The Greek people’s efforts to end the economic depression, recover their sovereignty and reverse the regressive socio-economic policies, which have drastically reduced living standards, have been thrice denied.

First, the denial came as tragedy: When the Greek majority elected Syriza to government and their debts increased, the economy plunged further into depression and unemployment and poverty soared. The Greek people voted for Syriza believing its promises of ‘a new course’. Immediately following their victory, Syriza reneged on their promise to restore sovereignty – and end the subjugation of the Greek people to the economic dictates of overseas bankers, bureaucrats and political oligarchs. Instead Syriza kept Greece in the oligarchical imperialist bloc, portraying the European Union as an association of independent sovereign countries. What began as a great victory of the Greek people turned into a tragic strategic retreat. >From their first day in office, Syriza led the Greek people down the blind alley of total submission to the German empire.

Then the tragedy turned into farce when the Greek people refused to acknowledge the impending betrayal by their elected leaders. They were stunned, but mute, as Syriza emptied the Greek treasury and offered even greater concessions, including acceptance of the illegal and odious debts incurred by private bankers, speculators and political kleptocrats in previous regimes.

True to their own vocation as imperial overlords, the EU bosses saw the gross servility of Syriza as an invitation to demand more concessions – total surrender to perpetual debt peonage and mass impoverishment. Syriza’s demagogic leaders, Yanis Varoufakis and Alexis Tsipras, shifting from fits of hysteria to infantile egotism, denounced ‘the Germans and their blackmail’ and then performed a coy belly-crawl at the feet of the ‘Troika’, peddling their capitulation to the bankers as ‘negotiations’ and referring to their overlords as . . . ‘partners’.

Syriza, in office for only 5 months brought Greece to the edge of total bankruptcy and surrender, then launched the ‘mother of all deceptions’ on the Greek people: Tsipras convoked a ‘referendum’ on whether Greece should reject or accept further dictates and cuts to bare bones destitution. Over 60% of the Greek people voted a resounding NO to further plunder and poverty.

In Orwellian fashion, the megalomaniac Tsipras immediately re-interpreted the ‘NO’vote as a mandate to capitulation to the imperial powers, accepting the EU bankers’ direct supervision of the regime’s implementation of Troika’s policies – including drastic reductions of Greek pensions, doubling the regressive ‘VAT’ consumption tax on vital necessities and a speed-up of evictions of storeowners and householders behind in their mortgage payments. Thus Greece became a vassal state: Nineteenth century colonialism was re-imposed in the 21st century.

Colonialism by Invitation

Greek politicians, whether Conservative or Socialist, have openly sought to join the German-led imperial bloc known as the European Union, even when it was obvious that the Greek economy and financial system was vulnerable to domination by the powerful German ruling class.

From the beginning, the Greek Panhellenic Socialist Party (PASOK) and their Conservative counterparts refused to recognize the class basis of the European Union. Both political factions and the Greek economic elites, that is, the kleptocrats who governed and the oligarchs who ruled, viewed entry into the EU as an opportunity for taking and faking loans, borrowing, defaulting and passing their enormous debts on to the public treasury!

Widely circulating notions among the Left that ‘Germany is responsible’ for the Greek crisis are only half true, while the accusations among rightwing financial scribes that the ‘Greek people are spendthrifts’ who brought on their own crisis is equally one-sided. The reality is more complex:

The crash and collapse of the Greek economy was a product of an entrenched parasitic rentier ruling class –both Socialist and Conservative – which thrived on borrowing at high interest rates and speculating in non-productive economic activities while imposing an astronomical military budget. They engaged in fraudulent overseas financial transactions while grossly manipulating and fabricating financial data to cover-up Greece’s unsustainable trade and budget deficits.

German and other EU exporters had penetrated and dominated the Greek markets. The bankers charged exorbitant interest rates while investors exploited cheap Greek labor. The creditors ignored the obvious risks because Greek rulers were their willing accomplices in the ongoing pillage.

Clearly entry into and continued membership in the EU has largely benefited two groups of elites: the German rulers and the Greek rentiers: The latter received short-term financial grants and transfers while the former gained powerful levers over the banks, markets and, most important, established cultural-ideological hegemony over the Greek political class. The Greek elite and middle class believed ‘they were Europeans’ – that the EU was a beneficent arrangement and a source of prosperity and upward mobility. In reality, Greek leaders were merely accomplices to the German conquest of Greece. And the major part of the middle class aped the views of the Greek elite.

The financial crash of 2008-2009 ended the illusions for some but not most Greeks. After 6 years of pain and suffering a new version of the old political class came to power: Syriza! Syriza brought in new faces and rhetoric but operated with the same blind commitment to the EU. The Syriza leadership believed they were “partners”.

The road to vassalage is rooted deep in the psyche of the political class. Instead of recognizing their subordinate membership in the EU as the root cause of their crisis, they blamed ‘the Germans, the bankers, Angela Merkel, Wolfgang Schnauble , the IMF, the Troika… The Greek rulers and middle class were in fact both victims and accomplices.

The German imperial regime loaned money from the tax revenues of German workers to enable their complicit Greek vassals to pay back the German bankers… German workers complained. The German media deflected criticism by blaming the ‘lazy Greek cheats’. Meanwhile, the Greek oligarch-controlled media deflected criticism of the role of the parasitical political class back to the ‘Germans’. This all served to obscure the class dynamics of empire building — colonialism by invitation. The ideology of blaming peoples, instead of classes, is pitting German workers against Greek employees and pensioners. The German masses support their bankers, while the Greek masses have elected and followed Syriza – their traitors.

From Andreas Papandreou to Alexis Tsipras: Misconceptions about the European Union

After Syriza was elected a small army of instant experts, mostly leftist academics from Canada, the US and Europe, sprang up to write and speak, usually with more heat than light, on current Greek political and economic developments. Most have little knowledge or experience of Greek politics, particularly its history and relations with the EU over the past thirty five years.

The most important policy decisions shaping the current Syriza government’s betrayal of Greek sovereignty go back to the early 1980’s when I was working as an adviser to PASOK Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. At that time, I was party to an internal debate of whether to continue within the EU or leave. Papandreou was elected on an anti EU, anti NATO platform, which, like Tsipras, he promptly reneged on– arguing that ‘there were no alternatives’. Even then, there were international and Greek academic sycophants, as there are today, who argued that membership in the EU was the only realistic alternative- it was the ‘only possibility’. The ‘possibilistas” at that time, operating either from ignorance or deceit, were full of bluster and presumption. They denied the underlying power realities in the structure of the EU and dismissed the class capacity of the working and popular masses to forge an alternative. Then, as now, it was possible to develop independent alternative relations with Europe, Russia, China, the Middle East and North Africa. The advantages of maintaining a protected market, a robust tourist sector and an independent monetary system were evident and did not require EU membership (or vassalage).

Above all, what stood out in both leaders, Andreas Papandreou and Alexis Tsipras, was their profound misconception of the class nature of the dominant forces in the EU. In the 1980’s Germany was just beginning to recover its imperial reach. By the time Syriza-Tsipras rose to power (January 2015), Germany’s imperial power was undeniable. Tsipras’ misunderstanding of this reality can be attributed to his and his ‘comrades’ rejection of class and imperial analyses. Even academic Marxists, who spouted Marxist theory, never applied their abstract critiques of capitalism and imperialism to the concrete realities of German empire building and Greece’s quasi-colonial position within the EU. They viewed their role as that of ‘colonial reformers’ –imagining that they were clever enough to ‘negotiate’ better terms in the German-centered EU. They inevitably failed because Berlin had a built-in majority among its fervently neo-liberal ex-communist satellites plus the IMF, French and English imperial partners. Syriza was no match for this power configuration. Then there was the bizarre delusion among the Syriza intellectuals that European capitalism was more benign than the US version.

EU membership has created scaffolding for German empire-building. The take off point was West Germany’s annexation of East Germany. This was soon followed by the incorporation of the rightwing regimes in the Baltic and Balkans as subordinate members of the EU – their public assets were snapped up by Germany corporations at bargain prices. The third step was the systematic break-up of Yugoslavia and the incorporation of Slovenia into the German orbit. The fourth step was the takeover of key sectors of the Polish and Czech economies and the exploitation of cheap skilled labor from Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and other satellite states.

Without firing a shot, German empire-building has revolved around making loans and financial transfers to the new subordinate member states in the EU. These financial transactions were predicated upon the following conditions: 1) Privatization and sale of the new member states’ prized public assets to mainly German as well as other EU investors and 2) Forcing member states to dismantle their social programs, approve massive lay-offs and meet impossible fiscal targets. In other words, expansion of the contemporary German empire required austerity measures, which transformed the ex-communist countries into satellites, vassals and sources of mercenaries – a pattern which is now playing out in Greece.

The reason these new German ‘colonies’ (especially Poland and the Baltic States) insist on the EU imposing harsh austerity measures on Greece, is that they went through the same brutal process convincing their own beleaguered citizens that there was no alternative – resistance was futile. Any successful demonstration by Greek workers, farmers and employees that resistance to empire was possible would expose the corrupt relationship between these client leaders and the German imperial order. In order to preserve the foundations of the new imperial order, Germany has had to take a hardline on Greece. Otherwise the recently incorporated colonial subjects in the Baltic, Balkan and Central Europe states might “re-think” the brutal terms of their own incorporation to the European Union. This explains the openly punitive approach to Greece – turning it into the ‘Haiti of Europe’ analogous to the US’ long standing brutalization of the rebellious Haitians – as an object lesson to its own Caribbean and Latin American clients.

The root cause of German intransigence has nothing to do with the political personalities or quirks of Angela Merkle and Wolfgang Schnauble: Such imperial leaders do not operate out of neurotic vindictiveness. Their demand for total Greek submission is an imperative of German empire-building, a continuation of the step-by-step conquest of Europe.

German empire-building emphasizes economic conquests, which go hand-in-hand with US empire-building based on military conquests. The same economic satellites of Germany also serve as sites for US military bases and exercises encircling Russia; these vassal states provide mercenary soldiers for US imperial wars in South Asia, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.

Syriza’s economic surrender is matched by its spineless sell-out to NATO, its support of sanctions against Russia and its embrace of US policies toward Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

Germany and its imperial partners have launched a savage attack on the working people of Greece, usurping Greek sovereignty and planning to seize 50 billion Euros of vital Greek public enterprises, land and resources. This alone should dispels the myth, promoted especially by the French social democratic demagogue Jacques Delores, that European capitalism is a benign form of ‘social welfarism’ and an ‘alternative’ to the savage Anglo-American version capitalism.

What has been crucial to previous and current versions of empire-building is the role of a political collaborator class facilitating the transition to colonialism. Here is where social democrats, like Alexis Tsipras, who excel in the art of talking left while embracing the right, flatter and deceive the masses into deepening austerity and pillage.

Instead of identifying the class enemies within the EU and organizing an alternative working class program, Tsipras and his fellow collaborators pose as EU ‘partners’ , fostering class collaboration – better to serve imperial Europe: When the German capitalists demanded their interest payments, Tsipras bled the Greek economy. When German capitalists sought to dominate Greek markets, Tsipras and Syriza opened the door by keeping Greece in the EU. When German capital wanted to supervise the take-over of Greek properties, Tsipras and Syriza embraced the sell-off.

There is clear class collaboration within the Greek elite in the destruction of nation’s sovereignty: Greek banker oligarchs and sectors of the commercial and tourist elite have acted as intermediaries of the German empire builders and they personally benefit from the German and EU takeover despite the destitution of the Greek public. Such economic intermediaries, representing 25% of the electorate, have become the main political supporters of the Syriza-Tsipras betrayal. They join with the EU elite applauding Tsipras’ purge of left critics and his authoritarian seizure of legislative and executive power! This collaborator class will never suffer from pension cuts, layoffs and unemployment. They will never have to line up at crippled banks for a humiliating dole of 65 Euros of pension money. These collaborators have hundreds of thousands and millions stashed in overseas bank accounts and invested in overseas real estate. Unlike the Greek masses, they are ‘European’ first and foremost – willing accomplices of German empire builders!

Tragic Beginnings: The Greek People Elect a Trojan Horse

Syriza is deeply rooted in Greek political culture .A leadership of educated mascots serving overseas European empire-builders. Syriza is supported by academic leftists who are remote from the struggles, sacrifices and suffering of the Greek masses. Syriza’s leadership emerged on the scene as ideological mentors and saviors with heady ideas and shaky hands. They joined forces with downwardly mobile middle class radicals who aspired to rise again via the traditional method: radical rhetoric, election to office, negotiations and transactions with the local and foreign elite and betrayal of their voters. Theirs is a familiar political road to power, privilege and prestige. In this regard, Tsipras personifies an entire generation of upwardly mobile opportunists, willing and able to sellout Greece and its people. He perpetuates the worst political traditions: In campaigns he promoted consumerism over class consciousness (discarding any mobilization of the masses upon election!). He is a useful fool, embedded in a culture of clientelism, kleptocracy, tax evasion, predatory lenders and spenders – the very reason his German overlords tolerated him and Syriza, although on a short leash!

Tsipras’ Syriza has absolute contempt for democracy. He embraces the ‘Caudillo Principle’: one man, one leader, one policy! Any dissenters invite dismissal!

Syriza has utterly submitted to imperial institutions, the Troika and their dictates, NATO and above all the EU, the Eurozone. Tsipras/ Syriza reject outright independence and freedom from imperial dictates. In his ‘capitulation to the Germans’ Tsipra engaged in histrionic theatrics, but by his own personal dictate, the massive ‘NO to EU’ vote was transformed into a YES.

The cruelest political crime of all has been Tsipras running down the Greek economy, bleeding the banks, emptying the pension funds and freezing everyday salaries while ‘blaming the bankers’, in order to force the mass of Greeks to accept the savage dictates of his imperial overlords or face utter destitution!

The Ultimate Surrender

Tsipras and his sycophants in Syriza, while constantly decrying Greece’s subordination to the EU empire-builders and claiming victimhood, managed to undermine the Greek people’s national consciousness in less than 6 months. What had been a victorious referendum and expression of rejection by three-fifths of the Greek voters turned into a prelude to a farcical surrender by empire collaborators. The people’s victory in the referendum was twisted to represent popular support for a Caudillo. While pretending to consult the Greek electorate, Tsipras manipulated the popular will into a mandate for his regime to push Greece beyond debt peonage and into colonial vassalage.

Tsipras is a supreme representation of Adorno’s authoritarian personality: On his knees to those above him, while at the throat of those below.

Once he has completed his task of dividing, demoralizing and impoverishing the Greek majority, the local and overseas ruling elites will discard him like a used condom, and he will pass into history as a virtuoso in deceiving and betraying the Greek people.

Epilogue:

Syriza’s embrace of hard-right foreign policies should not be seen as the ‘result of outside pressure’, as its phony left supporters have argued, but rather a deliberate choice. So far, the best example of the Syriza regime’s reactionary policies is its signing of a military agreement with Israel.

