Every five years the Ethiopian people are invited by the ruling party to take part in a democratic pantomime called ‘General Elections’. Sunday 24th May saw the latest production take to the national stage.

With most opposition party leaders either in prison or abroad, the populace living under a suffocating blanket of fear, and the ruling party having total control over the media, the election result was a foregone conclusion. The European Union, which had observed the 2005 and 2010 elections, refused to send a delegation this time, maintaining their presence would legitimise the farce, and give credibility to the government.

With most ballots counted, the National Election Board of Ethiopia announced the incumbent party to have ‘won’ all “442 seats declared [from a total of 547], leaving the opposition empty-handed…the remaining 105 seats are yet to be announced.” ‘Won’ is not really an accurate description of the election result; as the chairman of the Oromo Federalist Congress, Merera Gudina, put it, this “was not an election, it was an organised armed robbery”.

The days leading up to the election saw a regimented display of state arrogance and paranoia, as the government deployed huge numbers of camouflaged security personnel and tanks onto the streets of Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar. For months beforehand anyone suspected of political dissent had been arrested and imprisoned; fabricated charges drawn up with extreme sentencing for the courts, which operate as an extension of the government, to dutifully enforce.

Despite the ruling party’s claims to the contrary, this was not a democratic election and Ethiopia is not, nor has it ever been a democracy.

The country is governed by a brutal dictatorship in the form of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) that has been in power since 1991, when they violently overthrew the repressive Derg regime. The EPRDF speaks generously of democracy and freedom, but they act in violation of democratic principles, trample on universal human rights, ignore international law, and violently control the people.

Independent international bodies and financial donors, from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to the European Union and the US State Department, are well aware of the nature and methods of the EPRDF, which is one of the most repressive regimes in Africa. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that Ethiopia is “the fourth most heavily censored country in the World”, with more journalists forced to leave the country last year than anywhere except Iran.

In the lead up to the recent election, CPJ found that, “the state systematically cracked down on the country’s remaining independent publications through the arrests of journalists and intimidation of printing and distribution companies. Filing lawsuits against editors and forcing publishers to cease production.” Various draconian laws are used to gag the media and stifle dissent, the Anti Terrorist Proclamation being the most common weapon deployed against anyone who dares speak out against the government, which rules through fear, and yet, riddled with guilt as they must surely be, seem themselves fearful.

Democracy and Development

The government proudly talks a great deal about economic development, which it believes to be more important than democracy, human rights and the rule of law, all of which are absent in the country. And yes, during the past decade the country has seen economic development, with between 4% and 9% (depending on who you believe) GDP growth per annum achieved, the CIA states “through government-led infrastructure expansion and commercial agriculture development.” It is growth, however, that depends, the Oakland Institute make clear, on “state force and the denial of human and civil rights.”

GDP figures are only one indicator of a country’s progress, and a very narrow one at that. The broader Ethiopian picture, beyond the debatable statistics, paints a less rosy image:
Around 50% of Ethiopia’s federal budget is met by various aid packages, totaling $3.5 billion annually. Making it “the world’s second-largest recipient of total external assistance, after Indonesia” (excluding war torn nations, Afghanistan and Iraq), Human Rights Watch states. The country remains 173rd (of 187 countries) in the UN Human Development Index and is one of the poorest nations in the world, with, the CIA says, over 39% of the population living below the low poverty line of $1.25 a day (the World Bank worldwide poverty line is $2 a day) – many Ethiopians question this figure and would put the number in dire need much higher.

Per capita income is among the lowest in the world and less than half the rest of sub-Sahara Africa, averaging, according to the World Bank, “$470 (£287)”. This statistic is also questionable, as Dr. Daniel Teferra (Professor of Economics, Emeritus at Ferris State University,) explains, “In 2008-2011 income per capita (after inflation), was only $131,” contrary to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) 2013 report, which put the figure at $320.

The cost of living has risen sharply (current inflation is around 8%) and, as The Guardian reports, “growing economic inequality threatens to undermine the political stability and popular legitimacy that a developmental state acutely needs. Who benefits from economic growth is a much-contested issue in contemporary Ethiopia.” Not amongst the majority of Ethiopians it isn’t: they know very well who the winners are. As ever it is the 1%, who sit in the seats of power, and have the education and the funds to capitalize on foreign investment and development opportunities.

Some of those suffering as a result of the government’s development policies are the 1.5 million threatened with ‘relocation’ as their land is taken – or ‘grabbed’ from them. Leveled and turned into industrial-sized farms by foreign multinationals which grow crops, not for local people, but for consumers in their home countries – India or China for example.
Indigenous people cleared from their land are violently herded into camps under the government’s universally criticised “Villagization” program, which is causing the erosion of ancient lifestyles, “increased food insecurity, destruction of livelihoods, and the loss of cultural heritage”, relates the Oakland Institute. Any resistance is met with a wooden baton or the butt or bullet of a rifle; reports of beatings, torture and rape by security forces are widespread. No compensation is paid to the affected people, who are abandoned in camps with no essential services, such as water, health care and education facilities – all of which are promised by the EPRDF in their hollow development rhetoric.

An Insult to the People

Economic development is not democracy, and whilst development is clearly essential to address the dire levels of poverty in Ethiopia, it needs to be democratic, sustainable development. First and foremost Human Rights must be observed, and there must be participation, and consultation, which – despite the Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn’s duplicitous comments to Al Jazeera that, “we make our people to be part and parcel of all the [developmental] engagements,” – never happens.

The Prime Minister describes Ethiopia as a “fledgling democracy”, and says the government is “on the right track in democratizing the country”. Nonsense. Democracy is rooted in the observation of Human Rights, freedom of expression, the rule of law and social participation. None of these values are currently to be found in Ethiopia.

Not only is the EPRDF universally denying the people their fundamental human rights, in many areas they are committing acts of state terrorism (one thinks of the abuses taking place in the Ogaden region and the atrocities being committed against the Oromo people for example) that amount to crimes against humanity.

The recent election was an insult to the people of Ethiopia, who are being intimidated, abused and suppressed by a brutal, arrogant regime that talks the democratic talk, but acts in violation of all democratic ideals.

The post On The Ethiopian General Election – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Sylvia Mishra*

On June 15, Jeb Bush formally entered the 2016 presidential race saying that ‘America Deserves Better‘. Jeb Bush, the former Florida Governor, speaking at a rally at Miami Dade College, announced that he would seek the Republican nomination for presidency highlighting America’s need for greater proactive engagement with the world. Jeb Bush, belonging to a family with two former American Presidents, often faces tough questions on his privileged family heritage and former George W. Bush’s hawkish foreign policy and the war on Iraq. Even though Jeb Bush is running as a full-spectrum conservative, he has been able to distance himself from George W. Bush’s economic and foreign policy records. According to experts, Jeb Bush’s views on foreign policy and defence are closer to those of his father — i.e., more centrist, more realist, more diplomacy-minded. Simultaneously, Jeb Bush declared that his family name has given him no unique claim to the Oval Office: “Not a one of us deserves the job by right of résumé, party, seniority, family or family narrative“.

Economic, social and foreign policy issues

Jeb Bush has focused on his personal accomplishments as a former governor of Florida. He has said that executive experience is another term for preparation, and there is no substitute for that. While focusing on his economic message on inequality and middle-class wage stagnation, Bush stated that he would try to nearly double the nation’s annual growth rate to 4 percent to create jobs. Though he favours simplifying the tax code, he has not specified how he would change the federal tax system. One of the social issues, Jeb Bush has spoken about is on improving education for children with developmental challenges. On the issue of immigration, like several other Republican candidates, he has called for tougher enforcement of immigration laws, including prosecuting businesses that hire undocumented aliens. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year, Bush mentioned his conservative views on “traditional marriage,” stating that there is no constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Recently Jeb Bush embarked on a five-day visit to three European countries — Germany, Poland and Estonia in order to bolster his preparedness on foreign policy issues. As Jeb Bush toured European cities, he carried with himself historical legacies of George W. Bush Senior who was the President of the United States during the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of former Soviet Union and receding of communism. Jeb Bush evoked the symbolic power of his father’s cold war ties with Germany during a speech in Berlin underlining America’s commitment to its allies – “from liberation and post-war ruin, to bitter division, to peaceful unification and now, the most dynamic economy in Europe, whole and free”. Paying homage to Poland’s tragic history during the cold war and meeting Polish national leaders, Jeb Bush stated “Think about how much change has taken place in these years. It’s a good reminder that we’re a lot freer than we were, and we need to protect that freedom. And that’s why the United States needs to be engaged. “He also recounted an anecdote from the elder Bush’s 1989 visit to Poland to forge closer and enduring ties between Poland and the rest of Europe. When elder Bush returned in 1992, not long after the country’s first free presidential election in six decades, he received a hero’s welcome and promised that the U.S. would help the young democracy “to succeed and to prosper.” In Estonia, Jeb Bush complimented the nation’s rapid technological developments and transformation from being once being a bleak Soviet economy into a metamorphosis into a free-market high technology economy.

Challenges ahead

Whilst Jeb Bush still hasn’t won the primaries, he has managed to conjure a lot of enthusiasm around his candidacy. Even though he has not emerged as the favourite of the GOP’s large block of more moderate supporters, Mr. Bush is often been called the front-runner. Polling data reveals that on an average, Jeb Bush has a lead cumulatively in surveys conducted by Fox News, CNN Opinion Research, ABC News/Wash Post and Quinnipiac and is closely followed by Marco Rubio and Scott Walker. In spite of the fact that Jeb Bush is well poised to face strong competition from other Republican candidates like Scott Walker and Marco Rubio, one of the key challenge is that the Republican Party hasn’t yet unified around him. Coupled with that, Jeb Bush’s favourability ratings are not as high as Democratic Party front-runner Hillary Clinton who is leading in most of the opinion polls with a thumping majority.

The stage is set for intense political drama surrounding the 2016 Presidential elections. From opinion polls, it seems that in all possible likelihood that Hillary Clinton would be the front-runner for presidential election from the Democrats. Would Jeb Bush be able to defeat his competitors during the primaries in Iowa and New Hamsphire? Whilst time would tell how the Republicans would jostle for winning the primaries, Hillary Clinton is undertaking full preparations to develop comprehensive strategies in her bid to the Oval Office. Her speech last weekend was heavy on policy and she mentioned universal early-childhood education, paid sick days and family leave, a higher minimum wage, and more. As the US Presidential elections unfold, it would be interesting to note if Jeb Bush’s rally for Americans to enjoy a “right to rise” strikes the right chord with his voters.

*The writer is a Junior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi

The post Jeb Bush Fires Up US Presidential Campaign – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The just concluded seventh round of the US-Pakistan Security, Strategic Stability, and Non-proliferation Working Group in Washington yielded promising results in favor of Pakistan. The Pakistani delegation vociferously presented its perspective on various issues including access to the civilian nuclear technology. The delegation led by Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry and US counterparts had a productive exchange of views on variety of pertinent issues such as international efforts to enhance nuclear security, peaceful applications of nuclear energy, non-proliferation, export controls, regional stability and security.

The U.S. welcomed Pakistan’s efforts to harmonize its strategic trade controls with those of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and other multilateral export control regimes. It expressed full confidence in Pakistan’s indigenous efforts to strengthen nuclear security, and also endorsed Pakistan’s efforts to strengthen export controls and border security including through ongoing efforts for installation of radiation portal monitors at border crossings, as well as Pakistan’s hosting of IAEA training activities at its Nuclear Security Center of Excellence. In addition to that, both sides emphasized the desirability of continued outreach to integrate Pakistan into the international nonproliferation regime.

On the backdrop of skepticism expressed particularly, in western media regarding Pakistan’s nuclear safety and security, the US official stance itself speaks volume. Despite the fact that Pakistan has unearthed all the stones to make its nuclear safety and security apparatus stringent, western media has painted dark picture of Pakistan’s nuclear assets.

In the past, we have witnessed too much divergence and too little agreement, on crucial matters such as fissile material stocks, nuclear weapons reduction, nuclear safety and security. The strategic dialogue was perceived to be an another episode in the saga of continued talks and ineffectual outcomes but this time, effective diplomatic display by Pakistani authorities proved old rhetoric wrong.

Both, Pakistan and US exchanged their respective perspectives on nuclear non-proliferation as well as on other strategic issues. Pakistani officials made a very convincing argument focusing on Pakistan’s right to become member of Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) a 48-nation body established four decades ago to ensure that civilian trade in nuclear materials is not diverted for military purposes. The plea was loud and clear. Pakistan demanded for a civilian nuclear deal similar to the India-US accord that allows India’s access to nuclear technology despite being a non-signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Earlier there was lack of considerable diplomatic support in favor of its inclusion in NSG. Pakistan clearly declared that access to the civil nuclear technology was a socio-economic imperative.

Today, the country is facing worst kind of energy crisis. The chronic power shortage has restricted its industrial production capacity and constituted a big hurdle in economic development. Nuclear energy, in this regard, seems viable option to meet growing energy demands and it is only possible once Pakistan become part of global nuclear trade industry. Pakistan has a history of safe operation of nuclear plants, it deserve to be integrated into the nuclear suppliers group (NSG). It is the need of hour for the global community to accept Pakistan as a de-Jure nuclear power otherwise; keeping it isolated from nuclear business will undermine all kind of global efforts for nuclear arms control and disarmament.

The post Pakistan’s Right For Peaceful Nuclear Energy – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Judge Andrew Napolitano, in a new riveting two-minute video monologue, is asking important questions regarding the killings of the US ambassador to Libya, another diplomat, and CIA contractors in Benghazi, Libya in 2012. Napolitano is also asking about the connection between these killings and a secret US program to provide weapons to terrorists.

Was the United States government handing out weapons in Libya to groups the US government had identified as terrorist organizations? Was the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi due to this illegal weapons transfer program? Napolitano wants answers, and he seems optimistic that answers will be revealed soon.

