By Iqbal Jassat*

During Indian President Pranab Mukherjee’s recent visit to Israel, he departed from his prepared text at a ceremonial reception hosted by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin.

Much to the consternation of his hosts, Mukherjee denounced violence and said that India always advocated peaceful resolution of all disputes.

While this denunciation did not sit well with Israel, Mukherjee went on to seek an assessment from Israel of recent developments, which he said held direct implications for India.

This certainly struck a raw nerve. Israel was in no mood to provide any explanation for how they were dealing with the Palestinians, claims Sanjay Kapoor in his report published The Star newspaper (December 15, 2015).

Titled “Mukherjee’s tightrope trip raises tension”, Kapoor’s assessment of the trip is that from the standpoint of outcomes, the visit fell way short of the mark.

“Neither did Mukherjee endear himself to the Israelis nor did it really clear the haze on when India’s itinerant Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, will be going to Tel Aviv”.

What was Israel’s expectations from the BJP-led Indian government?

According to Kapoor, it was that India would show greater support for Israel after the manner in which New Delhi abstained from a crucial UN Human Rights Council resolution that chose to demand an international inquiry against Tel Aviv’s violence in Gaza.

As traditional party to party allies, the BJP and Likud leaders had believed that Modi’s election to power will entrench their friendship. This may be so ata personal level, but as Mukherjee’s visit demonstrated, tensions between the countries remain.

For example, Mukherjee wanted to give computers and technical equipment to the Palestinian University, but was denied permission by the Netanyahu regime to do so. Apart from being humiliated, the Indian President was understandably angered.

This probably explains why during his stopover in the Occupied West Bank, Mukherjee quoted Mahatma Gandhi as saying:

“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English and France to the French.”

Gandhi was opposed to Zionism and its plans to overrun Palestine. To quote him, as Mukherjee had done, sent a strong signal of New Delhi’s traditional support for Palestine.

As Kapoor confirms, The Times of Israel, lent context to Gandhi’s quote by reminding its readers that India’s leader in 1938 had criticised Zionism and its efforts to reduce the proud Arabs. Haaretz also headlined India’s unwavering commitment to the Palestinian cause as it sought closer ties with Israel.

Despite Netanyahu’s friend Modi occupying India’s highest seat of power, it seems pretty clear that New Delhi’s opposition to Israeli Occupation, hasn’t changed. Nor has its advocacy of two states within the 1967 borders, altered.

Any hope cherished by Netanyahu of radical changes have been dashed. Modi may be a “dear friend” who’s opened up India’s defence and military wallets by expanding huge new contracts with Israel, but politically, remains on tenterhooks, walking on eggshells.

*Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the Media Review Network, Johannesburg. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Follow Iqbal on Twitter: @ijassa

Israel and Turkey have reached an understanding that could lead to the restoration of ties between the two former allies, an Israeli official said Thursday, December 17, the Associated Press reports.

Relations between the two countries broke down in 2010 after an Israeli naval raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla that killed eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American. In the aftermath of the raid, Turkey became one of the strongest critics of Israeli actions in Gaza.

Israel apologized to Turkey for the deaths and agreed to compensate the victims’ families under a U.S.-brokered arrangement in 2013. But efforts to restore ties faltered amid new Israeli action in Gaza.

The Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media about the diplomatic talks, said the sides agreed that Israel would compensate the families of the flotilla victims.

The official said Turkey would waive legal claims against Israel over the raid and that the countries would upgrade diplomatic ties by returning ambassadors. A leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas said to be based in Turkey will be banned from operating from the country.

A U.S. official familiar with the agreement confirmed the details. He also spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t allowed to talk to the media about the subject.

The Israeli official said the understanding requires final approval, adding that it was achieved between the incoming head of Israel’s Mossad Yossi Cohen and the Turkish Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu.

The official also said talks to lay down a natural gas pipeline from Israel to Turkey would begin soon.

By Konstandinos Nizamis*

Klaouzevits, had warned us almost two centuries ago, war is a chameleon, it changes its form constantly, hiding his phase and transforming from one type to another.

The latest transformation in the naval warfare took place in the World War II and introduced itself with an infamous act. The Japanese attack, in Pearl Harbor. The Japanese navy tried to win the war by sinking the entire US Pacific fleet, using not the big guns of its battleships, but the airplanes of its carriers. So, it was in the Pacific, where sea warfare as we understand it in the last 70 years, developed and formulated. Big carriers, loaded with airplanes, were seeking the enemy in the vast Pacific Ocean and they were launching them, to destroy him. In that war, enemy sailormen never saw each other. The carriers were launching their planes hundreds of miles away from the enemy forces. The battles were fought in the skies near and above the carriers. The actual fighting was taking place between enemy pilots who were trying to shoot down each other and between bomber pilots and the air defense capabilities of the carries and the other ships. In stark contrast the sea battles in the Atlantic were more of a traditional type and the last great battles between warships had taken place there, like the hunt and sinking of battleship Bismark.

The importance and the invincibility of the combined maritime and air power proved its value many times over during the cold war. USA carrier groups with the ability to project power everywhere in the world, the monstrous firepower and flexibility of their airplanes, secured the sea lines of communications, protected American interests all over the world and contributed to a great degree to the final victory over the USSR. Those magnificent and marvelous ships seems that they are about to meet an able opponent. The new weapon system that are promising to change once again the phase of sea warfare actually is a combination of an already existing technology and of one that is developing fast. The first technology, is the missile technology already mature and easy to master. The second technology is about flying at extremely high speed (hypersonic speed- that is in excess of mach 5 and up to mach 20). Flying a controllable vehicle in that speed sets a series of technical problems that are not solved yet. Probably the major problem is to create a jet engine that could work in that conditions.

To be accurate, supersonic antiship missiles are in service for many decades now with the once Soviet Navy and now its successor Russian Navy. Their development and adoption is due to qualitative and numerical inferiority of the Soviet naval forces in the cold war. USSR had to find a credible, cheap and easy way to negate the American threat, of course not globally but in the littoral areas of the Soviet empire. The soviet engineers came up with the use of supersonic missiles launched from a variety of platforms (planes, ships, land launchers). The first Russian cruise missile AS-1 was actually a modified MIG-15 in an antiship role. The development, production and use of supersonic missiles remains a vital and central Russian strategy today with the latest 3M82 / Kh-41 Moskit / SS-N-22 Sunburn and P-800 / 3M55 / Kh-61 Yakhont / Brahmos / SS-N-26 Stallion missiles.

Additionally, Russia became a major supplier of supersonic missiles both to China and India and the main partner of both countries in developing their own systems, providing the necessary technology and knowhow.China adopted and copied Russian supersonic missiles for much the same reason that made them indispensable to the Soviet war machine. PLA for decades lacked the appropriate naval power to defend and control its nearby seas. The latest member in the countries that built and operate supersonic missile is India which produces in cooperation with Russia the Brahmos missile. The Brahmos use a combination of a conventional missile for the first stage of its flight and a ramjet engine for the final approach to target. It has a cruising speed of Mach 2.8 (3,400 km/h) and a 290 km range and it can it can fly from an altitude of 15 km to mere meters above the waves.In contrast, and in full compliance with the paradoxal logic of strategy, as Luttwak another strategist claims, US and NATO choose to develop an efficient and capable air defense and not to engage in a competition in developing supersonic missiles of its own. Recognizing the grave danger to the fleet and especially to the most valued ships of all, the carriers, hurried up to beef up the air defenses especially in the antimissile field.The most prominent example is the combination of the F-14 Tomcat, a billion dollar airframe and the Phoenix missile, solely designed and built to engage and kill air breathing threats long before they reach the American flattops. The above combination is not the only defensive measure but one of many. Other systems including CIWS Phalanx, antimissile missiles, electronic counter measures etc., were developed in a more or less expected effort to protect Americas most valuable asset. Therefore West even at this time hasn’t got any supersonic missile equivalent to the Russian ones.

Eventually the cold war ended, leaving US as the only superpower in the world. Alas, new threats emerged like terrorism and new rivals appeared in the horizon like China. In response to the new security environment, new ideas about new weapons and the different use of old ones came up. The common theme and the main idea behind the new concepts, was one physical element, essential in warfare, namely speed. Speed regarded by American agencies as the new stealth, providing the necessary superiority to friendly forces. Superfast missiles compress the time defenders have to react to an attack and to successfully engage it and if used in large numbers can saturate the air Defence systems and defeat at low cost even an expensive and powerful carrier battle group.Among the first ideas, was the retrofitting of old nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles and arming them with conventional war heads. That way, they could be used against an array of targets without provoking a nuclear response. The idea quickly abandoned because of the obvious disadvantages. Once a ballistic missile is launched the enemy has no way of knowing what kind of warhead is carrying, thus a nuclear war may start due to an ambiguous act. Moreover a ballistic missile launched to strike a terrorist cave in Afghanistan, or Africa would follow the same ballistic path that could be used to target Chinese or Russian cities, provoking a nuclear response. US Congress taken into account these ambiguities and uncertainties stopped the development of the project, despite the many attempts by military planners to obtain approval of their plans and adequate funding.The plan was part of a program—in slow development since the 1990s, and now quickly coalescing in military circles—called Prompt Global Strike.On the other side of Pacific Ocean though, such qualms never appeared. China’s PLA probably copying the American concept developed the very same weapon that US Congress banned. China converted an intermediate nuclear ballistic missile into an antiship missile named Dong Feng 21D. This ballistic missile is launched toward space and arcing back to earth at speeds of about Mach 10 with a reported range of about 1,500 km. China, developed this missile as a “carrier killer”, an easy, effective and cheap way to challenge Americas naval supremacy in the Pacific Ocean, denying access to East China Sea to American vessels and ultimately leaving Chinese forces unopposed to secure the capitulation of the other Asian states and eventually regional hegemony.

So far, we have talked about already existing technologies, albeit in a new role. All the weapons are either modified ballistic missiles with conventional warheads or supersonic cruise missiles with speeds up to 3 or 4 Mach’s, nothing exotic and nothing new.The really interesting, revolutionary, new and game changing technology is hypersonic flight that enables vehicles to fly at speeds in excess of Mach 5 and up to Mach 20. These hypersonic vehicles are not missiles. Missiles carry their own fuel and oxidizer, a feature that permits them to operate in thin air upper atmosphere and outer space, but limits their flight profile and uses. In contrast, hypersonic vehicles are airbreathing vehicles that are using atmosphere’s oxygen just like turbofan and turbojet engines. Such vehicles,could travel at missile speed but will have the maneuverability and agility of an aircraft, making easier to avoid defenses, to change course en route to target and all that in a more economical way.

Where is the catch? Those wonderful capabilities demand the development of a new kind of engine that can operate reliably in those high speeds. Existing turbojet and turbofans engines can operate at speeds of about Mach2. Ramjets (jet engines without spinning blades like turbofan or turbojets but with specially designed inlets capable of slowing and compressing the airstream), can operate in higher speeds of about 3 to 4 Mach’s. Hypersonic vehicles operating at speeds above Mach5 require the development of scramjets (supersonic combustion ramjets) engines, capable of igniting and maintain combustion in a stream of supersonic air. Technology hasn’t provide a credible answer yet to this challenge. To make matter worse ramjets and scramjets cannot start flying on their own; they must be accelerated by a carrier aircraft or a first stage missile.The first successful flight test of a scramjet vehicle took place in the 1990’s by a group of Russian, French and American scientists, though it’s not quite clear if supersonic combustion was achieved in those tests. More recently, Russia and India are reportedly working together to produce a scramjet version of Brahmos missile. As for China beyond the DF-21D project that we have already mentioned, there are reports that is testing its own hypersonic vehicle. The Qian Xuesen National Engineering Science Experiment Base is one the centers that research and development about hypersonic technology take place. Recently, according to American and Chinese media, China tested an hypersonic vehicle that reached Mach 10 speed, above its territory. American media designated it as WU-14.Despite all that China, India and even Russia are still far away of their target to build a credible, reliable, operational ready, hypersonic vehicle.

Interestingly enough – or maybe not- the country that has the most advanced and more numerous such programs is USA. To begin with there is the X-51A Waverider, that was tested last summer, over the Pacific Ocean and is produced by a consortium composed of USAF, Boeing, DARPA, NASA, Pratt and Whitney, Rocketdyne and the USAF Research Laboratory’s Propulsion Directorate. The test ended after a malfunction resulted in the destruction of the vehicle. Of course the X-51A, it’s not the only program developed under the prompt global strike iniative, the Pentagon supports and funds DARPA’s Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 and Army’s Advanced Hypersonic Weapon. And we’re not finished yet; another promising project is based on one of the Cold War legends, the famous SR-71 “Blackbird” spy plane. SR-71 had a revolutionary combo machine “J-58” consisted of a turbojet mounted inside a ramjet. That combination enables the SR-71 to start flying on its own and to go supersonic in high altitude. This project named SR-72 potentially would fly at Mach 5 and besides reconnaissance missions it would be capable of carrying and deliver air to ground munitions. Those munitions will have their own hypersonic features and Lockheed’s Skunk Work laboratories which are responsible for those hypersonic programs are calling them “High Speed Strike Weapon”, essentially an hypersonic missile that would be suitable for use by future bombers and fighter aircrafts. Lockheed believes that in the future “speed will be the new stealth”, meaning that if you’ re flying extremely fast the enemy will not have the time to detect you and shoot you down.

Furthermore DARPA recently announced the launch of yet another one hypersonic experimental program. It is called Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) and according to DARPA its purpose is to develop a reusable unmanned vehicle with costs, operation and reliability similar to a traditional aircraft yet capable to ascend to suborbital altitudes to deploy satellites into Low Earth Orbit. Despite the many advantages that hypersonic systems would have in future battle space we should not get too excited. The needed technology is still in its infancy and we’re probably many years away from their operational deployment. Furthermore the paradoxal logic of strategy is working even before those systems became operational, producing the antidotes that will provide the necessary means, mainly for a carrier battle group to counter a swarm attack by supersonic missiles.

