There is growing evidence that recent extreme winter weather in the United States an the United Kingdom could be linked to arctic warming.

Professor Edward Hanna and PhD student Richard Hall, from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Geography, are part of a select group of international climate scientists investigating links between Arctic climate change and extreme weather in the northern mid-latitudes.

They have found that while it is too soon to know for certain whether the Arctic played a role in persistent cold events during the extreme wet UK winter of 2013/14 and recent USA East Coast winters, new studies are adding to the growing weight of evidence linking increased Arctic temperatures with changes in mid-latitude weather patterns.

The research published in the Journal of Climate by Professor James Overland of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and authors from North America, Asia and Europe, including Professor Hanna and Richard Hall, paints a picture of links that vary by region and season.

Arctic temperatures are increasing two to three times faster than those at the mid-latitudes. Some scientists have suggested that warming Arctic temperatures contribute to weaker upper level westerly winds and a wavier jet stream. This wavier path may have caused cold weather conditions to stall over the eastern seaboard and midwest United States during recent winters, according to these theories.

Professor Hanna and Richard Hall note increased variability of the jet stream in winter and high pressure over Greenland, which has given more variable UK winters in the last few years. This includes the exceptionally stormy winter of 2013/14 which could have been partly influenced by climate change in the Arctic.

Professor Hanna said: “Our work presents tantalising new evidence of links between global warming, which is enhanced in high northern latitudes, and recent extreme winter weather events in the UK and further afield, as well as a timely review of much recent literature which has appeared in this important field of research. However, since the climate system is highly complex, many missing parts of the puzzle remain and much further work needs to be done.”

Professor Overland, lead author of the paper The melting Arctic and mid-latitude weather patterns: Are they connected? added: “We are in the pre-consensus stage of a theory that links continued warming of the Arctic with some severe weather events.”

A way to advance research from a pre-consensus stage is to further investigate the meandering jet stream and the connection between the warmer Arctic and the negative phase of an index showing the dominant pattern of sea level air pressure in the Arctic.

“We are where other major theories such as plate tectonics and El Niño were before they were widely accepted,” said Professor Overland.

“We need a Grand Science Challenge to advance weather forecasting abilities and climate change prediction.”

New studies on the changing Arctic together with additional Arctic observations will improve the ability to make forecasts for the mid-latitudes, helping millions of people better plan for the future and take steps to be more resilient in the face of extreme weather.

The post New Evidence Links Arctic Warming With Severe Weather Including US, UK appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Vyjayanti Raghavan Professor*

Narendra Modi, who has visited 17 countries in the one year that he’s been Prime Minister, made his latest stop in South Korea at the end of a three-nation Asian tour that took him to China and Mongolia.

In Korea, he talked about ‘Make in India’. He talked about Asian Unity. He talked about defence cooperation. He talked about international institutions and the need to reform them. He talked about security dialogues.

India and Korea signed seven agreements, described in the MEA’s usual way as ‘wide-ranging’. But the question now is: What are they worth and will India meet Korean expectations, especially on the economic side?

If the past is anything to go by, the Koreans may well be in for a disappointment. After all, P V Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh in their time had also invited Korea’s small and medium scale firms to come and invest in India. To date, however, there are only 300 Korean firms functioning in India. Their number is growing, but at a snail’s pace.

Hare and tortoise

The main reason is that India and Korea have very different notions of time. One places very little value on it; the other thinks the only way to live is in a hurry, what they call palli, palli (jaldi, jaldi or seekram, seekram, as we might say in Hindi or Tamil).

For the past 40 years, the talk has been there but the walk is missing. Every time an Indian PM goes there, starting with Rao in 1993, to the latest by Narendra Modi, we hear all the right noises. Some progress, like on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, is even made.

But it all remains on paper, except perhaps in the field of education where the connections have indeed widened and deepened. In fact, the political, strategic and cultural dimensions of the India-Korea relationship remain almost at the same level where they were 30 years ago — in the realm of hope and possibilities.

There’s much that could be done if only we could get our act together. Nothing exemplifies this more than the POSCO fiasco. It has come to define the relationship.

The story is worth retelling. Korea came to India with a $12 billion investment proposal in 2005, the largest FDI project that any country had brought in till then. I was in Korea when the news broke and there was much excitement: the Koreans thought this would be their gateway to the 1.2 billion people Indian market for their goods.

They were in for a big surprise. They soon realised that the Indian system did not function in any way that they had ever encountered anywhere in the world. They simply could not fathom its ellipses.

They have waited patiently — and are doing so even now. But time is running out, just the way the MOU did. It came up for renewal in 2011 and the Koreans just let it slide.

If Modi really wants to send a message that India is serious about Korea – over-ruling the External Affairs ministry’s arrogance that the Koreans have no place else to go – he will switch to Korean time for the execution of whatever the two countries agree to do together. Indian standard time will simply not do.

For Koreans promises made must be kept. ‘Yaksok’ in Korean means both a promise and an appointment. Both are sacrosanct. Neither the promise nor the time schedule can be reneged upon.

Unfortunately the Indian style ‘vaada’ is only a verbal promise and like everything else can be changed to suit the context. In this case, India would be a big loser as the Koreans now have no dearth of countries waiting for their investments.

What next

Net-net, India has to get its act together on the economic side because this will then propel cooperation in other areas like marine technology, space technology, ship building, nuclear technology, green technology, R&D in defence and maritime security etc. They could pursue broader joint engagement in global forums like the WTO, G-20, the east Asia Summit, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, that Asean is floating as a free trade area for the Asean+6 countries, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and perhaps the Trans-Pacific Patnership (that currently excludes India) too.

Once Korea is convinced that India means business, they will support it in all forums including for a permanent position at the UN Security Council.

Let’s not forget how, when the going became good on the economic front, the Koreans went to great lengths to ferret out historical linkages between the two nations. They trotted out the story of an Ayodhya princess sailing to Korea and marrying a Korean king and starting an Indian bloodline; they spotted Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry; then came talk about Gandhiji’s influence and, the similarity between Tamil and Korean, not to mention the similarity in folk games like gilli-danda and Jachigi!

India’s turn

Personally speaking – and here I am in total sync with Modi – one area where I think we could greatly benefit from the Koreans is in acquiring professionalism. The commitment to deliver what has been promised and the lengths to which they can stretch themselves in order to adhere to an agreed time-frame is something worth emulating.

That said, it’s not been an entirely dreary story. India-Korea bilateral trade has grown from a mere $500 million in the early 1990s to about $18 billion now. Korean electronic products, mobile phone handsets and even cars have managed to push out many other giants, including Japanese ones, and grab a sizeable portion of the market through what they call their ‘nunchi’ power — the power to sense what the sangdaebang or ‘the other party’ wants.

But this is a case of been there, done that. Now the time has come to push the relationship further.

The responsibility for this is entirely India’s.

*Vyjayanti Raghavan, Professor, Centre for Korean Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Note: This commentary was originally published on 19 May 2015 by The Wire, and has been republished with permission from the author.

The post Forget About Wooing Korea On Indian Standard Time – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The US’s inaction vis-a-vis ISIS’s recent assault and capture of the Iraqi provincial capital of Ramadi has raised fresh questions about the true intentions and motives of Obama’s “ISIS strategy.” According to reports from Iraq, despite a passionate plea by the Iraqi military officials to rush air cover for the Ramadi defenders, the US responded with token delayed action — that proved a remedy too little and late.

Hardly surprising, this actually fits in with the pattern of US’s behavior already observed with respect to, among others, Mosul and Kobane, as well as Tikrit. Despite a loud pledge of putting the US’s mighty power to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the ISIS terrorists, President Obama has been considerably less than forceful in his commitment, thus raising questions about the US’s motives.

In the past few days, the US media and some US politicians have been critical of Obama’s “failed strategy” to contain the menace of ISIS, yet few have raised the pertinent question of whether or not the egregious shortcomings of this strategy are deliberate and self-imposed, in light of US’s overall Middle East and Persian Gulf strategy, which is nowadays fully geared to the objective of carving up nations, e.g., Iraq and Syria, and thus sustaining the traditional U.S. hegemony? Such questions are simply not entertained by the mainstream U.S. media and its various think tanks.

As a result, there is a growing gap between the U.S.’s declared anti-ISIS policies and the actual policies that fall dreadfully short of the latter and, worse, indicate a built-in ambiguity regarding U.S.’s ISIS intentions, as well as the intention of other members of the “coalition,” which has dwindled since last September to a handful from over two dozen nations. Some local members of that coalition, namely the Arab states of Gulf Cooperation Council, have been too busy attacking the Shiite Houthis in Yemen to focus on ISIS, although as the UN Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki-Moon has rightly warned, the war in Yemen opens the “corridor to ISIS.”

In fact, Obama’s “ISIS strategy” increasingly looks like a half-baked non-strategy consisting of limited air sorties and rare ground operations, such as last week’s special operation deep inside Syrian territory, which has raised other questions in terms of whether or not the actual motive was a ‘trial run’ at military intervention in war-torn Syria, where the armed opposition is slated to receive U.S. military training? In other words, is the U.S. using the excuse of ISIS to other ends?

If so, undoubtedly Washington is playing with fire that will backfire and enhance the threat of terrorism against it, all the more reason to avoid short-sighted policies that ignore the multiple side-effects harmful to U.S.’s own interests. To remove the ISIS’s “tumor” as pledged by Obama requires a much greater degree of U.S. policy transparency than hitherto observed, otherwise the current mix of token action and inaction will have long-term deleterious consequences for both regional stability and global peace.