In a series of provocative questions in the Thursday video monologue, Napolitano, a Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Advisory Board member, asks:

And what if the weapons that the United States government illegally sold to American enemies were the same weapons used to kill the United States ambassador in Benghazi? And what if the reason the consulate in Benghazi was attacked was because it wasn’t just a consulate — it was a warehouse for weapons, and the rebels knew the weapons were there, and they wanted more than we were giving to them?

Napolitano suggests that answers to these and other questions will likely be revealed “pretty soon” by the Select Committee on Benghazi in the United States House of Representatives or by involved individuals who “can no longer keep the truth within them.”

Should such information be brought out into the open, Napolitano suggest we will be looking at evidence that President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton committed the felony of “providing material aid to a terrorist organization.”

Watch Napolitano’s complete presentation here:

This article was published by the RonPaul Institute.

The post Judge Napolitano: What If US Consulate In Benghazi Was A Terrorist Weapons Warehouse? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

It is striking how many traditional proponents of separation of church and state are now screaming at Republican Catholics to get in line and start taking their marching orders from Rome. All of a sudden church and state separation is an anathema: they want the pope to shove his teachings down their throat. Correction: they only want the pope’s position on climate change to be imposed—not his condemnation of abortion.

The New York Times, which normally loves church-state separation, is today expressing its hope that governments the world over will adopt the pope’s “unexpectedly authoritative and confident” encyclical. “Sadly,” it notes, “the encyclical, compelling as it is, is unlikely to have a similarly positive effect on American politics.”

This is a keeper. Never before have I read an editorial by the Times saying how sad it is that agents of the state are not taking their cues from the pope. Indeed, this newspaper typically congratulates Catholic pro-abortion Democrats for their “independent” thinking. But independent thinking is the last thing the Times wants to encourage now.

The Times is not alone in its duplicity. Catholic leftists, such as John Gehring at Faith in Public Life, are saying that Catholic Republicans are now in a jam. “It’s much harder for them to brush off one of the greatest moral leaders of the world,” he said. Gehring is wrong. As a matter of fact, it’s really not that hard: all they need to do is call Nancy Pelosi.

The post Church-State Separation Now Bemoaned – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Frank R. Gunter*

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is the ultimate predatory state. It has been able to obtain vast amounts of financial and other resources in a relatively short period of time by theft or extortion. However, its revenues are mostly unsustainable. As a result, like other extreme predatory states, it must either rapidly expand or slowly die. Coordinated activities by the anti-ISIL coalition can accelerate this loss of revenues and substantially weaken the ISIL proto-state.^[1]

As has been reported by the Financial Action Task Force (February 2015), the Combating Terrorism Center (December 2014), and a wide range of news outlets including the Economist (June 4, 2015), and the Wall Street Journal (March 23, 2015), ISIL has obtained large financial and other resources from a variety of sources. A rough summary of ISIL financial revenues in 2014 is given below although it should be noted that this list is not exhaustive. There are other sources of ISIL revenues including funds brought in by foreign fighters, financial support raised through social media such as twitter, donations by some non-profits, etc.

Table 1. Sources of ISIL Revenue

While ISIL has obtained resources from an impressive variety of sources, they tend to share characteristics that make them unsustainable. A strategy to defeat ISIL will require the coordination of substantial political, economic, military, and maybe cultural lines of operation. Part of this strategy must be an attempt to sharply reduce this predatory state’s revenues. The U.S. Department of the Treasury led a successful international effort to block foreign financial flows to ISIL’s predecessor, al Qaeda in Iraq. However, the same tactic will be of limited usefulness in defeating ISIL since only a small proportion of its revenues are obtained from international sources. What is required is a coordinated attack on each source of ISIL revenue. After discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each possible source of revenue, there will be a discussion of methods to reduce or block each source.

Banks, Farms, and Businesses: One and Done

The theft or heavy taxation of the assets of state-owned banks, farms, and businesses in ISIL-occupied Iraq and Syria has changed incentives. The implications of the changed incentives are clearest in the case of the looted state-owned banks, Rafidain and Rasheed. Neither the Government of Iraq, nor its agencies, nor private residents are going to deposit more money in a bank that was looted by ISIL. Therefore, the opportunity to steal more assets from the previously looted banks is gone. And despite the well-known inefficiencies of Rafidain and Rasheed banks, individuals and businesses in ISIL-occupied territory are now forced to operate in a more inefficient manner – reducing incomes that could be taxed.

The effect on agriculture is almost as extreme. Over half of the population of ISIL-occupied Anbar Province lives in rural areas and is dependent on agriculture. Following the ISIL confiscation of crops in 2014, planting has dropped dramatically since farmers have little confidence that they will be able to keep and sell any crops that they grow. The situation is exacerbated by ISIL mismanagement and corruption in the operation of the complex irrigation system. This has not only reduced the volume of water available for irrigation but also – more critically – reduced the predictability of water flows. The collapse of agricultural production will have several adverse effects ISIL. Rising food prices will work hardships on urban dwellers throughout ISIL-controlled territory as well as increasing the expense of maintaining ISIL soldiers. And the fall of agricultural incomes has led to increased rural poverty. The rural regions have changed from a source of revenue in 2014 to a drain on ISIL resources.

A similar story can be told about businesses in ISIL-occupied territories. The high and arbitrary “taxes” are forcing businesses to either conceal their economic activities or cease them entirely. Under Saddam, most private economic activity was illegal and small businesses became accomplished at either concealing their activities or bribing local officials to turn a blind eye. These skills have been revived under ISIL’s new regime. It can be expected that the tax revenues will continue to fall over the next several years.

Skimming Government Paychecks: An ISIL-Government of Iraq Partnership of Corruption

There has been much nonsense written about the motivations for the Government of Iraq (GoI) continuing to pay salaries and pensions to persons in ISIL-controlled territories, which has allowed ISIL to raise funds by skimming a portion of these payments. The usual reasons given are that continued payments reflect a humanitarian desire to reduce the hardships faced by these government employees and pensioners or that the Shi’a-dominated GoI hopes to gain future political support from the mostly Sunni residents of the ISIL-occupied territories. But the most important incentive is rarely discussed — corruption.

The GoI pays a large numbers of “ghost” workers who receive a paycheck but rarely show up for work. Instead these ghost workers give a portion of their pay to their supervisors to ignore their absence while the workers stay home or work at another job. In many cases, the ghost workers may not exist at all, allowing supervisors to pocket their entire paycheck. While it has been estimated that more than 25% of all GoI employees are ghosts, no one knows for sure. A decade ago, the International Monetary Fund recommended that the GoI perform a rigorous census of government employees to allow the identification of ghosts. But even before the ISIL invasion, census takers were bribed, threatened, or beaten in government offices to prevent them from creating an accurate list of employees. There have been similar difficulties in getting an accurate count of pensioners.

So the payments made from the GoI to government employees and pensioners in ISIL-controlled territories are much less than reported. For ghost workers and pensioners that don’t really exist who are supposedly located in ISIL-controlled territory, the monthly salary or pension payments probably don’t leave Baghdad. Rather they are diverted into the accounts of corrupt GoI officials. This is an almost ideal situation for corrupt officials since there is no way the payments can be confirmed in ISIL-occupied territory. And even for the employees and pensioners that really exist, it can be expected that corrupt officials in Baghdad take their cut. Maybe there is an even split: one-third for corrupt GoI officials in Baghdad, one-third for ISIL, and one-third for the actual employee or pensioner. In either case, the amount of reported salary and pension payments made to persons in ISIL-controlled territory is greatly exaggerated.

Therefore, on the one hand, humanitarian and political arguments are made to justify the GoI continuing to pay salaries and pensions to persons in ISIL-controlled territories; on the other hand, such payments reflect massive corruption in Baghdad, further drain a GoI treasury already severely stressed by low oil prices and the cost of conflict, and are a substantial source of revenue to ISIL. It will be a difficult decision to execute but if the GoI is serious about defeating ISIL, then these payments should cease immediately.

Oil Trafficking: It is Truly an Ill Wind…

ISIL has been referred to as the newest oil state. And it has obtained revenues both by smuggling oil to its neighbors and refining oil for sale within the territory they control. Its oil resources are primarily in its Syrian occupied territory; its territory in Iraq contains little oil. In fact, Iraq has achieved record levels of oil production and exports since the ISIL invasion. While oil smuggling may have raised $1-$3 million a day for ISIL in 2014, the collapse in world oil prices since November of that year has sharply reduced the black market price of oil. Instead of earning an estimated $40-$50 a barrel, ISIL is believed to have received only $20-$30 a barrel during the first half of 2015. However, due to the loss of traditional supplies, fuel prices are high and this provides an opportunity for substantial revenue if refiners in ISIL-controlled territory can increase both the quality and quantity of refined fuels.

Much has been made of the ISIL attempt to capture the Baiji refinery with the implication that this would substantially increase the supply of refined fuels for sale. As I have argued elsewhere (Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2014), capturing this refinery may be a propaganda victory for ISIL but an economic defeat. As a result of decades of deferred maintenance and mismanagement, the refinery is extremely inefficient, producing excessive amounts of corrosive heavy fuel oil. In addition, ISIL lacks a reliable source of crude oil to feed this refinery and many of the skilled workers who are necessary to operate the refinery have fled. As a result, it will probably be less costly for ISIL to smuggle oil out and refined fuels in than to attempt to restart and operate the Baiji refinery.

ISIL earnings from oil trafficking are already down sharply from last year. And further reduction of oil smuggling revenue appears likely for several reasons. First, the recent decision of OPEC to continue high levels of oil production will contribute to at least another year of low oil prices reducing the gain to ISIL from smuggling. In fact, in view of the continued production of oil from fracking in the U.S., and the economic slowdown in the BRIC countries; it may be a decade or more before oil prices return to the levels that ISIL enjoyed in 2014. Second, neighboring states, especially Turkey, are clamping down on oil smuggling from ISIL-controlled territory. One motivation of this clampdown is to prevent an ISIL infection among its own people. Finally, the U.S. and other coalition air forces have targeted the transportation of both crude oil and refined fuels further reducing ISIL gains from both smuggling and sales to domestic consumers.

Kidnapping and Human Trafficking

Among the more despicable sources of ISIL revenues are widespread kidnapping for ransom and the sale of human beings, many as sex slaves for ISIL fighters. Ransoms from kidnapping of foreign persons initially earned substantial amounts but it appears that these revenues have sharply declined as foreigners now avoid traveling or working in ISIL-controlled territory. Domestically, the threat and reality of kidnapping for ransom or sale has greatly contributed to residents fleeing ISIL-controlled territory. And to the extent that these refugees have valuable skills or assets, their departure further weakens the strength of the ISIL proto-state.

In addition to its direct effects, kidnapping and human trafficking can be expected to have severe reputational effects. As Somalia demonstrated, an organization or state that engages in or facilitates such activities loses its legitimacy. It is perceived more as a gang of thugs than a potential new state. While ISIL is much less dependent on international financial transfers than its predecessor, al Qaeda of Iraq, it does rely on a large inflow of foreign fighters. If it becomes increasingly perceived as an international pariah, then foreign states can be expected to act more aggressively to block the movement of fighters to ISIL-controlled territory.

Reducing ISIL revenues from kidnapping will require countries around the world to make a politically difficult tradeoff. In view of the well-known cruelty of ISIL towards its prisoners, there is a strong humanitarian argument to pay the ransom. But, of course, every time that a government allows the payment of a ransom for one of its citizens, this provides a stronger incentive for ISIL to kidnap and hold others for ransom. If the international community is serious about defeating ISIL, they must strictly enforce existing laws forbidding the payment of official or unofficial ransoms. The immediate cost will be high as ISIL has tortured and murdered persons who are unable to pay the ransom demanded. But if the payment of ransoms can be stopped, there will be not only a reduction in ISIL revenues but also – more importantly – a saving of lives in the future.

With respect to human trafficking, much of it for purposes of sexual slavery, there is little direct action that would be effective. However, the GoI and the emerging civil society in the region should ensure that those who escape from ISIL control have a safe place to go with a reasonable quality of life. Too often, women and girls who escape from human traffickers are treated as damaged goods by Iraqi and Syrian society and even by their own families. This has led some ISIL apologists to argue that they treat these women or girls no worse than their own families. As difficult as it is to change a culture, if women or girls who are able to escape are then welcomed by their society, this will not only further undermine ISIL’s international reputation but also further motivate other captives to make an escape attempt. These results seem inadequate compared to the harm done by human trafficking but, until the ISIL perpetrators can be punished, they might be the best that can be achieved.

Border Tariffs and Artifact Smuggling: Business as Usual

ISIL now collects tariffs of several hundred dollars per truck of goods and persons moving across its borders. But as the GoI realized long ago, geography and cross-border tribal relationships severely limit tariff revenues. If ISIL attempts to raise tariffs from their current low levels, then smugglers bribe border guards instead of paying the tariff. And if guards at one station refuse to accept bribes, then smugglers will simply move fifty miles in either direction across the mountains or desert and try again. With respect to bribes, every border station is in competition with every other station; smugglers will eventually find guards that are willing to turn a blind eye to the movement of goods accompanied by forged documents. This smuggling is facilitated by cross-border tribal relationships. Members of the same tribe have been moving illicit goods and persons across the Syrian and Iraqi borders for centuries. Therefore, ISIL faces a conundrum. If it relies on local officials who know the territory, then they have probably already been co-opted by the smugglers. On the other hand, if it relies on outsiders, then they will probably be ignorant of the local smuggling routes and techniques.