Those technologies in contrast to supersonic missiles are for the most part already developed and ready to be tested in operational deployments. Among them the most promising is the laser guns that would be used to counter asymmetrical threats such as drones, speed boats,missiles and so on. The laser guns with their ability to fire fast, accurate and continuously without the fear of running out of ammunition are already installed in US navy ships. Other systems include electromagnetic rail guns and revolving missile launchers. Those weapons are also being developed but the US armed forces, an astounding fact that exemplifies their resolve not only to hold but to expand their superiority over their potential competitors.To conclude, Pacific Ocean once more is becoming the workshop of a new type of warfare. Warriors of both sides will never see each other in those wars but will depend on systems fast, lethal and accurate to destroy the enemy in mere minutes or even seconds. Additionally despite the strengthening of potential competitors, USA still is the most powerful, sophisticated and intelligent actor in the area. Furthermore, although anti access and area denial capabilities are an important element of maritime strategy, still the real and paramount ability of a navy, the only one that will ensure victory is to confront the enemy navy in the sea and defeat it.

About the author:
*Konstandinos Nizamis is Senior Military Analyst (Mediterranean Observatory – International Relations Institute of Athens)

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) recently captured a unique view of Earth from the spacecraft’s vantage point in orbit around the moon.

“The image is simply stunning,” said Noah Petro, Deputy Project Scientist for LRO at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “The image of the Earth evokes the famous ‘Blue Marble’ image taken by Astronaut Harrison Schmitt during Apollo 17, 43 years ago, which also showed Africa prominently in the picture.”

In the composite image the Earth appears to rise over the lunar horizon from the viewpoint of the spacecraft, with the center of the Earth just off the coast of Liberia (at 4.04 degrees North, 12.44 degrees West). The large tan area in the upper right is the Sahara Desert, and just beyond is Saudi Arabia. The Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America are visible to the left. On the moon, we get a glimpse of the crater Compton, which is located just beyond the eastern limb of the moon, on the lunar farside.

LRO was launched on June 18, 2009, and has collected a treasure trove of data with its seven powerful instruments, making an invaluable contribution to our knowledge about the moon. LRO experiences 12 earthrises every day; however the spacecraft is almost always busy imaging the lunar surface so only rarely does an opportunity arise such that its camera instrument can capture a view of Earth. Occasionally LRO points off into space to acquire observations of the extremely thin lunar atmosphere and perform instrument calibration measurements. During these movements sometimes Earth (and other planets) pass through the camera’s field of view and dramatic images such as the one shown here are acquired.

This image was composed from a series of images taken Oct. 12, when LRO was about 83 miles (134 kilometers) above the moon’s farside crater Compton. Capturing an image of the Earth and moon with LRO’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) instrument is a complicated task. First the spacecraft must be rolled to the side (in this case 67 degrees), then the spacecraft slews with the direction of travel to maximize the width of the lunar horizon in LROC’s Narrow Angle Camera image. All this takes place while LRO is traveling faster than 3,580 miles per hour (over 1,600 meters per second) relative to the lunar surface below the spacecraft!

The high-resolution Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) on LRO takes black-and-white images, while the lower resolution Wide Angle Camera (WAC) takes color images, so you might wonder how we got a high-resolution picture of the Earth in color. Since the spacecraft, Earth, and moon are all in motion, we had to do some special processing to create an image that represents the view of the Earth and moon at one particular time. The final Earth image contains both WAC and NAC information. WAC provides the color, and the NAC provides high-resolution detail.

“From the Earth, the daily moonrise and moonset are always inspiring moments,” said Mark Robinson of Arizona State University in Tempe, principal investigator for LROC. “However, lunar astronauts will see something very different: viewed from the lunar surface, the Earth never rises or sets. Since the moon is tidally locked, Earth is always in the same spot above the horizon, varying only a small amount with the slight wobble of the moon. The Earth may not move across the ‘sky’, but the view is not static. Future astronauts will see the continents rotate in and out of view and the ever-changing pattern of clouds will always catch one’s eye, at least on the nearside. The Earth is never visible from the farside; imagine a sky with no Earth or moon – what will farside explorers think with no Earth overhead?”

NASA’s first Earthrise image was taken with the Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft in 1966. Perhaps NASA’s most iconic Earthrise photo was taken by the crew of the Apollo 8 mission as the spacecraft entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve Dec. 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts — Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders — held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. Said Lovell, “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.”

The FIFA Emergency Committee on Friday took a series of decisions concerning FIFA member associations.

Under the circumstances, which resulted from the recent indictment by US authorities of the president of the Honduran FA (FENAFUTH), Mr Alfredo Hawit, the president of the Guatemalan Football Association (FEDEFUT), Mr Brayan Jimenez, and a member of the FEDEFUT Executive Committee, Mr Hector Trujillo, FIFA said the Emergency Committee has decided, in accordance with article 33 of the FIFA Statutes and in consultation with CONCACAF, to nominate normalization committees for the respective member associations.

The normalization committees will be made up of five members to be identified by FIFA and CONCACAF in the near future and whose tasks will be to run the daily business of FENAFUTH and FEDEFUT respectively, to revise their statutes in order to bring them in line with the FIFA Standard Statutes, and to organize elections accordingly.

The mandates of the respective normalization committees will last until September 30, 2016. The members of the normalization committees will not be eligible for any of the open positions.

In addition, the FIFA Emergency Committee has decided to extend the mandate of the normalization committee of the Football Association of Maldives (FAM) until 31 March 2016 so as to enable FAM to adopt new statutes and complete the registration process of its statutes with the authorities, as well as to organize an elective congress.

It was also decided to replace two members of the normalization committees of the Football Association of Thailand (FAT) following the resignation of Mr Chaiprasit and Mr Vadhanasara.

Furthermore, FIFA said it was decided to remove two members, Mr Médard Sessinou and Mr Laurent Houngnibo, from the normalization committee of the Benin Football Association and to allow the normalization committee to continue with five members.

A product of an 1894 treaty to separate the Russian Empire from British India, the Wakhan Corridor is a thin panhandle in North Afghanistan. The Emirs of Badakhshan once leveraged on the region’s control over mountain passes on the Silk Road to China to build a wealthy domain extending as far as Kashgar. Today the border to China is closed, the tracks are desolate, and only sheep roam where rich caravans once plied. Yet, if challenges can be overcome through bilateral cooperation, this ancient trading route may provide old advantages and new opportunities for both China and Afghanistan

By Boh Ze Kai*

Opportunities

Reopening the Wakhan seems increasingly viable in these exciting times for intra-regional trade; the impending lift of Iranian sanctions; growing convergence between Russia, China and Pakistan, together with India’s Connect Central Asia Policy precipitates a shift in economic attention to the region. China’s One Belt One Read (OBOR) development plan, convergent with President Ashraf Ghani’s transit country proposal and Pakistan’s new found emphasis on Gwadar Port, could lead to the integration of Afghanistan into a cohesive economic area bridging the maritime and land routes of the Silk Road. In 1991, intra-Central Asia trade accounted for 20 percent of all trade in the region; today, due to the disintegration of joint production processes, that figure has shrunk to 3.5 percent. Reinvigorating intra-regional trade with access to Chinese inputs would be an efficient strategy to restore productive capacity for value-added manufacturing in a region now characterised by primary exports.

Figure 1: Current Infrastructure Development Projects
(Map drawn by hand by the author and should not be seen as authoritative)

Its proximity to the Karakoram Highway (KKH) would see the Wakhan connected to the US$46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a massive mesh of Chinese infrastructure investment designed to transform the region into a strategic energy nexus through pipelines, power grids and railways. This provides not only a market for Afghan oil and energy products, but provides electricity imports to a country where, according to the World Bank only 43 percent of the population has reliable power grid access. Most importantly, Wakhan offers a route bypassing Pakistan and reducing Afghan dependency on a neighbour it barely trusts which accounts for a third of all trade, a much-needed boon considering Afghanistan’s perennial trade deficit, currently valued at 37.4 percent of GDP.

For China, Afghanistan itself boasts bountiful resources of rare minerals and oil, which the Chinese have demonstrated a keen interest in by signing oil contracts in Faryab and Sar-e-Pul and by purchasing the MesAynak mining lease for US$4.4 billion in 2009, which remains the single largest investment to Afghanistan to date. Afghanistan’s central position allows China to link up with various infrastructure projects in the region, including the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline, the Central Asia-South Asia Electricity Transmission Project (CASA-1000) and the Asian Development Bank’s Afghan Ring Road Initiative (see Figure 1). Fostering regional economic interdependency increases the attractiveness of China’s own Silk Road Economic Belt project, while prosperity will lead to stability in Afghanistan and surrounding polities.

With 2.6 million tons of trade in 2014, China’s existing trade with Central Asia through the well-established Alashankou port-of-entry with Kazakhstan is booming , while trade with South Asia through the Karakoram Highway (KKH) is poised to take off. Compared to these, the Wakhan offers China the opportunity to bridge South and Central Asia, profiting from the streamlined production networks that lower the barriers to trade and result in a coherent economic region, under Chinese leadership.

On a grander platform, with all roads leading to Beijing, China will gain a major boost in its endeavour in the New Great Game for the Central Asian Republics. Energy, oil and trade nexuses concentrated to the East will leave China’s greatest adversaries in the New Great Game excluded and frustrated. Afghanistan is the final key for China to completely encircle India, allowing Central Asia unimpeded trade southwards to Pakistan’s Port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. The completion of the OBOR project with Afghanistan as a crucial linchpin would likely see the cost and barriers of trade from Central Asia to China decrease relative to excluded, peripheral countries like the USA and Japan, who are also conveniently China’s rivals. In one bold stroke, China has the capability to take victory in the New Great Game.

Challenges

Nonetheless, the current infrastructure situation in the Wakhan makes all these opportunities moot. From Fayzabad, the largest city in Badakhshan, primary earth roads vulnerable to inclement weather run 160km as far as Ishkashim, while 190 kilometres of dirt tracks provide access up to the village of Sarhad. From there, no roads exist until the Chinese border 100 kilometres away, where the closest major city of Tashkurgan connects to the Karakoram Highway (see Figure 2). A loaded truck from Fayzabad would take 19 hours to travel just 160 kilmetres to Ishkashim, and there would be no means to get it any further. As a result, trade has remained non-existent since the border was closed in 1949.

Figure 2: Dark Blue – Paved all-weather roads; Pink – Unpaved dirt tracks for 4WD travel; Yellow – Projected Wakhan Road; 1: Karakoram Highway (North to Kashgar, South to Gilgit); 2: 1.5 hours from Baharak to Fayzabad and onwards to Kabul 3: Pamir Highway (West to Dushanbe, East to Osh)
(Map drawn by hand by the author and should not be seen as authoritative)

In a bid to ease the military logistics situation and encourage commerce, both American and Afghan authorities have issued requests to open the border in 2009. Since then, in response to an appeal by the Afghan ambassador in 2013, China has only pledged a feasibility study. Yet, a preliminary proposal made at the Pak-Afghan Joint Economic Commission meeting in November 2015 suggests that countries in the region may be moving to resolve outstanding challenges.

Despite key cultural differences, China has remained consistent in its stand of keeping the border closed in order to limit influences from Afghanistan on domestic Uyghur religious-nationalistic terrorism and other socio-political implications. Once considered insurgent-free, Badakhshan Province has seen increasing spates of Taliban and ISIS activity.Notwithstanding the Badakhshan Massacre in 2010, August 2015 saw the Islamic State conduct a suicide attack and July 2015 saw the Taliban overrun a joint military base. In September 2015, the Taliban captured swathes of Raghestan district. These incidents continue to threaten the security of any passage through the Wakhan Corridor. Nonetheless, as the province and the Wakhan in particular are still among the safest regions in the entire country, the chief security threat will likely be opium smuggling. Badakhshan experienced a 77 percent increase in opium cultivation from 2013-2014, making it a major opium nexus on the Golden Crescent, and Tashkurgan’s rich water resources coupled with China’s may make it a convenient heroin production area. Enforcing anti-smuggling measures in the remote region may prove to be an exercise in fruition, and China’s 20% rise in drug abuse rates from 2013 to 2014 means 0.3 percent of the population are now registered drug offenders, no doubt already a headache for Beijing.

Considering China’s infrastructure building track record, constructing the road will not be an unsurmountable challenge. However, low human development will remain an endemic problem to providing the logistics support required to sustain the route. Civilisation in the Wakhan consists of 10,000 people living in tiny Wakhi villages or among Kyrgyz shepherding tribes, hence running water, electricity and even food supplies will need to be built from scratch. Landslides, avalanches and rockfalls threaten to obstruct the pass, while the 2015 Hindu Kush earthquake with its epicentre near the Wakhanis a reminder of the risks associated with mountainous infrastructure construction.

Overcoming Challenges

To overcome these challenges, partnership must extend beyond inter-governmental cooperation. Well-established and experienced organisations like the Aga Khan Foundation should be courted to spearhead and buttress Chinese and Afghan efforts to secure the region. In-depth anthropological understanding of regional demographics can also go a long way towards harmonising the region and pulling it out of its isolation. Building a socially stable region will be a long, complex process, requiring the education of the population bereft of education and the provision of public and private investment to build access to services and food security. Funding for such infrastructure could come from the nascent Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), from the ADB, or even from the China Export-Import Bank with its stunning track record in African infrastructure investment.