As the Iran nuclear talks make steady progress toward a final deal, the stage is set for broader U.S.-Iran dialogue on regional and security issues, in light of the recent statement of Iran’s Supreme Leader that once the nuclear issue is resolved then “other issues” may be discussed as well. The evolution of the nuclear talks to broader bilateral talks is, however, only possible if the U.S. backtracks from its occasional menacing posture toward Iran, which in turn invoke the image of an unreconstructed U.S. approach terminally wedded to Manichean enemy image of Iran, which is hardly in tune with the more complex reality on the ground featuring areas of shared U.S.-Iran interests and concerns, such as with respect to Afghanistan and narco-traffic. The chasm between the subjective misperceptions of Iran and the objective reality aforementioned must be addressed by U.S. policy-makers, who are constantly engaged in a balancing act with respect to competing allies.

Clearly, sacrificing the U.S.’s interests for the sake of other parties, including some states in the region, does not hold for a rational policy. Unfortunately, some of those states, who view the ISIS as operating on the Shiite-Sunni ‘fault line,’ are equally blind to the negative results of their hidden and sometimes not so hidden support for ISIS and other like-minded takfiri groups. A region-wide security dialogue involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and other stakeholders in regional stability is desperately needed today, which is held back partly as a result of U.S.’s divisive approach that inhibits regional cooperation.and manipulates the “Iran threat” for its own hegemonic purposes.

In conclusion, Obama’s “ISIS strategy” increasingly reminds one of General Electric’s ‘planned obsolecence’ of its light bulbs, that could have a longer life-span in the absence of corporate greed. Same thing with a Western superpower that can achieve greater success against the ISIS terrorists if it were not handicapped by the inherent defects of that strategy.– that are in dire need of correction.

The post Questions On Obama’s ‘ISIS Strategy’ – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The latest round of cross-party mediation with the Macedonian Prime Minister and leader of the Opposition was prolonged and saw commitment to the European perspective, mediator Richard Howitt MEP said in a speech to the European Parliament Wednesday.

The spokesperson for the Socialist Democrat Group in the European Parliament warned against one-sided criticisms, said there must be political accountability over the country’s wiretap scandal and warned Europe must live up to its own responsibility in relation to the recent deadly terrorist attack in the country.

The full text of Richard Howitt MEP’s speech is as follows:

“President, we meet on the day after the latest cross-party mediation talks whose contents must remain confidential, but in a process in which I am proud to take part on behalf of my Group, a meeting last night which was prolonged, which able to deal with the contentious issues, where commitment to the European perspective was agreed and in a process which is continuing.

“To fellow Members of the European Parliament, let me make some comments of my own not about the talks but about the country.

“First, one-sided calls to end the parliamentary boycott on their own without taking decisive measures to address the failings of the political institutions, is a partisan not a cross-party answer and therefore is not an answer.

“Second, my Group has never actively supported any parliamentary boycott or even publication of wiretap tapes, and members of the EPP Group – not Mr Kukan – should show the same discipline by not blaming the opposition or indeed my own group, if jointly we are to succeed.

“Third, that no-one suggests the leaked surveillance tapes which prompted this crisis are entirely fabricated, and that this European Parliament should support the demarche from EU ambassadors that there must be accountability for the wrongdoing uncovered.

“Fourth, that reforms of the very issues which have caused concern – the judiciary, the media, electoral practices, civil society – have already been part of progress reports, action plans and the high level accession dialogue – so that any fresh commitment to address them must demonstrate why this time it will be different?

“And fifth, that no-one is above the law but if the opposition leader is put in jail, our solidarity would not just be with him, but with the very notion of democracy in the country, which would be questioned by such a step.

“President.

“Last weekend I stood at the site of the terror attack in Kumanovo amidst burnt out houses whose walls were pockmarked with bullet holes and where the view through shattered windows revealed interiors buried in rubble. The families I talked to hid for their lives from a 30 hour firefight and suffered the trauma of witnessing 18 people dead.

“We all hope this was a one-off event with no repercussions for inter-ethnic relations, but where those families told me they believed the event to be linked to the breakdown of political stability.

“Lack of trust which is itself dangerous.

“I have repeatedly warned that Europe’s failure to start accession talks risks a return to conflict and this deadly attack is a tragic and urgent reminder that this warning is crying out to be heard.

“What happened in Kumanovo and in the country may not be the direct responsibility of Europe.

“But if we expect the political parties of the country to exercise their responsibilities, as we do, they can reasonably expect Europe to exercise our own.”

The post ‘Macedonian Talks Prolonged, But Risks Of Political Instability Crying To Be Heard’ appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The sixth annual South Asian Regional Conference on International Humanitarian Law (IHL) jointly organized by the Government of Sri Lanka and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is being held in Colombo from 19-21 May 2015.

Welcoming the opportunity of hosting the Conference in Colombo for the first time, Deputy Foreign Minister Ajith P Perera, Chief Guest at the opening of the Conference, remarked that the deliberations of this event would be important to ensure that the Humanitarian Law regime keeps pace with the evolving nature of armed conflict. Thanking ICRC for the remarkable work that it has been carrying out in Sri Lanka for 25 years, the Deputy Minister commented that the Government looks forward for more close cooperation with the ICRC in future, to address the humanitarian needs of the people in the country.

Approximately 40 nominated individuals representing key ministries, parliaments, the judiciary and the armed forces in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, the Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan are participating in the conference.

Sri Lanka is represented by officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Attorney General’s department, the Legal Draftsman’s department and the Sri Lanka Army. Experts in IHL from the region and the ICRC will be resource persons for the event where participants will share their perspectives on IHL and work together towards heightened recognition of and compliance with this body of law.

“Over the years, international humanitarian law had to respond to the evolving nature of armed conflicts”, said Cherine Pollini, the head of the delegation of the ICRC in Sri Lanka. “The theme of the conference, which is ‘IHL: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow’, reflects these challenges and developments, some of which will be deliberated on at the forum”, she added.

The first South Asian Conference on international humanitarian law was co- organized by the ICRC and the Government of Nepal in 2009. Since then the ICRC has organized four more conferences with governments in the region: Bangladesh (2010), Maldives (2011), Bhutan (2012) and Nepal (2014).

The ICRC promotes respect for international humanitarian law on the basis of its internationally recognized mandate under the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols.

The post Sri Lanka Hosts Forum On International Humanitarian Law appeared first on Eurasia Review.

On Tuesday, Spain deposited the instrument ratifying the European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement at the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union. This has taken place following due authorization from the Spanish Parliament along with the signature of H.M. the King.

According to the Spanish government, the ratification is evidence of Spain’s firm commitment to Ukraine. This Association Agreement constitutes a key element in the development of relations between Ukraine and the European Union and includes an ambitious reformist agenda operating to the mutual benefit of society in both Europe and Ukraine. The Association Agreement also provides for the establishment of a free trade zone with a broad and far-reaching scope.

Georgia and Moldova have also signed similar association agreements with the European Union. Spain is finalizing the internal ratification process of both agreements, which are currently in their passage through the Spanish Upper House of Parliament.

Within the European Neighbourhood Policy – together with Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia and Moldova – Ukraine forms part of the Eastern Partnership with the EU. On Thursday 21 and Friday 22 of May, the EU will hold its fourth summit with the countries making up the Eastern Association in Riga. As regards the Southern Neighbourhood, the EU and its Member States met with their Mediterranean partners on 13 April in Barcelona, in what constituted the first regional meeting of EU Foreign Affairs Ministers with their Mediterranean partners since 2008.

The post Spain Ratifies European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Hari Bansh Jha*

What took centuries to build, the deadly 7.9 magnitude earthquake on April 25 destroyed in a few seconds. The multiplier effect of the earthquake is great. It will take us several decades to rebuild destroyed infrastructure. But thousands of lives will never be recovered.

According to United Nations, nearly 600,000 houses have been either completely destroyed or damaged in the earthquake. Latest estimate has it that 200,000 houses have been reduced to rubble. In Sindhupalchowk, there were 66,000 houses before the earthquake; only 1,000 are left standing. Nearly 45,000 private houses have been completely damaged in Gorkha district. In Bhaktapur, a quarter of the city has been razed; while a half of it is abandoned. As many as 10,718 government buildings have been devastated; while 14,741 have been partially damaged. The number of affected schools is close to 5,000. In Kathmandu, 80 percent of ancient buildings, temples and monuments are completely destroyed. In the big picture, of the 5.4 million houses in Nepal, 7.5 percent are completely damaged.

Unfortunately, tremors continue to rock the country even after ten days of the first earthquake. As per official figures, the earthquake death toll has now reached 7,557 (as of this writing). Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has said the death toll could reach 10,000. But there are experts who believe Koirala’s estimates are “uninformed” and the real number of deaths could be around 26,000. On the basis of calculation of Max Wyss of the Geneva-based International Centre for Earth Simulation (ICES), the death toll in Nepal due to earthquake could cross 100,000.

Nepal’s official version is that 14,536 people were injured. But here too experts estimate the number of injured between 94,000 and 321,000. Nearly eight million of 28 million Nepalis are directly or indirectly affected. Of the 1.7 million affected children, 260,000 have lost everything, including their homes, warm clothes and families. They need urgent help.

While a large number of children have been orphaned, many women have become widows. Others have lost their sons, daughters, parents and beloved ones. In this situation, the risk of uncared children and women getting abused or trafficked has intensified. Worse still is the situation of 126,000 pregnant women who are directly or indirectly affected by the quake.

Even among survivors, more than 25,000 are in dire need of immediate psychological intervention. They have become depressed. Serious mental health crisis caused by the death of near and dear ones have resulted in suicidal tendencies among different people. Additionally, in many parts of the country the stench from human corpses and dead livestock trapped under rubble has created potential public health disasters. As many people are compelled to live under tents or under open skies, they don’t have access to even temporary latrines, water, food and medicines. Many of them defecate out in the open haphazardly. Garbage is yet to be collected from our houses and public places. As such, there has been spike in water-borne diseases like fever, diarrhea and pneumonia in all the affected regions. If we fail to take precautionary measures, other diseases might crop up as well.

