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India Comes Calling To Central Asia – Analysis

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By Ashok Sajjanhar*

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the five Central Asian states from July 6-8, and again from July 10-13, 2015 is extremely significant, timely and symbolic. It has the potential of transforming and catapulting relations between India and the Central Asian countries to new, uncharted heights.

Prime Minister Modi’s decision to visit this important region soon after completion of his first year in office sends a powerful signal to the region and the world that India is keen to significantly strengthen its ties with these nations.

It is disappointing that relations between India and the five Central Asian republics comprising of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have been stagnating at a level much below potential because of neglect and attention deficit from both sides. By taking this unilateral initiative, Prime Minister Modi has given an unequivocal message about the relevance and significance that India attaches to this region in its foreign policy matrix.

Prime Minister Modi’s initiative is reminiscent of former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s visit to three of these republics when they were still a part of the Soviet Union, exactly 60 years ago in June 1955. After independence of these countries in 1991, then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao seized the opportunity and notwithstanding the domestic difficulties that India was experiencing on account of the economic crisis, demolition of Babri Masjid, Mandal Commission protests etc., visited four out of the five countries. Unfortunately over the last 10 years, former prime minister Manmohan Singh paid a visit to only two countries in the region viz Uzbekistan in 2006 and Kazakhstan in 2011.

Importance of these countries in regional and international affairs has increased several folds over the last decade.

The impending drawdown of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces from Afghanistan significantly enhances the imperative of strengthening India’s relations with these countries. There are other common challenges, including the recent civil war and air strikes by Saudi Arabia in Yemen; rise of ISIS which has taken over vast swathes of land in Iraq and Syria; resurgent Islamic insurgency in Egypt; renewed civil war in Libya; ongoing negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 countries on the former’s nuclear programme etc.

Central Asia has also been afflicted by the flight of several young men and women to join the Islamic State or ISIS. The recent killings in France, Kuwait and Tunisia are harsh reminders of the growing impact of ISIS ideology on young impressionable minds to lead them towards terrorism and violence. Stability and security in Afghanistan and Central Asia is of paramount importance for peace in India. India’s experience and success in promoting a syncretic and pluralistic culture among its diverse population can be of great value to Central Asia.

It is essential for India and Central Asia to chart out common strategies to confront and overcome these looming risks. Our security and strategic affairs policy makers need to share information and intelligence on these growing threats to jointly confront them. Regular and frequent meetings between National Security Advisers of all countries need to be instituted on a priority basis.

Energy is a significant pillar for expanding our bilateral economic engagement with this region. Opportunities abound for Indian companies in exploration and production of oil, gas and uranium in Kazakhstan; of gas in Turkmenistan; of uranium in Uzbekistan, and for hydro-power in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Our public sector company ONGC Videsh has committed to investing $400 million in exploration in Satpayev Block in Kazakhstan in which it holds 25% share. The TAPI pipeline to supply gas from Turkmenistan to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan has been under discussion for the last several years. It is imperative that all hurdles are cleared so that construction of the pipeline starts quickly.

India has been importing uranium from Kazakhstan over the last few years. Prime Minister Modi’s visit could result in enhanced partnership in exploration and mining of uranium in Kazakhstan. Renewable energy sector is also a promising area as India embarks on its ambitious solar and wind energy programmes. Theme of EXPO 2017, which will be held in Kazakhstan two years hence, is green and clean energy. There are rich possibilities for cooperating in this field.

Greater cooperation is possible in the field of trade and economic partnership also. Currently India has bilateral trade of about US$1.4 billion with Kazakhstan, about $270 million with Uzbekistan and below $100 million with each of the other three countries. Lack of direct land connectivity between India and the region is a huge bottleneck in expanding ties. Decision by India to invest around $100 million in the Chahbahar port project in Iran can help it to reach this region via Afghanistan. The International North South Transport Corridor can also provide an easier and quicker access to this region.

China’s growing presence in this region in areas of energy, security, trade, infrastructure and connectivity is a matter of growing concern. Prime Minister Modi’s visit is likely to ensure that India also capitalises on its cultural, historical and civilisational links with these countries to reassert its presence in the region. Tourism, education, health, IT, agriculture, pharmaceuticals etc are areas that enjoy rich potential for strengthening relations with this region.

It can be expected that some ambitious and far-reaching initiatives in the area of energy, security cooperation and trade and economic collaboration will be announced during the visit. The journey is likely to herald a sharp upswing in relations with this region.

*Ashok Sajjanhar, former ambassador of India to Kazakhstan, is secretary of the National Foundation for Communal Harmony, He can be reached at editor@spsindia.in

The post India Comes Calling To Central Asia – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.


Recent Developments In Sino-EU Relations: 2014 And 2015 State Visits By Xi Jinping And Li Keqiang

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China and the EU

On June 28, 2015, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrived in Belgium for the 17th China-European Union (EU) Leaders’ Meeting. This was followed by his state visit to France which included a visit to the headquarters of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).1 The timing for the premier’s trip was significant as 2015 marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the EU. China and the EU upgraded their bilateral relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2003, shortly after China’s ascension to the World Trade Organization in December 2001.2

China's Li Keqiang

China’s Li Keqiang. File photo.

Since the turn of the millennium, trade between China and the EU has soared. China has been the EU’s second largest trading partner for the past 12 years, and the EU has been China’s largest trading partner for the past 11. The value of trade between China and the EU increased from US$2.4 billion to US$615 billion between 1975 and 2014.3 The EU currently has a cumulative investment of almost US$100 billion in China, while China has a cumulative investment of more than US$50 billion in the EU.4 These bilateral investment flows are—in the eyes of the Chinese government at least—paltry given the much larger scale of Sino-EU trade. As such, Premier Li has called on the EU to quickly conclude a bilateral treaty that would facilitate Chinese acquisitions in Europe, and proposed that China and the EU begin studying the feasibility of establishing a free trade zone.5

At the 17th China-EU Leaders’ Meeting in Brussels, which Premier Li co-chaired, China and the EU agreed to align China’s “Belt and Road” development framework with the EU’s recently announced €315 billion Juncker investment plan, to stimulate synergistic growth for both regions. The European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), a financial vehicle for high risk ventures that is part of the Juncker plan, will eventually be linked to a Chinese initiative for international cooperation on production capacity, thereby allowing China and Europe to leverage their respective strengths in manufacturing capacity and advanced technology for the purposes of practical cooperation. Such practical cooperation will go beyond the traditional pattern of Chinese and EU foreign direct investment in each other’s economies, and will instead see Chinese and European firms linking up to expand into key emerging markets. Trilateral cooperation between China, its European partners, and third countries from emerging regional markets in projects like equipment manufacturing can accelerate industrial development and bring increased growth to not just the three partners but their respective regions as well, potentially accelerating global economic growth.6

China’s “Belt and Road” development framework offers opportunities for such trilateral cooperation to take place, and the involvement of 18 European countries in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)—the primary financing instrument for the “Belt and Road”—highlights European interest in the “Belt and Road” projects. The AIIB and the Silk Road Fund, the secondary financing instrument for the “Belt and Road,” will both offer funding for Chinese and European joint ventures on “Belt and Road” projects.7 Outside of the “Belt and Road” framework, China and Europe can extend their existing practical cooperation on climate change.8 China and the EU have agreed to cooperate on developing a sustainable low-carbon economy through technological innovation. Beyond technological research, China and the EU will also further their cooperation in emissions trading and the carbon market, as well as city-level partnerships in climate change mitigation projects.9 In recent historical perspective, this proliferation in practical cooperation can be connected to the 2005 decision at the 8th EU-China Summit in Beijing for China and the EU to develop their strategic relationship through “concrete actions.”10

Belgium and France

In his visit to Belgium, Premier Li and his Belgian counterpart Prime Minister Charles Michel signed cooperative agreements worth €18 billion, in sectors ranging from finance to telecommunications. Premier Li also stated that China will help Belgium develop into a key distribution and logistics node between Asia and Europe. China and Belgium will also cooperate on industrial joint ventures in key emerging markets like those in Africa.11

Following Belgium, Premier Li traveled to France and met with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. China and France agreed to expand their cooperation in the civilian nuclear energy sector including cooperation in the development of nuclear technology. In particular, Areva and China National Nuclear Corporation agreed to cooperate on a series of projects including uranium mining. In addition, China and France signed over 50 business agreements, including the Chinese purchase of 45 A330 passenger jets from Airbus. In turn, Airbus, which already has an A320 Family Final Assembly Line and Delivery Center in the Chinese city of Tianjin, agreed to set up an A330 Completion and Delivery Center in that same city, its first wide-body aircraft factory outside of Europe. Significantly, China and France also agreed to cooperate on ventures in Africa’s and Asia’s emerging markets. As noted earlier, such trilateral cooperation will boost economic growth in not just the emerging market concerned but also the Chinese and French economies. Africa, for example, hosts seven of the world’s fastest growing economies, and foreign direct investment in this high-growth region offers significant growth potential for foreign investors. In the telecommunications sector, Alcatel-Lucent won a deal worth €1.3 billion to supply telecommunications equipment to Chinese firms operating in Africa. China and France will also form joint ventures and other cooperative ventures in sectors like agriculture, aviation, and green energy in emerging markets in Africa and Asia.12

While in Paris, Premier Li also visited the OECD headquarters. During this visit, the Chinese delegation officially accepted the OECD’s invitation for China to join its Development Center. This gives China an important international forum to share the knowledge and expertise it has learned from its recent decades of rapid economic growth. Involvement in the OECD Development Center will also provide China with a wealth of practical research on economic restructuring and sustainable development, which should prove useful as China transitions from its previous decades of double-digit growth to a “new normal” of single-digit growth. Apart from its new role with the OECD Development Center, China will also enhance its two-decade long partnership with the OECD with strengthened cooperation in areas like sustainable development and the management of the macroeconomic environment.13

President Xi Jinping’s 2014 European Tour

Premier Li’s European tour built on cooperation agreements achieved by Chinese President Xi Jinping during his state visit to Europe the previous year.

China's Xi Jinping

China’s Xi Jinping

President Xi started that tour on March 22, 2014 with a state visit to the Netherlands, one of China’s key European economic partners. The Netherlands has been China’s second-largest trading partner in the EU for over a decade, and Sino-Dutch bilateral trade reached US$70.15 billion in 2013. During President Xi’s visit, China and the Netherlands signed cooperation agreements in a range of economic sectors including agriculture, energy, and finance. Both countries also agreed to cooperate in emerging sectors like green energy and smart cities.14 During his visit to the Netherlands, President Xi attended the Nuclear Security Summit, in which he voiced China’s view that the benefits of civilian nuclear technology should be equitably distributed among the world’s populations for global sustainable development; and that international cooperation is required to establish a global system of nuclear security that can successfully avert the threat of nuclear terrorism.15

President Xi followed this with a state visit to France, which was timed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Sino-French diplomatic relations. Indeed, France was the first Western power to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, and their bilateral ties have since been upgraded to a comprehensive strategic partnership. Sino-French bilateral trade reached US$50 billion in 2013, and President Xi sought to strengthen this economic relationship. Chinese and French enterprises have long been cooperating in sectors like finance, nuclear energy, rail transportation, and civil aviation, and President Xi encouraged these enterprises to cooperate in new sectors like green technology, and he also encouraged Sino-French joint ventures to seek trilateral cooperation in emerging markets.16 As noted earlier, Premier Li’s 2015 tour of Europe offered further encouragement to such trilateral ventures.

President Xi followed his state visit to France with state visits to Germany and Belgium. Germany is China’s largest trading partner in Europe, with bilateral trade amounting to US$161.6 billion in 2013. President Xi called for an expansion of Sino-German trade and investment, especially in infrastructure projects in Eurasia and Central Asia that will be constructed under the Silk Road Economic Belt development framework. China and Germany are already linked by transcontinental rail connections, including the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe International Railway which was launched in 2011. Infrastructure development under the Silk Road Economic Belt will add to the existing transportation and logistics linkages between Asia and Europe.17 President Xi ended his tour of Europe with a state visit to Belgium, where he and his Belgian counterpart Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo officially strengthened Sino-Belgian relations to an all-round partnership of friendship and cooperation, and agreed on a range of cooperative ventures in sectors like science and technology, telecommunications, and trade.18 In Brussels, President Xi visited the headquarters of the EU, the first Chinese president ever to do so.19 President Xi also witnessed the opening of the EU-China Research Center at the College of Europe, and in his address to the College on April 1, 2014, he highlighted the opportunities afforded by cooperation between China and Europe.20 As he observed:

“China and Europe may seem far apart geographically, but we are in fact in the same time and the same space. I even feel that we are close to each other, as if in the same neighborhood. Both China and Europe are in a crucial stage of development and facing unprecedented opportunities and challenges. As I just said, we hope to work with our European friends to build a bridge of friendship and cooperation across the Eurasian continent. For that, we need to build four bridges for peace, growth, reform and progress of civilization, so that the China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership will take on even greater global significance.”21

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Notes
1. “Chinese premier arrives in Brussels for China-EU leaders’ meeting,” Xinhua, June 28, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-06/28/c_134363153.htm. “Li’s visit to boost China-France practical cooperation, mutual trust,” Xinhua, June 29, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-06/29/c_134364886.htm.

2. “China, EU, exchange congratulations, diplomatic ties,” Xinhua, May 6, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-05/06/c_134214353.htm. “China-EU ties in past 40 years,” Xinhua, June 29, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-06/29/c_134365378.htm.

3. “Premier Li’s visit opens new chapter in China-EU economic ties,” Xinhua, July 1, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-07/01/c_134372782.htm.

4. “China-EU ties.”

5. James Kynge and Christian Oliver, “Li Keqiang pushes for China-Europe investment treaty,” Financial Times, June 29, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f0b923c0-1e67-11e5-ab0f-6bb9974f25d0.html.

6. “Production capacity cooperation opens new opportunities for China, Europe,” Xinhua, July 2, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-07/03/c_134377077.htm. “Chinese premier’s Europe visit sets new stage for bilateral cooperation,” Xinhua, July 3, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-07/03/c_134380243.htm. “EU agrees details of 315 billion euro investment plan,” Reuters, May 28, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/28/eu-investments-idUSL5N0YJ2ES20150528. Robert Ash, “Europe’s Commercial Relations with China,” in China-Europe Relations: Perceptions, Policies and Prospects, ed. David Shambaugh, Eberhard Sandschneider, and Zhou Hong (New York: Routledge, 2008): 210-213. Zhang Zuqian, “China’s Commercial Relations with Europe,” in China-Europe Relations: Perceptions, Policies and Prospects, ed. David Shambaugh, Eberhard Sandschneider, and Zhou Hong (New York: Routledge, 2008): 234-235.

7. “Premier Li’s visit.” “Production capacity cooperation.” Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim, “The US, China and the AIIB: From Zero-Sum Competition to Win-Win Cooperation?” Eurasia Review, April 19, 2015, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.eurasiareview.com/19042015-the-us-china-and-the-aiib-from-zero-sum-competition-to-win-win-cooperation-analysis/.

8. Richard Balme, “Global Warming Politics: The EU, China, and Climate Change,” in Europe and China: Strategic Partners or Rivals? ed. Roland Vogt (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012): 168-171.

