French police have made 323 arrests since the start of the European Championships, the interior ministry said on Thursday, June 16 as Europe’s showcase football event continues to be marred by violence, AFP reports.

“Of these arrests, 196 were taken into custody, eight convicted to jail terms and three given suspended sentences,” the ministry said in a statement, without offering further details.

It was earlier reported Russia will be disqualified from Euro 2016 if there is further crowd trouble at their remaining tournament matches.

UEFA, European football’s governing body, has given Russia a suspended disqualification and a 150,000 euro fine for disorder in the game against England in Marseille.

ASEAN+3 Regional Financial Safety Net and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) are making good progress in strengthening their operations and in cooperating with and complementing global institutions. What are the next steps?

By Pradumna B. Rana*

THE FIRST half of this year saw two notable developments that have gone unnoticed by analysts and commentators. They relate to the ASEAN+3 Regional Financial Safety Net (RFSN) – comprising the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation (CMIM) and the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) – and the China-driven Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

The first significant development occurred on 9 February 2016 when the AMRO, the independent surveillance unit of the ASEAN+3 countries, was upgraded from a company registered in Singapore to an international organisation which is not bound by the legal system and practices of any one particular member country. The AMRO Agreement had been approved three years ago and it has now been ratified by all 13 members. The AMRO, therefore, has the mandate to conduct surveillance of ASEAN+3 member countries either individually or collectively. This will contribute to macroeconomic and financial stability in the region. Also with the upgrading of AMRO, the possibility that the US$240 billion crisis fund, awkwardly named the CMIM, will be utilised when the next financial crisis hits the region has increased. This fund was not used when the global financial crisis hit the region in late 2008.

AIIB’s Forthcoming First Annual Meeting

The second development of note is the first annual meeting of the AIIB slated to be held in Beijing on 25-26 June 2016. This meeting of the bank’s board of governors and board of directors which is being held only a few months after the bank became operational indicates how quickly things are moving in the institution. The main agenda of the meeting is to elect the constituent directors of its innovative non-resident board. The meeting will also draw up rules for operation, financing, and human resources. Views on infrastructure finance will also be exchanged. Soon after its establishment, the AIIB board is expected to approve the three projects that were recently announced.

The AIIB has 57 founding members. Recently, the AIIB President Jin Liqun announced that another 30 countries were waiting to join, 20 of which had expressed “firm commitment”.

By contrast, the major US initiative in the Asia-Pacific region appears to be stuck. Hillary Clinton, who has claimed democratic nomination, has said that she “opposes the TPP in its current form” although in the past she had said that the deal was a “gold standard” of trade deals. Donald Trump, the presumptive republican nominee, has mentioned the possibility of building a wall along the southern border and abrogating all trade treaties of the country. It is worth noting that withdrawal from trade agreements does not require congressional approval.

Complementarity and the Next Steps

In addition to strengthening their operations, the new regional institutions in Asia are deepening their cooperation and complementarity with global institutions. They have not participated in a “race to the bottom” to upstage existing global institutions as some had initially feared.

Cooperation makes sense because both global and regional institutions have their comparative advantages: Cross-regional expertise and experience plus institutional memory in the case of the former, region-specific knowledge and proximity in the case of the latter. Also demand for finance is sufficient for both of institutions to co-exist.

As early as 2000 when the ASEAN+3 finance ministers had initiated their “self-help” measures they had guided that these measures “should supplement the existing international facilities” and the way that complementarity was promoted in the CMIM was by requiring the existence of an IMF-supported program to provide assistance in excess of a certain percentage of maximum access. Initially, only 10 per cent of the maximum access was readily available. This has now been increased to 30 per cent and a task force has been established to study if further increases are justified.

My research finds that the present ad hoc modality of cooperation between the ASEAN+3 RFSN and the IMF is unlikely to be successful and recommends a more structured form of cooperation as in Europe. This involves three cooperative activities between the ASEAN+3 RFSN and the IMF: (i) joint analysis and evaluation of applications for funding; (ii) joint AMRO-IMF missions, joint surveillance, and jointly developed conditionality; and (iii) co-financing of programmes with amounts determined on a country-specific basis.

Co-financing Activities

The three projects that the AIIB has announced to build transport networks in Central Asia and Pakistan are to be co-financed with various multilateral development banks such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB), World Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Co-financing activities are mutually beneficial and should be encouraged further.

The AIIB should also collaborate in knowledge sharing and capacity building with other multilateral development banks as this will help address the concerns raised in some quarters regarding transparency, governance, accountability, and environmental standards that will be adopted by the AIIB. At the global level, like other multilateral development banks, the AIIB should seek to participate in the meetings of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) which coordinates foreign assistance programmes. The BRICS should also provide data on their official development assistance to the DAC.