According to the Jerusalem Post (July 19, 2015), the Greek Defense Minister signed a mutual defense and training agreement with Israel, which included joint military exercises. Syriza has even backed Israel’s belligerent position against the Islamic Republic of Iran, endorsing Tel Aviv’s ridiculous claim that Teheran represents a terrorist threat in the Middle East and Mediterranean. Syriza and Israel have inked a mutual military support pact that exceeds any other EU member agreement with Israel and is only matched in belligerence by Washington’s special arrangements with the Zionist regime.

Israel’s ultra-militarist ‘Defense’ Minister Moshe Yaalon, (the Butcher of Gaza), hailed the agreement and thanked the Syriza regime for ‘its support’. It is more than likely that Syriza’s support for the Jewish state explains its popularity with Anglo-American and Canadian ‘left’ Zionists…

Syriza’s strategic ties with Israel are not the result of EU ‘pressure’ or the dictates of the ‘Troika’. The agreement is a radical reversal of over a half-century of Greek support for the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people against the Israeli terrorist state. This military pact, like the Syriza regime’s economic capitulation to the German ruling class, is deeply rooted in the ‘colonial ideology’, which permeates Tsipras’ policies. He has taken Greece a significant step ‘forward’ from economic vassal to a mercenary client of the most retrograde regime in the Mediterranean.

The EU’s once ambitious EULEX (European Union Rule of Law in Kosovo Mission) needs to be reformed so that it can put an end to its presence in Kosovo after having helped strengthen the Rule of Law.1

By Salvador Llaudes and Francisco Sánchez Andrada*

The EU’s EULEX (European Union Rule of Law in Kosovo Mission) started in 2008. Its aims were to help improve the quality of Kosovo’s institutions and to strengthen the Rule of Law while at the same time combating corruption. Some progress has been made but there have also been some notable failures, which make it necessary to reform the Mission. In any case, there is no clear end in sight for EULEX’s presence in Kosovo.

Analysis

(1) Introduction: EULEX takes over from UNMIK

Following the Kosovo conflict in 1999, the United Nations approved Security Council Resolution 1244² that authorised international military and civil intervention in the country and created the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

The UNMIK had a provisional mandate to deal with territorial administration until 2008, the year in which Kosovo declared its unilateral independence. A year before, in 2007, a strategy began to be developed to devolve competences to the EU. Although at first there were problems cooperating with local institutions, which slowed down the transfer of power, at the end of 2008 the United Nations withdrew the Mission from the area (as shown in Table 1) and transferred power to EULEX (European Union Rule of Law in Kosovo), which became fully operational in April 2009.

The Council Joint Action of 4 February 2008³ and the Council Decisions of June 2010 and June 2012⁴ are the legal basis for EULEX (which has so far been the most expensive EU mission, with an investment of €724 million up to June 2014, as shown in Table 2). In turn, the mission operates within the framework of United Nations Resolution 1244.

As regards the latter there is a certain degree of controversy. On the one hand, the hierarchical relationship between the Resolution and EULEX is evident, as pointed out by Jean-Paul Jacqué, the lawyer assigned by Federica Mogherini to report on internal corruption in EULEX:⁵ ‘The 2008 EULEX Kosovo Joint Action referred to UN Security Council Resolution 1244 and the UN Secretary-General’s authority under this resolution’. On the other hand, some member states insist that although initially the Mission’s presence was due to Resolution 1244, Kosovo’s unilateral Declaration of Independence and, especially, the ending of supervised independence in September 2012, it is now directly justified by the Pristina government.⁶

(2) Executive Division and Division of Empowerment: the two EULEX axes

EULEX was created with the object of establishing the effective Rule of Law in Kosovo, strengthening the region’s institutions and facilitating negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina. While establishing the Rule of Law the focus was on combating corruption and cooperating with local institutions in order to promote stability in the area, particularly in the north, which has a large Serb-Kosovar majority.

As explained in more detail below, the Mission has two divisions: (1) Executive, whose mandate is to head investigations and to process and adjudicate criminal cases (mostly those dealing with organised crime, war crimes, corruption and human trafficking), on which it continues to focus given the lack of progress in these tasks; and (2) Empowerment, whose aim is to train, monitor and provide police support of all kinds to members of the court and customs officials. The Empowerment branch has been successful in carrying out most of its core competences.

1. Executive Division: while Kosovar judges and attorneys are already active in District Courts and in the Prosecution Service –still counselled by EULEX personnel–, further up the structure the presence –and mandate rather than just advisory capacity– of EULEX is far greater. However, Mission personnel lack sufficient knowledge of the local law codes and it is difficult for Albano-Kosovar judges to try Serb-Kosovar defendants fairly (and vice versa), considerably complicating the process. An example is the Drenica Case,⁷ in which, after the trial was over, some of the witnesses declared that their testimonies had been manipulated and incorrectly communicated.Some of the Executive Division’s most successful actions in the past few months have been the clearing of all charges against three Serb-Kosovars accused of participating in war crimes in April 1999 in Novo/Brdo, the sentencing of eight defendants accused of corruption in the Passport Case and the first phases of the case charging eight defendants with storming a United Nations convoy in 2012 in Zubin Potok.
2. Empowerment Division: initially, EULEX had been present in all police, court and customs tasks. Given Kosovo’s improvement in these areas, over times its involvement has steadily decreased and it now focuses almost exclusively on the highest and most strategic levels.Most recently (from October 2014 to January 2015) the Empowerment Division has focused on giving support to the training of the Kosovo Border Police in respect to the problem of irregular emigration, on counselling the Kosovo Police for improving control over the north following the events at the October 2014 football match between Serbia and Albania and on enhancing surveillance and control during the Serbian Prime Minister Aleksander Vucic’s visit to Kosovo on 14 January.

(3) EULEX and the Agreement between the governments of Kosovo and Serbia on normalising relations

The Agreement on the Normalisation of Relations between Belgrade and Pristina was signed in April 2013. It opened up a period of smoother relations between Kosovo and Serbia as a result of their shared goal of joining the EU at some point in the future. Thus, Serbia’s parliamentary elections of 2014 were marked by a decline in Euroscepticism in the National Assembly. The 2014 election results in Kosovo also led to the Serbian minority gaining the post of Deputy Prime Minister, along with two other positions in the government.

Theoretically, the Agreement should have had no practical consequences for the development of the EULEX Mission since it is a declaration of principles and not legally binding. However, at the political level it could imply the beginning of the break-up of the status quo, affecting the balance of power in Kosovar regions with a Serbian majorities (as shown on Map 1 there is no Albano-Kosovar majority anywhere in Kosovo) and in the position of the member States which do not recognise Kosovo as an independent state –currently Cyprus, Slovakia, Spain, Greece and Romania.

Although Serbia’s plans do not yet specifically include recognising Kosovo, both countries have skilfully managed to find a way for the Agreement to focus on less controversial issues to help foster a friendlier relationship. Thus, amongst the 15 points included in the Agreement,⁸ three refer to implementing an effective Rule of Law: a consensus on the telecom market, regularising customs –bearing in mind that the OSCE considers Kosovo a separate customs territory– and, most importantly, a decision on the future institutions for northern Kosovo.

The Agreement should involve substantial changes for the institutions of northern Kosovo. The police and judiciary in Serbian districts were still exercising their functions and thus answered to the Ministry of Justice and the Serbian authorities. However, the new Kosovo police force, created with the aim of integrating both Serb-Kosovars and Albano-Kosovars, was, in practice, unable to act in the north. Furthermore, EULEX courts were also unable to be inclusive as regards the country’s different communities. It was not a matter of a lack of Kosovar authorities but of their inability to act. As an example, the Kosovo police operated in Mitrovica⁹ but no one chose to report incidents to it. The Agreement now puts an end to parallel institutions with the object of unifying them into a single structure. As a result, the Belgrade government will cease to finance them, with the Pristina government taking over control, thus clarifying the position of the EULEX Mission, which had so far engaged in executive and police functions.

The latest report of the EU’s High Representative for the UN Secretary General already dealt with north Kosovo, considering it a priority to establish an appropriate contact with the local authorities and reminding the players involved that there is a threat of conflict. However, tensions are still latent, as shown by the recent controversy generated by the invitation of the Serbian NGO Youth Education to the Kosovar Deputy Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi to attend an event in Belgrade on the integration of Balkan countries in the EU. Thaçi has a warrant against him in Serbia for terrorism and the Serbian authorities claimed that if he had set foot in Belgrade he would have been arrested. The situation came to a head with cross-statements, including the Kosovar Deputy Prime Minister’s: ‘This proves there’s still much work to be done to complete the normalisation of relations’. Meanwhile, Serbian diplomats commented that Thaçi’s presence ‘really was not discussed with the Serb government the way it should have been’.¹⁰

Nevertheless, negotiations on the Agreement’s implementation are still in progress. The first of the two latest meetings in Brussels between Federica Mogherini and the Serbian and Kosovar Prime Ministers, Alexander Vucic and Isa Mustafa, was held on 21 April.¹¹ Although the High Representative described the meeting as ‘constructive’, Vucic and Mustafa agreed that progress was slow at a summit in which three issues were tackled: energy connections, telecommunications and the establishment of an Association of Serb Municipalities.¹²

At the following meeting, on 23 June, the keynote was similar. While Mogherini focused on progress, the declarations of the two Prime Ministers suggested that it would be difficult to reach an agreement on the Association of Municipalities.¹³ To establish a common position on the issue will be essential to helping implement the Brussels Agreement considering that six of its 15 points refer to the Association of Serb Municipalities in northern Kosovo.

(4) Corruption accusations against EULEX: discredit threatens the Mission

Accusations emerged in October 2014 questioning the integrity of certain of the Mission’s members: the daily Koha Ditore13 published a series of internal EULEX reports that showed that Mission members had allegedly accepted Mafia bribes in order to block proceedings against defendants and even to eliminate proof. It was a direct attack against one of the EULEX Mission’s priority objectives.

The Mission’s special prosecutor, Maria Bamieh, was accused of leaking the report to the media but denied any responsibility. However, it is important to stress that corruption allegations against EULEX members were not new: in 2012 the Italian judge Florence Florit had already been named by Bamieh as the recipient of €300,000 as a reward for absolving three defendants accused of murder. The British prosecutor also accused the special prosecutor Jonathan Ratel of obstruction in a corruption investigation against the Kosovar politician Azem Syla. As a result and as a preventive measure Maria Bamieh was suspended and was unable to resume her position as she failed to be selected for one of the few places available.

Despite the fact that the first accusations were made two years ago, the European External Action Service (EEAS) failed to take any serious action until November 2014, when the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, appointed the French lawyer Jean-Paul Jacqué¹⁴ as an independent member in charge of examining the EULEX Mission’s accusations of corruption. At the same time, the European Ombudsman opened an investigation on the EEAS’s management of the accusations of corruption against EULEX¹⁵.

External pressure has not been limited to the media: the non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch released a report (dated 15 December 2014) denouncing these practices and presented a written request¹⁶ to the High Representative to extend Jacqué’s mandate in the investigation (at first only four months) and its competences.

Jacqué’s report (Review of the EULEX Kosovo Mission’s implementation of the mandate with a particular focus on the handling of the recent allegation) was made public on 14 April on the EEAS webpage, casting some light on important aspects of the Mission’s development.

First, because of the lack of evidence the French lawyer rejected there had been a corruption cover-up in EULEX. However, he recognised the Mission’s endemic problems as regards bad administration and a disastrous communications policy, drawing two main conclusions: that an investigation should have been opened earlier in order to avoid the problems that have later emerged¹⁷ and that EULEX has to be reformed if it is expected to be continued¹⁸ . The latter issue is considered by Jacqué to be essential, since Kosovo is still unable to fend for itself as regards the Mission competences.

Jacqué’s complaint about the deficient communications in the Mission was motivated by the latter’s failure to start up an investigation and by its lack of transparency. Specifically, the report refers to what happened in 2013, when Bernd Borchardt, the Mission’s leader at the time, and Hansjörg Haber, who ran the Civil Planning and Conduct Capability (CPCC) –the authority in charge of planning and operating the civil missions within the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)– created a group to investigate internal corruption in EULEX. Information about the initiative failed to reach either Brussels or Pristina, heightening the perception of a cover up.¹⁹

Although Jacqué denied in his report that there had been any cover-up as regards corruption, his conclusions on EULEX’s lack of transparency and poor management have had an evident effect, damaging the legitimacy of the Mission’s members after years of shepherding local institutions and imposing its principles to combat corruption.

(5) What is the Mission’s future?

In line with the practice since 2008, the expiration of EULEX was again extended by two further years in June 2014. There is now a consensus among the 28 that the most likely outcome is for the Mission to continue beyond 2016. Bearing in mind that EULEX is to be terminated in future, this implies that its objectives have not been achieved and that is still far from having succeeded. A reflection of this is the need to finalise the court cases concerning three types of penal issues: war crimes, organised crimes and corruption.

Among them, those allegedly committed by the leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) are especially noteworthy. Their investigation was divided between, on the one hand, the cases looked into in Kosovo by EULEX judges and, on the other, the allegations of Dick Marty, a Council of Europe senator.

This Swiss senator revealed non-police allegations which concluded that members of the KLA had committed war crimes. The Marty Report was presented to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in November 2011, where it was approved, pointing to collaborators of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) who were responsible for the criminal network in the late 1990s that harvested organs from Serbian POWs to sell them in the international black market.

Given the Marty Report’s endorsement by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, EULEX focused on these crimes by creating a Special Investigation Task Force (SITF). The SITF’s report concluded that there was sufficient proof to prosecute the members of the KLA. Nevertheless, there was a problem of responsibility: which court should pass judgement on these cases? Thus, the allegations remained in the air while no legal sentence was pronounced.

The debate about the shape that this tribunal should adopt is still alive. However, the most plausible solution is the creation of a Kosovar court, separate from the jurisdiction and the rest of the EULEX tribunals, to be established in Kosovo but which would largely operate in another country in order to guarantee the protection of witnesses (an as yet unresolved issue, as in the Drenica Case) and prevent corruption. In addition, its competences should not only be limited to crimes listed in the Marty Report but to war crimes committed during and after the Kosovo conflict also. The advantage of this would be that such a court would be created under the umbrella of Resolution 1244 but be staffed by Kosovars.