9. “Chinese premier’s.” “China, EU pledge closer cooperation on climate change,” Xinhua, June 29, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-06/30/c_134366471.htm.

10. Xinning Song, “Challenges and Opportunities in EU-China Relations,” in Europe and China: Strategic Partners or Rivals? ed. Roland Vogt (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012): 24.

11. “China, Belgium sign cooperation deals, agree to explore third-party market,” Xinhua, June 29, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://english.cntv.cn/2015/06/30/ARTI1435624526378809.shtml.

1.2 “Chinese premier’s.” “Airbus A330 Completion and Delivery Center to be built in China’s Tianjin city,” Xinhua, July 3, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-07/03/c_134379253.htm. “China, France pledge closer cooperation in civil nuclear energy,” Xinhua, July 1, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-07/02/c_134373609.htm. “France woos Chinese investors as PM wraps up fruitful trip,” AFP, July 2, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.yahoo.com/france-woos-chinese-investors-pm-wraps-fruitful-trip-145616158–finance.html. “China, France to team up on projects in Asia, Africa,” AFP, July 2, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.dawn.com/news/1191785/china-france-to-team-up-on-projects-in-asia-africa. Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim, “Africa and China’s 21st Century Maritime Silk Road,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 13 (2015), accessed June 28, 2015, http://japanfocus.org/-Alvin_Cheng_Hin-Lim/4296.

13. “China joins OECD Development Centre,” Xinhua, July 1, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-07/01/c_134373533.htm. “Premier Li welcomes OECD’s role in China’s modernization,” Xinhua, July 1, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-07/02/c_134374544.htm. “China, OECD eye closer partnership,” Xinhua, July 1, 2015, accessed July 4, 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-07/02/c_134375395.htm. Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim, “China’s Transition to the ‘New Normal’: Challenges and Opportunities,” Eurasia Review, April 2, 2015, accessed June 28, 2015, http://www.eurasiareview.com/02042015-chinas-transition-to-the-new-normal-challenges-and-opportunities-analysis/.

14. “President Xi begins Europe visit,” China Daily, March 23, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-03/23/content_31873114.htm. “Xi arrives in Netherlands for state visit, nuclear summit,” Xinhua, March 23, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-03/23/content_31873177.htm. “China, Netherlands to build pragmatic partnership,” Xinhua, March 24, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-03/24/content_31877376.htm.

15. “President Xi calls for fair system of global nuclear security,” Xinhua, March 26, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-03/26/content_31902801.htm. “China’s role ‘constructive’: NSS chief negotiator,” Xinhua, March 26, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-03/26/content_31917547.htm.

16. “Xi’s visit to open new chapter with France,” Xinhua, March 25, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-03/25/content_31897832.htm. “China, France vow to boost financial, nuclear cooperation,” Xinhua, March 27, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-03/27/content_31919223.htm. “Xi’s France visit inspires Sino-French green cooperation,” Xinhua, March 28, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/environment/2014-03/28/content_31933382.htm.

17. “Chinese president arrives in Berlin,” Xinhua, March 28, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-03/28/content_31937046.htm. “Chinese president calls for further cooperation with Germany,” Xinhua, March 30, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-03/30/content_31945999.htm. Zhou Wa, “Rail route to Europe improves freight transport,” China Daily, September 13, 2013, accessed July 4, 2015, http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2013-09/13/content_16968074.htm. “Xi calls on China, Germany to build Silk Road economic belt,” Xinhua, March 30, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-03/30/content_31946001.htm. Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim, “China and the Eurasian Economic Union: Prospects for Silk Road Economic Belt,” Eurasia Review, May 14, 2015, accessed June 28, 2015, http://www.eurasiareview.com/14052015-china-and-the-eurasian-economic-union-prospects-for-silk-road-economic-belt-analysis/.

18. “Xi expects his visit to boost China’s ties with Belgium, Europe,” Xinhua, March 30, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-03/30/content_31953264.htm. “Xi leaves Brussels for Beijing after Europe trip,” Xinhua, April 2, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-04/02/content_31974014.htm.

19. “Xi Jinping becomes first president to visit EU HQ for top-level talks,” AFP, March 31, 2014. Accessed July 4, 2015. http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1461724/xi-jinping-becomes-first-president-visit-eu-hq-top-level-talks.

20. “EU-China Research Center opens in Belgium,” Xinhua, April 2, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-04/02/content_31977292.htm.

21. “President Xi’s speech at the College of Europe,” Foreign Ministry of the People’s Republic of China, April 4, 2014, accessed July 4, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2014-04/04/content_32004856.htm

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FIFA’s Blatter Unwittingly Pinpoints Soccer Governance’s Prime Issues – Analysis

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Embattled FIFA president Sepp Blatter unwittingly put his finger on two fundamental issues that underlie a corruption scandal that has rocked world soccer governance, the worst crisis in the sport’s history: the fiction that sports and politics are separate and hypocrisy that distorts legitimate debate about Qatar’s successful but controversial World Cup bid.

Speaking to German newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag, Mr. Blatter asserted that the governments of France and Germany had pressured their national soccer federations to vote in favour of the Qatari bid. His self-serving remarks were likely intended to deflect responsibility as authorities investigate his controversial stewardship of FIFA.

Nonetheless, in doing so, Mr. Blatter implicitly admitted that the notion of international sports federations, including FIFA, that sports and politics was fiction – a fiction that has allowed the federations to play politics with impunity.

Mr. Blatter further hypocritically disavowed responsibility for sub-standard conditions of migrant workers in Qatar despite FIFA’s self-declared “humanitarian values” and mission “to improve the lives of young people and their surrounding communities, to reduce the negative impact of our activities and to make the most we can of the positives.”

Mr. Blatter noted that German companies had employed migrant labour in Qatar on the same terms that have become a major issue since the awarding of the World Cup long before the Gulf state had moved into the firing line of human rights and trade union activists as well as Western critics of the FIFA decision.

“Look at the German companies! Deutsche Bahn, Hochtief and many more had projects in Qatar even before the World Cup was awarded,” Mr. Blatter said referring to German railways and a major construction company.

In effect, Mr. Blatter was laying bare an attitude expressed explicitly by his equally embattled general secretary, Jerome Valcke that FIFA prefers to work with dictatorships. “I will say something which is crazy, but less democracy is sometimes better for organising a World Cup,” Mr. Valcke told the BBC in 2013. He added that FIFA expected to have far less problems with the 2018 tournament in Russia than it had with last year’s competition in Brazil that sparked mass protests.

Mr. Blatter’s comments have implications both for Swiss and US investigations into soccer corruption that involve the Qatari World Cup bid as well as the debate about Qatar. Western criticism of Qatar’s labour regime that puts employees at the mercy of their employers is justified, but only gained momentum once opponents of the Qatari bid jumped on the bandwagon.

Fact of the matter is that human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch alongside Western media that have long albeit intermittently reported for decades on abominable labour conditions in Qatar and other Gulf states were effectively voices lost in the wind until Qatar won its bid.

That does not absolve Mr. Blatter or FIFA of its responsibilities to adhere to its values, particularly at a time that international sports associations are paying increased lip service to human rights. Nor does it give Qatar wiggle room to escape making good on promises to substantially reform, if not abolish, its notorious labour kafala or sponsorship system.

What it does do is put the burden of responsibility for an onerous system that has indebted and indentured generations of migrant worker as much on Western governments and corporations as it does on Qatar. It also highlights the need to distinguish in the debate about Qatar between legitimate criticism and opportunistic attacks that are driven by ulterior motives.

Mr. Blatter’s acknowledgement of the German and French pressure highlights the need for international sports to acknowledge that their ties to politics are intrinsic and need to be embedded in a structure that monitors and governs that relationship.

It also underlines the fact that soccer governance’s corruption problems are twofold: financial, the focus of the Swiss and US investigations, and political – a problem that is as much the preserve of democracies as it is of autocracies.

France’s interference was documented two years ago in a lengthy expose in France Football. The magazine detailed a meeting engineered by then French president Nikolas Sarkozy between Michel Platini, a former French star who heads European soccer body UEFA; then Qatari crown prince Sheikh Tamim bin Haman Al-Thani, who has since become his country’s ruler; and a representative of French premier league club, Paris Saint-Germain.

The three-way deal cut at that meeting involved Mr. Platini agreeing to vote for the Qatari bid in exchange for Qatar acquiring the French club, creating a French sports channel and investing in France.

Mr. Platini, a potential candidate to succeed Mr. Blatter, who has resigned and is acting as a caretaker until FIFA holds presidential elections sometime between December of this year and March of next year, has been haunted since by his decision to switch his vote from the United States to Qatar in the crucial World Cup vote.

In a separate interview with Die Welt am Sonntag, Mr. Platini suggested that he would not stand as a candidate in the upcoming election.

German newspaper Die Zeit disclosed last month that Germany had lifted an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia and sold the kingdom arms to persuade the Gulf state to vote for its successful bid to host the 2006 World Cup. The government also persuaded German corporations to invest in Thailand and South Korea as part of its World Cup bid.

“Germany’s action may have been legal but it did not quite live up to what is believed to be the spirit of sports,” the newspaper said.

Its understated comment is true for all aspects of the crisis engulfing soccer governance and serves as a yardstick for what it will take to put soccer’s house in order.

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BBIN Agreement: Building Sub-Regional Corridors Of Trust – Analysis

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By G. Padmaja*

On June 15, 2015, the transport ministers of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) endorsed and signed in Thimphu the BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement (MVA) for the Regulation of Passenger, Personal and Cargo Vehicular Traffic between them. This first step towards concrete sub-regional cooperation opens the doors for transforming these transport corridors into corridors of economic growth by bringing in investment and making them channels for carrying trade. They will also enable people-to-people connectivity. Once implemented they have the potential to increase intra-regional trade within South Asia by almost 60% and with the rest of the world by over 30%.

Most important however, the agreement signals that relations earlier characterised by trust deficit among some of these countries is decisively moving towards a national political consensus in the respective countries for cooperation with neighbours. The member countries are finally convinced that it can be a win-win situation for all. Interestingly, sub-regional cooperation was not envisaged when the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was formed in 1985. It was only in the 9th SAARC Summit held at Male, Maldives in 1997 that the member countries agreed for, “…the development of specific projects relevant to the special individual needs of three or more member states”. However, no projects were taken up to be implemented under this sub-regional cooperation mechanism. Efforts towards a SAARC MVA had begun in 2007 and the agreement was to be signed at the18th SAARC Summit held in Kathmandu in 2014. However, when members failed to agree for a SAARC MVA, focus shifted towards a BBIN MVA. Some member countries of BBIN now envisage this MVA to open up opportunities to link them with Southeast Asia.

Role of SASEC

Since 2001, the South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) programme has brought together Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, India in a project-based partnership to promote regional prosperity by improving cross-border connectivity, boosting trade among member countries, and strengthening regional economic cooperation. Since 2014, Sri Lanka and Maldives are also part of this programme. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) serves as Secretariat to the SASEC Program. Since 2001, ADB has approved almost $4.7 billion in loans and grants — toward which the SASEC governments have contributed more than $1.9 billion — in support of 25 SASEC projects in transport, trade, trade facilitation, energy and information and communications technology.

The SASEC partnership works to increase trade and cooperation within South Asia, while also creating the linkages to East and Southeast Asia. SASEC countries follow a flexible multi-track approach, with coordinated projects in different countries implemented nationally as well as across borders, to promote sub-regional cooperation. National road and rail networks, for example, are strengthened within individual countries, yet are planned and prioritized to link up across national borders with transport networks in neighbouring countries. Connecting transport networks efficiently speeds access to ports and markets, and eases the movement of goods, people, and business within South Asia. For example, better infrastructure connectivity to port facilities of Bangladesh and India helps not only those countries themselves but makes these ports more accessible to landlocked countries of Bhutan and Nepal.

Under SASEC, the Chittagong Port Trade Facilitation Project has increased the capacity and efficiency of the container terminal and is helping international port security and environmental standards to be met. This leads to lower shipping and port charges, contributing to more international trade. SASEC has also undertaken projects for upgrading infrastructure at selected border crossings considered crucial to intra-regional trade, as well as institutional and capacity building for trade facilitation.

The joint statement of transport ministers of BBIN released on June 15, 2015, acknowledged the role of ADB and ADB-supported SASEC in enhancing interconnectivity between the four countries. It further said, “… We acknowledge the technical and facilitating role played by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in taking the BBIN MVA initiative this far and request ADB to continue providing much needed technical support and other related arrangements necessary to ensure the effective e and efficient implementation of the work plan.”

It needs to be stated that external agencies can only help to the extent the member countries want to move ahead. The path ahead is not easy. The member countries need to implement with utmost sincerity all issues agreed upon so that the benefits can filter down to the people of the region at the earliest. People’s support would then prevent derailing the project even if any cracks arise in the political consensus in future. Given that the journey so far has not been easy, it’s not only about building trust but sustaining that trust.

The Tasks Ahead

The joint statement released spelt out the roadmap these four countries had charted for the next six months i.e. July 2015–December 2015. The preparation, negotiation and approval of the bilateral, and where necessary the trilateral and quadrilateral agreements/protocols would be completed by September 15; installation of the prerequisites for implementing the approved agreements (e.g., IT systems, infrastructure, tracking, regulatory systems) by December 2015; and staged implementation would start from October 15. A Friendship Motor Rally bringing out the potential of BBIN MVA would be held in October.

Various studies have highlighted that acquiring land for constructing roads will be a complex process and resistance from the effected people will have to be addressed. The quality of work needs to be ensured; sharing of tolls and tariffs to be arrived at so that all are benefitted; measures to be ensured so that security concerns are not compromised and also need for transparency in the whole process.

BBIN MVA: A win-win scenario for all

BBIN MVA should be a reality by the end of 2015 if everything goes as planned. It will open innumerable opportunities for landlocked Bhutan and Nepal. For India, its landlocked northeast will breathe new opportunities and India’s Act East policy will gain a new energy. The joint declaration of June 7, 2015, between Bangladesh and India made during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Dhaka spells out Bangladesh’s interest in importing power in the BBIN framework, The success of BBIN MVA could soon make this proposal a reality too.

*G.Padmaja , a former United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research Visiting Research Fellow at the United Nations, Geneva is presently an independent researcher on India’s foreign policy towards its immediate neighbours. She can be reached at sri2003ja@yahoo.com

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India-Australia: Changing Nature Of Strategic Ties – Analysis

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By Biren Nanda*

When we speak of the changing nature of India’s engagement with the international community, it is but natural that we should also reflect upon relations between Australia and India.

India and Australia have several commonalities including the shared values of a democratic system, a free press, an independent judiciary and a vibrant civil society. These elements have served as a solid foundation for close cooperation and multi-faceted interaction between the two countries. Today it is on the basis of shared interests that India and Australia are witnessing a robust development in their bilateral ties.

We have established institutional platforms for furthering cooperation in diverse areas like foreign affairs, defence, education, science and technology and resources. High level visits on both sides are promoting engagement across a wide range of areas and creating new opportunities for both countries.

