A Chinese political cartoonist who had lived in Thailand for the past seven years, was arrested three weeks ago at Beijing’s request and was deported back to China. Two other Chinese dissidents were also extradited, highlighting how China’s influence and its oppressive policies are reaching beyond its borders.

The Thai police arrested the cartoonist, Jiang Yefei (姜野飞), on 28 October, held him in a prison for illegal immigrants in Bangkok for just over two weeks and finally put him on a plane chartered by the Chinese government on 13 November after denying him any contact with his family for the last eight days.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had nonetheless recognized his refugee status and Canada had offered to take both him and his family. Before fleeing to Thailand in 2008, he had been imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese authorities for criticizing their handling of the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan.

“We call on the authorities to release Jiang Yefei immediately and unconditionally or, failing that, to ensure that he is not tortured or mistreated in detention,” said Benjamin Ismaïl, the head of the Reporters Without Borders Asia desk.

“We also call for the repeal of the new national security law, whose vague wording and very broad applicability allow the authorities to assume the right to gag critics beyond China’s borders.”

Thailand’s extradition of Jiang is far from isolated. Dong Guangping (董广平), a dissident and human rights activist, and Gui Minhai (桂民海), a publisher of books critical of the Chinese government, were also returned to China on the same plane on 13 November with the Thai government’s complicity.

Dong had been in Thailand since September and also had refugee status. Gui, who was born in China and had acquired Swedish nationality, had been missing in Thailand since mid-October. He worked in Hong Kong for Mighty Current, a publishing house specializing in books about mainland China’s politics, power struggles and scandals involving high-level officials.

“This is not the first time Thailand has extradited political detainees, Ismaïl added. Even if it is not a signatory of the 1951 United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, we remind the Thai authorities of the principle of non-refoulement, under which no one should be sent back to a country where their life or liberty is threatened because of their political convictions.”

Repatriation on “national security” grounds

The national security law adopted on 1 July, with its obligation to “defend the people’s fundamental interests,” seems to be playing a key role in China’s determination to pursue dissidents who have gone into exile.

Not satisfied with exporting its system of censorship and information control, the government is now using “national security” as grounds for extending its repression beyond mainland China’s borders and for often calling on its neighbours to repatriate whose who flee Xi Jinping’s regime.

Bao Zhuoxuan (包卓轩), the son of a couple being held incommunicado (human rights lawyer Wang Yu (王宇) and activist Bao Longjun (包龙军), was arrested in Burma on 6 October and was sent back to China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where he is now under house arrest.

Ranked 176th out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, China continues to take advantage of the international community’s silence to extend its prerogatives in breach of international law.

As we set our eyes on the long horizon of economic integration we should not neglect the important role ASEAN can play in the wider region today.

By John Pang*

This has been a year of high expectations and of disappointment in Southeast Asia. Rarely has the economic and strategic importance of the region been as apparent. As China’s economy transitions towards “a new normal” marked by lower growth, structural and financial reform, and as the other BRICS markets have also slowed, investors have looked to ASEAN, with its favourable demographics and market-oriented economies, as both an alternative and a complementary market to China.

ASEAN’s prospects have often been approached through the criteria of economic integration. Hopes have centred on the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), which is being inaugurated as we speak. The bold language of “a single market and production base” and of the launch of an economic community implies a change in the way business will be done in Southeast Asia. The reality is slow and incremental progress.

Don’t expect radical change

There is already a free trade regime for most goods. Progress has been slower on the more difficult issues of non-trade barriers, trade in services, financial services integration, customs harmonisation and the movement of labour and talent. The AEC will not be raising the curtain on any radical change.

On the strategic front, growing US-China rivalry over Southeast Asia seems to have exceeded ASEAN’s ability to come up with a unified response. ASEAN ministers were unable to conclude with their customary joint declaration after their meeting in Kuala Lumpur earlier this month. ASEAN’s powerlessness before regional “non-traditional security threats,” such as human-induced forest fires in Indonesia, is a stark reminder of ASEAN’s lack of institutional capability and its inability to transcend nationalist sentiment.

Regional political integration needs national governments regarded by their own people as representative and legitimate. While representative democracy and the rule of law have leapt forward in Myanmar and been confirmed emphatically in Indonesia, Thailand remains under military rule and Malaysia, this year’s chair of ASEAN, is in deep political crisis. The year has also seen progress towards a Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement that bisects ASEAN and raises questions about the relevance of the AEC.

Paradox of ASEAN weakness

ASEAN’s continuing weakness at a time when stakes are high and centrifugal pressures great might tempt us to dismiss its prospects. Paradoxically ASEAN is more relevant than ever. ASEAN remains the platform for a range of diplomatic and economic activities that are critical to the future of Asia at a time when international order is challenged by long term developments in Asia. ASEAN’s central role in regional multilateralism makes it uniquely placed to help shape events.

The opening of China has already unleashed the largest mobilisation of people and productive forces in human history. Change on this scale cannot but disrupt the present order, both economic and strategic, social and cultural.

China is already ASEAN’s largest trading partner, collectively and country by country. ASEAN is linked to China by global supply chains that will grow more complex and multi-dimensional as the Chinese economy undergoes structural reform.

China’s One Belt One Road: a generational project

The question is not how to preserve a status quo that is already over but how global order is changing, and what role we can have in influencing the direction of that change. ASEAN’s sparse achievements in integration belie its value in the moving context of a changing Asia Pacific and a changing world. While rightly attending to the continuing work of ASEAN integration, we should not miss the bigger picture of ASEAN’s significance in the midst of change.

China’s One Belt One Road initiative is a generational project integral to its economic transition and its ‘peaceful rise’. It envisions a set of corridors of economic integration, opened up by a network of overland and maritime connectivity, that will span Eurasia, and join Southeast and East Asia with Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe. It means building new networks of global partnership, and forging bilateral and multilateral cooperation with more than sixty other countries. It means a new economic geography for Asia.

The investments planned under OBOR are much needed in Southeast Asia, but the multi-stakeholder, multilateral partnerships needed to make such investments work are going to be hard to put together. ASEAN would have a lot to offer from its resources in multilateralism. China should look to

ASEAN as a partner for OBOR.

China’s rise is re-ordering strategic relations and reshaping relationships in trade, investment and culture. It will reshape the networks, including the physical links between China and the rest of the world, but nowhere else more in Southeast Asia. While these developments are rich with promise, they are also viewed with anxiety, particularly by incumbent regional powers, the US and Japan, and by regional powers such as India. Through multilateral efforts that draw in all these players, ASEAN has stood for for mutually beneficial collaboration rather than destructive rivalry, engagement rather than containment.

ASEAN: hub of multilateralism

Southeast Asia has long served as an arena of great power relations and rivalry. In the last four decades, however, ASEAN has served as a platform for confidence building and collaboration across Asia and the Pacific through institutions such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit. Even with all its internal weaknesses, ASEAN, as its diplomats rightly insist, remains ‘central’ to a set of regional discussions and formal and informal links that tie the interests of the US, China and Japan together.

ASEAN’s experience and credibility as the hub of multilateralism in the wider region is important in helping the wider region adapt to the economic and strategic rise of China. That rise is provoking a reaction from conservative elements in the US and Japan. Dire predictions are being made with examples drawn from the Peloponnesian Wars. The US ‘pivot to Asia’ and a similar heightening and securitisation of Japan’s engagement with Southeast Asian countries, are, at least in part, driven by such fears.

The fears are understandable, and so is the fact that the very ground of global order is shifting beneath our feet. Our analytical and policy frameworks have time and again failed to capture the full scope of the change we are living through. Our efforts to cope amidst this uncertainty and dynamism must leave room for experiment, evolution, and tolerance for ambiguity. ASEAN must be a partner for the interested parties to come together to bring about a new regional order that can accommodate the dynamism of the peoples of Asia.

This makes ASEAN a vital platform, and beyond that a key partner, for China to work out, convey and exemplify its peaceful rise. ASEAN’s fluidity and its lack of institutional strength may not always be a handicap in a global context of massive change and strategic anxiety.

ASEAN is no threat to any major power. It has never been “a global player” in its own right, but in its diplomacy of dialogue and consensus building over 48 years, it has managed to become a useful forum and partner for global players working out new arrangements of co-existence. The promise of ASEAN should not be undervalued.
About the Author

*John Pang is a Senior Fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

By Mohammad Masjed-Jamei*

Lack of respect for the rights of Christians has been a regular item on the list of the Western countries’ outright criticism of the Islamic states during the past years and even decades. Due to my diplomatic mission to the Vatican and later contacts with various Christian circles and personalities, I have been witness to such criticism and those who claim that Islamic governments do not deem themselves committed to safeguarding the rights of their Christian citizens.

Most surprisingly, the policy adopted by big Western powers toward the situation in Syria has been an exact example of the same criticism that they regularly raised about Muslims. Among regional countries, Syria followed the most proper and less discriminatory policy toward its Christian population, and was a much better place for them compared to Iraq, Egypt and Jordan. This point has been confirmed by both Syrian and Arab Christians, as well as Western Christian personalities and scholars specializing in religious issues of the Middle East.

Since the beginning of the unrest in Syria, it was clear that a large part of the opposition, especially those armed opposition groups that were inclined toward the Muslim Brotherhood, was not tolerant of Christians and was going to exact revenge on them. Since early days of the unrest, this was their slogan: “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to Coffins.”

Western countries did not think about the consequences that their unbridled support for the Syrian opposition and their absolute hostility toward Syria’s ruling regime would have for Christians both in that country and in neighboring countries. They not only did not think about this issue, but also scoffed at and ridiculed those who warned them against it.

I have reminded Christian dignitaries of this points on various occasions. In September 2011, Cardinal McCarrick, the then Archbishop of Washington, headed a religious delegation, which visited Iran upon Tehran’s official invitation. During a conversation, I discussed with him issues related to Syria and the situation of Christians in the region and also pointed out the above facts. A while later, the former French minister of housing, who was among famous and influential Catholic personalities of the country, paid a visit to Iran accompanied by two scholars to discuss similar points. Apart from these two personalities, the aforesaid facts were discussed with many other people, but they generally noted that those in power were inattentive to these issues. Of course, Cardinal McCarrick frankly told me in his last year trip to Iran that I was right and the developments in Syria have caused a lot of problems for all Christians across the region.

Of course, I must admit that the incumbent Pope has taken bold and laudable personal positions in the face of this crisis. Certainly, his anti-war positions as well as categorical positions he has adopted in protest to aerial raids on Syria by the United States and its allies, as well as his initiative to invite people to prayer and fasting over Syria were among the most important factors that prevented a military strike against Syria.

In the early days of the Arab Spring, popular uprisings pursued freedom-seeking goals and were against corruption, discrimination and dictatorship. However, due to various reasons, especially weakness of their underlying revolutionary and reformist ideology and also due to absence of suitable social and historical institutions, and as a result of the power swayed by tribal structures, those uprisings finally turned into some form of revenge game and civil war.

The unrest emanating from the Arab Spring actually threatened all regional regimes, including rich sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf. The highest threat was posed to Saudi Arabia, especially after the unrest escalated in the neighboring Bahrain. As a result, Saudis and their allies tried to take advantage of various religious, media, political, financial and propaganda tools to polarize the existing atmosphere and channel popular protests along the lines of religious and ethnic rivalries and hostilities.

Such measures proved more successful than expected due to available grounds, the most important of which included general backwardness, especially intellectual and cultural underdevelopment in regional countries. As a result, in a country like Syria, the main goal of the opposition was no more achieving freedom, welfare, progress and establishment of a healthy government. On the opposite, they fought against the ruling regime due to tribal and religious reasons. A while later, a large number of religious bigots from neighboring countries and also from all corners of the world, who were helped and abetted by Saudis and other sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf and their ideological allies such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist groups, joined the Syrian opposition. In this way, Takfiri groups came into being and managed to capture large swathes of territory through financial and arms support of the same sheikdoms and their Western allies.