Going forward, as the world globalises further, other developing regions of the world are likely to establish regional institutions to provide global public goods. An important lesson for these countries from Asia’s experience is that such institutions should find ways of cooperating with global institutions instead of trying to upstage and replace them.

*Pradumna B. Rana is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the International Political Economy Programme in the Centre for Multilateralism Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

China’s massive investment to mitigate the ecosystem bust that has come in the wake of the nation’s economic boom is paying off. An international group of scientists finds both humans and nature can thrive — with careful attention.

The group, including scientists who have done research at Michigan State University (MSU), report on China’s first systematic national accounting of how the nation’s food production, carbon sequestration, soil and water retention, sandstorm prevention, flood mitigation, and biodiversity are doing, and what trends have emerged. The work, which spans from 2000-2010, appears in this week’s edition of Science Magazine.

“To achieve global environmental sustainability and enhance human well-being, effective government policies can play crucial roles,” said co-author Jianguo “Jack” Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability and director of MSU’s Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS).

The paper notes that China’s effort to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty since the 1970s came at a high cost of environmental degradation, including deforestation and erosion that resulted in devastating flooding. The National Forest Conservation Program (NFCP) and the Sloping Land Conversion Program, which started around 2000, paid farmers and households in critical areas to restore forest and grassland — delivering alleviation of poverty in addition to environmental benefits.

In roughly the first decade, the programs cost $50 billion dollars.

The researchers examined a staggering amount of data from all of mainland China — satellite images, field studies, historical records and more.

They found that food production and carbon sequestration were the ecosystem services that increased the most, while the programs contributed most dramatically to carbon sequestration, soil and water retention and sand fixation. They found varying gains and losses depending on what part of the country they looked at. Sometimes, there were tradeoffs — such as food production and soil retention.

This big-picture look adds to a body of work published in the past few years documenting successes in parts of China. In March, the book “Pandas and People — Coupling Human and Natural Systems” published by Oxford University Press reported the conservation policies have helped recovery of habitat for the world-famous endangered giant pandas.

In March 2013, two parallel papers in the online journal PLoS ONE examined gains in human well-being linked to ecosystem services in Wolong Nature Reserve of China — a new approach to quantifying and understanding the benefits that can be reaped by conservation policies.

Some results of this new paper also validate what have been reported across China. In March of this year, for example, several scientists working with CSIS published a paper in Science Advances reporting significant recovery in China’s forests covered by the NFCP, although they used a somewhat different method. The authors state that this sort of aggressive and robust scrutiny of the wins and losses that come in the wake of sweeping policies already has paid off, allowing China to better target areas for more conservation efforts.

The new Science paper notes that continuing to improve understanding of how people benefit when conservation programs succeed is important to future success.

And the findings hold value beyond China’s borders.

“The results of the China Ecosystem Assessment (CEA) show that improving ecosystem services and economic growth can co-exist,” the paper says. “Analyses using model simulations in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia also show that it is possible to increase the provision of key ecosystem services with economic growth through intelligent policy design, although ecosystem services can decline without proper policies in place.”

Liu noted that sustainability science continues to demand the holistic approach applied to the CEA, and the increasing use of an integrated framework of telecoupling, which examines socioeconomic and environmental interactions across distance to better understand far-reaching consequences.

“It is hopeful that the experiences from increasing China’s ecosystem services can help address China’s enormous environmental challenges such as air pollution, water pollution, and resource shortages,” he said. “They may also offer useful insights into environmental and poverty problems in other parts of the world.”

A farming technique practiced for centuries by villagers in West Africa, which converts nutrient-poor rainforest soil into fertile farmland, could be the answer to mitigating climate change and revolutionizing farming across Africa.

A global study, led by the University of Sussex, which included anthropologists and soil scientists from Cornell, Accra, and Aarhus Universities and the Institute of Development Studies, has for the first-time identified and analyzed rich fertile soils found in Liberia and Ghana.

They discovered that the ancient West African method of adding charcoal and kitchen waste to highly weathered, nutrient poor tropical soils can transform the land into enduringly fertile, carbon-rich black soils which the researchers dub ‘African Dark Earths’.

From analyzing 150 sites in northwest Liberia and 27 sites in Ghana researchers found that these highly fertile soils contain 200-300 percent more organic carbon than other soils and are capable of supporting far more intensive farming.

Professor James Fairhead, from the University of Sussex, who initiated the study, said: “Mimicking this ancient method has the potential to transform the lives of thousands of people living in some of the most poverty and hunger stricken regions in Africa.