The successful visits to India of then prime minister Julia Gillard in October 2012 and Prime Minister Tony Abbot in September 2014 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Australia in November 2014 all had substantive outcomes that have contributed significantly to the agenda of our Strategic Partnership.

India and Australia have shared perspectives on global challenges like international terrorism and are partners in regional cooperation in the context of our dialogue partnership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), participation in the East Asia Summit and the Indian Ocean Rim Association.

As the centre of gravity of the world economy shifts to Asia and the Indian Ocean Region, India and Australia have the potential to cooperate more closely in areas like combating piracy, disaster management, food and energy security and the prevention of drug trafficking.

There has been a significant expansion of trade and investment between our two countries. The Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement negotiations which we have embarked upon will strengthen institutional connectivity and accelerate the rapid expansion of our commercial ties. We expect that the conclusion of the Agreement will expand the base of merchandise trade, remove non-tariff barriers, facilitate investment and address behind the border restrictions to trade. We seek to achieve some correction in the adverse balance of trade in goods and services with Australia. In services we seek greater Mode IV access and Mutual Recognition Agreements.

As the Indian economy grows, the global situation presents a mixed picture. On one hand, we are growing at a healthy pace, increasing our share in global trade and output. On the other hand, many obstacles have to be overcome if we are to sustain rapid growth in the years ahead. Particularly important are the supply side constraints of the Indian economy’s narrative of “catch up growth” including Energy, Water, Food, Infrastructure and not in the least Education and Skills Training. It is no surprise, therefore, that these supply side constraints are the driving force behind the rapid growth in ties between India and Australia. There is much that India can gain from interaction and exchanges with Australia in terms of best practices, improved capabilities and the additionality of resources.

Australia is a major and growing source for imports of resources – gold, copper, coal and diamonds for the Indian economy. A number of Indian companies have invested in the resources and manufacturing sectors in Australia.

India and Australia signed a Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement during the visit of Prime Ministar Abbott to India in September last year. Nuclear power generation is an important element in India’s efforts to achieve energy security and to reduce the carbon footprint of the economy.

Australian companies possess expertise, technology and products in a number of areas of interest to India. They are increasingly looking to opportunities in manufacturing, telecom, logistics, steel production technologies, mining technologies, energy exploration, infrastructure projects and services. Australian investments in India are making significant contributions to the economic relationship between the two countries.

Australia is one of the major destinations for Indian students studying abroad. At present there are 36,000 Indian students studying in Australia’s tertiary and vocational education sector. A number of formal agreements have been concluded between Australian and Indian universities. They involve student and staff exchanges, joint programs in India as well as research collaboration.

In the area of skills the National Skills Development Council has tied up with Skills Australia to set skill’s standards in collaboration with Industry Skills Councils in India. We are also witnessing the emergence of a new opportunity for Australian vocational training institutes to deliver services in India. Indian corporates have successfully tied up with Australian Vocational Training Institutes to train trainers in specific skills in India. Skills training and vocational education, therefore, presents a huge opportunity for Australia to leverage and benefit from Indian growth in the coming decades. It is also a win-win opportunity for India as we seek to overcome capacity constraints in this area.

In science and technology we have been cooperating in a number of focus areas including tsunami warning, clean energy and joint research projects. The Australia India Strategic Research Fund (AISF) is an outstanding example of how we have collaborated together in scientific research and how our institutions have successfully developed networks in either country. The AISF supports science & technology collaboration in the areas of agricultural research, astronomy and astrophysics, environmental sciences, microelectronics, nanotechnology, renewable energy, marine sciences and earth systems sciences. Many of these projects touch the daily lives of people in India. We need to strengthen such collaboration in the future.

It is possible to identify several areas of convergence between India and Australia in terms of our strategic interests. First of all, Australia in its search for new avenues of enhancing economic growth should look more closely at the complementarities and opportunities offered by India with its huge market. Economic cooperation must continue to provide a strong underpinning to the India-Australia relationship. Second, There is an impressive array of bilateral, regional and global issues that we have agreed, at the highest level, to address as part of our Strategic Partnership for the 21st century. For instance, we have common interests in maintaining the security of sea-lanes and in combating terrorism.

Third, we have common approaches and concerns on a range of regional issues, which can be explored and developed further. Fourth, we can work together to restore the credibility and authority of the UN and promote UN reforms, making its institutions more representative of the current realities. (Australia supports India’s cadidature for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.) Last, but not the least, we can work together within the G-20 towards strengthening the global financial system.

*Biren Nanda is former High Commissioner to Australia. He can be reached at biren9@gmail.com

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Islamic State And The South Asian Caliphate – Analysis

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The argument that South Asia in general and India in particular would maintain its insularity from the Islamic State’s influence is delusional. The threat for India is real and could be far more lethal than familiar Islamist groups. With the IS already showing signs of presence in parts of South Asia, it could be only a matter of time before it announces its arrival in India in a grand fashion.

By Surya Valliappan Krishna*

A year since its declaration of intent, the Islamic State (IS) has captured the world’s imagination like no other terrorist organisation. It continues to demonstrate supernormal growth and area dominating abilities. In this context the argument that South Asia in general and India in particular would maintain its insularity from the outfit’s influence is delusional. The first propaganda video featuring Caliph Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi in late June 2014 after the declaration of the Caliphate showed him make explicit and specific references to Indian Muslims and to those of its neighbours to rise up, wage Jihad and establish the Islamic State of Khurasan. Khurasan is the proposed geographical entity covering almost the entire South Asian region. India figures prominently in the outfit’s future plans.

Having the second largest Muslim population (180 million according to the 2011 census constituting 14.2 percent of the country’s population) with a large majority of them being so-called young vulnerable Muslims, a Hindu nationalist Government in New Delhi with an allegedly questionable record related to treatment of the Muslim community and a ready-to-exploit sectarian divide between the Shia and Sunni groups (Shias are roughly estimated to be 22 to 28 percent of the Indian Muslim population), India arguably is a prime ground for the IS. And yet, the case is often made out that the IS, its affiliates and fan-boys will never succeed in India.

On 19 March 2015, Home Minister Rajnath Singh made a statement regarding how the IS has failed in the Indian context. Singh said,

“I am happy to note that the influence of Islamic State on the Indian youth is negligible. The failure of IS to attract Indian Muslims, who constitute the second largest Muslim population in the world, is due to their complete integration into the national mainstream. Indian Muslims are patriots and are not swayed by fundamentalist ideologies. Extremism is alien to their nature”.

The official line thus far has been to parrot the strength of India’s unity in diversity, integration of all religious communities in the national mainstream, and the supremacy of the Indian identity. This has also been attributed to the fact that pluralism has had a long history in India. Although much of this is true and for long Indian Muslims have refused to be a part of Global Jihad, to expect the past to be able to prevent a slide into chaos in future could be strategically myopic.

The Indian Government has underplayed the IS threat. India has also been treading carefully with relation to its foreign policy agenda in Iraq and Syria, opting out of the United States-led coalition potentially thwarted dissatisfaction among members of the Indian Muslim community. While the past year has witnessed a march of some Indians to join the IS in Iraq and Syria, there isn’t an agreement on the exact number of such people who have been associated with the violent agenda of the outfit. Reported cases of radicalisation in the media differ from the ones that politicians and security officials confirm, In November 2014, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval said that there could not be more than 10 cases of which five or six persons were those with the intention of joining the Islamic State. Doval’s statement contradicted his predecessor M K Narayanan’s account in September 2014 that Indians numbering between 100 and 150 – mostly engineers – have left the country to fight with the IS. In either case the number of Indians with the IS has been extremely small compared to the overall Muslim population. Given that India’s attempts at establishing either a comprehensive counter-extremism programme or a explicit counter-narrative that addresses violent extremism are incomplete projects, the weak Indian association with the IS is puzzling and could be a erroneous source of satisfaction.

Interestingly, many IS foreign fighters from Westerns and European countries have been second or third generation Muslims of South Asian descent, some like Abu Rumaysah being of Indian origin, Abdul Raqib Amin being of Bangladeshi origin. Racism, discriminatory experiences in association with a strong identity crisis is seen to be the underlying cause for radicalisation.

This is where the role of the media has been overlooked, the influence the media has had is enormous. The Indian media in recent times has been at the forefront of controversy. Whether being accused of fronting for corporate bigwigs or dishing out content that lacks objectivity, only on rare occasions that select India media has received accolades for its sensitive coverage of issues of terrorism. Indian media’s coverage since the Mumbai attacks, with fantastic visuals and poor content, has been an oft-cited case of failure in cooperating with counter terrorism operations.

The IS poses a new threat; the group with its ruthless brutality makes Al Qaeda look moderate while its cutting edge video production skills gives it a all pervasive capacity to induce fear. In contrast, the Indian television and print media’s attention on IS-related content has been sporadic as compared to the European media portraying it as an existential threat. Unlike its peers in the developed world, the Indian media reported events ‘as they occurred’- basis and its coverage was not characterized by an underlying narrative that focussed on the IS content regularly. This has strongly contributed to a culture which views the IS as a distant threat without much of immediate domestic repercussions. Recent examples of this trend is the hyperbole and little else in covering three stories: One was related to the massive efforts to rescue Indian workers from IS stronghold in Iraq undertaken by the Ministry of External Affairs, while the second was related to radicalisation of Areeb Majeed, the young man from Kalyan who travelled to the IS stronghold and returned. The third was in connection to the arrest of Mehdi Biswas, an Islamic State sympathizer with an influential twitter handle (@ShamiWitness).

The Islamic State is showing signs of expanding. The militant culture in Pakistan and Afghanistan seem to be particularly receptive to this new breed of political violence. Some of the Pakistani Taliban commanders and Jundullah, a splinter of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have pledged allegiance to the self proclaimed Caliphate. In November 2014, the provincial government of Balochistan told Islamabad in a confidential report that IS has claimed to have recruited a massive 10 to 12,000 followers from the Hangu and Kurram Agency tribal areas. In addition, Indian groups such as the Indian Mujahedeen (IM) could wreak havoc with support of the IS transnational network. In September 2014, the National Investigative Agency in a case relating to the IM told the Delhi High Court that the group wanted to create an Iraq-Syria situation in India with the intention of forming an Islamic State in the region. The volatile Kashmir region, where this Islamic State flag has been cited on a number of occasions could play out to be a theatre of violent conflict for the IS Islamic State with Indo-Pak diplomacy and talks reaching an inevitable deadlock. The inclination of Pakistan in attempting to use the IS as an anti-India instrument cannot be ruled out.

The South Asian dream of the IS is yet to take full shape. The threat for India, however, is real and could be far more lethal than familiar Islamist groups such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba. With the IS already showing signs of presence in parts of South Asia, it could be only a matter of time before it announces its arrival in India in a grand fashion.

*Surya Valliappan Krishna is a postgraduate student at the Department of War Studies, King’s College, London. This brief has been published under Mantraya.org’s “Islamic State in South Asia” project. Surya is a lead researcher with the project.

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Could Islamic State’s Rise Be Chance For Real Reformation Of Islam? – Oped

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Islamic State (IS), previously known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has shown nothing but destruction, chaos and sectarianism. Through terror strategies, they rapidly spread over great parts of eastern Syria and north and central Iraq. Their new recruits came from all over the world, but mainly from Islamic countries. Arab countries had the biggest share of recruits.

While IS was assembling supporters and sympathizers, Sunni Clergymen constantly called for ‘material and moral’ support to the Syrian rebels, and accordingly, thousands of foreign fighters flooded into Syria for Jihad. According to a Soufan Group research in 2014 on the foreign fighters in Syria, it is estimated that the highest number of foreign fighters came from Tunisia (about 3,000), Saudi Arabia (about 2,500), Morocco (about 1,500), Russia (about 800), France (700), Turkey and the United Kingdom (about 400 each). These numbers exclude the Syrians and Iraqis who are already in IS.

The Arab leaders of IS are Al-Bagdadi (in reference to Bagdad) in Iraq and later the Caliph of the Islamic State, and Al-Golani (in reference to the occupied region of Golan Heights) in Syria as the Emir of the Islamic state in Syria. Caliph literally means the ‘successor’ – the ruler of the Muslim Community whereas Emir means the ‘prince’ – a military commander and a governor of a province. IS seems to have a clear and strategically advised ideological path. It should not be alien to Muslims, especially the political and religious elites that these teachings still exist in Islamic books, Friday prayer preaching, and even schoolbooks. The ideology of IS is one of various interpretations of the principle books, the Quran and the Sayings and Tradition of the Prophet Mohammad. The Salafi-flavoured IS actually represents a valid extension of fundamentalism in the Arab societies. It is more a cultural and educational matter than a religious matter. Such an apocalyptic interpretation of Islam does not seem to be likeable by the majority of Muslims.

The Supreme Imam of Al-Azhar University and Mosque, Ahmed Al-Tayeb said that the extremist groups who murder and slaughter under the name of the Islamic State do not represent neither Muslims nor Al-Azhar nor the prophet Mohammad and his teachings. The hideous deeds of these extremist groups repeatedly harm and distort the real message of Islam.

Furthermore, the grand Mufti of Egypt Shawqi Alam said that naming a terrorist organization such as IS an Islamic state is a huge mistake. This organization speaks and acts against the humane and religious teachings and the Sharia of Islam. Indeed, the World Association of Al-Azhar Graduates declared the organization as un-Islamic and it is a part of a conspiracy against the Muslim world – IS in the Middle East, Taliban in Asia and Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Media outlets in the Arab world were flooded by news, explanations, and interpretations condemning the Islamic State calling it un-Islamic. Prominent Islamic scholars from different countries all over the world condemned the actions of IS and confirmed the message that IS is not related to Islamic teachings, but on the contrary it destroys Islam.

Now if IS members are not Islamic and are not true Muslims, then what are they? All their slogans are Islamic, and all their interpretations are Islamic. Actually on their flag it is written ‘there is not God but Allah and the prophet Mohammad is his messenger.’ IS could be a chance for a real Islamic reformation apart from conspiracy theories and apart from excluding such a terrorist organization from the realm of Islam. Most of IS recruits have come from Muslim countries, and to a greater extent from Arab countries. They mainly rose from Islamic societies and communities and studied in the same religious books at schools and universities. They went to the same mosques and they received the same religious messages as the rest of the community. They might actually be the sons, brothers, fathers, sisters and mothers of so-called moderate Muslims.

The shocking reality of the horrible actions and ruthless brutality of IS members should bring the attention to the real problem that Islam needs reformation and revivalism. It is not a matter of defending Islam, but rather offending it.

Therefore, reformation could perhaps start from elementary school beginning with religion books for kids to the highest forms of religious education. A reformation could start at mosques and at preaching sessions at Friday prayers to enforce tolerance and build towards peace. A reformation could also start when religious institutions in the Arab world and the Muslim-majority countries stop interfering in politics on one hand and when the political institutions stop instrumentalizing religion and co-opting religious institutions for power consolidation.

The rise of IS should be a wake up call for all Muslims all over the world. Muslims calling IS un-Islamic and it does not represent Islam does not seem to be enough for it, at least, does not stop newcomers from joining IS. Moreover, IS is Islamic as much as they claim they are. Reformation of religion is due; otherwise the world risks the emergence of organizations similar to IS in the near or far future. Describing IS as un-Islamic is apologetic and serves reality with nothing. It neither prevents the emergence of other hundred IS-like extreme organizations nor improves the image of Islam and Muslims. A real action of reform should start from the scratch and every source, as it can be decided by Islamic scholars, should be put under scrutiny and thorough study.