In this way, the region became deeply polarized and negative memories of the past came back to life, of course, in a much more negative way than actually existed. According to new demarcations and groupings, Sunnis stood on one side, while all other groups stood on the other, including Twelver Shias, Zaidis, Alawites, Druze people, Christians, Izadis, and Sabians. The party responsible for this demarcation was not Sunni masses or even their scholars, but was Salafist Takfiri groups as well as Wahhabi religious establishment. The conditions, however, turned in such a way – and in better words, were engineered in such a way – that nobody could oppose them officially and openly, and those people like Mohamed Said Ramadan Al-Bouti who did, lost their lives over it.

According to this new demarcation, Iran turned into the gravitational center of one pole of the existing bipolar reality of the region. In fact, we had no hand in creating this situation and were even opposed to it. Iran’s axial motto was Islamic brotherhood and fraternity in addition to doing away with religious and ethnic frontiers, but external realities usually do not adapt themselves to your intentions and even practical measures.

Under new conditions, all religious minorities in the region, especially Christians, feel they are sharing the same fate with Iran and some of them have said this clearly. And of course it is a reality that the sole regional power to stand against the Takfiri current is Iran. Even a country like Turkey, despite its Kemalist backdrop, preferred to stand not only on the side, but also behind Takfiri groups.

Of course, this is also true about Egypt, though the North African country is so entangled in its own domestic problems that it is actually less prone to turn into an influential factor in this regard.

Another point that must be mentioned here is that presence of official religious minorities will finally benefit the region as well as its social and political balance. As said before, such minorities have been present in the region since the advent of their religions and even at certain junctures, they have played a major role in the evolution of science and civilization and culture in their respective territories. In contemporary times, most of them have been actively involved in independence seeking activities and are still deeply attached to their land, culture, and identity. Therefore, this is their inalienable right to enjoy an honorable life as original citizens of their territories, and be able to play a role in social, economic and political processes in their countries as well.

Their active presence in such areas will be an exercise for increasing individual and social tolerance in those societies and, in turn, will be the most important factor leading to social and political stability and paving the way for achievement of sustainable development. At present, these are two major factors of whose absence the Arab world is currently suffering, because it has no well-established institutions that would be able to realize and guarantee them. Therefore, political and social reformist movements in the Arab world are usually channeled in other ways, which generally lead to destruction.

* Mohammad Masjed-Jamei
Iran’s Former Ambassador to Morocco

By Julio Godoy*

It happened at least twice in January and February 2014: U.S. senator John McCain expressly thanked “God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar and our Qatari friends” for supporting the Sunni Islamic opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. The first time McCain said so to the U.S. television network CNN in January 2014, the second time one month later during a speech at the Munich Security conference.

McCain was simply referring to Saudi Arabian help to create the Islamic State guerrilla group terrorising its way to Damascus. Prince Bandar bin Sultan was once Saudi ambassador in Washington – curiously enough, during 2001, coinciding with the attacks against the World Trade Centre and Washington.

Curiously enough because 15 out of 19 of the September 2001 airplane hijackers were Saudis, as was Osama Bin Laden. Prince Bandar was also the powerful and merciless secretary-general of the Saudi National Security Council from 2005 to January 2015, and head of the Saudi General Intelligence from 2012 to mid-2014. In addition, Prince Bandar has been a treasured business partner of the U.S. Bush dynasty, using the Carlyle group as one of his investment avenues.

McCain’s expression of gratitude for Bandar was most peculiar, since the Saudi prince has been for many years – to say the least – a highly controversial figure in Arab and world politics. In August 2013, only five months before McCain’s repeated kowtows in his honour, Prince Bandar had faced serious accusations that he had provided chemical weapons to the Syrian Sunni guerrilla groups fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad, to attack the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, in which at least 335 people died.

A Sunni Prince of Darkness

The accusations against Bandar surfaced as Syrian rebels acknowledged that Saudi-controlled mercenaries had given them “tube-like structures” and “huge gas bottles” to carry around, or to store them in tunnels around Damascus. Prince Bandar was reported to have supplied these “gas bottles” and “tube-like structures”. Apparently, the rebels were never told how they had to use the bottles. Nor were they warned about the contents.

But according to Western official accounts of the events, staunchly insinuated by the U.S., Britain and France, and shared by the Arab League, the deadly chemical attack on Syrian civilians was perpetrated by Syrian army troops, by Bashar al-Assad. Until today, Western governments and media continue to repeat the accusations against Assad, persistently ignoring the questions about Bandar’s role in the tragedy.

By the same token, Western governments ignored the leaked transcripts of a closed-door meeting between Prince Bandar and the Russian head of state Vladimir Putin in August 2013. These prove, if any proof was necessary, the ruthless nature of Saudi foreign policies, especially in Syria.

According to the transcripts, Prince Bandar offered Putin a strategic alliance in the Middle East if the Russian leader agreed to topple Bashar al-Assad. In case Putin would not agree to such objective, Bandar unsubtly threatened to order Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics held in Sochi in February 2014. Putin did not accept the offer, and until today remains loyal to Assad.

According to a version of the meeting between Bandar and Putin published by the British newspaper, The Telegraph, the Saudi prince allegedly said:  “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us.”

Prince Bandar went on to say that Chechens operating in Syria were a pressure tool that could be switched on and off, The Telegraph report adds. “These groups do not scare us,” Bandar said. “We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role in Syria’s political future.”

Such allegations against Bandar beg the question of why McCain was so keen in praising in public the Sunni armed opposition to Assad, or in thanking the Sunnite despots in the Arabian Gulf for helping to create the Islamic State guerrilla.

In fact, McCain was not alone on genuflecting before the Sunni despots. A large coalition of Sunnite countries, including Turkey, and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members were at the time providing military, logistics, and public relations support to the radical Islamic opposition to Assad. And this under the motto: “The enemy of our enemy is our friend, regardless of his or her (our temporary friend’s) credentials.”

Oil for weapons for Islamic State

For instance, there is strong evidence suggesting that Turkey has been purchasing and allowing the trafficking of oil from the fields Islamic State controls in Iraq and Syria. The brutal Islamic guerrilla group now accused of organising the terror attacks against civilians in Paris is known to finance its operations thanks to massive inflows of money from oil clandestine sales.

According to the British Guardian newspaper, “These (oil) profits helped (the Islamic State) pay its burgeoning wages bill: 500 U.S. dollars a month for a fighter, and about 1,200 U.S. dollars for a military commander.”

Similarly, strong is further evidence that Saudi Arabia was pivotal in creating the Sunnite Islamic State terror group, to obliterate the Saudi’s Shia enemies in Iraq and Syria. In July 2014, the British Independent newspaper reported a conversation between the legendary Prince Bandar bin Sultan and the former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove sometime in the late 1990s, maybe early 2000s.

According to Dearlove himself, Prince Bandar told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.”

Shia is the second-largest denomination of Islam, and constitutes the archenemy of Sunnite Muslims. Especially the extreme intolerant Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam, with headquarters in the Saudi capital Riyadh, sees Shia and other Islamic sects as non-Muslim apostates and polytheists.

Most of the Shia population is concentrated in Iran, therefore the deadly enmity between Riyadh and that denomination of Islam. Large numbers of Shias also live in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere in the Arab world. It is common wisdom nowadays, that the war in Syria is a surrogate war, only a battle in the larger conflict between Sunnis and Shias. Bashar al Assad is an ally of Shia-ruled Iran.

Dearlove himself confirmed this quote in July 2014, during a speech he held at the Royal United Services Institute. Dearlove, head of MI6 from 1999 to 2004, called the conversation with Bandar “a chilling comment that I remember very well indeed”.

Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for the Independent newspaper, called Dearlove’s revelation “explosive”, but at the same time wondered why it attracted “surprisingly little (media) attention.” Cockburn added: “Coverage of Dearlove’s speech focused instead on his main theme that the threat from (Islamic State) to the West is being exaggerated because, unlike Bin Laden’s al-Qaida, it is absorbed in a new conflict that ‘is essentially Muslim on Muslim’. Unfortunately, Christians in areas captured by (Islamic State) are finding this is not true, as their churches are desecrated and they are forced to flee. A difference between al-Qaida and Isis is that the latter is much better organised; if it does attack Western targets the results are likely to be devastating.” (The emphasis is the writer’s).

As Paris can confirm now, Cockburn was deadly right in his prediction.

From Riyadh to Paris

It seems, therefore, that the NATO powers repeated in Syria the very same mistake they committed in Afghanistan some 30 years ago: By supporting their Saudi and other Sunni allies in a highly volatile area, they have again helped to create a ruthless monster, a band of soulless criminals who have no scruples at all about showing themselves point blank executing defenceless people, only because their victims are Shia, or even eating their enemies’ visceral organs.

By supporting Prince Bandar’s nihilist policies, NATO members, France included, were ready to sacrifice the values they claim to defend on the shameful altar of realpolitik. Toppling Bashar al Assad has been since 2011 NATO’s top priority, and this objective has blinded governments and media as far as the nature of Sunni terrorism is concerned. In the NATO amoral accountancy, the horrors and the victims of the Syrian civil war were quantité négligeable as long as the top priority was somehow achieved.

For the European Union, rather recent hesitant search for a solution to the Syrian catastrophe became a top priority only after hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the war arrived in Hungary, Austria, and the Balkan countries. Before, as long as the refugees remained in Jordan, Lebanon or in Turkey, the EU didn’t feel concerned, and left thousands to die in the Mediterranean Sea.

It is also often forgotten that the Islamic State emerged in Iraq, first as a reaction to the U.S.-led invasion 13 years ago, and then as a Saudi-controlled militia to get rid of the Shia Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki was practically ousted in 2014, under pressure from Saudi Arabia.

As a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable dated March 22, 2009 shows, the Saudi king Abdullah told U.S. diplomats, that he had “no confidence whatsoever in … Maliki, and the (U.S.) Ambassador (Ford M. Fraker) is well aware of my views.”

The U.S. cable goes on: “The King affirmed that he had refused former (U.S.) President (George W.) Bush’s entreaties that he meet with al-Maliki. The King said he had met al-Maliki early in al-Maliki’s term of office, and the Iraqi had given him a written list of commitments for reconciliation in Iraq, but had failed to follow through on any of them. For this reason, the King said, al-Maliki had little credibility. ‘I don’t trust this man,’ the King stated, ‘He’s an Iranian agent.’ The King said he had told both Bush and former (U.S.) Vice president (Richard) Cheney ‘how can I meet with someone I don’t trust?’ Al-Maliki has ‘opened the door for Iranian influence in Iraq’ since taking power, the King said, and he was ‘not hopeful at all’ for al-Maliki, ‘or I would have met with him’.”

The Saudis needed five years of waging war through the Islamic State to reach their goals in Iraq, but by mid-2014 al-Maliki was no longer prime minister. In other words, Saudi fingerprints are all over the crime scenes in the Middle East, in Paris, in Yemen. And yet, France and the NATO prefer to bomb some locations in Syria, while at the same time they continue arming the likes of Prince Bandar bin Sultan in Riyadh.

*Julio Godoy is an investigative journalist and a member of the IDN Editorial Board. He has won international recognition for his work, including the Hellman-Hammett human rights award, the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Investigative Reporting Online by the U.S. Society of Professional Journalists, and the Online Journalism Award for Enterprise Journalism by the Online News Association and the U.S.C. Annenberg School for Communication, as co-author of the investigative reports “Making a Killing: The Business of War” and “The Water Barons: The Privatisation of Water Services”.

