A 47-count indictment was unsealed early Wednesday in a US federal court in Brooklyn, New York, charging 14 defendants with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies, among other offenses, in connection with the defendants’ participation in a 24-year scheme to enrich themselves through the corruption of international soccer, according to the US Department of Justice.

Department of Justice noted that the guilty pleas of four individual defendants and two corporate defendants were also unsealed today.

The defendants charged in the indictment include high-ranking officials of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the organization responsible for the regulation and promotion of soccer worldwide, as well as leading officials of other soccer governing bodies that operate under the FIFA umbrella.

Jeffrey Webb and Jack Warner – the current and former presidents of CONCACAF, the continental confederation under FIFA headquartered in the United States – are among the soccer officials charged with racketeering and bribery offenses, the Department of Justice said.

The defendants also include U.S. and South American sports marketing executives who are alleged to have systematically paid and agreed to pay well over $150 million in bribes and kickbacks to obtain lucrative media and marketing rights to international soccer tournaments.

The charges were announced by Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, Acting U.S. Attorney Kelly T. Currie of the Eastern District of New York, Director James B. Comey of the FBI, Assistant Director in Charge Diego W. Rodriguez of the FBI’s New York Field Office, Chief Richard Weber of the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) and Special Agent in Charge Erick Martinez of the IRS-CI’s Los Angeles Field Office.

Earlier Wednesday, Swiss authorities in Zurich arrested seven of the defendants charged in the indictment, the defendants Jeffrey Webb, Eduardo Li, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, Eugenio Figueredo, Rafael Esquivel and José Maria Marin, at the request of the United States. Also this morning, a search warrant is being executed at CONCACAF headquarters in Miami, Florida.

The guilty pleas of the four individual and two corporate defendants that were also unsealed today include the guilty pleas of Charles Blazer, the long-serving former general secretary of CONCACAF and former U.S. representative on the FIFA executive committee; José Hawilla, the owner and founder of the Traffic Group, a multinational sports marketing conglomerate headquartered in Brazil; and two of Hawilla’s companies, Traffic Sports International Inc. and Traffic Sports USA Inc., which is based in Florida.

“The indictment alleges corruption that is rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted both abroad and here in the United States,” said US Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch. “It spans at least two generations of soccer officials who, as alleged, have abused their positions of trust to acquire millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks. And it has profoundly harmed a multitude of victims, from the youth leagues and developing countries that should benefit from the revenue generated by the commercial rights these organizations hold, to the fans at home and throughout the world whose support for the game makes those rights valuable. Today’s action makes clear that this Department of Justice intends to end any such corrupt practices, to root out misconduct, and to bring wrongdoers to justice – and we look forward to continuing to work with other countries in this effort.”

Attorney General Lynch extended her grateful appreciation to the authorities of the government of Switzerland, as well as several other international partners, for their outstanding assistance in this investigation.

“Today’s announcement should send a message that enough is enough,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Kelly T. Currie. “After decades of what the indictment alleges to be brazen corruption, organized international soccer needs a new start – a new chance for its governing institutions to provide honest oversight and support of a sport that is beloved across the world, increasingly so here in the United States. Let me be clear: this indictment is not the final chapter in our investigation.”

“As charged in the indictment, the defendants fostered a culture of corruption and greed that created an uneven playing field for the biggest sport in the world,” said Director James B. Comey. “Undisclosed and illegal payments, kickbacks, and bribes became a way of doing business at FIFA. I want to commend the investigators and prosecutors around the world who have pursued this case so diligently, for so many years.”

The charges in the indictment are merely allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty, the Department of Justice noted

The Enterprise

FIFA is composed of 209 member associations, each representing organized soccer in a particular nation or territory, including the United States and four of its overseas territories. FIFA also recognizes six continental confederations that assist it in governing soccer in different regions of the world. The U.S. Soccer Federation is one of 41 member associations of the confederation known as CONCACAF, which has been headquartered in the United States throughout the period charged in the indictment. The South American confederation, called CONMEBOL, is also a focus of the indictment.

As alleged in the indictment, FIFA and its six continental confederations, together with affiliated regional federations, national member associations and sports marketing companies, constitute an enterprise of legal entities associated in fact for purposes of the federal racketeering laws. The principal – and entirely legitimate – purpose of the enterprise is to regulate and promote the sport of soccer worldwide.

As alleged in the indictment, one key way the enterprise derives revenue is to commercialize the media and marketing rights associated with soccer events and tournaments. The organizing entity that owns those rights – as FIFA and CONCACAF do with respect to the World Cup and Gold Cup, their respective flagship tournaments – sells them to sports marketing companies, often through multi-year contracts covering multiple editions of the tournaments. The sports marketing companies, in turn, sell the rights downstream to TV and radio broadcast networks, major corporate sponsors and other sub-licensees who want to broadcast the matches or promote their brands. The revenue generated from these contracts is substantial: according to FIFA, 70% of its $5.7 billion in total revenues between 2011 and 2014 was attributable to the sale of TV and marketing rights to the 2014 World Cup.

The Racketeering Conspiracy

The indictment alleges that, between 1991 and the present, the defendants and their co-conspirators corrupted the enterprise by engaging in various criminal activities, including fraud, bribery and money laundering. Two generations of soccer officials abused their positions of trust for personal gain, frequently through an alliance with unscrupulous sports marketing executives who shut out competitors and kept highly lucrative contracts for themselves through the systematic payment of bribes and kickbacks. All told, the soccer officials are charged with conspiring to solicit and receive well over $150 million in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for their official support of the sports marketing executives who agreed to make the unlawful payments.

Most of the schemes alleged in the indictment relate to the solicitation and receipt of bribes and kickbacks by soccer officials from sports marketing executives in connection with the commercialization of the media and marketing rights associated with various soccer matches and tournaments, including FIFA World Cup qualifiers in the CONCACAF region, the CONCACAF Gold Cup, the CONCACAF Champions League, the jointly organized CONMEBOL/CONCACAF Copa América Centenario, the CONMEBOL Copa América, the CONMEBOL Copa Libertadores and the Copa do Brasil, which is organized by the Brazilian national soccer federation (CBF). Other alleged schemes relate to the payment and receipt of bribes and kickbacks in connection with the sponsorship of CBF by a major U.S. sportswear company, the selection of the host country for the 2010 World Cup and the 2011 FIFA presidential election.

The Indicted Defendants

As set forth in the indictment, the defendants and their co-conspirators fall generally into three categories: soccer officials acting in a fiduciary capacity within FIFA and one or more of its constituent organizations; sports media and marketing company executives; and businessmen, bankers and other trusted intermediaries who laundered illicit payments.

Nine of the defendants were FIFA officials by operation of the FIFA statutes, as well as officials of one or more other bodies:

• Jeffrey Webb: Current FIFA vice president and executive committee member, CONCACAF president, Caribbean Football Union (CFU) executive committee member and Cayman Islands Football Association (CIFA) president.
• Eduardo Li: Current FIFA executive committee member-elect, CONCACAF executive committee member and Costa Rican soccer federation (FEDEFUT) president.
• Julio Rocha: Current FIFA development officer. Former Central American Football Union (UNCAF) president and Nicaraguan soccer federation (FENIFUT) president.
• Costas Takkas: Current attaché to the CONCACAF president. Former CIFA general secretary.
• Jack Warner: Former FIFA vice president and executive committee member, CONCACAF president, CFU president and Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) special adviser.
• Eugenio Figueredo: Current FIFA vice president and executive committee member. Former CONMEBOL president and Uruguayan soccer federation (AUF) president.
• Rafael Esquivel: Current CONMEBOL executive committee member and Venezuelan soccer federation (FVF) president.
• José Maria Marin: Current member of the FIFA organizing committee for the Olympic football tournaments. Former CBF president.
• Nicolás Leoz: Former FIFA executive committee member and CONMEBOL president.

Four of the defendants were sports marketing executives:

• Alejandro Burzaco: Controlling principal of Torneos y Competencias S.A., a sports marketing business based in Argentina, and its affiliates.
• Aaron Davidson: President of Traffic Sports USA Inc. (Traffic USA).
• Hugo and Mariano Jinkis: Controlling principals of Full Play Group S.A., a sports marketing business based in Argentina, and its affiliates.

And one of the defendants was in the broadcasting business but allegedly served as an intermediary to facilitate illicit payments between sports marketing executives and soccer officials: José Margulies: Controlling principal of Valente Corp. and Somerton Ltd.

The Convicted Individuals and Corporations

The following individuals and corporations previously pleaded guilty under seal:

• On July 15, 2013, the defendant Daryll Warner, son of defendant Jack Warner and a former FIFA development officer, waived indictment and pleaded guilty to a two-count information charging him with wire fraud and the structuring of financial transactions.
• On Oct. 25, 2013, the defendant Daryan Warner waived indictment and pleaded guilty to a three-count information charging him with wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and the structuring of financial transactions. Daryan Warner forfeited over $1.1 million around the time of his plea and has agreed to pay a second forfeiture money judgment at the time of sentencing.
• On Nov. 25, 2013, the defendant Charles Blazer, the former CONCACAF general secretary and a former FIFA executive committee member, waived indictment and pleaded guilty to a 10-count information charging him with racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, income tax evasion and failure to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR). Blazer forfeited over $1.9 million at the time of his plea and has agreed to pay a second amount to be determined at the time of sentencing.
• On Dec. 12, 2014, the defendant José Hawilla, the owner and founder of the Traffic Group, the Brazilian sports marketing conglomerate, waived indictment and pleaded guilty to a four-count information charging him with racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Hawilla also agreed to forfeit over $151 million, $25 million of which was paid at the time of his plea.
• On May 14, 2015, the defendants Traffic Sports USA Inc. and Traffic Sports International Inc. pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy.

All money forfeited by the defendants is being held in reserve to ensure its availability to satisfy any order of restitution entered at sentencing for the benefit of any individuals or entities that qualify as victims of the defendants’ crimes under federal law.

The indictment unsealed today has been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Raymond J. Dearie of the Eastern District of New York.

The indicted and convicted individual defendants face maximum terms of incarceration of 20 years for the RICO conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering conspiracy, money laundering and obstruction of justice charges.

In addition, Eugenio Figueredo faces a maximum term of incarceration of 10 years for a charge of naturalization fraud and could have his U.S. citizenship revoked. He also faces a maximum term of incarceration of five years for each tax charge.

Charles Blazer faces a maximum term of incarceration of 10 years for the FBAR charge and five years for the tax evasion charges; and Daryan and Daryll Warner face maximum terms of incarceration of 10 years for structuring financial transactions to evade currency reporting requirements. Each individual defendant also faces mandatory restitution, forfeiture and a fine. By the terms of their plea agreements, the corporate defendants face fines of $500,000 and one year of probation.

The government’s investigation is ongoing.