The shocking fact that IS emerged from an Arabic conflicting political context and it instrumentalizes Islam for political ends should be an awakening moment for those who call for the fusion between politics and the state. Compromising politics and dogmatic religion might result in a destruction of one of these two components.

Either politics dominates and destroys religion or religion dominates and destroys politics. In the case of IS, politics is dominant over religion but the prominence of the latter serves the political cause of IS – power, legitimacy and dominance. The choice of such a version of extremism severed IS well as there is no hesitance in committing genocide to eliminate their opponents.

It is a chance for Muslims to make a real reform. Islamic scholars should lead such a reformation far from politics and far from the divide of what is the right Islam and what is the wrong one. There must be a framework to lay down the first bricks in this long process. The political leadership must in return observe the process closely. It does not seem enough for Muslims to condemn a terrorist act and simply call it un-Islamic. There must be a real change and it should start now.

*Hakim Khatib is a political scientist and analyst works as a lecturer for politics and culture of the Middle East, intercultural communication and journalism at Fulda and Darmstadt Universities of Applied Sciences and Phillips University Marburg. Hakim is a PhD candidate in political science on political instrumentalization of Islam in the Middle East and its implications on political development at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the founder and editor-in-chief of the Mashreq Politics and Culture Journal (MPC Journal).

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How To Better Reintegrate Former Detainees Into Society – OpEd

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MENA regional director of Penal Reform International (PRI) Taghreed Jaber said that the Mohammed VI Foundation for Detainees’ Reintegration is a model and reference in the Arab world. In fact This foundation is a unique institution in the Arab world, created to promote educational and vocational training programs to enhance the socio-professional reintegration of prisoners.

Micro-projects and self-employment program for former inmates are regularly offered to support the social and professional integration of former prisoners who benefit from the program carried out by the Mohammed VI Foundation for the reintegration of detainees.

This action, reflecting the special attention given by King Mohammed VI to the social and professional integration of former inmates. It is also part of a Royal vision aiming at reinforcing societal security, fighting delinquency, reducing recidivism and creating income- generating activities through improving the quality of life of former prisoners.

The foundation provides financial support and equipment to former inmates on the basis of a study conducted during the detention period by the integration service taking into account the consistency of the training with the know-how of the inmate as well as the job market requirements. According to the Moroccan Press Agency MAP, in 2014, the same program helped in the professional integration of 933 former prisoners in enterprises and the creation of 1,436 micro-projects in a wide array of sectors.

This strategy is overseen by the Mohammed VI Foundation for the integration of prisoners in partnership with the administration in charge of the integration of prisoners and the ministerial departments delivering training and services as well as civil society partners.

The establishment of the Mohammed VI Foundation for the Reintegration of Prison Inmates is part of the current strengthening of the rule of law and consolidation of national institutions that have made significant progress in Morocco since the 90s.

The Moroccan Constitution, adopted on July 1, 2011, supports this commitment to protect the rights of prison inmates by the terms of Section 23, which states:

“No one shall be arrested, detained, prosecuted or convicted unless it is under the circumstances and in the manner provided by law. Arbitrary and secret detention and enforced disappearance are crimes of the utmost gravity and their perpetrators shall be exposed to the most severe punishments. Any person being detained shall be informed immediately, in a way that they can understand, of the reasons for their detention and of their rights, including the right to remain silent. They must obtain legal assistance, at the earliest possible time, and have the possibility of communicating with their relatives, in accordance with the law.

The presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial are guaranteed. A person in detention shall have the benefit of fundamental rights and of humane conditions of detention. They can benefit from training and reintegration programs. Any incitement to racism, hatred or violence is prohibited. Genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and any serious and systematic violation of human rights is punishable by law. ”

The Socio-professional Reintegration Program for Prison Inmates is the result of a commitment by the national authorities, and, even more so, the result of a royal commitment, to reform the penitentiary system.

“… The special care that We have given to the social dimension in the field of justice would not be complete if We did not guarantee that the human dignity of detained citizens is preserved. It is however not being denied to them by the sole effect of a legal decision to deprive them of their freedom…

… in addition to the proposed reform that includes prison legislation and an ambitious action program which We are overseeing through the implementation of the Mohammed VI Foundation for the Reintegration of Residents of Penitentiary Institutions, We gave our instructions to… ensure that the material and moral conditions of prisoners are improved.”

Extracted from the royal speech given on January 29, 2003 on the occasion of the opening of the judicial year.

Azzedine Belmahi Coordinator at Mohammed VI Foundation for the Reintegration of Prisoners and member of the UNESCO Chair Science Committee stated that “The Socio-professional Reintegration Program for Prison Inmates integrates several components that are related to education and vocational training. Sports, cultural and religious activities with educational purposes, the strengthening of family and social relationships in the outside world, medical care, the improvement of living conditions are all components that contribute to preparing an inmate for an easier reentry into the economic and social fabric.”

To achieve this purpose, Mr. Belmahi underlined that “a partnership approach was adopted by the Foundation for the implementation of this program in the correctional institutions. Partnership agreements have been signed with the Government departments in charge of education and with the institutions that provide such services. Thus, education is taken in charge by the Ministry of National Education, and the Penal Institution’s school is under the regional academy’s oversight. All levels of training are provided, from basic literacy training to university courses. Training is provided by the State instrument in this field, namely the Office of Vocational Training and Employment Promotion (OFPPT). The same applies to all activities. Each action is carried out by the professional who has the required skills. Thus, sporting and cultural activities are taken in charge by the Ministry of Youth and Sports and by the Ministry of Culture, respectively.”

The Foundation has been instrumental in bringing together the various actors involved, each one contributing according to their competence.

Mr. Belmahi added that “The Foundation has put in place a series of measures for the socio-professional reintegration of inmates that are divided into two services, one being internal while the other is external. The Reintegration Preparation Service (SPR) takes the inmate in charge at the start of detention, providing him with stability and information. It creates a trusting relationship with him and puts forward the valuable gains that he can make during detention. The Service supports the inmate as he carries out a personal project during detention. This project focuses on four axes: * family * administrative and judicial * health * training and education.”

Prior to his release, an assessment of his progress is made, so as to raise the beneficiary’s awareness of what he has gained and of the tools that are available to him. He is then introduced to the second service that will take over after his release.

The foundation signed partnership agreements with the General Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises (CGEM) to raise awareness in the business community, with the National Agency for the Promotion of Employment and Skills (ANAPEC) for job search training and with the Fondation Banque Populaire pour le Microcrédit for microproject financing. Partnership agreements have also been signed with representatives of the civil society to follow up on actions under their jurisdiction.

Comprehensive crime prevention programs must include effective measures to prevent recidivism and to stop the cycle of failed adaptation by repeat offenders. Offenders released from confinement face a variety of challenges that may hinder their ability to become law-abiding citizens. The Mohamed VI Foundation For the Detainees’ Reintegration aims to facilitate the social reintegration of offenders and reduce the rates of re-offending be informed by the efforts and outcomes of programmatic initiatives undertaken to date. The Foundation’s slogan illustrates the plurality of the actions of the various stakeholders:

“Their Reintegration Depends on Us”

The post How To Better Reintegrate Former Detainees Into Society – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.


The Choice Ahead: A Private Health-Insurance Monopoly Or A Single Payer – OpEd

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The Supreme Court’s recent blessing of Obamacare has precipitated a rush among the nation’s biggest health insurers to consolidate into two or three behemoths.

The result will be good for their shareholders and executives, but bad for the rest of us – who will pay through the nose for the health insurance we need.

We have another choice, but before I get to it let me give you some background.

Last week, Aetna announced it would spend $35 billion to buy rival Humana in a deal that will create the second-largest health insurer in the nation, with 33 million members.

The combination will claim a large share of the insurance market in many states – 88 percent in Kansas and 58 percent in Iowa, for example.

A week before Aetna’s announcement, Anthem disclosed its $47 billion offer for giant insurer Cigna. If the deal goes through, the combined firm will become the largest health insurer in America.

Meanwhile, middle-sized and small insurers are being gobbled up. Centene just announced a $6.3 billion deal to acquire Health Net. Earlier this year Anthem bought Simply Healthcare Holdings for $800 million.

Executives say these combinations will make their companies more efficient, allowing them to gain economies of scale and squeeze waste out of the system.

This is what big companies always say when they acquire rivals.

Their real purpose is to give the giant health insurers more bargaining leverage over employees, consumers, state regulators, and healthcare providers (which have also been consolidating).

The big health insurers have money to make these acquisitions because their Medicare businesses have been growing and Obamacare is bringing in hundreds of thousands of new customers. They’ve also been cutting payrolls and squeezing more work out of their employees.

This is also why their stock values have skyrocketed. A few months ago the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Managed Health Care Index hit its highest level in more than twenty years. Since 2010, the biggest for-profit insurers have outperformed the entire S&P 500.

Insurers are seeking rate hikes of 20 to 40 percent for next year because they think they already have enough economic and political clout to get them.

That’s not what they’re telling federal and state regulators, of course. They say rate increases are necessary because people enrolling in Obamacare are sicker than they expected, and they’re losing money.

Remember, this an industry with rising share values and wads of cash for mergers and acquisitions.

It also has enough dough to bestow huge pay packages on its top executives. The CEOs of the five largest for-profit health insurance companies each raked in $10 to $15 million last year.

After the mergers, the biggest insurers will have even larger profits, higher share values, and fatter pay packages for their top brass.

There’s abundant evidence that when health insurers merge, premiums rise. For example, Leemore Dafny, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and his two co-authors, found that after Aetna merged with Prudential HealthCare in 1999, premiums rose 7 percent higher than had the merger not occurred.

The problem isn’t Obamacare. The real problem is the current patchwork of state insurance regulations, insurance commissioners, and federal regulators can’t stop the tidal wave of mergers, or limit the economic and political power of the emerging giants.

Which is why, ultimately, American will have to make a choice.

If we continue in the direction we’re headed we’ll soon have a health insurance system dominated by two or three mammoth for-profit corporations capable of squeezing employees and consumers for all they’re worth – and handing over the profits to their shareholders and executives.

The alternative is a government-run single payer system – such as is in place in almost every other advanced economy – dedicated to lower premiums and better care.

Which do you prefer?

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Politics Matter In Middle East And So Does Religion: Forms Of Political Instrumentalization Of Islam – Analysis

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Practicing politics within religious frameworks is more likely to increase states’ fragility. While employing religious references in political discourses could foster positive outcomes such as avoiding dangerous eruptions of violence under authoritarian regimes, it could also increase the space for political and religious elites to instrumentalise religion for their own interests. Such patterns of instrumentalisation are more common in the Middle East; especially the dominant religion in the region is Islam, which enjoys a decentralised mode of function.

Political Instrumentalisation of Islam means ‘Islam’ serves as a means of pursuing a political aim or relating to Islam’s function as a means to a political end. Like the Marxist theory views the state and social organisations as tools taken advantage of by the ruling class or by individuals in their own interests, Islam seems to function as a tool exploited by the powerful elites or individuals in their own interests.

Religion rises to play a distinctive prominence in several cases, from which I mention only three in this article. First, the case of state ideology building such as the case of the dissolution of the state of modern Pakistan from the partition of India in 1947 and the case of state ideology building of modern republic of Turkey in 1923. At that time Pakistan was more linguistically, traditionally and socially heterogeneous. Functioning as an integration element, Islam, at least rhetorically, was mixed with nationalism in a series of compromises between modernist elites and religious factions to establish borders between Islamic Pakistan and Hindu India.

In Turkey, the state didn’t precisely serve Islam, but rather vice versa. After the collapse of the Sultanate and the secularization of legal and educational systems, the Turkish government founded the so-called Presidency of Religious Affairs (in Turkish: Diyanet Işleri Bakanlɪğɪ) in 1928, by which the religion was officially administered by a state institution. The state monopoly of exercising religion explicitly meant that any Imam education, religious teachings and preaching should be solely legalised through state channels. Until 1941, the central Presidency of Religious Affairs distributed the content of Friday speeches to all preachers across
Turkey.

Second, the case of power balance and state crisis in a dictatorial state such as the one we see between the ruling political elite and Islamic institutions in Egypt since 1920s. On variable degrees, King Farouk, Jamal Abdulnasser, Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, Mohammd Morsi and Abdulfattah Al-Sisi formed an alliance between the state and Al-Azhar, Egypt’s leading mosque and university. This alliance resulted in forming the so-called ‘official Islam’ of the state, which represents the state’s position on religion and its various mechanisms.

Third, the case of state in a violent crisis such as the one we have been witnessing in Syria since 2011. Religion, specifically Islam, served mobilization, contestation and elimination processes. In this case, and according to the engagement of religious factions in political opposition, the manipulation of Islam deems to be useful for the state to react and outbid its opponents. The regime directly framed the protests as sectarian and claimed the protection minorities and the correct version of Islam. As the Syrian regime framed all protests and subsequent armed resistance in sectarian terms and associated them with ‘extreme Islamist factions’, some protestors, in return, framed all Alawites and other minorities to be responsible for the regime’s atrocities and carried on to protect what they see the right version of Islam.

Political instrumentalisation of Islam should have forms but they could be blurry. However, we can recognize the following categories:

The ruler–Ulama relationship

Instrumentalisation of religion can occur in the form of an alliance between the ruler and the Ulama. Such a relationship comes about through coercing or luring the religious elites by the despotic regime or ruler. Religious elites receive protection and privileges, whereas the ruler receives religious and moral support in return, by which rulers can fortify and consolidate their power position, gain more legitimacy and credibility.

Religious elites (using religious terms and references) could also function as a means to eliminate other religious and secular opponents to them and to the ruler. They help the ruling elite, intentionally or unintentionally in creating cognitive structures that define their identity, define the political process and the ruler’s role as well in a reality that they all constantly built and rebuilt

The Ulama–followers relationship

The relationship between religious elites and their followers works as a take-action-step. Such a form serves the mobilization of the masses. As it could result in exploiting the very honest beliefs of people, it could also lead to positive effects such as peace building and avoiding dangerous situations or falling into violence.

The independent use of religious references

All dimensions of power in a state could equally exercise such form. Its main characteristic is using religious terms in communication with others. Rulers, religious figures, political parties and state networks, secular and non-secular factions, the public etc. could fall under this form using religious idioms to relate to the prophet Muhammad and the Quran. This relation to the tradition serves in determining the authenticity, legitimacy, and credibility of one’s actions and words.

This form is the most complicated one and can be used in private as well as public spheres. This form of implementing religious references can raise the issue of the genuineness of someone’s belief in using religion. It might seem to be political instrumentalisation of religion because the end goal is political or has a political impact, but in reality, it is a genuine belief. This kind of religious use is unlike these who instrumentalise religion with the previous knowledge of doing so. However, the end effects of both actions – intentional and unintentional – are political or relate to political influence and they contribute to the political outbidding game among contesting actor in a state.