Widespread smuggling is already reducing ISIL revenues from tariffs on border trade. But this puts ISIL’s neighbors on the horns of a dilemma. If they turn a blind eye to smuggling across their borders, then this reduces ISIL tariff revenues but securing the borders reduces illicit oil and artifact sales. In view of the different scale of earnings from oil and artifacts versus border tariffs, the better choice is to secure the borders. And better security at the borders should also reduce the illegal import of military or dual use equipment and supplies.

After human trafficking, probably the most disturbing ISIL revenue source is the extensive trade in stolen or looted historical artifacts. This illicit trade is decades old in both Syria and Iraq and was facilitated by payments to government officials. Some of these objects of both artistic and historical interest were looted from Syrian or Iraqi museums or government storage. However, many of the items are obtained directly from the many archeological sites in ISIL-controlled territory. As a result, not only do artifacts that illustrate the incredible history of the region disappear into the international black market in art but also tomb raiders, in their eagerness to quickly find items of value, often damage the sites. This permanently reduces the knowledge that can be obtained by archeologists in the future.

Successful efforts by the U.S. and the European nations to reduce trade in looted artifacts will lead to a substantial increase in the black market prices of authentic artifacts. This price rise can be expected to both increase the incentives for artifact smuggling and increase the production of counterfeits. It is not clear whether ISIL revenues from such trade will increase as a result of higher prices or decrease as a result of decreased volume from trade restrictions and increased competition from counterfeits. However, one fear is that if the profits from artifact smuggling decrease, then this will result in increased destruction of such treasures motivated in part by an extremist view among many ISIL supporters that representations of persons are religiously prohibited. Some have argued that as long as ISIL is in control, these priceless artifacts may be safer in private collections in Europe and Asia than in museums or archeological sites in ISIL-controlled territory.

Captured Equipment: It’s Maintenance, Stupid

Government reports and news stories refer to billions of dollars of weapons, equipment, and supplies captured by ISIL from the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). Unlike the revenue sources discussed above, captured equipment and supplies cannot be easily converted into dollar revenue for ISIL. However, the capture of this equipment does reduce the amount that would have to be spent to purchase them on the black market, freeing up ISIL funds for other purposes.

In other words, capturing such weapons, equipment, and supplies provides a tremendous short-term advantage to ISIL by providing resources to its fighters while, at the same time, denying them to the ISF. However, the advantage will probably be short-lived. Whether as simple as a machine gun based on a eighty-year-old design or as sophisticated as a state of the art tactical radio, military weapons and equipment require constant skilled maintenance. Increasingly, ISIL-controlled territory is littered with vehicles and other military equipment that were captured intact from the ISF but no longer operate.

The maintenance problem has several dimensions. First, much of the equipment operated by the ISF was poorly maintained in the first place. This is an endemic problem in Iraq. Just a few miles from the Haditha Dam, there was a field covered with hundreds of brand new government vehicles that had been abandoned because of the lack of basic maintenance such as the failure to change the oil. Second, the hot and dry Syrian and Iraqi climate is very hard on equipment. Filters must be constantly cleaned, seals tend to fail much earlier than expected, and friction damage from the very fine sand disrupts not only precision instruments but also any equipment with exposed moving parts. Much of the equipment requires fluids, disposables, or parts that may be difficult to obtain or transport to where they are needed, when they are needed. This is one of the problems of military logistics.

Finally, ISIL lacks the skilled manpower to maintain all of this equipment even if they can obtain, manufacture, or cannibalize the necessary supplies and parts. In these days of widespread Internet access, it is usually not difficult to obtain the maintenance instructions even if they were not captured with the equipment. However, obtaining the maintenance manual is only the first challenge. Many of the ISIL fighters and equipment operators are only semi-literate in Arabic so even if the instructions were translated, they will have difficulty performing maintenance and repairs. And many maintenance and operating procedures are easy to demonstrate but difficult to explain – many instructors are needed. For example, correctly setting the headspace and timing of a M2 machine gun is required for its proper operation. These procedures appear complex in the manual but can be demonstrated in less than a minute even during a combat situation. Finally, leaders up the entire chain of command must focus on maintenance or it won’t be performed and the equipment will fail when it’s needed. The old cliché is true: “Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.”

Grow or Die

ISIL finds itself in a situation similar to that of the slave-owning plantations of the pre-Civil War American South. Raising tobacco initially led to very large and profitable harvests but within a few years the fertility of the soil was exhausted and production collapsed. Therefore, plantation owners had to constantly move their slaves to new land where the pattern of initial prosperity followed by collapse would be repeated again. Similarly, ISIL gains much of its revenue in ways that are not sustainable. Revenues from newly conquered cities and towns are initially quite large but then rapidly decline. And this financial unsustainability is a critical vulnerability of ISIL.

It can be expected that ISIL will respond to the expected loss of revenue. They may ratchet up the level of extortion in ISIL-occupied territory, accepting a rise in the hostility of the occupied population in order to obtain a short-term boost in revenues. If the financial situation continues to deteriorate, ISIL may “cut loose” those mercenary foreign fighters who are motivated more by pay than ideology. This response will be a mixed blessing for those states that oppose ISIL. The loss of foreign fighters will weaken ISIL but possibly spread the infection as these fighters move to other conflicts. Possibly, the ISIL leadership will attempt to get more than the current low levels of funds from foreign sources. Foreign funding sources have been preferred by other insurgencies since they allow the insurgency to avoid financially exploiting persons in occupied territories increasing the likelihood that such persons would support or at least tolerate the insurgency. However, substantial increases in foreign funding for ISIL are unlikely for two reasons. First, there are few states inside or outside of the Middle East that both favor the ISIL ideology and are able to supply substantial funds. Second, since 2001, an international coalition led by the U.S. Treasury has developed an increasingly sophisticated capability to identify and block funds destined for terrorist groups.

Another option is that ISIL may execute raids outside its current territory intended not to permanently seize cities or towns but rather to execute a “smash and grab” — steal everything of value including foreigners that might be held for ransom and then return to ISIL-controlled territory. This possibility emphasizes the most important element of an anti-revenue strategy. The ISF, with the support of the international coalition, must deny ISIL any further geographic expansion in order not only to prevent humanitarian tragedy but also to thwart the looting of banks, farms, and businesses. It will not shorten the conflict if the ISF re-conquers an already devastated town in one part of Iraq while ISIL fighters subjugate another town elsewhere. The revenue gain from the latter town to ISIL will more than offset the loss of the former town, which has already been looted. The ISIL proto-state must either grow or die. Preventing that growth will strangle ISIL.

About the author:
*Frank R. Gunter is a Professor of Economics at Lehigh University, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and a retired Colonel of the U.S. Marines. The Arabic edition of Professor Gunter’s book The Political Economy of Iraq: Restoring Balance in a Post-Conflict Society (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013), based on his two years in Iraq as an economic advisor, will be published next month.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

[1] This study is based on discussions with Glenn Goddard, Commanding General 353^rd Civil Affairs Command, U.S. Army; Anthony O’Brien, Professor Emeritus at Lehigh University; James Savage, Professor at University of Virginia and author of Reconstructing Iraq’s Budgetary Institutions; and Mohaned al-Hamdi, Assistant Professor at Kansas State University. However, the opinions expressed are entirely those of the author.

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What is the most important health issue that needs quick action? The dubious distinction goes to the need to phase out sale of tobacco and tobacco products.

If we do not act swiftly now, we can expect one billion deaths from smoking and other forms of tobacco use by the end of this century. Over 80% of these deaths will be in low- and middle-income countries; the devastating economic and social burden of tobacco illness will affect them in the coming decades.

On March 13, 2015, Robert Beaglehole, Ruth Bonita, Derek Yach, Judith Mackay and K Srinath Reddy, leading public health researchers from New Zealand, USA, China and India pleaded for phasing out the sale of tobacco by 2040 in a major new series in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

They proposed that UN should call a high- level meeting on tobacco use to galvanize global action to achieve a tobacco free world (where less that 5 % of the adults use tobacco) based on new strategies and new resources. They asserted that such a “turbo-charged approach will achieve a tobacco-free world by 2040 where tobacco is out of sight, out of mind, and out of fashion—yet not prohibited”.

Release of The Lancet series marks the ten-year anniversary of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. It coincides with the 16th World Conference on Tobacco or Health, the world’s largest gathering of tobacco control advocates, policy makers, researchers, public health and clinical experts. at Abu Dhabi, UAE, from March 17-21, 2015.

In a second paper in the Journal, researchers from China disclosed tobacco use as a leading risk factor for non-communicable diseases in China. It has to discipline more than 300 million smokers and care for 740 million non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke. The authors attributed 1.4 million deaths in China in 2010 to tobacco use.

In China, the state-owned Chinese National Tobacco Company controls tobacco production. The fact that the same agency effectively controls production, sales, and regulation of tobacco hindered effective implementation of tobacco control measures.

Another paper revealed that during the most recent decade (2000–10), the prevalence of tobacco smoking in men fell in 125 (72%) countries, and in women fell in 156 (88%) countries. If these trends continue, only 37 (21%) countries are on track to achieve their targets for men and 88 (49%) are on track for women, and there would be an estimated 1·1 billion current tobacco smokers in 2025. The study predicted rapid increases in Africa for men and in the eastern Mediterranean for both men and women, suggesting the need for enhanced measures for tobacco control in these regions.

India which is the third largest producer of tobacco and the second largest consumer of tobacco products worldwide has reasons to worry. There are 275 million adult tobacco users in India.  From 1980 to 2012, the number of smokers increased from 74.5 million to 110.2 million. Sadly, women smokers increased from 5.3 million to 12.2 million.

The finding in the March 2011 issue of the Indian Journal of Medical Research that 537 out of 4786 (11.2%) students of class 7 to 12 (age: 11-19 yr) in Noida city used tobacco in some form or other is an eye opener. No stake holder can ignore the horrendous reality.

Acting against tobacco is easier said than done.

Tobacco lobby has hidden influence. Recently, a Parliamentary panel set up to decide on India’s commitment to increase the size of pictorial warnings on cigarette and bidi packets decided against the proposal. The pearls of wisdom expressed by the chairman and some members of the panel starkly revealed their conflict of interest.

Their weird views: “Bidis are natural products (sic) and are very small as compared to cigarettes. As such, bidis should not be compared with cigarettes as far as rules are concerned”; “there is very little tobacco in each bidi, hence the harmful effects are nil as compared to cigarettes and chewing tobacco”; “what people find in Abu Dhabi does not apply to India. There is no work done in India to show that bidi and smokeless tobacco (meaning ghutka etc) cause cancer”; another view is that “some people who smoke 60 cigarettes a day and are yet cancer-free.”

Mercifully, Government removed the members with clear conflict of interest from the panel.

In a telling article in The Hindu daily (April 9, 2015), Dr D Balasubramanian, an eminent scientist, lucidly exposed the ignorance of the panel by listing the phenomenal amount of work done in India.

In its fact sheet no 339, updated on May 2014, WHO declared that tobacco kills up to half of its users.

This conclusion may change. A large Australian study of more than 200,000 people published in BMC Medicine on February 24, 2015 independently confirms that up to two in every three smokers will die from their habit if they continue to smoke.

The message from the study according to Scott Walsberger, Tobacco Control Manager at Cancer Council, New South Wales is: “It’s never too late to quit? no matter what your age, or how much you smoke”.

*Dr K S Parthasarathy is former Secretary, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board

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Itera, a 100% Rosneft subsidiary, and General Electric signed an agreement of intent regarding natural gas processing cooperation at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

The parties agreed to evaluate opportunities for potential cooperation on natural gas processing using GE technology for low-tonnage liquefied natural gas (LNG) production.

In particular, the agreement covers analysis of opportunities to cooperate on establishing LNG production at Bratskecogas assets, as well as potential joint work on deploying GE technology and equipment to boost the company’s efficiency and production capacity.

The development of infrastructure aimed at LNG production will open additional monetization channels for Rosneft’s significant gas reserves and will enable increased efficiency for Itera Oil and Gas Company consolidated assets.

Chairman of Rosneft Management Board Igor Sechin said after signing: “Gas business is one of the priority dimensions of the Company’s business; Rosneft has tripled its gas production in the last two years and we are glad to develop gas processing with such technologically advanced partner as GE”.

Commenting on the agreement signing, Ron Pollett, President & CEO GE Russia/CIS, noted, “GE’s high-tech solutions create opportunities for enhancing productivity and contributing to our partners’ business development. Since 2004, GE has designed, manufactured, delivered, and launched more than 140 cryogenic modules globally, including 11 units for the production of LNG and 130 to liquefy carbon dioxide gas. We are confident that our cooperation with Itera on gas monetization will contribute to the modernization of the Russian oil & gas industry.”

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Kangaroos prefer to use one of their hands over the other for everyday tasks in much the same way that humans do, with one notable difference: generally speaking, kangaroos are lefties.

The finding, reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on June 18–the first to consider handedness in wild kangaroos–challenges the notion that “true” handedness among mammals is a feature unique to primates.

“According to a special-assessment scale of handedness adopted for primates, kangaroos pulled down the highest grades,” says Yegor Malashichev of Saint Petersburg State University in Russia. “We observed a remarkable consistency in responses across bipedal species in that they all prefer to use the left, not the right, hand.”

Malashichev’s interest in handedness goes back at least a decade, when he reported differences in handedness between jumping and walking frogs. Those studies showed that jumping frogs less often show handedness than do walking frogs. His team later showed subtle signs of handedness in marsupials that walk on all fours, including gray short-tailed opossums and sugar gliders, which differed by sex. But no one had taken a careful look at different species of bipedal kangaroos.

One reason true handedness wasn’t expected in kangaroos–or other marsupials, for that matter–is because, unlike other mammals, they lack the same neural circuit that bridges the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Studies of kangaroos living in captivity hadn’t yielded conclusive evidence either. In the new study, to find out what wild kangaroos really do when left to their own devices, the researchers watched these iconic animals in Tasmania and continental Australia.