“More work needs to be done but this simple, effective farming practice could be an answer to major global challenges such as developing ‘climate smart’ agricultural systems which can feed growing populations and adapt to climate change.”

Similar soils created by Amazonian people in pre-Columbian eras have recently been discovered in South America – but the techniques people used to create these soils are unknown. Moreover, the activities which led to the creation of these anthropogenic soils were largely disrupted after the European conquest.

Encouragingly researchers in the West Africa study were able to live within communities as they created their fertile soils. This enabled them to learn the techniques used by the women from the indigenous communities who disposed of ash, bones and other organic waste to create the African Dark Earths.

Dr Dawit Solomon, the lead author from Cornell University, said, “What is most surprising is that in both Africa and in Amazonia, these two isolated indigenous communities living far apart in distance and time were able to achieve something that the modern-day agricultural management practices could not achieve until now.”

Solomon added that, “The discovery of this indigenous climate smart soil-management practice is extremely timely. This valuable strategy to improve soil fertility while also contributing to climate-change mitigation and adaptation in Africa could become an important component of the global climate-smart agricultural management strategy to achieve food security.”

UK Labour MP Jo Cox, was shot, and stabbed and killed by a white nationalist shouting “Britain First”.

Ms Cox, who supported Britain to stay in EU, had been campaigning with her husband and two little kids and had been a strong supporter for intervention in Syria as well, as well as campaigning for Britain to take in more refugees.

Britain, as a nation desensitized by violence, has a reputation to keep calm and show fortitude, as compared to the cousins across the pond.  British politics is good humored, debated in Parliament in PMQs, and chases in boats across the Thames. Yet, never since the early 1980s, has it been so toxic.

For far too long, British white nationalists has been regarded as stupid idiots who can’t spell or construct a single English sentence, but not anymore. They are a threat, just as much as ultra nationalism across Europe and US, and they need to be identified and dealt with firmly, with extreme prejudice, if necessary.

There are rational arguments both for and against Brexit. Already three major publications have endorsed and taken sides, the Spectator came out for Brexit, and the Economist and Financial Times came out against Britain leaving the EU. But no side supports violence, especially the stabbing and shooting of a defenseless public servant.

An attack against an MP is an attack against democracy itself…and it should be dealt with accordingly.

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI on June 14 chaired in the nation’s spiritual capital Fez the installation ceremony of the Higher Council of the recently set up Mohammed VI Foundation for African Islamic scholars. A very important world event, particularly amid the difficult conditions in several African Member States in the Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa where risks posed to their spiritual, cultural, social and economic security, as a result of the growing terrorist threats by extremist groups (Boko Haram and others) in the region and the spread of some trends which are inconsistent with the Sunni Malekite school of thought followed by the peoples of African countries. The creation of this leading institution is another powerful spiritual landmark of the effective model of South – South cooperation in the religious and spiritual realm among African countries to which King Mohammed VI gives utmost attention.

The ceremony was held in the Al-Qarawiyyin in Fez. A university that attained prestigious fame, producing a number of high profile scholars that exercised a strong influence on the intellectual and academic realms in the Muslim world. For well over twelve hundred years Al-Qarawiyyin has been one of the leading spiritual and educational centres of the Muslim World, a typical institution, of many, underlining how learning constituted the heart of the religion of Islam and its civilisation

During the installation of this prestigious council, King Mohammed addressed the African ulema stressing that that “the aim is to make sure those values help us promote security, stability and development in Africa.” Mohammed VI Foundation for African Ulema as an institution for cooperation, for the exchange of experiences and for the Ulema to make concerted efforts to fulfill their duty and turn a spotlight on the true image of the pristine Islamic faith as well as on its open-minded values,” said the Sovereign in a speech during the installation ceremony of the Foundation Higher Council.

The Sovereign expressed confidence that the Foundation, through its branches in African countries, and together with other religious institutions, “will play its role in disseminating enlightened religious precepts and in combating extremism, reclusiveness and terrorism – which our faith does not embrace in any way – but which are advocated by some clerics, in the name of Islam.”

King Mohammed VI underscored that the creation of the Foundation “reflects the depth of the time-honored spiritual bonds between sub-Saharan African peoples and the King of Morocco, Commander of the Faithful.

In his Speech, the Sovereign deemed the Foundation as another building block which further enhances Morocco’s strategic policy designed to raise the level of its political and economic cooperation with a number of sisterly African nations, in order, he said, “to make it an effective, solidarity-based partnership, covering all sectors.”

Explaining that his decision to create this institution “has nothing to do with transient circumstances or narrow, passing interests,” he said “It is rather in line with an integrated policy to promote constructive cooperation and respond to the requests from a number of sisterly African nations in the religious domain.”