Recent developments suggest that China is committing to improving security on the border: a newly built road leads up to 10kilometres from the border on the Chinese side (shown in pink in Figure 2), a supply depot operational since 2009 provides logistics support to border guards, and a mobile communications center provides optical cables for internet connection to the remote region. Tashkurgan’s company-sized county garrison provides first-level security. However, it would be naïve to expect the overstretched Afghan military to provide anything like Pakistan’s 12,000 man Special Security Division for the Karakoram Highway. Instead, a softer approach seems to be the key. China has excellent relations with the Taliban, having hosted direct Afghan-Taliban talks in July 2015, with a second round expected in December 2015. In January 2015, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid even made a visit to China to ‘enhance ties and making (sic) relationships’ between the two countries. This alongside a general ambivalent mood towards Chinese people among Afghans may go a long way towards defusing security tensions.

As part of the Xinjiang Work Conference, the city of Tashkurgan has been paired with Shenzhen, granting it 0.5% of the annual budget of the thriving metropolis of 10.6 million people, alongside human resource and technological assistance. This money has gone to the creation of a 100 million RMB Border Trade Zone intended to boost trade and tourism, with plans to boost the transport infrastructure through rail connections, upgraded highways and even an airport. Private investment reached US$15 million in 2009, including a mineral water plant by Spring Capital Hong Kong. While these investments are designed primarily to support the KKH on the Khunjerab Pass to Pakistan, Tashkurgan’s development as a regional trading hub would provide China with the infrastructural capital required to push towards the Wakhan.

Sceptics would be wise to remember that developing the Wakhan Corridor, while ambitious, is the resurrection ofan ancient, tried and proven trade route. A successful project in the Wakhan will be far more than an economic measure; it will simultaneously be a domestic and foreign confidence-building mechanism, a geostrategic manoeuvre to outflank both America and India, and a stabilising force in the region. China has done nothing for the Wakhan thus far, but it is for these reasons that China is right to exercise patience and caution to ensure the project fulfils its maximum potential.

*Boh Ze Kai is a project intern with Mantraya and is a lead researcher in Mantraya’s Borderlands project.

References:

BBC News. 12 June 2009. China mulls Afghan border request. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8097933.stm. Accessed 26 Sep 2015.

Bloomberg. 18 April 2015. Islamic State Militants Claim First Bombing in Afghanistan. Retrieved from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-18/suicide-bomb-kills-33-at-afghan-bank-in-deadliest-attack-in-2015. Accessed 25 Sep 2015.

China News. 8 January 2015. Xinjiang’s Alashankou Border Pulls in 2.545million Tons of Trade in 2014. Retrieved from http://www.chinanews.com/df/2015/01-08/6949168.shtml. Accessed 1 Nov 2015. Source is written in Chinese.

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In this week’s address, US President Barack Obama celebrated the end of the year tradition of list-making with a year-in-review list of his own. The President offered his roundup of the top 10 things that happened in 2015, all of which should make us optimistic about the prospects for 2016. This past year has been one where we’ve seen unprecedented progress in areas ranging from the Iran deal to marriage equality to concluding a historic trade agreement. The year 2015 brought economic growth, with our unemployment rate dropping to five percent; the normalization of our relations with Cuba and a newly opened U.S. Embassy in Havana; and a historic agreement in Paris to take real action on climate change. The President acknowledged the significant progress of the past year, and looked forward to 2016 and all we have yet to accomplish.

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
December 19, 2015

Hi, everybody. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Not just for spreading holiday cheer – but also for list makers. You’ve got wish lists; Santa’s list; and of course, a blizzard of year-in-review lists. So I decided to get in on the action.

As a nation, we face big challenges. But in the spirit of 2015 retiree David Letterman, here – in no particular order – are my top 10 things that happened in 2015 that should make every American optimistic about 2016.

Number ten: The economy. Over the past 12 months, our businesses have created 2.5 million new jobs. In all, they’ve added 13.7 million new jobs over a 69-month streak of job growth. And the unemployment rate has fallen to 5 percent – the lowest it’s been in almost eight years.

Number nine: More Americans are getting health coverage. The rate of the uninsured in America dropped below 10 percent for the first time ever. In all, 17.6 million people and climbing have gained coverage as the Affordable Care Act has taken effect. And don’t forget, you can still sign up through January 31st at HealthCare.gov.

Number eight: America’s global leadership on climate change. Last week, in Paris, nearly 200 countries came together to set the course for a low-carbon future. And it was only possible because America led with clean energy here at home and strong diplomacy around the world.

Number seven: Progress in the Americas. We turned the page on an outdated, half-century old policy by re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and reopening embassies in both our countries, allowing us to build greater ties between Americans and Cubans.

Number six: Preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. We succeeded in forging a strong deal to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. In fact, Iran has already dismantled thousands of centrifuges that enrich uranium.

Number five: Standing strong against terrorism. Even as we continue to grieve over the attack in San Bernardino, we’re leading a global coalition and hitting ISIL harder than ever. In Syria and Iraq, ISIL is losing territory, and we’re not going to stop until we destroy this terrorist organization.

Number four: A 21st century trade deal that makes sure our businesses can sell goods “Made in America” across the Asia-Pacific. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the strongest, most pro-worker, pro-environment trade agreement in our history. And it means that America – not China, not anyone else – will write the rules of the global economy for the century ahead.

Number three: A pair of Christmas miracles in Washington! This week, Congress passed a bipartisan budget that invests in middle-class priorities, keeps our military the strongest in the world, and takes the threat of shutdowns and manufactured crises off the table for 2016. Plus, I signed a bipartisan education bill into law to help our students graduate prepared for college and their future careers.

Number two: Love won. No matter who you are, here in America, you’re free to marry the person you love, because the freedom to marry is now the law in all fifty states.

And the number one reason I’m optimistic going into 2016: It’s you—the American people. All of this progress is because of you—because of workers rolling up their sleeves and getting the job done, and entrepreneurs starting new businesses. Because of teachers and health workers and parents—all of us taking care of each other. Because of our incredible men and women in uniform, serving to protect us all. Because, when we’re united as Americans, there’s nothing that we cannot do.

That’s why it’s has been a good year. And it’s why I’m confident we’ll keep achieving big things in the New Year. So happy holidays, everybody.

As the mystery surrounding the abduction last week of a Qatari hunting party in Iraq deepened, a report in Kuwait said that nine of its members were from the Al Thani Ruling family.

The Al Thani hunters abducted are Shaikh Khalid Bin Ahmad Mohammad Al Thani, Shaikh Nayed Bin Eid Mohammad Al Thani, Shaikh Abdul Rahman Bin Jasem Abdul Aziz Jassem Al Thani, Shaikh Jassem Bin Fahad Mohammad Thani Al Thani, Shaikh Khalid Bin Jassem Fahad Mohammad Al Thani, Shaikh Mohammad Bin Khalid Ahmad Mohammad Al Thani, Shaikh Fahad Bin Eid Mhammad Thani Al Thani, Shaikh Abdul Aziz Bin Mohammad Bin Ahmad Al Thani, and Shaikh Jabr Bin Ahmad Al Thani, Kuwaiti daily Al Rai reported on Friday.

No details have been provided about the identity of the kidnappers and the reason for the abduction, but so far nine people have been able to reach Kuwait where they provided some information about what happened.

The nine who drove back into Kuwait, and were welcomed at Abdaly border crossing by officials and the Qatari ambassador in Kuwait City, are one Kuwaiti, two Saudis and six Qataris.

However, none of the Qataris who arrived in Kuwait was a member of the Al Thani family.

According to one of the rescued, the expedition of hunters that crossed from Kuwait into Iraq three weeks ago consisted of 70 people, including members of the Ruling family in Qatar, young people, Saudis and Kuwaitis.

“Armed militias attacked the camp where the party was staying at around 2am and kidnapped all those who were there at the time,” he said. “They were 32 people and the list included hunters, workers, cooks and helpers. They were transported to an undisclosed location. The other members of the party were not kidnapped because they were away on a night hunting expedition,” he said, quoted by Al Rai.

“The hunting expedition was duly licenced by the Iraqi authorities and the tent of the hunting party is among the largest put up by various hunting groups in the area,” he said.

Kuwaiti officials said they have been monitoring the situation closely through the ministry of interior and the ministry of foreign affairs, but they denied claims they were aware of the identity of the kidnappers or their militia.

“Negotiations to secure the release of the kidnapped hunting party members were conducted directly with the Iraqi authorities,” Khalid Al Jarallah, the deputy foreign minister, said.

Reports in Iraq said the nine people who had been able to cross back into Kuwait were servants and not hunters.

“They were not kidnapped alongside the hunters and they were taken back to Kuwait by the Iraqi authorities,” an Iraqi police source told Iraqi news site Al Sumaria.

Faleh Al Ziyadi, the governor of Al Muthanna in the south of Iraq, said he had banned all Gulf hunting parties from hunting in the area following the kidnapping.

“Military operations with aerial assistance from the army and the police are being conducted to find the kidnapped,” he said. “A security committee headed by the interior minister has been formed to look into the kidnapping and identify the kidnappers and locate them,” he said.

Ahmad Al Abyadh, an Iraqi political analyst, told Al Rai that if the kidnapped are not released quickly, they will most likely be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations to secure the release detainees held by armed factions in Syria.

The presence of Gulf nationals on hunting expeditions using falcons in southern Iraq is a deep-rooted tradition.

Hunting trips up to 2003, the year the regime was changed in Iraq, were under the direct supervision of the intelligence services, Al Sumaria said.

However, after 2003, the number of Gulf nationals who crossed into Iraq to hunt has dwindled due to security concerns, but expeditions never stopped.

The Gulf hunters regularly purchased falcons from Iraqis in the southern part of the country where several associations breed them and promote hunting.

By Habib Toumi
Original source

An organization that tracks jihadi websites says the Islamic State group has published an infographic saying its West Africa division has launched more than 100 attacks in the past two months, the Associated Press reports.

SITE Intelligence Group reports Boko Haram, which joined the Islamic State group in March, has killed and injured more than 1,000 people between October 14 and December 12.

Based in Nigeria, Boko Haram has expanded its attacks into Cameroon, Niger and Chad, countries contributing to a regional force to wipe out the extremists.

The IS graphic says its West African branch has staged 67 suicide attacks and fired more than 120 rockets.

SITE says the data for the infographic posted Saturday on Twitter and Telegram was apparently collected from media reports.

NASA’S Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) data collected from December 12 to 17, 2015 were used to update Typhoon Melor’s rainfall totals. The central Philippines received the largest amount of rainfall that measured almost three feet.

Northern Luzon escaped the damaging winds of Typhoon Melor but moisture transported by the tropical cyclone caused flooding rainfall in that area. IMERG data showed that much of Luzon was found to have rainfall totals of over 200 mm (7.9 inches) during this period. Unexpectedly heavy rain totaling over 771 mm (30.4 inches) fell over northeastern Luzon. The highest rainfall totals during this five day period were still found along the typhoon’s path in the central Philippines where rainfall totals were now measured by IMERG at over 899 mm (35.4 inches).

The Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) creates a merged precipitation product from the GPM constellation of satellites. These satellites include DMSPs from the U.S. Department of Defense, GCOM-W from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Megha-Tropiques from the Centre National D’etudies Spatiales (CNES) and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), NOAA series from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Suomi-NPP from NOAA-NASA, and MetOps from the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). All of the instruments (radiometers) onboard the constellation partners are intercalibrated with information from the GPM Core Observatory’s GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR).

After crossing the northern and central Philippines and emerging in the South China Sea on Thursday, December 17, Melor dissipated over the waters of South China Sea.

The decision to intervene in Syria and to more actively fight the so-called Islamic State was right. Something needs to happen now to prevent this barbaric regime from spreading its message and promoting its inhumane practices. Yet, airstrikes alone will not be the answer.

By Soeren Keil*

There has been a lot of debate in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe about intensified military actions against so-called Islamic State as a result of the Paris terror attacks on 13 November 2015. The argument of the French President was clear: The attacks in Paris were motivated and supported by the Islamic State, hence a strong military reaction was needed to demonstrate that Western powers will not give in to terrorism.

Yet, the arguments in Germany and the UK, in the past France’s two most important allies in Europe (although for different reasons) were more nuanced, and in many respects the whole idea of a military reaction to the attacks that killed 130 people in Paris was more controversial. In Germany, military intervention is still a complex issue. Not only is Germany’s military in a permanent state of reform and its contribution rather limited, but in the wake of the refugee crisis Angela Merkel and her government also faced substantial internal criticism, for the first time since she came to power 10 years ago.

In the UK, there were those that said military reactions will not make a difference. Rather, so-called Islamic State needs to be defeated diplomatically and in coordination with Syria’s neighbouring countries. Others were worried about the possible risks for the UK, which have become apparent when in early December a man attacked numerous people at a London Underground station shouting “This is for Syria.” Others argued that UK participation will not make a difference, since the majority of airstrikes come from the US, and that any British participation would be symbolic more than anything.

The decision to go to war, to risk your own soldiers’ lives and to potentially escalate an already very messy conflict in Syria was very hard for the Cameron government. In addition to the general dangers connected with the participation in an armed conflict, Syria is worse for many reasons. For one, it is difficult to assess who is “worthy” of Western support in the country. Clearly so-called Islamic State are an enemy, but the Assad regime that used chemical weapons against its own people cannot be an ally either. Within other opposition forces, the Nusra Front has become more dominant, which is Al Qaida in Syria and therefore also no potential ally. Whatever is left of the Free Syrian Army and the moderates, who started the Syrian unrest, is dispersed and weakened. Even the Kurds, a traditional ally for Americans and British alike, have become problematic because of the renewed conflicts in Turkey. Secondly, Cameron was vary of another defeat in parliament. The UK House of Commons has voted on airstrikes in Syria before, but the then coalition government was unable to gain a majority and an unwise-opportunistic move by the Labour party ensured defeat for the government proposal. Cameron, now with a Conservative majority, wanted to avoid another defeat by all means. To do this, he needed the support of other parties, including at least some support from the Labour Party. Their leader Jeremy Corbyn was personally against any airstrikes, but was unable to unite his party and provide convincing arguments for those in the Labour Party that remember Tony Blair’s Chicago Speech and the need for Britain to play an active role in world politics.