The post US Justice Dept Says 9 FIFA Officials And 5 Corporate Executives Indicted appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Felix K. Chang*

On Tuesday, China published its latest defense white paper.  Unlike its’ eight predecessors, this document was the first time that China publicly unveiled parts of its military strategy.  Even the paper’s title was changed from China’s National Defense to China’s Military Strategy.  Rather than the opaque and retrospective generalities found in earlier versions, the new white paper offered details about China’s strategic intentions and the future development of its military.

One Chinese military official went so far as to state that the greater transparency of the new white paper was a sign of a more confident China.  That said, many of the revelations contained in the document were hardly novel.  It profiled China’s decades-old “active defense” strategy, which maintains that China would always remain strategically defensive–though perhaps not so at the operational or tactical levels.  It also detailed the Chinese military’s primary aim: to prepare itself to fight “local wars under conditions of informationization”—in other words, regional conflicts in which command, control, communications, intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance (C4ISR) would play major roles.  That too was already known.[1]

But other revelations in the white paper were more illuminating.  It showed that China intends to focus its force development in four domains: cyberspace (it will boost its cyber warfare capabilities); outer space (it will take steps to defend its interests there, even though it is opposed to the militarization of that domain); nuclear forces (it will build a reliable second-strike capability); and finally the oceans.

That last domain is what currently worries China’s neighbors the most, given Chinese assertiveness in the East and South China Seas. Indeed, the white paper highlighted Beijing’s intentions to further expand the Chinese navy and extend the range of its operations—shifting from “offshore waters defense” to “open ocean protection.”  The white paper argued that China’s growing overseas interests have changed the country’s focus from being a continental land power to a maritime power.  That has led China to prioritize its navy in its military modernization plans.  In what once would have been heresy in the Chinese military, the white paper declared that “the traditional mentality that land outweighs sea must be abandoned.”[2]

That means that in the future China would not only defend its coastline from attack, but also its sea lanes of communications through international shipping routes, including those from the Middle East through which over half of China’s oil flows.  That, in turn, means countries like India will have to get used to seeing more of the Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean.  By the same token, Japan and the United States should expect more Chinese naval and air patrols in the Pacific Ocean and maybe one or two more Chinese aircraft carriers.

The white paper also listed China’s strategic concerns.  Chief among them was America’s “rebalance” toward Asia, under which the United States has increased its military presence and strengthened its alliances in the region.  The white paper also noted Japan’s push to revise its military and security policies, characterizing them as “sparing no effort to dodge the post-war mechanism.”  China’s “offshore neighbors” warranted mention too for their “provocative actions [to] reinforce their military presence on China’s reefs and islands that they have illegally occupied,” no doubt referring to the Philippines and Vietnam in the Spratly Islands.

While the white paper’s greater transparency may be the product of a more confident China, it is still a country that has not escaped the classic security dilemma.  As the white paper itself observes, China’s neighbors are rearming and helping the United States bolster its security alliances.  So, even as China strives to improve its security, it has prompted its neighbors to seek ways to improve their security situations, thereby reducing the effectiveness of its own efforts.  That is something that China’s military strategy probably did not intend.

About the author:
*Felix K. Chang is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is also the Chief Strategy Officer of DecisionQ, a predictive analytics company in the national security and healthcare industries. He has worked with a number of digital, consumer services, and renewable energy entrepreneurs for years. He was previously a consultant in Booz Allen Hamilton’s Strategy and Organization practice; among his clients were the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of the Treasury, and other agencies. Earlier, he served as a senior planner and an intelligence officer in the U.S. Department of Defense and a business advisor at Mobil Oil Corporation, where he dealt with strategic planning for upstream and midstream investments throughout Asia and Africa.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] “China sticks to ‘active defense’ strategy,” interviewee Senior Captain Zhang Junshe, Vice President of the China Naval Research Institute, China 24, CCTV, Beijing, May 26, 2015,  http://english.cntv.cn/2015/05/27/VIDE1432675208303328.shtml; “White Paper highlights ‘active’ defense strategy,” interviewee Senior Colonel Zhou Bo, China Ministry of National Defense, host Han Bin, China 24, CCTV, Beijing, May 26, 2015, http://english.cntv.cn/2015/05/26/VIDE1432614727198411.shtml.

[2] China’s Military Strategy (Beijing: State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, May 2015); “China’s defense white paper,” interviewee Senior Captain Zhang Junshe, Vice President of the China Naval Research Institute, host Wang Yizhi, Dialogue, CCTV, Beijing, May 26, 2015, http://english.cntv.cn/2015/05/27/VIDE1432668717544907.shtml.

The post Strategic Intentions: China’s Military Strategy White Paper – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

As Singapore transforms itself into a Smart Nation, challenges will emerge. Instead of being decentred, the State will in fact become more important in terms of strengthening the nation against the challenges that follow.

By Tan Teck Boon*

Announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last year, the Smart Nation initiative will see Singapore transforming into the world’s first smart nation – a hyper-connected country that uses Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to enhance the quality of life of its people. By connecting “everyone to everything, everywhere, all the time”, a hyper-connected Singapore promises to be smarter, cleaner and more efficient.

Wearable technologies that monitor the well-being of patients will be a boon to the healthcare sector. Thanks to them, healthcare professionals will be able to assess, treat and monitor patients remotely while family members will be able to keep a close eye on their loved ones. Soon, wearable technologies will end unnecessary commute to the hospital for many patients.

Other major benefits of Smart Nation

The country’s transportation system will be enhanced. With driverless trucks transporting cargo at night, roads will be less congested during the day. And with the aid of specialised apps, commuters will be able to navigate the public transportation system with ease. Indefatigable, driverless buses will also reduce waiting times and crowdedness for commuters.

The country will become more energy-efficient and eco-friendly. Household appliances with sensors embedded will switch off when no one is at home. Smart waste bins that transmit a signal when full will enable town councils to implement a more efficient waste collection regime and reduce the number of cleaners needed.

Undeniably, smart technologies will solve some of the most pressing healthcare, infrastructure and environmental problems facing Singapore today. One might even think that the State will be decentred as smart technology takes over key public services. Nonetheless, as the country marches toward becoming a smart nation, challenges will emerge.
Unintended consequences of hyper-connectivity

Hackers have yet to actively target smart technologies. However, cyber criminals will surely begin scouring the technology for weakness once the opportunity for significant gains arises. Coordinated cyber attacks on critical sectors can potentially cripple the country and hyper-connectivity will elevate that risk.

Low-skilled workers will be sidelined as Singapore transforms into a smart nation. For examples, smart waste bins and driverless vehicles will eliminate the need for many cleaners and transportation workers respectively. Foreign workers might return to their countries if they are made redundant but local workers will be in a bind since they do not have that option. An unintended consequence of a smart nation might well be a persistently jobless underclass.

Ironically, we have grown more detached from one another at the personal level even as we have become more connected online. As contacts are increasingly intermediated by digital devices and physical interactions are reduced, society as a whole might become less cohesive. The advent of modern information communications technology has already added much coldness to our communications and hyper-connectivity might just make things a lot colder.

Lastly, technical glitches will appear since no system is perfect. From the mundane (smart bins that failed to signal when full) to the deadly (accidents involving driverless vehicles), isolated incidents might not trigger a backlash. But combine a buggy system with a less than cohesive society, hyper-connectivity might just lose its appeal to the very people whose lives it is designed to better.

Policy implications of Smart Nation

Considering the challenges, one might argue for a slower pace of hyper-connectivity. Yet, there are significant first-mover advantages to being the world’s first smart nation. The innovations engendered can be used to improve subsequent generations of smart technology and the experience will be invaluable when Singapore shares its knowledge with others. The country will also be in the forefront in terms of attracting foreign investment. With the global economic value-add for IoT technology in 2020 estimated at US$1.9 trillion by leading information technology research firm, Gartner, the sector will be a major growth driver.

If forging ahead with the Smart Nation initiative is the way to go, then addressing the challenges will be vital. Crucially, only the State – with ultimate control over the policy-making process and the nation’s resources – has the power to do so effectively.

As recent cyber attacks on major US companies illustrate, even well-resourced companies are ill-equipped to protect their data. To enhance cyber security, Singapore has established new agencies and departments but more needs to be done. The State needs to place tough restrictions on data collection and storage by businesses so as to limit the amount of damage in the event of a cyber breach, while making it mandatory for smart devices to utilise encryption so that even if data were stolen, it cannot be read. To mitigate the impact on low-skilled workers, the State must be prepared to introduce a range of financial aid and skills re-training programmes.

While private charitable organisations can contribute, only the State retains the kind of long-term financial and planning capabilities to prevent the emergence of an underclass. Meanwhile, the State needs to strengthen social cohesion as hyper-connectivity threatens to pull it apart. By facilitating public activities that bring together people from all walks of life, the State can promote a more cohesive society. Finally, despite the best efforts, technical glitches will occur so it will be more practical to build up the country’s resilience against these breakdowns. Again, only the State has the capacity to prepare, respond and rebuild when the system fails.

Rather than becoming decentred, the State will actually become more important as Singapore transforms into a smart nation. From strengthening cyber security to social cohesiveness to national resilience, the State must play a central role. Only then will its people truly enjoy a better quality of life.

*Tan Teck Boon PhD is with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore (NUS). His research interest covers the social, economic and security consequences of disruptive technologies on nations. He contributed this specially to RSIS Commentary.

The post Smart Nation And Its Implications: The State In Hyper-Connected Singapore – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

On May 28, 1998 Pakistan successfully tested five nuclear bombs as a direct response to a series of five nuclear test explosions carried out by India seventeen days earlier. This day is celebrated annually in Pakistan as both Youm-e-Takbeer, which means “the day of greatness”, and the National Science Day, to celebrate Pakistan’s scientific achievements.

The importance of Youm-e-Takbeer

To better appreciate the significance of Youm-e-Takbeer and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, we have to understand how and why Pakistan was compelled to develop a nuclear weapons program in the first place.

Yes, the Indian explosion of the nuclear bomb in 1974, and subsequent explosions of 1998 were most critical factors. But the experience of the 1971 war and the outstanding dispute over Kashmir created an environment of fear and insecurity for Pakistan, which forced them to develop a nuclear weapons program to discourage Indian belligerence.

The Jammu and Kashmir Dispute

Let us start at the beginning to before Pakistan won its independence from the British.

In British occupied Subcontinent during the early 1900s a movement had begun demanding a separate state for Muslims. Overtime this movement expanded and stretched from Kashmir to the eastern state of Bengal. By the mid-1930s there was a strong political Muslim movement in British India.

In Kashmir – collective noun for Jammu as well – the movement flourished under the Muslim Conference, and other parts under the banner of the Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. In 1944, Jinnah visited Kashmir to meet with the Muslim leadership and convinced them to join his movement for an independent Muslim state.

Fast-forwarding now to the year 1946. Kashmir had just held their general elections, and had voted into power by a majority the Muslim Conference. Immediately after coming into power the Muslim Conference passed a resolution, demanding an end to Maharaja Hari Singh’s autocratic rule of Kashmir.