By Roberto Savio*

In the aftermath of the massacre in Paris on November 13, media throughout the world are calling for unity of the West and intensification of military action against the Islamic State (IS).

Of course, the Paris slaughter can only cause horror and mourning. But why can some very young people act so atrociously … and is it not also time to consider the responsibilities of the West in the rise of IS terrorism?

Among the many reflections that can be made on its roots, three stand out.

The first is that relations between the Arab world and the West carry with them the burden of an uneasy past.

In 1916, during the First World War, an agreement was made to divide the Ottoman Empire among France, Britain, Russia and Italy. The disappearance of the Russian Empire, and the opposition of Kemal Ataturk who was able to keep Turkey independent, left France and Britain to partition the rest.

Artificial countries were carved out at the negotiating table, and thus Syria and Iraq – to name just two of the countries at the centre of today’s scenario – were created. In the process, the negotiators, François Georges-Picot for France and Sir Mark Sykes for Britain, “forgot” to give some land to the Kurds, sowing the seeds for another modern-day problem, and rulers were installed in the new countries who were not legitimated by popular support and who never started a process of modernisation and democracy.

Then, in a brutally compressed nutshell, we come to today, with the growth of education and the arrival of Internet. Millions of educated and unemployed youth have always felt that the West had a great historical responsibility for their lives without a future and the Arab Spring of 2010-2012 brought more frustration.

In Egypt, dictator Hosni Mubarak, was replaced by another, Abdelfatah Al-Sisi, with the acquiescence of the West. And Tunisia, the only surviving democracy, received little real support.

It is important to note that the West tends to ignore the fact that what is happening today is due to three interventions: in Iraq, Syria and Libya. All three were intended to bring about a change of regime, and eliminate unsavoury dictators Hussein, Assad and Gaddafi – all in the name of democracy and freedom. But there were never any follow-up plans and the vacuum left by the dictators is obvious to all but the blind.

Meanwhile, the IS did not appear on the scene unnoticed.

A startling declaration came in July this year (and totally unreported elsewhere) in an Al Jazeera interview with Michael Flynn, a former head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Flynn said that, in 2007, neo-conservatives convinced then U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney to support initiatives to topple the Assad regime by creating a hedge between Syria and Hezbollah by backing the establishment of a “Salafist principality” in Eastern Syria. This would also play favourably for Israel.

Salafism, a radical and extreme branch of Sunnism, is the official religion of Saudi Arabia, which has spent large sums on exporting Salafism – and the IS is an offshoot of Salafism. What is astonishing is that in 2012, when the IS was beginning to appear, Flynn sent a report to the White House. Its lack of response, he said, was not they just turned a blind eye, it was “a willful decision” to let this happen.

It is a repetition of how Bin Laden was used in the war against the Russians in Afghanistan. But we should know now that it is impossible to ride fanaticism.

Anyhow, it is a fact that the West did not start to act against the IS until very late. And this fight is just a small point in the overall Syria mess, which is a proxy war, in which the enemies of the West – the Kurds, Hezbollah, the Iranians – are carrying out the real fight against the IS. And the allies of the West – Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries and Turkey – are in fact not fighting the IS, but only Assad, while the Russian intervention was to prod the Assad regime, with very little action against the IS.

Perhaps Paris will change that, because Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot appear to be ignoring the IS, especially after Russia admitted that the IS blew up a Russian plane at the end of October. But, until now, the West has not really taken military action against the 50,000 fighters that the IS is estimated to have … unless aerial bombing is considered a serious action. It is also important to note that on Arab streets the unanimous view is that the IS could not exist without the tolerance of the West. While this is only a rumour, it helps to fuel the resentment.

We should not forget that the goal of the IS is to depose all kings and dictators and create a Salafist caliphate which will redistribute all the wealth from the Gulf to every country … and it was originally very much an internal affair of the Sunnite and Shiite Muslim world.

U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden put things clearly in public remarks on October 2014, when he said: “Our allies in the region … were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tonnes of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadism coming from other parts of the world.”

A second reflection concerns the Muslims in Europe, who are becoming increasingly linked to the IS.

France has a special situation, with 6 million Muslims, close to the population of Norway. Ten years ago, the same ghettos of Paris, which are now the main IS recruiting fields, were shaken by a sudden revolt which lasted 20 days, with over 10,000 cars burned.

All reports from the ghettos speak of unemployed youth shunned by French society. They are the second or third generation of immigrants who felt themselves to be French, but unlike their fathers have a crisis of identity and future, and see in the Caliphate revenge and dignity. There is unanimity that since the revolts of 10 years ago, frustration has only increased, and the same can be said of many young Muslim people all over Europe.

The recent simultaneous action in Paris by at least three groups, with several kamikazes coming from outside France, shows what we can expect in the future. And terrorism for the IS is mainly a recruitment technique. Every action increases the prestige of the Caliphate, and brings more frustrated European Muslims into its fold. Why has nobody written that it is now estimated that at least 50 percent of IS fighters come from abroad, when originally they were just Iraqis and Syrians?

The third reflection is that the West is now tragically in a no-win situation.

If it intervenes really militarily, it will deepen the conviction that it is the real enemy of the Arab world, Sunnites and Shiites alike. It can easily put the IS down militarily, but to solve the frustration and the spirit of revenge which is behind terrorism is quite another matter. The Paris massacre will put a stronger wedge between European Muslims and the European population, with further radicalisation which is also an IS calculation.

But if the West does not intervene, events such as Paris are politically impossible to ignore. The New York Times has just published an article by Michael Goodwin, an important neoconservative, calling on U.S. President Barack Obama to resign. A similar call from the opposition for the government to resign has been heard  in several European countries and calls for an integrated European army are coming from several corners, among them Italian Minister of Defence Roberta Pinotti.

So, in conclusion, who is going to benefit from Paris?

First and foremost, all xenophobic and right-wing parties in Europe, which are also now able to “justify” their call for closing Europe to refugees. The new Polish Prime Minister-designate, Beata Szydlo, has already declared that, in the light of the Paris attacks, Poland cannot accept EU quotas for asylum seekers.

The popularity of the likes of Matteo Salvini (leader of Italy’s Lega Nord party), Marine Le Pen (leader of France’s National Front) and Pegida (Germany’s anti-Islamic movement) is increasing.

No doubt the inevitable animosity against Muslims will strengthen the appeal of the IS. So polarisation will increase, instead of tolerance, dialogue and inclusion: violence begets more violence.

It looks like we will be going from a time of greed into one of fear … and that, together with the growing impact of global warming, is increasingly being felt beyond rhetoric and easy declarations. [IDN-InDepthNews – 18 November 2015]

*Roberto Savio is publisher of Other News, editorial adviser to IDN and adviser to Global Cooperation Council. He is also co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus. This is a revised version of an article published on Other News on November 17.

“You will have a hard time managing people and organizations if you are unable to manage yourself.” This is the basic premise of the new book on leadership by IESE Prof. Cosimo Chiesa.

The author sets aside his usual subject matter, business management, for this project focused on personal leadership. The 2015 book is driven by the conviction that “the leadership of an organization always begins with the personal leadership of each of its members.”

Offering 25 keys to true leadership, the author addresses such aspects as:

• Focusing on what gives meaning to our lives. Our mission and our values, and what makes us happy, are important components of effective leadership.
• Time management, that perennial complication. “There can be no success, or lasting happiness, if your daily agenda does not conform to your core values,” Chiesa writes.
• Taking care of relationships. Personal, professional and family relationships are all essential to fomenting good leadership.
• Taking care of ourselves, which includes finding time to think, listen and manage our emotions, to read and study, and to get some exercise.

The 8 Treasures of Well-Being

The book takes the form of a series of conversations between a highly successful (but not particularly happy) executive, who has just suffered a serious car accident, and his former professor, who visits him in the hospital. Over the course of nine hospital visits, the professor helps the self-questioning executive rediscover his core beliefs and values. The professor also coaches the executive to rearrange his priorities and commit to a set of goals more aligned with his own true desires.

This coaching process revolves around what the author calls “the eight treasures of well-being,” i.e., the eight elements that lead to personal fulfilment: personal, professional, sentimental, physical, economic, social, community and spiritual treasures. Throughout the process, readers are encouraged to reflect upon their own beliefs and priorities.

And this is where the hard work begins: the book aims to reduce the gap between who we are (or who we have become) and who we would like to be. “Being consistent in what you feel, think, do and say,” is, according to Chiesa, the key to serenity, personal balance and, ultimately, happiness.

Define Your Mission

The first step is to find, and verbalize, a mission to guide your actions from that point onward. This mission will help prioritize between important and urgent tasks.

Start by asking: What is it that inspires and compels you to act? What are your goals? What price are you willing to pay to achieve these goals? What mark do you want to leave on the world?

Your mission should be aligned with your values. “Your values are your DNA, the compass that tells you which way to go,” Chiesa writes.

Each aspiring leader needs to define his or her own personal and non-transferable mission. The book offers a series of practical exercises to help with the process, including tips to help identify fears and thoughts that may trip us up.

The Importance of Setting Goals

“When we don’t have an action plan to stick to, good intentions quickly fall by the wayside,” the author warns. Setting objectives is essential: they allow us to chart a course, align our priorities, measure progress, develop creativity, fix concentration, be proactive and stay motivated in the face of constant challenges.

Yet, armed with clear goals and the best intentions, we can still end up lost in what Chiesa dubs “the valley of excuses.”

What holds us back from achieving the goals we set for ourselves? Falling short of a proper self-assessment is one problem. Fear is another: fear of leaving our comfort zone, of failing and of being rejected. Sometimes we forget the advice we have been given; at other times, we stumble due to a lack of consistency, conviction, or faith in our own potential, Chiesa notes.

The Winning Formula

To overcome common obstacles, Chiesa advocates decisiveness, engagement, dedication, daily improvement and, last but not least, time.

After nine frank conversations, and a list of 25 keys, the coaching process comes full circle to reinforce the first and most vital key to great leadership: the idea that the path to true leadership starts with the individual.

Six world powers will help Iran redesign its Arak heavy water reactor so that it cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium, according to a document released by the state news agency IRNA on Saturday, November 21, Reuters reports.

The document was signed separately on November 13, 17 and 18 by the Foreign Ministers of Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany) as well as EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. It became effective on the date it was signed by all states.

The fate of the Arak reactor in central Iran was one of the toughest sticking points in the long nuclear negotiations that led to an agreement in July. Removing the core of the heavy water reactor to produce less plutonium is a crucial step before the relief from sanctions starts.

Iran will act as project manager, according to the document, while China “will participate in the redesign and the construction of the modernized reactor” and the United States “will provide technical support and review of the modernized reactor design”. France, the United Kingdom and Germany will participate in design review and Russia will provide consultative services.

“The primary design of Arak reactor will take one year. Then the (P5+1) working group has three months to approve it,” Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran’s atomic energy agency, was quoted as saying on Saturday by state broadcaster IRIB.

During the process the Arak heavy water reactor will be reconfigured so it cannot yield fissile plutonium usable in a nuclear bomb.

By Obinna Anyadike*

Kitting out a Nigerien army unit is not what most humanitarians would consider the best response to Boko Haram. But for the NGO Spirit of America, it is precisely the sort of muscular aid – along with more traditional wealth-generating development projects – that’s needed to tackle the militants.

The US non-profit draws the line at supplying weapons. But for a donation of $27,239, Spirit of America will provide all the non-lethal equipment a 150-man unit patrolling the southern border with Nigeria needs. If that’s a bit steep, then $21 buys a headlamp and $62 a first aid kit.

“Spirit of America is a philanthropic rapid response team providing humanitarian and economic assistance in support of our nation’s interests,” proclaims General (Rtd) Stanley McChrystal, of Afghanistan surge fame, on the banner of the group’s website.