Therefore, based on the end effect of such contestation processes, intentional (being aware of the fact they are instrumentalising Islam) and unintentional (being unaware of the fact they are instrumentalising Islam) are forms of political instrumentalisation of Islam. The end effect is identical and both contribute to building cognitive structures of reality in which all political actors live and evolve.

Pushing religion into political domain puts belief systems at stake. While religion enjoys a dogmatic nature, politics enjoy a compromising one. On the one hand, if religion was heightened in the political domain, it might increase the dogmatic understanding of compromising political constructs. This could consequently lead to a political vicious cycle, which risks reaching a political stalemate. On the other hand, Politics destroy religion by compromising, making concessions and imposing more interpretations of religion on society. Politics and religion make an antithetical paradigm, yet they help political and religious elites in the Middle East to create and preserve structures guarantee their survival.

*Hakim Khatib is a political scientist and analyst works as a lecturer for politics and culture of the Middle East, intercultural communication and journalism at Fulda and Darmstadt Universities of Applied Sciences and Phillips University Marburg. Hakim is a PhD candidate in political science on political instrumentalisation of Islam in the Middle East and its implications on political development at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the founder and editor-in-chief of the Mashreq Politics and Culture Journal (MPC Journal).

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If ISIS Doesn’t Liberate Palestine, Who Will? – OpEd

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This is one of the questions ricocheting between Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon, posed also by ISIS (Da’ish) operatives, as the hot summer months and plummeting quality of existence raise tensions in the refugee camps and social gatherings.

With its resilience, on-the-ground “achievements”, adaptability, global franchising, copy-cat knock-offs, chameleon-like adaptations, combinations and permutations, and slick honing of medium and message, ISIS is offering oppressed and desperate populations in this region both hope and fantasy for escaping their deepening misery. The dream is to escape abject poverty and indignity by any means necessary, and joining ISIS or other like-minded cash-flush groups, which seem to appear out of thin air these days, is the most promising way to do it.

Some people in Lebanon and Syria are wondering why it took ISIS so long to present a detailed plan to Palestinian refugees to liberate their country, now in its 67th year of brutal Zionist occupation. This subjugation has has created an Apartheid state that, according to South African leader Bishop Desmond Tutu and others, exceeds even the crimes of the Afrikaner National Party. And like the Israelis, the ANP also began their racist occupation of a majority-indigenous “less civilized” population in 1948. South African apartheid ended in 1994, but in Palestine it continues to metastasize. ISIS representatives in the camps are pledging to destroy the Zionist occupation and boast about opening up Palestine to Full Return within two years.

Who is listening to Da’ish (ISIS)?

In the early days of the crisis in Syria, many Palestinians fleeing to Lebanon quickly returned to whatever fate held back in Syria after they saw the conditions in Lebanon’s camps. But as the fighting between Syrian rebels and government forces intensified in Damascus, they became trapped in the camps. Alongside their fellow Palestinians in Lebanon, these new refugees sank ever more deeply into dire poverty.

During recent discussions with a sampling of refugees from several camps in Lebanon and Syria, it’s not surprising that the main part of the conversation quickly moves to subjects long familiar to those of us who have lived among Palestinians in this region. The list of grievances is ever-expanding and ISIS supporters and recruiters take advantage of this in order to round up recruits and sympathizers to join their growing ranks.

These grievances include frustration and anger over the perceived pervasive corruption among political and religious “leaders” who basically speak gibberish while urging patience for the next life, or promise the fruits of countless ‘dialogue’ sessions among sworn political enemies that to date have achieved absolutely nothing to help those most in need. Lebanon’s Parliament has recently ruled against the right to work and home ownership, and this now ranks near the top of any list of refugee grievances. One could also add: severe camp overcrowding, lack of hygienic infrastructures, declining health care, rising illnesses among children due to respiratory diseases and more than a dozen easily preventable communicable illnesses, shortages of medicines, drugs and drug gang violence, increasing tension and gun battles among militia (this is almost weekly – most recently in the Ein el Helwe camp in Saida and this week, in the infamous Shatila camp), domestic violence, petty crime, increase in school dropout rates, and the almost total inability of UNWRA to fulfill its mandate. Typical of the latter, is the closure of some 700 schools in Gaza, which will impact UNRWA’s work in Jordan, Gaza, the West Bank, and Syria. There are also worries here that some UNWRA schools, even those now operating on two shifts, may soon close in Lebanon and Syria.

One of the most urgent crises in Lebanon’s camps is the fact that the few remaining Palestinian hospitals are also nearing collapse, particularly Haifa Hospital in South Beirut’s Burj al Barajneh camp. The two main Palestine Red Crescent Hospitals, Gaza and Akka, closed decades ago. These problems are just a sampling of what life has become for Palestinians currently living in Lebanon, and for almost 50,000 more that have come from Syria and are still stuck here.

Da’ish – ISIS – has started to capitalize on these problems, as pressures mount under the long hot summer days and adequate water and electricity becomes ever more scarce. Some camp residents speculate about what kind of ‘explosion’ will happen during or after Ramadan begins…

What is Da’ish (ISIS) offering Palestinians?

First and foremost, Da’ish pledges Full Return for the nearly 12 million Palestinian refugees scattered around the world. Approximately 6.4 million Palestinians had their homes and lands occupied in 1948 (55% of the total population), 4.5 million now live outside historic Palestine, and some 1.8 million live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Da’ish is also offering an alternative to the half-century of fake “peace processes” and an alternative what increasing numbers of refugees claim is the quisling position of the current PLO leadership.

Understandably, jihadist appeals are finding an audience. The reason for this was best expressed recently by Dr. Mohsen Saleh, of the Zaytona Center in Beirut: “The refugee issue is the core of the Palestinian issue… the issue of a people who were uprooted from the land in which they lived for thousands of years. These people existed before the Israelites came to Palestine, and were present during their existence in Palestine and after they were gone. The Zionist project could only materialize after destroying the social fabric of these people, destroying more than 400 (531 villages: Ed.) of their villages and cities, confiscating most of their land, and usurping their properties, buildings, factories, and endowments.”

On 29/10/2013, the London-based al-Hayat newspaper published a report, based on Zionist sources, documenting that the Palestinian ‘negotiating team’ had given its Israeli counterpart a “position paper” on the core issues of the conflict. Eyewitness accounts claim that the Palestinian team actually offered to waive the right of return for Palestine refugees to their land, stolen in 1948. The Palestinian ‘negotiating team’ would give the refugees several choices: return to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, accept cash reparations, move to a third country, or stay put in one of the 59 camps and three dozen settlements.

On 8/23/2013, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, speaking to an Israeli delegation from the Meretz Party that visited him in Ramallah, reassured and guaranteed the Israelis that the PLO will not ask to return to Jaffa, Acre (on a clear day visible from villages, including Maron al Ras, in South Lebanon) and Safad (home for one third of the 1948 Nakba refugees who were forced to leave to Syria and Lebanon).

ISIS is making plain to all who will listen that they reject this ‘sellout position’ and that every Palestinian on this planet has the inalienable right of Full Return. This right can never be ceded by any leader and the Zionist regime which has put colonials from the West on their land has no right to even one grain of Palestinian soil.

There is fierce competition between Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS to woo Palestinians. Both groups vow that soon “the Zionist invaders will experience Allah’s wrath until they have been destroyed and Palestine is liberated.”

Meanwhile, Anthony Glees, Director of the Center for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham, is warning that Zionists will be among the jihadis’ main targets in the coming days. Daesh spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani predicts that Ramadan will be a “calamity for kuffars.”

Peter Neumann, director of International Center for the Study of the Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College London claimed this week that Jewish institutions in Europe and in Occupied Palestine will also pay the price for the growing battle for influence between Al Qaeda (al Nusra) and ISIS.

Jobs for all who need them?

Young, fit Palestinians are at last being offered a job in a country where they are forbidden by law to work or own a home. Da’ish is reportedly paying an average of $300 a month, promising two and sometimes three days off each week to visit one’s family, cash bonuses for marriage and one-time child subsidies of $400 per child. Subsidies for food of $70 a month are also being offered, in the face of the fact that UNWRA has just reduced monthly cash for food stipends to a mere $30 per month. One can imagine what some of the camp residents are thinking: which horse is the best bet for an improved life and for full return to our own country?

Based on conversations with recently-arrived Palestinian refugees from Syria, as well as old friends in Lebanon’s camps, this observer is confident that today only a small percentage of Palestinians are responding to the siren-call of ISIS.

But tomorrow?

The post If ISIS Doesn’t Liberate Palestine, Who Will? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Greek ‘No’ Inflicts Heavy Blow On EU

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(EurActiv) — EU leaders will have a lot of soul searching to do today, following the victory by the “No” camp in the Greek referendum on Sunday (5 July), which rejected their proposed rescue package.

A eurozone summit on Tuesday (7 July) will look into the fallout of the vote.

In Athens, thousands of jubilant Greeks waving flags and lighting fireworks poured into the city’s Syntagma Square, as official figures showed 61% of Greek voters had rejected a deal the two sides had been close to reaching on 26 June.

You made a very brave choice,” Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a televised address. “The mandate you gave me is not the mandate of a rupture with Europe, but a mandate to strengthen our negotiating position to seek a viable solution.”

During his campaign, Tsipras had been saying that a “No” vote would strengthen the Greek negotiating position and that he would go to Brussels the day after the referendum and sign a good deal for the country.

However, international creditors say that their offers are no longer on the table and that Greece, whose economic situation has further deteriorated, would have to negotiate a new arrangement from scratch.

Greek banks remain closed and the available liquidity is barely enough to suffice for a few days. Greeks can withdraw a maximum of €60 a day from ATMs.

The vote leaves Athens in uncharted waters, risking a banking collapse that could force it out of the eurozone.

The 60-40 margin of defeat for the terms of a cash-for-reform deal, which the leftist Greek government rejected a week ago, shocked EU officials, who had been heartened by opinion polls showing the “Yes” camp gaining ground as bank closures and the rationing of cash withdrawals began to bite.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande agreed in a phone conversation “that the Greek vote has to be respected”.

According to a German government spokesman, both politicians spoke in favour of a special eurozone summit on Tuesday (7 July). Council President Donald Tusk, who was tasked with convening the summit, tweeted a couple of hours later that it would start at 6PM CET on Tuesday.

Merkel will travel to Paris this evening to confer with Hollande on the consequences of the referendum.

The “No” vote is a personal blow for European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, one of the architects of the euro, who worked for months to try to broker a debt deal with Tsipras despite misgivings in Berlin, and who called on the Greeks to vote “Yes”.

The European Commission said in a brief statement that it “takes note of and respects” the referendum result.

There was a thunderous silence from top EU policymakers in Brussels and Frankfurt, who conferred by telephone but avoided public appearances to comment on an outcome, which was a stunning setback for EU governments but delighted eurosceptics, as well as the pro-European left, who want a more social union.

Martin Schulz, the European Parliament President, expressed his pessimism regarding Greece’s future and warned of a humanitarian crisis in the country.

“This is a difficult day: there’s a broad majority in Greece, and the promise of Prime Minister Tsipras to the Greek people that with the “No” vote, the position of Greece for negotiating a better deal would become better is, in my eyes, not true…” he said, adding that the EU should start preparing a humanitarian aid programme for Greece.

Should Greece stay?

Hours before the referendum result became known, Schulz said that a “No” vote victory would mean that Greece would have to abandon the euro and introduce another currency.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, chairman of the Eurogroup of finance ministers of the currency bloc, said in a letter to his Dutch Labour Party members before the vote: “Although the government in Athens would like people to think otherwise, it is about the question of whether Greece stays in the eurozone or not.”

After the referendum, Dijsselbloem issued a statement in which he called the referendum result “very regrettable for the future of Greece”. “For recovery of the Greek economy, difficult measures and reforms are inevitable. We will now wait for the initiatives of the Greek authorities. The Eurogroup will discuss the state of play on Tuesday 7 July,” Dijsselbloem wrote.

But the most devastating reaction came from the German Vice Chancellor and SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel.

Speaking to Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper, Gabriel said negotiations about a new bailout program are “hardly imaginable“ after Greek’s overwhelming referendum “No” at the referendum.

According to Gabriel, Tsipras had persuaded his people that a “No” would strengthen Greece’s bargaining position. But in fact, Greece’s Prime Minister had “torn down (the) last bridges” over which Europe and Greece could have moved towards a compromise, Gabriel said.

Manfred Weber, the leader of the centre-right European People’s Party tweeted that his political force would stay with the Greek people “whether inside or outside” the eurozone.

Varoufakis resigns

In a sign that the Syriza-led government might change its negotiating tactics with the creditors, Greece’s firebrand finance minister Yanis Varoufakis resigned this morning.

In a statement, Varoufakis said he had been “made aware” that some members of the eurozone considered him unwelcome at meetings of finance ministers, “an idea the prime minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement”.

“For this reason I am leaving the ministry of finance today.”

Just ahead of the referendum, Varoufakis had called the creditors “terrorists”, saying they were trying to intimidate voters by capping the amount Greek banks can borrow, which has led to desperate queues for cash.

“What they’re doing with Greece has a name: terrorism. If Greece crashes, a trillion euros – equivalent to Spain’s GDP – will be lost,” he said.

Varoufakis may have failed in his doomsday prediction, which allowed him so far to taunt the creditors. Markets however have reacted so far quite calmly to the Greek referendum.

Poland’s Finance Minister Mateusz Szczurek said today that he was not surprised by the result of the Greek referendum, and that the first reaction of the financial markets does not seem significant.

He added that the EU’s inability to deal with the Greek crisis is an argument for Poland not to enter the eurozone for now.

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Ron Paul: For Normal Relations With Cuba, End US Interventionism – OpEd

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Last week we saw an encouraging sign that the 50 year cold war between the US and Cuba was finally coming to an end. President Obama announced on Wednesday that the US and Cuba would restore full diplomatic relations and that embassies could be re-opened in each country by the end of the month.

For this achievement, which was resisted by vested interests in the US, Obama should be praised. However we shouldn’t be too optimistic about truly establishing normal relations until we understand how relations became so abnormal in the first place. The destruction of relations between the two countries was preceded by US intervention on behalf of a hated Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista, which had turned the Cuban people against the United States and set the stage for the emergence of Fidel Castro.

In 1944, after Batista’s first term as president of Cuba, he emigrated to the United States. When his campaign to return to office in 1952 looked lost, he led a military coup, seized power, and declared himself president. The US government quickly recognized his military junta as the legitimate government of Cuba and began propping him up. Much of the Cuban economy was in the hands of well-connected US companies, and the US government exerted its influence to their financial benefit.

The Cuban dictatorship was helped along by US assistance. The secret police was trained by the United States and was used to brutally suppress any political opposition. Almost all US aid to Cuba was in the form of military equipment used brutally against the Cuban people. The US was seen as the force behind Batista’s dictatorship.

As John F. Kennedy said while campaigning for the presidency in 1960:

Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years … and he turned Democratic Cuba into a complete police state — destroying every individual liberty. Yet our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror.