In June 1947, the British announced their intention of accepting the demand of Muslims for an independent state. The new nation would be called Pakistan and would be made up of areas where Muslims were in majority, which included Kashmir.

The Congress Party, representing the Hindu majority and the Muslim League, representing the Muslim majority accepted the plan.

In Kashmir things had also started heating up and the Muslim Conference and Maharaja Hari Singh’s private troops called the Dogra army had began confronting each other in a series of violent clashes.

Days before Pakistan would officially declare its independence from Britain, Kashmiris held a demonstration demanding Hari Singh join Pakistan. Singh was an oppressive dictator unfairly treating the Muslim majority in Kashmir. He responded to the peaceful protestors by unleashing his private Dogra army on them. His troops burnt down entire villages and massacred innocent men, women and children; this is according to the official records recalling the ‘Poonch Revolt of 1947’ in the United Nations Security Council meeting held on March 6, 1951.

On August 11, 1947, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan addressed the first constituent assembly in which the flag of Pakistan was officially adopted. On the same day homes all over Kashmir began to proudly display Pakistan’s flag, and three days later on August 14, 1947 Pakistan officially declared its independence from Britain.

The following day on August 15, 1947 India also declared its independence from the British, and a conflict over Kashmir began between the two newly liberated nations.

India and Pakistan fought their first war over Kashmir in 1948, after Maharaja Hari Singh fled to India.

Up until this point it was understood that all Muslim majority territories would become a part of Pakistan, and all Hindu majority areas would become a part of India, despite the religion of the leaders in that area.

Take for example Hyderabad, a state in southwestern India. While the majority of its population was Hindu, a Muslim elite under the leadership of Nizman Osman Ali Khan ruled the state. Despite wanting to remain independent, was forced to integrate into India because it was a Hindu majority state.

Despite this precedence, India illegally occupied Kashmir, turning it into a conflict that continues to be a source of constant tension and conflict between India and Pakistan to this day. And despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding that the people of Kashmir be given a vote, a right to self-determination, India does not allow it, and rules Kashmir like a colony.

In January 1957, the UN Security Council reiterated that the UN Commission under Resolution 49 go help India and Pakistan restore peace to the region and prepare for a referendum to decide the fate of Kashmir.

On February 5, 1964, Indian Defense Minister, Krishnan Menon, in a filibuster speech, the longest ever recorded at the UN Security Council, said that India cannot give the Kashmiri people a vote to decide their fate. He said, “I wish to make it clear on behalf of my government that in no circumstances can we agree to the holding of a plebiscite in Kashmir.” Menon explained that it is certain that “Kashmir would vote to join Pakistan and no Indian government responsible for agreeing to plebiscite would survive.”

India continues to deny Kashmiris a vote to determine their own future to this very day.

Menon’s statement at the UN resulted in a bunch of violent clashes between Kashmiri freedom fighters and the Indian army. And to make matters worse the Indian Parliament declared Kashmir a province of India in March 1965.

Violent clashes along the Indo-Pak border between the Pakistani and Indian forces continued until September 6, 1965. On this day the Indian troops crossed the international border. In what was originally a battle for Kashmir turned into a full out war with India attempting to take control of Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city at the time.

The war ended on September 23, 1965, when both sides agreed to a cease-fire, negotiated by the UN Security Council. All though the 1965 war officially ended in stalemate, it was largely seen as a humiliating loss for India because despite its larger force and greater manpower it could not defeat Pakistan.

Pakistan will fight, fight for a thousand years

In February 1964, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto addressed the UN Security Council and warned them that if India developed a nuclear bomb, Pakistan would also develop it. And in 1972, having received credible intelligence that India was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, Bhutto is reportedly to have said, “Pakistan will fight, fight for a thousand years. If India builds the bomb… we will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own… We will have no other Choice!”

In “The Myth of Independence,” a book Bhutto wrote in 1969, he stated that it was necessary for Pakistan to acquire the fission weapon, and start a deterrence program aimed at a nuclear-armed India.

1971

After the 1948, and 1965 experience, Pakistanis feared that it would not be long before India launched another attack in an attempt to disintegrate Pakistan.

Their fears were realized in November 1971, when the Indian army taking advantage of a political conflict between East and West Pakistan, attacked East Pakistan.

All though India failed to destroy Pakistan completely, it did succeed at splitting the nation in half. East Pakistan was lost to Indian interference in a sovereign country on December 16, 1971. It is amazing that the world sat silent while India terrorized and tore Pakistan asunder.

Smiling Buddha (Pokhran-I)

On May 18, 1974, just a mere three-years after splitting Pakistan in half, India tested their first nuclear bomb in an operation codenamed ‘Smiling Buddha’ now commonly referred to as Pokhran-I. They created a rationale of threat from China after New Delhi was defeated in 1961 War over Chinese territory. Interestingly, facts deny this claim because Indians were developing the bomb when they enjoyed the best of relations with Peking. It was global power ambition and not security that drove India to ‘smile’ at Buddha.

The Indians diverted fueled from the CIRUS research reactor donated by the Canadian government, and used it to conduct their explosion. This was in direct violation of international law, as well as their agreement with Canada. The international community responded by creating the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to control the export of nuclear technology and material in an effort to curb future unlawful proliferation.

The Indians claimed that ‘Smiling Buddha’ was a peaceful nuclear explosion and was not a weapons test. But speaking to the press in 1997, Raj Ramanna, the Director of India’s Nuclear Program during the Smiling Buddha operation said, “The Pokhran test was a bomb, I can tell you now… An explosion is an explosion, a gun is a gun, whether you shoot at someone or shoot at the ground… I just want to make clear that the test was not all that peaceful.”

The 1974 Indian nuclear explosion forced then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to inform the world that “Pakistan was exposed to a kind of “nuclear threat and blackmail” unparalleled elsewhere (…) If the world’s community failed to provide political insurance to Pakistan and other countries against the nuclear blackmail, these countries would be constraint to launch atomic bomb programs of their own! (…) Assurances provided by the United Nations were not “Enough!”

Pakistan learned a very harsh lesson from the 1971 war, which was that it could not rely on the United Nations or the United States for support if confronted by an Indian nuclear threat. Unwilling to let the Indians blackmail Pakistan, Bhutto made it his mission to arm Pakistan with a nuclear weapon for the sole purpose of being able to deter India’s nuclear aggression.

1984

On April 13, 1984 India showed its greedy pugnacious side once again when it launched Operation Meghdoot, in which it illegally occupied the Siachen Glacier an area that was not demarcated as part of an agreement with Pakistan. India dishonestly claimed more than 1,000 square miles of territory as a result of its unlawful 1984 military operation in Siachen.

1990s

In 1987 a new Kashmiri resistance against India’s illegal occupation of Kashmir was seen as gaining enormous momentum. The Indian army responded to this new wave of resistance by conducting a series of violent operations against the people of Kashmir. This led to India banning the United Nations in 1990, and Amnesty International in 1992.

Responding to the kidnapping of four journalists in 1995, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said, “The kidnapping of four journalists in Kashmir is only one current example of a complete clampdown on any independent journalism in the area.” In their report, “On the Razor’s Edge,” the CPJ stated that the Indian government harasses and intimidates reporters.

India continued their violence against the Kashmiri people with total disregard to their fundamental human rights. Eventually in March 1998 the governor of Jammu and Kashmir, KV Krishna Rao confessed that Indian troops were “responsible for the massacre of Kashmiri people on several occasions” and that he felt “deeply for these human rights violations.”

May 11, 1998, Operation Shakti (Pokhran-II)

On May 11, 1998 India test exploded five nuclear bombs. These tests were conducted at a time when conflict in Kashmir was once again escalating.

In a recent presentation on April 18, 2015 to a group of students on the issue of the Kashmir conflict at the National Defense University, Islamabad. General Rashid Qureshi, Former Director-General, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), who was serving as a Brigade Commander in Kashmir on the Line of Control on May 11, 1998, recalled that the Indian troops fired day and night across the border after they exploded their nuclear bomb.

There was an environment of insecurity all over Pakistan. This insecurity grew on May 26, 1998 as Indian troops began fighting in the Keri, Rajauri area of Kashmir. The fear in Pakistan now was that India has demonstrated their capability of conducting multiple nuclear explosions what would stop them from blackmailing or bullying Pakistan in an attempt to take control of Kashmir, and what guarantee would Pakistan have that India would stop at Kashmir.

May 28, 1998, Chaghai-I

The May 11, 1998 explosions had threatened the existence of Pakistan and Pakistan was forced to make a tough decision. Risk Indian aggression, and possibility of a military confrontation, or should Pakistan detonate their own nuclear bombs to deter India’s belligerent design towards them?

Despite a tremendous amount of international pressure, mostly coming from the United States, Pakistan was forced to test detonate five nuclear bombs in the Chagai District of Balochistan on May 28, 1998 as a direct response to India’s tests.

According to authenticated sources, after Pakistan responded to India’s nuclear explosions, there was an eerie silence all along the Indo-Pak border. The constant firing and shelling by Indian soldiers had stopped completely.

Youm-e-Takbeer

Youm-e-Takbeer is celebrated because on this day Pakistan’s scientists successfully demonstrated their country’s nuclear capability and were able to bring stability to the region by deterring the threat of India’s nuclear bomb.

By testing the bomb Pakistan made full-scale war with India redundant.

All though India did amass more than 100,000 troops to Pakistan’s Eastern border during Operation Parakram in 2001, the Indian dream of capturing any part of Pakistan including Kashmir by force, is now dead.

It is important to remember the important role science played in all of this, which is why we also celebrate May 28 as the National Science Day. Pakistan’s scientific achievements continue to keep India at bay, promoting peace and stability. Pakistan’s most recent development of the Nasr short-range battlefield ready nuclear missile system is an example of just that.

Following Operation Parakram, it is widely known that India devised a new military doctrinal strategy of limited war, which has been referred to as the Cold Start Doctrine. The Indian thinking behind the limited war doctrine was that all though Pakistan has been able to deter them at the nuclear level they still had space at the conventional level. Pakistan quickly plugged this gap by developing a battlefield nuclear weapon, “pouring cold water on cold start.”

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FIFA said that on the basis of investigations carried out by the investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee and the latest facts presented by the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, the chairman of the adjudicatory chamber of the Ethics Committee, Hans-Joachim Eckert, has banned provisionally 11 individuals from carrying out any football-related activities on a national and international level.

The decision was taken upon the request of the chairman of the investigatory chamber, Dr Cornel Borbély, based on art. 83 par.1 of the FIFA Code of Ethics.

“The charges are clearly related to football and are of such a serious nature that it was imperative to take swift and immediate action. The proceedings will follow their course in line with the FIFA Code of Ethics,” said Chairman Eckert.

The banned individuals are: Jeffrey Webb, Eduardo Li, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, Jack Warner, Eugenio Figueredo, Rafael Esquivel, José Maria Marin, Nicolás Leoz, Chuck Blazer and Daryll Warner.