Moroccan spiritual diplomacy has been very successful in West Africa due to the country’s historic Maliki School through Sufi channels and methods of reaching worshipers in the sub-Saharan region and West Africa. The Tijaniya sufi order widely operating in West Africa was founded in North Africa during the 18th century. Other Sufi orders – including the Qadiriyya and Chadiliya orders – soon followed, gaining large numbers of devotees who identified heavily with Morocco, where the tomb of Sheikh Ahmed Tijani, the founder of the Tijaniyyah order, is buried.

Sufism attracts more young Africans because of its tolerance, due to the easy interpretation that gives to the Qur’an, its rejection of fanaticism and its embrace of modernity. Young people are the principles of” beauty” and” humanity”. Sufism balanced lifestyle that allows them to enjoy arts, music and love without having to abandon their spiritual or religious obligations. Sufi orders exist throughout Morocco. They organize regular gatherings to pray, chant and debate timely topics of social and political, from the protection of the environment and social charity to the fight against drugs and the threat of terrorism.

In addition, focusing on the universal values that Islam shares with Christianity and Judaism (as the pursuit of happiness, the love of the family, tolerance of racial and religious differences and the promotion of peace) Sufi gatherings inspire young people to engage in interfaith dialogue.

Sufism is so diffuse in Moroccan culture that its role cannot be properly understood if reduced to a sect or a sacred place. People get together to sing Sufi poetry, the primordial essence of the human being, the virtues of simplicity and the healing gifts of Sufi saints such as Sidi Abderrahman Majdub, Sidi Ahmed Tijani, and Sidi Bouabid Charki, the spiritual masters revered by peers and disciples for having attained spiritual union with God during their earthly lives.

Apparently Morocco’s religious authority – Imarat Lmouminin – is highly venerated by many Africans, whether in Mali, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire… In all his trips in Africa, King Mohammed as Commander of the Faithful, receive all leaders of major Sufi orders. In all his trips in West Africa, he provided thousands of copies of the Quran issued by the Mohammed VI Foundation for Holy Quran Publishing to be distributed mosques and other major Muslim institutions. In short, a credible and very successful spiritual diplomacy led by the King to promote a tolerant Islam that teaches respect, love to other religions and contribute efficiently to counter all extremist voices who unfortunately seem to gain ground in some countries in West Africa.

In March 2015, King Mohammed VI inaugurated the Mohammed VI Institute for the Training of Imams, Morchidines, and Morchidates in the capital, Rabat. The religious training center that aims to instill the values of Morocco’s open, moderate form of Islam, based on the Maliki rite and Sunni Sufism, in the next generation of Muslim religious leaders (imams) and preachers (morchidines and morchidates) from across the region and the world.

The new foundation (Mohammed VI Foundation for African Ulema) will be a key element in Morocco’s ongoing efforts to promote religious moderation and tolerance as a shield against extremism in the region. The spiritual ties between Morocco and many African Sub-Saharan countries are mirrored throughout history in the exchange of muslim scholars, saints and sufis who spared no effort to spread the genuine Islamic values of tolerance and moderation. This leading institution will be the most convenient forum where African Ulema can debate Islamic thought, unify and coordinate their efforts to disseminate the true value of Islam : tolerance, coexistence, peace and respect for other religions.

Here is the full text of the Royal speech:

Praise be to God May peace and blessings be upon the Prophet, His Kith and Kin

Distinguished Ulema,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It gives me great pleasure, on this auspicious day, to inaugurate the Higher Council of the Mohammed VI Foundation for African Ulema.

This step reflects the depth of the time-honored spiritual bonds between sub-Saharan African peoples and the King of Morocco, Commander of the Faithful. Furthermore, it attests to the unity of our faith and doctrine, as much as to our shared cultural heritage.

This is another building block which further enhances our strategic policy designed to raise the level of political and economic cooperation between Morocco and a number of sister African nations in order to make it an effective, solidarity-based partnership, covering all sectors.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

My decision to create this institution has nothing to do with transient circumstances or narrow, passing interests.

It is rather in line with an integrated policy to promote constructive cooperation and respond to the requests from a number of sister African nations in the religious domain.

Among the most significant indicators of this cooperation is the fact that many African students have been accepted for enrollment at the Mohamed VI Institute for the Training of Imams, Murshideen and Murshidat (male and female preachers).

Distinguished Ulema,

I view the Mohammed VI Foundation for African Ulema as an institution for cooperation, for the exchange of experiences and for the Ulema to make concerted efforts to fulfil their duty and turn a spotlight on the true image of the pristine Islamic faith as well as on its open-minded values, which are based on moderation, tolerance and coexistence. The aim is to make sure those values help us promote security, stability and development in Africa.