US intervention in Cuban affairs really got a boost when Batista was overthrown by the young revolutionary Fidel Castro. As Stephen Kinzer writes in the excellent book, “The Brothers,” Castro’s rise to power was not immediately condemned by the US. When Castro traveled to the US shortly after taking power, he met with Vice President Richard Nixon, who found that Castro “has those indefinable qualities which make him a leader of men.” But Nixon worried that the US might not be able “to orient him in the right direction.” Nixon was concerned that Castro sounded too much like Indonesian president Sukarno, who urged countries to join a non-aligned movement to resist both superpower camps at the time. The US could not tolerate the non-aligned movement and pushed a zero-sum game in global politics.

When Washington realized it could not control Castro, it embargoed the island and began launching plots to overthrow and even kill him. US policy likely was responsible for Castro turning to the Soviet Union in the first place.

This US intervention in Cuba’s internal affairs continues to this day. Even under Obama several US plots to overthrow the regime have been exposed. So while opening an embassy in Havana is a positive step, this embassy must be used to help promote truly normal relations with Cuba. That means an end to the embargo, an end to the travel ban, and an end to US interference in Cuba’s internal affairs. A more free and prosperous Cuba will not emerge as long as US interventionism continues to turn Cubans against the United States.

This article was published by the RonPaul Institute.

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Jordan Bans Press Coverage On Alleged Terror Plot – Report

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Jordan’s State Security Court has banned media Monday from publishing information about an alleged Iranian-backed terror plot, Indo Asian News Service reported.

Media reports about the ban came shortly after the trial of suspect Khaled al-Rubai, who works for Iranian intelligence and allegedly attempted to carry out extremist attacks in Jordan. All outlets have been banned from reporting on the trial.

Al-Rubai reportedly had been detained by Jordanian security forces earlier on Monday. The 49-year-old had been involved in previous attacks and is a member of the Iranian-backed Bayt al-Maqdis group.

Al-Rubai was arrested north of Amman in Jerash, where he was allegedly storing explosives, IANS reported.

Original article

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Afghanistan: Darkening Shadows – Analysis

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By Ajit Kumar Singh*

The Islamic State (IS) has started making significant territorial gains within war-torn Afghanistan. IS, according to the US Department of State’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2014, has emerged as the most dreaded global terror outfit, and has captured large parts of Syria and Iraq. According to June 2015 reports, fighters loyal to IS have seized sizeable territories in Afghanistan as well. Reports citing witnesses, who have fled from Nangarhar Province due to fierce clashes between forces loyal to IS and those loyal to the Afghan Taliban, claim that IS has pushed the Taliban out from areas previously under Taliban control. Haji Abdul Jan, a tribal elder from Achin District (Nangarhar Province) stated,
They (IS loyalists) came in on many white pickup trucks mounted with big machine guns and fought the Taliban. The Taliban could not resist and fled… Unlike the Taliban, they (IS) don’t force villagers to feed and house them. Instead, they have lots of cash in their pockets and spend it on food and luring young villagers to join them. Some villagers welcomed the new arrivals.

Further corroboration came from Malek Islam, the District Chief of Achin, who noted that IS fighters were “almost everywhere in the District” but were targeting the Taliban only and “not us”.

Official sources have now confirmed that forces loyal to IS have seized some territory from the Taliban in Nangarhar Province. Provincial Council chief Ahmad Ali Hazrat and Member of Parliament from Nangarhar Haji Hazrat Ali stated that, out of 21 Districts in the Province, the IS had seized some territory in at least six: Kot, Achin, Deh Bala, Naziyan, Rodat and Chaparhar. Local Army spokesman, Noman Atefi claimed that IS had established a presence in “seven or eight” Districts. Significantly, reports indicate that the fighting between the IS and Taliban was going on in Khogyani and Pachir Agam Districts.

The Taliban has also conceded that it has lost ground in Nangarhar, but attempts to downplay the influence of IS, even as it held the position that IS was not a rival. Taliban ‘spokesman’ Zabihullah Mujahid thus argued, “They are thieves and thugs … We will soon clear those areas and free the villagers.”

Nevertheless, official confirmation about IS presence also came from the Governor of Kunduz Province, Mohammad Omar Safi. Safi noted, on February 2, 2015, that nearly 70 IS militants had started activities in Dasht-i-Archi and Chardara Districts of the Province and a strategy was urgently needed to deal with IS.

Reports of IS making inroads into Afghanistan had started emerging subsequent to the June 2014 release of IS’ ‘world domination map’, which included Afghanistan in the projected ‘Islamic region’ of ‘Khorasan’.

Further, referring to the increasing IS presence within Afghanistan, Nicholas Haysom, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, stated, on March 16, 2015,

Recent reports have indicated that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL, now known as IS] has established a foothold in Afghanistan. It is UNAMA’s [United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan] assessment that the group’s presence is of concern but that ISIL’s significance is not so much a function of its intrinsic capacities in the area but of its potential to offer an alternative flagpole to which otherwise isolated insurgent splinter groups can rally.

In his address to the United States (US) Congress on March 25, 2015, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani warned, “From the west, Daesh [IS] is already sending advance guards to southern and western Afghanistan to test for vulnerabilities.”

Moreover, a June 24, 2015, report noted that, during a meeting with President Ashraf Ghani, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated, “…what is even more disturbing is that the so-called Islamic State is getting increasingly active in Afghanistan, consolidating its position there. I believe we are already seeing the Islamic State’s presence in 25 out of the 34 provinces.”

Meanwhile, on April 18, 2015, IS reportedly carried out its first terror attack inside Afghanistan. At least 33 people were killed and another 105 were injured in a suicide bomb blast outside a bank, where Government staff and military personnel were collecting their salaries, in the city of Jalalabad, the provincial capital of Nangarhar Province. IS ‘spokesperson’, Shahidullah Shahid, claiming responsibility online, identified the suicide bomber as Abu Muhammed Khurasani. An email from the outfit reportedly confirmed the claim and boasted of “sending 75 government servants to hell.”

Confirming that the IS was responsible for the attack, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani declared, “Who claimed responsibility for the horrific attack? The Taliban did not claim responsibility for the attack, Daesh (IS) claimed responsibility for the attack.”

The spread of IS is an ominous development for Afghanistan, which is going through one of the most turbulent phases of terrorism. According to partial data compiled by the Institute for Conflict Management (ICM), at least 8,275 persons, including 1,440 civilians, have already been killed in the Taliban-led insurgency across the country in 2015, with almost six months still to go in the year (all data till July 5, 2015). The total number of such fatalities was 10,574 through 2014, the highest number of fatalities in any year since 2007 (ICM data compiled from various sources is available since then).

Terrorism-related Fatalities in Afghanistan: 2007-2015

Years

ANA*
ANP**
ISAF***
Civilians****
Militants*****
Total

2007

209
803
232
1523
4500
7267

2008

226
880
295
2118
5000
8519

2009

282
646
521
2412
4610
8471

2010

519
961
711
2777
5225
10193

2011

550
1400
566
3021
4275
9812

2012

1200
2200
402
2754
2716
9272

2013

560
1082
161
2959
2702
7464

2014

413
357
75
3699
6030
10574

2015

517
192
5
1440
6121
8275

Total

4476
8521
2968
22703
41179
79847

*Data till July 5, 2015

*ANA: 2007-2013: Source Brookings; 2014-15: Source ICM
** ANP: 2007-2012: Source Brookings; 2013-15: Source ICM
***ISAF: 2007-2015: Source ISAF website
**** Civilians: 2007 – 2015 (April): Source UNAMA; 2015 (May) onwards: Source ICM
****** Militants: 2007-2015: Source ICM

According to the latest data made available by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), at least 2,967 Afghan casualties were reported during the first four months of 2015. Mark Bowden the deputy head of the UNAMA and UN Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative in Afghanistan, disclosed on June 7, 2015, “As of 30 April, 1,989 Afghans were injured as a result of the conflict and 978 Afghan civilians killed, throughout the country.” Though no further official data is available, according to partial data compiled by the ICM, another 462 civilians have been killed since May 1, 2015 (data till July 5, 2015). 3,699 civilian fatalities were recorded in the country through 2014, the highest number of civilian fatalities in a year recorded by UNAMA since 2007. UNAMA began recording civilian fatalities in Afghanistan in 2007.

Fatalities among Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) have also increased considerably. Through 2014, a total of 770 deaths among Afghan Forces (413 ANA and 357 ANP personnel) were recorded, while the number of such fatalities already stands at 709 (517 ANA personnel and 192 ANP personnel) in the current year (till July 5).

The situation is bound to worsen further as Taliban has already launched its annual ‘Spring Offensive’. Indeed, in one of the most daring attacks ever, Taliban fighters stormed the Afghan Parliament compound on June 22, 2015. Though the attackers failed to enter the Parliament building, at least two people, a woman and a child, were killed during the attack, which ended with the killing of all the six attackers. None of the parliamentarians, who were meeting to consider the appointment of new Defence Minister Massoom Stanekzai, were harmed. Claiming the attack, Taliban ‘spokesman’ Zabihullah Mujahid declared, “We have launched an attack on Parliament as there was an important gathering to introduce the country’s Defence Minister.”

The Taliban also continues to control significant territory in the country. Despite efforts to project its ‘successes’, the Government concedes that the outfit has complete control over four districts across Afghanistan. Major General Mohammad Afzal Aman, chief of operations for the Ministry of Defence admitted on June 13, 2015, that that the Taliban controlled Baghran and Dishu in Helmand Province; Khak-e-Afghan in Zabul Province; and Nawa in Ghazni Province. General Aman asserted, “No other area except those four districts is under the enemy control now.”

With IS making inroads, the turf war between the two groups is likely to escalate. What is currently occurring, however, is simply a redistribution of existing rebel forces in Afghanistan under competing flags. While IS may bring a new character and level of brutality to its violence, it is unlikely to dramatically alter the structure and dynamics of insurgent violence in the country. Nevertheless, if IS allied formations tend to prevail over wider areas, the possibility of greater influence of the ‘global jihadi’ elements will significantly increase creating a rising potential for the entry of foreign fighters and the direct influence of IS leaders, commanders and strategic objectives. Such an eventuality would certainly bring new dangers to Afghanistan.

In view of the surge in terrorist activities and these other developments, the US has now has agreed to Afghanistan’s demand not to withdraw any US troops through 2015. US President Barack Obama had originally planned to cut the size of US Forces from their current strength of 9,800 to about 5,000 by the end of the 2015. However, he remains committed to withdrawing the bulk of American Forces by the end of 2016, leaving behind just a small force to guard the US Embassy.

Such a strategy would, however, simply repeat the cycle of disasters of the past, leaving Afghanistan isolated and in grave danger of consolidation by Islamist extremist forces. The threat, in such a situation, would not only be to Afghanistan, but to the wider region and, eventually, the world, once again creating a base and staging ground for international terrorists to mount attacks against their declared enemies everywhere. The West would not escape the consequences of such a development, even as it did not in the past. Significantly, in his meeting with Russian President Putin, President Ghani had noted, “The fact is, they [Islamic State] were not created for Afghanistan – they are using Afghanistan as a launching pad to spread their influence across the region.”

IS has already made deep inroads within Pakistan, and is emerging as a worry for security establishments in Bangladesh and India. Every country in the fragile and turbulent Asian region is now at risk of destabilization, in South Asia, both by continuous mischief by Pakistani state proxies and the global jihadists, and across the rest of the region by the rising influence of increasingly radicalized Islamist formations. Regrettably, no country or international coalition has yet evolved a coherent strategy to confront and neutralize the complex threat of Islamist extremism in its multifarious forms – both as instrument of state strategy and as the lunatic aspiration of millenarian terrorists.

*Ajit Kumar Singh
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management

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India: Maoists In Chhattisgarh, Limited Gains, Repeated Errors – Analysis

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By Fakir Mohan Pradhan*

Three cadres of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist), including two women, were killed in an exchange of fire between the Maoists and the Security Forces (SFs) near Jinipa under Tarlaguda Police Station limits in Bijapur District on June 12. Apart from the bodies, Police recovered five weapons from the spot. While the two women cadres are yet to be identified, the third Maoist was identified as 19-year-old Kodamagundla Vivek, a dropout from Osmania University who had played a major role during the students’ agitation for Telangana in 2012-14. He belonged to Suryapet in Telangana.

In a separate incident on the same day, another Maoist, identified as Rama (27), a Jan Militia member, was killed and another three were arrested after an encounter between the Sukma District Reserve Guard and Maoists near Tumma Vaagu village in Sukma District. The arrested Maoists were Apka Pandu (27), a member of Maoist battalion; Madvi Bheema (28), a member of Bhejji Maoist militia; and Madvi Somlu of Kistaram Maoist militia.

Just six days earlier, on June 6, at least two CPI-Maoist cadres, identified as Sukoti, resident of Rowghat, Kanker, and Jamli, hailing from South Bastar region, were killed in an encounter near Timdi village in Kondagaon District. A Maoist camp was also neutralised during the encounter and three 12-bore rifles, around 15 backpacks and other material were recovered from the spot.

On June 2, 2015, a woman Maoist ‘commander’ was killed in an encounter with SFs near Bechapal village, under the Mirtur Police Station limits of Bijapur District. SFs recovered her body along with two hand grenades and one rifle. She was later identified as Lingo Parvati, a member of the CPI- Maoist ‘platoon number 13’. Police also claimed that SFs recovered a “big arms, ammunition dump left by the Maoists” from the encounter spot.

In all these incidents, SFs killed seven Maoists and, for a change, recovered the bodies. Earlier, on May 17, three policemen and two Maoists had been killed in an encounter near Ponjed at Mirjur in the Gangalur Police Station area of Bijapur District during an anti-Maoist operation conducted by a joint team of the Special Task Force (STF) and the District Police Force. Significantly, SFs recovered the bodies of both the Maoists, including that of Hemla Masa alias Vijay, ‘commander’ of Company 2 of the CPI-Maoist West Bastar Division. Fifteen AK-47 rounds, nine Under Barrel Grenade Launcher (UBGL) shells, a 12 bore rifle and a wireless set were recovered. Masa is said to be the highest-ranked Maoist whose body has been recovered in Chhattisgarh.

The recent SF successes in Chhattisgarh have been attributed to “small surgical operations” based on specific intelligence inputs about the movement of cadres in the jungles ahead of the monsoon. An official on the condition of anonymity disclosed, further, “We will try to corner naxals in rainy season too with similar small surgical operations in their hideouts and camps.” S.R.P. Kalluri, Inspector General (IG), Bastar Range, added that the present operations were being conducted while SFs were gearing up for major operations in the offing. He refused to divulge more on the nature of the upcoming offensive.

The SFs have also arrested at least 30 Maoists over the past two months, including some significant catches. On June 28, 2015, a Maoist couple, identified as Mallesh alias Dhansingh and his wife Sukay Vetti, were arrested from Korlapal village forests under Geedam Police Station limits in Dantewada District. Mallesh was a prominent Maoist leader of the region and was active as ‘Commander’ of Section ‘A’ of the CPI-Maoist Military Platoon Number 1 of Military Company No. 6. Mallesh’s wife Sukay was an active member of the same group and assisted her husband in several incidents. Each was carrying a reward of INR 800,000. Other prominent Maoists arrested included: Rakesh, ‘commander’ of Antagarh dalam, carrying a reward of INR 500,000; Kamla Dhruv alias Santoshi (22), a senior woman cadre, with a reward of INR 200,000; Fuleshwari Pudo alias Mayawati (27), a cadre of the Pallemari Local Operation Squad (LOS), with a reward of INR 100,000; Baman Kunjan (25), ‘militia commander’ of Tikanpal village; Shashikala Vadde (21), a member of Kasansur (Gadchiroli District in Maharashtra) LOS under North Gadchiroli Division, active on the Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh border, was arrested from the Bande Police Station limits of Kanker District on May 29.