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Although Yemen is economically the poorest country in the Middle East, it may be the wealthiest in social capital. Yemen’s limited experience with colonialism has left largely intact important tribal institutions that still prioritise mediation, egalitarian ethics, cooperation and respect for women, all of which can be effectively harnessed in rebuilding and crafting a democratic nation.

By Najwa Adra*

At some point in the near future, the bombing of Yemen’s cities and on-the-ground violence taking place there will cease, opening the way for a flood of aid workers representing international organisations to arrive. They will bring with them welcome and much needed humanitarian assistance, as well as well-meaning consultants, armed with the latest development buzzwords and their own ideas of how to rebuild a country.

Models of governance, conflict resolution and micro-credit schemes that have been used elsewhere will be applied to Yemen with little consideration of how well they fit into Yemen’s social and economic environment. While immediate humanitarian relief may assist a harried population, the rebuilding efforts could easily damage the fabric of Yemeni society, thus completing the destruction begun by the combined efforts of former Yemeni president, Ali Abdallah Saleh, and the Saudi-led bombing campaign that began on March 26.

Although Yemen is economically the poorest country in the Middle East, it may be the wealthiest in social capital. Yemen’s limited experience with colonialism has left largely intact important tribal institutions that still prioritise mediation, egalitarian ethics, cooperation and respect for women, all of which can be effectively harnessed in rebuilding and crafting a democratic nation.

The vast majority of Yemen’s rural population, and a growing number of its urban population, self-identifies as tribal (qabayil). Yemeni tribes are territorial units organised into subunits, each with its own elected leader. They are best described as civil society organisations capable of mobilising groups of varying size to serve community needs. Schools, mosques and feeder roads to villages are all constructed to be affordable to the communities by mobilising local labour.

Tribal politics – conflict or cooperation?

I heard a wonderful example of tribal cooperation at a meeting at Oxfam, Sanaa in 2004. Wanting to build a health center in an under-served rural community, Oxfam staff offered the community a proposal for a micro-credit scheme to raise capital for the project. When these plans were rejected, the disappointed development agents left, saying they would return in a month. On their return they found a health center built and awaiting staff to be supplied by Oxfam. Such stories abound throughout Yemen. By listening to the concerns of local people, similar organisational principles can be applied to postwar rebuilding of Yemeni communities.

The gender perspective – Yemeni respect for women

Historically, tribalism in Yemen has respected women. Although all legal systems – customary, Islamic law and State law – assume a woman’s dependence on her male kin, economic necessity counteracts the official ideology of male control. Gender segregation is rare in rural communities; women are active economic participants, and they benefit from multiple safety nets. The protection of women is the norm, and women are rarely victims of assault or targets of violence. Yemeni women’s assertiveness often surprises visitors. It is important to note that these attitudes towards women are traditional to Yemen.

The demonstrations of 2011 showed the extent to which tribal principles of cooperation, egalitarianism, due process and respect for women have permeated all levels of Yemeni society. Women were highly visible leaders and participants, as protesters from diverse groups and parties worked together. Yet Yemen’s tribal heritage is under threat. Tribal rules have broken down over the past 10-15 years in response to feuding and warfare in the north and to the extent that corruption and government co-optation of major tribal leaders have reduced their accountability to their constituents. Other threats include an imported, often externally funded, politicised Islam that perceives tribal heterogeneity, flexibility and reliance on consensus as divisive and the mobility of rural women as unacceptable. Ironically, Islamist views are perceived as ‘modern’ by young tribal Yemenis because they differ from local traditions.

Understanding rural society in Yemen

Urban Yemeni and expatriate scholars, who have absorbed western visions of modernity and its assumptions that rural life is, by definition, conservative, patriarchal and incompatible with nationalism, also oppose tribalism, usually with little understanding of tribal life. Further, many southern Yemenis distrust northern tribes due to a history of raids in the past and more recent land grabs by corrupt tribal leaders acting at the behest of the Yemen’s ousted president. Finally, a month of merciless bombing by Saudi forces and their allies has polarised Yemen’s population with unprecedented sectarian animosity. The potential for civil war is real.

Experience elsewhere has shown the common practice of contracting relief work to external actors to be unsustainable, often leading to corruption and violence. The alternative is to contract local organisations staffed by Yemeni nationals familiar with the customs and concerns of the affected communities. Only with their input can sustainable models of national development be devised. The spirit and institutions that have provided Yemeni society with its extraordinary resilience can continue to do so if harnessed towards goals of rebuilding that all share.

Najwa Adra is a Research Associate at the American Institute for Yemeni Studies. She has a PhD in anthropology and extensive research, development and consulting experience on Yemen.

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

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Qatar’s 2022 World Cup is promising to be a rare example of a mega sporting event that leaves a legacy of social, political and economic change – but not in the way the Gulf state’s ruling family had imagined.

Controversy about Qatar’s successful bid coupled with world soccer body FIFA’s failure to seriously tackle corruption in soccer governance in its own house as well as its regional federations, prominent among which the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), led to this week’s unveiling of indictments against 14 senior current and past soccer FIFA executives and sports businessmen.

The scandal goes to the heart of not only financial corruption but also the enabling environment of political corruption rooted in the political sway of political forces often aligned with autocratic governments like those of the Middle East within FIFA, the AFC and the Olympic Council of Asia.

The scandal is compounded by mounting criticism of Qatar’s controversial labour regime and the Gulf state’s failure to so far make good on lofty reform promises. That has not only prompted global corporations who sponsor FIFA to speak out but also sparked discussion on the ethical responsibility of corporate sponsors embarrassed by what crusading journalist Andrew Jennings termed a criminal organization.

Given resistance to change within FIFA as well as several regional soccer bodies like the AFC, only three stakeholders had the potential of shaking soccer governance’s tree: the judiciary, fans and corporate sponsors. Prosecutors in the US and Switzerland took the lead this week.

The US Department of Justice had a legal base with the presence on US soil of the Miami-based Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) – virtually all those indicted hail from the Americas –, the involvement of a prominent US national, the fact that potentially illicit US dollar payments were processed through US banks, and the legislative and judicial infrastructure capable of taking on a global investigation.

By contrast, fans with the exception of a few demonstrations and statements primarily in Britain and Scotland were largely apathetic to what was a far-from-my-bed show in the stratosphere of soccer while corporate sponsors also took a lead in recent weeks with sharp statements criticising controversial labour conditions in Qatar.

The corporates were joined this week by former and present international players who in a letter demanded that Qatar abolish its controversial kafala system or sponsorship system that puts workers at the mercy of their employers. The letter asserted that those working on the 2022 World Cup were being “held hostage on the world’s biggest building site”

The combination of legal action in the United States and Switzerland coupled with corporate unrest should give Qatar reason for concern. The threat to Qatar’s retaining its hosting rights is multi-fold and has increased substantially with the legal proceedings. The legal proceedings also threaten with the focus on sports rights companies to shine a spotlight on companies’ cosy commercial relationships with soccer governance bodies that various regional federations, first and foremost among which the AFC, have sought to maintain at whatever cost.

While the US investigation appears to be initial focused on events in the Americas and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, it is also looking at the 2011 FIFA presidential election that sparked the downfall of Mr. Bin Hammam. ‎That election is closely tied to the Qatari bid and together with the FIFA vote in favour of Russia, the focus of the Swiss criminal proceedings.

Former FIFA executive committee Chuck Blazer, who has already pleaded guilty and is cooperating with US authorities, played an important role in bringing down Mr. Bin Hammam. Mr. Blazer allegedly sat next to Mr. Bin Hammam during the December 2, 2010 FIFA executive committee meeting that voted in favour of Qatar and watched‎ the Qatari tick off a list of names of those voting for the Gulf state. The assertion was that Mr. Bin Hammam’s list included the names of those whom he had bought.

Similarly‎, the sons of disgraced soccer executive, Jack Warner, Darry and Daryan Warner a former FIFA executive committee member and Bin Hammam associate, have followed Mr. Blazer in working with US authorities. Jack Warner, one of the 14 indicted executives, turned himself in to police in Trinidad and Tobago on Wednesday night local time.

Mr. Warner was instrumental in Mr. Bin Hammam’s campaigns for both the Qatar World Cup and the FIFA presidency. Mr. Warner resigned from FIFA in 2011 to avoid legal proceedings by the soccer body. Mr. Warner warned at the time that he would bring the house down on FIFA after he released an email from FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke asserting that the Qatar World Cup had been bought.

While the US and Swiss proceedings ‎focus on financial corruption, they are unlikely to tackle the equally serious problem of political corruption resulting from the close association of soccer and political corruption that often served as an enabler for illicit financial dealings and are at the heart of FIFA’s Qatar and Russia-related scandals, the Bin Hammam affair and the AFC scandals the group is seeking to suppress.

This blog together with the Malay Mail sparked the suspension earlier this month of AFC general secretary Dato Alex Soosay pending investigation into allegations that he attempted to have documents hidden or destroyed related to multiple potentially illegal payments as well as the group’s corporate dealings.

AFC president Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, a member of the Bahraini ruling family that in 2011‎ brutally crushed a popular revolt during which some 150 athletes and sports executives were arrested. They included on Sheikh Salman’s watch as head of the Bahrain Football Association national soccer team players who were reportedly tortured. Sheikh Salman failed to stand up for his players or address the allegations against him.

Sheikh Salman has further gone out of his way to bury an independent audit that disclosed massive financial shenanigans within the AFC and raised serious questions about the group’s $1 billion master rights agreement with Singapore-based World Sports Group. (WSG). WSG’s legal effort to force this author to disclose sources failed in 2014 with a damning Singapore Supreme Court ruling against it.

The US and Swiss legal proceedings put the Qatari World Cup bid in the spotlight.‎ Recent revelations by The Sunday Times leave little doubt about corruption in the Qatari bid. But to be fair, Qatar and Russia played the game the way it is played in FIFA. England lost its 2018 World Cup bid for the simple reason that it insisted on walking a straight and ethically and legally correct line.

As a result, depriving Qatar of its hosting rights without also tackling Russia and more importantly radically reforming FIFA and soccer governance worldwide to root out a culture of financial and political corruption would turn the Gulf state into a scapegoat. Moreover, the question is, what is the most favourable result of the legal proceedings: uprooting a deep-rooted culture, enabling sporting mega events to be vehicles of change or punitive retribution?

‎While Qatar scrambles to counter potential fallout from the legal proceedings, it is certain to feel pressure to act swiftly to address concerns about the working and living conditions of workers, including those involved in World Cup-related construction projects. Migrant workers constitute the majority of Qatar’s population.

To Qatar’s credit, it stands out since winning its World Cup hosting rights as the only Gulf state to engage with its critics in a part of the world that incarcerates or bars entry to those who don’t tow the autocrats’ line. Qatar has in recent weeks been under fire for failing to make good on lofty promises and cracking down on its critics as well as foreign media reporting on labour and World Cup-related issues.