On 21 April the Constitutional Court of Kosovo accepted the creation of this Special Tribunal pending its subsequent endorsement by the Kosovo Parliament. The UN put pressure on Pristina to give its approval, adding that should it not be forthcoming the Security Council itself would deal with the matter. As recently stated by Samuel Zbogar, the EU’s Special Representative: ‘This will happen either by the decision of the Kosovo parliament or by the decision of the UN Security Council’.²⁰ Even the US Ambassador in Kosovo has said there would be no objections to its approval in the UN Security Council.²¹

Nevertheless, pressure from the international community has so far been insufficient to force the Kosovo Parliament to act promptly and authorise the establishment of the Special Tribunal. This would require approval by two thirds of the chamber plus two thirds of the minorities’ representatives. Apart from the difficulty of winning over the opposition (the Vetëvendosje parties, Alliance for Kosovo’s Future and Kosovo Initiative), which is still contrary to the idea, 10 government-coalition deputies have also refused to support the new tribunal due to their rejection of the Drenica Case sentence. Thus, while the process has steadily ground to a halt, the Kosovo government is now attempting to modify the law in order to satisfy a majority. Meanwhile, Samuel Zbogar has again insisted that there is ‘no need for delays in setting up the Special Court’.²²

Besides these judicial matters that have an obvious impact on the Mission, there are other external factors that condition its future: on the one hand there are the consequences of the region’s disastrous economic situation and high unemployment rate; on the other, the signing of the Agreement on the normalisation of relations. The latter led to the opening of the borders between Serbia and Kosovo, resulting in a huge outflow of emigrants, with clear consequences for EU member states such as Hungary.

There are evident differences among the EU’s member states’ as regards the Mission’s continuity. Although the 28 agree on the need to ultimately devolve power, some countries are in a greater hurry than others to see the process finalised. Although perceptions about the speed of the transfer of powers to the local authorities and of the Mission’s aims might appear to be related to the stance of each member state regarding the recognition or not of Kosovo’s independence, in practice this is not the case. Belgium supports the recognition of Kosovo but has doubts about speeding up the transfer of competences, and this is directly related to migration issues. Member states with Kosovar minorities place a greater stress on the need to guarantee that once the Mission is wrapped up there should be effective institutions untainted by corruption.

Conclusions

The effectiveness of the EULEX Mission is being questioned, perhaps now more than ever before. Although it is true that some of its objectives have been achieved, such as the transfer of competences in the Empowerment Division and much more slowly in the Executive Division too, and that relations with Serbia have improved since the Brussels Accord, political interference and corruption are still casting a shadow over it.

So far, the battle against the political interference from within the institutions has been lost. The latter’s inefficiency led to the absence of bodies entrusted with protecting the development of civil society. Furthermore, it is in the institutions in which EULEX has been most successful that a certain dependence has paradoxically been generated, with the Kosovar judges submitting to their international colleagues.

Political interference is not the only problem regarding the way Kosovar institutions function. Corruption in the region is still excessive. According to Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer,²³ which measures the citizens’ perception of corruption, in 2013 48% of the people of Kosovo believed that corruption had increased in the previous two years, with the judiciary being the least valued institution. Again, the latter is paradoxical since the Mission was created with the clear objective of establishing an effective Rule of Law in Kosovo. Thus, EULEX cannot be said to have achieved its objective if it has been unsuccessful in combating endemic evil.

Furthermore, it is impossible to establish an institutional supervisory system and the fundamental principles for the efficient Rule of Law if communications are opaque and poor management is prevalent. The fact that the Jacqué Report has confirmed the problem’s continuing existence merely makes it even more evident.

EULEX’s future is therefore uncertain. To counteract the consequences of these events, the Mission has launched a process to evaluate its impact on the ground. The Programmatic Approach²⁴ will require EULEX personnel and their local counterparts to provide monthly information about the Mission’s development in each specialised area. The results obtained will then be compared to the strategic objectives accorded by the member states. This is the first time that the EU will be using a system like this on such a scale. The aim is to guarantee the responsibility of the Mission’s personnel and to measure its action statistically, with the focus on the transfer of competences to local institutions.

Despite the attempts by EULEX to analyse its achievements in order to continue making further progress, the Jacqué Report has placed a fundamental issue under the spotlight: the breakdown of what has so far been the dominant triumphalist rhetoric of those supporting the Mission. And even if EULEX could never be the only solution to Kosovo’s problems, it is still responsible by default.

To conclude, it can be said that reforms within EULEX are the only solution in the short term for a mission that must be very clear that its priority is not to become institutionalised and remain in Kosovo forever but to help with the establishment of the efficient Rule of Law. If the dynamics employed so far to fight political interference, judicial corruption and opacity change, the situation in Kosovo will improve substantially, at the same time stimulating and speeding up the transfer of competences. Otherwise, the EULEX experience will end up being considered an unmitigated failure, seriously damaging the credibility of the EU’s foreign policy in the region.

*About the authors:
Salvador Llaudes, Real Instituto Elcano | @sllaudes

Francisco Sánchez Andrada,Real Instituto Elcano | @curroandrada

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute.
Notes:
¹ A version of this analysis was published in Spanish by the Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos.

In Mexico, breast cancer has been adequately controlled, and is no longer considered a risk of death when it’s diagnosed. The disease is common among women in the capital and the northern states, it ranks first in incidence of malignant neoplasms in females. Representing 11.34 percent of all cancer cases, and there is an overall increase of about a 1.5 per year.

However, in the United States this increase is of five percent per year. In response, a group of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, presented in the framework of the 51st annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) a study which reveals that there is a common gene variant among Hispanic women that reduces the risk of developing breast cancer.

The study showed that one in five Latin American women have this variant known as single nucleotide polymorphism or genetic alteration (SNP) found on chromosome 6q25.

It also identified that one in five Latina women in the US has this genetic variant. Although its function is not yet known, is believed to affect the production of estrogen.

This research scientifically proved that Hispanic-Latino women have a lower rate of breast cancer compared with the US women.

Basic biology is still unable to resolve the association between variant in chromosome 6q25 and reduction of breast cancer, but preliminary trials indicate that affects transcription factors, such as proteins that regulate the expression of an estrogen receptor, according to Dr. Jean René Clemenceau Valdivia oncologist at a Hospital in Mexico City and member of the ASCO.

Also, the Cancer Center of the University of Arizona in collaboration with the universities of Texas in the United States and Sonora and Guadalajara in Mexico, noted similar characteristics between populations of Mexican and Mexican-American women. They found that for every five kilograms of weight a woman gains, a decrease of eight percent in the risk of developing breast is obtained in Mexican and Mexican-American women.

Source: Agencia ID

It has been 20 years since the Srebrenica Massacre and the cheerleaders of the West’s intervention were everywhere to be seen during the recent commemorations. But where were they when it was all happening?

By Paul Gallagher

The region of Yugoslavia that is now constituted as Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) was once the epicentre of a war that has had ramifications for how the world now looks at ‘intervention’ in conflict. This essay will focus on the period leading up to the violent conflict, the war itself and the years following on from the peace. The activities of actors external to BiH will be at the centre of this essay.

The creation of the state of BiH came out of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. During the Cold War Yugoslavia was viewed as a somewhat modern, viable communist country with a growing economy which was almost entirely publicly owned. The population enjoyed many benefits including a one month paid holiday every year, free education, free healthcare, a guaranteed right to employment and a decent standard of living (Parenti, 1999). Parenti (1999) puts forward the notion that the capitalistic West embarked on a ‘concerted’ mission to ‘dismember’ and ‘mutilate’ Yugoslavia in order to install a neo-liberal free market economy more conducive to the predatory form of capitalism that had flourished in the aftermath of the West’s victory in the Cold War.

During the 1970s, in an attempt to expand its industrial base and to increase consumer goods the Yugoslav government borrowed heavily from the West which led to a crippling debt crisis, exacerbated by hyperinflation (Lampe, Prickett, & Adamovic, 1996; Wight, 2014). Yugoslavia, argues Parenti (1999) and Mansouri (2000), was to be the subject of some considerable ‘restructuring’and austerity programmes. To do this the country would require a dose of economic shock therapy utilising international institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF (Klein, 2008). The public sector services and social programmes that had kept Tito’s Yugoslav Republic, with its underlying ethno-nationalist rivalries, united would have to be abolished. The standard of living decreased. Stability eroded. With reference to Maslow’s (1943) Hierarchy of Needs the basic human necessities such as food, shelter, safety and security that had long been provided in this socialist society began to vanish leading to a deterioration in the self-esteem and self-actualisation of the population with future devastating results.

The ‘ultimate goal’ of this treatment, according to Parenti (1999), would be ‘the privatization and Third Worldization of Yugoslavia’ in which this once unified country would be balkanised into a ‘cluster of weak right-wing principalities’; primarily pointing to the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriation Act as evidence of the conscious attempt by the US to ‘dismember’ Yugoslavia. This Act of Public Law provided that any part of Yugoslavia which failed to declare independence within six months would lose US financial supportand that any future aid would only be directed to the separate republics, on condition that they elected democratic parties, approved by the US State Department. Economic sanctions on Belgrade were used as another weapon in the West’s intervention. Yugoslavia was doomed to disintegration.

The argument that external economic intervention led to the subsequent war is compelling. With this in mind, any future interventions that followed should be viewed with caution. Can the subsequent ‘humanitarian’ intervention by the West be categorised as a benign and altruistic undertaking?

The causes and context of the war in Yugoslavia are important. As above, economic instability may be one factor. Ancient ethnic hatreds were put forward as another reason (Blagojevic, 2009). Gagnon (1994) disputes the notion that ethnic nationalist hatreds are the essential, primary cause of the conflict by pointing the finger at the ruling elites, within the ethnic groups themselves, manipulating ethnicity, culture and religion to solidify their own domestic power bases.

The West responded to the conflict engulfing Yugoslavia in various ways; not all being viewed as a success. Samantha Power (2003) argues that the West sat on its hands during the bloodiest period of the war in Yugoslavia. Some believed that this was the correct course. ‘We got no dog in this fight’ was a typical response (James Baker). On the other hand, interventionists were intent on ripping up the Realist rulebook by claiming that the West was morally bound to intervene in the affairs of this sovereign nation to protect the Bosnian people. The intention should be ‘… [T]o help the helpless’, in the words of Anthony Lake (in Mandelbaum, 1996), Clinton’s National Security Adviser. The discourse that ensued in the new 24 hour news cycle on news networks may have played a part in how the US would respond to the conflict, a term that has become known as the ‘CNN effect’ (Robinson, 1999). It has been argued that the reporting of events such as the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995 led to a sea change in US public opinion on the war in BiH and thus a change in US foreign policy. ‘After Srebrenica, nothing would ever be the same’, (Silber and Little, in Rozen, 2002, p.1063). Previously, there had been little appetite to expend US blood and treasure to aid the war torn region.

The West is viewed, especially in the mainstream Western media, as being the saviours of the Bosnian people from ‘unrelenting Serb expansionism’ (Boyd, in Parenti, 1999). However any meaningful intervention to stop the killing stalled. Candidate Clinton had earlier pledged to intervene in Yugoslavia to stop the fighting: President Clinton was more reticent (Mandelbaum, 1996; Smith, 1994). Power (2003, p.307) alludes to the moral ambiguity of the Clinton Administration who chose to ‘blame the victim’ by promoting the story that there were atrocities on ‘all sides’ which led to equivocation. However, the reporting, which blamed the Serbs aggressors, could be viewed as ‘consistently one-sided’ argues Parenti(1999). There is no argument that multiple atrocities and gross violations of human rights were carried out during the course of the conflict (Tabeau, 2009).

Clinton came into his presidency in a world that was trying to come to terms with various new paradigms. What was the role of the preeminent, predominant USA in a unipolar world and should the US become the world’s policeman? Is there a need for NATO in a post-Cold War Europe? Is the United Nations (UN) efficacious in conflict prevention?

Realists such as Mandelbaum (1996) have poured scorn on Clinton’s attempts to ‘help the helpless’ in that, the Clintons policies ‘made things worse’. He cynically characterises the Clinton administration’s response as an attempt to ‘bolster [their own] political standing’ which was suffering from a failure to resolve the problem in BiH. Clinton threatened military intervention early on but failed to carry out such attacks. In a realist sense this inaction is detrimental to the US as it displays an air of weakness thus bolstering potential US challengers.Proponents of Realpolitik did not advise a humanitarian intervention in the Balkans. National sovereignty, the primary tenet of realism, was one block to this. It was also viewed that an intervention was not in the US national interest. In contrast, Ramet (1992, p.98) predicted that the 1991 view of the war as a ‘Yugoslav affair’ soon transformed into a ‘European affair’ and would become ‘one that would affect U.S. interests as well’.

A policy directive from the Clinton administration in May 1994 (Sciolino, 1994) suggested that the UN was ill-equipped to deal with conflicts such as BiH in the future. Strict conditions were laid down as to when the US would consider involving troops in international operations under the auspices of the UN such as the ‘advancement of [US] interests … the presence of clear objectives … [and a clear exit strategy’ (Sciolino, 1994). Presidential Decision Directive 25 attempts to absolve the US of the responsibility of ‘world policeman’ while also undermining the UN as an effective peacekeeping institution (Sciolino, 1994).

The UN’s role in BiH demands scrutiny. Did the UN have a ‘Responsibility to Protect’ the victims (R2P, 2014)? Why were the ‘safe havens’, as set out by a number of UN resolutions, not safe (White, 1997, p.126). Kaldor (2007, p.125) points to the ‘inadequacy of the mandate’ as a possible reason for some failures in BiH. White (1997) says that the UN peacekeepers were forced to concentrate on delivering humanitarian assistance to civilians while avoiding any confrontations with the warring parties due to vulnerability. Diehl, Reifschneider and Hensel (1996) are critical of the UN as effective peacekeepers, peacemakers and peace-builders. They (ibid., p.697 & p.685) find that the short-term goals of the UN’s efforts to stop fighting are ‘not enough to promote long-term conflict resolution’ and that ‘[it may be] … counterproductive in some instances’.

This begs the question, how can any intervention work in a conflict like that in BiH? Does external intervention do more harm than good (Anderson, 1999)? There are many arguments in favour of the notion that the war should have been left to play itself out (Luttwak, 1999; Boyd, 1995). Luttwak, (1999) also accuses the Dutch UN troops of collaboration in the fall of Srebrenica by helping to separate the men from the rest of the population. Should the West have just let the stronger party claim a decisive victory and shorten the conflict or to keep the arms embargo in place (Boyd, 1995); ‘… [t]here are enough arms there already’, proclaimed G.H. Bush (in Power, 2003).

Then came the reports of genocide, ethnic cleansing and concentration camps. Power (2003) talks of the analogies made to the Holocaust in WW2. The Western powers were also compared to the appeasers of 1938 Munich. Lewis (in Power, 2003 p.278) called Bush ‘a veritable Neville Chamberlain’. Dissenters to non-intervention such as Congressman McCloskey recounted the stories of the ghastly brutality visited upon the survivors and witnesses of so many atrocities (Power, 2003). There were arguments as to whether what was happening in BiH could be classed as genocide made clear by Clinton’s Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, (in Power, 2003, p.300) when he questioned whether these ‘… atrocious set of acts … [met] the legal definition of genocide’. McCloskey (in Power, 2003) argued that the threshold was set too high in that Nazi levels of killing should not be the marker for calling out genocide. Power (2003, p.305) talks about the use of wording to downplay events by choosing phrases such as ‘tragedy’ over ‘terror’.