Further, at least 10 Maoists have surrendered in past two months. The most significant among them was CPI-Maoist commander Kiran alias Sannu Potam of the Malangir Area Committee, who surrendered with his SLR, two magazine and 47 live cartridges. He carried a reward of INR 500,000 on his head. The Maoists’ ‘Bangapal platoon no. 2’ commander, Mantu Gonde alias Motu, section commander Savita Sodhi, Military platoon commander Ramsingh, Kondagav, Military platoon commander Fuldev and Kanker Sangham member Rajeshwari, surrendered on May 18, 2015. Mantu Gonde and his wife Savita Sodhi carried a reward of INR 800,000 each, whereas Fuldev and Ramsingh carried a reward of INR 200,000 each. Bastar IG Kalluri claimed that a small magazine called ‘Badru’ that talks about surrender policies of State Government and encourages Maoists to join mainstream was circulated in villages, which inspired Potam to surrender. ‘Badru’ was published by the Police’s counter propaganda cell in the Bastar Division.

According to partial data compiled by South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), Chhattisgarh has recorded a total of 62 fatalities in 2015 (till July 5), including 16 civilians, 29 SF personnel and 17 Maoists. Of these, in the past two months [May and June], the Maoists have lost 10 cadres where as SFs have lost five personnel.

As the SFs try to recover somewhat, after the disastrous month of April, when 14 SF personnel were killed by Maoists within five days, there have been concerns from several quarters regarding the attempt to start “Salwa Judum Part-II” by Chhavindra Karma, son of the late Mahendra Karma, the controversial architect of “Salwa Judum” who was killed on May 25, 2015.

Several leaders associated with Salwa Judum came together on May 4, 2015, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Dantewada, and formed the Vikas Sangharsh Samiti (VSS, Development Struggle Committee) under the leadership of Chhavindra Karma, who claimed that it was to be “Salwa Judum Part-II” but without the bloodshed. “We will move through villages in Bastar and make people aware about the real face of the Maoists.” The first mega event was slated to take place in Faraspal village (Dantewada), the native place of Karma family, on Mahendra Karma’s second death anniversary. The mega event was, however, postponed due to Maoist threats, and the death anniversary was observed as a simple affair, instead.

Describing the new movement as a ‘supportive organization to the (Operation) Greenhunt’ the Maoists threatened to mete out the same punishment to the supporters of ‘Salwa Judum-II’ which was given to Salwa Judum activists. To communicate their seriousness on this issue, the Maoists hacked to death two relatives of Mahendra Karma – Sukku Oyami of Kesapur village and Chitranjan Barse from Gondapal village – near Karma’s ancestral village of Faraspal, on May 25, the eve of his second death anniversary. The rebels also shot at former Salwa Judum leader Podium Sukka and his wife in Sukma District in the same night.

The Raman Singh Government, however, appears inclined to support the Vikas Sangharsh Samiti. On May 12, Chief Minister Singh observed, “On the issue of garnering consent among people, making them ready and creating a certain atmosphere — there should be awareness. If we stand up against Naxals on the streets and bring villagers along, I have to ensure they are protected.” He, however, added that “How far we should bring villagers — to the forefront of our fight against Naxals – is a highly sensitive issue. Creating awareness among people and educating them is a major solution.”

On May 25, 2015, Bastar IGP Kalluri also declared his support for VSS. Speaking at Karma’s second death anniversary in Faraspal, Kalluri lashed out at those who compared it with Salwa Judum. He claimed that “Maoists sympathisers” often say that the years of historical neglect had triggered the violence by Maoists. VSS, he claimed, was an effort to address this record of neglect: “We are not talking about violence, but trying to bring development to Bastar.”

Chhavindra Karma has also emphasised that “bullets are not the solution” and that VSS would avoid bloodshed ‘as far as possible’, focusing only on development. His brother Deepak Karma added, “the present Samiti must learn from earlier mistakes”.

But not many are convinced. Manish Kunjam, President of the All India Adivasi Mahasabha and a former Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) representing Communist Party of India (CPI), noted, “It’s all about mines. Some big industrial houses have got leases but are unable to begin work. Earlier Karmaji did it, now his son. We all know what happened during Salwa Judum. If it goes on, it will be a fansi ka fanda (hangman’s noose).” However, former Salwa Judum leader Sukhdev Tati insists that, though some vested interests entered the earlier campaign, “industry hand” cannot motivate people for another Judum, especially since the people who participated in Salwa Judum only got death, and the fortunate ones who survived live in constant fear, with limited means.

Meanwhile, reviewing the security situation during a two day visit to Chhattisgarh, Union Minister of Home Affairs Rajnath Singh directed that the installation of mobile towers by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) be expedited, particularly in Sukma District. He said that new Post Offices would be opened in the three worst affected Districts of south Bastar – Sukma, Bijapur and Dantewada. He also laid stress on the expeditious formulation of the Road Requirement Plan, RRP-II, in consultation with the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and called for the opening of schools and hostels, new bank branches and expansion of radio and TV coverage in the Naxal affected areas. The State Government proposed that the Centre should undertake an INR 30 billion “Bastar Plan” for its integrated development on both economic and security fronts.

However, calls for development of Bastar are not new, and the poor state of infrastructure and governance has been repeatedly highlighted in SAIR. Media reports indicate that even in the Police Department, Bastar Division has 1,031 vacancies across ranks [9,245 posts sanctioned, 8,214 have been filled]. In an attempt to fill up the vacancies, the State Government invited applications from retired Army personnel in 2013; only two ex-servicemen joined in response.

Interestingly, unable to fill up vacancies for doctors, teachers and para-medical staff in the insurgency-hit Bastar region and Sarguja District [in the north] despite several attempts, the State Government has decided to “outsource the posts in both Sarguja and Bastar region.” The State Cabinet, on May 19, 2015, approved the proposal moved in this connection, while details of executing the proposal are to be worked out ‘soon’. It would be interesting to see how the outsourcing agencies would provide services that the state has failed to, especially where the private sector has already failed to deliver in Maoist afflicted regions. The only possibility is that some questionable operatives may function under Maoist patronage, while the rebels extract a price for the ‘protection’ they would offer.

Meanwhile, in a major decision, the Chhattisgarh Government decided, on June 30, 2015, to hike allowances and other benefits for Police jawans (troopers), including constables, assistant constables and secret troops posted in the Naxalite-dominated areas of Bastar Division, Gariyaband and Rajnandgaon. Nearly 22,000 Police jawans are expected to benefit from the move, which would result in an almost 58 per cent hike in emoluments of assistant constables, who, after the revision, would get INR 14,144 per month instead of Rs 8,990 earlier. This amount will be applicable till 2018-19 and further decisions would be taken in this regard in a review meeting before March 31, 2019. The Cabinet also approved 150 additional posts for ‘Secret Troops’. As of now there are 458 Secret Troop personnel active in the State. Further, UHM Rajnath Singh has agreed “in principle” to a proposal by Chhattisgarh Government to raise a tribal battalion to take on the Maoists in the Bastar region.

Concerns, however, remain. During the Union Home Minister’s visit, Chief Minister Singh is learnt to have complained that there was “no cooperation” from the Telangana Government in the fight against Maoists in the Bastar region, while Odisha’s cooperation was ‘moderate’. He praised the “active participation” of Maharashtra.

Temporary advantages and set backs offer no enduring solution to the Maoist challenge, and the importance of a sound anti-Maoist policy can hardly be understated. In the absence of a coherent view among the Centre and the affected States, especially Chhattisgarh, the task confronting SFs can only be difficult.

* Fakir Mohan Pradhan
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

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Islamic Jihad Fighters Set Up Watchtower Near Gaza Border

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The military wing of Islamic Jihad has set up a watchtower near the Israeli border in Gaza, a senior leader told Ma’an on Sunday.

The leader, who only named himself as Abu Ahmad, said that the al-Quds Brigades set up the tower in the Abu Reida area on the outskirts of Khuzaa in southern Gaza.

He said it lay opposite an Israeli gate on the border fence used for military purposes, adding that it was eight meters high and 500 meters from the border.

“In al-Quds Brigades we believe that the equation has changed and the rules of the conflict have changed in favor of (the Palestinian) resistance,” Abu Ahmad said.

He added that al-Quds Brigades insisted on defying the Israeli occupation.

“This is a message notifying (the Israeli) occupation that we are coming closer and closer, with our eyes focused on the (Israeli) borders, and not on what is going on in the Arab world,” he said, apparently in reference to a violent insurgency in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, which Egypt has accused some Palestinian factions of supporting.

Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on Palestinians from the border fence since the ceasefire agreement signed Aug. 26, 2014 that ended a devastating 50-day Israeli military offensive against the Gaza Strip.

In May alone, there were a total of 51 incidents of shootings, incursions into the coastal enclave, and arrests, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. This included 41 shootings, which left nine injured, including one minor.

The attacks come despite Israeli promises at the end of the ceasefire to ease restrictions on Palestinian access to the border region near the “security buffer zone.”

Islamic Jihad’s “watchtower” comes several months after the military wing of Hamas claimed that it had rebuilt a number of military bases near the Israeli border in Gaza.

Al-Qassam Brigades said in March that it had recovered from Israel’s offensive and was “not afraid” of confronting the occupation again.

The offensive left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead, mostly civilians, and nearly 70 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

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Pope Francis Off-The-Cuff In Latin America

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By Alan Holdren

The world is about to see a new side to Pope Francis and, interestingly, it could be the most intimate look yet at who he really is.

Already in his first speech at Quito’s Mariscal-Sucre airport for the welcoming ceremony, he was adding color to his speech. Powerful lines like saying that the most vulnerable minorities “are the debt that Latin America still has.”

He also appeared to have a laugh about Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa’s extensive and highly political opening speech, in which he cited the Pope repeatedly. The Pope thanked him and said Correa had even quoted him “too much.”

These and other additions to the prepared speeches are likely the first of many off-the-cuff comments to come.

“This is the first time he’s truly going to feel at home speaking his own language,” veteran Mexican journalist, Valentina Alazraki, told CNA aboard the papal flight en route to Quito, Ecuador.

In 22 planned speeches and countless other, more personal encounters across the next week, Pope Francis will be speaking in his native tongue, Spanish, to Spanish-speaking crowds.

He’s visiting “his” people, the people of Latin America. It’s the land he calls the “Patria Grande,” the “Great Homeland.” While he won’t be stopping through his native Argentina, millions of people in Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay will be treated to Pope Francis “unplugged.”

The Castellano-speaking TV reporter, Alazraki is a veteran. She’s covered 130 papal flights dating back to her first, also St. John Paul II’s first, in January of 1979. But she called this trip “unique.”

“Language, precisely, is the essence of this visit because the Pope, as we’ve known him to do up until now, will improvise,’ she said, almost in warning.

As the Pope traveled across the Pacific Ocean in an Alitalia-operated Airbus 330 aircraft, the director of the Holy See Press Office conceded that papal improv sessions would be “facilitated” during the tour.

“How the Pope will want to make use of it, we’ll see,” Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi said with a grin. “But it is certainly a particularly favorable condition for the communication between the Pope and the people.”

At rallies with schoolchildren or in audience with large groups of priests at the Vatican, he often can’t help setting aside the prepared remarks and saying what comes to mind.

And, Pope Francis has improvised heavily on previous trips, most often in Italian, but also in Spanish and even English.

But no more will he be limited by the constraints of speaking a second or third language for an extended period of time. He’ll be free to say exactly what he wants, no simultaneous interpreters needed, all week long.

“He’s happy, you wouldn’t have to ask him to know that,” said Gerard O’Connell, an Irishman who writes for America Magazine. “The Pope says Spanish is the language of his heart. He expresses himself very well in Italian but this is his mother tongue.”

While Spanish is the majority language across Latin America, it’s not the only one spoken in the three relatively small South American nations he’ll be visiting. For some of the indigenous population there, what they call Castellano – Castilian Spanish – is actually their second language.

An incredible ethnic and linguistic diversity marks the Andean nations of Ecuador and Bolivia in particular. There, the indigenous Quechua and Aymara languages, respectively, are very much alive. In addition to Spanish, these two and also Guarani will be employed in papal liturgies in the coming days.

Journalists traveling with the Pope are either very happy to be following the Pope in Spanish-only this week, or quite concerned.

Those with some anxiety know from past experience that when the Pope goes off-the-cuff, he can also employ words that most of the Spanish-speaking world wouldn’t know unless they were also raised in his part of Argentina. And then, there are the new words he invents, in Shakespearian style.

“We all know that he loves his language. So, that’s going to give him greater freedom and expressivity,” said Sergio Rubin, the Argentine co-author of El Jesuita, a 2010 biography of then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio. The head of the religion section of Argentina’s daily “Clarin” newspaper is also going to be on the Pope’s heels all week as part of the pool of newsmen and women on the papal flight.

“I think he could say some very interesting things and make very interesting gestures as well,” Rubin told CNA. He noted that the Pope has been to all three of these nations previously and is “profoundly aware of the social and religious problems” they face.

The papal biographer sees the current trip as a sneak-preview of the possible 2016 visit to Argentina, which would allow the Pope to kick the language up yet another notch, rolling out his Buenos Aires’ dialect of Lunfardo to the delight of locals and the trepidation of foreign journalists.

Rubin said the Pope will be in his element on this trip, returning to known territory. “I think he’s going to feel very comfortable, very comfortable, for many reasons… the issues of the excluded, the most dispossessed, the simplest. In this context, you don’t forget that. This is very important for him and for the Church,” he said.

The post Pope Francis Off-The-Cuff In Latin America appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Modi’s Visit To Central Asia – Analysis

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By P. Stobdan*

Prime Minister Modi’s forthcoming visit to the Central Asian States could prove a smart strategic and diplomatic feat by paving the way to overcome several predicaments that have so far stymied India’s role in the region. Though much time has been lost, reconnecting with the land of Sakas (Kushans) would be a useful national strategic endeavour. India’s stakes go beyond the energy and security aspects.

As Central Asia gets de-Europeanized, there is a major power rivalry afoot. The region is already getting swamped by the Chinese as well as by extremist forces. China has pushed for the interlocking of economic and security interests in Central Asia. It has finally broken a century and half of Russian monopoly in the region. It is China that now controls the flow of goods and services to and from the region.

China’s presence and influence have not invoked any “Great Game” fear. Its presence in the region has not elicited any tangible Russian opposition. Nor has it stirred any containment by the United States and India. Instead, China has come to enjoy an air of respectability in the region. Central Asian Republics are excited about China’s “One Road One Belt” (OBOR) initiative; they hope that it would revive the legendary Silk Route marvel. The West has questioned Russia’s economic agenda in Central Asia, but remains silent on China’s drive. In fact, it sees OBOR as not being “mutually exclusive” to US plans for Central Asia and Afghanistan.