Now what does stronger military engagement in Syria mean? Critics of any intervention have pointed out that increased airstrikes usually increase the suffering of the civilian population. In an age of precise strikes this argument is not fully true. While some casualties can be expected amongst the civilian population, Western powers nowadays have the military capability to reduce the risk for civilians and massively reduce the number of casualties. This is not to say that increased airstrikes will not lead to civilian suffering, but if the aim is to fight greater suffering i.e. the rule of the so-called Islamic State, it might just be worth it.

Others have pointed out that stronger engagement will result in the so-called Islamic State using more violent means against its enemies and it will also promote more terrorist attacks in the West. Both arguments are flawed, as the IS is already incredibly brutal (one only needs to be reminded about their treatment of the Yazidis that many describe as genocide). Furthermore, the so-called Islamic State is already involved in the planning and support of numerous terrorist attacks (most of them not in Western countries but in Africa and parts of Asia). To assume they would spare the West if we only stop caring about their rule in Syria and Iraq is flawed, because many terrorists, including recent attackers in the US and in London never had direct contact with the leadership of the so-called Islamic State, but use them as their inspiration for their murderous plans.

Finally, some have argued that dealing with the so-called Islamic State needs a diplomatic solution. This is true. We know that some countries, including Saudi Arabia and for a long time Turkey as well, have, if not directly supported IS, tolerated and accepted their rule as an alternative to growing Iranian influence in Syria and Iraq. While I believe that the so-called Islamic State can in fact be defeated militarily, a wider reconfiguration of the Middle East is needed to ensure stability, security and democratization. But this is incredibly difficult, as the above discussion on the conflicting parties in Syria demonstrates. Hence, this cannot be the only solution, while the so-called Islamic State keeps murdering people, killing journalists and destroying cultural monuments.

The decision to intervene in Syria and to more actively fight the so-called Islamic State was right. Something needs to happen now to prevent this barbaric regime from spreading its message and promoting its inhumane practices. Yet, airstrikes alone will not be the answer. While clearly the advances of the so-called Islamic State have stopped, they have not lost any substantial territory under their control and they have been able to fight of offences from the Kurds and Iraqi army forces (who are supported by Iranian special troops). It will be a question of time until we will run out of targets in Syria and Iraq. Then, we will need to discuss ground troops. This will be a difficult decision, and one that will only be accepted if the US will participate in troop deployment, which will only happen when a successor to Barak Obama agrees to it. Otherwise, we will be able to hurt the so-called Islamic State, but we will be unable to defeat it, and Syria and Iraq will remain shadows of states, in which different groups control different territories.

The other key variable in Syria and Iraq is the question of what happens when (rather than if) these conflicts are over. This is where the importance of state-building becomes visible. One of the major reasons for the failure of American state-building in Iraq was their inability to get the major groups to work together and cooperate in order to make the state function. Instead, Shias aimed for domination, Kurds just wanted to be autonomous/independent and Sunnis refused political cooperation and instead fought the American occupiers. We need to learn from this. State-Building is not a question of money (there was a lot in Iraq!), it is a question of commitment and of will. Commitment means that Syria and Iraq need to be re-built in order to serve all of their citizens, which will clearly mean some difficult compromises. Commitment also means that the West is prepared to stay in it for the long-run. We can learn from Germany and Japan that troop deployment for 10 or 15 years might not be enough, but that long-term engagement is needed.

Finally, commitment refers to the above-mentioned re-organisation of the Middle East. It is widely recognised that Iran and Saudi Arabia are the dominant and rival forces. One might want to add Israel to this equation. What is needed is a security architecture that, while not promoting friendship and alliances, at least promotes peace, as has emerged in South East Asia through ASEAN. The US and the European Union can provide a military and economic framework in which this security community could emerge. Yet, to deliver all of this, political will is required, both by the elites in Syria and Iraq, and by elites in the wider Middle East and in Western capitals. We have lost Iraq once, mainly because we were not prepared to be in it for the long-haul and because we never managed to promote the democracy we hoped Iraq would be. It is important that we do not make the same mistakes twice. Instead, we need to think today about what kind of Syria and what kind of Iraq we want in the future and which groups we want to include in a post-war settlement. Are we prepared to make the compromises needed? Are we willing to be in it for the long-haul? Are we capable of persuading people of the advantages of democracy and open political systems? These will be the questions that we need to answer, if we want to defeat the so-called Islamic State and other radical groups long-term.

*Dr Soeren Keil is Reader in Politics and International Relations at Canterbury Christ Church University, where he teaches courses on conflict resolution and foreign policy analysis. He is the author, editor and co-editor of six book, and has written extensively about state-building and democratization in the Western Balkans. He can be contacted at soeren.keil@canterbury.ac.uk

Criminal charges brought in Thailand against a factory worker for satirical commentary on Facebook about the king’s dog show the military junta’s misuse of laws intended to protect the monarchy, Human Rights Watch said.

On December 14, 2015, based on a complaint made by Thai military authorities, police filed lese majeste (insulting the monarchy) charges against Thanakorn Siripaiboon, 27, in the Bangkok Military Court. Thanakorn is accused under section 112 of the Penal Code of spreading “sarcastic” Facebook images and comments that were deemed to be mocking the king’s dog, named Thong Daeng.

“The charges against Thanakorn show the Thai junta’s ever tightening chokehold on free expression in the name of protecting the monarchy,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “The abuse of lese majeste law has reached the absurd with the prosecution of a factory worker for allegedly offending the monarchy by insulting the king’s dog.”

Thanakorn also faces separate charges of sedition under section 116 of the Penal Code for online postings alleging members of the ruling National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) junta of involvement in corruption. If found guilty of all charges, the court could sentence Thanakorn to up to 37 years in prison.

The Thai junta has arbitrarily and aggressively used the lese majeste laws to prosecute people for any speech found objectionable, including what is considered critical of the monarchy, The junta leader, Prime Minister Gen. Prayut Chan-ocha, has made lese majeste prosecutions a top priority for his government. Since the coup in May 2014, at least 56 lese majeste cases have been brought, 43 against individuals for online commentary. In a media interview on December 9, Maj. Gen. Wicharn Jodtaeng, chief of the NCPO’s Legal Office, said that commenting, sharing, or pressing “Like” on Facebook contents that the authorities consider offensive to the monarchy would be prosecuted as lese majeste.

Section 112 of Thailand’s Penal Code states, “Whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, Queen, Heir-Apparent or Regent shall be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteen years,” In recent years the government and the courts have interpreted the law increasingly broadly. In May 2013, the Supreme Court handed down a guilty verdict by concluding that Natchakrit Jungruengrit had committed lese majeste because of his comments about King Mongkut (Rama IV), who reigned from 1851 to 1868. The court ruled that “defaming the former king can affect the current king” and “King Mongkut was the great grandfather of the current king.”

The United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of expression stated in October 2011 that Thailand’s lese majeste laws were “vague and overly broad, and the harsh criminal sanctions are neither necessary nor proportionate to protect the monarchy or national security.”

Since September, 2015, those accused of committing lese majeste have been detained incommunicado in a prison facility at Bangkok’s 11th Army Circle military base. The government has denied requests by human rights groups to visit detainees and examine detention conditions at the base even after the recent deaths there of a fortune teller, Suriyan Sucharitpolwong, and Police Maj. Prakrom Warunprapa, both charged with lese majeste.

Military courts have imposed harsher sentences for lese majeste offenses than civilian courts did prior to the coup. In August, the Bangkok Military Court sentenced Pongsak Sriboonpeng to 60 years in prison for his alleged lese majeste Facebook postings, later reduced to 30 years when he pleaded guilty. It was the longest recorded sentence for lese majeste in Thailand’s history.

Neither the Thai monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, nor any member of the royal family has ever personally filed lese majeste charges. During his birthday speech in 2005, the king stated that he was not above criticism. “Actually, I must also be criticized. I am not afraid if the criticism concerns what I do wrong, because then I know. Because if you say the king cannot be criticized, it means that the king is not human,” he said. “If the king can do no wrong, it is akin to looking down upon him because the king is not being treated as a human being. But the king can do wrong.”

The police, public prosecutors, courts, and other state authorities appear reluctant to reject allegations of lese majeste out of concern they might be accused of disloyalty to the monarchy.

“The heavy-handed enforcement of lese majeste laws is crushing freedom of expression in Thailand,” Adams said. “A serious discussion is urgently needed to amend the law and reconsider how it is enforced so that it conforms with Thailand’s international human rights obligations.”

(Civil.Ge) — Georgia’s President, Prime Minister, Parliament Speaker, as well as leaders of parliamentary opposition parties have welcomed European Commission’s report, which said that Georgia meets criteria for lifting visa requirements in the Schengen area.

“I welcome the European Commission’s report on visa liberalisation action plan, which fully reflects the progress achieved by Georgia over the past three years,” President Giorgi Margvelashvili said in a written statement shortly after the report was released on December 18.

“Huge efforts of the Georgian government and the authorities made it possible to meet within the shortest period of time all those requirements, which were envisaged by the action plan. This unity has brought the result to our country, which is an important step forward to ensure free movement of our citizens to the EU member states,” Margvelashvili said.

“From now on a very responsible process lies ahead for us, which should be accomplished by adoption of a political decision by the European Union that will officially open the EU borders for the Georgian citizens,” the President said.

The European Commission said that it will present a legislative proposal in “early 2016” to the EU-member states to allow visa-free travel for Georgian citizens. After this formal proposal is presented, it should then be approved by the European Parliament and the EU-member states before visa-free rules can go into force. Georgia hopes the process will be completed by mid-2016.

“Our task is to pass through this process with dignity and spare no effort to achieve the goal in the shortest possible time,” President Margvelashvili said.

“I am sure that the Georgian government, Parliament, political forces and society will remain united to materialize our European choice.”

“Our choice is European choice; Europe is our welfare and progress; more Europe in Georgia and more Georgia in Europe,” Margvelashvili said. “I, as the President of Georgia, will remain actively involved in all those processes, which are related to realization of this strategic goal.”

In a televised address PM Irakli Garibashvili said that it’s “a historic day” for Georgia.

“Georgia has made a step which will largely determine our future in the family of the European states,” Garibashvili said.

The European Commission’s much-awaited report, the PM said, should now pave the way for visa-free travel to the Schengen area for the Georgian citizens in 2016.

“Of course it does not mean that the Georgian citizens will be able to take tickets and go to Europe without visa from tomorrow,” he said. “Certain stages remain before the final decision, which, taking into view experience of other countries, may take several months.”

In case of Moldova, interval between the European Commission’s positive final report and the time, when visa-free travel rule came into effect in late April 2014, was five months.

The PM said that the European Commission’s positive report marked “the most important step in this process.”

“The European Union has actually acknowledged our unwavering commitments to the European values… and consistent efforts undertaken by our government for efficient and prompt implementation of reforms,” Garibashvili said.

“Our country has confirmed once again that we are frontrunners among EU’s Eastern Partnership countries,” he said.

“In response, the Europe tells us that it is open for the Georgian citizens,” the PM said.

“We have fulfilled dream of present and many past generations. We have achieved the result with joint efforts of the people and the authorities despite of many external or internal obstacles,” PM Garibashvili said.

“New stage for country’s development is starting with this historic decision,” he added.

Visa-free travel rules will add “much deeper dimension” to Association Agreement and deep and comprehensive free trade treaty, which Georgia already has with the EU.

“Europe is our historic home. Europe embodies everything which our nation aspires for – individual freedoms, rule of law, welfare, strong economy and equality, peace and bright future for our children, and most importantly it is a new space for realization for our self-identity and uniqueness,”

“And this is path towards Georgia’s unity – we can make our country attractive for our Abkhaz and Ossetian brothers only through building modern, European state. I am confident that time will come when they fully make use of those benefits, which the European integration brings,” the Georgian PM said.

Parliament speaker, Davit Usupashvili, said before closing Friday’s parliamentary session that this day will “take its worthy place in Georgia’s history.”

“Today we learned about a very important event – borders between Georgia and the EU are being abolished; that’s precisely what visa-free movement implies,” said Usupashvili, who was interrupted by standing ovation from lawmakers in the chamber; UNM MPs, who have also welcomed the European Commission’s report, were not in the chamber at the time.

“We have taken another huge step towards the civilization, which abolishes borders in the 21st century and not towards the civilization, which erects borders. It is very important. I congratulate everybody and each and every citizen,” he said.

“This is a huge achievement of our government, previous governments, and many persons, who worked on this direction and I want to thank all of them,” Usupashvili added.

Leader of opposition UNM party’s parliamentary minority group, MP Davit Bakradze, congratulated the Georgian people, which, he said, “confirmed that it deserves European future.”

“I also want to congratulate each and every Georgian diplomat and public servant, who have been working for years – first when we [UNM] were in government, which launched this process, and then under the incumbent government, which brought this process to its end – have been working on this issue,” MP Bakradze said.

“This is a huge step towards Europe, but we still have a long road ahead and much remains to be done,” he added.

Leader of the opposition Free Democrats Party, Irakli Alasania, said that he expects decision on lifting visa requirement to come into effect by mid-2016, which, he said, will allow Georgian citizens to move freely in Europe and “to bring in more Europe into Georgia and to introduce more Georgia to the EU.”

If John Kerry doesn’t win an Oscar for his performance in Moscow on Tuesday, then there’s something very wrong with the system.