I am convinced the Foundation, through its branches in African countries, and together with other religious institutions, will play its role in disseminating enlightened religious precepts and in combating extremism, reclusiveness and terrorism – which our faith does not embrace in any way – but which are advocated by some clerics, in the name of Islam.

Distinguished Ulema,

I have decided that the Mohammed VI Foundation for African Ulema will be based in Fez, given this city’s religious status, and also in view of the fact that it is one of Morocco’s main seats of learning and our country’s spiritual capital.

I have also chosen the city of Fez because I am aware of its standing in the hearts of Africans.

May God grant you every success

The best way for Latin American countries to succeed amid rapid technological change is to invest in education, business and government leaders agreed in a session on the Fourth Industrial Revolution at the World Economic Forum on Latin America. The Fourth Industrial Revolution refers to advances across technologies from robotics to 3-D printing, the networking of these systems, and the proliferation and use of consumer data, all of which are causing often severe disruptions to business models and labour markets.

“The Fourth Industrial Revolution is already here and we have to get ready for it,” said Claudia Vasquez, President and General Manager, Latin America, at CA Technologies in Colombia. “It’s about hyperconnectivity. It is centred around people.” A disruptive new business model such as Uber grew out of a consumer need, she noted. “Several companies already understand that they have to listen to customers.” They have to come up with solutions that are based on “agile” systems and technologies – thought up quickly and executed fast. Explained Vazquez: “Agile is the key word. Companies need to be ready to take risks. Knowledge sharing is probably the most important characteristic of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

“We are in the age of the customer,” said Maria Martinez, President, Customer Success, Renewals and Latin America at Salesforce in the US. “The customer is empowered more than ever before (and can demand) that companies and institutions deliver a better experience to them.” Many companies today are possessed by the “fear of being Uberized”, getting disrupted practically overnight by the arrival of an innovative upstart armed with little more than data, analytical algorithms and code for an app.

In this fast-shifting environment, can Latin America not only cope but also prosper? “The next generation of entrepreneurs are already named Martinez or Sanchez,” Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal, Secretary of the Economy of Mexico, argued. What they lack is financing and the enabling platforms, he added. “We have to have a good environment to support these new talents. If Latin American countries have the right set of policies, our catch-up time can be shortened. We cannot fool ourselves. We have to do our homework. Markets are essential. You have to have strong antitrust laws. We have to try to simplify the way we regulate.” Making it easier to set up a business online is one measure to take, Guajardo noted.

Investing in education is probably the most important policy a government can take to enhance an economy’s capacity to succeed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, meeting Co-Chair Brian Gallagher, President and Chief Executive Officer of United Way Worldwide in the US, advised. “Investment in education, especially in early childhood, and technology adoption will be instrumental. Guaranteeing universal access to early childhood education is the smartest investment a government can make.”

David Luna Sánchez, Minister of Information Technologies and Communications of Colombia, agreed, observing that academic systems can be rigid. “We have a huge challenge in teaching mathematics and science. We may live in a digital economy, but people may not be well trained in these skills. We may be left behind.” He concluded: “The Fourth Industrial Revolution will destroy jobs but will also create new ones if we can deliver the capacities that are required for them.”

More than 550 participants are taking part in the 11th World Economic Forum on Latin America in Medellin, Colombia from 16 to 17 June 2016. The theme of the meeting is “Reigniting Latin America’s Inclusive Growth”.

As Canadians prepare for long summer days in the sun, a new publication is shedding light on the suggested medical benefits of a nutrient that comes with the sun’s rays: vitamin D.

The vital nutrient is widely seen as an important element to good health. Many people place strong belief in its potential benefits in treating a number of medical conditions–such as depression or Multiple Sclerosis–and feel a need to supplement their vitamin D intake. But according to Michael Allan, a professor of Family Medicine and director of Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, much of that belief isn’t validated by science.

“Wouldn’t it be great if there was a single thing that you or I could do to be healthy that was as simple as taking a vitamin, which seems benign, every day? There is an appeal to it. There is a simplicity to it. But for the average person, they don’t need it,” said Allan.

Allan is the lead author of a review published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine that examines the evidence for 10 common beliefs about vitamin D. The beliefs range from the ability of vitamin D to reduce falls and fractures, improve depression and mental well-being, prevent rheumatoid arthritis, treat Multiple Sclerosis, and lessen incidences of cancer and mortality. The review finds little evidence though that supplementation with this vitamin has much of an effect at all.