According to founder, internet guru Jim Hake, the idea came while watching a documentary in which a special forces soldier in Afghanistan wins the goodwill of a village through the supply of baseball equipment donated by friends and family back home. In gratitude, the village forms a “night watch patrol” to protect the US soldiers, and Taliban attacks end.

Hake’s narrative is that his NGO links well-meaning US troops in global hotspots with the generosity of the American people. Field representatives, all ex-servicemen, work with the soldiers as “embedded venture capitalists”. Their job it to understand the humanitarian problems the soldiers are trying to solve, with the internet then used “to crowdsource whatever capital, knowhow and material is needed,” says Hake.

Spirit of America funded a community-level counter-Boko Haram summit in Niger’s southern Region of Diffa in October – in partnership with the US army’s civil affairs unit and the Nigerien military – to discuss how to stop the flow of recruits to the militants, and better police the porous border villages.

Brutal attacks by Boko Haram, a Nigerian-born jihadist group, have spilled into Niger, as well as neighbouring Cameroon and Chad. The US government is supporting regional governments in the fight against the movement, and a small special forces unit is in Niger.

Further north, in the Agadez region, Spirit of America has spent $41,000 on veterinary school scholarships for a group of young men, the hiring of a veterinarian to work on a vaccination campaign, and two dirt bikes. The grand plan is to build wealth and resilience to undercut any local appeal al-Qaeda – active throughout the Sahel – may exert.

On each page of the NGO’s website is the disclaimer that no endorsement by the Department of Defense “is intended or implied”. Spirit of America does, however, work directly with regional US military commands, and has a star-studded establishment advisory board including former Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain, former secretary of state George Shultz, and several retired generals.

Blurring lines

The politicisation of aid is far from new. During the Vietnam War, Catholic Relief Services deliberately aligned itself with US military policy, and the bulk of its food assistance fed the Popular Forces Militia of the government of South Vietnam. In Afghanistan, NGOs were regarded as “force multipliers”, and Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) – mixed civilian and military units – were supposed to demonstrate the value of soft power.

“Their intentions are genuine. They’re trying to help,” said conflict and emergencies researcher, Ashley Jackson, in reference to Spirit of America. “But the danger is they are blurring the lines and creating problems for aid workers who are seeking to do things in a more impartial way.”

Effective aid programming is a bit of a science, and when done badly – as with the corrupt and inefficient PRTs – it can prove disastrous. Ex-military turned embedded aid entrepreneurs may have martial skills, “but in the civilian/development sectors, they may not have the expertise or the approach that a local NGO with decades of experience would have,” Jackson told IRIN.

With total revenue of $3.2 million for the 2014 financial year, spread over projects in some 15 countries, Spirit of America is a relatively small operation. Katy Thiam, the head of public information for the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, in Niger, said she had never heard of them.

But the broader question, Jackson points out, is whether small, quick impact projects can be anything more than palliative – and whether in any real sense they take account of the dynamics of these complex conflicts.

“You need to be part of a broader strategy to end them rather than just putting a band aid on it,” she said.

*Obinna Anyadike, Editor-at-Large for IRIN.

By Riley Walters*

With the world-wide fallout over the Paris attacks and ISIS’ bloody role in them, pundits and journalists have been falling all over themselves opining on how we got here.  There has been no end of breast-beating about Islam: what’s wrong with Islam that it produced such monsters?  Can Islam be reformed?  I think the question is entirely wrong.

How many Islamist extremists do we believe there are in the world?  If we include al Qaeda, ISIS, al-Nusra, Boko Haram and similar groups–Peter Bergen, writing at CNN, estimated in 2014 there are between 85,000-100,000.  How many Muslims are there in the world?  1.6-billion.  That works out to .000625%.  It is true, of course, that it is those willing to be the most violent, most extreme, most outrageous who hijack the world’s attention.  They present the most aggressive, most militant, most visible face of the religion.  So they exert impact far out of proportion to their actual numbers.

But we should remember Bergen’s words on this subject:

By historical standards this is hardly a major threat. At the end of the Cold War, Soviet and other Warsaw Pact countries could muster around 6 million men to fight in a war against the West, a number that is some 60 times greater than the total number of militants estimated to be fighting for jihadist organizations today…

The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that the threat posed by jihadist organizations around the globe is quite inconsequential when compared with what the West faced in the past century.

But that hasn’t stopped media outlets like the NY Times from weighing in on the subject.  Here is Tim Arango’s introduction to a broad examination of the question of “how to smash” ISIS:

Talking to a diverse group of experts, officials, religious scholars and former jihadis makes clear there is no consensus on a simple strategy to defeat the Islamic State. But there are some themes — like…pushing a broader reformation of Islam — that a range of people who follow the group say must be part of a solution.

Who is the first “expert” he cites?  A former Islamist recruiter who tells him:

“The statement that this has nothing to do with Islam is disingenuous,” said Maajid Nawaz, a former recruiter for a radical Islamist group who was imprisoned in Egypt from 2001 to 2006.

“We need to have a candid conversation about this and recognize that there is a correlation between scripture and this,”

Nawaz of course offers no proof of this correlation, nor does the reporter.  But even if we concede for argument’s sake that there is some correlation, no matter how tenuous, why do we blame an entire religion?  Why do we blame an entire sacred book when a tiny minority of a religion misinterpret it?  Why do we say the religion is at fault rather than the human beings who betray or distort it?

Baruch Goldstein was a mass murderer who killed 29 Palestinian Muslim worshippers at a religious shrine.  He did this in the name of his twisted form of Judaism (which I prefer to call settler Judaism to distinguish it from normative Judaism).  Did I hear Tim Arango or anyone else wring their hands about the correlation between Torah and mass murder?  Even if I did, should I have?

There is nothing wrong with Torah.  Just because Jews misread their sacred text, must I blame the text itself?

Next Arango turns to a “former colonel” in Russia’s Federal Security Service.  Given the brutal ways in which Russia has addressed its own homegrown Islamic extremism, I’d question an intelligence agent as a credible source on this subject.  But he does suggest that Wahabism and radical Gulf clerics and others inspire much of Sunni radicalism, of which ISIS is at the heart.  Arguably a reasonable idea.  But then our friendly FSS agent adds this zinger:

“A significant part of the Islamic religion is infected with a tumor that is metastasizing.”

Really?  And we’re supposed to accept the word of a Russian spy who knows next to nothing about Islam as a religion, and who sees Islam as his darkest Satanic enemy to be exterminated (generally the Russian solution to such problems)?  This is the sort of “expert” Arango seeks to offer?

Next, Arango offers this unsupported, overly-broad claim (and note the typical call for a “moderate Islam”):

An ultimate defeat of the group cannot happen without a reformation within Islam, experts say, and that necessitates a recognition that interpretations of Islam are at the core of the problem, and an outreach to moderate Muslims.

This is the very next quotation from a Muslim “expert.”  You’d expect it to support his demand for a Muslim reformation.  Does it?  No:

“Where is the panel this morning on the Sunday talk shows where you have Muslim leaders alongside Western leaders to talk about how they’re going to conquer this problem?” she [Princeton Professor Amaney A. Jamal] asked. “Instead, you’ll get panels of Western leaders and public policy intellectuals telling you what they will do about Muslims, talking at Muslims.”

Not a word from the good professor about reforming her religion or the cancer that is supposedly eating away at it from within.

There is one source Arango quotes who may remotely be construed as addressing the issue of a theological debate within Islam between extremists and more normative Muslims.  He says:

“ISIS is the one that is saying, ‘We have something to offer you: a sense of purpose, a sense of fulfillment.’ That is what is missing,” said Imam Mohamed Magid, a spiritual leader in Virginia.

“We need to have a strong religious identity that calls people to action, but action in a way that is constructive, not destructive, and promotes life, not death,” he said.

But if you examine his view closely you will see there is no call to reform Islam.  He does not say there is anything wrong with Islam.  He says that Muslims must more vigorously espouse their more normative religious beliefs.  That seems almost self-evident and hardly as sweeping as calls for a radical transformation of Islam and a rooting out of bad ideas at its heart, which Arango infers, and whose sources explicitly avow.

So there you have it.  A claim that is supposedly supported by four “experts,” only two of whom are Islamic scholars and only one of whom remotely speaks to the claims Aranago has set forth.  But even if Islam did require reformation, who is Tim Arango to tell it to do so?  Or Pamela Geller?  Or Daniel Pipes?  Isn’t that the job of Muslims if it is the job of anyone?

Al Jazeera America’s Mehdi Hassan thoroughly debunked the notion of Muslim reform propagated by non-Muslims motivated by political, rather than purely spiritual or religious motives (h/t to Yasser Abumuailek):

[What we] don’t need are lazy calls for an Islamic reformation from non-Muslims and ex-Muslims, the repetition of which merely illustrates how shallow and simplistic, how ahistorical and even anti-historical, some of the west’s leading commentators are on this issue. It is much easier for them, it seems, to reduce the complex debate over violent extremism to a series of cliches, slogans and soundbites, rather than examining root causes or historical trends; easier still to champion the most extreme and bigoted critics of Islam while ignoring the voices of mainstream Muslim scholars, academics and activists.

Now let’s turn to coverage of Islam in the world media.  It doesn’t generally happen unless there is a bombing or a war.  Even then, it doesn’t cover the subject well.  The amount of drivel that passes for knowledge in social media tells you how much the average person knows about Islam.

I make no claim to be a scholar of Islam.  But I know my own religion and have a general interest in the broader subject.

So let me ask a few questions: when Israeli settlers murder Palestinian babies how many NY Times reporters ask what’s wrong with Judaism?  How many wonder when or how Judaism will reform itself?  How many ask where the “moderate Jews” are?  And even if reporters like Tim Arango did so, why should a Jew listen or care?  It’s the job of Jews to determine what their religion is.  Not outsiders who have their own agendas having little to do with the religion itself.

Another question: when a white supremacist murders nine African-American churchgoers, how many asked what’s wrong with white people in America?  When Burmese Buddhists commit genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority, how many wail about the sickness at the heart of Buddhism?

The biggest problem I have with the way this issue is presented is that it confuses a political, with a religious issue.  Though Islamist extremists claim their motivation springs from Islam, I think it springs from far more secular motives: greed and power.  They aren’t motivated by religion.  They are thugs and malcontents who thrive on a geopolitical vacuum.  They are like soldiers of fortune, supping on the world’s misery.

ISIS is a political movement.  The problems which permitted ISIS to sweep across wide swaths of Iraq and Syria were not religious in nature.  The Iraqi state was, and still is in shambles.  There is no central government.  What little there is of it is corrupt.  The army barely exists.  When it does, it too is corrupt and dysfunctional.  Into this maelström stepped ISIS, eager to advantage.

Why did ISIS find a foothold in Syria?  Because that country too had become a failed state.  There was a vacuüm into which a ragtag gang of looters, criminals, and killers disguised as devout Sunni Muslims rushed.  Politics and nature abhor vacuums.  When they exist, the worst dregs of humanity are more than happy to fill them.

Is any of this the fault of Islam?  I think not.  So let’s stop the hysteria.  That may not be possible.  But let’s do our best to tone it down.

This article was published at Tikun Olam.

Last week the US House dealt a blow to President Obama’s plan to resettle 10,000 Syrians fleeing their war-torn homeland. On a vote of 289-137, including 47 Democrats, the House voted to require the FBI to closely vet any applicant from Syria and to guarantee that none of them pose a threat to the US. Effectively this will shut down the program.

The House legislation was brought to the Floor after last week’s attacks in Paris that left more than 120 people dead, and for which ISIS claimed responsibility. With the year-long US bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, there is a good deal of concern that among those 10,000 to be settled here there might be some who wish to do us harm. Even though it looks as though the Paris attackers were all EU citizens, polling in the US shows record opposition to allowing Syrian refugees entry.