Transporting goods overland is a major challenge as roads are blocked by landslides. In such a situation, rescue and relief operation have become Kathmandu-centric. All of the 12 worst-hit districts in Nepal—including Sindhupalchowk, Kavrepalanchowk, Dolakha and Gorkha—are still beyond the reach of rescue and relief teams. Even in Kathmandu valley, many people are still complaining that they are without any rescue and relief support.

In the meantime, prices of essential goods and services have skyrocketed partly due to the lack of supply and partly due to rampant profiteering. People’s wrath against the government, political leaders, I/NGOs and other concerned organizations is growing for their failure to come to their aid on time. Media reports have it that mountains of rescue and relief materials are piling up at Tribhuvan International Airport and at Birgunj Customs, but to what effect?

Despite this crisis, custom authorities are yet to relax their strict customs restrictions in the inflow of relief materials from overseas. The government says that it wants to inspect goods coming into the country. But if that is so, how did “Beef Masala” enter Nepali territories? Even a child knows this is the most sensitive issue for the predominantly Hindu population.

Unfortunately, certain organizations are trying to serve their vested interests, at the cost of the quake victims. Again, as per media reports, certain western Christian missionaries are planning to convert more and more Nepalis, taking advantage of their helplessness after the earthquake.

Our politicians have not helped matters either. Some leaders of left parties have given irresponsible statements that the Indian rescue and relief missions posed security threat to the nation. To the contrary, India once again won the hearts of the Nepali people for the urgency with which it provided rescue and relief assistance to quake victims in different parts of the country. In fact, India performed where the Nepali leaders failed. Besides, saving lives of many from under the rubble, Indian teams not only helped evacuate their own nationals stranded in this country, but many foreign nationals from difficult places on humanitarian ground. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi even vowed to wipe the tears of each and every Nepali as he felt that Nepal’s pain was that of India as well.

Life of each citizen is important—no matter whether that person lives in Kathmandu or in the peripheries of the country. Therefore, every effort should be made to bail out the people from distress in all affected districts. But the government has instead immaturely asked foreign rescue and relief teams to return to their home countries. The situation is that Nepalis should be cautious of their own government for its inept handling of post-earthquake efforts while they have every reason to be thankful to the individuals and organizations that have extended their whole-hearted support at this difficult juncture.

* Hari Bansh Jha
Professor of Economics and Executive Director, Centre for Economic and Technical Studies, Nepal

Note: This commentary was originally published on 5 May 2015 by My Republica and has been republished with permission from the author.

The post Nepal Earthquake: How Rescue Efforts Played Out – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

While there are no absolute preconditions to sustainable human development there are undoubtedly conditions conducive to such development. Enabling local communities to plan and implement their future in an empowering decentralized environment is a recipe for success on an historic scale in this respect.

By Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir*

After fifteen years of nations pursuing the Millennium Development Goals established by the United Nations, representatives of the member states, along with experts and private citizens, have defined Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to help set the course for the next fifteen years.

All told seventeen goals have been developed which together aim to end poverty and hunger; ensure access to health and education for all; achieve gender equality as well as greater equality between individuals and nations; and protect the environment, combat climate change and promote sustainable growth.

One critical SDG involves the strengthening of the means by which nations can implement the overall vision. Is there proven methodology that member states can consider and adopt in this regard, even as the challenges and opportunities they face are as diverse as humanity itself? We suggest four specific factors that are applicable in this case.

First, we know from decades of global project development evaluations that people’s participation from design to evaluation is the primary factor in determining whether sustainability will be achieved. In order to promote effective community participation, an administrative system that is decentralized will empower local populations to make decisions and assume responsibility for implementing the social change they seek. Since sustainable development is a reflection of the extent to which people own their particular development process, it follows that institutionalizing local open spaces so that people can come together and build partnerships and shared action plans is of paramount importance in achieving the SDGs.

A fortuitous occurrence is that in global terms decentralization is on the rise, albeit for different reasons in different countries. In a number of Arab Spring nations, for example, the promotion of human development and popular empowerment is – rightfully – part of a calculated attempt to avoid political instability.

A second necessary measure at the national level is capacity building among stakeholders to advance projects that achieve the SDGs. Specifically, there is a critical role to be performed by facilitators of local community meetings and dialogue in order to promote participation. Trained facilitators help to ensure that all voices are represented and heard. Further, they are aware of pre-existing power relationships and how to engage with these so as to guide a development process in a manner that is broadly based and just.

Third, it would be helpful if measures for sustainable implementation were described in culturally relative terms. In many societies the enduring precepts of people’s participation in communal life leading to sustainable societies are informed fundamentally by Islam. Integrated Islamic and developmental concepts include shura, itself the practice of participation and consultation; ummah is the global integration of individuals and groups with rights to solidarities and part of humanity as a whole (decentralization); baya in Islamic tradition holds leaders accountable; and tawhidi society is one that recognizes the indivisibility of mankind. Ensuring that participation and decentralization are explained in Islamic, rather than Western, terms would allow Muslim people to see their own outlook and values fully present and incorporated in the steps needed to implement the SDGs.

Developmental concepts are also present in the Biblical story of creation. “And God said, “Let us make Man in our image, after our likeness…”. What is meant by us? Jewish Sages recording a tradition dating back at least two thousand years explain that God included the angels in the decision to create humanity in order avoid conflict between the angels and humankind (by being part of the decision, angels accepted the outcome). God in effect created the blueprint for consulting with others before embarking upon initiatives. Only then did God create humankind who – by virtue of being formed in the Divine image – are enjoined to follow the Divine example.

Finally, policy development embarked upon by nations in order to achieve the SDGs, occurs sustainably and most suitably as local participatory processes unfold and light is shed naturally upon policy opportunities that promote sustainable development. People’s participation in a sense tests the social system. In this way for example, restrictions to the growth of civil society are clarified and the necessary roles that could be played by public agencies, in order to bring to fruition projects determined by local communities, may be defined in greater detail. In sum, the most effective policy development emerges from lessons gained from the experience of community participation in development.

In the same way as laws and policies to advance the human condition, the SDGs find their efficacy only in their processes of implementation. Indeed, in development and social processes generally, the means are the ends (or at least they determine them to a large extent). While there are no absolute preconditions to sustainable human development there are undoubtedly conditions conducive to such development. Enabling local communities to plan and implement their future in an empowering decentralized environment is a recipe for success on an historic scale in this respect.

*Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir is president of the High Atlas Foundation.

The post Implementing The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Nurzhanat Ametbek

Pakistan is an important pillar of China’s “One Belt, One Road”Initiative, whichrefers to “The Maritime Silk Road and The Silk Road Economic Belt”. Introduced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 during his visit to Kazakhstan, this policy framework foreseesthe development of several corridors across the region that will be built to boost regional economies to the tune of $2.5 trillion and to the benefitof a combined population of over 4.4 billion across 65 countries.

Among these corridors, The Maritime Silk Road will connect the Pacific coast to the Baltic Sea. With China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Yunnan province as starting points, The Silk Road Economic Belt will link China, Central Asia, Russia, and Europe, while also connecting China with the Persian Gulf, South East Asia, and the Indian Ocean.

Under the auspices of this series of projects, the China-Mongolia-Russia Land Corridor will be built with the Chinese province of Heilongjiang as its starting point; the China-India-Bangladesh-Myanmar Corridor will be built with Kolkata as its starting point; the China-Central Asia-West Asia Corridor will be built with China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as it starting point; and an exclusive China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will be built to connect the ports of Pakistan’s Gwadar with Xinjiang.

The initiative does not simply entail the building of roads, rails, and ports, instead it foresees the introduction of a comprehensive network of infrastructure development. The Asia Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB) will finance projects within the framework of this initiative. The BRICS New Development Bank, the Silk Road Fund, as well as the China-ASEAN Interbank Association and SCO Interbank Association will also offer funds.

Under this initiative, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a 2-day visit to Pakistan last month, during which time he signed various agreements amounting to an estimated $46 billion. These funds represent one of the first concrete acts in line with China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative as they will be devoted to the construction of roads, rails, and power plants which will be built on a commercial basis by Chinese companies over a 15-year period.

Economic focus

Mr. Xi’s visit aimed at establishing infrastructure and energy projects along the CPEC..Based on a report by Xinhua, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry the projects to be implemented along the CPEC in Pakistan would constitute the first initiative of the $40 billion Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road Project, envisioning an ambitious network of roads, rails and ports designed to link China to Europe through Central Asia and Russia and announced with considerable fanfare by Mr. Xi.

With this project, rail and road networks will be strengthened to allow Chinese goods to flow the length of Pakistan from its northern mountains to the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar. For China, this would provide a shorter, alternative route to major oil-producing countries, allowing it to bypass Southeast Asia’s Strait of Malacca, an overcrowded, relatively shallow sea lane troubled by pirates.

“The real opportunity of this China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is that it changes the scope of the relationship from geopolitics to geoeconomics”, Pakistan’s Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal was quoted by the Guardian as saying in reference to the trade corridor project that would tie the two countries’ economies together. China has come up with “a much larger financial commitment – and it is focused on a specific area, it has a signature infrastructure focus and it is a decades-long commitment”, he said.

Strategic focus

The $46billion that Xi Jinping’s visit to Pakistan has promised to its old ally is a figure that far exceeds U.S. spending in Pakistan, and it further underscores China’s projection of power in Asia.

