – in Nazi racial hygiene terminology, they have become ‘useless mouths to feed’. This has intensified as crisis engulfs the West and the least productive sectors of capitalism, finance, real estate and insurance (FIRE), have become the leading sectors of capital. ‘Cheap labor’ is less needed, least of all overseas labor from conflictual regions.

The ‘poorest of the poor’ countries under attack lack rich resources ripe for plunder; their populations do not exist among the priorities of the multi-national bankers – except when seen as ‘obstacles’. In the colonial past, sectors of these populations would have been recruited by imperial countries to submit, obey and serve as imperial mercenaries or coolie labor. They would have been transported and employed by empire for ‘dirty’, dangerous and poorly paid jobs in other colonized countries – like the millions of Indians scattered throughout the former British Empire. Today, such coolies have no value.

The genocidal nature of the wars against the ‘poorest of the poor’ is best demonstrated by the actual targets and primary victims of these wars: Millions of civilians, families, women, children and heads of households have suffered the worst. These ‘targets’ represent the most stable and essential elements responsible for family reproduction and security. The ‘poorest of the poor’ communities are being destroyed. Genocidal bombing has overwhelmingly targeted the essential factors for survival: cohesive households, communal settings, subsistence food growing regions and access to clean water. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that marriage ceremonies and traditional social gatherings have been ‘mistaken targets’ of missiles and drone strikes. Despite the denials from the White House, the geographic extent and nauseating number of such attacks demonstrate that according to the ‘genocide hypothesis’ there is ‘nowhere to hide’: The targeted populations will have no marriage celebrations, no social life, no increase in children among the poorest of the poor, no protection for the elders, no social fabric and no communal organizations – there will be no survival networks left for the superfluous of empire.

The ‘genocide hypothesis’ underlies the practice of ‘total war’. The practice includes massive attacks on non-military targets (‘Shock and Awe’) and the use of high tech weaponry to target collectives of the poorest of the poor – repeatedly, over long periods of time and wide geographic regions.

If, as the apologists of genocidal wars claim, the bombings of weddings and slaughter of school children are ‘collateral’ in the ‘Global War on Terror’ why are they happening everywhere in the fourth world and virtually everyday?

The genocide hypothesis best explains the data. Even the terminology and claims made by imperialist experts regarding their weapons systems support the genocide hypothesis. These weapons, we are told, are ‘intelligent, precise and highly accurate’ in targeting and destroying ‘the enemy’. By their own admission, then, the poorest of the poor have become ‘the enemy’, as imperial weapons makers support ‘intelligent’ genocide with ‘precision’.

When liberals and leftists criticize how imperial drone strikes kill civilians, instead of ‘armed terrorists’, they are missing the essential point of the policy. The prime purpose of the wars and the imperial weapons of mass destruction is to kill the largest number of the very poorest in the shortest time.

No member of the financial-high tech capitalist class has ever complained about the mass killing of the ‘poorest of the poor’ anywhere or at any time because the victims are, for the purpose of accumulating imperial profit and concentrating wealth superfluous. The poorest don’t figure into the formulae of profit and productivity; they don’t ‘make or take’ markets. On the other hand, their continued existence is a potential liability. They are aesthetically unappealing on the outskirts of luxury resorts. To the rich, they represent a desperate criminal element and they may pose a real or imagined ‘terrorist’ threat. For these reasons, the rich would ‘prefer’ that they would quietly cease to exist, or if the warlords have to dispose of them, the world will be a safer and more attractive place to accumulate wealth. ‘Let them kill each other, as they have done for millennia’, the empire piously opines and the bankers and their high tech allies can use their military and mercenaries without soiling their own hands. The elite ignore the mass immiseration while the militarists bomb ‘the problem’ out of existence.

Today genocide occurs in once vibrant living and working communities, not hidden in ‘concentration camps’. The secret ovens and gas chambers have been replaced by an ‘open range’ of incendiary weapons that end lives, burn neighborhoods and workshops, devastate livestock and crops. Those who survive the bombing are starved, enclosed, malnourished and inflicted with disease. Eminent doctors tell us that the misery is ‘self-inflicted’ and that the poorest of the poor are ignorant and lack healthy habits. Recurrent epidemics from HIV to cholera to Ebola are quintessential ‘4th world diseases’. Even though the Caribbean had not seen cholera for over a century, its introduction into Haiti via the bowels of imperial mercenary troops (UN peacekeepers from Nepal) was blamed on the Haitians’ lack of access to clean water! Not since the small pox blankets passed out by the US Army to freezing Native Americans in their concentration camps of the 19th century have we heard such apologists for genocide!

The truth about genocide is that all this is known, repeatedly documented and forgotten. White workers in the First World cannot even register these ‘facts’ under their own noses, let alone express any form of solidarity. Imperial genocide, committed by proactive militarists and ‘passive’ rich elites, are no secret even if they deny their complicity. The key word here is ‘mission’. ‘Mission Accomplished’ was the celebratory banner over the total destruction of Iraq. The warlords claim rewards for successfully completing ‘the mission’. Yemenis are dying under US-supplied Saudi bombs; Somalis are scattered in tens of thousands of tents to the four corners of the earth; Haitians continue to enjoy the ‘gift of cholera’ from UN ‘peacekeepers’ and rot in massive open air prison-slums – their leaders imprisoned or assassinated.

The Poorest of the Poor Respond

In the face of genocide and their irrelevance to the profit motive of modern high tech and finance capital, the poorest of the poor have chosen multiple responses: (1) Mass out-migration, preferable to the First World, where they won’t be bombed, raped or starved as they had been at ‘home’; (2) Internal migration to the cities, under the illusion of an ‘urban safe haven’ when in fact their concentration in slums makes it easier for the bombers; (3) return to the countryside and subsistence farming or the mountains and subsistence herding, but the missiles and drones relentlessly follow them; (4) mass flight to a neighboring country where the local gendarmes will ‘herd’ them into camps to rot and (5) finally resistance. Resistance takes various forms: There are spontaneous upheavals when the scope of abuse exceeds all endurance. This form involves attacking the local collaborators and gendarmes and authorities and sacking food warehouses. Such action burns briefly and dies (many times literally). Some choose to join armed resistance bands, including gangs of brigands, political ethno-religious rivals and terrorists who retaliate against authors of their genocide and its collaborators with their own version of justice and material and celestial rewards.

Total war from above and the outside breeds total war from the inside and below. The rebellion of the ‘wretched of the earth’ in the 21st century is far different from that portrayed by Franz Fanon in the middle of the last century. Fanon described a revolt against colonialism and neo-colonialism. Today the revolt is against deracination and genocide. During colonialism, the ‘wretched’ needed to be subdued to better exploit their labor and resources. Today, the ‘poorest of the poor’ are superfluous to empire and thus the policy of genocide. The current world war between the classes has become a war between exterminators and those who would fight to survive!

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