I agree that we must be very careful about who is permitted to enter the United States, but I object to the president’s plan for a very different reason. I think it is a sign of Washington’s moral and intellectual bankruptcy that US citizens are being forced to pay for those fleeing Washington’s foreign policy.

For the past ten years the US government has been planning and executing a regime change operation against the Syrian government. It is this policy that has produced the chaos in Syria, including the rise of ISIS and al-Qaeda in the country. After a decade of US destabilization efforts, we are now told that Syria is totally destabilized and we therefore must take in thousands of Syrians fleeing the destabilization that Washington caused.

Has there ever been a more foolish and wrong-headed foreign policy than this?

The American people have been forced to pay untold millions for a ten-year CIA and Pentagon program to undermine and overthrow the Syrian government, and now we are supposed to pay millions more to provide welfare for the refugees Obama created.

Who should pay for the millions fleeing the chaos that Washington helped create? How about the military-industrial complex, which makes a killing promoting killing? How about the Beltway neocon think-tanks that continue to churn out pro-war propaganda while receiving huge grants from defense contractors? How about President Obama’s national security advisors, who push him into one regime change disaster after another? How about Hillary Clinton, who came up with the bright idea that “Assad must go”? How about President Obama himself, a president elected to end wars, but who has ended up starting more wars than his predecessor? It’s time those who start the wars start paying for the disasters they create. Then perhaps we might have some relief from an interventionist foreign policy that is destroying our financial and national security.

If Obama wants to take in refugees from the chaos in Syria, there are probably plenty of vacant rooms in the White House.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

By Ajit Kumar Singh*

In a dramatic development, on November 11, 2015, Bangladesh Guard Border personnel handed over Golap Baruah alias Anup Chetia, the ‘general secretary’ of the undivided United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and his two prison mates — Babul Sharma and Laxmiprasad Goswami aka Shakti Prasad who were arrested along with him in Bangladesh in 1997 — to personnel of India’s Border Security Force (BSF) near the Dawki border point in the Sylhet District of Bangladesh. Chetia was brought to the Indian capital, New Delhi, on the same day. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) placed him under arrest in New Delhi a day later, in connection with a murder incident in 1998 in Golaghat (Assam). On the same day, a court in Delhi issued a six day transit remand to the CBI to hold Chetia. Chetia was brought to Guwahati, Assam, on November 18, 2015, where a special CBI court forwarded him to a further five days in CBI custody. Chetia has long been wanted in India to stand trial in various cases of extortion, abduction, murder and attempt to murder.

Chetia was first arrested in Kolkata (then Calcutta), capital of the Indian State of West Bengal, in March 1991 for allegedly aiding and abetting the murder of Kolkata-based tea planter Surendra Paul and Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) activist Sanjoy Ghosh. Later that year, he was released by the then Assam Chief Minister Hiteswar Saikia to facilitate the first ever peace talks between the Government and the ULFA. As the talks failed, Chetia disappeared and took shelter in Bangladesh. On December 21, 1997, he was arrested by Bangladeshi authorities along with his two bodyguards from his plush apartment in North Adabar under the Muhammedpur Police Station in Dhaka, on charges of illegally crossing into Bangladesh, unauthorized stay in Bangladesh, illegal possession of a satellite telephone and illegal possession of foreign currency. He was sent to jail. Even after completing his jail term on February 27, 2007, he continued to remain in jail till his deportation, as a court in Bangladesh had ordered, in August 2003, that Chetia be kept in custody until a decision was made on an asylum plea filed by him. However, on May 13, 2013, in a petition submitted to the Rajshahi Central Jail, where he had been in detention, Chetia stated: “Earlier, I wanted to stay in this country. I have changed my mind and I have decided to live the rest of my life with my children in my country (India).”

Chetia is the seventh top leader from the undivided ULFA who have been ‘deported, or handed over to Indian authorities, from Bangladesh so far. In November 2009, the then ‘foreign secretary’ of ULFA, Sasadhar Choudhury, and the then ‘finance secretary’ Chitraban Hazarika, had been handed over to Indian authorities at BSF’s Gokul Nagar post, before they were brought to Guwahati by an Assam Police team. On December 4, 2009, the then ‘chairman’ of undivided ULFA, Arabinda Rajkhowa, and the outfit’s then ‘deputy commander-in-chief’ Raju Baruah, were handed over to Indian authorities at Dawki by the then Bangladesh Rifles. ULFA ‘captain’ Antu Chaudang and ‘second lieutenant’ Pradeep Chetia were handed over to Indian authorities on February 5, 2011.

Chetia was one among the six founding members of the undivided ULFA, which was established on April 7, 1979, by Bhimakanta Buragohain, Rajiv Rajkonwar alias Arabinda Rajkhowa, Samiran Gogoi alias Pradip Gogoi, Bhadreshwar Gohain, Paresh Baruah and Chetia, at the Rang Ghar in Sibsagar, with the objective of establishing a “sovereign socialist Assam” through armed struggle. While Rajkhowa and Chetia were ‘deported’ from Bangladesh, Pradip Gogoi was arrested from Kolkata on April 8, 1998. Bhimakanta Buragohain died on December 19, 2011, of cardiac arrest after his release from jail in December 2010. He was arrested by the Royal Bhutan Army during Operation All Clear which was executed against insurgent groups operating in India’s northeast from safe havens in the southern regions of Bhutan, between December 15, 2003, and January 3, 2004. He was subsequently handed over to the Indian authorities in January 2004. Bhadreshwar Gohain gave up militancy in the early 1980s and was elected as a Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) in the Assam State Assembly Elections of December 1985 on an Asom Gan Parishad (AGP) ticket. Subsequently, he went on to serve as the Deputy Speaker of the State Legislative Assembly between April 1, 1986, and April 10, 1990.

Thus, apart from Paresh Baruah, all the other founding members of undivided ULFA are no more associated with the ‘movement’. In fact, the parent organisation vertically split into two when, on February 5, 2011, leaders of undivided ULFA led by ‘vice-chairman’ Pradip Gogoi, along with ‘foreign secretary’ Sashadhar Choudhury and ‘central publicity secretary’ Mithinga Daimary announced that the outfit’s general council had endorsed the resolution of the central executive council (CEC) to sit for talks with the Central Government without any precondition. The then ULFA ‘commander-in-chief’ Paresh Baruah described the general council itself as unconstitutional and rejected the resolution. The ‘formal’ split of the group took place in August 2012, when Paresh Baruah ‘expelled’ Arabinda Rajkhowa and appointed Abhijit Barman as the outfit’s ‘chairman’. Thus emerged two factions of ULFA – the Anti-Talks (ULFA-ATF) and Pro-Talks (ULFA-PTF) factions, led by Paresh Baruah and Arabinda Rajkhowa, respectively. The ULFA-ATF renamed itself as ULFA-Independent (ULFA-I), following its ‘central executive committee’ meeting between April 2 and 5, 2013.

Not surprisingly, the ‘movement’ has weakened considerably. While ULFA-PTF is now engaged in negotiations with the Government, the Baruah led ULFA-I is struggling for survival, as is evident from the fact that it has been forced to play second fiddle to the Khaplang faction of the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) in the newly formed United National Liberation Front of Western South East Asia (UNLFWESEA). UNLFWESEA has scored some ‘successes’ in keeping insurgency alive in the region. On June 4, 2015, 18 Army personnel were killed and another 11 were injured when militants ambushed a convoy of 46 troopers of the 6 Dogra Regiment of the Army, at Moltuk, near the India-Myanmar border, in the Paralong area of the Chandel District of Manipur. The attack was attributed to UNLFWESEA.

It is expected that Chetia will join the peace process between the Government and the ULFA-PTF which got underway in 2010 with ULFA softening its demand over sovereignty. Assam Director General of Police Khagen Sarma, who according to reports is steering the peace talks, observed, “Chetia will go for the peace process and that is why he had to be brought in.” ULFA-PTF ‘vice chairman’ Pradip Gogoi, after meeting Chetia, asserted, on November 18, 2015, “Chetia will certainly cooperate”.

Chetia’s participation is likely to have a positive impact on the peace process. An unnamed Government source was quoted as stating, “It would definitely be a boost to the talks with ULFA and further weaken Baruah’s position. Whatever little hope Baruah had of some support from his community, Chetia being from the same community and being the original founder of ULFA weakens Barua that much further… Chetia’s presence and endorsement of the talks was important for Assam.”

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi also noted, “… He [Chetia] is very influential and his presence will help the India-ULFA talks see a solution. He is more influential than the chief of ULFA anti-talks faction Paresh Barua.” Moreover, ULFA-PTF ‘foreign secretary’ Sashadhar Choudhury noted that Chetia’s participation will legitimize the peace process: “…if Chetia joins then the peace process will be legitimized more than the existing one.” Choudhury also said that it now depends on the Government if it wants to resolve the Assam problem or not, adding, “I do not think that the Government is trying to intentionally delay the peace process but if it wants a quick solution, it needs to speed up.”

On November 10, 2015, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju stated, “Talks with ULFA will be held after the Diwali festival and the Centre is soon likely to wind up talks with the pro-talks faction of the ULFA.” According to reports, the proposed date for the next round of peace talks between ULFA-PTF, the Centre and the Assam Government is November 24, 2015. It is expected that the process will be expedited in the context of this latest positive development in the form of Chetia’s’ deportation.

Significantly, however, Baruah’s ULFA-I remains active, principally from safe havens in Myanmar, and unless this group is brought to the table, or neutralized, this stream of violence in Assam will persist.

* Ajit Kumar Singh
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management

In a preemptive move and in a major blow to the extremist elements in Kuwait, security forces have busted and dismantled a multinational cell for Daesh (Islamic State), including five Syrians, two Australians, a Lebanese, an Egyptian, and a Kuwaiti national.

The vigilance of security agencies has led to the apprehension of a dangerous Daesh cell in Kuwait, the Ministry of Interior announced in a press statement Saturday, adding that the cell was providing the main organization in Syria with new recruits, money, weaponry, and logistical support.

It stated that five of the cell members were arrested and four others are still fugitive outside the country. The ringleader is a 45-year-old Lebanese national, born in Kuwait, named Osama Khayat.

It added that the cell included a Kuwaiti national named Rakan Al-Ajmi and was responsible for the logistical matters.

The Interior Minister said that the cell dismantling comes in continuation of the security agencies following up, monitoring, and cracking down on extremists in the state.

It pointed out that Khayat, the cell coordinator, was arrested first. During cross-examination, he gave detailed information about the cell members and roles.

The suspect, who has been using his website for propaganda work for Daesh, confessed that he has been in contact with the group leaders in Syria and has made several arms deals for the main organization, including deals for purchasing FN-6 missiles and other weaponry from Ukraine.

Khayat told investigators that the purchased weaponry was being shipped to Turkey and being smuggled into Syria later.

He admitted that he has printed and dispatched stamps and seals with the Daesh logo for the main organization and transferred money to Daesh-related bank accounts in Turkey.

The ministry statement pointed that Khayat gave the names of the five cell members in Kuwait. They were all arrested.

Abdulkarim Mohammad Selem has a Ukraine-based arms company and was about to purchase shoulder-fired missiles and telecommunications devices. Rakan Nasser Muneer Al-Ajmi is a Kuwaiti national offering logistical support to the extremists. Also in the arrests were Hazem Mohammad Khair Tartari, Wael Mohammad Ahmad Baghdadi, and Abdhulnasser Mahmoud Al-Shawa.

Investigations also unveiled names of four additional members who are still at large abroad.

Waleed Nasif works as a currency exchanger in a Turkish city on the Syrian border. Mahammad Hekmat Tartari was in charge of financial matters and external liaisons. Hesham Mohammad Thahab and Rabia Thahab are also suspected to be involved, though their positions within the cell are not known.