“What we observed in reality we did not initially expect,” Malashichev says. “But the more we observed, the more it became obvious that there is something really new and interesting in the wild.”

They found that wild kangaroos show a natural preference for their left hands when performing particular actions–grooming the nose, picking a leaf, or bending a tree branch, for example. Left-handedness was particularly apparent in eastern grey and red kangaroos.

Red-necked wallabies prefer their left hand for some tasks and their right for others. Generally speaking, they use their left forelimb for tasks that involve fine manipulation and the right for tasks that require more physical strength. The researchers found less evidence for handedness in species that spend their days in the trees.

The findings should encourage more careful study of the marsupial brain, which differs from those of other mammals in many respects. Such studies might even yield important insight into neuropsychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia and autism, the researchers say, noting links between those disorders and handedness.

The researchers will continue to explore handedness in other species that stand upright regularly or from time to time. “This will give us a better resolution for the evolutionary interpretations,” Malashichev says.

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Human rights abuses in their home countries are the driving force behind the surge in boat migration in the Mediterranean to reach Europe, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Friday. EU leaders should put human rights at the heart of its response. EU leaders will meet on June 25 and 26, 2015, to discuss European Commission proposals toward a “European Migration Agenda.”

The 33-page report, “The Mediterranean Migration Crisis: Why People Flee, What the EU Should Do,” documents the human rights abuses driving people to make the dangerous sea crossing and the shortcomings of EU migration and asylum policies. The report is based on over 150 interviews in May with recently-arrived migrants and asylum seekers in Italy – Lampedusa, Catania, and Milan – and Greece – the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Leros, and Kos. The conclusions are also based on extensive Human Rights Watch research in Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, and Somalia – the home countries of many of those arriving by sea.

“The majority of those crossing the Mediterranean are taking terrible risks because they have to, not because they want to,” said Judith Sunderland, senior Western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “Saving lives and increasing safe pathways into Europe should be the EU’s priorities, while ensuring that all cooperation with countries of origin and transit countries respects international human rights standards.”

Over 100,000 migrants and asylum seekers have crossed the Mediterranean since the beginning of 2015. According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, over 60 percent of those taking the journey come from Syria, Somalia, and Afghanistan, countries torn apart by war and generalized political violence, or from Eritrea, which is ruled by a highly repressive government. Asylum seekers, including children, from these four countries who arrived in Italy and Greece in May described to Human Rights Watch the indiscriminate fighting, threats from insurgent groups such as the Taliban, Al-Shabaab, and ISIS, forced conscription and recruitment by armed groups, attacks on schools, and other abuses that forced them to flee.

Mubarek, from Parwan, in northern Afghanistan, left the country with his wife and three young sons in March to escape the Taliban. “Every day the Taliban would take people and children for suicide bombings,” he said. “I was worried about my children, my sons, that they would be forced to become suicide bombers.”

While many of those coming from other countries – Nigeria, The Gambia, Senegal, Mali – want to improve their economic opportunities or to live in more open and safe societies, some among them may be fleeing persecution or other serious harm. Some migrants who have lived in Libya since before the current hostilities broke out in May 2014, are fleeing insecurity and violence there.

Every year thousands of unaccompanied children make the journey across the Mediterranean without parents or other caregivers. In 2014, over 10,500 children traveled alone to Italy by sea. In Greece, over 1,100 unaccompanied children were registered in 2014.

The International Organization for Migration has identified the Mediterranean as the world’s deadliest migration route. The EU has recently taken some positive steps to save lives in the Mediterranean, but it remains focused primarily on ways to limit arrivals to European shores. But the severe human rights situations that people are fleeing shows why the EU’s priorities need to change, Human Rights Watch said.

The EU should maintain robust search and rescue operations as long as they are necessary, Human Rights Watch said. It should significantly increase the number of people resettled in the EU under UNHCR programs from the 20,000 proposed by the European Commission. EU countries should endorse and fully carry out the commission’s proposal to relocate 40,000 asylum seekers within the EU to share responsibility for asylum seekers more equitably across the EU.

UNCHR has asked the international community to resettle at least 130,000 Syrian refugees. The EU has pledged to resettle 45,000 but can respond more generously to the Syrian crisis as well as to other protracted refugee crises, Human Rights Watch said.

The deaths of over 1,000 migrants at sea within a week in April spurred positive, if belated, EU action to step up search and rescue efforts in the central Mediterranean. The EU should sustain this collective effort in the long term to minimize deaths at sea, and ensure that those rescued are brought to safe EU ports where those seeking asylum will have the opportunity for fair consideration of their claims, Human Rights Watch said.

In May the European Commission issued proposals for a “European Agenda on Migration.” The agenda includes some positive steps that if implemented fully – and more generously – could help save lives, ensure safer access to international protection in the EU, and correct distortions in the EU’s asylum system that affect the rights of asylum seekers, Human Rights Watch said. However, most of the commission’s agenda involves reinforcing measures to limit arrivals to the EU.

EU respect for international law and human rights norms should inform and shape its current and future deliberations on migration and asylum policies as well as its approach to boat migration in the Mediterranean, Human Rights Watch said. The right to life and protection against refoulement – the return to persecution, torture, or ill-treatment – are cornerstone rights of international human rights architecture. In addition to these rights, the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees the rights to liberty and security, the right to an effective remedy, and the right to privacy and family life. Enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the right to leave any country, including one’s own, is key to ensuring the right to seek asylum. This is also guaranteed in the EU’s binding Charter of Fundamental Rights.

In advance of the EU Council on June 25-26, Human Rights Watch said, EU leaders should support farther-reaching proposals to increase safe and legal channels into the EU. These measures should include significantly expanding resettlement for refugees identified by the UNHCR, facilitated family reunification to enable people already in the EU to bring family members there, and the increased use of humanitarian visas to enable people in need of international protection to travel lawfully to the EU to apply for asylum.

Over the long term, the EU should ensure that cooperation with sending and transit countries does not effectively trap people in abusive situations, prevent them from accessing fair asylum procedures, or lead to refoulement. And the EU should use its influence and resources more effectively to address the major drivers of migration, including systematic human rights violations, poverty, inequitable development, weak governance, and violent conflict and lawlessness.

“There are no easy solutions to the terrible abuse and hardship that force people to leave their countries or the cruelty they face on the journeys,” Sunderland said. “This is a difficult challenge for the EU but one where human rights must take center stage.”

The post EU: Rights Abuses At Home Drive Mediterranean Crisis, Says HRW appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Total primary energy consumption

Management of oil and natural gas sectors

The state-owned National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) is responsible for all upstream oil and natural gas projects. The Iranian constitution prohibits foreign or private ownership of natural resources. However, international oil companies (IOCs) can participate in the exploration and development phases through buyback contracts.

Foreign investment

Iran is planning to change its oil contract model to allow IOCs to participate in all phases of an upstream project, including production. However, international sanctions have affected foreign investment in Iran’s energy sector, limiting the technology and expertise needed to expand capacity at oil and natural gas fields.

Oil sector

Reserves

Largest proved reserve holders of crude oil

Iran holds almost 10% of the world’s crude oil reserves and 13% of OPEC reserves. About 70% of Iran’s crude oil reserves are located onshore, with the remainder mostly located offshore in the Persian Gulf. Iran also holds proved reserves in the Caspian Sea, although exploration has been at a standstill.

Iran’s major oil infrastructure
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, IHS EDIN

Exploration and production

Iran produced 3.4 million b/d of petroleum and other liquids in 2014, of which 2.8 million b/d was crude oil and the remainder was condensate and natural gas plant liquids. Iran’s crude oil production fell dramatically from nearly 3.7 million b/d in 2011 to 2.7 million b/d in 2013 because of sanctions.

Iran is one of the founding members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which was established in 1960. Since the 1970s, Iran’s oil production has varied greatly. Iran averaged production of more than 5.5 million b/d of oil in 1976 and 1977, with production topping 6.0 million b/d for most of the period. Since the 1979 revolution, however, a combination of war, limited investment, sanctions, and a high rate of natural decline in production of Iran’s mature oil fields has prevented a return to such production levels.

In recent years, a series of sanctions targeting the oil sector have resulted in cancellations of new projects by a number of foreign companies, while also affecting existing projects. Following the implementation of sanctions in late-2011 and mid-2012, Iranian production dropped dramatically from almost 3.7 million b/d in 2011 to 2.7 million b/d in 2013. Although Iran had been subject to four earlier rounds of United Nations sanctions, the tougher measures imposed by the United States and the EU severely hampered Iran’s ability to export its oil, which affected Iran’s oil production.

The U.S. and EU measures targeted Iran’s petroleum exports and imports, prohibited large-scale investment in the country’s oil and gas sector, and cut off Iran’s access to European and U.S. sources for financial transactions. Further sanctions were implemented against institutions targeting the Central Bank of Iran, while the EU imposed an embargo on Iranian oil and banned European Protection and Indemnity Clubs (P&I Clubs) from providing Iranian oil tankers with insurance and reinsurance.

In 2014, Iran produced almost 3.4 million b/d of petroleum and other liquids (total oil), of which roughly 2.8 million b/d was crude oil, and the remainder was condensate and natural gas plant liquids (NGPL). Iran’s total oil production level in 2014 was nearly 200,000 b/d higher than in 2013, but still about 800,000 b/d lower than the production level of 4.2 million b/d in 2011. Sanctions and unfavorable contractual terms have impeded the necessary investment needed to increase Iran’s production capacity.

Crude streams and oil fields

Iran’s largest oil fields. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, IHS EDIN

Most of Iran’s crude oil is generally medium in sulfur content and in the 29° to 36° API gravity range. Two crude streams, Iran Heavy and Iran Light, account for more than 80% of the country’s crude oil production capacity. Both crude streams are sourced from onshore fields, many of which are older fields experiencing natural decline.¹² According to the International Energy Agency, about half of Iran’s production is sourced from oil fields that are more than 70 years old, which include the Ahwaz-Asmari, Marun, and Gachsaran fields.¹³ The NIOC has been working on offsetting declines at aging fields through the use of EOR techniques, mainly by reinjecting associated gas into oil wells to improve oil recovery rates. Other crude streams include Froozan, Soroush/Norouz, Doroud, Sirri, and the Lavan Blend.

Non-crude liquids productionIn 2014, Iran produced about 600,000 b/d of non-crude liquids, of which about 75% was condensate and the remainder was natural gas plant liquids. Iran’s non-crude oil production mostly comes from the South Pars natural gas field, with smaller volumes produced at Nar, Kangan, and at other fields.¹⁴

In 2011, Iran started a 1,000 b/d pilot gas-to-liquids plant, according to the Arab Oil & Gas Directory. The country planned to build a 10,000-b/d commercial plant fueled by the South Pars natural gas field. The current status of the plant’s development is unclear.¹⁵

Upstream ProjectsThere were a number of new exploration and development blocks announced over the past several years that could provide Iran with an increase in its crude oil production capacity, but sanctions have negatively affected the Iranian oil industry. Virtually all western companies have halted their activities in Iran, although some Chinese and Russian companies are still participating. The sanctions and lack of international involvement have particularly affected upstream projects, as the lack of expertise, technology, and investment has resulted in delays and, in some cases, cancellations of projects. Nonetheless, development of a few projects continues, albeit at a much slower pace than originally planned.

Table 2. Status of new upstream crude oil projects

Project	Developer	Plateau output (000 b/d)	Est. plateau year
Yadavaran phase 1	Sinopec	85	2016
Yadavaran phase 2	Sinopec	95	2019-20
Yadavaran phase 3	Sinopec	120	post 2020
Azar phase 1	NIOC subsidiaries	30	2016
North Yaran	Persian Energy	30	2016
South Yaran	NIOC subsidiaries	55	2018
North Azadegan phase 1	CNPC	75	2016-17
North Azadegan phase 2	CNPC	75	2019
South Azadegan phase 1	no developer	150	NA
South Azadegan phase 2	no developer	110	NA
Forouzan	NIOC subsidiaries	100	2017-18
South Pars (oil layer) phase 1	PEDCO	35	2017-18
The Yadavaran, South Azadegan, and Forouzan fields are currently producing crude oil, but below their plateau levels. CNPC is China National Petroleum Corporation. PEDCO is PetroIran Development Company. Sinopec is China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation. Source: Facts Global Energy

Iran’s exports of crude oil and condensate dropped from 2.6 million b/d in 2011 to almost 1.3 million b/d in 2013 as a result of U.S. and European Union sanctions that targeted Iran’s oil exports. Iran’s exports increased by nearly 150,000 b/d to 1.4 million b/d in 2014. The largest buyers of Iranian crude and condensate are China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey.

Iran’s monthly crude oil exports

According to EIA estimates based on data from Eurostat, Global Trade Information Services, Lloyd’s List Intelligence (APEX), and trade press reports, Iran’s crude oil and condensate exports averaged 1.4 million b/d in 2014, 1.2 million b/d less than the volume exported in 2011 but almost 150,000 b/d above the 2013 export level. China and India accounted for nearly all of the year-over-year increase. Iran’s ability to sell oil was substantially impeded by new sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union, that went into effect in the summer of 2012.

Effects of 2011-12 sanctionsThe decline of Iran’s crude oil and condensate exports is attributed to new sanctions imposed by the United States and the EU at the end of 2011 and during the summer of 2012. Iran’s ability to sell crude oil was particularly affected by the EU ban on all Iranian petroleum imports as well as the imposition of insurance and reinsurance bans by European P&I Clubs effective July 1, 2012. European insurers underwrite the majority of insurance policies for the global tanker fleet. The insurance ban particularly affected Iranian oil exports, as lack of adequate insurance impeded the sales of Iranian crude to all of its customers, including those in Asia. Iranian exports dropped to about 1.0 million b/d in July 2012 as Japanese, Chinese, South Korean, and Indian buyers scrambled to find insurance alternatives. Adding to the insurance difficulties was continued pressure imposed by the U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil customers to decrease their purchases.