Liberal interventionists reject this theory of non-intervention. They advocate the use of military intervention to protect the weaker victims against the strong oppressors (Kaldor, 2013; Smith, 1994). They rejected realpolitik terms like nations, interests and sovereignty; describing such terminology as dehumanising. Machiavellian amorality should be set aside for a new moralpolitik (Russell-Johnston, 2001). Liberal interventionists find themselves aligned with unlikely allies in the guise of the Neo-conservatives. The neo-cons promote Manichean principles of good and evil when it comes to international politics and see the USA as the preeminent force for good in the world (The Phantom Victory, 2004; Boyd, 1995). They also reject balance of power theories in favour of using the brute power of the US military industrial complex to change the world.

The war ended with the Dayton peace Accords in 1995 however the legacy of the international response is ongoing. BiH remains a country that remains in conflict. There may have been a peace process, which stopped the bloodshed, but the political process is incomplete. The international community still has a say in the internal politics of BiH. The Office of the High Representative (OHR) from the European Union acts as a proconsul overseeing the democratic process. Mladen Ivanic (2005, p.275), a former Foreign Minister of BiH, characterised the international intervention as ‘successful’ but questioned the ‘paradoxically problematic role’ of the OHR into the future. Manning (2006, p.724) expands on this continuing interference in the domestic politics of BiH by questioning the efforts of external state-builders who give primacy to getting the ‘right’ elites into power. Nationalist parties would be sidelined, moderates encouraged, legislation removed, individuals ejected from office (Manning, 2006). This interference mirrors the above 1991 US Foreign Appropriations Act which provided that the US would vet the results of free elections in the separate republics. This display of arrogance by the international community portrays the population of BiH as being incapable of governing themselves and could further the seeds of resentment. Ethno-nationalist ambitions are still evident in BiH most notably in Republika Sprska.

In conclusion, the intervention in the Bosnian conflict could easily be described as messy. Were the origins of the conflict born in the backrooms of Foggy Bottom, the White House, the Pentagon or Wall Street? The lack of any early meaningful intervention to protect the population of BiH could be viewed as an indirect intervention in its own right. Did the international community just leave this war to resolve itself? Did the fighting only really stop when the warring parties had reached their objectives of making their areas ethnically pure? There are many theories floating around the academic journals and far reaches of the World Wide Web as to how this war unfolded. There are more ideas of how to finally resolve the ongoing tensions. It remains to be seen how successful they will be.

Paul Gallagher was injured at his home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in an indiscriminate sectarian gun attack in 1994 in which he was left paralysed and confined to a wheelchair.  He is currently the Chairman of Victims and Survivors Trust – a registered charity supporting victims of conflict.  He is also studying for a Degree in Psychological Trauma Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast.

This article was originally published on Paul Gallagher’s blog, ‘A Journey into the Grey Zone’, and is available by clicking here.

The unilaterally declared humanitarian truce by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen was violated after just a few hours. The allies of the internationally recognized government of Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi and Houthi rebels accuse each other of resuming hostilities.

According to the coalition, the rebels shortly after midnight last night, which was supposed to mark the start of the truce, targeted some areas of the city of Taiz. The Hoputhis instead denounce airforce airstrikes in the Saada and Hajjah provinces.

UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon had called on the sides to “act in good faith” and use “maximum restraint” in case of “isolated truce violations”.

In confirmation of a continuation of hostilities was also a coalition strike in Jebel al-Zaytoun, in the south, which hit its allied pro-government forces killing 12 and injuring around thirty.

In June this year China had blocked India’s proposal to the UN Sanctions Committee to act against Pakistan on the release of 26/11 accused Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi. China had put a ‘technical hold’ on India’s proposal as a permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC). This came as India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Asoke Mukherjee wrote a letter to the UN sanctions committee, saying that Lakhvi’s release was in violation of the UN resolution 1267 dealing with designated entities and individuals. Earlier in April, Lakhvi, had been released from Adiala jail following the Lahore High Court’s dismissal of detention orders issued against.

The furore in India over the Chinese action at the UN drew attention away from a more significant Chinese move in favour of Pakistan. China again stood by Pakistan on terror at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meet at Brisbane on June 21-26, where New Delhi had strongly raised the non-compliance by Islamabad on freezing assets of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its affiliates. This article looks at curbs on the financing of terrorism in the context on India-Pakistan relations.

FATF

The Financial Action Task Force, an inter-governmental body, was founded by the G-7 Group in 1989 to set standards for anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT). The FATF in its functioning has identified ‘jurisdictions’ that pose a risk to the international financial system and works to address their deficiencies in order to improve compliance. The FATF uses the assessments by the International Co-operation Review Group (ICRG), to publicly declare non-compliance through one of its two public documents that are issued three times a year. These public documents are the ‘FATF’s Public Statement’ and the ‘Improving Global AML/CFT Compliance: On-going Process.’ In February 2012, one of these documents, the FATF Public Statement identified Pakistan as having “jurisdictions with strategic AML/CFT deficiencies”.

This designation placed Pakistan on FATF’s ‘grey list’ for not having made sufficient progress in addressing its deficiencies (initially identified in June 2010) and not being committed to an action plan developed with the FATF to address these deficiencies. Simply put, because of weak laws and inadequate actions against money laundering and terror financing. This move proved to be not just a blot on Pakistan but also a major restricting factor in its dealing with the international financial sector.

Implications for Pakistan

According to Pakistani Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, had Pakistan been moved from the grey list to the ‘black’ it would have meant difficulty in opening letters of credit and a four per cent rise in cost of borrowing within the global financial system. On the other hand Pakistan’s exit from the grey list would encourage foreign investment and provide grounds for better assessment of its credit rating in the international market. He said Pakistan to get itself removed from the grey list had brought in legislative changes and then, in collaboration with the State Bank, addressed FATF’s concern regarding the Chaman border point on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s AML/CFT law had been adopted via an ordinance in 2010, but remained deficient due to the government’s inability to pass it into law. The issue dragged on till January 2014, when the FATF cautioned Pakistan that it was now posing “a risk to the international financial system”. It was then that Pakistan realised the gravity of the situation and by June managed to pass two amendments to its Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997, which allowed Pakistani law enforcement agencies to pursue cases of terror financing, alongside anti-money laundering. These amendments brought Pakistani laws in line with international standards set by the FATF. Post-Peshawar attack Pakistan also made AML/CFT part of the National Action Plan against terror and reduced the actionable threshold for transactions to $2 million from $2.5 million.

Off –the-Hook

Consequently the ‘FATF Public Statement of February 27, 2015’ did not name Pakistan and the ‘Improving Global AML/CFT Compliance: ongoing process’ document of February 27 welcomed “Pakistan’s significant progress in improving its AML/CFT regime” and observed that Pakistan had established the requisite legal and regulatory framework to meet its commitments towards the strategic deficiencies identified in June 2010. However, Pakistan despite being off the FATF grey list, is still required to work with Asia Pacific Group on money laundering (APG-ML) to address the full range of AML/CFT issues identified in its mutual evaluation report, in particular, entirely implementing UNSC Resolution 1267.

Ishaq Dar also said that Pakistan’s journey from ‘grey list’ to the ‘white list’ had been strenuous and had taken 21 months. He pointed to the presence of an “unfriendly country” in the FATF which had delayed Pakistan’s removal from the grey list.

Brisbane Meet

At the FATF Plenary meet in Brisbane on June 21-26, 2015, India persisted with its reservations on removing Pakistan from the grey list of countries. India contested the idea of Pakistan’s significant progress on both money laundering and terror financing. It also drew attention to the fact that Pakistan’s counterfeit currency machinery which produces fake Indian currency was still intact and operational and that Pakistan should be placed back on the grey list.

Rebutting Pakistan’s claim that it had frozen the bank accounts of Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD), India placed evidence that JuD was operating through an offshoot, Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation Pakistan (FIF), and was involved in raising terror funds for LeT. Further, Muhammad Iqbal, a founding member of FIF, had been put on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) by the US in August 2014. Iqbal had financed the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) connection used by the terrorists during the 26/11 Mumbai attack.

China, however, felt that Pakistan was progressing well on ensuring compliance within the Asia Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering. China also objected to India raising the issue at the FATF on the grounds that Pakistan was not a member of the grouping. The issue has now been referred to the APG (of which Pakistan is a member) for further deliberation and will then be brought back to the FATF. The meeting at Brisbane saw India and the US act in tandem, while New Zealand, Australia and Russia supported China’s stand.

The FATF episode not only showcases the efficacy of the AML/CFT mechanisms, but also indicates the availability of other options for India to constrict Pakistan’s support to terror groups. There is also an opportunity in such situations for India to remind China of its commitment to fight terrorism globally.

*Monish Gulati is Associate Director (Strategic Affairs) with the Society for Policy Studies. He can be contacted at mgulati@spsindia.in

This article was published by South Asia Monitor.

By Biren Nanda*

China’s economic boom and military modernization have brought it to the forefront of the strategic stakes in the Asia Pacific region. In economic terms China is the number one trading partner of many countries in the Asia Pacific, including India and Australia. On the other hand China’s military aggressiveness in the East and South China Seas and the “US pivot” to Asia have raised the prospects of tensions between China and the United States in the future.

There seems to be a gap between China’s local bullying behavior and her overall strategy and pronouncements, which seem to advocate a more reasoned rise. This begs the question as to whether China’s aggressiveness is based on the premise that US’ power is on the decline and that it can deter the US at least in the region? Does China believe that US pronouncements notwithstanding, the US will not move to contain China? Or is Chinese behavior the result of the gap between the tactical and the strategic – and the result of a well thought out strategy towards the eventual establishment of a dominant power position in the region? There are no precise answers to these questions. There appear therefore, to be grey areas in Chinese and US perceptions regarding each other’s motives and intentions, which could sow the seeds of future conflict in the region.

The National Security Strategy released by the Australian Government in 2013 described the US-China relationship as “the single most influential force in shaping the strategic environment”. For Australia, China is the main trading partner and importer of Australia’s natural resources. The rise of China and the prospect that such a rise will be contested by the United States have led Australian strategic thinkers, like Hugh White, to express the fear that US-China tensions in the future would put Australia in the unhappy position of having to choose between Australia’s alliance partner and her most important trading partner. He has therefore, ventured to suggest that the US must accommodate China’s rise by giving strategic space and perhaps even a sphere of influence in Southeast and East Asia. Hugh White’s critics have pointed to the web of interdependence and growing ties between the US and China, which would preclude the scenario of rising US-China tensions of the sort feared by him.

In India we have witnessed the assertive posture of the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) on our borders. Concern has been expressed on the port calls by Chinese submarines in our neighborhood and on China’s so called “String of Pearls Strategy” of bases and diplomatic ties in the Indian Ocean Region. How concerned should we be about these developments?

As China emerges as a major global power, it will expand its military footprint across the globe, much like that other great power, the US, whose bases surround China. The rapid expansion of China’s naval capabilities and broader military profile is a classic manifestation of its great power status. China’s growing reliance on ports across the Indian Ocean Region may just be a response to its perceived vulnerability, given the logistical constraints that it faces due to the distance of the Indian Ocean waters from its own territory.

While in light of the recent history of India-China relations we have reason to be concerned about these developments, it is also important to acknowledge the following: First, India’s box seat position in the Indian Ocean Region, straddling major shipping lanes, gives it a unique advantage that the PLA Navy is unlikely to be able to neutralize in the foreseeable future. Second, though China has been involved in constructing port infrastructure in our neighborhood, it may be premature to describe these facilities as bases. Third, while we correctly perceive a potential threat from the Chinese Navy in the Indian Ocean Region, we have to recognize that China also has legitimate security interests in the Indian Ocean Region and needs to protect the security of her sea lanes of communications.

The question then is whether the Chinese have gone beyond their legitimate interests in developing relationships in the Indian Ocean Region. Finally, we must note that to advance our own interests, India too, has developed strong maritime security relationships with Mauritius, Madagascar, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Oman and Qatar. Lastly unlike Australia, India’s policy of strategic autonomy and the diversity of her political, security and economic partners gives her ample strategic space to craft her response to China’s rising ambitions.

China’s assertiveness and the United States’ uncertain response are encouraging countries like India and Australia to strengthen their bilateral security ties. In 2009 the two countries declared their Strategic Partnership, which included the intent to develop stronger security ties. Since then we have exchanged visits of defence ministers and have established a number of dialogue platforms, including the annual Defense Policy Talks, Service-to-Service Staff Talks, and a Track 1.5 Defense Strategic Dialogue. The two countries have signed bilateral MOUs on combating terrorism, defence cooperation and information sharing. During the recent visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Australia in November 2014, the two prime ministers released a Framework for Security Cooperation. The framework consists of an action plan for cooperation in foreign policy; defense policy planning and coordination; counter-terrorism and other transnational crimes; border protection, coast guard and customs; disarmament, non-proliferation, civil nuclear energy and maritime security; disaster management and peacekeeping; and cooperation in regional and multilateral fora. (India and Australia work closely on security issues in regional fora like the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the ADMM+, the IORA and the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium).

The navies of the two countries have been at the forefront of security cooperation between the two countries. In recent years there has been a steady stream of goodwill visits by Indian Navy ships at Australian ports. This year, in a landmark event, the two navies are slated to organize their first bilateral naval exercise

*Biren Nanda was formerly high commissioner to Australia, ambassador to Indonesia and Consul General in Shanghai. He can be reached at editor@spsindia.in

By Gaurav Agnihotri

The undisputed king of oil and gas is making some moves that could change the face of the global refining sector.

In June 2015, Saudi Arabia pumped a record 10.564 million barrels a day, a record level. As if being the world’s biggest exporter of oil was not enough, the desert kingdom is now looking to conquer the refining sector as it has quickly become the fourth largest refiner in the world. “Saudis have moved into the product business in a big way,” said Fereidun Fesharaki of FGE Energy. With Saudi Arabia’s refined fuel contributing to the global supply glut, what will be its impact on the refining markets especially those in Asia?

How will Saudi Arabia Capture Market Share Downstream?

A refinery’s success is measured by its ‘gross refining margins’. The gross refining margin is nothing but the difference between the value of the refined products and price of the crude oil. In case of Saudi Arabia, the price of crude oil would be extremely low. “The crude is so cheap it’s pretty much free for them, the margins are going to be massive. It makes trade flows in products very different,” said Amrita Sen of Energy Aspects.