The arrested an seized items were all referred to relevant investigative bodies, the ministry said.

It reiterated firm determination to confront any attempt from extremist groups to jeopardize the country’s security and people’s safety.

It also urged all people to cooperate with security bodies for securing their homeland.

By Ibi

Original article

By Fakir Mohan Pradhan*

The Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) abducted six local leaders of the Bhadrachalam division of Telangana State’s ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), including constituency in-charge Maane Ramakrishna, from Pusuguppa, a village on the fringes of forest in Charla mandal (block administrative unit) in Telangana’s Khammam District, late on November 18, 2015. The TRS leaders had reportedly gone to the village to discuss about Government’s scheme to build two-bedroom houses in the village. A letter issued in the name of Maoist ‘spokesperson’ Jagan listed three demands – stringent action against Police officials involved in alleged “fake encounters”, immediate halt to combing operations in the entire tribal belt spanning Adilabad and Khammam Districts and an end to “fake encounters”. The Maoists warned of “serious consequences” if their demands were not met. They also accused the TRS Government of repressing people’s movements and pursuing “feudal and pro-imperialist” policies.

The TRS leaders were, however, abruptly released by the Maoists near the Chhattisgarh border within Khammam District on November 21, following fervent appeals by their families. The Maoists, however, reportedly issued a renewed warning to persons at the helm of affairs against “fake encounters”.

Earlier, an Assistant Beat Officer of the Forest Department, identified as Bukya Mohan, had been abducted by the Maoists from Chennapuram village in the Charla mandal of Khammam District late on November 9. Mohan along with his colleagues, had gone to the village, located on the fringes of the forest in connection with his official duties when the incident occurred. Less than 24 hours after being whisked away, however, he returned home safely.

Meanwhile, in the East Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh, Maoists had abducted Isaac, son of a pastor, from Yetapaka on October 31, after they failed to abduct his father Kannaiah. Three pastors from the neighbouring villages later went to the forest to persuade Isaac’s abductors to release him. Rumours emerged that they were also abducted. However, on November 12, Police disclosed that the pastors had returned to Yetapaka along with Isaac earlier in the day. According to the Police, Maoists freed Isaac unconditionally. Police had attributed Isaac’s abduction to the arrest of Eruvu Siva Reddy, CPI-Maoist ‘State committee’ leader, who was arrested on October 11 from Yetapaka in the East Godavari District.

The Maoists had also abducted three local leaders of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) of G.K. Veedhi mandal from their homes in Kothaguda village in the Visakhapatnam District of Andhra Pradesh (AP) on October 5. TDP is the ruling party in AP. The Maoists demanded that the Government make it clear that it would not exploit the bauxite resources in the Agency, and that TDP men would quit the party and join the agitation against the proposed mining.

After some grandstanding and a few threats, the Maoists finally handed over abducted TDP mandal unit president Mamidi Balayya Padal, party senior leader Vandalam Balayya and District Committee member Mukkala Mahesh to the Girijan Employees’ Association leaders, on October 14, after holding a Praja court (People’s court) in an interior forest area in Chitrakonda, Odisha. The Maoists announced in the Praja court that the TDP men were being released on ‘humanitarian grounds’ following appeals from the Girijans (tribals), political parties and former Tribal Welfare Minister M. Manikumari. The released leaders were told strictly not associate themselves with any political party and should involve themselves in the ongoing anti-bauxite mining agitation with their fellow Girijans.

At the Praja court, the Maoists had reportedly declared that they had to resort to these abductions since the people’s voice against the bauxite mining proposal was being stifled and the Police had made all efforts to disrupt the meetings organised by the YSR Congress and Left parties at Koyyru and Darakonda respectively. Maoists also opposed the plans of erecting more cell phone towers in the Agency and to open petrol filling stations at Sileru, Peda Bayalu and G.K. Veedhi. The petrol pumps were meant to provide fuel to vehicles engaged in bauxite mining activities, the Maoists contended.

According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) database, undivided Andhra Pradesh, and after its bifurcation both AP and Telangana, had recorded very few incidents of abduction over the past years: one each in 2005, 2006, and 2007; eight in 2008; none in 2009; two in 2010; two in 2011; one in 2012; none in 2013; three in 2014; and five, thus far, in 2015. Significantly, most of the abductions were either ‘unspecified’ or for specific reasons like allegations of being Police informers. However, in the recent abduction of TDP leaders in Andhra Pradesh and TRS leaders in Telangana, the Maoists laid out specific demands before the respective States Governments for the release of the abducted persons. While the Maoists kept the TDP leaders hostage for seven days and TRS leaders for two days, the hostages were released in both cases for reasons other than the States meeting their demands.

The Maoists had gone ahead with the abductions, despite the 4th Central Committee meet resolution that made it clear that no abductions should be carried out for political and economic demands. The Maoists resolved,

We must not put political and economic demands when we take up this struggle form [‘arrest of political prisoners’, i.e., abductions]. We must not take this up with the view of exposing the Government politically (for propaganda). Doing so would send wrong signals to the fighting people. Any struggle form taken up by us should aim to mobilize the people as much as possible. Even while getting the political prisoners released we must primarily try to mobilize the people and take up the struggle even while utilizing the lawful opportunities.

It is interesting to take note of the Andhra Pradesh Government’s action in the wake of the abduction of TDP leaders. After the release of the abducted TDP leaders on October 14, the AP Government came out with a Government Order (GO) on November 5, permitting bauxite mining in the Agency area in direct contravention of the Maoist demand. As expected, this created a furore in the area engineered by opposition political parties, and human rights and girijan organisations. Responding to the protests, the AP Government put the proposed mining plan on hold on November 16. In other words, the State has not committed itself to abandoning the proposal for bauxite mining in the Agency area, though it has yielded to opposition pressure to defer the project. Not surprisingly, the Opposition is demanding the scrapping of the GO.

Bauxite mining in Agency area has remained a contentious issue in Andhra Pradesh. The Maoists have been trying to exploit the situation to their advantage by taking a strong stand against permission to start mining. In fact, AP Director General of Police (DGP) J V Ramudu expressed apprehensions that the bauxite mining issue could spur Maoist efforts to regain their lost ground in the Visakhapatnam Agency, though he added that the Police was ready to face the situation in such a case.

The actions of the AP Government make it clear that the State is confident of dealing effectively with the remaining traces of Maoist activities in the State. In fact, the State has not lost any Security Force (SF) personnel to the Maoists in 2015 (till November 22), as was the case in 2014 and 2013, while the Police killed one Maoist cadre in 2015. The Maoists have killed five civilians in this period. In 2014, the Maoists killed five civilians and suffered five fatalities. Crucially, 112 Maoists have surrendered in AP in 2015, till date. The State has also made 42 arrests, including a CPI-Maoist ‘State committee’ member and ‘secretary’ of the party’s Khammam District committee, Eruvu Shiva Reddy alias Kiran (38), from the East Godavari District, on October 11.

In Telangana too, the Maoists are making fervent attempts to a shadow of their earlier dominance. After a gap of a decade, the first killing of a civilian by Maoists took place in Tiryani mandal (Adilabad District) on October 30, reportedly by a dalam comprising 10 to 14 armed extremists. However, total civilian killings by the Maoists were down at two in 2015, as of November 22. Significantly, while the SFs have not suffered any casualties, two Maoists, both new recruits, were killed in an encounter on September 15, 2015. Further, a new recruit, Kodamagundla Vivek (19) of Suryapet in Nalgonda, was killed near the Chhattisgarh border.

The recent spate of abductions by Maoists in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are part of increasingly anxious efforts by the Maoists to engineer a revival in their erstwhile areas of dominance, but have failed abysmally, exposing and underlining their increasing weakness.

* Fakir Mohan Pradhan
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

By Manoj Joshi*

The Paris attack has focused the attention of the world on the Islamic State (Daesh).

Earlier, the impact of the outfit, also known as the ISIS, was confined to the geographical region it controls – eastern Syria and northern Iraq. Now it seems to be everywhere.

Every day Indian newspapers are giving us details of the organisation’s alleged Indian adherents and our intelligence agencies, through deep background briefings, warn darkly about the IS threat.

Just why Daesh decided to change its focus from the “near enemy” – Syrian and Iraqi forces, the Kurdish and Iranian militias – for the “far enemy” is difficult to determine. Perhaps Paris, as well as the Russian airliner, were targets of opportunity.

However, as Bernard Haykel pointed out in a recent article, it has to do with the adverse ground situation in Syria and Iraq where the Daesh has lost ground, and the punishment it is receiving from the aerial bombardment. It now faces a hardening of the Turkish stand since the bombing of the Opposition rally in Ankara in October, resulting in a choking of foreign recruits.

This should not lead to any slackening of effort to destroy this monstrosity – a medieval state functioning in the 21st century.

There are four steps that need to be taken to that end. First, containing the ISIS in the badlands of Syria and Iraq. Invading these areas would be counter-productive. Daesh would actually welcome a western attack because as per their theology, the end of days battle will begin from Dabiq and will actually see the “crusaders” victorious in the beginning, followed by their final destruction.

Using Shia on non-Sunni forces would harden the resistance in the Sunni-dominated ISIS areas. Instead, a tight cordon sanitaire should be maintained by the Kurds, Iranian, Syrian and Iraqi forces aided by western surveillance systems.

The second effort needs to be made to choke the ISIS finances. It is well known that even now oil continues to be smuggled out of areas under ISIS control. Obviously some influential parties are involved in this.

Actually it was only last week that for the first time US warplanes attacked an oil convoy coming out of the ISIS area, this was followed by attacks by the Russian Air Force as well. The question to be asked is why this was not done earlier, since these convoys are several kilometres long. However, indiscriminate bombing should be avoided because it will kill non-combatants.

The big issue to be thrashed out here is the future of Bashar al Assad, as well as the attitude of countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, which have backed rebels against the Syrian regime. The Americans remain insistent on his removal, but so far, their efforts have led to the strengthening of ISIS, rather than weakening it.

The third is a more complex, longer-term task, though it does not brook much delay. This is to undermine the Daesh’s ideological appeal. This appeal arises from its claim that life in the Caliphate is lived as it was in the time of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

The enslavement of non-believers, beheading of defeated enemies, and other such medieval measures are indeed mentioned in the Muslim holy book which is considered as the word of God, but which was written up in the medieval times.

The Old Testament of the Christians and the holy books of the Jews, too, say that God’s law demands death for, say, cursing your parents, pre-marital sex, and adultery. Slaughtering enemies and massacring the defeated is also sanctioned by divine law. But the practice of the application of the scriptures has changed, and in Christian lands no one seriously argues that practices which may have been the norm in Biblical times should be reinstituted today.

Most Muslims, too, do not believe that it is a good idea to enslave non-believers or to stone adulterers. But many remain in the thrall of preachers who say that “innovation” or bidaa is the path to apostasy, which itself is punishable by death.

In such circumstances, reformation or modernisation of the message of the Quran becomes moot.

But clearly this is something that only the Muslims can work out. The one positive outcome of the Daesh literalism is that it is compelling Muslims to think and debate these issues.

As for India, the good news remains that the ISIS phenomenon has very little traction here. If a couple of people have been in ISIS-related chatrooms or have been trying to travel to Syria, it means little.

As of now Indian Muslims have their feet on the ground and show no signs of being attracted to the Daesh ideology. However, we should not lower our guard, because as the Paris incident has shown, that with its back to the wall, the Daesh is striking out wherever it can.

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

Courtesy: Mail Today, November 22, 2015

Vladimir Putin met with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei upon the Russian president’s arrival in Tehran to attend the Gas Exporting Countries Forum. Putin reportedly made a gift of a rare handwritten Quran to Iran’s leader.