Qatar’s engagement was a first step in the kind of change the 2022 World Cup can spark. So is the fact that corporate sponsors are rethinking what it means to grant financial support.

“What are brands Adidas, Gazprom, Hyundai, Kia, McDonald’s, Budweiser, Coca-Cola and Visa to do over allegations of improper conduct in working conditions at the 2022 World Cup building sites in Qatar?… A brand’s moral compass is being tested here and whilst many brands had commented last year, most notably Adidas who’s association with FIFA extends to 2030, issued statements alongside Sony… As consumers we can influence and help brands recognise and understand that as global citizens our expectation is that we’d at least like them to demonstrate that they care and lead by example,” said David Todaro, writing in Branding Magazine.

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The Rohingya refugee crisis is a test of Malaysia’s chairmanship of ASEAN. Kuala Lumpur’s response is an attempt to balance its foreign policy commitment to ASEAN and allay domestic concerns over the Rohingya humanitarian problem.

By David Han Guo Xiong*

The Rohingya refugee crisis presents a test of Malaysia’s chairmanship of ASEAN. The most recent agreement by Malaysia and Indonesia to provide temporary shelter for the refugees, following an emergency meeting on 20 May 2015 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was a diplomatic breakthrough. It reflected Malaysia’s delicate efforts to maintain its regional commitment to ASEAN while allaying domestic concerns about illegal immigrants in Malaysia.

Over the past three weeks, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand were turning away ships carrying mostly Muslim Rohingya refugees who were fleeing from Myanmar due to religious and ethnic persecutions in the Rakhine state of Myanmar. Estimates show that there could be over 6,000 people who are still stranded in the open seas. Indeed, the plight of the Rohingya people stranded in Malaysian seas has drawn an international outcry. The United Nations’ human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, criticised Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand for turning away the vessels while the European Union has urged Myanmar to end the persecution of its Rohingya minority.

Why Malaysia rejected the refugees

Initially, Malaysia had rejected the additional influx of the Rohingya boat people because an unrestricted acceptance of these refugees is not a viable, long-term solution to the crisis that was largely caused by a domestic problem within Myanmar.

Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not possess a legislative and administrative framework to address refugee matters. Therefore, the inclusion of more Rohingya refugees would have further strained Malaysia’s domestic capacity to cope with illegal immigrants in the country.

Nevertheless, these issues do not deny Malaysia’s long-standing concern for the plight of the Rohingya people. In 1992, the government of then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad had urged Myanmar to take immediate steps to resolve the Rohingya problem. This was consistent with Mahathir’s foreign policy to project Malaysia as an Islamic nation concerned for the welfare of Muslim minorities. However, Malaysia could not interfere directly in the domestic affairs of Myanmar, given the ASEAN principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other member-states.

Refugee policy under Najib

Although Prime Minister Najib Razak has largely avoided the strong Islamic zeal of Mahathir’s foreign policy, Malaysia continues to be sympathetic to the Rohingya refugees. Notwithstanding the initial resistance to accept more Rohingya refugees, Malaysia has on the whole exhibited credible leadership as ASEAN Chair by being subsequently assertive in its response to the Rohingya crisis. At the 26th ASEAN Summit recently, Malaysian foreign minister Anifah Aman expressed the need for the Myanmar government to resolve the Rohingya problem domestically as a long-term solution.

Malaysia and Indonesia have agreed to provide temporary shelter for the refugees in their respective countries for up to a year, after which the international community should assist to repatriate and resettle the refugee to a third country.

Indeed, if the humanitarian crisis had not been temporarily mitigated, the consequences could have been worrisome not only for Malaysia, but also for the Rohingya refugees and ASEAN. An obvious outcome would be the continued suffering of the Rohingya people. Malaysia could be perceived as lacking leadership as chair of ASEAN. In addition, the failure to tackle the refugee crisis could have cast scepticism on the credibility of the ASEAN Community if it could not provide a viable solution to alleviate the suffering of the Rohingya people.

Malaysia’s domestic concerns

The Rohingya refugee crisis also poses domestic challenges for Malaysia. On one hand, the growing presence of Rohingya refugees could worsen the social, economic and political problems associated with illegal immigrants in Malaysia. The home affairs ministry has indicated that health and security problems could arise as a result.

In June 2013, ethnic violence between Buddhist and Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar spilled over into Malaysia, resulting in clashes between Buddhist and Muslim Myanmar nationals working in Malaysia in Selayang and the Klang Valley. These incidents threatened the safety of Malaysian citizens. Thus, a wholesale acceptance of the Rohingya refugees without addressing potential domestic problems is a risky political move which could easily trigger a backlash from the general public.

On the other hand, several Members of Parliament from both the ruling coalition and the opposition as well as local NGOs have criticised the government for not doing enough to alleviate the suffering of the Rohingya people.

Hence, the temporary acceptance of the refugees by providing shelter for one year – subject to an international solution to the Rohingya refugee crisis – is stop-gap measure that enables Malaysia to preserve its credibility as ASEAN Chair. This also placates domestic pressure to help the Rohingya refugees and at the same time reduce the negative impact of the presence of Rohingya migrants.

Rohingya as ASEAN citizens

In the end, opening borders indefinitely to the Rohingya people would not improve the domestic situation in Myanmar. In fact, it may the send the wrong signal to Myanmar that diverting its internal problem to other countries is an acceptable solution. Instead, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, are sending a strong message to Myanmar that pushing responsibility to others is contrary to the ideals of the ASEAN Community.

Indeed, a long-lasting solution has to come from an internal change within Myanmar, supported by a more inclusive ASEAN Community which develops conducive measures to tackle the Rohingya problem. The Rohingya people are part of Southeast Asia, and a people-centric ASEAN Community should live up to its promise of a regional body that cares for the welfare of its citizens.

*David Han Guo Xiong is a Research Analyst with the Malaysia Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

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The next president of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) – world football’s governing body – should ensure that future host countries of the World Cup are required to comply with fundamental human rights norms, said Human Rights Watch on Thursday. The FIFA presidential election will be held in Zurich on May 29, 2015.

The FIFA presidential election will take place just two days after a US Department of Justice indictment named 14 FIFA officials and marketing executives on charges including racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering. The two candidates are the incumbent, Sepp Blatter of Switzerland, seeking a fifth term, and Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan.

“The next FIFA president needs to deal directly with crises – including human rights abuses and corruption – that are undermining the foundations of football’s management,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives. “When countries seek the right to host World Cups, they should also be expected to play by the rules. Instead of allowing double standards for abusive or discriminatory hosts, FIFA needs to use its immense power to put an end to human rights violations in the name of sport.”

In April, the Sport and Rights Alliance (SRA) – a new coalition of leading rights organizations including Human Rights Watch, sports organizations, and trade unions – sent a questionnaire to the FIFA presidential candidates, asking specific questions about abuses linked to the 2018 World Cup in Russia and 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and about the FIFA reform process. The questionnaire asked candidates to tackle rights and labor abuses related to the 2018 Russia World Cup and 2022 Qatar World Cup, such as Qatar’s abusive kafala sponsorship system for migrant workers, which is a key part of a highly exploitative labor system.

“The arrests have spotlighted FIFA’s unaccountable system, but there should also be new scrutiny of the conditions for a vast army of migrant laborers who are building massive new infrastructure to host the World Cup,” Worden said.

During his 17 years at the helm, Blatter, the incumbent president, made no personal commitment to address these issues. Instead, his office issued a statement outlining the work FIFA has done to tackle corruption, and pointed to a long-overdue revision of the bidding process relating to human rights, labor standards, sustainability, and anti-corruption measures.

The 2022 Qatar World Cup, involving the construction of eight new stadiums and infrastructure by thousands of migrant workers, will cost an estimated US$200 billion. Qatari authorities arrested German and British television crews as they sought to document conditions for migrant workers working on the project, most of them South Asian.

Human Rights Watch documented exploitation of migrant workers ahead of the Sochi Olympics, including during construction of the Fisht Stadium, a 2018 World Cup venue. The Russian prison service recently announced its support for proposed legislative changes to allow prisoners to work at factories generating building materials, including for World Cup projects, as a cost saving measure.

“If the new FIFA President fails to implement human rights reforms ahead of the next World Cups, there surely will be further abuses,” said Worden, who recently testified at the European Parliament on such risks. “We all love to watch the World Cup, but sports fans don’t want to sit in a stadium built by exploited, cheated, and abused workers – or worse, a facility that cost lives to construct.”

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Islamic State has released a video showing the ruins of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra undamaged by the group’s takeover.

The jihadist group has destroyed many ancient artifacts in its conquests, which extend to roughly one-third of Syria and Iraq, including most recently in the Iraqi cities of Hatra and Mosul. Archaeologists fear the group’s taking of Palmyra could spell the final destruction of one of the most remarkable and well-preserved ruins of the classical world.

But on Tuesday, the Internet-savvy terror group uploaded a 1.5-minute video of the ruins still intact.

According to the British daily The Guardian, activists reported that the group had promised to only destroy statues that violated the radical Islamist group’s religious prohibition against what it sees as polytheistic depictions.

It was not clear from news reports whether the archaeological evidence from the city’s ancient Jewish presence was still intact.

IS’s apparent concern for world opinion didn’t extend to the people captured when Islamic State fighters took the city. The group used the city’s ancient Roman theater as a site for some 20 executions of people it alleged were pro-Assad fighters.

Earlier this week, UNESCO chief Irina Bokova called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in the area and for the international community “to do everything in its power to protect the affected population and safeguard the unique cultural heritage of Palmyra.”

Original article

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While speaking in the Upper House of Parliament, Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said that the indicators on economic growth and job creation are improving, meaning that inequality will fall. Furthermore, he said that the Government of Spain’s philosophy is to continue lowering taxes as far as the revenue increase allows.

During the government control session in the Upper House of Parliament, Rajoy said that a recent report by the OECD and experts on the matter show that job losses are the main cause of inequality. This was the reply given by the Prime Minister to the Member of the Upper House for the Socialist Parliamentary Group, María Victoria Chivite, following a question about the government’s inequality policy.

Rajoy argued that the 80/20 indicator, which establishes a comparison between the 20% of the population with the highest incomes and the 20% with the lowest, worsened from 2007 as a result of the decisions taken during the previous legislature that led to 3,400,000 Spaniards losing their jobs. “We have yet to receive the data on 2014 and 2015 but, given the figures on economic growth and job creation, I am convinced that these indicators will improve and, by extension, so will the inequality situation,” Rajoy said.

Rajoy recalled that, in 2014, employment rose in Spain for the first time in seven years and 440,000 Spaniards found work, that the Labour Force Survey (Spanish acronym: EPA) on the first quarter of 2015 shows that there are 504,000 more Spaniards in work than last year and that, in April, there were 578,000 more people registered with the Social Security system than in the same month in 2014.

The Spanish Prime Minister also quoted other figures that, in his opinion, reflect a change in trend: the number of households where all members are unemployed has fallen by 185,000 according to the latest EPA; the number of people who have been unemployed for over a year has fallen by 247,000; and 99,300 young people under the age of 24 have found a job in the last year.