Iran and the countries that are continuing to import Iranian oil have since been able to find alternatives to P&I coverage from EU companies. By the last quarter of 2012, Iranian exports recovered somewhat as Japan, South Korea, and India began to issue sovereign guarantees for vessels carrying Iranian crude oil and condensate. China and India began to accept the Iranian Kish P&I Club guarantee on vessels that shipped oil to its refineries. Nonetheless, Iranian exports have failed to reach export levels that existed before the latest sanctions.

In 2012, sanctions were not the only driver of export decreases. For example, commercial interests contributed to the decrease in China’s imports, as Chinese buyers were engaged in a contractual dispute with Iran in the first quarter of 2012. Chinese refiners significantly decreased their purchases of Iranian crude and condensate as a result of a dispute over the terms of annual purchase contracts. Although Unipec (the trading arm of China’s largest refiner Sinopec Corporation) eventually signed a supply contract with NIOC for volumes comparable to those imported in 2011, the contract did not allow NIOC to make up for the oil sales that were not delivered to China in the first quarter of that year.

Petroleum product exportsIn addition to crude oil and condensate, Iran also exports petroleum products. According to FGE, Iran exported almost 300,000 b/d of petroleum products in 2014, more than 50,000 b/d higher than in 2013 but about 100,000 b/d lower than in 2011 because U.S. and EU sanctions affected Iran’s ability to sell petroleum products as well.¹⁶ Iran mostly exports fuel oil, LPG, and naphtha to Asian markets.

Oil terminalsThe terminals at Kharg, Lavan, and Sirri Islands, located in the Persian Gulf, handle almost all of Iran’s crude oil exports. Iran also has two small crude oil terminals at Cyrus and Bahregansar, one terminal along the Caspian Sea, and other terminals that handle mostly refined product exports and imports. Condensate from the South Pars natural gas field is exported from the Assaluyeh terminal.

Kharg Island is the largest and main export terminal in Iran. Most of Iran’s exports are sent via Kharg. The terminal processes all onshore production (the Iranian Heavy and Iranian Light Blends) and offshore production from the Froozan field (the Froozan Blend). Kharg Island’s oil storage capacity is about 28 million barrels.¹⁷

Lavan Island mostly handles exports of the Lavan Blend sourced from offshore fields. Lavan is Iran’s highest-quality export grade and one of Iran’s smallest streams. Lavan’s storage capacity is 5.5 million barrels.¹⁸

Sirri Island serves as a loading port for the Sirri Blend that is produced in the offshore fields off the island. Its storage capacity is 4.5 million barrels.¹⁹

Neka is Iran’s Caspian Sea port that was built in 2003 to receive crude oil imports from the Caspian region producers under swap agreements. The port has a storage capacity of 1 million barrels and can handle 100,000 b/d of crude oil, according to FGE.²⁰ The terminal, which has not operated since 2011, was previously used to facilitate swap agreements with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. Under these agreements, Iran received crude oil at its Caspian Sea port of Neka, which was processed in the Tehran and Tabriz refineries. In return, Iran exported the same amount of crude oil through its Persian Gulf ports.²¹ There have been talks to revive the swaps, but it is unclear when they might restart.

The export terminals Bandar Mahshahr and Abadan (also known as Bandar Imam Khomeini) are near the Abadan refinery and are used to export refined product from the Abadan refinery. Bandar Abbas, located near the northern end of the Strait of Hormuz, is Iran’s main fuel oil export terminal.

Consumption and downstream

Iran is the second-largest oil-consuming country in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia. Over the past few years, Iran has expanded its domestic refining capacity to meet growing domestic demand, particularly for gasoline. Almost all of Iran’s domestic oil consumption was of locally produced products.

Natural gas sector

Reserves

Iran is the second-largest proved natural gas reserve holder in the world, behind Russia. Iran holds 17% of the world’s proved natural gas reserves and more than one-third of OPEC’s reserves. Iran’s largest natural gas field, South Pars, is estimated to hold almost 40% of Iran’s gas reserves. Most of Iran’s natural gas reserves are undeveloped.

According to Oil & Gas Journal, as of January 2015, Iran’s estimated proved natural gas reserves were 1,201 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), second only to Russia. Iran holds 17% of the world’s proved natural gas reserves and more than one-third of OPEC’s reserves.²⁵ Iran has a high success rate of natural gas exploration, which is estimated at 79% compared to the world average success rate of 30% to 35%, according to FGE.²⁶ Finding new natural gas reserves in Iran is not a high priority because the country contains large amounts of undeveloped known reserves. Although natural gas finds and exploration are limited, in 2011, four sizeable new discoveries were announced: Khayyam (onshore), Forouz B (offshore in the Persian Gulf), Madar (offshore in the Persian Gulf), and Sardare Jangal fields (offshore in the Caspian Sea).²⁷

Iran’s natural gas infrastructure
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, IHS EDIN

Iran’s largest gas field is South Pars, a nonassociated gas field located offshore in the middle of the Persian Gulf. South Pars is a portion of a larger gas structure that straddles the territorial water borders of Iran and Qatar. It is called the North field in Qatar. South Pars reserves account for almost 40% of Iran’s total natural gas reserves, and the field is also estimated to hold 17 million barrels of condensate in place.²⁸ Other major gas fields in Iran include: Kish, North Pars, Tabnak, Forouz, and Kangan. These fields and others also hold large amounts of condensate reserves. Iran’s Caspian basin gas reserves, at 2 Tcf, contribute very little to the nation’s total reserves.

Production

Iran is the world’s third-largest dry natural gas producer, after the United States and Russia. Despite repeated delays in field development and the effects of sanctions, Iran’s natural gas production is expected to increase in the coming years as new phases of the South Pars gas field come online. In 2013, Iran became the world’s largest gas-flaring country, surpassing Russia.

Gross natural gas production in Iran

Gross natural gas production totaled almost 8.1 Tcf in 2013, 1% lower than the previous year’s level. Iran’s natural gas production increased in 2014, although estimates are still preliminary. Of the 8.1 Tcf produced, most of it was marketed (6.5 Tcf), and the remainder was reinjected into oil wells to enhance oil recovery (1.0 Tcf) or vented and flared (0.6 Tcf). Reinjecting natural gas plays a critical role in oil recovery at Iran’s fields. As a result, natural gas reinjection is expected to increase in the coming years. Some estimates indicate that NIOC will require between 2.0 and 2.5 Tcf per year of natural gas for reinjection into its oil fields in the next decade.²⁹Iran also flares (burns off) a substantial portion of its gross production. Iran became the world’s largest gas-flaring country in 2013, surpassing Russia. Gas is flared because of the lack of infrastructure to capture and transport gas associated with oil production.

Iran’s major natural gas fields
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, IHS EDIN

Dry natural gas production is a subset of marketed production. Marketed production includes dry natural gas, liquid hydrocarbons, and natural gas used in field and processing plant operations. In 2013, 80% of the gross natural gas production was marketed as dry gas. Iran’s dry natural gas production has rapidly increased to almost 5.7 Tcf in 2013, almost double the amount produced 10 years ago. Iran is the world’s third-largest dry natural gas producer, after the United States and Russia. Most of Iran’s production is consumed domestically. Domestic consumption has increased as production has increased, totaling almost 5.6 Tcf in 2013.

Much like in the oil sector, the natural gas sector has been hampered by international sanctions. Additionally, lack of foreign investment and insufficient financing have resulted in slow growth in Iran’s natural gas production. Iran was expected to become one of world’s leading natural gas producers and exporters, given the country’s vast proved reserves of natural gas, which rank the second largest in the world. However, development of its fields has been hampered by financing, technical, and contractual issues, according to the Arab Oil and Gas Journal.³⁰ Nonetheless, Iran’s natural gas production has grown, and output is likely to continue to increase in the coming years as new phases of the South Pars gas field come online.

South Pars Gas Field

Natural gas production from South Pars is critical to meet increasing domestic consumption and Iran’s current and future export obligations.

Imports and exports

Iran trades marginal amounts of natural gas regionally via pipelines. In 2013, more than 90% of Iran’s imports came from Turkmenistan, and more than 90% of Iran’s exports went to Turkey. Iran does not have the infrastructure in place to export or import liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Iran accounts for less than 1% of global natural gas trade and is not a significant natural gas exporter, as explained in an EIA report on Natural Gas Exports from Iran. In 2013, Iran exported 329 Bcf and imported 188 Bcf of dry natural gas, both via pipelines. Iran relies on imports particularly during winter months when residential space-heating demand peaks during colder weather. Iran does not have the infrastructure to export or import liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Iran’s natural gas imports and exports

Iran’s natural gas imports declined in 2012 from the previous year (by more than 35%) and in 2013 (by 21%), reflecting much lower volumes imported from Turkmenistan. The U.S. and EU sanctions interfered with transactions between Turkmenistan and Iran in 2012 and 2013, resulting in the decline of Turkmen gas imports.³³ In 2011, Iran received almost 30% of Turkmenistan’s natural gas exports, but the share dropped to less than 12% in 2013, according to BP Statistical Review of World Energy.³⁴ Nonetheless, more than 90% of Iran’s natural gas imports still came from Turkmenistan in 2012 and 2013, and the remainder from Azerbaijan. Imports of Turkmen natural gas are essential to Iran’s ability to meet both seasonal peak demand and industrial demand in northern Iran.

Iran exports natural gas to Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. More than 90% of Iranian exports went to Turkey in 2013, and the remainder went to Azerbaijan and Armenia. Armenia uses most of its imported Iranian natural gas to produce electricity at the Hrazdan power plant. In return, excess baseload electricity generated from the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant is exported to Iran. Iran exports natural gas to the isolated Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan via the Salman-Nakhchivan pipeline. In exchange, Azerbaijan exports natural gas to Iran’s northern provinces via the Astara-Kazi-Magomed pipeline.

Liquefied natural gas (LNG)Although Iran’s aspirations to build a liquefaction facility date back to the 1970s, the country has yet to build one. The NIOC started construction projects in the past to build an LNG export plant, but most of the work has been halted, mainly because of the lack of technology and foreign investment, stemming from international sanctions that made it impossible to obtain financing and to purchase necessary technology. Given the political constraints, Iran’s LNG projects are years away from completion.

Proposed regional pipelinesIran has the potential to become an important gas supplier to its region, and has established agreements with some of its neighboring countries to export natural gas via planned regional pipelines. However, there are several challenges related to Iran’s natural gas sector that may complicate volumes expected from these projects. Some of these challenges include: Iran’s growth in natural gas demand; Iran’s reliance on its natural gas to augment oil recovery by reinjecting it into oil wells; international sanctions that have hindered Iran’s access to technology and foreign investment; and some disagreements between Iran and potential buyers over natural gas prices.

Iran-Iraq Pipeline: Based on recent progress, natural gas pipeline exports from Iran to Iraq are expected to begin soon. A natural gas pipeline from Iran’s Ilam province to the Iran-Iraq border is complete and the construction of the pipeline on the Iraqi side, which will supply the Mansourieh power plant, is near completion. Initial gas exports are expected to be about 50 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per year and to increase in the future.³⁵ Iraq and Iran signed an agreement in the past to supply natural gas to fuel Iraqi power plants in Baghdad and Diyala. The initial contract covered 320 Bcf per year over five years. However, security-related concerns may delay plans to increase gas supply to this level.³⁶

Iran-Oman Pipeline: In March 2014, Iran and Oman agreed that Iran would export 350 Bcf per year of natural gas via pipeline to Oman.³⁷ The construction of the pipeline may be delayed because of pricing disagreements. Iran expects gas prices of $11-14/million British thermal units(MMBtu), while Oman is looking to pay $6-8/MMBtu.³⁸

Iran-Pakistan Pipeline: Although the Iran-Pakistan Pipeline has experienced considerable financing difficulties, both countries seem committed to complete the project. Construction of the pipeline on the Iranian side is almost complete, while construction on the Pakistani side has been delayed. The initial pipeline agreement called for the delivery of 274 Bcf per year of natural gas over 25 years.³⁹

Iran-UAE Gas Contract: The Iran-United Arab Emirates (UAE) natural gas contract outlined an agreement to transport natural gas from the Salman field to Sharjah in UAE. Contract negotiations were not concluded because of a pricing and volume dispute, and the contract was referred to international arbitration.

Electricity sector

Iran’s electricity generation capacity by fuel

Iran’s increasing domestic demand for electricity has created supply shortfalls during times of peak energy demand. Iran recently increased electricity prices, which is a component of its energy subsidy reform, in hopes of limiting demand growth. Natural gas is the country’s primary fuel source to generate electricity, accounting for almost 70% of total generation in 2013.

Endnotes

The post Iran Energy Profile: Holds Some Of World’s Largest Deposits Of Proved Oil, Natural Gas Reserves – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Introduction

A significant regional initiative in the Southeast Asian region, regrettably not given the desired attention in India, is the 7th Summit of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV 7) and the 6th Summit of Ayeyawady- Chao Phraya – Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS 6), both of which Myanmar is going to host at its capital city of Nay Pyi Taw on 22-23 June 2015. CLMV Summit’s aim has been to have more cooperation in trade and economic investment, human resource development, agriculture and industry, mineral, hydropower, oil and natural gas, communication and transportation sector development. Myanmar also hosted the 1st Summit of ACMECS in Bagan in November 2003 and the future plans of ACMECS and Bagan Declaration were released at that time. Like the ASEAN summit which Myanmar also hosted in 2014, the CLMV and ACMECS Summits reflect the good image of the country, and the central committee and sub-committees are striving for their success and prosperity.