India views the fragility of Central Asia as a source of insecurity. The region is prone to Arab-Spring-type explosions as its politico-economic parameters resemble those in West Asia. Regional leaders have firmly resisted political change, and their regimes are insulated from falling by China and Russia.

Central Asia is the northern frontier of the Islamic world. Behind the current secular settings, a major shift is underway towards Political Islam. While the phenomenon is pronounced in Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan, disparity in wealth distribution is instilling public discontent even in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Islam has always remained the dominant factor for the polity in Uzbekistan. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which has links to al Qaeda, is well entrenched. Worst, even the Islamic State is heavily recruiting in Central Asia.

Central Asia is located next to the world’s most unstable region – Af-Pak. The region’s borders with Afghanistan are extremely porous for militants as well as for those engaged in drug trafficking and weapons proliferation. It is only a matter of time before instability in the region becomes worse than the crisis in Syria and Iraq.

Clearly, both extremism and China’s deep penetration of and growing influence in the region do not augur well. Together they could spell the death knell for India’s northern outreach. Of course China’s OBOR journey could face a bumpy drive, but the West has not so far reacted with any alarm to this Chinese move on the Eurasian chessboard.

India has so far lacked a cogent Central Asia policy. Hopefully, Modi would be able to evolve one. After all, he is proving to be historically the most conscious Indian leader after Jawaharlal Nehru.

Russia’s presence was a preferred option for India all along. But its influence in the region is waning. Russia is instead seeking convergence with China in the face of its own worsening standoff with the West.

Uzbekistan is the nerve centre of Central Asia. Zahir-ud-Din Babur came from the Ferghana Valley. Cultural contacts between India and Uzbekistan are deep and they cannot be wished away. Oil-rich Kazakhstan deserves India’s immediate attention. Turkmenistan is relevant for the TAPI pipeline, if at all it works out. Kyrgyzstan has huge hydropower potential and, like Mongolia, it is a democracy. India enjoys historical affinity with Tajikistan. The country is strategically critical for India in the context of the Af-Pak region.
For India to evolve an enduring Central Asia policy, it should foster a regional economic integration approach even if that means cooperating with China. But the main problem it faces when it comes to Central Asia is the lack of direct geographical connectivity. What has compounded this problem is New Delhi’s pursuit during the last two decades of the flawed policy of gaining access to Central Asia through the Persian Gulf. This folly in thinking persists even now. Routing through Iran and Afghanistan or via the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) are important pursuits, but even the best pursued connectivity and pipelines projects like the IPI and TAPI have not seen the light of day. Of course, these options should not be foreclosed, but the delays involved in actualising them go against India’s economic interests.

To reconnect with the Eurasian market, India needs to explore the hard but natural option of seeking a direct land-link through China. This would demand steps for opening up India’s northern borders i.e., reviving the traditional Ladakh-Xinjiang axis as the natural gateway to Eurasia.

The issue here is not about connectivity alone, but about interlocking the economic integration of India’s northern states with that of the Eurasian growth story. The shift in thinking along this direction can no longer be put off. If India remains disconnected from Eurasia, it would only instil greater insecurity and fears of encirclement vis-à-vis China. To overcome India’s geographical isolation from Central Asia and to increase India’s stakes in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Modi should articulate this point in Ufa.

India shared a common history and culture with Eurasia – once bound by the Silk and Spice Trade Routes. Clearly, reconnecting these points would foster better economic relations and improved political ties. Security issues are also getting more and more intertwined. Only Ladakh can become the launching pad for India’s Eurasian outreach. And only sound connectivity can make India’s participation in BRICS and SCO more robust. Such a proposal could also constitute a counterpoise to China’s call upon India to join the Silk Route.

It is time that flights from New Delhi to Urumchi or Kashgar started. India and China’s Xinjiang province have already signed an agreement on civil aviation cooperation. Flights between New Delhi and Urumchi or Kashgar could also be utilised to improve India’s air connectivity with Central Asia, i.e., hops via Almaty, Tashkent or Bishkek. Modi should also press for the re-opening of the Indian Consulate in Kashgar, which was closed in the mid-1950s.

Realizing such a goal would be an ice-breaking moment for Modi and Xi. India should view the SCO and BRICS from a positive perspective of restoring its lost linkages with Eurasia. Of course, for this to gain greater credence, Russia must also be taken on board.

*Author served as Ambassador in Central Asia (pstobdan@gmail.com)

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India. Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/ModisVisittoCentralAsia_pstobdan_060715.html

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NSA Internet Surveillance Program Still Raising Concerns – Analysis

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The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been conducting surveillance of top-of-the-line businessmen and politicians in France and Germany for over ten years, alleges WikiLeaks that published series of new documents on June 29 and July 1, 2015.

The files reveal that the American intelligence services chose several high-ranking persons as the targets of their telephone eavesdropping system, and created a database of intercepted information of economic and political value. Among other things, according to the documents, the US, and, in certain cases, other members of the so-called “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance that also includes the Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, gained access to information on large-scale French contracts for over $200 million, and the contents of communications between the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her personal assistant.

The secret documents caused an agitation in the European political society: the French President Francois Hollande called the situation unacceptable, and the German Chief of Staff Peter Altmaier summoned the US Ambassador John Emerson for immediate talks.

The journalists also took notice of the recent WikiLeaks releases. One of them, Simon Shuster of Time magazine, compared the events of the recent weeks with the 2013 scandal over the wiretapping of Angela Merkel’s phone calls. The German prosecutor’s office dropped the investigation of the case in June 2015, he reminds.

“As Germany’s experience suggests, no real rupture in relations comes out of these scandals, at least in part because the Europeans rely on the US not only for trade but security and the sharing of intelligence,” he writes.

Moreover, the published documents once brought the public attention towards the issue of mass Internet surveillance that went viral after a former US intelligence services employee Edward Snowden published the first batch of top-secret files in June 2013.

In a Q&A video session with Amnesty International held in early June, he recalled how the leaders of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance and several other countries introduced the indiscriminate surveillance measures under the guise of terrorism protection measures, doing all they could to avoid scrutiny.

“Courts have ruled [the US program] unlawful. They have said that from the very first day it was against the law, it was a violation of basic constitutional rights. The White House did a classified investigation of it, and they found that it never stopped a single terrorist attack,” stressed the former security agency employee whose story was depicted in the documentary film “Citizenfour.”

According to Anton Nordenfur, party organizer for the Pirate Party of Sweden, the current situation is further complicated by the fact that the Washington officials may have learned a lot from the Snowden’s case.

“I think it is more likely that the US gets more professional and more efficient in the spying programs, and simply being harder on whistleblowers, and being more careful about what it’s making that is being leaked,” he said in an interview to “PenzaNews” agency. He also added that Edward Snowden, who currently resides in Russia, risked becoming a prisoner of Guantanamo Bay or even losing his life.

He also suggested that the recent release by WikiLeaks would only have a short-term effect.

“But I also think that it will lead to the US continuing to spy on chiefs of states, just in different ways and more effective ways in which they won’t be discovered in the same way. […] Even if there was outcry about stopping the program, and even if they were to come out and say they would completely cease all programs, I’m entirely pessimistic about the idea that they would actually cease them,” the speaker noted.

According to Anton Nordenfur, the only thing that was damaged by the release of the documents describing the law-breaking activities of the American intelligence agencies that targeted their own allies was the public image of the US authorities. The reason behind it, he said, was that millions of people all over the world began to see the online privacy issue in a different light, as the security of information is important, for both the regular citizens who want their private data safe and politicians and businesses who seek to protect their professional and trade secrets.

“In a [recent] interview with the Swedish Prime Minister, he talked about how he didn’t have any faith in talking over phone anymore. And I think, unfortunately, that’s a good thing, because that means there are faith to more leaks in the future,” the member of the Pirate Party of Sweden stated.

At the same time, Peter Swire, professor of Law and Ethics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, privacy expert under Bill Clinton, said that Edward Snowden’s decision to publish the classified documents was a very influential event.

“For me, there are positive consequences of the Snowden revelations, such as starting this important debate on privacy. There were also negative consequences, such as revealing to North Korea and other totalitarian regimes some of the capabilities of the US intelligence services, and some of the revelations were so detailed that they tipped off dangerous nations to change their behavior,” he stressed, noting that the actions of the former security service employee constitute a criminal action.

However, he noted that these releases provoked the debate and pushed for the review of the American bulk data collection program.

“I was a member of President Obama’s review group on intelligence and communication technologies. He created a five-person group to review the NSA program in August 2013, and I was of the five people from it. […] Our review group recommended additional pro-privacy protection, especially concerning Section 702,” Peter Swire recalled, noting that the well-known PRISM system that went operational in 2007 is working under FISA Section 702 authority.

He also pointed out that one of the most important elements that came after the leaks was the USA Freedom Act, a law enacted on June 3, 2015, with the aim to impose limits on the bulk collection and retention of phone data.

“The USA Freedom Act was the biggest pro-privacy intelligence reform in 40 years. It also was the first major pro-privacy legislation since 9/11,” Peter Swire stressed.

Alan Butler, senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, expressed a similar point of view, calling it “a landmark piece of legislation.”

“We believe it is a really significant step in the right direction. It was right for the Congress to pass it and for the President to sign it,” he said.

According to the rights activist, additional oversight and transparency requirements imposed by the new law would allow to rein in the practice of authorizing surveillance in secret without a public oversight. However, the protection of people in other countries is an issue that is yet to be resolved in the future.

“It is certainly a complicated policy issue. I think that as similar organizations are pushing for broader rights for US persons as well as non-US persons, and the President did release a speech in 2014 where he pledged to revive those rights,” the expert reminded, adding that the rights organizations are continuing to working in this direction.

However, Joshua Franco, advisor on technology and human rights for Amnesty International, stressed that he does not see the USA Freedom Act as a complete US mass surveillance reform.

“There is a lot more to be done. A lot of surveillance carried out in the US is done under other legal authorities, and probably there is a lot going on that we do not necessarily know about. So I think it is a symbolic and important political victory, but it shows that we have a lot more to discuss,” the expert said.

He added that the information provided by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers has changed the attitude of the people and the society towards the issue, and also gave the rights activists an opportunity to challenge the bulk online communications interception programs in courts. Unfortunately, changes in the opposite direction still show up all over the world.

“The UK government promising at least to expand surveillance powers, and also officials in the US and the UK talking about encryption as a threat to counter-terrorism and a threat to law enforcement, all of which could harm online privacy rights and other human rights. And, of course, the French government itself is also adopting a mass surveillance law which we’ve criticized and we think it’s really problematic from the human rights point of view,” the Amnesty International representative said.

Because of that, he thinks, the international community must lobby the governments to gain legal protections of their private data against mass surveillance, and put pressure on the corporations that control access to information and design the technologies for the end users.

As the World Wide Web is not bound by the country borders, an intelligence agency of one country intercepting online communications automatically threatens the rights of all Internet users, Joshua Franco reminded.

In the meanwhile, he said, more and more countries seek to obtain the technologies to gain a maximum amount of data about their citizens as we go.

In his turn, Richard Hill, president of the Switzerland Association for Proper Internet Guidance, suggested that the wiretapping scandal in France would most likely lead to a series of behind-the-scenes talks.

“For example, I think, and so do other people, what happened in the Merkel story is that in exchange for dropping [the case], the US is probably sharing more information with Germany than they did before. So I think the countries that are targets of this are trying to enter the club of Five Eyes rather than trying to shut it down,” the rights activist suggested.

From his point of view, the actions of the American intelligence services seem to show a continuation of the so-called Wolfowitz policy, named after Paul Wolfowitz, former US Deputy Secretary of Defense, who had formulated it in early 90s.

“Under [this strategy], the United States after the Cold War would no longer allow any other state to achieve equivalence. The United States is attempting to prevent any other state from acquiring the comparable level of military and political power to itself. And so it was pursuing a policy to ensure that no other state achieves that power, and one methods they do that, of course, is surveillance,” explained the president of the Association for Proper Internet Governance.

He noted that the best way to combat the mass surveillance program would be not through such scandals, but through continued and constant pressure from the public and the media against the politicians and the intelligence agencies that promote their interests under the guise of fighting terrorists.

“The idea that we would reduce those criminal attacks by mass surveillance is just stupid. The analogy I always use is: do you think that we would have fewer bank robberies if we had mass surveillance? Of course not. And why do you think that we could reduce these isolated attacks through mass surveillance? You cannot. So the rationale given for doing that is completely silly, and I think it’s important to point that out,” Richard Hill stressed.

Arjen Kamphuis, co-founder and chief technology officer of Gendo.ch, IT expert, also expressed the belief that the mass surveillance program is in no way related to the counter-terrorism activities, just like the National Security Agency per se.

“That’s the FBI’s job (and sometimes the CIA, although they are usually the ones funding, arming, training and directing the Terrorists – like in Afghanistan 1978-1999). After the Cold War, the NSA’s job is industrial espionage and political subversion,” he explained.

Right now, the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom and the United States operate outside any laws, with no public official even trying to rein them in, Arjen Kamphuis said.

“I have worked with whistleblowers from intelligence agencies since 2007 and with WikiLeaks since 2008. […] Those agencies know everything about the personal life of those politicians and can ‘leak’ just enough of that info to destroy any political career instantly,” the expert stressed.

The US authorities have no qualms about using force whenever they see fit, even against those states that cooperate with the White House, he added.

“There are no allies, there is the US and there are smaller countries that feel they have no option but to smile to the crocodile and hope they won’t get eaten this week. France and Germany, as bigger nations, do resist somewhat but ultimately dare not to poke the monster too much,” Arjen Kamphuis said.

Even though two years had passed since the first Snowden revelations, the Berlin officials did not take any actual steps, he said.

The analyst also pointed out that the public finally focused its attention on the activities of the US intelligence agencies 15-20 years latter than they should have had, even though the warning signs had been appearing in the media as early as in late 90s.

“[Edward Snowden] letting over seven billion people know their human right to privacy was being violated every second of every day by a nation that wages undeclared wars and mass killings in two dozen countries? I’d say that was justified,” the co-founder and chief technology officer of Gendo.ch concluded.

He suggested that the current US policy resembles that of the USSR on the verge of breakup and the United States may collapse in 5-20 years.

“Just like the Soviet Union in its last days, the US will behave unpredictably as it joins the graveyard of empires. Better to stand at a safe distance as the process unfolds,” Arjen Kamphuis remarked.

He also highlighted the fact that most countries heavily rely on American technologies, particularly in computing and IT industries, and called for the world powers to create and develop their own solutions.

“Countries like France and Germany should actually work with countries like Russia, Brazil, India and perhaps even China and Iran to create technological alternatives they can all independently use without have to trust each other they way they have to trust the US now. Trusting a single powerful state clearly is not working. We need a multipolar world and decentralized technologies that have transparent inner workings so no abuse is possible. Such technologies also need to be the default in education so they become the norm instead of the exception. Such a policy would save all these countries 1-2% of their GNP currently spent on US tech that would now be invested in local technology development, new start-ups and skilled workers,” the expert concluded.

This article was published by Penza News.

The post NSA Internet Surveillance Program Still Raising Concerns – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

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