“From negative growth and recession, we have moved to positive growth and job creation. It is also important to note that, of the 504,000 jobs that were created last year, 60% of them are permanent and that the temporary employment rate now stands at 23.6%,” Rajoy said.

In Rajoy’s opinion, what needs to be done now is to persevere with those policies that create jobs because it is the most effective way to combat inequality. He particularly mentioned the extension of the Prepara Plan, the signing of a new benefit for the long-term unemployed with the CCOO and UGT trade unions, the tax reform, the maintenance of social policies, the Regional Liquidity Fund and payments to suppliers.

When asked by the Member of the Upper House for the Entesa pel Progrés de Catalunya Parliamentary Group, José Montilla, about a possible change to the cultural VAT,  Rajoy said any such decision would depend on revenue.

The government’s “philosophy”, he explained, is to try and lower Personal Income Tax (Spanish acronym: IRPF) and Corporate Income Tax “and, if possible, VAT as well”. “If revenue improves, as it has been doing this year, we can take decisions on this issue,” said Rajoy. The Prime Minister argued that “as long as economic growth and job creation continue, we will collect more revenue” and underlined the need to continue meeting the public deficit targets.

Rajoy recalled that this deficit stood at 9.1% of GDP when he took office as Prime Minister and Spain was experiencing considerably difficulty in its attempts to finance itself. This situation “forced us to take decisions that were tough, difficult and not in our manifesto,” such as raising Personal Income Tax and VAT (albeit maintaining the reduced rate, he said, for certain cultural products such as books and museum tickets).

Rajoy predicted that the public deficit will have fallen by half at the end of this year from where it stood in 2011 – a reduction that he believes was compatible with maintaining basic public services.

He also stressed that, following the initial tax increases, a selective reduction was applied in 2013 for SMEs and the self-employed while Personal Income Tax and Corporate Income Tax were lowered in 2014, a reform that came into effect this year and “the second part of which will take effect” in 2016.

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The FIFA-linked arrests on the eve of the re-election of the organization’s chief are an obvious attempt to thwart Sepp Blatter’s re-appointment, Vladimir Putin said, answering journalists’ questions. He added it’s another example of US meddling abroad. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the US could be selfishly motivated for its own gain, as was the case with Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.

“Unfortunately our American partners are using these methods in order to achieve their own selfish gains and it is illegal to persecute people. I would not rule out that in regards to FIFA, the same thing could be happening, though I do not know how it will end,” he said. “However, the fact that this is happening right on the eve of the FIFA presidential elections, gives one this exact impression.”

Putin added this is an obvious attempt to expand Washington’s jurisdiction in other countries.
“This is yet one more attempt to try and impose their law against other states. I am absolutely sure that this is an attempt to try and stop Blatter from being re-elected as FIFA president, which is a grave breach of the principles of a functioning international organization.”

He also said pressure had been applied on Blatter “to force him to take the 2018 World Cup from Russia.” “We know his position – which has nothing to do with any kind of special relationship between Russia and FIFA – he thinks that sport and politics should be separate.” “In terms of these arrests, it looks rather strange at the very least. These arrests took place at the request of the Americans and they were accused of corruption,” Putin told journalists, pointing out that that the accusations were being made against international officials.

“One could say that maybe someone might be guilty of something. I do not know this, but what I do know is that this has nothing to do with the USA,” he added. “They, these officials, are not citizens of the USA, and if something happened, it did not take place on the territory of the United States and the US has no business in this.”

Putin added that the “prosecutor of the United States, according to our mass media has already said that these FIFA committee members have committed a crime. This is almost as though the prosecutor doesn’t know of the rule ‘innocent until proven guilty’.” “Whether the people are guilty or not, this should be decided in a court.”

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By Musa al-Gharbi

In the Comedy Central television series South Park, the boys discover a cartel of gnomes who steal people’s underwear. Over the course of the episode it’s revealed that these seizures are part of their business plan which goes:

Step 1: Collect Underpants → Step 2: ? → Step 3: Profit

The punchline, of course, is that the gnomes have set up this elaborate enterprise for stealing and stockpiling underpants, but none of them have any idea how to leverage these resources in order to reach their aspiration (profits).

It is immediately obvious that step 2 may be the most important part of the entire plan: it tells you if there is a viable path from step 1 to step 3. If there isn’t, step 3 is irrelevant and step 1 is (at best) a waste of time and resources.

But Step 2 happens to be the least exciting part of the process, and the most difficult, complex, contentious—which explains why so many attempt to circumvent it. Instead they just keep repeating step one, at an ever-increasing scale, hoping that step 3 will somehow magically materialize in the process.

So it goes.

While this particular episode was meant to lampoon many aspects of the business world, it unfortunately seems just as reflective of U.S. national security policy. Consider:

Step 1: Sanctions →Step 2: ? →Step 3: regime change or substantial revision of regime policies

Step 1: Overthrow “rogue” government → Step 2: ? → Step 3: a democratic, secular and/or liberal state emerges in its stead (see: Iraq, Libya, and coming soon, Syria).

Step 1: Arm sub-state or non-state proxies → Step 2: ? → Step 3: American strategic interests successfully realized in the region

Step 1: Support dictators → Step 2: ? → Step 3: long-term stability in the Middle East; containment of radical ideologies antithetical to the prevailing order (see: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and coming soon, Libya).

Step 1: Bomb “militants” with drones or airstrikes → Step 2: ? → Step 3: Transnational/ supranational jihadist groups are defeated

Comedy, in the Aristotelian sense

This chronic failure to work out precisely how or if particular tactics can realize a specific strategic objectives before engaging would be bad enough on its own. But this is not even the worst part:

When these policies are obviously failing, or even generating severe blowback or 2^nd order effects, policymakers still refuse to concede, or even consider, that their plan may be ill-conceived. Rather than rethinking their approach, the typical response is to double-down on the current strategy—even when there is exhaustive empirical evidence suggesting the maneuvers are ill-advised.

For instance, it is an inductive fact that sanctions rarely achieve their stated goals. They work at best partially, and even then under very specific circumstances. The overwhelming majority of the time, rather than undermining “rogue” actors, they actually hurt primarily the common people while empowering autocrats in various ways—even as they generate widespread hostility towards the nation(s) spearheading the sanctions (generally, the U.S.). Often this leads to even more provocative actions. And yet, the U.S. and E.U.’s reflexive response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine was sanctions. And the typical results have followed.

The track record for U.S. targeted killings–to include the (interrelated) high-value targeting and drone campaigns—is abysmal. The programs have radically destabilized the countries of operation, with profound adverse ripple effects across the entire MENA region—and yet even while Yemen has imploded in part because of these policies, the U.S continues its drone operations there.

The CIA’s own exhaustive investigation revealed that arming and training non-state/ sub-state proxies has virtually never successfully realized America’s strategic interests. Instead, these investments tend to prolong, deepen and spread conflicts, empower bad actors, and make crises more difficult to predict or control—often serving as a catalyst for deeper, and even more catastrophic, U.S. intervention down the line. Worse still, the very actors the U.S. empowered often take on an adversarial relationship with the West if and when they successfully seize power. And yet, what is the primary strategy to defeat ISIS? Arming and training thousands more fighters to be deployed into Syria, who will likely drag the U.S. into direct conflict with Assad rather than ISIS; also arming and training Sunni tribal militias in Iraq who will likely use these assets to launch a revolt against the Iraqi government even if ISIS is driven out, assuming they don’t simply join up with the extremists instead, as many of the previous generations of Iraqi and Syrian recruits have.

Another example: there is literally no reason to believe that a modern and viable liberal, secular or democratic nation state will self-organize out of anarchy; in fact, there can be no meaningful guarantee or assurance of rights, freedoms, or lasting reform in the absence of stability or security. Moreover, failed states and ungoverned zones tend to provide ideal havens for, often repressive and exploitative, sub-state and non-state actors. And yet the United States dismantled the government of Iraq, overthrew the government of Libya, and is seeking to do the same in Syria—in partnership with one of the world’s most noxious regimes–and under the auspices of spreading democracy and defending human rights!

Finally, it is well-established that terrorism enjoys a strong correlation with occupations and interventions by foreign actors. ISIS has been trying to provoke outside powers into their theater for just this reason. As if to grant their wish, the United States is gearing up to deepen its failing campaign against the “Islamic State”—even to the point of putting thousands more U.S. soldiers on the ground in the Iraqi and Syrian theaters.

Tragedy in every sense

Of course, one important disanalogy with South Park is that in the “real world,” this psychology is not silly or funny—it is horrific, with incalculable consequences for those affected.

Since 9/11, the so-called “War on Terror” has caused the deaths of more than 1.3 million people—mostly non-combatants—with many times this number maimed and traumatized. The infrastructure of several countries has been destroyed, whole generations have their futures in jeopardy.

Despite the ostensive purpose of the campaign being the protection of Americans and their way of life, there have been tens-of-thousands of U.S. casualties, a radical undermining of civil rights and liberties—and for all that, the problem of terrorism has grown worse, largely as a result of these inept policies.

And yet the primary criticism launched against President Obama is not that his administration is overly-wedded to these failed policies and lacks any vision for alternative ways to proceed. Instead the charge is that the U.S. needs to redouble their efforts, doing these same actions more, harder, and on a bigger scale than Obama has been willing to do.

And unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any other channels to choose from: re-runs of the most notorious episodes of the last 14 years are slated to begin effective January 2017.

The post National Security Strategy: From South Park To Washington DC – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A top Islamic State, or Daesh, figure has made an appearance in Iraq’s city of Ramadi, residents told Reuters Thursday.

Iraqi security expert Hisham al-Hashimi identified Daesh’s second-leading religious authority as Ali Attiya al-Jubouri, also known as Abu Asim or “the blind judge.”

“This cleric who appeared in Ramadi yesterday is very famous,” Hashimi said. “He is the second highest religious authority after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the fifth man in the organization of Daesh.”

Residents in the city said blind man with one hand delivered a speech at a mosque in the Anbar provincial capital Wednesday evening after prayer.

Daesh overran Ramadi earlier this month, a major setback for the Iraqi government.

Original article

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By Tom Balmforth

(RFE/RL) — A prominent member of parliament for the ruling United Russia party has drafted a bill to allow enterprises to employ thousands of convicts as a cheap workforce to build infrastructure for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

The legal amendments reported on May 25 in leading business daily Kommersant create a mechanism for companies to use prisoners as laborers on work sites hundreds of kilometers from where they are incarcerated.

Any type of enterprise — state, private, or public — could employ prisoners facing compulsory correctional labor or serving time in penal colony settlements — facilities used to isolate prisoners typically convicted of less severe crimes.

There are 39,500 prisoners serving sentences in 128 penal-colony settlements in the Russian Federation, according to 2015 statistics from the Federal Penitentiary Services (FSIN) cited by Kommersant.