This is Putin’s second trip to Iran. His first was in 2007. when he attended the Caspian Sea Littoral States Meeting.

On his one-day trip to Tehran today, Putin was also to attend the GECF meeting and, on the sidelines there, meet with Iranian President Hassan Rohani.

Sputnik reported that Vladimir Putin has now signed the document lifting restrictions and prohibitions on nuclear cooperation with Iran as part of the nuclear agreement reached between Iran and the 5+1 in July.

In addition to lifting the ban on the sale of equipment, technology and goods related to importing enriched uranium, the document will open the door to cooperation in joint nuclear ventures.

Are the American corporate media largely propaganda organs, or news organizations?

Here are a few points to consider, and then you the reader can decide. Check out how one should objectively answer these questions below, and then check how the US corporate media generally answer them:

1. If ISIS or Al Qaeda deliberately attacks a civilian venue as in Paris, killing dozens of civilians indescriminately, is it terrorism?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes

2. If the US deliberately attacks a a civilian venue as in the case of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing dozens of civilians indescriminately, is it terrorism?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No

3. If the Chinese government takes control of a tiny island claimed by another nation, expands it, and puts a military installation on it, is it an example of aggression, a violation of international law, and a provocation?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes

4. If the US government takes control and then refuses to relinquish a portion of a tiny island owned by another country, in this instance Cuba, expands it and puts a military installation on it (as it has done now for decades in the case of Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba, is it an example of aggression, a violaton of international law and a provocation?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No

5. If the leader of a party that wins a national election by a landslide is not herself elected, but announces that she will in fact be making all the important decisions for the newly elected government, as Suu Ky just announced she will do in Myanmar, is it an example of undemocratic behavior, or caudillismo?

Objective answer: Yes
US Media answer: No

6. If the leader of a party steps down as president but then continues behind the scenes to act as the real authority on important issues even though someone else (his brother) was elected president, as Fidel Castro has done in Cuba, is this an example of undemocratic behavior and a kind of caudillismo?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes

7. If a foreign country places missiles pointed at another nation on the territory of a country adjacent to the target country, as the USSR once did in Cuba with respect to the US, is that a threat to the target country?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes

8. If the US places missiles in Poland and points them at Russia, as the US has done, or puts nuclear weapons in Germany also targeting Russia, as the US also does, is this a threat to Russia?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No

9. If Iran provides military assistance to insurrectionists in a neighboring country like Yemen and those armed fighters, the Houthis, successfully drive an autocrat from power, is that subversion?:

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes

10: If the US provides funds to organizations inside another country, which then organize protests, marches and bloody assaults, and ultimately drive the elected government out of office, as the US did in Ukraine, is that subversion?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No

11. If Iran, a signatory of the International Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, seeks to develop the capability to refine uranium-235 which could someday be used to make a nuclear bomb, but agrees to international supervision and inspections, is that a grave threat to regional stability in the Middle East and to world peace?

Objective answer: No, since there is already a powerful nuclear nation in the Middle East with the capability of totally obliterating Iran — namely Israel.
Media answer: Yes

12: If Israel, which has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which refuses to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities, and which is known to have hundreds of nuclear weapons as well as the planes and missiles to deliver them anywhere, is that a grave threat to regional stability in the Middle East and to world peace?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No

13: If a person discloses discloses, for money, to a foreign power, the inner workings of the National Security Agency’s signal intercept system, as well as the identities of hundreds of US undercover intelligence operatives, as just-paroled Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard did, is he an enemy of the US?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No

14. If a person discloses, as an act of principle and as a whistleblower, for no compensation, the illegal and unconstitutional spying activites against American citizens of the National Security Agency, as exiled and stateless whistleblower Edward Snowden did, is he an enemy of the US who should face his punishment?

Objective answer: No
US media answer: Yes

15. If pro-ISIS terrorists in Paris are said to have fired kill shots into the heads of wounded victims of their terror attacks, is that an example of barbarism and a crime worthy of world-wide condemnation?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes

16: If videos show Israeli Defense Forces firing kill shots into the head of a wounded Palestinian lying on the street, is that an example of barbarism and a war crime worthy of world-wide condemnation?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No. (It’s not even worth reporting on)

Clearly one could go on and on with this kind of a list, but the evidence should be obvious and incontrovertible that the mainstream corporate media are working essentially in lockstep supporting US foreign policy in ways that involve presenting the world to the US public in a very warped pro-government manner.

Why this is happening, when these news organizations are, for the most part, not directly funded or controlled by the government as they are in countries where we expect the media to be propaganda arms is a complicated story, long ago explained clearly by experts like Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman.

But whether one reads such analyses or not, the reality should be clear to anyone who pays attention: the US media, particularly when it comes to foreign affairs, but also when it comes to matters like intelligence and domestic spying, cannot be trusted to present the truth, or anything approaching the truth.

I would point out here that solid evidence of this willful disregard for the truth and for truthtelling on the part of the corporate media can be found by looking at just the stories that have been broken here in our own small and virtually penniless news organization, ThisCantBeHappening!. Over the past four years, we have exposed:

• The CIA’s role in orchestrating terrorist sectarian mayhem in Pakistan
• The central role of US law enforcement and intel agencies in coordinating the bloody crushing of the Occupy Movement in cities across the US
• The advance knowledge, and utter lack of concern or action by the FBI regarding a documented plot in Houston by some known but unidentified group or organization to assassinate leaders of that city’s Occupy movement using “suppressed sniper rifle fire.” (The Houston FBI sent memos about this plot to other FBI regional bureaus and to central FBI headquarters but never acted to prevent it and never made any arrests of those involved in the plot.)
• The Obama administration’s deliberate deep-sixing of hard forensic evidence by Turkish coroners showing that Israeli Defense Force members had brutally executed Furkan Dogan [5], a 19-year-old American kid aboard the Gaza Peace Flotilla’s flagship, the Mavi Marmara, and then did nothing to demand punishment for the killers
• The murder, by an FBI agent, of a young Chechen immigrant, Ibragim Todashev, in Florida who was being interrogated by the agent and a Boston cop in his own apartment. (Todashev may have had evidence that the FBI had been working with the Tsarnaev brothers before the Boston Marathon bombing.) Three part series: Dark Questions, Part I, Dark Questions, Part II, Dark Questions, Part III

These and other stories which we reported and published, and which were picked up widely in the alternative media, were never even mentioned by the US corporate media. Nor are most other important breaking news stories reported by other alternative media given any notice in the corporate press. Such information is thus kept largely away from the broader US population which gets its information entirely from mainstream corporate sources.

Instead of repeating the never ending mantra of not making it possible to agree within the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina (and within its two entities of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republic of Srpska) in regards to which day should be celebrated the country’s Statehood Day, shall we admit, at least, that we agree to disagree.

Even furthermore, after knowing that, can we can climb up and, after reading this link, arrange possible alternatives for the mentioning mantra of having just one part of the country to celebrate the date (just Federation of BiH). Why should only just one part of the country celebrate the mentioned date as Statehood Day? Again, they (read: people(s) representatives on the power) have agreed to disagree until the end of time about the mentioned day. Again, just check out the link above.

So, is there a solution?

Yes, there are always a lot of solutions and we will just, methodologically, present one, which seems (to underline: for me), most suitable for all parties involved.

Nevertheless, the Dayton Peace Agreement stated that (new) Bosnia and Herzegovina would have continuity with the former Republic Bosnia and Herzegovina and that is eo ipso, also the continuity of…for Statehood Day: “On this day in 1943, the Anti-Fascist Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ZAVNOBiH) adopted a resolution declaring Bosnia and Herzegovina an equal community of Serbs, Muslims and Croats.” … Again, that day has legitimacy in accordance with continuity, but…Living in, as we know, a very much paralyzed state exactly because of the Dayton Peace Agreement which stopped the war, but has created a Frankenstein state about which I wrote in Eurasia Review, “disagreement” as a state of mind exists here as the Law above all the Laws, and even above the Constitution as it is (again, why talk about the Constitution if it has never passed the Parliamentary procedure?).

The solution is, having in mind a consensual system within democracy as written by Arend d’Angremond Lijphart,

In fact, consensual systems stimulate economic growth, control inflation and unemployment, and limit budget deficits just as well as majoritarian democracies do. And, consensus democracies clearly outperform majoritarian systems on measures of political equality, women’s representation, citizen participation in elections, and proximity between government policies and voter preferences…Consensus democracy has particular advantages for deeply divided societies. Majoritarian democracy might be criticized for excluding almost half the population from the governmental process, since it can leave 49.9% of the population out of the policy process. In the literature, we read that this criticism is void under two conditions. First, if today’s minority has a realistic chance of becoming tomorrow’s majority, then exclusion probably isn’t a major problem, since each half of the country takes its turn being in charge (which will tend to moderate abuse of the minority by the majority). Second, if society is sufficiently homogeneous, then exclusion might not be a major problem, since the excluded minority’s interests don’t differ much from the majority’s.

Lijphart contests these two arguments by pointing out that in many societies, especially in societies with deep ethnic, linguistic, religious, or ideological cleavages, neither condition holds. These deep divisions can prevent crossover (“swing”) voting, preventing today’s minority from ever having a realistic chance of being tomorrow’s majority. Moreover, there is unlikely to be much overlap between the minority’s and the majority’s interests in such a society. Thus, the minority’s permanent exclusion might lead to unrest or violence. Consensus democracy is Lijphart’s institutional solution to this problem, allowing democracy to function by incorporating minority rights and allowing minority groups to influence policies. Though there might be less turnover in the legislature (see p 7), governments will represent a broader swath of interests (see pgs 31-33).

The solution is there and we just need to dig it up from, as mentioned above, a deeply divided society as is Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The answer is not (and will not) be found blowing in the wind, but will be found here:

The Statehood Day (which exists and being accepted by all sides within the continuity of Bosnia and Herzegovina) might be any day during November. To make it simplest, we can even put in between 21.11.2015 (for Republic of Srpska, the day of signing of Dayton Peace Agreement) and 25.11.2015 (for the Federation of BiH this is a historical date from 1943 as mentioned above).

A consensual system is the system in which nobody’s freedom to choose, think and act might jeopardize anybody else’s freedom to choose, think and act. Why? Because, if not, then freedom does not exist for anybody. Instead, it becomes organized…anarchy. A consensual system is the system of a win/win situation in which we can all gain something, until we find the final solution, in the days to come. If we, over here in Bosnia and Herzegovina, continue to negate any of above of the dates (21.11. and/or 25.11.) we will again establish the possibility for developing new conflicts in the future.

Can we make 23.11.2015 as the Statehood date of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which will encircle both (Dayton Peace Agreement and Decision made by Anti-Fascist Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina) dates and at the same time let both of entities celebrate their dates as it is now?

How that can help us?

1. It will satisfy the “owners” (read: elected politicians) of the entities being right in what they are saying.
2. It will satisfy “the others” (read: real people(s) of Bosnia and Herzegovina (in both entities) which will have their date that will encircle both mentioned dates.
3. It will establish excellent ground for the future talks within Bosnia and Herzegovina society as the whole – which will be based on equality and not supremacy of any kind over anybody (not even Muslims, not even Serbs and not even Croats).

And, who knows, we might be able one day to, according to the above-mentioned consensuality focused agreement: agree to agree, finally.

A long time ago I wrote that (in BiH) we are three tribes of the same people – the only problem is: which one!

What do you think? Shall we try?

Can we finally find out…which one?

By Shannon Collins

President Barack Obama reconfirmed U.S. and allied commitment against terrorism around the globe, including the Asia-Pacific region, during a speech today at the U.S.-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asia summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

“The Asia Pacific is absolutely critical to promoting security, prosperity and human dignity around the world,” Obama said. “That’s why I’ve devoted so much of my foreign policy to deepening America’s engagement with this region. And I’m pleased that on this trip we made progress across the board.”