According to Allan, only a few of the 10 beliefs the team looked into seemed to exhibit some scientific proof. Strongest among them, vitamin D was shown to have a minor impact in reducing the number of falls among the elderly and reducing fractures.

“Even areas that we really thought there was good evidence for benefit early on, don’t seem to be bearing out,” said Allan. “The one that we probably have the most evidence for is fractures. If you were to take a group of people who were at higher risk of breaking a bone–so had about a 15 per cent chance of breaking a bone over the next 10 years–and treated all of them with a reasonable dose of vitamin D for a decade, you’d prevent a fracture in around one in 50 of them over that time.”

“Many people would say taking a drug for 10 years to stop one in every 50 fractures is probably not enough to be meaningful. And that’s the best vitamin D gets as far as we know now.”

Allan said other possible benefits of vitamin D covered in the review were not borne out or are still unproven. He is quick to point out that much of the existing research around vitamin D was poorly executed and consists of poor quality evidence. While he welcomes ongoing research in the area, he says moving forward it needs to consistently be of a higher caliber to be of clinical relevance.

“It makes it really difficult to determine a lot of time if there is anything substantial there that you could tell a patient, ‘You can take this and it can help you this much.’ There’s really not nearly enough there to say that.”

Despite the lack of evidence, belief in the benefits of vitamin D supplementation remains strong. Allan believes much of that stems from misplaced trust in previous research studies showing low vitamin D levels are associated with poor health outcomes, however they don’t prove causation. The bottom line, he says, is that while moderate vitamin D supplementation won’t cause harm to the average healthy person, it won’t heal either.

“The 40 year old person is highly unlikely to benefit from vitamin D,” said Allan. “And when I say highly unlikely, I mean it’s not measurable in present science.”

Islamic State militants are frequently transported across the Syrian border to Turkish hospitals for treatment, according to eyewitness accounts collected by RT on the ground. Their crossing was allegedly ensured by Turkish officials.

Both Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL) and Free Syrian Army fighters were able to cross the border from Syria into Turkey en masse and receive medical help – only to then be allowed to go back to resume fighting in Syria, the head of a local doctors’ association told RT’s Lizzie Phelan.

Phelan visited Gaziantep, a city in south-central Turkey some 60 kilometers from the Syrian border. Eyewitnesses and doctors told the RT correspondent that most of the IS fighters were treated in the border city of Kilis south of Gaziantep.

“Many wounded ISIS militants or FSA [Free Syrian Army] fighters were brought to the border in pick-up trucks, not ambulances,” Medical Association Chair in Gaziantep and Kilis Hamza Agca said. “Many were unconscious and bleeding when they were brought to us.”

The injured men were apparently driven right from a “war zone” and doctors often had to deal with things like “grenades falling out of their pockets,” Agca added.

One doctor from Kilis also confirmed to RT that they were receiving fighters from across the Turkish-Syrian border, including IS militants. The doctor said on condition of anonymity that he was just one of the doctors who treated terrorists in Kilis.

The medic described discovering suicide vests on some of the IS patients and feeling terrified as he was forced to take them off.

The doctor added that the flow of IS militants being admitted to Turkish hospitals has decreased, but they still see militants admitted every couple of weeks.

When asked how the doctors felt about treating terrorists, Agca said that as medical professionals they were under an oath to help the injured, no matter who they were. “Any doctor throughout the world would do the same,” he said.

However, after the treatment was over, the fighters were allowed to rejoin the battlefield back in Syria. “We treated these fighters and they went back to fight once they recovered, some were brought for a second or third time to our hospital,” Agca said.

He also said that Turkish government officials ensured that IS fighters were able to cross into Turkey with no obstacles. “In terms of their medical treatment, the government didn’t give us any order but their policy was to provide the opportunity to fighters to use the border crossing.”

The first reports of IS militants receiving costly and complicated medical treatment was reported in May. The information was leaked via tapped phone calls and was handed to the media by opposition MP Erem Erdem.

RT’s Phelan filmed the footage in Gaziantep’s Ersin Arslan hospital, one of the medical centers that has treated Islamic State extremists. The trip to the hospital was risky in light of a crackdown on opposition-minded journalists in Turkey.

“If we get stopped by police they might not be impressed by the story we’re working on and maybe will give us a bit of a hard time,” Phelan said.

The Turkish government has been fiercely trampling on any allegations of links to Islamic State, pushing for the prosecution of reporters and opposition MPs alike for reports that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan refers to as “treason.”

“After broadcasting this report, it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to enter the country safely again,” Phelan said.

Russian state news agency Sputnik was recently shut down by Turkey without prior notification under “administrative measures” imposed by the country’s authorities in April based on Turkey’s internet controls law.