The scale of Mr. Xi’s aid announcement greatly overshadows American efforts, which amounted to only$7.5 billion between 2009 and 2012 and have been designated for development projects in the country over a five-year period. Considering this, American aid to Pakistan has been deemed a “dramatic failure” by David S. Sedney, a former senior official at the Pentagon who was responsible for Pakistan, because these resources were scattered too thinly, and had no practical or strategic impact.

Yet the Chinese appear to have learned from the American program, including the notion imbedded therein that aid was designed to deliver a strategic result, namely to deter terrorism (a goal that ultimately failed). China has long regarded Pakistan as an unflinchingly loyal ally, while Pakistan sees China as a vital ally in its struggle against India and as a foil to US dominance. The Chinese are not just offering to build much-needed infrastructure in Pakistan but also to make the country a key partner in the grand economic and strategic plan that is seen in the One Belt, One Road Initiative.

Security focus

The question now being asked is: are such vast sums realistic for such an unstable nation as Pakistan, which is embroiled in a battle against domestic terrorist factions and struggling to attract significant foreign investment?
Security will be one of the biggest challenges for Pakistan and the CPEC project, not least in its poor province of Balochistan, which is home to the Gwadar Port as well as a decade-old separatist insurgency and numerous criminal gangs and Islamist militants. Even though the Pakistani Army has promised to crush the insurgency, the security of Chinese workers will continue to be a prime concern for Mr. Xi.

The New York Times reported that “as China faces growing restiveness in Xinjiang, which has borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, Beijing is attempting to help stem the flow of radicalism into its own backyard by bolstering development in perhaps the most vulnerable part of Pakistan”. China also wants to see Pakistan tackle the problem of Jihadi militants and for it to help end the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, especially given the links this group has with Muslim separatists in China’s own western region of Xinjiang.

To sum up, the One Belt, One Road Initiative will help China boost ties with countries and regions along its propose droutes, especially Pakistan. While many Chinese and Pakistani leaders have described their two countries’ relations as “higher than the Himalayas and deeper than the Indian Ocean”, the nature of the Chinese-Pakistani relationship is not that that simple. It should not be forgotten that the complex relationship includes a dynamic based on definite economic, strategic, and security concerns as well.

The post Pakistan In China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ Initiative – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Kalinga Seneviratne*

It was a well-spelled out 100-day program to rid the country of endemic political corruption presented to the electorate by challenger Maitripala Sirisena that helped to topple Sri Lanka’s powerful president Mahinda Rajapakse in a shock vote on January 8 this year.

The ‘100-day’ period expired on April 23 with most of its promises unfulfilled, except for a constitutional amendment that holds promise of cleaner government in the future. However, this has been overshadowed by the spectrum of the new government leaders showing more interest in mending fences with the West.

With western powers given to meddle with the island’s internal affairs again, many Sri Lankans are now openly expressing fears of the 30-year old ethnic conflict resurfacing creating the type of chaos currently seen in Libya and Syria.

These fears were further exacerbated after the recent visit of the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to the island on May 1 and 2, where he was blatantly trying to tell the new government how to run their domestic and foreign affairs. He even let the cat out of the bag when he unwittingly said in response to a journalist’s question that Sri Lanka will be holding parliamentary election “in the summer” after which Sri Lanka and the U.S. will develop a close strategic relationship.

After being elected to office, President Sirisena has been trying to play a very delicate balancing act. He was Rajapakse’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party’s (SLFP) general-secretary for over 15 years and his Health Minister until his defection to become the common opposition candidate after Rajapakse called for a snap presidential poll in November last year.

After his election victory, President Sirisena nominated as Prime Minister the leader of SLFP’s arch rival the United National Party’s (UNP) Ranil Wickemasinghe, whose party has only 45 seats in the parliament while the SLFP and its allies command 130 seats.

The UNP has traditionally been strong ally of the West, and particularly Wickremasinghe is well known to be very close to the U.S. and Norway, and he is widely seen in Sri Lanka as a politician whose interests are aligned more with the geopolitical needs of the West rather than the national interests of Sri Lanka and often labelled as anti-Buddhist.

With the SLFP badly divided at the moment between two factions – one backing Sirisena and the other allied to Rajapakse – a parliamentary election now could decimate the SLFP to provide Wickremasinghe’s UNP victory on a platter.

A Wickremasinghe-led government could see Sri Lanka align itself closely with the U.S. and the European Union, push back Chinese investments and scuttle China’s Maritime Silk Route project, where Sri Lanka’s China-built Hambantota harbour is a crucial lynchpin.

Kerry woos Buddhists

During his visit, it is interesting how Kerry was trying to woo Sri Lanka’s Buddhist majority who are largely suspicious of the West. He visited the island state on the eve of the Vesak festival, a grand festival in Sri Lanka over three days to mark the Buddha’s birth. He attended a widely publicized ceremony at one of the leading Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka, where the chief monk gave him a traditional blessing by placing a Buddhist relic on his head. He also made a public statement expressing understanding of Sri Lanka’s war against Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) terrorism.

“It is sometimes necessary to go to war, despite the pain it brings. For all of my country’s disagreements with the previous government in Sri Lanka over how it fought the LTTE, we clearly understood the necessity of ridding this country of a murderous terrorist group and the fear that it sowed,” said Kerry in a speech given at the Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations.

If the U.S. understood Sri Lanka’s need to eliminate the LTTE, one would ask why there was such a witch-hunt against the Rajapakse regime spearheaded by the U.S. at the UN Human Rights Council accusing the government of war crimes and threatening sanctions against the country?

The Council’s report recommending sanctions has been withheld until September and one would assume that it will be tabled in Geneva if the Sri Lankan voters, by then, haven’t elected a Wickremasinghe-led government. Kerry knows, that to achieve that aim, an election needs to be held soon and a substantial portion of the Sinhalese Buddhist vote needs to drift away from Rajapakse to Wickremasinghe.

Rajapakse back to power?

However, a movement to bring back Rajapakse to power as SLFP’s prime ministerial candidate at the general elections has been gathering steam in the past two months. His supporters from the SLFP and their former governing alliance of United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) have already held four mammoth rallies, which have drawn over 500,000 each time. They have been using a well-crafted slogan “panas ata laksha” (5.8 million voters) candidate. This refers to the national vote he garnered in the January 8 presidential elections in contrast to Sirisena’s 6.2 million votes.

The new regime’s own actions that contradicted its election slogan of heralding a ‘yahapalanaya’ (good governance) era has played into the hands of Rajapakse and his supporters. The appointment of a Finance Minister tainted with multi-million dollar money laundering allegation involving the disgraced American insider trader (now in a U.S. prison) Raj Rajaratnam and a huge financial scandal centred around the newly appointed Central Bank Governor – a close friend of Wickremasinghe – have dented the Sirisena government’s claim to good clean governance.

Rajapakse and his supporters have latched on to these claiming the January 8 elections was a “regime change” conspiracy hatched by the old imperial powers and India to overthrow a regime that was too close to China.

On the eve of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Sri Lanka in March, Rajapakse gave an interview to ‘The Hindu’ newspaper in which he said that January election result was an outcome of a conspiracy to change regime undertaken by RAW (India’s intelligence agency), the U.S., Norway and some other EU countries. But, he added that Modi was not involved in it.

Under Rajapakse, Sri Lanka was one of the earliest subscribers to China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) project that will challenge the Manila-based U.S.-Japan controlled Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) monopoly on development funding and policy management in the region. Interestingly, Sri Lanka’s Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake, after infamously accusing Chinese investors as being corrupt, has been negotiating intensely with ADB to get development funding.

Karunanayake and other government leaders have alleged that during the Rajapakse regime large-scale contracts have been given to Chinese companies financed by the Exim Bank of China, without issuing competitive tenders. They have also alleged that the Chinese have charged high interest rates for the loans.

A statement issued by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Sri Lanka (CCCSL) on April 26 rejected Karunanayake’s allegation. It pointed out that while Sri Lanka was raising money in the international bond market at 12 to 14 percent interest, China has provided Sri Lanka with billions of dollars worth of loans, more than half at 2 percent interest.

Karunanayake told the media after returning from an Asian Development Bank meeting on May 8 that the ADB will be increasing its funds three-fold to Sri Lanka because of the “remarkable initiatives adopted by the new Lankan government, with a key focus on good governance”.

U.S. and China playing a geopolitical battle

Thus it is interesting to see how the geopolitical battle between the U.S. and China in Asia is being played out in Sri Lanka, while corruption allegations used to silence anyone who may not be supportive of the western designs.

The U.S. and the EU hate Rajapakse because he ignored western attempts to interfere in Sri Lanka’s civil war in support of the LTTE and with help from China and Russia he was able to put an end to the war – the only instance in the ‘war on terror” era a country has been able to successfully eradicate a terror group.

In the aftermath of the end of the war, Sri Lanka’s infrastructure development took off in a frenzy with Chinese aid, and the economy was growing at a healthy 7 percent when Rajapakse was overthrown.

For the West, this cannot be held up as a good example, because it showed that the West could be irrelevant in shaping up the 21st century Asian age. On the other hand, China should also learn from Sri Lanka’s experience that money alone cannot build Chinese influence in the region. They need a well-coordinated media and public relations strategy in the region with local media and non-governmental organization (NGO) partners.

Veteran Sri Lankan political analyst Dr Dayan Jayatilake in a commentary published in the Colombo Telegraph immediately following Kerry’s departure argued that the coming parliamentary elections will be the majority Sinhala population’s last chance to protect themselves from their external enemies.

“In the name of justice, equality and autonomy for the minorities, the majority on the island, the Sinhalese, who are the real minority when you consider the massive geopolitical realities just a few kilometers of ocean away, not to mention in the world as a whole, will find themselves politically displaced, distanced from their real friends (i.e. China) in the world, and left naked to their existential enemies,” he warned.