This is just a fraction of Russia’s prison population, which last year was estimated at 670,000 by the International Center for Prison Studies.

The bill was drafted by Aleksandr Khinshtein, a deputy for the ruling United Russia party and deputy chairman of the parliamentary committee for security. Khinshtein, unlike several deputies in the State Duma, does not have a reputation for making eccentric legal proposals that never see the light of day.

Khinshtein proposed offering companies tax breaks to encourage them to use prison labor. He said the cheap workforces would be particularly useful as Russia prepares to hold the 2018 World Cup, soccer’s grandest global event.

Memories Of The Gulag

He told Kommersant that the prisoners would be held in “isolated areas that function like colony-settlements outside the correctional facilities with the aim of adapting the convicts to work.”

“For example, if an enterprise is interested in using prisoners for work and has a hostel, then the convicts could live in that hostel but only on condition that it will be appropriately equipped and guarded by FSIN,” he said.

The Federal Penitentiary Service supports the initiative, according to Kommersant, but only with the proviso that prison laborers be employed in the same federal province where they are incarcerated.

Russia’s opposition condemned the initiative as reminiscent of the gulag economy under Josef Stalin that saw millions of Soviet citizens sent to camps and used as forced labor in inhospitable mines and abortive infrastructure projects.

“During a crisis, a cheap workforce is needed, and here we have it — the simplest decision: to use prison labor, the classic Stalin model,” wrote Dmitry Gudkov, an opposition lawmaker and often a lone voice of dissent in Russia’s lower house.

“We only need to recall how many people are serving time for trumped-up cases, how many of them are entrepreneurs — these people are also going to be sent to take part in this slave labor,” said Gudkov.

Vladimir Osechkin, head of human rights project Gulagu.Net, was quoted by Kommersant as saying: “The initiative is correct, but only if the prisoners are given the opportunity to voluntarily choose to work.”

“Otherwise, we are talking about the revival of the economic model of the Gulag when all of the main construction projects of the USSR were built at the expense of the poorly paid or completely unpaid.”

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When Ismoil told his parents that he wanted to attend one of Osh’s newly opened madrasahs and become an imam, his parents thought it a bad idea. The year was 1994, and their dusty corner of southern Kyrgyzstan had only a handful of mosques – a legacy of the Soviet Union’s tight control over religion. His parents worried Ismoil would not earn enough to feed himself.

Twenty years later, Ismoil is a sought-after religious authority whose blessing is often courted by local politicians. He lives comfortably amid a religious revival in Kyrgyzstan.

But now imams like Ismoil – who declined to give his full name for fear of state reprisals – face a fresh challenge. The government is questioning their qualifications, worried that poorly educated imams could either be spreading radical ideas, or are not capable of countering them.

Since October 2014, the Muftiate, a quasi-government agency also known as the Muslim Spiritual Board, has required all imams to pass tests on Sharia law and Arabic. The tests are conducted by a special committee comprising Muftiate representatives, officials from the secular State Agency on Religious Affairs and members of Kyrgyzstan’s Security Council, which is chaired by the president.

The idea is to weed out imams with weak religious knowledge. In 2014, the State Agency for Religious Affairs found that 70 percent of 59 imams surveyed lacked a formal and thorough religious education.

The tests also enable government officials to gain a better understanding of how mosques around the country operate. Officials are concerned that a poor understanding of Islam among clergy could facilitate the proliferation of radical ideas.

At an October roundtable attended by Kyrgyz officials and clergy, Zamirbek Tursunbekov of the State Agency on Religious Affairs lamented the government’s “lack of control over imams.” “Today there is a need to train imams to preach traditional norms of Islam,” Vechernii Bishkek quoted Tursunbekov as saying.

The state has struggled to prove that its anti-radical campaign is not a cover for personal vendettas or ethnic prejudices. In March, police arrested Rashot Kamalov, the leading imam at a popular mosque in Kara-Suu, alleging he was involved in the recruitment of fighters for rebel groups in Syria. Kamalov’s lawyers and supporters say the charges are politically motivated, intended to silence a prominent government critic.

Muslims have long been viewed with suspicion by Kyrgyzstan’s secular authorities. The latest tightening of religious affairs started in earnest at a February 2014 Security Council meeting. Shortly after, police in Jalal-Abad began requiring imams to sign statements certifying they do not belong to radical groups.

The idea of testing imams seems to have wide support, especially in Bishkek and Osh, cities with large secular populations.

“One of the most urgent problems in terms of religion is that many imams have an insufficient religious education,” said Alisher Yusupov, a professor of economics and finance at the Kyrgyz-Uzbek University in Osh. “It is important to improve the quality of education in religious educational institutions. It is also necessary to address the shortage of qualified instructors.”

The tests are proving divisive in a country where few take government proclamations at face value. An imam in a small village near Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital, complained that the exams have been politicized.

“We had to go through tests in the past. What is different this time is that they [the tests] are more about internal politics. The current Muftiate leadership is trying to stuff the Muftiate with loyal imams while getting rid of those who are tied to previous leaders. Those imams who have connections are allowed to pass; and those who do not are dismissed,” said the imam, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisals.

Muftiate representatives in Osh refused EurasiaNet.org’s multiple requests for comment.

Solijon, a religious construction worker from Osh, believes ethnic identity is also a factor. “After the 2010 events [ethnic bloodletting that disproportionately targeted minority Uzbeks], many Uzbek imams have been replaced by Kyrgyz imams. Official reasoning is that they failed to pass the tests. But this is a lame reason,” Solijon said.

It is not just imams who are under pressure. Amid official claims that several hundred Kyrgyz citizens have joined militant groups fighting in Syria and Iraq, authorities have begun questioning Kyrgyz citizens who received their religious education abroad.

An Osh-based human rights lawyer who represents suspected radicals told EurasiaNet.org that law enforcement bodies such as the police and GKNB (formerly the KGB) “have been interrogating those who studied and worked in Turkey and Gulf states because of suspicions that they have links to extremist groups.”

Authorities recognize that imams are still badly needed. According to government statistics, there are 2,362 mosques in Kyrgyzstan today, up from about 1,700 in 2011.

Moreover, though Kyrgyzstan has 75 madrasahs – Islamic seminaries – not all graduates become imams upon graduation. Alumni often opt to travel to Russia to work as labor migrants because as imams their salaries are too low, several seminary students told EurasiaNet.org.

In a February interview with Vechernii Bishkek, Bakhtybek Osmonov, a senior specialist at the State Agency for Religious Affairs, the secular government body, admitted that finding qualified imams is a struggle. “Sooner or later, imams must be replaced. But if all of them are dismissed, this will create a vacuum,” Osmonov said.

The post Kyrgyzstan Testing Clerics’ Knowledge Of Islam appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(EurActiv) — Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Thursday (28 May) of meddling outside its jurisdiction in the arrest of top officials from soccer’s world governing body, FIFA.

Putin said the arrests in Switzerland on Wednesday were an “obvious attempt” to prevent FIFA head Sepp Blatter’s re-election this week, but that the 79-year-old had Russia’s backing.

The world’s most popular sport was plunged into turmoil this week when seven senior soccer officials were arrested on US corruption charges to face extradition from Switzerland.

Swiss authorities have also announced a criminal investigation into the awarding of the next two World Cups, including the 2018 tournament in Russia.

“If anything happened, it did not happen on US territory and the United States has nothing to do with it,” Putin said. “This is yet another blatant attempt (by the United States) to extend its jurisdiction to other states.”

Citing former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, both of whom have evaded prosecution in the United States by hiding abroad, Putin questioned Washington’s right to request the FIFA officials’ extradition.

“Unfortunately, our American partners use such methods to achieve their selfish aims and illegally persecute people. I do not rule out that in the case of FIFA, it’s exactly the same,” Putin said.

He said FIFA head Blatter, who is standing for re-election to a fifth term at the FIFA Congress in Zurich on Friday, had been pressured to strip Russia of its rights to host the 2018 World Cup.

Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said on Thursday there was “no risk” of Russia losing the right to host the 2018 soccer World Cup after Swiss investigators opened a criminal investigation into the bidding process.

“There is no risk of losing the World Cup,” Mutko was quoted as saying by RIA news agency.

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While the self-proclaimed Islamic State has been identified as a serious security threat worldwide, the establishment of the Katibah Nusantara, a dedicated Southeast Asian military unit within IS, is a new direct challenge to Southeast Asia.

By Jasminder Singh*

While the presence of Southeast Asian fighters in the self-proclaimed Islamic State is well-known, what is less noticed is the rising importance of IS’ strategy of waging a global jihad. While the Malay-speaking jihadists who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s formed the backbone of the Jemaah lslamiyah in the 1990s and the first decade of 2000, IS seems to have more grandiose plans for its Malay Archipelago fighters.

This is evident from Islamic State’s establishment of the Katibah Nusantara, a Malay-based combat unit, with serious consequences for Southeast Asian security. The Katibah Nusantara is a dedicated fighting force. Its capability was most evident in early April 2015 when the unit scored its first major combat success by capturing five Kurd-held territories in Syria. This battle-field success was highlighted in the jihadi and Islamic State’s social media, especially in the Indonesian and Malay languages, partly to entice new recruits to join the cause.

IS’ Malay Archipelago Combat Unit

Katibah Nusantara has also been expanding its recruitment drive for fighters and supporters through videos and printed press in the Malay language. While Bahrumshah, a former charismatic Jemaah Islamiyah member in Indonesia has been active, this has reached new proportions with the use of young Malay and Indonesian children to propagate the cause, especially in the social media.

Katibah Nusantara is likely to gain importance in IS’ strategic goals of establishing a world-wide Caliphate. The combat returnees for IS could be mobilised to undertake attacks in Southeast Asia. Unlike JI which had members who were returnees from the Afghan war, this time, the region would be confronted with a far stronger force in terms of numbers, ideology and military training and combat experience.

Katibah Nusantara has also been playing a part in connecting the local extremist networks, leading to the ‘glocalisation’ of IS’ danger through nexus with local groups in the region. It also gives hope and support to the local outfits in the region by legitimising their causes, which have suffered from security operations since the 2002 Bali bombings. The downward slide of jihadist appeal and success in Indonesia and even Malaysia since 2009 has been reversed by Katibah Nusantara’s success in Iraq and Syria.

Importance of Malay-speaking fighters in IS

The growing reach of Katibah Nusantara could lead to its expanding influence in Islamic State’s decision-making process, in turn leading IS giving greater priority to Southeast Asia as its war zone. Already, there are indications with IS suggesting Poso in Indonesia as its training ground and the possible declaration of Southeast Asia as part of its wilayah or province within the Islamic Caliphate.

In addition to the arrest of more than 100 IS supporters in Malaysia and a smaller number in Indonesia, the foiling of planned attacks in Malaysia by IS supporters is indicative of the danger Katibah Nusantara poses to the region. A recent IS posting on the social media also identified Singapore as a possible target for attack with new groups in the Philippines pledging allegiance to Islamic State.