There is little doubt then as to why the Saudis are shifting their focus to domestic refining. Along with acquiring a controlling stake in Korea’s S- Oil, the desert kingdom is commissioning a new refinery in Jizan which would have a capacity of around 400,000 barrels per day when it begins operations in 2017. Jizan will come on top of Saudi Arabia’s two other 400,000 bpd- refineries at Yasref and Yanbu, and will turn the country into a major global player in the downstream sector, expanding its campaign for market share beyond just crude oil.

Is Saudi Arabia likely to win a potential price war against Asian producers of diesel?

By offering almost 2.8 million barrels of low-sulphur diesel to Asian and European markets, the Saudis are directly competing with Asian refiners, potentially sparking a price war. In fact, at $5.60 the Asian refining margins have fallen by almost 50 percent from June this year and are expected to drop by a further 30 percent.

“We see refining margins weakening on worsening diesel fundamentals, particularly east of Suez, though gasoline should be supportive. A lot of diesel will be trapped in the Far East and this will lead to run cuts in places like Japan and South Korea as the arbitrage to the west will be closed by growing Middle Eastern supplies” said Robert Campbell of Energy Aspects.

On the other hand, it won’t be easy for Saudi Arabia – Chinese refiners are also producing more gasoline, for which demand is still strong. Moreover, Indian refiners are now moving away from Saudi Arabia which was previously India’s largest crude oil supplier. Indian refiners are now buying more crude oil from Nigeria, Iraq, Venezuela and Mexico. As a result, Saudi Arabia was forced to offer discounts on its heavy and sour grade of crude oil to its Asian customers.

Still, Saudi Arabia can likely wait out the competition. Just as they have kept their crude oil production levels intact, it is possible that the Saudis will maintain their current refining output in spite of falling refining margins and eventually end up winning the price war against Asian producers.

However, one cannot easily neglect the Indian and Chinese refiners. Let us consider the case of Indian private refiners Essar and Reliance, which are among the most complex refineries in the world (refineries which are capable of processing heavier and cheaper crude). These two refineries have seen great success recently, following the recent dip in oil prices after a deal was reached between the P5+1 and Iran, and are likely to build upon their already impressive refining margins (Gross refining margin for Essar refinery was $9.04 per barrel while that of Reliance was $8.70 per barrel in first quarter of 2015).

So, who will reap the benefits of the low prices?

Given current market conditions, the Asian demand for diesel has reduced mainly due to the weakening Chinese market, while demand for gasoline is increasing in India, Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. The price for diesel is expected to fall, and gasoline prices will also continue to fall if there are no run cuts in the Asian refineries.

This all translates into lower prices of refined fuels will eventually benefit Asian customers who will pay less for transportation, basic commodities and essential services.

Source: OilPrice.com

By Afaq Hussain and Shakti Sinha*

The people of Kashmir are hopeful the PDP-BJP government, in power in the state of Jammu & Kashmir, will take up local concerns at the national level. The “Agenda for Alliance” released by the state government in March spoke about many issues, including political and developmental concerns. We would argue that one important issue deserves more detailed attention — the largely unexplored subject of “Cross-LoC Trade”.

In 2008, barter trade commenced across the Line of Control as part of a Confidence Building Measure (CBM) between India and Pakistan. The measure is considered one of the most significant CBMs taken by the two countries in recent history. This was expected to enhance economic cooperation between the two sides of Kashmir and eventually between India and Pakistan. Though initially this trade was in the limelight and did serve its purpose, but over the last few years its benefits seem to have been clouded by other “considerations”. It is of utmost importance that government looks into cross-LoC trade from the lens of the Valley, for them to make astute policies that would deliver politically, socially and economically.

In recent years, the term LoC has often being referred to as Line of Commerce and even Line of Cooperation. This is not surprising as trade volumes have shown a substantial increase despite trade being on barter terms, lack of proper communication channels, absence of a banking system, dearth of legal enforcement of contracts and, limited number of trade days and tradable goods. LoC trade has expanded from US$0.3 million in 2008-09 to $97.2 million in 2011-12.

There is a need to build on this since the potential is immense. Interaction with traders bears this out. There is tremendous zeal amongst people on both sides to further cross-LoC linkages. Trade across the LoC would serve as a source of employment, especially for the local youth. Such linkages would also offer Kashmiris an opportunity to reunite and associate with family members and friends, despite being on opposing sides of the LoC line. The development of cross-LoC trade should, thus, be a major priority of the Peoples Democratic Party-Bharatiya Janata Party (PDP-BJP) alliance as this trade offers a host of economic prospects to the state, in terms of employment generation, revenue generation and contributions to state GDP.

In addition to basic measures, increasing the number of vehicles, increasing the tradable commodities, promoting tourism and travel, fostering communication amongst people from both sides, encouraging greater stakeholder engagement — required to give LoC trade a boost, it is important to retain and preserve the character of the initiative. Conferences, consultations and talks focused on promoting cross-LoC trade usually dwell on the aforementioned measures but overlook the need to make the people of Kashmir feel that the government recognises the importance of this trade. The optics of such recognition cannot be underestimated.

Undoubtedly, the six-decade-long Kashmir dispute has had tremendous human and economic cost. Cross-LoC trade deserves serious and immediate attention because the short and long term impact of trade across divided Jammu and Kashmir would have major implications for the region. Based on repeated interactions with numerous stakeholders, it becomes clear that if both national governments give this trade proper attention and focus, it has the potential to reap positive economic benefits to the state and, in the long run, to the two nations.

At a geo-strategic and micro level, the importance of LoC trade needs to be understood in the context of the free flow of trade raising prosperity levels of people on both sides of the LoC and enabling them to become key stakeholders in the peace process. At a macro level, the governments can use this as a means of mitigating the long drawn out conflict in the region. Economic benefits have always served as a means of powerful conflict resolution. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been emphasizing the importance of trade and greater regional integration. The LoC trade fits in completely with his agenda. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is on the same page in recognising the importance of bilateral trade. Despite the recent flare-up on the LoC, the need to build on the Ufa summit is important. A peaceful border and neighbourhood will ultimately help the development agenda of India.

Governments on both sides should use the prospering cross-LoC trade to provide the much-needed boost to the presently latent India-Pakistan relationship. It would call for courage and imagination. Recent developments in the larger neighbourhood, particularly on the subcontinent’s northwest, offers both hope and challenge. Stated positions would have to be discarded and agility shown both in taking advantage of unexpected openings and in countering adverse trends. Strengthening cross-LoC trade is a relatively low-hanging fruit that would deliver domestically and externally.

*Afaq Hussain is Director and Shakti Sinha is Chair – Policy Research Group Bureau of Research on Industry and Economic Fundamentals, New Delhi. They can be reached at editor@spsinida.in

By K.P.S. Gill*

A day-long standoff between the Punjab Police and three terrorists who had holed up in an abandoned housing complex in the Dinanagar Police Station campus in the Gurdaspur District of Punjab in the early hours of July 27, 2015, ended with the killing of the last of the three terrorists just after 5 pm. A Superintendent of Police and three Home Guards also lost their lives in this gratuitous attack, which included the killing of three civilians in random shootings by the terrorists that led up to the final denouement at the Police Station. Separately, five bombs were found and defused on the Amritsar-Pathankot railway track in Gurdaspur, and initial speculation has linked these to the same group.

There are few surprises here: preliminary evidence, including data on two GPS devices recovered from the slain terrorists, indicates that they entered India from the Shakargarh area of Pakistan; while conclusive identification is yet to be made, there is little doubt that these are Islamist terrorists; the pattern of the attack bears striking resemblance to a succession of so called fidayeen attacks in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K); the Centre claims that it had been warning Punjab of an imminent attack for some time; the Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal claims that the Centre provided no intelligence of any impending threat and had also failed in its duty to prevent infiltration across the international border. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has declared, once again, that India would give a “befitting reply” to this new provocation from Pakistan. Nevertheless, initial reports suggest that talks with Pakistan are to continue and the scheduled meeting of Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Narendra Modi in 2016 is still on. Jitendra Singh, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office, speaking even while the operation was ongoing, asserted that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) – the principal sponsor of terrorism in the South Asian region – was likely to be behind this latest attack. Several commentators also speculated that the terrorists were probably affiliated to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Islamist terrorist formation that has long enjoyed the open and enthusiastic support of the Pakistani state.

All this is par for the course, but there are elements that need closer attention. First, the attack is widely being spoken as an aberration, because it occurred in Punjab; others are speaking of it as an ‘overflow’ from J&K, the ‘principal target’ of the Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorists. There is a deeply erroneous reading of the situation here. Over the past years, locations across India have been targeted by the Islamist terrorists; these are not just attacks ‘in J&K’, or ‘on Mumbai’ or ‘on Bodh Gaya’ or ‘on Gurdaspur’; State, city or district jurisdictions may have relevance in terms of tactical responses, but it is folly to believe that the ambitions or the operations of our enemies are in any way circumscribed by these internal arrangements. These attacks are systematically directed against India. Specific targets may be dictated by transient considerations of capacity, tactics or opportunity; but at core, this is a long term strategy to weaken India on every possible occasion, by every available device. Regrettably, our leaderships, particularly in the political, security and intelligence spheres, tend to lapse quickly into complacence regarding regions that are not subjected to sustained violence, despite visible vulnerabilities and threats. Gurdaspar is an obvious case in point; this is an area bordering Pakistan, with a history of volatility, significant vulnerabilities along the border, particularly to drug smuggling – another ‘industry’ actively supported by the Pakistani state; and disturbing legacies of deep involvement in the Khalistani terrorist movement that ravaged Punjab for over 13 years, through the 1980s and early 1990s. There have been continuous intelligence flows indicating that the ISI has been pressuring the many ‘rump elements’ of the defeated Khalistani movement – who Pakistan continues to host and fund in the hope of a possible revival – demanding that they ‘do something’ in Punjab to earn their keep. That they have failed is proof of the degree to which their ideology and networks were completely defeated in Punjab, the complete absence of traction that their occasional efforts have met, and the capacities and penetration that the Punjab Police and intelligence continue to retain. Nevertheless, Pakistan’s intentions and objectives in Punjab have never been in doubt, and the prospect that they could employ different instrumentalities – including the Islamist terrorists in their stables – is something we should have been completely prepared for, and utterly unsurprised by.

Our focus on ISI in the frenzied discussions that follow every new attack is also at least partially misdirected and strategically misleading. The ISI, in particular, has been magnified in the popular imagination into a formidable, indeed, monstrous entity. But this is the same ISI that we defeated comprehensively in Punjab. This is no remarkable, invincible organisation. But despite our national obsession with the ISI, its capacities and its proxies have never been the target of a sustained national strategy and campaign. We have reacted in isolation, locally, to each of its provocations; and slunk back into grateful complacency whenever and wherever we have been spared its venomous attention for any length of time. This is hardly the approach that is going to counter, leave alone defeat, a relentless adversary operating under an ideology of uncompromising hatred based on a deeply held, albeit perverse, Faith.

Crucially, however, our problem is not the ISI alone. Islamist terrorists the world over are, today, operating under the umbrella of an overarching Islamist terrorist Internationale, of which ISI is as much a part as is the Islamic State (IS, formerly Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham, ISIS), al Qaeda, and numerous rag tag Islamist terrorist formations that are proliferating across the world. These groups are not working in isolation, nor is Pakistan their only state sponsor. The virulent ideology of Islamist extremism that underpins all Islamist terrorist groups is shared by numerous states – most prominently including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. While these states and the many ‘non-state actors’ may have their own turf wars, disputes about command and control, about priorities, and about tactics, on ideology and in broad strategic orientation, this is a single complex. And as far as India is concerned, there is an identity of purpose across this entire complex: this is a ‘region of disbelief’, a land where the kafir has escaped rightful Islamist domination, and a necessary theatre of ‘re-conquest’. Billions of petro-dollars, injected overwhelmingly through a range of illegal channels, have, over the decades, funded the proliferation of Wahabi-Salafists mosques and madrasas across India, and particularly in its most sensitive and unstable concentrations – including J&K and along other vulnerable borders. We may, for the moment, rejoice in the fact that very few Indians have been tempted to join IS in Iraq and Syria – but hundreds have certainly gone across to join jihadi groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan. To believe that the hundreds of thousands of Indians who are currently being exposed to the distorted doctrines of Salafist and extremist Islam, will forever remain impervious to the seduction of the siren song of the Islamist terrorist jihad, is to ignore the violent realities that are sweeping across West Asia, North Africa and parts of South Asia today, and that have deeply infected even the tiny populations of Muslims in the affluent West.

There is one aspect of the Dinanagar incident that is of significance in this context. Some criticism is now being levelled against the Punjab Police, both for its decision to keep the better equipped and trained Indian Army and National Security Guard (NSG) out of the operation, as well as for various aspects of its own response. A tactical response assessment, based on a minute by minute examination of responses of this entire operation must, of course, precede any authoritative and prudent critique; but certain deficiencies were clearly visible. The absence of protective gear among even the ‘elite’ Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team leading the response; poor training visible in the clustering of groups of policemen, in postures during firing, in their movements, and some morbidly obese individuals in the Force, are all elements that have been swooped down upon by those who seek to highlight the negatives – and rightly so. But the determination of the Punjab Police and its leadership to handle the response on its own, despite the presence of better equipped, better protected and better trained teams of central Forces on location, and despite some pressure to deploy these, is commendable. The Director General of Police, Sumedh Singh Saini chose to lead from the front and whatever one may say of the quality of the response of his men, their motivation, their dedication to the task, their courage, and indeed, even the pugnacious attitude of some of the wounded, cannot be denied. This is a tremendous change from the characteristic whining and complaining by most State Police Forces in the wake of a terrorist incident, and the eagerness with which an intervention by central Forces is awaited and accepted.

Despite the visible deficiencies of the response of the Punjab Police, this is the only sustainable model to protect against the depredations of terrorists and extremists of various hues across unpredictable locations across the country. The Army and NSG cannot be everywhere, and cannot be deployed within an acceptable time frame at every new location of terrorist attack. Local authorities cannot, and must not, wait interminably for the Centre to send in appropriately trained or equipped Forces. The local Police, the first responders, must be ready, willing and highly motivated to react immediately and effectively on their own, and must take rightful pride in so responding. Every crisis across India cannot be handled from New Delhi. Decentralization is absolutely necessary, certainly in security matters.

There is tremendous latent danger in our regional environment and across the world today. The threat has been substantially contained within India, but it would be unwise to assume that this will forever remain the case. Police Forces and local intelligence across the country – and including Punjab – have been subjected to a continuous process of deprivation and decay. There must be a concerted effort, now, to strengthen the working of all Police Stations, their fortification, the improvement of personnel profiles and capabilities, technologies, weaponry and processes. This will not only be our most effective response to the challenge of terrorism, it will bring about a comprehensive transformation in the security profile of the country.

Our greatest threats lie in the weakness, the corruption and the degeneration of our own institutions and leaderships. We must, of course, defend against the machinations of our external enemies; but we must protect, even more urgently, against the enemy within.