From the time he touched down at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport, to the time he left some 26 hours later, the Secretary of State was as cordial and conciliatory as anytime in recent memory.  There was no hectoring, no lecturing, no threats of additional sanctions and no finger-wagging condescension, just pleasant give-and-take on the main issues followed by friendly chit-chat, multiple handshakes, and plenty of smiley photo ops.   To say his hosts were surprised by Kerry’s behavior is a probably an understatement.  After nearly three years of nonstop belligerence and confrontation, the last thing Sergei Lavrov and Vladimir Putin expected was an ingratiating Kerry oozing brotherly love and carrying on like an old buddy from college.

Then of course came the real stunner, the announcement that the US had suddenly changed its mind about toppling Syrian President Bashar al Assad and–oh by the way–‘we’d love to work with you on that ISIS-thing too.’  Here’s what Kerry said:

“The United States and our partners are not seeking regime change in Syria…(the focus is no longer) “on our differences about what can or cannot be done immediately about Assad…”

There’s no question that when the United States and Russia work together our two countries benefit. Despite our differences we demonstrated that when our countries pull together, progress can be made.”

The US is “not seeking regime change in Syria”?

No one saw that one coming. Maybe someone should remind Kerry that the Decider in Chief Obama reiterated the “Assad must go” trope less than two weeks ago. Now all that’s changed?

Apparently so. This has got to be the biggest foreign policy somersault in the last two decades and Kerry carried it off without a trace of shame, in fact, he never veered from his cheery script the entire trip. Case in point: In one particularly absurd photo, Kerry is seen grinning ear to ear while high-fiving Lavrov like he just got news that his horse placed first at Churchill Downs. Needless to say, Washington’s Skull and Bones diplomats know how to turn on the charm when it suits their purposes. And that’s exactly what’s driving Kerry’s slobbering tone and the “Can’t we be friends again” jocularity.  Washington wants something, and its willing to devour a rather sizable crow to get what it wants.

Okay, but were the Russians taken in by Kerry’s performance?

Heck no, in fact, they acted exactly as one would expect them to act.  They treated Kerry with the utmost respect, listened politely to everything he had to say, nodded, smiled and shook hands at all the appropriate times, and then got back to the business of bombing the holy crap out of the US-backed terrorists operating in Syria.  That’s the way Moscow conducts business, they never take their eye off the ball. Here’s what Putin said immediately after Kerry left:

“I have repeatedly stated and I am ready to stress once again: we will never agree with the idea that a third party, whoever this party is, has the right to impose its will on another country. This does not make any sense and it’s a violation of international law.”

Sounds pretty inflexible to me. Then he added this tidbit as if to underscore the fact that Obama’s meaningless policy reversal will not effect Russian’s military offensive in any way, shape or form:

“As soon as we notice the political process has begun, and the Syrian government decides it is time to stop the airstrikes, [we are going to stop] … The sooner it [the process] starts the better.”

In other words, show us you’re sincere and maybe we can do business together. But, until then…

So why is Kerry wasting everyone’s time with all this glad-handing and kowtowing when the Russians are obviously not taking the bait?

Well, because US proxies in the field (aka–Sunni militants and extremists) are getting blown to smithereens, that’s why. You see, the US is losing its proxy-war with Syria rather badly which has everyone on Capital Hill and the Pentagon extremely worried.  That’s why they sent Senator Botox to Moscow to see if he could conjure up a ceasefire before things get really out of hand. Here’s a brief recap of recent events:

The Syrian Army, Hezbollah and the elite 4th Mechanized Division are closing in on strategic town of Al-Zorba which will complete the encirclement of the country’s biggest city, Aleppo, cutting off critical jihadi supplylines to the north and signaling the beginning of a final offensive to clear the city of the many al Qaida-linked groups operating in the vicinity. This is the beginning of the end for the Jabhat Al-Nusra,  Ahrar Al-Sham, and other terrorist vermin who currently occupy the city.

The Syrian Army has also made great strides in capturing the area along the Turkish border. On Tuesday, the 103rd Brigade of the Republican Guard – in coordination with the National Defense Forces (NDF) took  full control over the strategic Al-Nuba Mountains after a ferocious week-long battle with Jabhat Al-Nusra. Once the Latakia offensive is concluded, the Turkish border will be sealed and it will be impossible for terrorists to come and go as they please. That, in turn will lead to a long mop up operation within Syria itself.

Get the picture? The Russian-led coalition is methodically going about its work, reopening the main highways, securing the border, liberating cities and villages across western and northwestern corridor, destroying oil fields,  refineries and tanker trucks, rolling up jihadis wherever they find them, and  gradually restoring the power of the central government. It’s a much tougher slog than many had anticipated, but that has a lot to do with the fact that anti-regime militias appear to be getting logistical support from allies outside the country. (Who could that be, I wonder?)

In any event, the situation on the ground is bad enough that Kerry decided it was better to swallow his pride and climb-down on the “Assad must go” demand, to see if Russia would go-easy on Obama’s “moderate” terrorists presently fighting in Syria. This is the real reason Kerry flew to Moscow.

This is also why the Saudis convened a two-day conference that included the various Syrian opposition groups just last week. The Saudis are trying desperately to create a fig leaf of legitimacy for the many groups of terrorists that have torn Syria to shreds in order to remove Assad and establish an Islamic Caliphate. The Russian-led offensive has forced the Saudis to rethink their approach. Now the Saudis want to create an umbrella group of so called “moderate” opposition forces who will be spared Russia’s wrath and allowed to participate in future negotiations on Syria’s political future. Unfortunately, it’s all for show. Washington’s objectives haven’t changed and neither have Riyadh’s. The Pentagon hawks are already gearing up for the next phase of the war as are the Saudis, in fact, just this week the Saudis launched an initiative to create a  “Islamic military alliance devoted to combating global terrorism.”

Got that?  The Saudis want to spearhead the fight against terror, which is bit like Xaviera Hollander chairing the Chastity League. Naturally, the macabre irony of the endeavor was lost on the media which reported the story without questioning the credibility of the source.

So what’s this new charade all about?

It’s another attempt for the Saudis to get a shoe in the door so they can raise more hell in Syria. They think that if they create a “broad-based international coalition” then they’ll be able to deploy their homicidal crackpots into Syria with impunity. It’s all part of the neocon plan to rip Syria apart by occupying a vast stretch of land in east Syria and west Iraq to establish Sunnistan, a de facto terrorist sanctuary where the Washington-Ankara-Riyadh axis can continue its proxy campaign for as long as they want keeping the Middle East in a permanent state of anarchy until the elusive Caliphate finally emerges and the last drop of oil has been extracted by avaricious western oil giants.

Fortunately, Putin is going to put an end to this nonsense. And he has the arsenal to do it too.

By Joris Leverink*

While the war in Syria continues to draw in more outside forces, the work towards finding a political solution to this five-year old conflict carries on. In the past week, no less than three separate conferences were organized by different clusters of opposition groups. Conferences were held in three places: Damascus, Dêrîk – a city in the Kurdish-controlled northern part of Syria – and Riyadh, the Saudi capital, respectively.

With the Damascus conference widely regarded as a sham, organized with the permission and under the firm control of the Assad regime, and the conference in Dêrîk being all-but ignored by the international media, the eyes of the world were fixed on the proceedings in Riyadh.

The conference in the Saudi capital was sponsored by a number of international allies to the various warring factions inside Syria. The intended outcome was to unite the Syrian opposition so that it could present a common front in upcoming negotiations with the regime, as determined by the Vienna talks held in November.

Remarkably, little attention was paid to the conference in Dêrîk – called the “Democratic Syria Congress” – organized by Syrian Kurdish groups and their allies. This conference brought together more than a hundred delegates representing religious and ethnic groups from all over Syria, with an important role reserved for women and youth organizations. It was the first peace conference of its kind organized in opposition-controlled territory inside Syria – a fact that goes a long way in pointing out the significance of this particular event. Contrary to the one in Riyadh, this was a conference by Syrians, and for Syrians, not controlled by the agendas of powerful international allies nor obstructed by the dogmatic views of some of its participants.

The Riyadh conference was attended by political bodies such as the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces and the National Co-ordination Committee for Democratic Change, as well as rebel factions like Jaysh al-Islam, the Southern Front and Ahrar al-Sham, a salafist group fighting in alliance with the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front.

Tellingly, the New York Times reported that in the final statement of the Riyadh conference the word “democracy” was left out because of objections by Islamist delegates, and replaced with “democratic mechanism” instead.

In contrast, the final resolution presented at the Democratic Syria Congress in Dêrîk underlined the delegates’ commitment to democracy, social pluralism, and national unity. It confirmed the participants’ determination “to form a democratic constitution to enable solutions to the Syrian crisis through democratic, peaceful discussion, dialogue and talks; … to hold free and democratic elections required by the current process in Syria; [and] to secure the faith, culture and identities of all Syrian people.”

The Dêrîk conference also saw the establishment of the Democratic Syrian Assembly, which will serve as the political representation of the newly formed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF is a Kurdish-dominated coalition of rebel factions, including Arab, Syriac, Turkmen and Yezidi forces. In recent months, the SDF has proved to be ISIS’ most formidable enemy, and the international coalition’s most reliable ally in the fight against the terrorist organization.

It might come as a surprise, then, that neither the SDF nor any other Kurdish organizations were invited to the Riyadh conference. As a faction that controls an area many times the size of that under control of the National Coalition – or any other rebel group for that matter – and which has been able to claim a string of victories against ISIS, it naturally ought to play a role in any post-Assad, post-ISIS future plan for Syria.

The Kurds’ absence in Riyadh has everything to do with Turkey’s position in the Syrian conflict. From the Turkish perspective, the Kurds in Syria pose a bigger threat to its national security than ISIS.

Turkey fears that the establishment of the autonomous regions, or “cantons,” in the Kurdish parts of northern Syria might inspire its domestic Kurdish population to pursue a similar goal. The fact that the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is the most powerful political body in the region, is a sister organization to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging a 35-year insurgency against the Turkish state, only adds insult to injury.

Commenting on the Riyadh conference, PYD co-chair Saleh Moslem stated that “it doesn’t pay regard to the current political and military reality in Syria and the region, as the most active and dynamic actors and representatives of the actual Syrian opposition haven’t been invited. In the circumstances, such meetings will have no seriousness.”

Before it even started, the precarious alliance formed in Riyadh was already on the verge of collapse. Ahrar al-Sham threatened to pull out of the talks, condemning the presence of “pro-Assad forces” and deeming the final statement “not Islamic enough.”

The goal to bring all the different opposition factions to the table, to explore common ground and to form a united front against the Assad regime is a noble one. Unfortunately it is doomed to fail when the alliance neglects to reflect the reality on the ground as well as the will of the Syrian people.

When it is merely the outcome of external parties pushing their agendas for personal benefits – whether it is to strengthen the position of local allies on the ground, to obstruct the efforts of the Kurdish autonomous administration or to explore options for negotiations with Assad in order to be able to focus all energy on destroying ISIS – any alliance will be too weak to withstand the test of time, let alone the test of war.

In this regard, despite the lack of international attention, the conference in Dêrîk might actually supersede the one in Riyadh in terms of importance. Despite the increasing involvement of outside forces, diplomatically, politically and, most important, militarily, any real solution to the crisis in Syria must be initiated by the Syrian people, not any outside power.

The Democratic Syria Congress in Dêrîk has shown that there is not only a will to work towards peace, but that there is also an infrastructure in place, a platform, where the first, cautious steps towards a peaceful future and an “alternative democratic system aiming at change” have been made.

*Joris Leverink is a writer and political analyst based in Istanbul. He is an editor for ROAR Magazine and a columnist for TeleSUR English, where he frequently reports on Turkish and regional politics.

By Lena Muxfeldt and Matthias Götz*

In recent decades, it has become a mantra that the EU-Japan relations are full of significant untapped potential. Now, with the negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA; officially: Economic Partnership Agreement) underway, there is momentum to believe that this untapped trade potential will finally be unfolded like a delicate origami. However, we argue that the FTA under negotiation is unlikely going to be a “game-changer” for EU-Japan economic relations, but only a first step to increase bilateral trade. More specifically, we put forward that while an FTA can strengthen existing trade flows, it can neither address nor – in the short- to medium-term- overcome many of the underlying challenges of deeper EU-Japan economic relations. Addressing these underlying challenges would, however, be necessary to truly unfold still untapped potential of the bilateral economic relations between the EU and Japan.

Since 25 March 2013, the EU and Japan are negotiating an “ambitious and mutually beneficial” FTA with the aim to liberalise trade in goods, services and investments as well as to eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers. Currently, the EU ranks as Japan’s third largest trading partner after the United States (US) and China. Meanwhile, Japan is the seventh biggest trading partner of the EU. Impact assessments forecast that an ambitious FTA could increase EU exports to Japan by 32.7% and Japanese exports to the EU by 23.5% (European Commission, 2012: 38). The negotiations over an FTA with Japan fall into a broader ambition of the EU to strengthen its trade relations with countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This ambition is further pushed by the recent conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a mega-regional trade agreement including the US and Japan. To strengthen its trade relations with the region, the EU has already concluded FTA’s with the Republic of Korea, Singapore and Vietnam and is negotiating a Bilateral Investment Treaty with China. Besides, the new trade strategy “Trade for all” presented by the European Commission in October 2015 proposes the launch of FTA negotiations with New Zealand and Australia and showcases ambition to open or reopen negotiations with selected countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The negotiating priorities of both the EU and Japan for a bilateral FTA imply in which sectors the EU and Japan hope to strengthen trade flows the most. The EU puts special emphasis on removing Japanese non-tariff barriers, especially in the automotive sector (tax subsidies of small kei-cars), and opening up the Japanese public procurement market, especially for railway industries. Japan particularly focuses on tariff liberalisation on manufacturing export goods, including automotive, machinery and electronics (for a more comprehensive review see Kleimann, 2015). A concluded trade deal is thus likely to improve notably the market position of producers from these industries in the other respective market and increase competition. Depending on the degree and extent to which both the EU and Japan commit themselves to reducing non-tariff barriers, this increase in competition will be more or less strong and symmetric. With the exception of railway industries- and to a limited extent- EU automotive producers, these industries, however, already trade between the EU and the Japan. The benefits of better market access as a consequence of a concluded FTA are – especially in the short-term- thus likely to concentrate on firms (many of them multinational firms) which are often already active in EU-Japan trade today. Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) may to some extent benefit from improved market access for large firms as suppliers

An FTA does and can, however, not address trade barriers which are not immediately related to trade policy. To truly unfold untapped potential, an FTA would also have to improve market opportunities for firms which are not yet involved in bilateral trade between the EU and Japan.