While Malay-speaking fighters, mostly from Indonesia and Malaysia, constitute a small proportion of the more than 30,000 foreign fighters from over 90 countries currently fighting in Iraq and Syria, more significant is the growing importance of the Southeast Asian group.

With more than 700 and 200 fighters from Indonesia and Malaysia respectively, and a smaller number from the Philippines and even Singapore, the Malay-speaking fighters are being organised for a number of reasons, including the fact that they emanate from Southeast Asia where a sizeable number of world’s Sunni Muslims reside. About 30 groups in Southeast Asia have already pledged allegiance to IS.

Launch of the Malay-Speaking Combat Unit

On 26 September 2014, the Katibah Nusantara Lid Daulah Islamiyah or the Malay Archipelago Unit for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was formally launched, headquartered in Al-Shadadi, in the Syrian province of Hasaka. This is reminiscent of the Jemaah Islamiyah’s Al-Ghuraba cell that was based in Karachi, Pakistan which formed the hub for Malay-speaking jihadists fighting in Afghanistan.

The Katibah Nusantara is headed by an Amir, officially identified as Abu Ibrahim al-Indunisiy. Most of the leaders appear to be Indonesians even though many Malaysians are part of it. The unit is subdivided into various departments including those handling combat fighters, snipers, heavy weapons, tactics and strategy, and military management.

The primary objective of the combat unit is to assist IS to achieve its jihad goal of establishing an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as part of the wider Caliphate. Ideology is a major factor binding these fighters. The Malay unit facilitates communication among its members and directs their combat tasks. It facilitates the day-to-day challenges confronting Malay-speaking jihadists as they are operating in a largely Arabic-speaking environment and face difficulties communicating with other foreign jihadists.

The unit assists families in Indonesia and Malaysia whose husbands or children are in Iraq and Syria, including those who have perished in combat. The unit motivates the fighters to continue their struggle through religious classes and prevent disillusionment or retreat from the combat zone, especially in the face of Western Coalition attacks. It also performs the task of recruiting new fighters by providing a more conducive environment of fellowship, providing the pull factor for those intent on supporting IS.

While Islamic State has surfaced as a major threat world-wide, this has become even more compelling for Southeast Asia with the establishment of Katibah Nusantara. The formation of a combat unit for the Malay Archipelago requires a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach with strong international support in response. Failure to counter it could have severe security ramifications for the region, similar to what Boko Haram and Al-Shabab are perpetrating in Africa.

*Jasminder Singh is a Research Analyst with the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR), a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

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China’s responds to US pivot to Asia with One Belt, One Road – that could offer opportunity for the US.

By Shuaihua Wallace Cheng*

Successful launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and confrontations in the South China Sea have reignited debate over how the United States should deal with a rising China. The US has not yet offered an official response to China’s “One Belt, One Road” that marks an unprecedented shift of China’s economic diplomacy from a low-key approach to an ambitious China Circle. A considered response is warranted – and the new Silk Road network could offer an opportunity for the US to engage with China in a constructive manner.

The initiative has two parts, namely, the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The concept was introduced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in late 2013. In less than 18 months, China has produced a comprehensive action plan with committed support from near 60 countries in Eurasia and beyond.

The proposed network has enormous geographic scale. The belt on land runs through the continents of Asia, Europe and Africa, connecting China, Central Asia, Russia and Europe in the north, and linking China with the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea through Central Asia and the Indian Ocean in the south. The maritime route starts from China’s coast to Europe through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean in one route and to the South Pacific in the other – estimated to cover 4.4 billion people and US$2.1 trillion gross production, respectively 63 percent of world population and 29 percent of world GDP.

China’s vision is no less impressive than the geographic scope. The belt and road will not only enhance “five connections” – trade, infrastructure, investment, capital and people – it will create a community with “shared interests, destiny and responsibilities.” China hopes the network will become two wings of Asia, with China at the head of this flying eagle.

The belt and road form a massive China Circle that does not overlap with US territory. China does not want a confrontation. With this emerging circle, China will have more equal footing vis-à-vis US in the international economy:

• The China Circle is partly driven by Obama’s pivot to Asia strategy, announced in 2011 and also called a rebalance to Asia. The pivot includes two main security and economic arms – to redeploy 60 percent US air and sea power to Asia by 2020, surrounding China, and to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement with allies, excluding China. The de facto containment effects of these policies prevent China from expanding its influence to the East and South.
• The circle opens diversified export markets for China. China’s traditional markets in the US and Western Europe, while big in scale, are sluggish. More importantly, in some sectors such as solar panel, machinery, or telecommunication and construction services, these traditional markets are either already saturated or riddled with protectionist trade and investment measures. Developing countries along the proposed Silk Road are far from fully tapped. China’s bilateral trade with countries along the Silk Road represent 26 percent of China’s total in the first quarter of 2015, according to Chinese Ministry of Commerce.
• China will have better access to energy and food, becoming less dependent on transportation routes controlled by the US military. So far, about 80 percent of China’s oil imports go through the Strait of Malacca, crowded and under the control of the US military and non-Chinese commercial entities. Going through Gwadar Deep Water Port in Pakistan will shorten by 85 percent the distance between China and Europe, Middle East and Africa, rather than going through Malacca. Gwadar is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, for which China has signed an investment agreement of US $46 billion, about one fifth of Pakistan’s annual GDP and 10 times US investment in Pakistan, to connect the two nations by rail, road, pipelines, and optical cables. In April, China’s state Xinhua news agency reported that the nation will invest in the Thai Canal, also known as Kra Canal, cutting through southern Thailand to save up to 48 hours to shipping companies transiting routes between Asia and Europe, a route also circumventing the Strait of Malacca.
• The China Circle has a potential to be a renminbi circle, allowing China to optimize use of its foreign reserves and accelerate internationalization of the currency. China has around US$4 trillion in foreign reserves; so far more than 60 percent of the foreign reserves are used to buy US government bonds. The return on these bonds is low, with China’s foreign reserves constantly losing value due to appreciation of Chinese yuan. Instead of lending money to US government, China is investing some reserves in infrastructure and productions along the routes to gain better financial returns and build political friendship. Besides a couple of bilateral arrangements, China has also set up two major multilateral institutions, namely, the AIIB with US$100 billion initial equity, and the New Development Bank with US$50 billion equity proposed by BRICS countries, headquartered in Beijing and Shanghai respectively. China also established the Silk Road Fund, starting discussions about a financing mechanism for Shanghai Cooperation Organization.As announced in its belt-road action plan, China envisages “more capital convergence and currency integration” accompanied by lessening dependence on the US dollar. The renminbi is widely used for trade in countries including Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Thailand. By the end of 2014, offshore renminbi deposits amounted to ¥1.6 trillion and offshore renminbi bonds reached ¥350 billion – a trend supported by the belt-road initiative. Moreover, this initiative calls for establishing a renminbi-nominated Asian bond market.
• Finally, the China Circle is a manifestation of commitments to improving international governance and increasing the representation of developing countries in dealing with global affairs. The belt-road initiative may well be an exercise of more “China wisdom, China roadmap” and “more public goods for international community,” as stated by Xi during a 2014 visit to Latin America. For many countries, China’s roadmap could bring a welcome economic boost and job creation.

The emerging China Circle poses three questions for US politicians:

Does containing China work? Probably not. China’s manufacturing capacity, domestic market and foreign reserves are big enough to create its own circle. Many countries will decline to support containment measures, as shown when many nations ignored US advice to avoid AIIB membership. Despite US admonitions against joining AIB, most major economies, 57 in all, applied as founding members.

Shall the US welcome China’s rise and the emerging China Circle? It’s not wise for US politicians to bury their heads in the sand. The rise of emerging countries is inevitable. The rise of China Circle, along with an Indian Circle and Brazil Circle, is unstoppable. Obama’s State of the Union address in 2015 and recent congressional trade debates fail to offer a global vision, by arguing that US policymakers should ensure the US, not China, to write rules of the global economy. Sadly, their worries center solely on putting US workers and business at a disadvantage. In assuming global leadership, the United States should welcome China’s more equal-footing participation in updating rules and recognize that its growing influence may be a force for good. China’s belt and road, if successful, may be such an example, helping fill capital gaps in badly needed infrastructure, economic development and political institutions throughout Eurasia. A more developed region could create a bigger economic pie for everyone, including US business and workers. Success could also undermine terrorism and radical movements.

Will supporting China’s One Belt, One Road, compromise core universal values and high environmental and labor standards? These are key areas where the US can show leadership and remain a keystone of the 21st century global economic architecture. But a keystone must work with other stones rather than stand alone.

Shuaihua Wallace Cheng, PhD, is managing director, ICTSD China, the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, and a Yale World Fellow in 2015.

The post China’s New Silk Road: Implications For The US – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A Swedish company established in 2007 was used to cover up the sale and transfer of a West Bank church compound to settlers funded by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz, Israeli media reports.

Spotlight has been held on the church compound, located nearby the Palestinian refugee camp al-Arrub between Bethlehem and Hebron, for the last week due to contradicting allegations regarding the compound’s ownership.

Pastor Keith Coleman, head of the church that originally owned the compound since the 1940’s, told Haaretz that the compound was sold to a Swedish company called Scandinavian Seamen Holy Land Enterprises in March 2008.

While Coleman believed the group was a church group based in Haifa planning to renew the use of the church, Haaretz reported that, “The Swedish group was established in Stockholm in 2007, and seems to have been used as a cover for transferring the ownership of the compound to the settlers. The group does not seem to have any offices.”

After buying the property, the Swedish group registered the purchase with the Israeli Civil Administration in 2012 and received necessary approval, the report said.

Following registration with the Civil Administration, the Swedish company announced its dissolution. The group had no offices or assets except for this church compound at the time, Haaretz said.

Ownership was then passed to the nonprofit organization American Friends of the Everest Foundation. The American organization operates from occupied East Jerusalem and its sole contributor is American millionaire Irving Moskowitz.

Haaretz reports that the Everest Foundation owns several properties in occupied East Jerusalem totaling a value of $12 million.

The report added that Moskowitz is also the main funder behind the activities of Israeli right-wing activist Aryeh King, founder and director of Israel Land Fund, an organization that buys Palestinian property and homes for resale to Jews with the aim of ‘Judaizing’ occupied East Jerusalem as well as Palestinian neighborhoods in Israel.

The report came after last week Arie Suchovolsky, an lawyer who told Ma’an he represented a Swedish church that owned the compound, rejected claims that the church had been sold, saying that “the church is the owner of the compound, and we are refurbishing it to be a hostel to serve Jews, Muslims and Christians who pass by.”

Actual renovations being carried out to prepare the church compound for transformation into a new West Bank outpost comes to the dismay of local Palestinians.

The church lies in a sensitive location, which when settled, will see Israeli settlements stretch all the way from the Gush Etzion settler bloc south of Jerusalem to the cluster of settlements around Hebron.

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