Vietnam has remained as an important cog in the regional economic integration strategy and played an important role in Summits preparation and their subsequent progresses over the years. In particular, its role in both CLMV and ACMECS summits and the incremental progression is noteworthy. This time, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung will lead the Vietnamese delegation for the two summit meetings at the invitation of Myanmar President Thein Sein. CLMV Summit is held biannually and the two summits have combined since 2008 in Vietnam. The last two Summits were held in Vientiane, Laos, in March 2013.

In preparation of the two Summits, senior economic officials of the four CLMV countries held a conference in Hanoi on 7 March to discuss initiatives and solutions to bridge the development gap between the four countries and other ASEAN members. This conference took place within the framework of the 9th ASEAN Economic Ministers’ Meeting. As the ASEAN members are poised to announce the formation of the ASEAN Economic Community by the end of 2015, reducing the development gap is a constant challenge for the CLMV four nations. Several projects have already been carried out by Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam and these projects are implemented within the framework of the Initiative for ASEAN Economic Integration (IAI) and supported by the remaining six ASEAN members and some developed countries such as Japan, China, the EU and the US.

CLMV cooperation is being pursued on the principle of equality and mutual benefit to promote internal strengths. Vietnam is committed to jointly find ways with its CLMV partners to strengthen bilateral and multilateral cooperation to a higher level, by focusing on agriculture, linkage of physical infrastructure, trade, investment promotion and tourism. Support from the remaining six ASEAN members and international assistance are useful to intensify scientific and technological application and investment attraction. This point was stressed by Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyan Tan Dung during the 5th CLMV Summit that took place in Laos, on 16 November 2010. It is noteworthy that the four CLMV countries have leapfrogged through their development goals remarkably. Vietnam has also established the CLMV Scholarship Fund to help boost education and research among the member countries.

The focus areas are to developing infrastructure, transport, technology and communication, human resources, poverty reduction and tourism promotion in CLMV countries. More than 200 projects are being carried out to meet the target deadline of 2015- end when the ASEAN Economic Community formation is to be announced.

Vietnam’s role and Areas for Cooperation

In all the CLMV initiatives, Vietnam’s role has been commendable. Besides other areas for deepening cooperation, Vietnam has identified tourism as an area that required special focus as people-to-people contacts are indispensable for human development. Prior to the Summit meetings at Nay Pyi Taw, travel industry stakeholders gathered in Da Nang, Vietnam, to discuss the promotion of sustainable tourism in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS). The Asian Development Bank (ADB) defines the GMS as six countries – Cambodia, the People’s Republic of China, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam – which share the Mekong River. Collectively, the area is the fastest-growing tourist destination in the Asia-Pacific region and Vietnam realizes that tourism industry can unfold tremendous growth prospect not only in economic terms but also at showcasing each country’s soft power.

The annual event of stakeholders’ meeting representing the tourism industry, civil society, academia, the media and other development organisation such as the ADB has been attracting a lot of attention in the GMS countries. Though tourism is flourishing in the GMS, the growth in the industry ought to bring benefits to local communities and protect the environment.

According to the ADB, the GMS attracted 52 million international tourist arrivals in 2013, an increase of 17 per cent from the previous year. Indeed, arrivals have been growing at an annual rate of 12 per cent since 2002. Among the countries in the sub-region, Myanmar is the fastest growing destination. After the restoration of democracy, tourist traffic in Myanmar reached 5 million in 2014, an increase by 2 million over the previous year.

There are risks with this growth, however, that need to be plugged. For example, as the number of globe-trotters surge, there is a need to highlight the importance of practices that enhance environmental, social and economic benefits to tourism. Therefore, the GMS countries need to develop a ‘white paper’ for tourism ministries and private tourism operators, outlining a path for the industry’s future.

For Vietnam, the two Summits at Nay Pyi Taw have added importance as the year 2015 marks the 40th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries, established on 28 May 1975. During these 40 years, bilateral ties have developed in a host of areas, including politics, economy, trade and culture. The regional cooperative mechanisms in operation shall help develop this multifaceted cooperation between the two nations in the future. The establishment of the Vietnam-Myanmar Friendship Association has been also a catalyst in bringing the peoples of the two countries closer.

Vietnam seems to have done good homework prior to the two summits. For example, Vietnamese Vice President Nguyen Thi Doan visited Myanmar in March 2015 to intensify bilateral cooperation during celebrations for the 40th anniversary of diplomatic ties. During this time, she clarified that Vietnam is keen to have a stable and long-term friendship as well as all-round engagement with Myanmar, especially within the ASEAN framework. During talks with her counterpart, Nyan Tun, the Vietnamese Vice President sought Myanmar government’s support for Vietnamese firms active in the 12 priority fields mentioned in the Vietnam-Myanmar joint statement signed in 2010, as well as accelerating the licensing of Vietnamese projects in Myanmar. What is noteworthy was that bilateral trade doubled in two years and reached $475 million in 2014. This prompted both sides to talk about initiatives to boost it further. It was agreed that this can be enhanced by joint efforts through high-level visits using bilateral co-operation mechanisms and boosting economic and trade-investment activities. Both countries aim to take bilateral trade figure to reach $500 million in 2015 if collaboration in agro-forestry and fisheries, finance banking, telecommunications, transport, oil and gas, and tourism are expanded as envisaged.

There are prospects for the Bank for the Investment and Development of Vietnam to open a branch in Myanmar soon, the Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group to expand oil and gas exploration, and the military-run telecom provider Viettel to set up a joint venture with Yantanarporn Teleport of Myanmar. Other areas where both can cooperate are rubber and food production and exports, including rice, seafood, vegetables and fruit. Myanmar shall be happy to receive Vietnamese investment in three newly-established exclusive economic zones. Given political understanding, both sides can work closely at regional and global forums, especially in sub-regional mechanisms such as the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Co-operation, the Cambodia-Laos-Myanmar-Vietnam Ministerial Summit, and the East-West Economic Corridor. A closer Vietnam-Myanmar bonhomie can be a catalyst to secure ASEAN solidarity, uphold the association’s central role in the evolving regional structure, maintain peace and stability in the region, especially South China Sea, and create the ASEAN Economic Community by the end of 2015.

Besides good neighbourhood policy that Vietnam maintains, especially with Laos and Cambodia, as well as a responsible member of the ASEAN regional grouping and active participant in regional forums, Vietnam seeks common grounds with its partners on regional issues for peace and stability in the region.

Future Direction for CLMV and ACMECS

With Vietnam’s active role, combined with the efforts of other CLMV and ACMECS member countries, the regular summit meetings shall help leverage and create conditions for the eventual announcement of the ASEAN Economic Community at the end of 2015. When that materialises, it shall not only unfold huge opportunities for further cooperation, development and prosperity amongst ASEAN members, but also hone the region’s economic footprint in the world’s economic growth. Such a course shall also facilitate direction for regional peace, stability and security as well as for the world. The destiny of Asia would be thus be re-written by this single path-breaking institution-building effort.

In recent times, China’s belligerence on territorial issues, particularly on South China Sea, makes the rest of Asia unease. There is a sense of discomfort that China’s adventurism in the area is sending to the rest of Asia. Though there are nearly a dozen of countries having contending claims on some parts or other of the South China Sea, China claims the whole of the South China Sea as its own by openly flouting global norms and United Nations Laws of the Seas. Some recent Chinese measures to build islands in the South China Sea are also troubling as well as questionable. China has been warning many countries, including the US and India, to keep off the zone that it claims as its own. While the Philippines have taken up its case to the international court of justice, Vietnam need call upon friends in the US, India, Japan Australia and others who stand for universal values and global rules. These countries would not hesitate to intervene if the region’s peace is affected by the unilateral action of a particular country at the expense of rest of Asia.

Besides having support of many countries friendly to it, it is desirable that Vietnam uses the CLMV and ACMECS summits forum and joins the rest of ASEAN regional grouping members to build consensus that could contribute to the building of internal solidarity and further the region’s economic prosperity. Such a policy measure could also help deter another country to be over-ambitious and check single-country domination over the rest of Asia. Building up of regional solidarity needs to remain at the core of nation-building and Vietnam’s commitment seems to be just that like a head.

It’s expected that Prime Minister Dung will have an important speech that putting forth directions and roadmaps to make cooperation within the framework of CLMV and ACMECS more active and effective, thereby building strategic trust, enhancing cooperation and harmonizing national interests with common interests and making practical contributions to peace, cooperation and development in the region. It could help raise awareness in the countries of the region for what is best for them. After all, regional prosperity is contingent upon mutual respect and respect for international rules of law.

Though India is always on the same page with Vietnam on this common cause, as mentioned in the beginning, it is regrettably that Indian media does not give the attention that these two important summits deserve.

India’s possible role in CLMV and ACMECS Co-operation

India’s ONGC is in engaged in oil exploration activities on the invitation of Vietnam in the South China Seas in the areas claimed by Vietnam. China has objected to this but India remains undeterred. India has kept its option open to let its Navy to intervene to protect its national interests if needed. China ought to be careful not to escalate the tensions that are its own making for purely selfish interests. India would not be found wanting to defend the global commons if threatened by outside forces. On this India and Vietnam are on the same page and Vietnam can count on India’s principled stand on this.

From its own side, India would be too keen to pursue bilateral pacts with the four CLMV countries in order to enhance the economic footprints in terms of trade and investments in these countries. Though India has a smooth relationship with the ASEAN as a bloc, Indian business environment can be better served through one-to-one agreements than through a combined approach, though both approaches can complement each other. For the same reason, India has separate pacts with Singapore and Malaysia despite its own separate ASEAN pact. In view of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Act East policy and the reaching out to the Myanmar authorities to tackle the terrorist activities in the northeast region of India, land connectivity to the ASEAN region through the only gateway in Myanmar offers huge opportunity. Both CLMV and ACMECS can be conduits to such a policy approach for India.

Conclusion

Observers and security analysts specialising on the region would hope and expect that Vietnam would sustain its pro-active foreign policy at the two forthcoming CLMV and ACMECS summits at Nay Pyi Taw. Indeed, CLMV and ACMECS cooperation, if continued to be pursued on the principle of equality, it would contribute to mutual benefits and promote building of internal strengths and solidarity. Such a policy choice also shall help opening up of opportunities for more development cooperation, bridge gaps in developmental challenges and precipitate movement towards the eventual announcement of the formation of the ASEAN Economic Community by the end of 2015 – upholding thus the association’s central role in the evolving regional structure, maintain peace and stability in the region, and to cope with the emerging challenges with a common voice.

The post Vietnam Rises In Stature As Active And Responsible Stakeholder: 7th CLMV And 6th ACMECS Summits In Perspective – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Joyeeta Bhattacharjee*

The Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal multimodal transport agreement (BBINMVA) for easing cross border movement of people and goods signed in Thimphu on June 15 is a welcome step forward to regional integration.

However, it is just a beginning and not a time for jubilation as there is plenty of work pending before the agreement can be actually implemented. Expectation is that the member countries will take the necessary steps to enable early implementation of the agreement.

On June 15 transport ministers of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) met in Thimphu to finalise the Motor Vehicles Agreement (MVA) for the Regulation of Passenger, Personal and Cargo Vehicular Traffic between the BBIN countries. Earlier, a draft agreement was agreed by all the four countries in a conference of transport secretaries in February this year at Kolkata. The BBINMVA is designed on the lines of the SAARC MVA, which was set to be signed during the 18th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Summit in November 2014 at Kathmandu but was suspended after Pakistan’s objection. This agreement removes all obstacles for movement of vehicles within the member countries. Following this agreement, a vehicle from one country can easily go to another without much hindrance. But vehicles will be allowed to ply only on the stipulated routes and will have to attain specific permits. Also, drivers of these vehicles will have to carry valid passport.

BBIN countries will tend to benefit economically as trade and commerce between them will get a major boost. Intra-regional trade suffered due to poor connectivity. Besides, the BBIN MVA has opened new horizon for business among the member countries, like transport and tourism. Economic interdependence had existed among these countries for centuries as most of the region was one country before partition of British in India in 1947. Partition disrupted the lines of communication, affecting the economy of the region. South Asia today is home to one of the poorest people in the world with significant population living below $1 a day. Also, it is one of the least integrated regions globally.

The BBIN countries deserve credit for taking this move to restore the old linkages. The countries also need appreciation for thinking of something which is regional in approach despite disappointments with the SAARC. Though SAARC was established in 1985 regionalism could not take off in South Asia in the proper sense. Reasons that prevented growth of regionalism in South Asia are: the countries’ zealous protectionist notion of sovereignty and territorial integrity; dispute between India and Pakistan and apprehensions of smaller countries about India. The present agreement shows a change of mindset of the countries towards regionalism.

However, India’s role cannot be overlooked in attaining the present success. Considering India’s huge geographical, political and economic position in South Asia, no regional cooperation will be successful without the country’s cooperation. After the failure of the SAARC MVA to be signed in Kathmandu, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi categorically explicated his intention of realising the regional connectivity either within SAARC or outside it. Indeed, BBIN MVA is a major diplomatic victory for India.

To sustain the present momentum countries should work on resolving some of the gaps in the treaty so that it does not face the same fate of the SAARC. The agreement does not give many details about route maps, location of permitted rest or recreation places, tolls and check-posts. For smooth functioning of the agreement, negotiations on these issues need to be concluded at the earliest. Again, the agreement does not talk of issues like fees, service charges and administrative costs and has left it to be resolved bilaterally. Such gaps raises doubts about seriousness of the member countries, and some analysts on the subject suggest that the present agreement is nothing more than a symbolic one.

Meanwhile, the joint statement issued at the meeting of the transport ministers stipulated six months to complete all the negotiations for the protocols and to upgrade the necessary infrastructure for implementation of the agreement. The statement suggests that agreement/protocols could be bilateral, trilateral or quadrilateral. To transport analysts signing of the protocol will be the major challenge.