“If we don’t generate a tsunami of Sinhala votes which will sweep away the local puppets and defend our natural status in this island home, it will be our last summer as an independent nation, (which) will be followed by a long winter as a dependency of the Empire,” Jayatilake added.

*Dr Kalinga Seneviratne is IDN Special Correspondent for Asia-Pacific. He teaches international communications in Singapore.

The post Sri Lanka’s Souring ‘Revolution’ – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Husain Haqqani*

With a litany of unproved claims, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has revived discussion about the circumstances in which al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was discovered and killed in May 2011 in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad.

Some of Hersh’s assertions in a 10,000-word London Review of Books article border on fantasy. He claims that bin Laden lived under the protection of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was given up for reward money by one of the agency’s officers, and was eventually eliminated in a U.S. raid covertly backed by Pakistan’s army commander and ISI chief.

According to Hersh, the Americans “blackmailed” Pakistan’s generals into helping them kill bin Laden but then stabbed them in the back for political reasons by denying them any credit for assisting in the raid by Navy SEALs. Instead of blaming ISI for sheltering bin Laden in Pakistan (which Hersh claims it did), he points the finger at the Obama administration for not acknowledging ISI’s role in the U.S. operation that killed the terrorist mastermind.

With the exception of the possibility of a Pakistani “walk in” selling information about bin Laden’s location, the other details of Hersh’s story simply do not add up. If the ISI had hidden bin Laden for five years, it would not have cooperated in the U.S. operation to kill him without demanding a serious quid pro quo.

Hersh explains the Obama administration’s eagerness to claim sole credit for finding and killing bin Laden in terms of domestic U.S. politics. But he offers no explanation as to why, after covertly helping the Americans, Pakistan’s generals would keep quiet about their role. The veteran reporter alludes to the idea that this might have been because of bin Laden’s popularity among the Pakistani public. But by 2011, bin Laden was no longer that popular — and in any case Pakistan’s military leaders have consistently ignored public opinion to ensure the flow of American aid. Hersh’s suggestion that Pakistan’s generals covertly helped Americans eliminate bin Laden simply to maintain the flow of U.S. dollars to the country — but kept it secret so as not to incur the wrath of the Pakistani street — does not hold water.

For several years before the bin Laden raid, Pakistan’s military and the ISI had been criticized in the U.S. media and Congress for double-dealing in the fight against terrorism. If the ISI had protected bin Laden (or held him prisoner) for five years before being found out by the Americans, the United States would have increased its leverage by going public with accusations of hiding bin Laden. But there’s no evidence that Washington held Islamabad’s feet to the fire.

If, however, a backroom deal had been negotiated to secure Pakistani cooperation in the raid on Abbottabad in return for U.S. silence, the ISI would have demanded some glory for its cooperation. Facilitating the raid, as narrated by Hersh, would have provided Pakistan’s military and ISI an opportunity to redeem themselves in American eyes. Hersh wants us to believe an entirely improbably scenario. According to him, Obama’s political requirements denied Pakistanis any credit and senior generals in Islamabad simply accepted that without pushing back.

Was the “walk-in” real?

To this day, there is no solid evidence of Pakistanis at the highest level of government knowing about bin Laden being in Pakistan — though there have been widespread suspicions. If, after being tipped off by a rogue Pakistani intelligence officer looking for personal reward, the United States planned a raid with covert help from Pakistani intelligence, why didn’t the cooperating Pakistani officials demand credit for assisting in targeting bin Laden in order to mitigate the bad press for previously protecting him? And what prevented the U.S. government from publicly acknowledging that they knew bin Laden had been officially protected? Was the need to keep the relationship with Islamabad on solid footing so important that the Obama administration would risk telling a lie this massive?

Hersh’s story is based on the fundamental premise that the U.S. government had bad intentions, including in their interactions with the Pakistan Army and the ISI. In an interview with the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Hersh defends Pakistan’s generals. “Pakistan has a good army, not a bad army,” he declared, adding that the Obama administration’s cover story made the Pakistan army look incompetent because it didn’t know that bin Laden was residing in a garrison town just two miles from the country’s main military academy. But he still does not offer an explanation for why the Pakistan Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, and ISI head, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, went along with the cover story.

The only point in Hersh’s story that seems plausible relates to the Pakistani officer who tipped off the Americans about bin Laden’s location. Further reporting by AFP and a story by NBC affirm the role of a Pakistani defector — though NBC later amended its story to clarify that while the defector provided information, it didn’t lead to finding bin Laden. The rumor that the CIA learned about bin Laden’s location through an ISI officer has been around since the Abbottabad raid. But I’ve also heard another version of the same story from Pakistani officials.

According to this version, the ISI officer only facilitated the CIA’s on-ground operation in Abbottabad after the U.S. spy agency started planning an operation based on intelligence obtained through other means. The CIA relocated the Pakistani officer — not because he was the man who tipped them off on bin Laden’s location — but because he acted without authority from his superiors in enabling the CIA to conduct an operation on Pakistani soil.

The NBC story also repeats the suspicion of U.S. officials — about Pakistani complicity in hiding bin Laden — though, obviously, there isn’t enough evidence for the U.S. government to formally and publicly make that charge. As a witness to Pakistan’s response after the bin Laden raid I find it difficult to believe Hersh’s conspiracy theory about so many people in both the U.S. and Pakistani governments and militaries telling a big coordinated lie.

In the middle of a diplomatic dance

I was serving as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States at the time of the SEAL raid in Abbottabad. I was on my way to Islamabad via London and Dubai when the operation took place; I first found out about it upon landing at Heathrow airport in the early morning of May 2, 2011. My superiors in Islamabad instructed me to turn around immediately. I was back in Washington by around 5 p.m. local time.

My instructions were clear: to ensure that the U.S. government, Congress, and the media did not blame Pakistan’s government, armed forces, or intelligence services for allowing Osama bin Laden’s presence in the country, as that would have been a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1267 and 1373. My bosses, both civilian and military, were obviously concerned that Pakistan would be taken to task. But nothing in the conduct of Generals Kayani and Pasha (both of whom later forced me to resign as ambassador) hinted at their collusion with the U.S. in the Abbottabad raid.

They attributed their lack of response to the incursion by U.S. helicopters from Afghanistan to the absence of adequate radar coverage on the western border — a symptom of Pakistan’s view of India as the only threat to its national security. Kayani and Pasha also wanted to ensure that there would be no reprisals against Pakistan over allegations of official complicity in hiding bin Laden.

A bevy of damage diplomacy followed. A few days after the Abbottabad raid, then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry visited Islamabad. Gen. Kayani was eager during that visit for a statement by the U.S. senator emphasizing Pakistan’s position as an American ally in the war against terrorism. Kerry agreed to the reassuring language proposed by Kayani. The Kerry visit was followed by a visit by Pasha to Washington during which he was keen to convince the CIA that the ISI had no knowledge of bin Laden being in Pakistan. In a meeting with CIA Director Leon Panetta, Pasha listed the CIA’s own failures over the years to advance his argument that intelligence gathering is often imperfect and that the enemy can hide within plain sight.

Notwithstanding my own disagreements with Kayani and Pasha, I found no reason to believe that either general was feigning ignorance or outrage while being secretly in league with the Americans. The Foreign Office also asked me to protest the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by U.S. forces in conducting the operation and to point out how it violated the norms of international conduct between two sovereign countries that were, at least officially, allies. I didn’t make much headway.

The U.S. officials I interacted with were not only unwilling to apologize for violating Pakistani sovereignty but demanded that Islamabad cooperate in giving Americans access to data and persons found at the house in Abbottabad where the raid was conducted. They also demanded the return of the wreckage of the stealth helicopter that had been damaged and left behind during the operation. Pakistan handed over the wreckage a few days later, though not without prodding by the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen.

Security Council cover

Immediately after the raid, the U.S. government persuaded the president of the U.N. Security Council to issue a statement, “welcoming [the] end of Osama bin Laden’s ability to perpetrate terrorist acts.” Obama administration officials I spoke with pointed to UNSC resolutions and this statement by the Security Council president to justify their unilateral action in Abbottabad in disregard of Pakistani sovereignty.

Pakistan’s protests about violation of its sovereignty and against the U.N. Security Council president’s statement came within hours of the Abbottabad raid. Our side was stunned because it had not been kept in the loop. At the United Nations, the Security Council president was busy listing justifications under international law for the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. But none of these responses would have occurred if, as Hersh says, the cover story about the unilateral raid had been “manufactured” in the White House just two hours after the raid, in a cynical ploy to help Obama’s re-election bid.

On the evening of May 2, I was interviewed on CNN. There I made what remains a valid point: I said that it was obvious someone in Pakistan protected Osama bin Laden. The question was to determine whether bin Laden’s support system lay “within the government and the state of Pakistan or within the society of Pakistan.” I had asked for “a full inquiry into finding out why our intelligence services were not able to track him earlier.”

I never got an answer to my question. Pakistan created a commission that conducted its hearings in a non-transparent manner and declined to publish its findings. The Obama administration went back to business-as-usual with Pakistan — without insisting or pushing Islamabad for answers on the tough questions about bin Laden’s stay in Pakistan from 2006 to 2011. I understand how the failure of both Washington and Islamabad to disclose a more complete understanding of what transpired in the years leading up to the raid feeds conspiracy theories and the presumption that something is fishy.

But it is this failure — explaining bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan, not the elaborate conspiracies Hersh alleges on the say-so of a single retired U.S. counterterrorism official — which has been a major disservice to truth.

Both the people of Pakistan and the people of the United States would benefit from detailed answers to questions about bin Laden’s support network in Pakistan. But don’t hold your breath. It might not be in either Islamabad’s or Washington’s interest to wake sleeping dogs.