* K.P.S. Gill
Publisher, SAIR; President, Institute for Conflict Management

By Sanchita Bhattacharya*

The Supreme Court (SC) of Pakistan on July 22, 2015, observed that the war against terrorism could not be fought without choking funds to terror outfits. The Court expressed grave concern over the Federal Government as well as the Provincial Governments for their failure to compile the baseline data pertaining to sources of funding of local as well as International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) operating in the country.

Though the Apex Court did not directly blame the Pakistani establishment for involvement in funding terror groups, it is widely believed internationally that Islamabad continues with this policy.

During the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meet at Brisbane in Australia in June 2015, India had strongly raised the issue of non-compliance by Islamabad on freezing assets of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its affiliates. India pointed out that Muhammad Iqbal, the founding member of Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF), one of LeT’s many front organisations, had been put on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) by the United States in August 2014. Iqbal had made the payment to purchase Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) used by perpetrators of November 26, 2008, (26/11) Mumbai attacks. According to sources, India with the support of allies included the United States (US), managed to derail China’s bid, backed by Australia, to shield Pakistan on the issue of terror financing.

Several countries – including Pakistan’s “all weather friend” China; Russia, which in recent times have started moving closer to Pakistan to counter India’s perceived improving relations with the US; and Australia – knowingly or unknowingly fell prey to Pakistani propaganda that it was doing its level best and submitting reports to the Asia Pacific Group (APG), which works in collaboration with FATF. Nevertheless, FATF finally decided in Brisbane, supporting India’s argument, that, though Pakistan was not part of FATF, it was part of APG, and its enforcement of targeted financial sanctions against terrorism should be subject to monitoring by FATF through APG.

Interestingly, on February 27, 2015, during the FATF meeting at Paris, Pakistan’s name was put into the category of “Jurisdictions no longer Subject to the FATF’s On-Going AML/CFT Compliance Process”. This list included seven countries, including Albania, Namibia, Kuwait, Cambodia, Zimbabwe and Nicaragua, apart from Pakistan. Explaining Pakistan’s position, FATF had then observed,

The FATF welcomes Pakistan’s significant progress in improving its AML/CFT [Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism] regime and notes that Pakistan has established the legal and regulatory framework to meet its commitments in its action plan regarding the strategic deficiencies that the FATF had identified in June 2010. Pakistan is therefore no longer subject to the FATF’s monitoring process under its on-going global AML/CFT compliance process. Pakistan will work with APG as it continues to address the full range of AML/CFT issues identified in its mutual evaluation report, in particular, fully implementing UNSC [United Nations Security Council] Resolution 1267.

On October 28, 2011, FATF had expressed its disappointment regarding five countries, including Pakistan, stating:

The FATF is not yet satisfied that the following jurisdictions have made sufficient progress on their action plan agreed upon with the FATF. The most significant action plan items and/or the majority of the action plan items have not been addressed. If these jurisdictions do not take sufficient action to implement significant components of their action plan by February 2012, then the FATF will identify these jurisdictions as being out of compliance with their agreed action plans and will take the additional step of calling upon its members to consider the risks arising from the deficiencies associated with the jurisdiction.

On missing the deadline, Pakistan was blacklisted by FATF on February 16, 2012. Later, in June 2012 FATF had reiterated that laws on counter-terrorism financing and anti-money laundering in Pakistan either did not exist or were ineffective. Further, in October 2012, FATF included Pakistan in its Public Statement, underlining continuing deficiencies in its AML/CTF regime.

Pakistan had first been publicly identified by the FATF in February 2008 for deficiencies in its AML/CTF regime. On February 28, 2008, FATF urged Pakistan to continue its efforts to improve its AML/CFT laws to come into closer compliance with international AML/CFT standards and to work closely with the APG to achieve this.

In response to mounting concern over money laundering, FATF had been established by the G-7 Summit that was held in Paris in 1989. FATF is a policy‐making body, whose objectives include setting standards to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism and supporting implementation of these standards. At present FATF has 36 members (including India) along with two observers. APG is something of a mini‐FATF and is committed to the effective implementation and enforcement of standards set by FATF.

Developments at FATF meets in 2015 clearly indicate that the international community, or at least sections thereof, have either failed to understand the Pakistani design or are willingly attempting to underplay Islamabad’s role in international terrorism and its willful failure to apply civilized norms of government and enforcement to curb the menace. This is despite the mounting evidence that nothing has changed on the ground to suggest that Pakistan has stopped the export of terror and the funding of terror groups.

Indeed, as recently as on July 7, 2015, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan gave a clear indication to the Upper House (Senate) of Pakistan’s Parliament that JuD, the “public face” of LeT, was unlikely to be banned and that, “JuD has been on observation under Section 11 D of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997 since 15 November, 2003. The activities of JuD are monitored by law enforcement agencies and if report of any of such activity (having connection with LeT) that fulfils requirement of Section 11 B of ATA was presented, the organisation shall be proscribed.” Section 11 B of ATA 1997 provides for the proscription a terror organisation, while Section 11 D is meant to keep organisations under observation where the Federal Government has reason to believe that an organisation is acting in a manner that suggests it may be linked to terrorism.

Crucially, JuD has been designated a terrorist organisation by the US, UK, the European Union, Russia, Australia and, of course, India. JuD’s ‘chief’ Saeed, the mastermind of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, openly engages in the collecting funds to carry out his ‘charity work’ – and the organisation is widely acknowledged as a front of LeT. Despite international exposure and opprobrium, the Pakistani Government continues to contribute to his various ‘charities’. The Pakistan Muslim League-led Punjab State Government, for instance, has long provided financial support to JuD for its ‘welfare’ activities. A grant-in-aid of PKR 61.35 million was given to the administrator of the group’s training camp Markaz-e-Taiba in the Provincial budget for fiscal year 2013–14. The budget also included an allocation of PKR 350 million for a knowledge park at Muridke – JuD’s headquarters – and various other development initiatives across Punjab.

On March 25, 2015, Indian Minister of State for Home Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary informed the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Indian Parliament) that Pakistan, through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) continued to aid terror activities in India by providing shelter, training, patronage and financial assistance to terrorists.

Meanwhile, Pakistan continues to pump increasing volumes of Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICNs) into India and its neighbourhood in its campaign to provide finances for Islamist terrorists, and to destabilize the Indian Economy. According to a July 2014 report quoting the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Sri Lanka and Maldives have been identified as two new transit destinations for FICN, with Chennai in Tamil Nadu as the point of arrival. An unnamed IB official stated, “Until now, FICN was known to come from Bangladesh and Nepal. The addition of two more neighbours to this list is rather worrying.” Moreover, the ISI-run mafia engaged in production of FICN has altered patterns of circulation, increasingly emphasizing lower denomination notes, INR 500 and below, as compared to an overwhelming flow of INR 1,000 notes in the past. According to a report by the Central Economic Intelligence Bureau (CEIB), “Pakistani operators based in Nepal, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand act as recipients of FICN from Pakistan as well as conduits to the distribution channels in India through air and land border.”

Under the circumstances, the apparent eagerness of several members of FATF, and of the organisation itself, to let Pakistan off the hook is certainly surprising. In the present and deeply unstable regional and international environment, it would have been expected that the most stringent standards would have been imposed on suspected state sponsors of terrorism – a status that few in the global community could honestly deny to Pakistan.

*Sanchita Bhattacharya
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

By Deepak Kumar Nayak*

On July 20, 2015, at least 62 persons, including three Security Force (SF) personnel, were injured when agitating cadres of Terai-based parties clashed with the Police in several areas of Janakpur, Mahottari, Parsa and Saptari Districts in the Terai region of Nepal.

The protestors also targeted the leaders of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) and Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M). The CPN-UML leader and former Prime Minister (PM) Madhav Kumar Nepal was attacked with chairs and stones by protesting cadres at Gaur municipality in Rautahat District; cadres of Madhesi Morcha, the Mohan Baidya-led Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-Maoist-Baidya) and the Matrika Yadav-led Communist Party of Nepal – Maoist (CPN-Maoist-Matrika) pelted stones at UCPN-M Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda in the Mirchaiya area of Siraha District; protestors also hurled three Petrol bombs targeting the vehicle carrying Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat in Suryamati VDC (Village Development Committee) in Nuwakot District on July 20. Apart from these attacks on leaders, protestors also vandalised public properties.

Again on July 21, 2015, 75 persons, including SF personnel, were injured as protestors clashed with SFs in several areas of Bara, Dhanusha, Janakpur, Rupandehi Districts in Terai, and in Makwanpur which shares a border with the Terai.

On the same day, July 21, more than two dozen cadres of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal (RPP-N, a conservative national party) including lawmaker Ganesh Thapa, were injured in a clash with Police in Hetauda, the District headquarters of Makwanpur. The clash ensued after a group of cadres, led by RPP-N Chairman Kamal Thapa, forcefully entered into the hall where public feedback collection on the Draft Constitution was under way, and vandalised chairs and the stage, demanding re-establishment of the Hindu state.

On July 22, 2015, RPP-N, enforced a bandh (general shut down) in the Hetauda area in Makwanpur. Daily life was hit hard due to the bandh in Jhapa District as well.

Further, on July 24, 2015, normal life across Nepal was hit hard by the bandh enforced by the Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-Maoist-Chand), protesting against the Constitution drafting process and the Lipu-Lekh agreement, a trade agreement signed by India and China to expand border trade at the Lipu-Lekh Pass – a piece of land in Nepal bordering the two neighboring countries – signed on May 15, 2015. The bandh enforcers had vandalized five vehicles in Kathmandu and three in the Lalitpur District. Police arrested 52 persons, including CPN-Maoist-Chand’s senior leader Tilak Pariyar and Sharad Rasaili, Chairperson of All Nepal National Free Students Union-Revolutionary (ANNFSU-R), the student wing of the CPN-Maoist-Chand, from various parts of Kathmandu. Seven persons were arrested from the Banepa area of Kavre District, which shares a border with the Terai region, as they were organising a ‘torch procession’ on the eve of the bandh.

These recent incidents of violent protests and bandhs followed the July 9, 2015, decision of the four major parties to collect public opinion on the provisions of the draft Constitution. Those opposing the decision – National Madhes Shadbhavana Party (NMSP), Tarai Madhes Democratic Party (TMDP), Sadbhavana Party (SP) and United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF) – have decided to stall the process. Notably, soon after the decision taken by the four major parties on the issue, these groups had threatened severe protests if the major political parties did not pay heed to their principal demand, the inclusion of provisions in the Draft Constitution for Nepal to be federated into 11 provinces as recommended by the State Restructuring Commission formed in 2011, and not into eight as agreed in the 16-point Agreement.

Significantly, violent protests and bandhs continue to haunt Nepal intermittently as the country struggles to resolve the residual tensions of decades of precedent turmoil. At its peak, insurgency-related fatalities in Nepal stood at 4,896 – 3,992 Maoists, 666 SF personnel and 238 civilians – in a single year, 2002. According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), the country has registered no insurgency-related fatalities since August 24, 2012, when unidentified assailants killed the general secretary of the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF)-affiliated Factory Workers Union (FWU), Rama Shankar Mandal in the Birgunj, area of Parsa District. However, the country has recorded 26 incidents of street violence and bandhs leading to four killings and 174 injuries since then.

Just between February 28, 2015, and March 30, 2015, during an earlier cycle of political turmoil, 83 persons, including 67 cadres of the UCPN-M-led 30-party alliance, 15 Policemen and one minor were injured when sporadic clashes erupted between the agitating activists of the alliance and Police in different parts of the country. The protestors were demanding that political parties reach a consensus on drafting the new Constitution. According to the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB), the average direct cost of general strikes in Nepal stood at Nepali Rupee (NPR) 1.8 billion per strike day and NPR 27 billion per year, at current prices, over 2008-2013.

Meanwhile, amidst all these violent protests, the Constituent Assembly (CA) concluded the process of collection of feedback on the Draft Constitution on July 21, 2015. The CA had stipulated two days (July 20–July 21) for feedback collection. A total of 33,316 suggestions through various means of communications were collected from 240 electoral constituencies. These included 20,722 suggestions through website; 8,800 by email; 2,471 from toll-free numbers; 1,080 through fax; and 243 through postal service and direct submission at the CA Secretariat. Some notable suggestions which came from the public, include holding of direct elections for key political positions such as President, Prime Minister, lawmakers, and heads of ward committees of municipal or VDC committees; fixing education qualification of executive heads and lawmakers; determining the names and boundaries of the federal units by the CA itself; removing secularism and restoring Nepal as a Hindu State; among others.

The Constitution writing process, incorporating the views collected from the masses, is now approaching completion, and it will be necessary for the CA to resist the pressure that is being exerted by certain groups with vested interests. Indeed, during an interview on June 26, 2015, Prime Minister Koirala had already declared,

There is no reason to doubt the trajectory of new Constitution. It has already entered a process. Every Committee of the Constituent Assembly is working on war footing. There is not a moment to waste. You might consider the Constitution done and dusted. No force can stop it now. There is no time like now to reconstruct the country and take it on the path of development and prosperity. The recent disaster has only added to the urgency. Our commitment is peace, development, democracy and prosperity and there is no better time to institutionalize them.

A time bound approach and an inclusive Constitution incorporating public feedback will certainly help stabilize Nepal and create the conditions to meet the country’s many other challenges. Crucially, according to a World Bank report released on June 16, 2015, quake-hit Nepal needs fund equivalent to one third of its economy to recover from the disaster, which killed nearly 9,000 people in April-May 2015. The Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) prices the damage at USD 5.15 billion, losses at USD 1.9 billion and consequently recovery needs at USD 6.6 billion. Unless the political turmoil is brought to an end, and a final Constitution is established to guide the policies and practices of successor Governments, the urgent requirements of reconstruction and relief cannot be successfully addressed.

*Deepak Kumar Nayak
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

Because Moscow cannot cut spending on oil and gas as that sector is too closely tied to Putin, cannot cut spending on defense because of the military buildup, and cannot attract outside investment because of sanctions, the Kremlin is putting all the burden on the population, reducing effective demand, and making the situation even worse.

Indeed, Aleksey Mikhaylov says this week, by cutting social spending and especially pensions, the regime is dousing the fire with gasoline and “only deepening the crisis because the main problem of the current crisis is the decline of consumer and investment demand. And [these measures] reduce consumer demand” (profile.ru/rossiya/item/98652-za-vse-zaplatit-narod).

As one would expect, Vladimir Putin and his government have sought to put the best face on things, arguing that the situation could have become far worse than it is. That may be so, but on the horizon are three external developments and a slew of internal ones that are certain to make the situation much worse and soon.

The resolution of the Iranian crisis has already sent oil prices down and the end of the embargo will send them down more. The Federal Reserve Bank of the US will begin to raise interest rates in September drawing more capital to America. And Greece will probably leave the euro zone, forcing a further devaluation of Russia’s hard currency holdings.