In March, a correspondent for the influential German magazine Der Spiegel, Hasnain Kazim, was forced to leave Turkey after his press credentials were not renewed.

SG Secure calls for all Singaporeans to come together as a strong and prepared community, and play a part in the nation’s enhanced counter-terrorism strategy. How can we bring the SG Secure narrative closer home to the basic institution of the community – the families?

By Muhammad Faizal Bin Abdul Rahman and Damien D. Cheong*

The SG SECURE initiative launched in March this year aims to strengthen the community’s vigilance, cohesion and resilience amid the heightened threat of global terrorism that is casting its ominous shadow on Singapore. The movement constitutes one of the components in Singapore’s enhanced counter-terrorism strategy, and key to its success would be effective outreach to every segment of the community. As Singapore celebrates Father’s Day in June, it would perhaps be opportune to explore the potential role that fathers can play in furtherance of the goals of SG Secure.

Plans for the “SG Secure in the Neighbourhood” were unveiled on 28 May 2016 in conjunction with the revamped Emergency Preparedness (EP) Day where residents learned how to react and respond in the event of a terrorist attack in the heartlands. The theme of the simulation drills during the EP Day – terrorist attacks and hostage situations in a neighbourhood setting – not only showcased the readiness of homeland security forces and grassroots but more importantly conveys the grim and implicit message that a terrorist attack in the HDB heartlands is now highly probable.

Protecting the Heartlands & Leveraging Fathers as Advocates

The realisation that the threat of terrorism is now closer to the heartlands – our home where our families live, school and play – underscores the need for families to be supportive of SG Secure, as this would result in the downstream benefits of a more vigilant and resilient community.

Families, as the Ministry of Social and Family Development point out, “serve as an important pillar of support for the nation. At the individual level, families are the primary source of emotional, social and financial support. At the national level, they contribute to social stability and national cohesiveness as they help develop socially responsible individuals and deepen the bond Singaporeans have with the country”. As such, vigilant and resilient families give rise to a vigilant and resilient community and subsequently a vigilant and resilient nation.

There are several advantages to employing fathers as SG secure advocates. Firstly, his traditional role as family protector coupled with protective instincts make him a natural fit. Take for example, Adel Termos, a father of two who was killed when he intercepted a suicide bomber during an attack in Beirut last November. His act of heroism reportedly saved many lives. In the Singapore context, many fathers have the necessary skills to protect both the “home and nation” by virtue of their national service training and experience. In fact the Singapore Armed Forces commemorated this dual role at the SAF50 Celebrations in 2015.

Secondly, although there is a now a growing acceptance of shared parenting, research such as the Fatherhood Public Perception Survey 2009 by the then Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports, revealed that fathers exert a strong influence on their children. For instance, Lieutenant Julie Tan’s decision to become a pilot was influenced by her father. “Seeing what he does and, more importantly, the purpose of his job made me want to be in the SAF,” she said.

Thirdly, fathers are in a perfect position to teach life skills such as persistence. A 2013 study by Brigham Young University found that persistence “is more clearly influenced by fathers…and indeed, may be one of the mechanisms through which fathers help to protect their children”. Persistence in turn helps in the development of other useful behavioural traits such as personal resilience in facing adversities.

Fathers can act as conduits to engage families and the community at large on SG Secure in the following ways: (a) highlighting the threats facing Singapore and explaining why the city-state remains vulnerable; (b) discussing the importance of social cohesion in enhancing societal/national resilience and tangible ways the family can contribute; (c) explaining the importance of emergency preparedness and how/if the family can contribute; and (d) volunteer or participate in SG Secure initiatives (individually or as a family).

Some Operational and Policy Considerations

One of the key challenges is getting some fathers to change their mindsets about their role in defending the realm. Having gone through national service as well as refresher training as NSmen, they may feel they have contributed sufficiently to total defence. However, as today’s national security threats are complex and adaptive, collective responsibility and active community involvement/participation is necessary. Besides they will be able to enhance existing skills/knowledge by learning about emergency preparedness and response techniques/approaches as part of SG Secure.

It is important to note that a broad whole-of-society approach would be needed to leverage fathers as effective advocates of SG Secure. Starting with a national conversation (i.e. similar to the Singapore Conversation) or a public feedback exercise (i.e. REACH), homeland security agencies could harvest public opinion on the best methods to empower fathers, both as a key family member and NSman, to involve their families in SG Secure. This could feed into an iterative process of incorporating useful feedback to the public communications on SG Secure, with the aim of ensuring the enduring efficacy of outreach efforts.