About the author:
*Husain Haqqani, Director for South and Central Asia

Source:
This article was published by the Hudson Institute.

The post What Pakistan Knew About The Bin Laden Raid – Oped appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Today’s low-wage workers are both older and much better-educated than the average low-wage worker in the past. In theory, this should mean that these workers also earn much more the in the past. A high school degree, an associate’s degree from a two year college, a bachelor’s degree from a four year college or an advanced degree adds to a worker’s skills. Likewise, each year of work experience also adds to a worker’s skills. Strikingly, though, a new issue brief from the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that low-wage workers have not seen a commensurate increase in pay.

“These workers have done all the things you would expect to make more money,” said Cherrie Bucknor of CEPR and the author of the brief. “They have finished high school or gotten a degree and have work experience. Nevertheless, they still find themselves underpaid.”

In the brief, Bucknor defines low-wage workers as those earning at least or less than $10.58 an hour in inflation-adjusted 2014 dollars. This amount is roughly equivalent to $12.00 per hour in 2020, the amount proposed by Raise the Wage Act of 2015. This stands slightly above the peak value of the 1968 minimum wage which was equal to $9.54 in inflation-adjusted 2014 dollars. While some low-wage workers do make more than the historic high of the minimum wage, most of the workers in this group make less.

In addition to earnings, Bucknor looks at several characteristics of low-wage workers both now and in the past. In 1979, 26.9 percent of low wage workers were teenagers; now that number is just 12.1 percent. In 1979 almost 36 percent of low-wage workers were 35 and older. In 2014, that percentage had risen to 42.4 percent. The educational attainment of these workers has also improved. In 1979, 40.7 percent of low-wage workers had less than a high school degree. Today that number is 18.3 percent. Over the same span of time, the percent of low-wage workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher has almost doubled.

Bucknor demonstrates that today’s low-wage workers are older and better educated than their counterparts were 35 years ago. Even so, the federal minimum wage is still far below its historical peak. Efforts to raise the wage would do much to correct the erosion of the value of the minimum wage and return it to a level we have not seen in almost 50 years.

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The Moroccan Ministry of Royal Protocol and Chancellery issued a communiquė stating that King Mohammed VI will start on Wednesday working and friendship visits to the Republic of Senegal, the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire and the Republic of Gabon and will pay an official visit to the Republic of Guinea-Bissau.

“The Ministry of Royal Household, Protocol and Chancellery announces that His Majesty King Mohammed VI, may God assist Him, will pay visits to several sister African countries, starting on Wednesday May 20, 2015,” the release said.

“During these visits, His Majesty the King, may God assist Him, will hold talks with the presidents of these sister countries and will chair signing ceremonies of bilateral agreements and the launch of cooperation projects related to human development, exchange of experience and reinforcement of economic partnership with these countries”, the source added.

Undoubtedly, Morocco is determined to promote openness and democracy and to bring about peace and security to the whole continent.

In recent years, Morocco is located in the economically developed countries where greater cooperation in the fields of banking, telecommunications, housing, commerce and industry. It also offers its expertise in infrastructure, public health, roads and education. It also gives a great interest in national education by offering fellowships to African students.
Morocco is determined to establish real win-win partnerships with African countries, a new axis for peace and economic prosperity. Economic interests and geo-political considerations account for much of Moroccan royal’s diplomatic offensive.

King Mohammed VI’s visit, is part of the country’s initiatives to set up its new foreign policy in Africa. Morocco has always voiced openly its keen interest to establish a powerful partnership with African countries. With this new vision Morocco has become a leading continental power that will guarantee economic dynamism, security and stability in the African continent

Morocco is strengthening its political, economic and spiritual presence in Africa. This royal vision will certainly contribute efficiently to a stable and prosperous africa that will become more and more economically attractive to foreign investors.

Morocco’s political influence is growing and so is the trust of the states it is working with. The kingdom keeps defending African’s cause, either directly, thanks to its participation in different operations to maintain peace or either indirectly, supporting, in all of the international summits, sustained efforts for human and social development in the sub-Saharan area.

Morocco also relies on its spiritual diplomacy. King Mohammed VI in his capacity as Commander of the Faithful, agreed to official requests made by African countries to benefit from religious training and cooperation.

Morocco prioritizes South-South cooperation. The King took the initiative to cancel the debt of very poor African countries. This decision was only the beginning of a long-term economic strategy to get back to the suitable position it occupied in the African diplomatic landscape. To reinforce its economic leverage in the area, Morocco is settling human and social development projects. The private sector participation is also a relevant asset of its policy. Several Moroccan public or private companies have established themselves in sub-Saharan Africa to invest in sectors that could foster some countries growth, such as banking sector, as Attijari wafabank is present in Senegal and Mali, finance sector with CDG and the group Chaabi in Ivory Coast, Mali, and Guinea, or even telecommunication sector thanks to Maroc Télécom that owns communication companies in Senegal, Mali and Burkina Faso. The Moroccan main phosphate company OCP uses all of its knowledge and experience in agri-food industry to favour food security in the area. The exportation of its renewable energy model is also very important, as it is a decisive innovation that will influence positively on the countries suffering from frequent power and water cuts.

This new royal diplomatic strategy has opened new doors for the Moroccan-American and Moroccan-European partnership to fight terrorism but mostly to promote economic propserity for many African countries. In each of these cases, Africa must lead and Morocco will help. And Morocco will make no apology for supporting African efforts to end conflict and stand up for human dignity.

Morocco has taken an engagement not just on security issues in sub-Saharan Africa , but on environmental issues — and economic issues and social issues, education issues. King Mohammed will certainly take that engagement to a whole new level.

The post Morocco: A New Royal Tour In Africa For A Win-Win Partnership – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Following the executions of Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in Indonesia, the Australian government should redouble efforts to end the death penalty around the world, and overhaul the way it campaigns for global abolition, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances because of its inherent cruelty.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Human Rights Law Centre, Reprieve Australia, Australians Detained Abroad, NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Civil Liberties Australia, and Uniting Justice Australia have joined forces to launch a new Australian blueprint to end the death penalty.

The Australian government has condemned executions in Indonesia, but it could play a larger role opposing the death penalty globally. Australia abolished the death penalty in 2010, although the last execution took place in 1967.

“The time is ripe for Australia’s foreign ministry to make public a new comprehensive policy to end the death penalty worldwide, with specific and achievable goals for individual countries,” said Elaine Pearson, Australia director at Human Rights Watch. “The strategy should include consistent public and private diplomatic pressure to end this cruel practice, showing how the death penalty has failed to deter crime and been unjustly applied.”

The groups’ blueprint for change, “Australian Government and the Death Penalty: A Way Forward” details four steps the government should take to build on the current momentum to end the death penalty:

1. Develop a new Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade public strategy document aimed at ending the death penalty, everywhere;

2. Use Australia’s aid program to support civil society organizations campaigning for abolition in countries which retain the death penalty;

3. Join forces with other nations to push for universal adoption of a global moratorium on the death penalty; and

4. Put in place stronger legislation so the Australian Federal Police (AFP) is required by law not to share information with other law enforcement agencies that would potentially result in suspected perpetrators facing the death penalty.

The blueprint urges the Australian government to consult widely, including with the UK government, which already has a global strategy against the death penalty, as well as with advocacy groups in countries retaining the death penalty.

The organizations said if Australia wants its opposition to the death penalty globally to be credible, it is important that Australian laws consistently reflect that opposition. Following the arrests of the so-called Bali 9 in 2005, it emerged that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) passed on detailed information about the alleged plan to smuggle heroin from Bali, without seeking guarantees that the information would not be used by the authorities to eventually seek the death penalty against the perpetrators.

Emily Howie, director of advocacy and research at the Human Rights Law Centre, said: “If the Bali 9 case happened again tomorrow, nothing would prevent the AFP from acting in the same way. Parliament should amend the AFP Act to include sufficient safeguards to prevent police sharing information which could lead to the death penalty.”

“Momentum is building globally for the abolition of the death penalty. In recent months, Australian people and the government have spoken out powerfully against executions,” said Ursula Noye, vice president of Reprieve Australia. “The time is right for us to take a lead role, and build a regional coalition for abolition. We should make future generations proud.”

“The recent executions of eight men in Indonesia, including Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, was an inhuman and unjust punishment and represents exactly why the Australian government must continue to speak out against the death penalty whenever it occurs,” said Claire Mallinson, national director at Amnesty International Australia. “We must now ensure Australia’s stance against the recent executions is reflected in all government policy. We are asking for change across the Australian Government – through diplomacy, our aid program, our federal law enforcement agencies.”

The post Australia Should Adopt New Strategy To End Death Penalty Abroad, Says HRW appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By David-Ngendo Tshimba*

A coup d’état attempt was launched in Burundi’s capital city Bujumbura in a bid to overthrow President Pierre Nkurunziza—who was at the time attending an urgently scheduled East African Community heads of state summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania—amidst unrest over Nkurunziza’s bid to be re-elected to a third term. Thousands of people, it is reported, poured into the streets of Bujumbura by the afternoon of Wednesday 13 May 2015 following the announcement by Major General Godefroid Niyombare. At any rate, and if unfolding media reports are anything to go by, the coup outcome is far from clear. Whether foiled or not, what is nevertheless certain is that huge uncertainties loom ahead of Burundi’s political future.

In the aftermath of the decade-long bloody civil war and following prolonged political negotiations from Kigobe and Kajaga (Burundi) through San Egidio (Italy) and Sun City (South Africa) to Mwanza and Arusha (Tanzania), Burundians adopted a constitution which requires a two-thirds majority for the passing of any bill tabled in Parliament. This was ingeniously adopted to avoid the excess of power by simple majority rule and to bring the ruling party to exercise its power in concert with the opposition.