But these “’unexpected developments’” pale in comparison with the problems at home, the commentator suggests. The government has been playing games with statistics to make things look less bad, like not including Crimea in terms of costs but including it in terms of income.

Moreover, the Russian government’s decision to try to balance the budget on the backs of the population by cutting pensions and reducing social spending has had the effect of cutting consumer demand at precisely the time when such demand could play a positive role in getting the Russian economy out of its slump.

Government spokesmen insist that the crisis is a cyclical one in which a rapid decline will be followed by a rapid recovery. To be sure, Mikhaylov says, there are some cyclical elements in the situation. But the explanation for the current situation is to be found elsewhere and not just in foreign sanctions.

Much of the reason for the current crisis lies with what are typically called “’structural problems,” a term traditionally used in a situation when regimes are trying to make the defense of property, competition and transparency more available. But “it is obvious that in recent years and especially in the last one, Russia has gone in exactly the opposite direction.”

“The slow growth of the economy and the high outflow of capital began under the impact of structural factors long before sanctions the decline of world prices for oil,” he points out. “The last two circumstances only accelerated and intensified processes that were already going on. And the Russian economy would have stopped even without them.”

Despite the crisis, he continues, “we continue to move along a course against a normal market economy, strengthening the state sector, monopolizing markets, ‘direct administration’ from the authorities, and the defenselessness of business before the force structures of the state. This will not allow the Russian economy to renew growth.”

In this situation, the Russian Central Bank has not been able to help the government deal with the crisis. “Just the reverse.” But “it has done this not out of ill will but out of extreme shakiness of the achieved financial stability it the Russian market. The RCB leadership understands the current financial stabilization is decisive: under quiet waters are swimming hungry sharks.”

This fall and winter are going to be “’hot’” for the bank: “inflation will grow and the ruble exchange rate will fall. And it is quite likely that this will happen with sharp peaks as in the fall and winter of last year,” Mikhaylov says. The Central Bank is “afraid of losing control over the situation,” and its next two meetings, on July 31 and in September, will require hard choices.

For too long, those in charge of economic policy have comforted themselves with “bedtime stories,” but now they recognize that “the situation is going beyond their control,” and they don’t know exactly what to do.

One thinks of Lenin’s observation about a revolutionary situation: “those on top cannot run things in the old want, and those below do not want to live that way in any event.” Clearly, those on top in Moscow know they can’t behave as they have in the past; but so far, those below have not responded as one might expect.

But at some point, they will, Mikhaylv says. “The Titanic of the Russian economy is colliding with the iceberg of popular dissatisfaction, the largest part of which is under water and not visible,” but no less dangerous for that.

In a new assessment of nine state-of-the-art climate model simulations provided by major international modeling centers, Michael Rawlins at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and colleagues found broad disagreement in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) annually sequestered in tundra and boreal ecosystems of Northern Eurasia, a vast, understudied region of the world.

Rawlins also identified a trend among the nine models that shows the region’s land carbon sink has been strengthening in recent decades, drawing in more carbon than expected, driven by increases in carbon uptake from plant growth that outweigh respiration increases. But lately, it shows signs of weakening.

“As a group, the models tend to overestimate carbon emissions from land, particularly in autumn,” he says. “They generally underestimate the present-day carbon sink, in our view. So there is good news, in that the region is likely storing more of the carbon being emitted by human activities than the models depict. But the lack of agreement across the models is a concern.”

He adds, “Given the wide range in sink strength across the models, we are recommending that decision makers not rely on a single model for predicting what the future of the Arctic may be. This could lead to a very biased assessment.” Findings appear in the current issue of Biogeosciences.

The lack of agreement “is not for a lack of effort on the part of modeling groups,” Rawlins points out, but rather from a lack of available data to improve understanding of key processes. Northern Eurasia is critically undersampled, with much less field study than other parts of the Arctic.

For this model intercomparison supported by NASA, Rawlins and the team examined simulations from nine land models participating in the Model-Integration Working Group of the Permafrost Carbon Network (PCN). Group members from each center conducted retrospective simulations from 1960 to 2009, producing current best estimates of the flow of CO2 between the land and atmosphere. They compared the model data with satellite and land-based measurements to establish model credibility.

Rawlins and colleagues also found that residence time of carbon in soils is decreasing in response to warming temperatures that enhance both carbon uptake from plant growth and carbon emissions from soil litter decomposition. “In essence, carbon is moving through northern ecosystems at a faster rate,” he points out.

This study and others from the PCN are helping modelers to refine representation of carbon fluxes and storages across permafrost regions, Rawlins says. The best climate models constantly evolve, adding multiple interacting variables over time. However, the simulation of terrestrial ecosystem processes is currently inadequate. “Models do a good job at simulating some elements of the climate system, but they disagree on key aspects of the land-atmosphere CO2 exchange, and in particular the amount of carbon being sequestered,” he explains.

Statistically speaking, the range in model estimates of net productivity, which closely approximates the net CO2 sink, is twice the multi-model average. “This speaks to the level of uncertainty in sink strength,” the climate scientist says.

Rawlins and the team point out the need for new field data on vegetation and soil characteristics for model parametrization and validation. “Comparisons with the few available tower-based measurements suggest that the models tend to overestimate land carbon emissions in spring and autumn. However, the lack of data across this large area limits our confidence in this bias. There is an obvious need for establishment of more research sites. Additionally, soil measurements at new locations must be made at several depths, and during autumn, winter and spring,” he notes.

They also provide additional recommendations to improve model simulations of Arctic carbon cycle process, writing that investments must be made to develop new benchmarking datasets from measurements and remote-sensing observations and to support coordinated model intercomparison studies using standardized driving variables.

At the very beginning of his government, the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had made the negotiation with the Taliban and the restoration of peace in his country a top priority agenda. In the regional political milieu, almost all of the surrounding states are particularly concerned about the future of the region in the wake of NATO forces drawdown and the reduced combat mission of existing ISAF troops in Afghanistan. Some countries in the region like China, Pakistan and Iran (particularly after coming out of the isolation as a result of Iran and P5+1 nuclear deal) have greater roles to play for the regional peace and progress.

Besides the fact that the Taliban are once again gaining significant momentum in almost 26 provinces out of 34 and the Unity Regime under President Ashraf Ghani is also facing staid divisions therefore, for Afghan Government it is the need of hour to conduct a series of result oriented talks with the Taliban and other stakeholders for a better progressive, peaceful and politically stables Afghanistan rather than still prevalent anarchic society and unstable political order only apt for chaos and the civil war.

Since taking office in September 2014, President Ghani has pursued Pakistan’s special support to come across a peaceful settlement for his war-ridden country because Pakistan is particularly important for Afghanistan than any other country in the region due to various dynamics which are counted as eternal bounds at both sides. The commonalities like, religion, culture, language, geographic proximity, ethnic connections and many other factors which make their relations, interests and sufferings interconnected with each other, therefore it is also strongly believed that peace and progress in Afghanistan are indeed peace and progress in Pakistan.

Pakistan is currently hosting the negotiation process between the Afghan Government and Taliban and the first round of talks was held in Pakistan in the first week of July, 2015. The talks are a result of several informal meetings between the Taliban and Afghan government representatives which took place in Qatar and Norway through the high profile links on both sides along with special efforts of an international organization the Pugwash Conference- (a Nobel Peace Prize Winner private group).

After the successful conduct of the first round of talks on July 7, there are further prospects about the progress in the talks as both the sides strongly realized the need to develop confidence-building measures (CBMs) aimed at bringing peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan. These rounds of talks are hoped to be strapping initiative towards the most significant and fruitful impetus towards the point of reshaping the existing political and security discourse as these talks are also viewed as a major breakthrough and have been hailed by US, China, NATO and the UN Security Council. The supreme commander of the Afghan Taliban Mullah Mohammad Omer is also supporting the peace talks with the Afghan government with the endeavour to oust the foreign troops from their land.

The second round of the talks between the Taliban and the Afghan Government is also expected to be hosted by Pakistan at the end of this month intending at swiftly restoring the peace for the progress of Afghanistan through the participation and contribution by the major stakeholders in war-battered country. Moreover, a truce and the possible concur of the Afghan Taliban to join the mainstream will constitute the theme of the discussion in the upcoming round of talks, particularly during the second round of talks, the top agenda will be ascertaining options for a ceasefire but however, the most important part of the success of these talks mainly depends upon meeting the Taliban demands for release of their leaders detained in Guantanamo Bay and lifting the UN sanctions under Resolution 1267 against them.

Finally, the success of the talks will only be decided after both parties come up with a win-win solution and ultimately reach an agreement rather than keep indulging in an unending war and leaving no hope for the future generations. For many decades people have been living under the shadows of fear and uncertainty that needs to be finished once for all and now for a common Afghan, the stable Afghanistan means much more than his own existence.

* The writer works for the Strategic Vision Institute, Islamabad and can be reached at nasurullahsvi@outlook.com

Deterrence is defined or explained differently by the states keeping their own personal nature of threat or policies to counter certain coercion. Therefore, it is likely to say, an ambiguously defined concept generally. Undoubtedly, every country has to meet certain policies in order to meet its security concerns both globally and internationally. Now, while defining the tasks for adopting a certain set of principals or policies, Henry Kissinger stated that the aim of choosing certain policy options is to translate the power into policy’, so that states know ‘what objectives are worth contending for and determine the degree of force appropriate for achieving them.’

Keeping in mind the Pakistan’s perspective, it had two choices while designing its nuclear deterrence, ‘one was the war denying deterrence and the second is the nuclear war fighting deterrence.’ Both choices had a different pattern of implications including developmental strategies. War denying deterrence required minimum number of weapons while war fighting deterrence needed large number of nuclear arsenals, variety of delivery means and missile defence programs etc. Pakistan’s economy and strategic interests allow only the pursuit of war denying deterrence.

This is the reason why Pakistan does not believe the need of nuclear parity and is just seeking to maintain a deterrent equilibrium or more precisely is just balancing the threat caused by the conventional superiority of the enemy. Pragmatically, if one state has to go for a war fighting nuclear doctrine then it is desirable for that state to opt for nuclear parity from its adversary but if the purpose is only to serve the deterrence then it is better to seek a balanced deterrent posture. Resultantly, Pakistan principally decided to adopt the option of ‘Credible Minimum Deterrence’. Now the question of minimum deterrence and its credibility comes under view.

Rodney W. Jones, an expert on the subject defined minimum deterrence as the term minimum rapidly became a fixture of the public nuclear discourse in South Asia. Neither India nor Pakistan officially clarified what the term minimum means leaving this open to speculations. Does minimum imply the sufficiency of small numbers of nuclear weapons; Nuclear weapons held in reserve; low reading or alert rates of a nuclear force; renunciation of nuclear war fighting or mainly counter-value targeting? Or does the minimum merely make a virtue of today’s facts of life in the subcontinent – limited resources, scarce weapons material, unproved delivery systems, and still undeveloped technical military capabilities?

The then Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, spoke at the ISSI seminar about the matter of Minimum Deterrence taken by Pakistan is, largely seen as a dynamic concept. He said “Minimum cannot be quantified in static numbers. The Indian build up would necessitate review and reassessment….but we shall not engage in any nuclear competition or arms race.” Whereas, since Pakistan is a minor nuclear weapon state of the second atomic age, the term minimum is only used to signal or to send a satisfactory message to the international community and also that depending on smaller nuclear weapons that are comparably be better managed in terms of deployment, maintenance, command and control systems etc. Certainly the minimum minimizes the dangers of inadvertence and misuse of nuclear weapons. The term Minimum also mollifies the proliferation concerns of the international community.

Whereas, Credibility has been added in order to add ambiguity, may be to have a psychological comfort or to leave room for modernizing the weaponry inventories. Paradoxically narrating, policy-makers in Pakistan feel convinced that this ambiguity serves deterrence well. Credible would in such circumstances help keep a psychological check on the adversary. Also, it would provide the protagonist an additional cushion of comfort as viewed by Ms. Sadia Tasleem in her write-up titled “Towards an Indo-Pak Nuclear Lexicon – II: Credible Minimum Deterrence”. The emphasis on the word ‘credible’ was meant to reinforce the importance of credibility.1 It does not suggest a shift from Minimum Deterrence.

Nevertheless, posture of Credible Minimum Deterrence has remained a principle option of Pakistan’s nuclear policy. This principle is based on the concept that Pakistan’s nuclear policy is driven by its perceived threat to its security from India and is therefore India centric. Deterrence is the sole aim and a small arsenal is considered adequate for satisfying it.2 But ironically this is also a fact that with the introduction of Tactical Nuclear Weapons in the region or with the introduction of battle field weapons is actually a modernized advancement in the inventories. Those are ironically meant to balance out this superiority complex.

So, it could be concluded that it is only when states feel threatened they opt for defending their territory and sovereignty that actually compels them to maximize and enrich their security measures under the perceived threat of vulnerability. But for maintaining a deterrent posture according to my understanding, quantitative number is not necessary as the possession of a nuclear weapon is itself enough for crafting deterrence. Because even by possessing one nuke, the nuclear aggression from the other state can be discouraged. So the question of numeric parity or nuclear sufficiency does not make sense for instance. Therefore, it would not be in correct to conclude that credible minimum deterrence is something different then nuclear parity and nuclear supremacy.

As much of the Middle East sinks deeper into division between competing political camps, the terror outfit, Daesh, continues its unhindered march toward a twisted version of a Muslim caliphate. Thousands have lost their lives, some in the most torturous ways.

Violence meted out by Daesh is hardly an anomaly, considering that the group was spawned in a predominantly violent environment. It is difficult to imagine, for example, that, if the Syrian regime and its opposition had sought a political solution from the early days of the uprising, Daesh would have found a stable foothold for itself in Syria.

It was during the emergence of violence by the Syrian regime that Daesh, a dark force that neither believes in democracy, civil rights nor co-existence, appeared. The same scenario was repeated in Iraq and a host of other countries. In an article in the Independent newspaper, Patrick Cockburn highlighted seven countries where the influence of Daesh is great or growing: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and north-east Nigeria.

The group’s “successes have been possible because it is opposed by feeble, corrupt or non-existent governments and armies,” he wrote.

However, very little emphasis has been placed on the root cause of the problem and its resulting violence. Western governments and media are not the only ones guilty of discussing the brutality of Daesh outside proper political or socio-economic contexts; Arab countries’ media often misinterpret each crisis in the region.

Yemen, which has undergone several stages of political crises is a case in point. Daesh bombs targeting mostly houses of worship, are now another staple in Yemen’s bloody conflict.

This terror group thrives on conflicts and calamities that are rooted in poor, fragmented societies, where youth are disenchanted with their governments and where they have little or no hope for the future due to corruption and the protracted violence. Such embitterment is a perfect recruiting ground for Daesh, which enjoys multiple revenue streams and a self-sufficient economy.