The president noted that terrorism is no stranger to the region.

“Over the years, our friends here in Asia have been victims of terrorism, and many of them are close counterterrorism partners with us,” he said.

Obama said he used part of his time at the summit to work with regional partners who are members of the anti-ISIL coalition. These include Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

Broad Coalition

Obama said the United States has built and led a broad coalition of some 65 nations against ISIL, and the contribution of those other nations is very important to the coalition’s success.

“Given the frequent focus on America’s leadership of this campaign, sometimes the contributions of our partners are overlooked,” he said. “Nearly two dozen nations — among them Turkey and our Arab partners — contribute in some way to the military campaign, which has taken more than 8,000 strikes against ISIL so far.”

Obama said the United States is ready to cooperate with other countries that are determined to fight ISIL. He noted that 15 countries deployed personnel to train and support local forces in Iraq.

“The United Arab Emirates and Germany are organizing 25 coalition partners in helping to stabilize areas in Iraq liberated from ISIL. Italy is coordinating the multinational effort to train Iraqi police,” he said.

Regarding Syria, the president said U.S. leadership brought all the key countries together in Vienna to discuss a common understanding on the principles for ending the Syrian civil war. On the humanitarian front in that nation, the United States is helping to lead the effort to mobilize more aid for the Syrian people, including refugees.

Global Fight

Obama said the fight against terrorism is global, with more than 40 countries passing or strengthening laws to prevent the flow of foreign terrorist fighters, and 34 nations, including the United States, arresting foreign terrorist fighters.

“Saudi Arabia is helping to coordinate the crackdown on ISIL financing. The United Arab Emirates’ new messaging center is working to discredit ISIL’s propaganda, and Malaysia just announced the creation of its own center to do the same,” he said.

The president said that more than 100 nations, 20 institutions and 120 civil society groups, including many Muslim community leaders from around the world, joined an anti-terrorism summit at the United Nations. These nations and groups are now “part of a global movement against ISIL and its twisted ideology.”

The President said the coalition will not relent or accept terrorist threats as the new norm.

Not the ‘New Normal’

“We will not accept the idea that terrorist assaults on restaurants and theaters and hotels are the new normal — or that we are powerless to stop them,” President Obama said. “After all, that’s precisely what terrorists like ISIL want, because, ultimately, that’s the only way that they can win.”

Obama said that, as the U.S. president, he will not allow terrorists to make people panic, live in fear, change their behavior patterns, abandon their partners and allies or retreat from the world. He added that everyone can do their part not to create a perception bolstering ISIL’s propaganda, which falsely asserts that somehow the U.S. is at war with Islam.

“The United States could never be at war with any religion because America is made up of multiple religions,” Obama said. “We’re strengthened by people from every religion, including Muslim Americans. Prejudice and discrimination helps ISIL and undermines our national security.”

Continue to Lead

President Obama said the U.S. will continue to lead the global coalition to roll back ISIL in Iraq and Syria to “take out more of their leaders and commanders so they will not be able to threaten us.”

“Even as we destroy ISIL on the battlefield — and we will destroy them — we will take back land that they are currently in,” the president said.

“We will cut off their financing. We will hunt down their leadership. We will dismantle their networks and their supply lines, and we will ultimately destroy them. Even as we are in the process of doing that, we want to make sure that we don’t lose our own values and our own principles. And we can all do our part by upholding the values of tolerance and diversity and equality that help keep America strong,” he said.

Ongoing Collaboration

The president said collaboration will continue between the U.S. and other nations to destroy terrorism around the world.

“We’ll keep working with our allies and partners for the opportunity and justice that helps defeat violent extremism,” he added. “We’ll keep standing up for the human rights and dignity of all people — because that is contrary to what these terrorists believe. The hateful vision of an organization like ISIL is no match for the strength of nations and people around the world who are united to live in security and peace and in harmony.”

French prosecutors have announced the death of Abdel-Hamid Abu Oud, the alleged ringleader of the Paris terror attacks, during the raid in Saint-Denis on 18 November 2015.

The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said the member of the extremist group had played a decisive role in the Paris attacks on November 13 and was involved in four of the six terror plots that French intelligence services had foiled.

However, the situation remains tense in France – a state of emergency has been extended for three months.

According to French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, instead of bombings and mass executions the extremists could resort to larger attacks using other weapons.

“We must not rule anything out. I say it with all the responsibility. But we know and bear in mind that there is also a risk of chemical or bacteriological attacks,” the politician said during a session of the lower house of the national Parliament.

Commenting on the tragic events in France, Anthony Glees, Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and Director of its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS), compared them with the terrorist attack at Charlie Hebdo.

“It seems similar to the Charlie Hebdo attack of 7 January 2015, in that there was a core group of fighters supported by a wider group of accomplices. Currently there is a manhunt for these; one seems to have gone to Germany, others to Belgium. It was self-evidently coordinated – eight attacks within a time frame that had been carefully computed by the perpetrators to cause maximum confusion. We believe the eight included one person with a Syrian passport who entered the EU via Greece but others who were French. They will have been recruited to the IS cause, taken to Syria or Iraq to become IS fighters and then specially trained to execute this atrocity and infiltrated back into France. None of this could have taken place without careful coordination and management and clear and direct lines of communication between the ‘commandos’ in Paris and those they were obeying,” he said in an interview with “PenzaNews” agency.

The expert did not rule out potential connection of what happened with the migration crisis in the European Union.

“The policy of opening Germany’s doors to migrants from Arab North Africa, the Middle East and beyond, without careful registration and vetting, in the states who were the border into the Schengen area, of those wanting to come in to Europe lay not just Germany, and not just the Schengen area open to abuse but every one of the 28 EU states,” the professor noted.

According to him, this tragedy could entail significant political consequences.

“If someone claiming to be an asylum seeker, someone whom Angela Merkel will have welcomed without proper registration into Germany, should prove to have been a member of this jihadist terror group, I think Angela Merkel’s political position will become untenable. Many of her supporters think her policy vis-a-vis ‘asylum seekers’ of whom 50% are economic migrants and not people in fear of their lives, was a disaster for Germany, for Europe and for NATO. Equally I think Francois Hollande will not be re-electable when his term runs out,” the analyst explained.

In his opinion, the steps towards a safer Europe must include securing borders both within the EU and between the member states, and re-introducing border controls.

“The Lisbon Treaty made national security a matter for the member nations, not the EU overall and member states should cease trying to Europeanize their security problems. Equally there must be a development of modern and technically advanced interception and surveillance mechanisms; more data will have to be collected and some people will have to be monitored very closely indeed,” Anthony Glees said.

In turn, Rohan Gunaratna, Professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, stated that Paris is a turning point in the global fight against the IS.

“Paris was a slaughter by the IS to drive fear but it had the opposite effect. The French decided to strike back both against the IS core area and to hunt IS operatives and supporters in Europe. Until Paris, governments worldwide believed that the IS focus will be to build a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. The IS ambition is to create a caliphate worldwide,” the expert noted.

According to him, terrorists will try to attack France and other Western countries further.

“The IS will strike against its enemies by enlisting its cells in target countries, cells in neighboring countries, and by dispatching its own operatives from the core area. This terrorist organization has divided the world into three blocs of countries: those countries actively targeting the IS, those countries supporting the targeting countries and those countries that are neutral countries. France is in the first category. It has declared war against the IS so it will be a favored target of the IS,” Rohan Gunaratna added.

Asked about the potential connection between acts of terrorism and a migration crisis in the EU, he stressed that in the absence of reliable programs some migrants can be recruited by the Islamic State.

“The diaspora and migrant communities of Europe and Canada are not well integrated. They live in the West but they are driven by the developments in their homelands. Until they are integrated they can be radicalized and militarized by extremist and terrorist propaganda. If they are joined by new migrants fleeing from conflict arenas, the threat to Europe will grow. As such it is paramount to settle the new migrants away from the ethnic and religious enclaves and pockets of European societies,” the analyst said.

Meanwhile, Peter Talas, Director at the Centre for Strategic and Defense Studies of the National University of Public Service in Hungary, identified several reasons why France is a prime target of Islamist terrorism.

“It has a Muslim population large enough also to host a meaningful number of radicals and extremists, maybe reaching thousands in numbers, who may serve as human resources for terrorism. France is also a constant focal point of international media attention, therefore any attacks carried out there will get global visibility. Being a secular country, France is also a cultural symbol of Western civilization. And of course France participates in the air strikes carried out against Islamic State, making them a hated enemy of the IS,” the analyst said.

Following the Paris attacks, it is likely that extreme right-wing politicians will point to a connection between the European refugee crisis and increased terrorist threat, and they may be successful in building political capital on this, he said.

“But this is a false view and a very dangerous course to take. There had been Islamist terrorism in Europe already before the 2015 attacks and the massive inflow of migrants. But even if the Islamic State would be sending terrorists among the migrants, why should European societies turn against refugees and not against the Islamic State that might be sending the terrorists?” the Hungarian expert wondered.

Nevertheless, according to him, in the short term the tragedy will have political consequences mostly for the extreme right wing in Europe, strengthening their position.

“While in the long term European societies must face the unsolved puzzle of a more successful integration of European Muslims. Currently multiculturalism across many societies in Europe means the – often segregated, parallel – coexistence of communities with different cultural background, not their integrated cohabitation. Segregation, coupled with poverty and societal exclusion, provides a suitable nurturing ground for radicalization,” the analyst noted.

In his opinion, the European Union will only be able to fight terrorism successfully if it can act as a state.

“Therefore, it should have already created a joint, centralized European intelligence service and a counterterrorism center. And of course there is a need to take action against the Islamic State, but caution and restraint must be exercised in order to avoid the same mistakes we have made in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya,” Peter Talas added.

According to Mila Johns, Researcher of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland, the attacks on Paris are striking in terms of their sophistication.

“This is really the first coordinated attack in Europe by Islamic extremists and it represents a significant shift for the Islamic State. Previously, the IS had been content to inspire attacks by its supporters abroad but had not directed attacks from ‘headquarters’ before in the way that seems to have happened in Paris,” the analyst said.

From her point of view, the country’s leadership could not fail to know that France is a cherished goal for extremists.

“Given the Charlie Hebdo attack and the foiled attack on the train in August this year, France was obviously aware that it was a target of great interest from terrorist groups. It would only be logical that France’s involvement in the airstrikes against the Islamic State would bring the country into even starker relief as a target,” Mila Johns noted.

In her opinion, the attacks on Paris are going to trigger expanded European involvement in the coalition against IS.

“We’ve already seen an increase in French bombing strikes in Syria. I would also expect that the European Union as a whole will move towards greater integration in terms of security. If one or more of the attackers is confirmed to have come into Europe posing as a refugee, it will likely exacerbate the tensions within European societies over acceptance of those fleeing the conflict in the Middle East,” the expert said.

According to her, greater coordination amongst EU countries on laws criminalizing travel to fight in foreign conflicts or for terrorist-training purposes would be an important first step towards a safer Europe.

“A number of countries currently have such laws, but to be truly effective they must be EU-wide. Another crucial step would be to finalize and implement a Passenger Name Record (PNR) system across all EU nations. I would also expect to see increased efforts within countries to counter extremist messaging, promote alternative narratives, and focus on deradicalization measures,” Mila Johns concluded.

A series of terrorist attacks took place in Paris in late evening of 13 November 2015.

According to recent data, 130 people were killed and more than 350 wounded in the explosions near the Stade de France stadium and in the Comptoir Voltaire café, attacks at the Bataclan theatre, the Petit Cambodge and Carillon bar, and shooting at La Casa Nostra pizzeria and La Belle Equipe café.

The state of emergency in France has been extended for three months.