By end of 2014, contrary to what members from the ruling party CNDD-FDD considered with regard to the amendment of some provisions in the current Constitution to allow for the candidature the incumbent President in the forthcoming general elections, members of the political opposition as well as civil society underscored that if anything in the Constitution were to change, this should be done by not simply relegating the matter to the National Assembly (where the ruling party holds majority of seats) but by engaging with all stakeholders in public life, including members of the political opposition and civil society.

Then, Burundi’s former President, Domitien Ndayizeye, murmured that any proposal of amendment of Article 299 of the Constitution—in a bid to secure a third presidential term for incumbent President Pierre Nkurunziza—would have far-reaching repercussions on efforts for the rebuilding of the political as well as socio-economic tissues of a society recovering from a gloomy past. This, Ndayizeye further stated, could negatively affect the yet fragile social cohesion and national security, to the extent of spilling over to neighbouring countries.

As 2014 drew to its close, Burundian political party leaders, under the auspices of the First Vice President of the Republic, Bernard Busokoza, gathered at the Royal Palace hotel to proceed with a first evaluation of the implementation of the roadmap for the 2015 elections as well as iron out challenges to its full realization. This roadmap was adopted by consensus at a workshop on the electoral process in Burundi, organised by the Government of Burundi in concert with the Burundi United Nations Bureau (BNUB) from 11 to and 13 March 2013 in Bujumbura. It was hoped that this gathering would allow Burundi’s key political actors to take stock of the implementation of the roadmap thus far as well as identify challenges and opportunities to strengthen the dialogue and democratic culture in Burundi, and so contribute to the creation of a conducive environment for free, fair, inclusive and peaceful elections in 2015. The said roadmap contained general principles and recommendations around four themes, namely: the legal framework for the elections; an enabling environment; electoral management and conduct; and the monitoring mechanism.

History seems to be repeating itself in Burundi once more after a decade of fragile, hard-won social peace following the signing of the 2000 Arusha Accord. Is the Burundian political elite designing a scenario akin to that of 1993 through such (in)famous roadmap to the 2015 general elections? What is more unfortunate is that the unfolding political bickering in the country seems to work against the avoidance of violence in the upcoming 2015 elections, if at all the latter would ever take place. For now, things remain convoluted.

BEYOND THE INCUMBENCY OF NKURUNZIZA

For a country previously devastated by political violence on a large scale, reducing all political stakes to electioneering by arguing for the right of the candidature of the incumbent president may simply be akin to granting a pain-killer to a patient in urgent need of surgery – just as arguing for the utter exclusion of the candidature of the incumbent president to the advantage of ‘new comers’ in the search for presidency may simply be synonymous with placing temporary bondages to a fractured limb. Systemic reforms of the state previously embroiled in political violence seems to be the commensurate dose in curing Burundi’s political ills in a much more rewarding manner.

In the context of post-transition Burundi, the questions of redistribution of land and that of full reintegration of previously exiled populations—whether civilian or armed—have come to the fore of the post-violence debate in the country. More vital, land is access to livelihoods; it allows for the bringing together of family structures that represents a vital coping mechanism in a context of extreme poverty; it symbolises connection with the past, with history, a reaffirmation of identity; and its equitable distribution represents hope for sustainable peace. What is even more critically important to reckon with is the fact that in such a small country with a big population whose livelihoods emanate from farming and livestock, land is in chronically short supply. Therefore, daunting as it may be, addressing current demands on land with the return of approximately half a million people in a way that is simultaneously equitable and feasible is critical to the long-term stability of Burundi.

In the final analysis, whereas the signing of the Arusha Accords as a pact for political justice does still represent a necessary and respectable step in Burundi’s nation-building process, the aspirations found in these Accords would never yield any positive results in the Burundian society unless they faithfully resonate with the deep-seated wishes for capabilities and functionings of local populations, most notably those from the new younger generation. On the one hand, a long events-filled history of conflict, ethnic politicisation and polarisation, authoritarian rule, a decade of civil war, and growing impoverishment will continue to be appended to the reflection of the Burundian reality.

On the other hand, power-sharing arrangements, democratic elections, peace agreements, demobilisation, and an infusion of development aid constitute another reflection of the Burundian reality. What lies in between, Peter Uvin in his latest book on Burundi’s contemporary political history (2009) rightly argues, is a generation of young people raised during times of mass violence (massacres, forced displacements or a brutal civil war) with years of education lost, hearts traumatized, and possessions lost. Some have fought, some have fled, some have stayed, but all have faced dramatically limited opportunities. Yet, these young adults who came of age during the war now represent the future of Burundi. The availability of jobs in a context of severe economic scarcity remains a crucial challenge that any ruling government will have to face—now and the coming future.

Allegorically, to conclude, if some people suffer from inherited diseases, Burundi too suffers from its inherited history. But if molecular biology has come to provide some sparks of hopes for the cure of inherited diseases, only social and economic justice may be the most promising cure for past political violence.

* David-Ngendo Tshimba is a PhD Fellow at Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University, Uganda.

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When Americans think of how the economic rules are stacked against them, they naturally think of Wall Street.

When the Wall Street bubble burst in 2008 because of excessive risk-taking, millions of working Americans lost their jobs, health insurance, savings, and homes.

But The Street is back to many of its old tricks. And its lobbyists are busily rolling back the Dodd-Frank Act, intended to prevent another crash.

The biggest Wall Street banks are also much larger. In 1990, the five biggest banks had 10 percent of all of the nation’s banking assets. Now, they have 44 percent – more than they had at the time of the 2008 crash.

They have a virtual lock on taking companies public, play key roles pricing commodities, are involved in all major U.S. mergers and acquisitions and many overseas, and responsible for most of the trading in derivatives and other complex financial instruments.

And as they’ve gained dominance over the financial sector, they’ve become more politically potent. They’re major sources of campaign funds for both Republicans and Democrats.

Wall Street banks supply personnel for key economic posts in Republican and Democratic administrations, and lucrative employment to economic officials when they leave Washington.

It’s a vicious cycle. The bigger they get, the more likely it is that government will bail them out if they get into trouble again. This, in turn, confers on them an ever-larger competitive advantage over smaller, community-minded banks that don’t have the implied guarantee – which gives the biggest banks even more economic and political power.

What should be done?

First, resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act that used to separate investment from commercial banking.

Second, put a small sales tax on every financial transaction. This would discourage speculation and slow down the casino. Not incidentally, such a tax could generate billions of dollars a year for, say, better schools.

But the most important thing we should do is bust up the big banks. Any bank that’s too big to fail is too big, period.

Antitrust law should be used the way it was against the big oil trusts and the telephone monopoly. The idea was to prevent too much economic and political power from concentrating in too few hands. And that’s precisely the problem with Wall Street.

The only sure way to stop excessive risk-taking on Wall Street so you don’t risk losing your job or your savings or your home, is to put an end to the excessive economic and political power of Wall Street.

It’s time to bust up the big banks.

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Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays PLC, The Royal Bank of Scotland plc and UBS AG agreed on Wednesday to plead guilty to felony charges, according to the US Department of Justice.

According to the Department of Justice, Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays PLC, and The Royal Bank of Scotland plc have agreed to plead guilty to conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros exchanged in the foreign currency exchange (FX) spot market and the banks have agreed to pay criminal fines totaling more than $2.5 billion.

A fifth bank, UBS AG, has agreed to plead guilty to manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and other benchmark interest rates and pay a $203 million criminal penalty, after breaching its December 2012 non-prosecution agreement resolving the LIBOR investigation.

“Today’s historic resolutions are the latest in our ongoing efforts to investigate and prosecute financial crimes, and they serve as a stark reminder that this Department of Justice intends to vigorously prosecute all those who tilt the economic system in their favor; who subvert our marketplaces; and who enrich themselves at the expense of American consumers,” said Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch. “The penalty these banks will now pay is fitting considering the long-running and egregious nature of their anticompetitive conduct. It is commensurate with the pervasive harm done. And it should deter competitors in the future from chasing profits without regard to fairness, to the law, or to the public welfare.”

According to plea agreements to be filed in the District of Connecticut, between December 2007 and January 2013, euro-dollar traders at Citicorp, JPMorgan, Barclays and RBS – self-described members of “The Cartel” – used an exclusive electronic chat room and coded language to manipulate benchmark exchange rates. Those rates are set through, among other ways, two major daily “fixes,” the 1:15 p.m. European Central Bank fix and the 4:00 p.m. World Markets/Reuters fix. Third parties collect trading data at these times to calculate and publish a daily “fix rate,” which in turn is used to price orders for many large customers. “The Cartel” traders coordinated their trading of U.S. dollars and euros to manipulate the benchmark rates set at the 1:15 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. fixes in an effort to increase their profits.

“The charged conspiracy fixed the U.S. dollar – euro exchange rate, affecting currencies that are at the heart of international commerce and undermining the integrity and the competitiveness of foreign currency exchange markets which account for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of transactions every day,” said Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer. “The seriousness of the crime warrants the parent-level guilty pleas by Citicorp, Barclays, JPMorgan and RBS.”

As detailed in the plea agreements, these traders also used their exclusive electronic chats to manipulate the euro-dollar exchange rate in other ways. Members of “The Cartel” manipulated the euro-dollar exchange rate by agreeing to withhold bids or offers for euros or dollars to avoid moving the exchange rate in a direction adverse to open positions held by co-conspirators. By agreeing not to buy or sell at certain times, the traders protected each other’s trading positions by withholding supply of or demand for currency and suppressing competition in the FX market.