Again, upgradation of the infrastructure will be a major challenge as it is both time-consuming and expensive. The joint statement indicated that development of the infrastructure will require $8billion worth of investment. The agreement suggests the cost for implementation of the agreement will be borne by the respective countries. Since most of the countries are poor there is apprehension whether they will be ready to spend that amount. Though India is giving assistance in developing infrastructure in the region but it will not be sufficient. Asian Development Bank and World Bank proposed to give $500 million and $1 billion respectively for development of infrastructure, but the money is not enough.

Also, since there is no clarity on the issue of transit, many in Bangladesh feel that the agreement is not in that country’s interest and they are propagating that it will give transit to India indirectly. Transit is a sensitive issue in Bangladesh and there is public resistance against the agreement. Such resistance might create obstacle for realisation of the treaty as government of Bangladesh might not be able to overlook popular opinion for a long time.

BBINMVA is an encouraging development that aims at shared growth and prosperity of the region. For success of the BBINMVA, the member countries should remain consistent and resolve the issues on timely basis for fulfilling the vision of prosperity of the region.

*The writer is a Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi.

The post BBIN Come Together For Prosperity Of Region – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Saturday urged the resumption of Middle East peace talks, AFP reported.

The French minister also warned that continued Israeli construction in the West Bank poses a threat to a final deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

“What’s important is that negotiations restart,” Fabius told reporters during a visit to Cairo, where he held what he said were intensive talks with Egyptian officials on the peace process.

“We need Israel’s security to be totally assured, that is essential, but at the same time we need the rights of the Palestinians to be recognized because without justice there can be no peace,” he added.

“From this point of view, when settlement building continues, (the prospect of) a two-state solution recedes,” claimed Fabius.

Egypt is the first stop of a two-day visit Fabius is making to the Middle East in an attempt to push Israel and the PA back to the negotiating table. Talks have been frozen since April 2014, when the PA applied to join international institutions in breach of the conditions of the talks.

Fabius met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, according to AFP.

“For 40 years, we’ve had negotiations but they’ve never been successful, so we need to change the method,” the minister said. “All this must be endorsed by the international community and… by a United Nations resolution.”

France has so far focused with Arab states on a possible resolution that would set negotiating parameters and establish a time period, possibly 18 months, to complete talks.

Work on the resolution began in March, immediately after the elections in Israel. Right after those elections, Fabius called for negotiations between Israel and the PA to resume in order to achieve “a comprehensive and lasting peace accord” based on the “two-state solution”.

The Security Council in December rejected a resolution, brought forward by the PA’s allies, that would have set a deadline for reaching a final peace deal and pave the way to the creation of a Palestinian state.

Referring to the proposed French resolution earlier this week, PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas said the PA would only back a proposal that raises all of their demands, indicating the demand for an independent Palestinian state on the 1949 Armistice lines with the eastern part of Jerusalem as its capital, and a clear date set for the end of negotiations and implementation of PA sovereignty.

Abbas emphasized that the PA fundamentally opposes recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, reiterating his vehement rejection of the recognition that Netanyahu requested in talks.

If recognition of the Jewish state is included in the French proposal the PA will not back it, warned the PA chairman.

Fabius will head to Amman Sunday for discussions with Jordan’s King Abdullah II before flying to Ramallah to meet Abbas.

The final leg of his two-day trip will see him hold talks with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

Original article

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In post 9/11 America, terrorism has been used to justify wars, drone strikes, torture, secret detention, kidnapping, extrajudicial killing, mass surveillance, and the unfettered expansion of the national security state.

In recent days, numerous commentators, many of whom have surely previously been disturbed by the way the fear of terrorism has been used to manipulate this country’s political system and global outlook, are nevertheless now arguing that in America today the term “terrorist” is not being used broadly enough.

Since the white male Charleston killer, Dylann Roof, is unlikely to be branded a terrorist by public officials or in most of the media, Anthea Butler suggests:

the go-to explanation for his alleged actions will be mental illness. He will be humanized and called sick, a victim of mistreatment or inadequate mental health resources.

Nevertheless, Butler writes:

The Charleston shooting is a result of an ingrained culture of racism and a history of terrorism in America. It should be covered as such. On Friday, Department of Justice spokeswoman Emily Pierce acknowledged that the Charleston shooting “was undoubtedly designed to strike fear and terror into this community” (though terrorism is not among the nine murder charges brought against Roof, so far). And now that Roof has admitted to killing those people to start a “race war,” we should be calling him what he is: a terrorist.

Then what?

Ship him off to Guantánamo?

Terrorist is a politically charged and legally dubious term precisely because it gets used to shut down debate and curtail analysis. It is used to justify sidestepping due process and ignoring human rights.

The terrorist is the ghoul of modern America — the term functions more as an instrument of exorcism rather than illumination.

In America and elsewhere in the West, fear of terrorism dovetails with the inclinations to treat skin color as a mark of foreignness, and the tendency to view the foreign as threatening.

Calling Dylann Roof a white American terrorist, isn’t going to diminish the levels of racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia across this country.

Calling Roof a terrorist, merely elevates his infamy, grants him the attention he obviously craves and turns attention away from the flawed legal system that allowed a worm of hatred inside his mind to be transformed into an act of deadly violence.

In America, infamy is no harder to obtain than a gun.

I recognize that there is a common sentiment which justifiably perceives an undercurrent of racism in the way in which people get labelled terrorists — that it’s a term that sticks much more easily to non-whites and especially to Muslims — but I don’t think this indicates we lack a sufficiently expansive definition and application of the term.

On the contrary, we would be better off not using the term at all, rather than trying to make its application more racially inclusive.

Jared Keller argues:

by not calling Roof’s atrocity terrorism, we gloss over the past — and present — of white America’s war of terror against its black citizens.

To my mind, that assertion, much as it contains an element of truth, is also indicative of the cultural stranglehold with which the war-on-terrorism narrative continues to grip America, fourteen years after 9/11.

The only way in which we can sense the gravity of a mass killing is by calling it terrorism, because it goes without saying — supposedly — that nothing is more serious than terrorism.

The real problem here is not the failure to call Roof a terrorist, but rather a failure to acknowledge that America faces many issues that are actually much more serious than terrorism:

Racism, inequality, environmental degradation, an unsustainable economic system, and foundationally a societal breakdown that results from individual interests being placed above collective welfare.

In a mind-your-own-business society, the mass murderers always seemingly come out of nowhere. No one sees them coming, because no one was paying enough attention. A live-and-let-live philosophy easily shifts into a live-and-let-kill reality.

In a word, we live in a country where people do not care for each other enough.

We do not live in a country where the number of terrorists is being undercounted.

After the shooting, President Obama said: “At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries.”

But why wasn’t that point reached long ago? The signs of this ugly form of American exceptionalism has been evident for decades.

Most Americans don’t own a gun and yet gun owners are more likely to think of themselves as “a typical American” (72% vs. 62%). Indeed, gun owners are more likely to say they “often feel proud to be American” (64% vs. 51%).

The most vocal among the 24% of Americans who own a gun are using their weapons to intimidate the whole population. Through their arrogance, ignorance and selfishness, they seem to imagine they have a stronger claim on what it means to be an American than everyone else.

After the Charleston shootings, National Rifle Association board member Charles Cotton blamed the deaths on one of the dead, Clementa Pinckney, who as a state senator had voted against a law allowing gun owners to carry concealed weapons without permits.

“Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead,” Cotton wrote. “Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.”

Gun owners like Cotton, regard guns as the protectors of freedom, and see gun control laws as threats to their own freedom. In practice, they prize their weapons more highly that the lives of the tens of thousands of Americans who get killed each year by firearms.

As Gary Younge writes:

America does not have a monopoly on racism. But what makes its racism so lethal is the ease with which people can acquire guns. While the new conversation around race will mean the political response to the fact of this attack will be different, the stale conversation around gun control means the legislative response to the nature of this attack will remain the same. Nothing will happen.

After Adam Lanza shot 20 primary school children and six adults in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in 2012 before turning his gun on himself, nothing happened. Seven children and teens are shot dead every day in America and nothing happens.

So these nine victims will join those who perished before them – a sacrifice to the blood-soaked pedestal erected around the constitution’s second amendment that gun lobbyists say guarantees the right of individuals to bear arms.

At some point, America as a nation needs to challenge its superstitious reverence for a piece of paper, and demonstrate that it is no longer willing to see the lives of so many of its citizen’s needlessly wasted.

The post In America Infamy Is As Easy To Acquire As A Gun – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan has begun last week. Because of its religious significance, hundreds of millions of Muslims throughout the world are expected to fast from dawn to dusk.

In total disregard to the religious rights of its Muslim minorities, the Chinese government has, once again, banned observation of Ramadan in parts of the far western Xinjiang province (formerly Eastern Turkestan) affecting millions of its indigenous Uyghur (also spelled as Uighur) people. There is much to criticize the Chinese government action.

China is long known for her harsh treatment of Muslim minorities. The Uyghurs are Turkic speaking Muslims who are one of the worst persecuted people in our time. In recent years, the Chinese authorities have blamed separatist Uyghurs for a string of attacks on Han settlers (of Chinese descent) and government institutions, but the group has consistently denied involvement.

The Chinese government has forbidden Muslim party members, civil servants, students and teachers in the districts of the Xinjiang province from fasting. The Uyghur leader, Dilxat Raxit, sees the move as China’s attempt to control their Islamic faith and warned that the restrictions would force the Uyghur people to resist the rule of the Chinese government even more. She added: “The faith of the Uyghurs has been highly politicized and the increase in controls could cause sharp resistance.”

Human rights activists have long-accused Beijing of exaggerating the threat as an excuse to impose restrictions.
Ms. Raxit told Radio Free Asia: “They [the Chinese government] are extracting guarantees from parents, promising that their children won’t fast on Ramadan.”

According to the government’s website, halal restaurants near the Kazakh border are being encouraged by food safety officials to stay open during daylight hours in Ramadan.

Shops and restaurants owned by Muslins have also been ordered to continue selling cigarettes and alcohol over the course of the month – or be shut down altogether.

Although the Chinese government tries to portray its actions as justifiable crack-down against ‘religious extremism’ all human rights groups call it ‘religious repression’, adding that authorities want to prevent Muslims from ‘instilling religion’ into public bodies.

The ruling Communist party says religion and education should be kept separate and students should not be subject to ‘religious influences’, although this rule is rarely enforced for children of Han Chinese, who – if they have a religion – are mostly Buddhist, Daoist or Christian. So what we are witnessing in China vis-à-vis its treatment of the Uyghur people is plain double-standard, and there is no way to hide this serious problem.

As I have noted before, the Uyghur Muslims of China are some of the worst persecuted people in our planet because of their ethnicity and religion. The Chinese government is after their natural resources, and has been treating the resources-rich Xinjiang region more like a colony settling millions of Han Chinese from outside, threatening the demographic makeup of the restive region. More problematically, the Uyghurs are denied jobs and are discriminated in their own region like a third-class citizen while they see the 0utsiders – the majority Han Chinese – taking all such jobs, while they remain unemployed.

While lack of employment is a big issue for most Uyghurs, they face discrimination in all areas of life, including where they can live and travel. They are discouraged and in some cases forbidden from displaying any outward sign of their Islamic identity, such as growing beard for adult men, and wearing hijab for women. The Chinese government has also been closing down Uyghur language schools to delink its history and heritage to Islam and the rest of the Muslim world, esp. Turkey. Instead, their students must take all subjects in Chinese. And even when they graduate, they are discriminated in the job market simply because of their race and religion. They are also spied and spat upon by the racist Han settlers.

Any protest or sign of disapproval of the apartheid-like treatment of the Uyghurs against the racist Han Chinese settlers has been treated by the colonial Chinese government as an act of terrorism.

Last year, the Chinese government sentenced Professor Ilham Tohti, an economics professor of Uyghur descent, to life imprisonment in a kangaroo court. He was found guilty of separatism, an absurd charge of no validity at all. He was also stripped of all his assets – a punishment that has inflicted extra hardship on his family. Professor Ilham was no separatist, and has always stressed that Xinjiang should remain part of China and promoted greater understanding between Han Chinese and indigenous Uyghurs. As I have noted before, Professor Tohti’s unjust imprisonment would only destabilize the restive Xinjiang region.

Last Thursday (the first day of Ramadan in many parts of our world), another Uyghur man was killed in the Chinese city of Xi’an, a popular tourist destination for being the starting point of the Silk Road and home to the famous Terracotta Army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang. According to government report the man approached a ticket counter with a brick, as if to harm ticket buyers, and when he didn’t stop, he was killed by a Chinese police man.

Given China’s censorship and tense relationship with the ethnic Uyghurs, we shall probably never know the whole truth about what really happened in Xi’an. Did the man really pose any danger to anyone? And if he did, was he reacting to the appalling repression of his people, including the banning of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan?

By treating all Uyghurs as separatists, and by default as terrorists, and driving every manner of dissent, including peaceful protests, underground, the Chinese government is behaving like an arrogant colonist that fancies that its repressive, heavy handed approach and apartheid-like policies will win the ultimate battle in East Turkestan (Xinjiang autonomous region). It is foolish thinking.

The Chinese government’s latest ban on fasting for Uyghur Muslims once again highlights the government’s extreme repressive policies in Xinjiang, which are sure to provoke more unrest. Beijing risks inciting the very radicalism of its persecuted Uyghur Muslims it fears.

Peace with the Uyghur Muslim minorities would require Beijing to respect the Uyghur people as equal citizens having similar aspirations as anyone else inside China, and to respect their religion – Islam, without restricting their religious duties. It would also require Beijing to listen to its own Mandela – Professor Ilham Tohti – and not more repression, and surely neither Hanification of Xinjiang nor locking up voices of moderation like Ilham.