An FTA per se can thus neither address differences in business culture nor resolve a lack of international connectivity. Studies demonstrate that these trade barriers are a relatively strong impediment for trade relations between EU and Japanese firms. A study conducted by the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation thus indicates that European SMEs often struggle with the unique Japanese business culture (EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation, 2012). Different cultural customs such as prolonged business negotiations caused by consensus decision-making rules and detail-orientation may lead to misunderstandings and loss of interest among European businesses. Moreover, bilateral trade relations are impeded by language barriers. In contrast to Hong Kong or Singapore, Japan does not have a pool of English language speakers from which companies could easily source. Limited levels of English language skills make it especially difficult for Japanese SMEs to do business with European counterparts. Business communities on both sides hope, however, that the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games may create a momentum to overcome cultural challenges and language barriers and give rise to an open-for-business environment and an atmosphere of internationality.

Besides, to unfold untapped potential, an FTA would have to create new investment flows between both regions. We consider it as unlikely, however, that an FTA between the EU and Japan will strongly shift investment patterns of either EU or Japanese firms. Given the low growth performance of the Japanese economy during the last decades, EU firms are unlikely to redirect their investments towards Japan even once an FTA is concluded. Likewise, Japanese firms are unlikely to shift their investment towards the EU as growth and return-on-investment prospects in the Union are for now hardly more promising. Besides, taking advantage of geographical proximity and auspicious growth opportunities, Japanese companies have strongly invested into Southeast Asian countries and built up regional supply chains, most of these with a long-term focus. According to the Japan External Trade Organisation’s (JETRO) 2015 Global Trade and Investment Report, Japanese outward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has exceeded $100 billion for four consecutive years. Furthermore, the report indicates that Japanese outward FDI in ASEAN was worth $20.4 billion, which is nearly three times as much as the amount invested in China $6.8 billion. An FTA between the EU and Japan is unlikely to shift the growing regional integration of Japanese firms in the Asia-Pacific region towards Europe. On the contrary, with the recent conclusion of TPP, these regional supply chains, in particular with Vietnam and Malaysia, are very likely to become even stronger.

To conclude, we do not deny that an FTA between the EU and Japan will create both additional market opportunities and growth prospects for firms from either side. Indeed, now that Japan has concluded negotiations over TPP, the negotiations of the EU and Japan may well resolve some long-standing trade issues between both sides. Yet, we argue that to truly unfold the economic potential of the bilateral trade relations, an FTA would also have to enable the participation of currently non-trading firms and create new investment flows. We believe that for now, neither is particularly likely. If both policy-makers and businesses understand an FTA as a starting point rather than the finalisation of bilateral trade policy, it may, however, trigger closer relations and further convergence in the future. It is then that the economic origami of EU-Japan relations can truly start to unfold.

About the authors:
Matthias Götz studied European Political Economy at the London School of Economics and is now PhD Candidate at the Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences, University of Cologne.

Lena Muxfeldt studied Political Science and International Relations at Leiden University and was previously a Visiting Research Fellow at the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation in Tokyo.

Links:
Delegation of the EU to Japan (2015): Trade and Investment Relations [Online] Accessible under http://www.euinjapan.jp/en/relations/trade/ (Accessed 04 December 2015).

EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation (2012): In Search for Growth: Towards a New Role for SMEs in EU-Japan Relations [Online] Accessible under http://www.eu-japan.eu/sites/eu-japan.eu/files/In%20Search%20for%20Growth%20-%20Towards%20a%20New%20Role%20for%20SMEs%20in%20EU-Japan%20Relations.pdf (Accessed 04 December 2015).

European Commission (2012). Impact Assessment Report on EU-Japan Trade Relations. Working Staff Document. [Online] Accessible under http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2012/july/tradoc_149809.pdf (Accessed 06 December 2015).

JETRO (2015): JETRO Global Trade and Investment Report 2015 – New efforts aimed at developing global business [Online] Accessible under https://www.jetro.go.jp/en/news/2015/ea96c87efd06f226.html (Accessed 04 December 2015).

Kleimann, D. (2014) Negotiating in the Shadow of TTIP and TPP: The EU-Japan Free Trade Agreement. German Marshall Fund of the United States, Asia Program, Policy Brief, June 2015 [Online] Accessible under www.gmfus.org/file/6173/download (Accessed 06 December 2015).

The economic recovery that began in the second half of 2013 is not the result of austerity policies, and is unlikely to rescue Spain from mass unemployment in the foreseeable future, a new paper from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) concludes.

“The fiscal tightening mostly ended after 2013, and this — combined with favorable external factors and election year tax cuts — probably accounts for the recovery of economic growth,” said Mark Weisbrot, CEPR Co-Director and co-author of the paper, “Has Austerity Worked in Spain?” “The idea that austerity brought about recovery by increasing investor confidence seems to be no more true in Spain than anywhere else,” he added.

A number of economists and officials have maintained that Spain’s fiscal consolidation, despite the losses of output and huge declines in employment, has spurred economic recovery by restoring the confidence of markets, investors, and consumers in the Spanish economy.

The favorable external factors include lower interest rates, helped along by the ECB’s quantitative easing, lower oil prices (which contributed to increased consumer spending), and a depreciating euro.

The authors also call attention to the European Union’s estimate that net fiscal consolidation measures by the government for 2013-15 fell short of the target by 2.8 percentage points of GDP. (The target is set by the Excessive Deficit Procedure of the Stability and Growth Pact.) This differs from the Spanish government’s estimates, and is another indication that the government’s let-up on budget tightening could be a main cause of the recovery.

“It wouldn’t be surprising to see more spending cuts after the election, depending on the outcome,” said Weisbrot.

The paper, co-authored by economists David Rosnick and Mark Weisbrot, focuses on employment, contributions to GDP growth, and the current account balance to analyze the current recovery.

According to IMF estimates, Spain will have 16.5 percent unemployment when it reaches its potential output, which means that this is basically considered a full-employment level of GDP. Unemployment is currently at 21.6 percent, with youth unemployment at 47.7 percent. About 60 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for more than a year. The number of people who are classified as at risk of poverty and social exclusion has risen with unemployment, by three million people from 2007-2014.

The paper notes that “relying on continued ‘growth-friendly fiscal consolidation’ — as the IMF recommends — as well as efficiency gains from further labor market or other reforms, is unlikely to move the economy toward reasonable levels of employment in the foreseeable future. A strategy of fiscal stimulus and public investment, combined with revenue increases that maintain a sustainable debt burden, present a much more effective alternative.”

By Mike Eckel

(RFE/RL) — Dig deep into the $1.1 trillion spending package that the U.S. Congress passed on December 18 and you’ll find all sorts of amendments, ranging from the quirky to the substantive.

That’s because the 2,000-page bill, which sets government funding priorities for the new fiscal year, is the result of plenty of horse trading and haggling by Congress’s 535 representatives and senators.

But the spending package, which U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to sign into law, also includes measures with foreign policy implications. Here’s a snapshot of four policy amendments, known as riders, tucked into the bill that could impact how Washington deals with the world.

Crude Oil Exports

The new spending package lifts a 42-year-old ban on exporting crude oil that was enacted shortly after the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, which led to major gas shortages in the United States and endless lines for American drivers filling up their cars.

Four decades after that ban, the United States has become one of the world’s largest producers of oil and gas, thanks to the revolution in underground extraction technology commonly known as fracking. Those innovations have flooded U.S. markets with additional hydrocarbons, known as shale oil and gas, and have helped drive world oil prices to below $35 per barrel, from near $100 per barrel a decade ago.

Now the right to export will be given to U.S. crude oil producers, who generate about 9.2 million barrels a day, nearly half of which comes from fracking, according to U.S. government figures.

This glut has been good news for U.S. refineries, which have long been able to export their products, as well as petrochemical companies, which do the same and rake in bigger profits from lower-costing crude.

The immediate, short-term beneficiaries of the export ban’s removal should be close-by refineries like those in Mexico, which will get cheaper, higher-quality crude than they typically use. The impact on European markets will be limited, because demand there is lower, said David Knapp, chief energy economist at New York-based Energy Intelligence Group. Asian markets are largely supplied by oil from the Middle East.

“U.S. crude is not in particularly high demand right now. I mean, there’s just too many barrels out on the market,” he said. “So the impact is going to be very localized, and it’s going to be more regional than international.”

Knapp said that both the surge in U.S. shale oil production and the looming influx of oil from Iran, which has been cut off from major export markets for years by sanctions, both factor into the current low global oil prices.

Countries whose budgets and economies are undergirded by high oil prices — like Russia, for example — won’t be directly harmed by the lifting of the U.S. export ban, but it won’t help them either.

Russia’s budget for the coming fiscal year is built around a projected oil price of $40 per barrel.

The more oil on the markets, the lower prices will be. The lower prices are, the less revenue the Kremlin will bring in. That means it will be harder to pay for everything from pensions and school teacher’s salaries, to advanced fighter jets and ballistic missile nuclear submarines.

Visa Waivers

The bill tightens restrictions on travelers to the United States from 38 countries — mainly in Europe — whose citizens qualify for the U.S. Visa Waiver Program after meeting strict requirements on biometric passports, reciprocal waivers for U.S. citizens, and other conditions. Under this program, about 20 million visitors come to the United States every year without obtaining a visa ahead of time.

U.S. lawmakers in recent months have voiced increasing concern that terrorists could slip into the United States under the waiver program. The November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people, stoked those fears. Most of the attackers were French or Belgian citizens, though there were unconfirmed reports that said some attackers may have been migrants from the Middle East.

The decision by the Obama administration to increase the number of Syrians fleeing civil war further worried lawmakers. So did the December 2 mass shooting that killed 14 people at a California social services center, even though one of the attackers was a U.S. citizen of Pakistani background, while the other — his wife — entered the United States on a special visa for prospective spouses.

Some U.S. lawmakers clamored for a complete halt to the visa waiver program. The spending bill tightens how the program operates, aiming to increase information sharing with the 38 participating countries. It also restricts entry for people who have traveled to countries including Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

That has worried the European Union, which is home to many dual-nationals who retain citizenship in countries like Iran. In an open letter published earlier this month, David O’Sullivan, the EU’s ambassador to the United States, warned that the push may result in European nations imposing reciprocal measures on U.S. citizens.

“Such indiscriminate action against the more than 13 million European citizens who travel to the U.S. each year would be counterproductive, could trigger legally-mandated reciprocal measures, and would do nothing to increase security while instead hurting economies on both sides of the Atlantic,” O’Sullivan wrote in an op-ed co-signed by other EU ambassadors to the United States.

Russian Rocket Engines

The spending package is favorable to Russian state-owned aerospace giant NPO Energomash, which manufactures engines that have been used for years by the U.S. Defense Department to launch military satellites. The RD-180 engines are provided to a U.S. joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing called United Launch Alliance, which has a monopoly on the launches.

Following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula in 2014, U.S. lawmakers sought to end the arrangement, citing national security and economic grounds. The emergence of the private U.S. aerospace company SpaceX also led to the effort to phase out the use of the Russian engines, and to encourage U.S. domestic engine manufacturing.

However, senators from two U.S. states — Illinois, where Boeing is headquartered, and Alabama, where United Launch Alliance has an assembly facility — inserted language into the spending package that will continue use of the Russian engines. Competition for the satellite launches will be open to launch-vehicle providers “regardless of the country of origin of the rocket engine.”

That prompted a visibly angry Republican Senator John McCain (Republican-Arizona) to take to the Senate floor on December 16 and excoriate both Russia and his senate colleagues.

“Have no doubt, the real winners today are Vladimir Putin and his gang of thugs running the Russian military-industrial complex,” McCain said.

Iran Hostages

The spending bill sets up for the first time a U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, similar to a fund established for victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It will be funded in part by a $9 billion fine paid by the French bank BNP Paribas in 2014 for violating U.S. economic sanctions on Sudan and other countries.

Victims of other terrorist attacks will qualify for the fund as well, including those who were among the 52 U.S. citizens and diplomats held hostage in Tehran between November 1979 and January 1981 after students stormed the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in the Iranian capital.

At the time of the crisis, then President Jimmy Carter ordered $8 billion of Iranian assets seized. The agreement that resulted in the hostages’ release, known as the Algiers Accords, lifted the U.S. seizure of assets. But it also barred the hostages from suing Iran.

In the years that followed, the former hostages pressed their cases in U.S. courts. But the U.S. State Department fought the efforts, arguing that allowing the hostages to sue would hinder the ability of the U.S. government to carry out foreign policy and conclude binding agreements with other nations. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 let the lower court rulings stand.

Meanwhile, survivors of other terrorist attacks — the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marines’ barracks in Beirut, the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa — also began pushing for a way to get compensation. Adding insult to injury for the former Iran hostages, victims of the 1983 Beirut bombing, responsibility for which has been pinned on Tehran, have also won legal awards.

Under the new fund set up by the spending bill, the former Iran hostages — 39 are reportedly still alive — and other relatives or survivors will receive money for their suffering amounting to $10,000 for each day they were held captive.