Citicorp, Barclays, JPMorgan and RBS each have agreed to plead guilty to a one-count felony charge of conspiring to fix prices and rig bids for U.S. dollars and euros exchanged in the FX spot market in the United States and elsewhere.

Each bank has agreed to pay a criminal fine proportional to its involvement in the conspiracy: Citicorp, which was involved from as early as December 2007 until at least January 2013, has agreed to pay a fine of $925 million; Barclays, which was involved from as early as December 2007 until July 2011, and then from December 2011 until August 2012, has agreed to pay a fine of $650 million; JPMorgan, which was involved from at least as early as July 2010 until January 2013, has agreed to pay a fine of $550 million; and RBS, which was involved from at least as early as December 2007 until at least April 2010, has agreed to pay a fine of $395 million.

Barclays has further agreed that its FX trading and sales practices and its FX collusive conduct constitute federal crimes that violated a principal term of its June 2012 non-prosecution agreement resolving the department’s investigation of the manipulation of LIBOR and other benchmark interests rates. Barclays has agreed to pay an additional $60 million criminal penalty based on its violation of the non-prosecution agreement.

In addition, according to court documents to be filed, the Justice Department has determined that UBS’s deceptive currency trading and sales practices in conducting certain FX market transactions, as well as its collusive conduct in certain FX markets, violated its December 2012 non-prosecution agreement resolving the LIBOR investigation. The department has declared UBS in breach of the agreement, and UBS has agreed to plead guilty to a one-count felony charge of wire fraud in connection with a scheme to manipulate LIBOR and other benchmark interest rates. UBS has also agreed to pay a criminal penalty of $203 million.

According to the factual statement of breach attached to UBS’s plea agreement, UBS engaged in deceptive FX trading and sales practices after it signed the LIBOR non-prosecution agreement, including undisclosed markups added to certain FX transactions of customers. UBS traders and sales staff misrepresented to customers on certain transactions that markups were not being added, when in fact they were. On other occasions, UBS traders and sales staff used hand signals to conceal those markups from customers. On still other occasions, certain UBS traders also tracked and executed limit orders at a level different from the customer’s specified level in order to add undisclosed markups. In addition, according to court documents, a UBS FX trader conspired with other banks acting as dealers in the FX spot market by agreeing to restrain competition in the purchase and sale of dollars and euros. UBS participated in this collusive conduct from October 2011 to at least January 2013.

In declaring UBS in breach of its non-prosecution agreement, the Justice Department considered UBS’s conduct described above in light of UBS’s obligation under the non-prosecution agreement to commit no further crimes. The department also considered UBS’s three recent prior criminal resolutions and multiple civil and regulatory resolutions. Further, the department also considered that UBS’s post-LIBOR compliance and remediation efforts failed to detect the illegal conduct until an article was published pointing to potential misconduct in the FX markets.

Citicorp, Barclays, JPMorgan, RBS and UBS have each agreed to a three-year period of corporate probation, which, if approved by the court, will be overseen by the court and require regular reporting to authorities as well as cessation of all criminal activity. All five banks will continue cooperating with the government’s ongoing criminal investigations, and no plea agreement prevents the department from prosecuting culpable individuals for related misconduct. Citicorp, Barclays, JPMorgan and RBS have agreed to send disclosure notices to all of their customers and counter-parties that may have been affected by the sales and trading practices described in the plea agreements.

Today, in connection with its FX investigation, the Federal Reserve also announced that it was imposing on the five banks fines of over $1.6 billion; and Barclays settled related claims with the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for an additional combined penalty of approximately $1.3 billion. In conjunction with previously announced settlements with regulatory agencies in the United States and abroad, including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), today’s resolutions bring the total fines and penalties paid by these five banks for their conduct in the FX spot market to nearly $9 billion.

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As a result of coordinated operational activities carried out in the framework of a Joint Investigation Team (JIT), Romanian and French law enforcement authorities, supported by Europol and Eurojust, have dismantled a Romanian organized network which trafficked young Romanian women for sexual exploitation.

On Tuesday, Romanian National Police carried out an extensive law enforcement operation targeting human trafficking in the Constanta region and another three locations. This operation resulted in 56 simultaneous house searches and 25 suspects taken into custody. During the operation, 11 victims were identified and interviewed by law enforcement authorities. EUR 20.000, 12 luxury vehicles, 88 mobile telephones, 79 SIM cards, 25 computers, jewellery, steroids and drugs were seized. French law enforcement authorities and Europol participated in this operation, supporting Romanian authorities on the spot with the deployment of experts and one of Europol’s mobile offices. Approximately 300 Romanian law enforcement officers were involved.

At the same time, law enforcement authorities in France carried out 3 searches of premises in various locations. These searches resulted in the identification and arrest of 3 suspects.

The criminal group has been the subject of a cross-border investigation since 2014 and trafficked young women from Romania to France, where they were sexually exploited in hotels and other premises. The victims were controlled by members of the group who regularly demanded information on the number of customers serviced and the amount of money earned by the victims.

The group members had specific tasks and roles in the criminal activity; the services of the victims were advertised online; the victims were frequently moved from city to city and accommodated in hotel rooms for short periods of time before being moved again.

The organized criminal network generated proceeds of up to EUR 4 million, invested in real estate in Romania.

Europol and Eurojust supported the Member States involved in this cross-border human trafficking operation throughout the investigation. Both agencies facilitated police and judicial cooperation in the framework of a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) which brought together authorities from France and Romania. Throughout the investigation, operational and coordination meetings were held at Europol and Eurojust.

Europol experts provided operational analysis to assist the investigation, as well as support in the field operation through the deployment of a mobile office to Romania. Europol’s on-the-spot support allowed for real time cross-checks of data on the action day. At the same time, Eurojust set up a Coordination Centre at its HQ.

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By Sinisa Jakov Marusic

Hours-long talks in Strasbourg between Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and opposition Socal Democrat leader Zoran Zaev ended at 3.30am Wednesday without resolution to Macedonia’s political crisis.

The three MEPs that facilitated the dialogue said they heard frank discussions from both leaders and extracted a commitment to meet again, however.

European Parliamentarians Richard Howitt, Eduard Kukan and Ivo Vajgl in a joint press release “welcomed the efforts of the party leaders to work towards an agreement in the interest of all citizens of the country and to address challenges arising from the crisis in accordance with European standards.

“The parties confirm commitment to EU integration process and democratic principles and agreed to put the interest of the country first” and held “frank discussions on key issues of contention”, they added.

The marathon talks were the third such round between the two leaders in only a week, but the first to take place outside the country, with the help of the European Enlargement Commissioner, Johannes Hahn.

The negotiations are an attempt to resolve a deep political crisis over claims of mass illegal surveillance. The opposition accuses Gruevski, in power since 2006, of orchestrating the surveilance of over 20,000 people and want him to resign.

Gruevski has insisted that the tapes of official conversations released by the opposition since February were “created” by unnamed foreign intelligence services and given to the opposition to destabilise the country.

The tapes indicate election fraud, abuse of the justice system and media and even suggest the government covered up the murder of a young man by a police officer.

On Monday, the United States also called both sides to work harder towards a solution and called on the government to address the opposition’s chief claims.

“We’ve urged the authorities to make progress toward accounting for allegations of government wrongdoing that arise from the recent disclosures. We also have urged the opposition party to return to parliament so that it can take part in strengthened parliamentary oversight of Macedonian Government institutions, including an inquiry committee into these disclosures,” Jeff Rathke, from the US State Department, said.

The US said it was a positive step that three of Prime Minister Gruevski’s closest associates, who were among the most implicated by the allegations, resigned last week.

They were Interior Minister Gordana Jankuloska, Transportation Minister Mile Janakieski and Gruevski’s cousin, the chief of the secret police, Saso Mijalkov.

While efforts to find a solution are ongoing, the two opposing political blocs held large but peaceful rallies on Sunday and Monday in Skopje.

The first, staged by Gruevski’s opponents, took place in front of the government building. The second, staged by Gruevski’s own VMRO DPMNE party and its supporters, took place in front of parliament.

The two blocs have set up permanent protest camps in support of their respective causes, just some 800 meters away from each other.

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A few hours after the government expressed willingness to assist the thousands of boat-people stranded at sea because rejected from South-East Asia’s coasts, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) today also stressed the “moral obligation” to protect them from the harm they flee from.

In a statement, CBCP president and Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop, Monsignor Socrates Villegas, said that “while it may be true that the country has no legal obligation on the part of the Republic of the Philippines or that of any other country to grant asylum to every refugee or displaced person, there is a moral obligation to protect them from the harm they flee from”. “There is a legal obligation not to forcibly repatriate them. And by all precepts of morality and decency, there is an obligation not to leave them to the mercilessness of the elements on the high seas”, said the prelate in reference to the country’s signatory to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons.

The CBCP president also denounced the move of Southeast Asian countries to push the boat-people back to sea: “Ironically, the countries that turn refugees away vie with each other for tourists and investors! In many instances, coast guard and naval patrol vessels tow these boats, brimming over with their load of our hungry, sick and desperate brothers and sisters back to the high seas, there to face the elements, and often, sadly, to perish!” he said.

Villegas lauded the Philippine government for its attitude of hospitality towards refugees, and urged other nations in the region, “in the name of our common humanity and the common Father we recognize”, to allow these refugees succor and assistance. “For while our own economic resources may not allow us to to welcome every migrant as a permanent resident of our country, still there is always room for the weary and burdened to rest on our shores before they continue on their journey”, he said.

A stand shared also by civil authorities of the Philippines. “The Philippines extended humanitarian assistance to Vietnamese boat-people in the 1970s following the Vietnam War”, the presidential spokesman Herminio Coloma had said yesterday. “We shall continue to do our share in saving lives under existing and long-standing mechanisms pursuant to our commitments under the UN Convention”.

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