The post China Violates Religious Rights Of Uyghurs – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The top United Nations official in Asia and the Pacific called for the development of a robust and coherent international monetary system that imposes responsibilities on debtors and creditors alike in delivering macroeconomic and financial stability, during the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg.

Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Dr. Shamshad Akhtar said such a system would need to be supported by global and inclusive institutions to give voice to developing countries in international economic decision-making.

Official Photo of Dr. Shamshad Akhtar, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations & Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP Photo/Suwat Chancharoensuk)

“We must ensure that a stable and resilient global platform for finance is in place to play its role in furthering the post-2015 sustainable development agenda that the governments of the world are expected to adopt in September 2015,” said Dr. Akhtar, during her keynote address to a high-level panel on global finance on Friday. “The economies of Asia and the Pacific intend to not only effectively deal with the negative implications of prevailing issues with global monetary system but to lead the debate on reform ideas,” she said.

Dr. Akhtar explained that thus far, Asia and the Pacific has been able to withstand the global crisis as the countries had strengthen their financial system post 1997/98 regional financial crisis. The global financial market volatility and uncertainties; however are testing the resilience of the emerging markets of the region and there remain worries how the countries will manage the risks emanating from capital movements following the Fed reserve hike. The regional economies have over the years developed their defense mechanism including buildup of foreign exchanges reserves and regional swap credit lines and have at hand capital management and macro-prudential instruments to curb financial market volatility.

In this context, the Executive Secretary of ESCAP outlined four broad areas that need attention, namely an automatic international adjustment mechanism, effective management of cross-border capital and financial flows, an explicit nominal anchor, and an effective and credible international lender of last resort.

Dr. Akhtar emphasized that the international community needs to work together to ensure that global finance serves as a guarantor and not a threat to global economic and financial stability: “The challenge is to strike a balance between maximizing the benefits of global finance while minimizing its negative implications,” she said.

During her visit to St. Petersburg this week, the Executive Secretary also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between ESCAP and the Electric Power Council of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS EPC) to enhance energy connectivity and regional integration in North and Central Asia. The MoU was signed by Mr. Alexander Novak, Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation and President of the CIS Electric Power Council. Dr. Akhtar also met with Mr. Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs to discuss a wide range of issues including strengthening ESCAP and Russia’s cooperation in transport and energy.

The post UN ESCAP Calls For Coherent International Monetary System To Support Post-2015 Development Agenda appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Moroccan Press Agency MAP reported that King Mohammed VI chaired an official signing ceremony for the agreement with the French manufacturer PSA Peugeot Citroen. The French manufacturer plans to open a plant in Morocco to develop the African market and reduce its dependence on the European market vagaries. It will be its first African factory in Morocco. The investment is estimated to be some 750 million euros ($848 million).

According to Reuters, the manufacturer plans to launch with a production capacity of some 90,000 vehicles and engines. Located in the city Kenitra, about 47 kilometers from Rabat providing for the setting up of an automobile factory in the integrated industrial platform “Atlantic Free Zone. It will be the company’s first fully owned factory in Africa.

According to MAP, the Moroccan Minister pointed to the numerous assets that make Morocco an attractive destination for such large-scale investments, notably institutional, political and macro-economic stability, openness and the free-trade agreements that Morocco signed in addition to the structural reforms that helped improve Morocco’s business climate.

Elalamy also underscored the quality of Morocco’s infrastructure and its industrial platforms and competitive edge in terms of logistics and connectedness through railways, highways, ports and airports.

Equally important is vocational training through the adoption of an innovative strategy that meets the needs of automobile industry, he said, noting that four institutions are delivering training in these regards in the cities of Tangier, Casablanca and Kenitra.

Speaking on the same occasion, Chairman of the Managing Board of PSA Peugeot Citroën Carlos Antunes Tavares said that the future factory will be completed for a total cost of 6 billion dirhams.

The choice to set up the new plant in Morocco was not accidental, he said, adding that Morocco is well-placed to host such a large-scale investment thanks to its political, social, economic, commercial and geographic assets.

The new plant will have a production capacity of 200,000 cars and 200,000 motorbikes, Antunes Tavares.

This industrial complex will help the French group to increase exports to several markets in Africa and the Middle East, Antunes Tavares added. The group said the plant “will by 2019 assemble engines and vehicles in the B and C segments” – compact and mid-sized cars, the mainstay of Morocco’s automobile industry. “With a capacity of 90,000 engines and vehicles to begin with, this industrial unit will eventually produce 200,000 units a year, when demand requires,” it said.

Alamy said the new factory would create 4,500 full-time and provide indirect employment for up to 20,000 workers.

PSA said it was “today preparing the conditions to realise its commercial ambition (to produce) a million vehicles in the Middle East and Africa region by 2025″.

This agreement represents the latest boost for Morocco’s increasingly important automobile sector, which has benefited from investments from Renault in 2013 and exports around the Mediterranean.

The post Automaker PSA Peugeot Citroën To Open Car Plant In Morocco appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Richard Cox

For most of this year, emerging market stocks have had a hard time participating in the stock rallies that have been present in the developed world. This might come as a surprise to some, as the underlying logic tends to be that a rising tide lifts all boats and that strong rallies in one area of the world should translate into other regional areas, as well. But the interconnected nature of global financial markets is more complicated than that and it is important for investors to understand the main factors at work in order to best position for new trending moves that might be present in the future.

When dealing with these issues, a good deal of importance should be placed on the monetary policy outlook at the US Federal Reserve. This is because the Fed is widely viewed as the first major central bank likely to begin raising interest rates before the end of this year. If these projections are accurate, credit will become more expensive and consumer spending activity in the US will likely begin to slow. Activity like this places key limitations on one of Indonesia’s key export markets, so there is a strong chance that increases in interest rates will have a material impact on the ability of Indonesian companies to generate improved revenue growth into next year.

Chart Perspective: iShares MSCI Indonesia Market Index Fund (Source: Teach Me Trading)

Of course, this does not mean that stock markets in Indonesia will fall forever. But it is important to note that interest rate speculation in the US has created a more negative outlook for Indonesian stocks in the near-term. In the chart, we can see market valuations for the iShares MSCI Indonesia Market Index Fund (NYSEARCA:EIDO) dating back to the beginning of last year. EIDO is one of the most commonly watched gauges of stock performance in Indonesia as a whole and for most of that time, we have seen steady declines in market valuations. This activity coincides well with rising expectations that the Federal Reserve would tighten monetary policy in the U.S. So for those that are interested in gaining exposure to stock markets in Southeast Asia (and Indonesia, in particular), it makes a good deal of sense to remain aware of any changes in the interest rate policy agenda that is present in the United States.

Any suggestions that the Fed is willing to hold-off on raising rate will likely be positive for emerging market stocks. But if we start to see any direct commentaries made which highlight a need for higher interest rates in the US, we could see additional declines in these types of assets. At this stage, an interest rate increase of just one-percent would likely send valuations in Indonesian benchmarks like EIDO back below its all-time lows of around 21.90. From a psychological perspective, a move like this could create a wave of panic selling for stocks in Southeast Asia and in emerging market assets as a whole. Because of this, it makes little sense to start gaining significant long exposure in this sector of the market.

Of course, this does not mean that investors should avoid buying into emerging markets. Indonesia is still the fourth-largest country in the world in terms of population and it is a country that tends to receive less attention in the financial media when compared to nations like India and China. So, for those with a longer-term outlook, there is still good value to be had in assets like EIDO. But the prudent investor will be the one that waits until the US Federal Reserve starts raising interest rates so that rest of the market has the opportunity to offer these stocks at on-sale prices.

This article was published by Geopolitical Monitor.com

The post US Federal Reserve Could Sink Indonesian Stock Market – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The dome was encased in a rigid web of scaffolding as I rushed by. Looking up at it on my way to the corner of Independence Avenue and New Jersey Avenue SE, I saw a country trying to hide a fatal illness. It’s beyond repair, I mumbled to myself, thinking about the deep underlying rot I see everywhere I look.

Walking in the shadow of the Capitol Building in the day’s rising heat, my ears were still ringing. Made uneasy by the inadequate yet intensifying public scrutiny faced by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the captive government agency that receives its funding from the very industry it purports to regulate, the rule-makers there no longer allow its outspoken critics inside the room where monthly public meetings are held. Instead, we’re relegated to an overflow room where we have to watch the meeting’s proceedings on a screen. That’s where I’d just come from.

I wasn’t discouraged to be in the overflow room, though, because I already knew such meetings meant little anyway. Not only is public comment not allowed, but matters are decided on by the FERC commissioners in difficult to discern code. From the screen inside the overflow room, I heard the secretary read what would be voted on.

“E1, E2, E3, E4, E5, E6, E7….,” she droned on, only those with special insight able to follow.

The only sensical sound that could be heard at FERC that morning was the sound of three screeching whistles that Ted Glick, Steve Norris, and I sounded in protest as we walked through the lobby and out of the building, mischief managed, but change left as yet unmade.

I thought about the fracking pipeline, compressor station, and export terminal permits that are rolling in like waves during a storm, all thanks, in part, to FERC’s rubber-stamp. What will it take to stop this onslaught, I wondered. Those at the levers of this crisis seem blind to reality.

Arriving at the corner of Independence and New Jersey, and joining almost two dozen others who were gathered with signs and banners directed at members of the House of Representatives, we learned the House was only an hour away from voting on a bill that would help corporate power grabs like the secretly negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pass through Congress. Known as Fast Track, this piece of legislation would make it so Congress could only vote such “free-trade laws” up or down with no amendments, no filibuster, and little time for debate.

“Vote no on fast track,” a friend shouted to a passing Representative on his way to the debate.

Watching the Representatives walk back and forth from the Capitol Building and the House offices, it struck me how insulated they were, surrounded by donors and lobbyists, seeing little of the direct impacts of the decisions they made. What about communities that stood to be hurt by fracking? Why would their Representatives give corporate interests primacy over their own? Perhaps it’s because they’ve been blinded. That’s certainly the case with FERC and their blatant insulation from the public. The big question for me is how to break through those blinders?

Before the Fast Track vote came, five of us, all members of Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE), a coalition of citizens and allied community groups fighting to stop new fracked gas permits at FERC, headed over to the Rayburn House Office Building where we had signed up to attend the Natural Gas Roundtable Luncheon. Congressman Tom Reed (R- NY), Congressman Jim Costa (D- CA), Congressman Gene Greene (D- TX), and Congressman Glen Thompson (R- PA) were slated to speak, all co-chairs of the Congressional Natural Gas Caucus, the caucus focused on promoting fracked gas in the House and among members of the public. We were going to gather intelligence on what was being said on the inside, but also to speak out and make our opposition to fracked gas infrastructure known.

It was inside the banquet room, sitting at a table watching the lobbyist file in, that I received a text about Fast Track from someone following the votes outside. “In case you haven’t heard yet, we’re doomed,” it said. Fast Track was going to pass in the House. My heart dropped. I thought of the dome, the construction, the rot, and the whistles.

I glanced around the room, reading some of the name tags. A representative from FERC. Someone from Spectra Energy, the Fortune 500 Company that builds and operates gas pipelines and storage facilities all around the country. ANGA, American’s Natural Gas Alliance. And many others.

No wonder Fast Track was going to pass, I thought. This was the kind of world our so-called Representatives lived in. Just like FERC, these people were insulated from the outside, surrounded by the industry, and effectively held captive to it.

Congressman Green spoke first, and Ted Glick of BXE delivered his uninvited speech directly afterwards. Ted’s focus was the release of the Pope’s encyclical about the realities of human-induced climate change and the moral imperative to act on it. The room seemed uncomfortable but determined to brush off his words. Ted sat down and the luncheon continued.

Congressman Reed spoke second. He spoke of a farm family he knew in Pennsylvania. The farmer’s daughter was opposed to fracking, Reed said. The farmer decided to have a fracking well built on his property anyway. He did it, Reed explained, because he would be able to use the money he earned from fracking to pay for his daughter’s college education. It was a tragic story that highlighted a grave ignorance to the realities of the climate crisis, not to mention the other negative health impacts of fracking.

When Reed told the crowd that fracking helps future generations, I felt words involuntarily escape from my lips.

“Fracking kills future generations,” I shouted, much to the room’s displeasure.

Before I knew it, a police officer was by my side, pulling my arm to remove me from the room. Once again, the insulation of those at the levers of destruction was being protected. Knowing it wouldn’t do much good to walk out quietly, I let my body go limp and shouted to the room as three officers carried me out. At one point, I remember calling those in the room criminals, because that’s what I believe they are.

I was disappointed not to hear the hard-hitting questions asked of the speakers by fellow Beyond Extreme Energy members after my removal. I later heard their questions about drought and climate change were not answered in a straightforward way.

As I sat in a holding cell an hour later and thoughts of the day raced through my mind, I was reminded that it’s going to take a whole lot more than a few individual disruptions to stop permits at FERC, or to stop corporate power grabs like the TPP, or to neutralize the power and influence of the fracked gas lobby on our supposed representatives. Such disruptions and appeals seem to do nothing when the system is set up to be non-responsive. Nor do I think any one of these endeavors, a few among many, can be achieved alone in isolated campaigns. Each one rests on a rotting system that if not dismantled and replaced as a whole, will leave us with a threatened existence.

If FERC stops issuing permits, for example, what of the power of the fracked gas lobby? And what good is delivering a message to Congress, however disruptive, if Congress is set up to operate in the interests of the industry? The same can be asked of FERC.

The time has come to rise up and displace the harmful machine that grinds on around us. I can’t see how that can be done if a whole lot more of us aren’t willing to sacrifice our freedom in the process, and maybe even our lives. Perhaps the unresponsive institutions around us make us feel alone. Maybe if that illusion is cracked, more will be willing to take action.

Lee Stewart is an organizer with Beyond Extreme Energy and Popular Resistance, where this article first appeared.

The post We Are Greater Than The Fracked Gas Lobby – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.