“From my point of view, this is long overdue. This is something that should have happened one way or another a very long time ago,” said John Limbert, 72, the political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran when it was overrun in 1979.

“There were parts of our own government which made common cause with the Islamic republic in order to prevent us from seeking compensation,” Limbert added.

While the Pakistani military and civilian leaders, so often the opposing forces, now seem inclined for cohabitation at the highest echelons of power, the country’s latest move towards a ‘comprehensive dialogue’ with neighbouring India is a new dynamic of wider regional and global importance.

By Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury and Chandrani Sarma*

Pakistan today is in the cusp of changes. Some of these are positive and some, not so. Its politics are seemingly stable, but beneath the veneer there is a lurking feeling of disturbing disquiet. Its economy reflects a graph with a rising curve, but not as much as the potentials would dictate. Violent extremism is largely under control, yet the menace of fundamentalism keeps forever gnawing at its social fabric. Its foreign relations appear sound, still it seems to be smarting under a sense of friendlessness in the region.

To say that the calm is eerie would be an exaggeration. But also to say that there is no fear of turmoil would entail an understatement. Pakistan is a polity of contradictions that is muddling through for now. But whether these various elements constitute a sustainable equilibrium, and what might upset this intricate balance, and when and how, merit close and focussed examination. Such a study would not be a cause for either optimism or pessimism, but would most certainly be an invitation to a sober reflection on societal management.

A Classical Analogy

The Classical Latin historian Tacitus has emphasised the need to learn the ‘causes of things’ (Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas; he had said, ‘happy is the man who knows the causes of things!’). A search for such causality into the decline and fall of the Roman Empire had led Edward Gibbon and other such historians to enlist about 200 or so of them. But if one were to cluster them into major groups, there could broadly be four such: loss of control over the distant provinces, corruption and mis-governance, failing economy, military overspending and the burgeoning power of the praetorian guards. One could add to this list the ignoring of the advice of the Emperor’s aide into his ears (solicited, because one is told he was paid solely for this purpose, to remind the great one that man is no god!): “Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal”! Pakistan is no Roman Empire, Islamabad is no Rome, and the Prime Minister no Caesar, but the following analyses will show that those who run that country today could do well to engage the classical with the contemporary and learn from history.

The Politics of the Provinces

Punjab

The key province of Pakistan, by any stretch of imagination, is Punjab. Incidentally, it is not Pakistan’s largest in terms of size – the arid stretches that comprise Balochistan is – nonetheless, it is the nerve centre, the heartland, indeed the very essence of Pakistan. It is what the celebrated Latium was to the classical Roman Empire. Comprising nearly 205,000 square kilometres of territory, and over 101 million population, Punjab is both the bread-basket and the sword arm of Pakistan. The name ‘Punjab’ meaning the land of ‘five rivers’ is derived from the tributaries of the Indus that water the region. These have been used to build the extensive irrigation system that has led to the production of rice, sugarcane, millet and corn and the cash-crop cotton. But the lack of redistribution of land, except some acquisitions by the new military and bureaucratic elite, has resulted in a small set of feudalistic landlords ruling the roost, politically and socially.

Both the poor and the rich have migrated in large numbers, the first to seek their fortune and the second to enjoy that they have already made. The diaspora has widened and deepened Punjab’s global linkages.

The seat of government of Punjab, Lahore, is also Pakistan’s cultural capital. The national poet Sir Mohammed Iqbal lived and wrote there. Once the mighty Moghuls ruled the entirety of India from within the walls of the Lahore Fort. Its ruins bear testimony, but do not necessarily reflect, the glorious past. A well-lit memorial marks the spot where the Pakistan Resolution was moved by the party of the founder of the nation, Quaid-e Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah in 1940. The cannon made famous by Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim guards the entry to the Museum, still a metaphor for Punjab’s military clout. The city remains Pakistan’s finest. There are the palatial structures along the Mall that denote the passage of Pakistan’s history. The Residency building that was once the Civil Service Academy that trained the mighty who ruled Pakistan is a deserted guest house which brings to mind Omar Khayyam’s lines: … the lion and the lizard keep the courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep!” It is important to note that the falling into disuse of this institution has not happened because of a decline (or otherwise) in the nature of governance but because of a change in the composition of the elite who govern! Other sparkling buildings in the extended city reflective of a growing entrepreneurial spirit, are more indicative of the prosperous present.

In Pakistan’s domestic economic and political terms, the Punjabis have done well. The economy of the province has grown four times since 1972, when the nascence of Pakistan, in its current form (without Bangladesh) occurred. Its contribution to Pakistan’s agricultural sector is over 60%, including 76% of the nation’s annual food-grain production. It lacks a coastline, yet industries have flocked there. Its contribution to Pakistan’s manufacturing sector is well over 52%. Punjab also contributes more than 57% of the military personnel, down from 71% in 2001, through a conscious policy effort. Unsurprisingly, the Punjabis dominate the government and politics in Pakistan. The province provides the three most powerful men in the country, the three Sharifs: Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif. Chief Minister of Punjab, Shehbaz Sharif and the Chief of the Army, General Raheel Sharif. The pecking order of power is not necessarily in that sequence. Punjab is by far the most dominant province, and some issues of Pakistani politics flow from that preponderance, though it must be said, in all fairness, efforts are continuously being made by the powers-that-be to moderate Punjab’s influence. Much of it, though, is structural, and, therefore, unavoidable.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

North of Punjab lies the old North West Frontier, so-called during the era of the British Raj and the early Pakistan period, rather simplistically describing only its geographical location. It is now renamed Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KP) reflecting its ethnic composition. Of its 21 million population, an overwhelming majority are Pukhtuns or Pushtuns often called Pathans, numbers that include those that regularly cross over from Afghanistan, in total disregard of, and often contempt for the British-drawn Durand Line set to demarcate the borders between today’s Pakistan and Afghanistan. Known for its fierce war-like predilections that pit one tribe against the other in perennial conflicts, often through generations, particularly in regions still unregulated by federal law, the Federally Administered (there is a touch of irony in the name, as some would argue that they are not ‘administered’ at all!) Tribal Areas (or FATA). Their culture has scantly evolved over centuries, and the predominant value is still the Pukhtunwali, a way of life determined by the practices of offer of hospitality, preservation of honour, and the seeking of revenge.

The Pashtuns have been often romanticised in literature for being akin to the perceptions, particularly in the West, of the glorified ‘noble savage’. But this has no bearing to historical veracity as the region was the cradle of old civilizations including ‘Gandhara’. The tribes also produced poets of the ilk of Khushal Khan Khattak, as long ago as three hundred years! The Pushtuns complicate matters for the authorities such as those representing the State, or simply law and order, by easily being attracted by extremist actions as those of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the like, not so much because of ideological convictions, but because of life-style similarities. Most Pushtuns would carry a rifle or a weapon of some sort, and many would simply be on the look-out for displaying their skills at using it! There was a time when the concept of ‘Pushtoonistan’, a separate state for themselves, was popular, but now that movement has run out of steam, as there are few takers for another potential troublesome entity, already having to deal with Afghanistan, KP, and, as we will see later in the article, Balochistan.

But for the constant strife that dots this province, bombings and shootings are frequent phenomena, the province with 11.5% of Pakistan’s population, has a share of roughly 10% of the GDP, is the poorest in Pakistan, ranking just above Balochistan. Having Afghanistan as a neighbour, and the ‘great game’ of the powers that get played out there, have not helped. The KP has been susceptible to fall-outs from foreign invasions in the neighbourhood, Soviet and NATO, and to American drone attacks. Indeed it was in one of its districts, Abbottabad, that the al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who had apparently lived undetected as a simple Pukhtun for years, was located and killed by the Americans.

This region is akin to what Gaul or Gallia was to ancient Rome and its rulers, requiring centuries of efforts to keep under control. Politically, once its leadership ,as of the legendary ‘Frontier Gandhi’, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and his son Wali Khan were left-wing, though there was a flip-side to it in the form of Qayyum Khan’s Muslim League. Currently, however, there has been a marked rightward swing, and the ruling party is the grandly styled “Tehreek- e-Insaaf’ – the ‘Path of Justice – led by the cricketer-turned-politician, the larger-than-life personality in the form of Imran Khan. While Pervez Khattak of his party is the Chief Minister based in the provincial capital, Peshawar, Imran strides the national scene as a Member of Parliament in Islamabad, with his eyes focussed on the Prime Ministership. He is seen as soft on the Taliban (doubtless a political strategy), hard on America, and empathetic towards the Army. Like those of Henry VIII, his wives have not lasted long, the latest marriage ending in less than ten months, but conservative Pakistanis do not appear to factor this into their political ratings and calculations, and this has not dented his popularity. But other factors have, such as the erratic behaviour as holding permanent, yet unsuccessful, rallies in the capital to bring down the government. Imran represents good looks, cricket, wealth and Oxford – everything that Pakistanis admire – but the authors have been told in their interviews that Imran’s bid to topple Nawaz Sharif would not succeed till such time as he is able to overcome the resistance of the Punjabi feudal lords. For that he might have to wait till the cows come home.

Balochistan

If Khyber Puktunkhwa is comparable to ancient Gaul, then Balochistan is most certainly Pakistan’s turbulent Germania. Julius Caesar had once said that the Gauls, though warlike, could be ultimately tamed, but the Germanic tribesmen were too ferocious, and unless conquered, could pose a threat to Rome itself. And so they did. Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province in size, the poorest and the most susceptible to violence of all kinds, religious extremism, nationalist insurgency, and oftentimes plain thuggery. Its capital Quetta, once a town of pristine beauty, also hosts the infamous ‘Quetta Shura’- the Al Qaeda leadership, which some say, is being mollycoddled by the Pakistan Army. Of course, now that the Army has taken on the Al Qaeda in a big way (we shall discuss this later in the essay), with regard to this group it is placed between the devil and the deep blue sea. Balochistan has an area of 347,190 square kilometres, but a population of only 13 million, given its extremely dry desert climate, mountainous wilderness and also otherwise inhospitable terrain. The majority of the tribesmen are either Balochis, Brahuis, or Pushtuns, though there are also some among the population who are Hazaras, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Punjabis and Sindhis.

Once rich in gas and mineral resources, its contribution to national economy since the mid-70s has dropped from 4.9% to 3.7%. Apart from being the most impoverished, Balochistan has the dubious reputation of having the highest infant and maternal mortality rate and the lowest literacy-rate in Pakistan. Balochis feel exploited and deprived, and therefore, for much of Pakistan’s history, many have been up in arms. The nationalist insurgents direct their ire at all the three State actors they are connected with; Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. The “Balochistan Liberation Army’ has been responsible for some deadly attacks in Pakistan. Pakistani authorities accuse India of offering the insurgents solace and succour, which the Indians deny. Military operations have led to allegations of human rights violations, and as the Baloch analyst Malik Siraj Akbar has said, public anger is “growing and uncontrollable”. Some see the Pakistan federal government as not only not having learnt from the classical examples of past empires (such as the Roman), but also from the experience of the loss of East Pakistan (in 1971). The government is an alliance of different parties, led by Chief Minister Abdul Malik Baloch of the National Party. He is reputed to have good connections with Islamabad, and has indeed been able to have some key development funds released by the Centre.

Balochistan’s good luck may be that it has caught the glad eye of China. As a part of China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ strategy, Beijing has announced that it will pump in US$ 46 billion by 2030 in infrastructural development in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and in the building of the Gwador port on the Arabian sea. If all goes well, these projects should boost Balochistan’s economy. The insurgents are less sanguine and point to outsiders being the real beneficiaries of such schemes. They have not, therefore, desisted from attacking the Chinese, a unique experience for Pakistan’s traditional ‘all-weather friends’, and so the military has decided to raise a division-strength force to protect its foreign friends. But greater protection will accrue if the aspirations are transformed into reality. This has been promised by the governments in both Quetta and Islamabad, but the proof of the pudding will be, as always, in the eating.

Sindh

The province of Sindh has the third-largest size – 141,000 square kilometres, and the second largest economy, contributing 30% -32.7%, on average, to the nation’s GDP. Its population is 42.5 million, largely Sindhis in the countryside, and a variety of ethnicities crammed into Pakistan’s largest metropolis, also the capital of the province, Karachi. This one-time capital of Pakistan still remains the economic hub, the centre of banking and industry of the nation. The city has grown exponentially in recent times, and has a population of anywhere between 10 and 15 million. This is also the region where most migrants from India, called Muhajirs are settled, which accounts for nearly 50% of the Karachi population being Urdu-speaking (19% in the province). Most of them belong to a political party called Muttahida Qaumi Muhmani (MQM) or United National Movement, a secular and powerful force in the city, and hence in the province.

Politically the Muhajirs have often been pitted against the Sindhis, a phenomenon described in an analytical study by Tanvir Ahmed Tahir, entitled Political Dynamics of Sindh, 1947-1977. This was also where many Afghan refugees during that country’s Soviet occupation in the 1980s sought shelter. Consequently 25% speak Pashto. The Sindhis here comprise a small minority of 0.3%. The numbers are important because these distinguish Karachi from the rest of the Sindh province. Law and order is often an issue in the megapolis, including sectarian violence and other crimes, and calm is sought to be preserved by the Rangers, a para-military force, and even private companies such as the ‘Pathfinder’, ably led by a retired army-officer turned entrepreneur and analyst, Ikram Sehgal.