Of course, more violence is seldom the solution, as the ‘Arab Spring’ amply demonstrated. In fact, the ferocity and ruthlessness of the many conflicts currently under way in the region have achieved little, aside from setting the stage for extreme polarization in political, ideological and sectarian discourses.

While sectarianism in the region dates back many years, its current expressions are mostly political, with unambiguous agendas and goals. Initially, sectarianism distracted from the genuine push for reforms and meaningful political changes as sought by various Arab collectives.

Regardless of its ideological or religious claims, it is evident that the violent vision of Daesh, if allowed to endure, would constantly translate into greater death tolls from all sides — Sunni, Shiite, Christians, and other minority groups.
With Turkey entering the fray now by bombing Daesh targets in Syria, in supposed retaliation for the militant group’s attack in the Kilis Province, the landscape of the war is stretching beyond its usual confines and methods, into whole new territories.

After resisting pressure to join the US-led coalition against the terror outfit, Turkey has now also agreed to allow the coalition access to its Incirlik Airbase. Meanwhile, Turkish F-16 continued to pound Daesh targets, while Turkish security reportedly rounded up hundreds of suspected militants, not only of Daesh supporters, but also Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and other radical groups.

The local dimension in Turkey’s newly started war on Daesh should be of particular interest. While Daesh is a common denominator among various Middle East countries, each country seems to have a local component that serves as a native host for the terror group, as was the case in Libya following the NATO-led war, and of course, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere.

The Egyptian case is also telling. The chaos that preceded the Daesh entry into Sinai was mostly related to internal Egyptian affairs. The Sinai Peninsula is poor and neglected. For decades, it has been a testament to unfair distribution of wealth. The Bedouin tribes in Sinai, which were once at the forefront of the fight to liberate the Peninsula from Israel, grew rebellious over time. The desert became rife with drug and human trafficking. The celebrations in Sinai, following the Egyptian revolt in January 2011, were short-lived and were quickly replaced by an armed revolt, when hope turned into anger.

Until recently, the Sinai violence was largely a local affair. Mauritanian journalist, Sidiahmed Tfeil, argues that Egypt’s militant factions, such as ‘Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis’, resisted calls to join Al-Qaeda ranks. But their need for alliances and support finally pushed them into the arms of Daesh, which now considers the war in Sinai, led by the ‘Sinai Province,’ another extension of its regional fight.

Tfeil lists countries where Daesh is moving in full force, flushing out Al-Qaeda influence and competing with local actors there. They include Yemen and Libya, but also Algeria, Mali, Somalia and others.

Aside from Algeria, the same malaise of internal conflict, external meddling and intervention seems to unite the rest, which have either become — or teeter at the edge of being — failed states.

In other words, the success of Daesh has worked in tandem with the failures of regional governments to offer road maps out of security chaos, economic crises and chronic corruption. With access to massive funds, Daesh is able to latch on to local militant groups which were formed as a result of real grievances, buying leverage and loyalty, as they have done in Libya, Syria and Sinai.

Another weapon in the Daesh arsenal that also proved effective is the fact that there is not one single united fight aimed at eliminating or, at least, slowing down the progress of Daesh armies in the Middle East. While military camps of the terror group are reportedly targeted in Syria, other regional conflicts, especially in Yemen, are facilitating the expansion of Daesh.

The war on Daesh and other extremist groups cannot possibly be won if the region remains divided.

It is the lack of political prospects, and the smothering of any attempt at freedom and fair economic opportunity, that lead to extremist violence in the first place. As long as this reality remains intact, Daesh will tragically find new recruits, latch on to local militant groups, and continue to expand into new borders — and even darker horizons.

Sanctions and lower oil prices have reduced foreign investment in Russia’s upstream, especially in Arctic offshore and shale projects, and have made financing projects more difficult.

Oil

Most of Russia’s oil production originates in West Siberia and the Urals-Volga regions. However, production from East Siberia, Russia’s Far East and the Russian Arctic has been growing.

Exploration and production

Russia’s oil- and natural gas-producing regions

Russia’s oil grades

Sector organization

Refinery sector

Oil exports

Pipelines

Figure 4. Major eastern Russian oil and natural gas pipelines

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration and IHS EDIN

Ports

Hydrocarbon gas liquids

Natural gas

Russia holds the largest natural gas reserves in the world, and is the second-largest producer of dry natural gas. The state-run Gazprom dominates Russia’s upstream natural gas sector, although production from other companies has been growing.

Sector organization

Exploration and production

Natural gas exports

Pipelines

Third-party access to pipelines

Liquefied natural gas

Electricity

Russia is one of the top producers and consumers of electric power in the world, with more than 230 gigawatts of installed generation capacity. In 2012, electric power generation totaled approximately 1,012 billion kilowatthours, and Russia consumed about 889 billion kilowatthours.

Sector organization

Nuclear power

Coal

Russia has sizeable coal reserves and is the world’s third-largest exporter of coal.

Endnotes:

A new study by researchers at the University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy, Geriatric Unit & Laboratory of Gerontology and Geriatrics, IRCCS “Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza”, San Giovanni Rotondo, Foggia, Italy, and Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS), Roma, Italy, estimates the association between change or constant habits in coffee consumption and the incidence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), evaluating 1,445 individuals recruited from 5,632 subjects, aged 65-84 year old, from the Italian Longitudinal Study on Aging (ILSA), a population-based sample from eight Italian municipalities with a 3.5-year median follow-up. These findings are published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is considered a prodromal stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia. As no effective treatment exists to modify the natural history of this neurodegenerative disorder, the identification and subsequent management of risk/protective factors may be crucial for prevention of MCI and its progression to AD and dementia. Among diet-associated factors, coffee is regularly consumed by millions of people around the world and owing to its caffeine content, it is the best known psychoactive stimulant resulting in heightened alertness and arousal and improvement of cognitive performance.

Besides short-term effects of caffeine-containing beverages, some case-control and cross-sectional and longitudinal population-based studies evaluated the long-term effects on brain function and provided evidence that coffee, tea, or caffeine consumption or higher plasma caffeine levels may be protective against cognitive impairment and dementia, with some notable exceptions.

An interesting finding in this study was that cognitively normal older individuals who modified their habits by increasing with time their amount of coffee consumption (> 1 cup of coffee/day) had about two times higher rate of MCI compared to those with reduced habits (< 1 cup of coffee/day) and about one and half time higher rate of MCI in comparison with those with constant habits (neither more nor less 1 coffee/day).

Moreover, those who habitually consumed moderate amount of coffee (1 or 2 cups of coffee/day) had a reduced rate of the incidence of MCI than those who habitually never or rarely consumed coffee. No significant association was verified between who habitually consumed higher levels of coffee consumption (> 2 cups of coffee/day) and the incidence of MCI in comparison with those who never or rarely consumed coffee.

“These findings from the Italian Longitudinal Study on Aging suggested that cognitively normal older individuals who never or rarely consumed coffee and those who increased their coffee consumption habits had a higher risk of developing MCI. Therefore, moderate and regular coffee consumption may have neuroprotective effects also against MCI confirming previous studies on the long-term protective effects of coffee, tea, or caffeine consumption and plasma levels of caffeine against cognitive decline and dementia,” said investigators Vincenzo Solfrizzi, MD, PhD, and Francesco Panza, MD, PhD, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy.

The authors hypothesized different potential mechanisms in explaining the neuroprotective effects of coffee consumption observed in this study. The long-term neuroprotective effect of caffeine may involve competitive antagonism of excessive activation of adenosine A2A receptors (A2ARs), which may attenuate damage caused by -amyloid (A), the toxic peptide accumulating in AD brains. Indeed, both acute or long-term caffeine administration were shown to reduce brain A levels in AD transgenic mice and memory restoration and reversal of AD pathology in mice with pre-existing A burden. Adenosine is a neuromodulator that operates via the most abundant inhibitory adenosine A1 receptors (A1Rs) and the less abundant, but widespread, facilitatory A2ARs. A1Rs play a key role in neuroprotection, decreasing glutamate release and hyperpolarizing neurons, and their activation attenuates brain damage, whereas their blockade exacerbates damage in adult animals.

In contrast, A2ARs blockade confers robust brain neuroprotection in adult animals. Moreover, while central A1Rs are down-regulated by chronic noxious situations, the brain neuroprotective effect of A2AR antagonists is maintained in chronic noxious brain conditions without observable peripheral effects, thus justifying the interest of A2AR antagonists as novel protective agents in neurodegenerative diseases such as AD. Therefore, the ability of caffeine to prevent memory deterioration in animal models of aging or AD may be related to the action of A2ARs rather than A1Rs, suggesting that an adequate adenosinergic tonus is required for normal memory performance and that over- or down-activation of the adenosine system may result in impaired memory functioning.

This hypothesis could in part explain why, as shown in this study, both no or rare and higher consumption of coffee (> 2 cups/day) were associated with higher risk of the incidence of MCI. Accordingly, moderate doses of caffeine improve memory performance in rodents, whereas higher doses of caffeine may impair memory acquisition. Biological effects of caffeine on brain function also included modulation of white matter lesions and/or microvascular ischemic lesions, and improved insulin sensitivity, so reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, which is a strong risk factor for cognitive decline. Moreover, caffeine could in part compensate the cognitive decline in older individuals because its effects on vigilance and attention, mainly in situations of reduced alertness. Finally, habitual and moderate consumption of coffee may prevent MCI through attenuation of subclinical neuroinflammation, and reduction in oxidative stress.

The authors concluded: “More sensitive outcomes such as findings from neuroimaging studies should become available from experimental data, so further explaining the mechanisms underlying the neuroprotective effects of coffee, tea, and caffeine consumption. Larger studies with longer follow-up periods should be encouraged, addressing other potential bias and confounding sources, so hopefully opening new ways for diet-related prevention of dementia and AD.”

By Kevin J. Jones

The Boy Scouts of America is moving to change its leadership standards in order to allow openly homosexual adult leaders and volunteers. While the organization promises that individual church-affiliated councils can choose their own leaders, at least one critic warns the move will expose churches to further pressure.

“This change allows Scouting’s members and parents to select local units, chartered to organizations with similar beliefs, that best meet the needs of their families,” the Boy Scouts of America said July 13. “This change would also respect the right of religious chartered organizations to continue to choose adult leaders whose beliefs are consistent with their own.”

The proposal drew criticism from Richard John Matthews, former general counsel for the Boy Scouts of America, who now serves as general counsel for Trail Life USA, an alternative scouting organization formed after previous policy changes.

In a July 22 memorandum, Matthews said the policy change means it is “only a matter of time” until the Boy Scouts of America incorporate LGBT teachings into its programs and merit badge instructional material that deal with family life, relationships, and sex education.

The change also creates “numerous legal ramifications” for the Boy Scouts of America and religious organizations that charter local troops, he said.

“The church-chartered troop will likely be sued the moment it tries to revoke the membership of the homosexual member who wears his uniform to the Gay Pride Parade, revokes or denies membership to an adult who publicly gets married to someone of the same sex, or denies membership to the girl who believes she is actually a male,” said Matthews.

According to the text of the Boy Scouts of America’s July 13 executive committee resolution, no adult employee applicants or non-unit-serving volunteer who otherwise meets the organization’s requirements “may be denied registration on the basis of sexual orientation.” The resolution says sexual relations between adults should be “moral, honorable, committed and respectful.” It says it recognizes the right for each chartering organization to select its leaders, and bars local councils from denying a charter to a unit that is following its religious beliefs.

The scouting group’s National Executive Board met July 27 and was expected to ratify the resolution.

In a July 8 memo, the Boy Scouts of America said its policy barring adult homosexuals from leadership is “no longer legally defensible.” It warned of staggering costs of litigation, the threat of overly-broad court decisions, an increase in anti-discrimination laws and policies, and the federal government’s “use of executive power to deter private action.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision will accelerate these trends, the memo said.

“Several conservative states have retreated from religious freedom legislation – most recently Indiana and Arkansas – due to the business community wanting to avoid appearing anti-gay,” the Boy Scouts’ memo noted.

The scouting organization no longer holds the position that homosexuality is “immoral and unclean,” a position the organization successfully defended before the Supreme Court in a 2000 lawsuit that sought to force the organization to change its moral standards.

Many local councils, leaders, and supporters now openly disagree with the leadership standard barring active homosexuals from leadership, the Boy Scouts of America noted.

The organization promised to “steadfastly defend the right of religious chartered organizations to select leaders whose beliefs are consistent with those of the religious organization.”

It advocated moving towards a policy that “accepts and respects different perspectives and beliefs.”

The Boy Scouts of America referred to a memo from the Hughes, Hubbard & Reed law firm that said Boy Scout units which are not chartered by religious organizations could not exclude homosexuals from leadership.

The memo said religious-sponsored Boy Scout groups could face the risk of a lawsuit from a homosexual activist seeking admission, but that any lawsuit challenging a religiously-chartered scouting unit would be “unlikely to succeed or even make much progress” due to existing religious freedom protections, such as a 2012 Supreme Court decision which recognized constitutional protections for religious organizations to choose their own leaders.

The memo also predicted a low likelihood of success for a lawsuit seeking to force the Boy Scouts of America to end a relationship with a religiously-chartered organization because it does not include homosexual adults.

The memo said the Boy Scouts of America would “not seek to exert pressure on any religious chartered organization” but would “help safeguard the religious chartered organizations by defending their protected expression and religious liberties.”

Matthews, however, predicted the policy change will cause problems for churches that do not condone homosexual acts.

“Even if you believe the BSA’s statement that it will bear the costs of defense, the disruption of having to deal with the litigation process, the adverse publicity and the likely intimidation of donors and church members will likely be detrimental to the overall mission of churches and religious organizations,” he said.

Religious-chartered organizations will be vulnerable to legal challenges under state laws governing public accommodations, he added.

“Granting the use of facilities to the BSA – with its acceptance of homosexuality – by religious organizations could result in the loss of their legal protection to deny facility use to other ‘gay-friendly’ or homosexual advocacy groups.”

A church-chartered council will still be under the guidance of local, state, and national Boy Scout groups that now allow homosexuals in leadership positions, Matthews said.

“It is difficult to see how a court will uphold a religious organization’s claim that allowing homosexual adult leaders violates its religious beliefs, when that same religious organization is sending its unit to activities, events and facilities under the leadership of homosexuals,” he said.

Matthews argued the Hughes, Hubbard & Reed memo was incorrect to hold that Supreme Court decision that allows religious schools to set moral and religious standards for teachers will apply to scout leaders. Scout leaders are “rarely involved in ministerial activities or religious instruction.” They teach camping and other outdoor skills, not religion, he said.

The Boy Scouts of America has faced significant corporate and political pressure to change its moral teachings and its membership policies. The organization announced it would allow openly homosexual members, but not leaders, in May 2013.

CNA contacted the National Catholic Committee on Scouting for comment, but did not receive a response by deadline.