Sindh is the home province of the Pakistani political legends – the Bhuttos. Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Asif Zardari, Benazir, and Bilawal have been, and are, family scions. Unsurprisingly their Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is dominant politically and provides the Chief Minister, Qaim Ali Shah. This leftish political entity is a fierce opponent of the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif, the Federal Prime Minister. While at high levels, and especially in the urban areas, the left- right tussle continues, the waderas or the Sindhi landlords rule the roost in the countryside. Sindh, like Balochistan, has its share of nationalist parties and movements. Jiye Sindh (literally, ‘long live Sindh’) movement of G M Syed in the earlier years merits mention. There is a more contemporary one, a variant of the same, for so- called Sindhudesh (in style of Bangladesh), but these have to-date gained little political traction, and some are nipped in the bud by being labelled as “terrorists and anti-state saboteurs”. The Army, assisted by the Rangers, keeps a watchful eye, much as the Roman legions would have done in remote Britannia.

Civilians and the Army, Sharif and Sharif

The most significant social and political institution in Pakistan is the military. It has over 617,000 personnel on active duty and is the seventh largest in the world in size. Out of Pakistan’s total budget outlay of US$ 42 billion as presented in June 2015, US$ 7.5 billion was allocated to defence. While the increase in the total outlay was 4.8% over the previous year, in this sector it was a massive 11.6%. Two recent books, one by Ayesha Jalal (‘The Struggle for Pakistan’) of Tufts University, and the other by Christine Fair (‘Fighting to the End’) at Georgetown have been trenchantly critical of how so much funds have been eaten up by the ‘men in Khaki’ for so little contribution! All in the name of an existential threat from India, they have broadly argued. But today there are those who view the flip-side of the coin, perceiving the Army, not only as a non–feudal counter to the traditional landlords, but also as a principal deterrent to violent extremism. Its leader, General Raheel Sharif, is often said to be more popular, than his namesake (but no kin), Prime Minister Sharif. These ‘plus points’ form an important component of the Army’s public relations drive headed by Lt General Asif Saleem Bajwa.

Time was when the reputation of the Army was in tatters. ‘No famous victories’ in battles or wars had been won over the arch-enemy, India. The episodes of 1971, the human rights violations perpetrated in the Eastern Wing followed by the disastrous loss of East Pakistan lowered its esteem, home and abroad. The interventions made in Pakistan’s domestic political arena did nothing to improve it. The ‘double game’ of both using the Taliban in Afghanistan and fighting it at home landed it in a Machiavellian milieu that it found difficult to extricate itself from. Then there was the huge loss of face involved in the American military foray that eliminated Osama bin Laden deep within Pakistani territory. The Army’s professional relationship with the Americans, a major source of its sustenance, was at its nadir. It was against such a backdrop that in November 2013 Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appointed General Raheel Sharif as the Chief of Army Staff, superseding two senior officers. Raheel had impeccable credentials and came of a most decorated military family.

The new Army Chief set to work immediately. Having decided that the Taliban and the extremists deserved no quarters, he launched the operation known as ‘zarb-i-azb’ on 15 June 2014 in North Waziristan along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The operations were further intensified after the school massacre in Peshawar when, in December 2014, 132 children were killed by extremists. A 20-point National Action Plan (NAP) was set up with the backing of all political parties to step up the anti-terrorism drive under the stewardship of the Army. Acts of violence reached an all-time low. At least at a stated level, the generals said they perceived terrorists and the Taliban, now buttressed by the Islamist Caliphate (who have declared the region as Khorasan and a part of the Caliphate domain), as a greater existential threat than India. Raheel Sharif’s popularity soared in Pakistan. Abroad, as in the United States, he has been received at levels far above that which would be dictated by protocol. The discussions have not remained confined to military matters, and have included the hochpolitik of international relations.

The budgetary reward has already been mentioned. So are the Praetorian guards of Pakistan, being fondly nurtured like those in Ancient Rome, and could the resultant accretion of power flowing from the lead-role in the State’s current primary objective of curbing the extremists be a threat to the Republic? When Pakistan opted for nuclear weapons, a widespread belief was that, since a few such weapons – and with around 120 or so warheads this is more than a few – would obtain the necessary minimum deterrence against India, so defence costs could actually be reduced. This did not happen. The shift of the fight now directed at terrorism implies that the traditional funding would have to continue alongside with nuclear capabilities. Also, the Commander at battalion level derives little comfort in nuclear ordnance. He wants perks: better salaries, improved housing, more transport facilities, quality education for army children, and conventional weapons to keep his ordinary troops equipped. It is not surprising therefore, that out of this huge allocation to defence of US$ 7.5 billion, only US$ 1.6 billion has been earmarked for procurement and maintenance of arms and ammunition, strictly military needs. Such affection from civilian financial policy masters could, as is feared in some quarters, whet appetite for more. This does not mean assumption of direct State control. That would be self- destructive and would invite global opprobrium, when the Army also wants external assistance. However this is not to say that ‘remote control’ of some key policy sectors are not desirable. Some have called it the ‘soft coup’ paradigm.

There are some signs that this may be happening, or at least is seen to be happening. At a meeting of Corps Commanders in Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s military head-quarters, General Raheel Sharif, according to the report issued by the Army’s media wing, called for “governance initiatives” to complement the “success” of the on-going fight against terrorism. In other words, there were ‘governance-gaps’ in the implementation of the National Action Plan, and therefore, of government’s policies. Earlier he was said to have complained to the Prime Minister in private. Now he was going public. He had touched a hornet’s nest. Immediately there were two kinds of reactions. One was Federal PML Ministers blaming non-PML provincial governments such as that of Sindh of failing to address corruption and hence attracting criticism from the Army. The other reflected deeper and darker fears, and implied closing of ranks of the civilian political elite. The Leader of the opposition in the Senate, Aitzaz Ahsan said in the house: “I am disappointed with the governance of the present government. But the ISPR (Inter-services Press Relations) and the corps commanders have no right to publicly talk about the democratic and constitutional government of Nawaz Sharif” (Dawn, Karachi, 13 November 2015). He confirmed as much in a discussion with the authors. A sense of democratic norms is obviously prevalent, which might make policy interventions by the Army only more subtle, but not any less substantive.

Extrapolations and Conclusions

So, domestically, what we are likely to see something akin to a pull-devil, pull-baker contest between the civil and the military authorities. Though Nawaz Sharif appears to accept a diminished political stature, this is unlikely to translate into a full formal control by the military. The Army is likely to follow up on the governance debate and will maintain a modicum of pressure on the government. Raheel Sharif’s term will come up for extension in November 2016, and significant personalities as former President Musharraf have come out in its favour, but Nawaz will have a chance to weigh his options at that time. Every Chief has some impatient subordinates, and this would give Nawaz some manoeuvrability, should Raheel get too big for his boots. Also, he could be elevated to Field Marshal, a rank that will give Raheel batons but no battalions. That is, if Nawaz calculates then that a change would be better for him, which is not certain. For now the equilibrium will sustain.

The Army’s foray into foreign affairs and security will continue, as evidenced in the acceptance by the Prime Minister of the (reportedly) Army nominee for the post of National Security Adviser (NSA), Lt General Nasir Khan Janjua. The received wisdom is that the Army wanted a more appropriate counterpart (in its view) of India’s NSA, Ajit Doval, than the much more senior, and gentler, Sartaj Aziz, the Foreign Adviser, and effective Foreign Minister. Janjua is said to have worked on Azm-i-nau (literally, ‘A New Beginning’), a set of exercises reflecting the Pakistani counter-strategy to India’s cold start, an offensive blitzkrieg-inspired doctrine.

However, it seems that Janjua and Doval did manage to ‘kick-start’ a process of engagement that might lead Indo-Pak relations somewhere a tad more positive than has been the case. Aspirations for good relations between these two neighbours would have to be a triumph of hope over experience. Nonetheless there have been periods when they have done the right thing, which means they have talked and traded, and not attacked each other. Might we be seeing yet another entry into such a phase of ‘working co-existence’? Nawaz and Modi met on the side-lines of the ‘climate change conference in Paris’ in November and took a decision that might at least change one climate, which is the thawing of the frosty bilateral relations. They decided that their NSAs should meet in Bangkok, which they did, on 6 December 2015 for four hours. It seems the two followed an agenda that covered both terrorism and Kashmir, significant as India and Pakistan usually wanted to flag one or the other. The two agreed that the India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj would travel to Islamabad, also in December, for a ‘Heart of Asia’ Ministerial on Afghanistan.

This she has done. A glimmer of hope appeared just beyond the rim of the saucer. Swaraj has affirmed that the discussions have resulted in a ‘breakthrough’. What was once a ‘composite dialogue’, which later became ‘resumed dialogue’ would now be called ‘comprehensive bilateral dialogue’. It would comprise nine ‘pillars’; Confidence Building Measures, Siachen, Sir Creek, Wullar barrage/Tulbul navigation project, economic and commercial cooperation, counterterrorism, narcotics control, humanitarian issues and religious tourism. The last two were fresh additions, perhaps to show ‘advance’, even if confined to the merely listing of agenda items. Importantly, it was all but agreed that Modi would attend the SAARC Summit in Islamabad in 2016. In most parts of the world such trips would be considered routine, particularly for scheduled regional events, but in the case of India and Pakistan, these would be rarer than once in a blue moon! Swaraj also met Nawaz, there was much demonstrated cordiality, and the leaders switched between English, Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi to maximise on their communicative skills. Sometimes in diplomacy between these two countries, promises have proved to be more brittle than lovers’ oaths. The two NSAs seem bent on making the dialogues, not only ‘constructive’, but also ‘non-accusatory’, which, particularly the latter, might require a huge leap of faith and trust!

Risks of derailment abound. For instance, another terrorist action on Indian soil would upset the apple-cart. However, account must be taken of the fact that given the variety of forces that have taken to violent extremism now, it might be more complex to identify the sources of perpetrators. Sadly, they are legion. Both sides should understand the inefficacy of rushing to war in such scenarios.

In terms of broader foreign relations, beyond India, Pakistan also has its work cut out. Globally, there is an apprehension that it has a growing culture of extremism that has even penetrated its diaspora. The recent shooting incident in California has done nothing to dispel it. To any immigration officer anywhere in the world a Pakistani passport inspires, for reasons fair and unfair, a mixture of caution and apprehension. Its best friend, China, is circumspect about possibilities of empathy in Pakistan for its ‘extremists’ in Xinjiang. The Saudis, the other good friend, is miffed at Pakistan’s hesitation at not fully backing it in Yemen. In the subcontinent Pakistan ploughs a curiously lonely furrow. Relations with India had plunged, and all eyes will focus on the immediate future if these can be pulled away from a deeper crevice by the recent initiatives.

With Bangladesh, terms are at an all-time low, following some perceived interference in Dhaka’s domestic affairs that have raised Bangladesh’s ire, and opened up old wounds. Nearer home, with Afghanistan, a good beginning with President Ashraf Ghani is losing direction, and steam. Trust with Washington is increasingly getting strained. These issues need addressing. The historical analogy, the reference to antiquity, is meant to be an antidote to contemporary errors, as past is the perpetual spring from which the wisdom of the present can, indeed needs must, be drawn. Delay or denial of the realities would be tantamount to avoidance of responsibilities, which is surely the wrong way of going about it. The sooner this recognition dawns on Islamabad, the better for Pakistan, the region and the world.

About the authors:
* Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), an autonomous research institute at the National University of Singapore. He was formerly Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh. He can be contacted at isasiac@nus.edu.sg. Ms Chandrani Sarma is Research Assistant at ISAS. She can be contacted at isaschsa@nus.edu.sg. The authors, not ISAS, are responsible for the facts cited and opinions expressed in this paper.

Source:
This article was published by ISAS as ISAS Insight Number 300 (PDF)

Two senior Communist Party officials formerly responsible for China’s religion apparatus have been accused of overseeing long-running corruption involving the naming of “Living Buddhas.”

Ye Xiaowen, head of the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) for over a decade until 2009, and Zhu Weiqun, former head of the Tibet section of the United Front Work Department have both come under rare attack.

The accusations appear significant as it was Jiangbian Jiacuo, a respected Tibetan scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who made them on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, before being removed on Dec. 18.

The accusations remained on the websites of the Pu Shi Institute for Social Sciences in Beijing and Invisible Tibet, run by exiled Tibetan activist Tsering Woeser.

Accusations of rampant corruption, national security violations and other serious disciplinary offences by senior party officials are rarely written or published in public forums in China unless they are already being pursued by authorities.

“Director Ye, how much [money] did you dredge up yourself?” Jiangbian asks at the end of his first article published on Dec. 12.

In another post the next day accusing Zhu of corruption, Jiangbian questioned a Zhu statement that said money generated around “Living Buddhas” may have been used to fund separatist activity in Tibet, and asking who should be responsible for policy errors.

Living Buddhas, known as tulkus, are in great demand among China’s 200 million Buddhists who are prepared to donate large sums for the honor of receiving their blessing.

The title of a “Living Buddha” reportedly sells for more than 200,000 yuan (US$30,800) and many have been accused of selling out after appearing in television advertisements and online stores.

Many “Living Buddhas” were found to be fakes, according to an investigation published last August by Zhang Weiming, a researcher at the Sichuan Tibetan Buddhism Culture Research Center.

There may be as many as 10,000 people calling themselves “Living Buddhas” across China, Zhang estimated, even though the state has only recognized 1,700, suggesting 83 percent may be fraudulent.

“The phony tulkus are pervasive, which threatens the authority of the reincarnation system,” Zhang told the nationalistic tabloid “Global Times.”

Earlier this week, a self-proclaimed Living Buddha, Baima Aose, who ordained the Chinese actor Zhang Tielin issued an online apology and resigned from all posts after a Tibetan monastery denied certifying him.

In some cases, powerful officials in Tibet were found to have been bribed or had themselves chosen their own “Living Buddha” candidates.

In 2007, China initiated a law governing the selection and reincarnation of Living Buddhas, when Ye was director of SARA.

More than 100,000 people have been indicted for corruption over the past three-and-a-half years during a far-reaching anti-corruption campaign led by President Xi Jinping who is scheduled to oversee a major meeting on religion in the coming weeks.