Next, there could be a whole-of-government conversation between the homeland security, military and social agencies. Drawing on the ideas distilled from public opinion, these agencies would need to work out how they could leverage existing military and social engagement efforts to reach out to fathers. For example, In-Camp training (ICT) for NSmen could incorporate a module on SG Secure as part of National Education. Similarly, the Dads for Life campaign could include SG Secure among its Fatherhood 101 resources.

Fathers can play a part in instilling the values of vigilance, resilience and social cohesion in their families particularly among the young. These values, if properly ingrained, would be carried by the young to adulthood; shaping their worldview as prepared and responsible citizens and thus contributing to the sustainability of SG Secure in the long run.

*Muhammad Faizal bin Abdul Rahman and Damien D. Cheong are both Research Fellows at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

The opening of a court case against Turkish soccer star Hakan Sukur on charges of insulting the president takes Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s autocratic ambitions back to their origins: an Islamist power struggle with exiled preacher Fethullalh Gulen that erupted five years ago on the pitch.

A soccer player-turned-politician who in 2011 was elected to parliament as a representative of Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), Mr. Sukur stands accused of asserting in February 2015 that the president was guilty of theft.

>Mr. Sukur, who sided with Mr. Gulen in his dispute with Mr. Erdogan, was referring to charges in 2013 of corruption against Cabinet ministers, the director of a state bank and members of the president’s family by pro-Gulen prosecutors that were at least partly related to Iran sanctions busting. The charges rocked Turkey at the time.

Mr. Sukur may well be sentenced as many others have in a Turkey that is being subjected to Mr. Erdogan’s will through the curtailing of individual freedoms and the politics of fear – a private university fired a communications professor this week for mocking the president in class – but can seek comfort in the fact that legal proceedings in the United States could reopen the corruption charges.

Mr. Erdogan responded to the corruption charges by accusing Mr. Gulen, who heads one of the world’s largest and wealthiest Islamist movements, of attempting to stage a coup and build a parallel state in Turkey. The president effectively squashed the investigation of the corruption charges by dismissing or transferring thousands of members of the judiciary and police, both institutions that were viewed as bulwarks of support for the preacher. Some alleged pro-Gulen members of the judiciary and police were accused of conspiracy and terrorism.

The corruption charges constituted a sequence in the power struggle that first erupted in 2011 with a massive match fixing scandal, the worst in Turkish soccer history, in which the two Islamist leaders battled for control of storied Istanbul club, Fenerbahce SK, the political crown jewel in Turkish soccer.

At the centre of the scandal was Fenerbahce president Aziz Yildirim, one of 93 soccer officials and players accused of match fixing. Political control of Fenerbahce potentially paves the way for support of millions of the club’s fans. Mr. Erdogan, who at the time was still prime minister. ensured legislation that shielded the club from relegation and reduced penalties for match fixing. Mr. Yildirim was initially sentenced to six years in prison but acquitted last year in a retrial.

Turkish authorities detained 38 people, including former police chiefs, lawyers and journalists, in April in a series of police raids on suspicion of framing Mr. Yildirim as well as other Fenerbahce players and directors as part of a continued crackdown on alleged followers of Mr. Gulen.

Police issued at the time warrants for the arrest of 64 people suspected of involvement in the alleged plot against Fenerbahce. State-run Anadolu News Agency reported that the suspects could be charged with forming and belonging to a terror organization and conducting illegal wiretaps.

While Mr. Erdogan may have believed that he had put the corruption scandal to bed, he risks the case being reopened with the arrest in Miami earlier this year of Turkish businessman and gold trader Reza Zarrab on charges of having helped Iran circumvent US and international sanctions against Iran.

The US investigation has laid bare details of Mr. Zarrab’s links to senior Turkish officials, including some of those that originally had figured in the 2013 corruption scandal. US prosecutors allege that Mr. Zarrab paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes to the three ministers and the director of Halkbank, the state bank, that had been named in the scandal. The prosecutors further assert that Mr. Zarrab made a $5.5 million donation to a charity established by Mr. Erdogan’s wife.

Turkish prosecutors dropped similar charges against Mr. Zarrab as part of the squashing of Turkish proceedings. Mr. Zarrab was subsequently honoured with an award for being one of Turkey’s top exporters. US prosecutors said their evidence supported the original Turkish charges against Mr. Zarrab.

The threat to Mr. Erdogan is that Mr. Zarrab may want to cooperate with US prosecutors in an effort to reduce the chance of him spending up to 75 years in prison if he were to be convicted in a US court. That in turn could lead to legal proceeding against associates of Mr. Erdogan in US courts as well as sanctions against Turkish banks complicit in Iranian sanction busting. Halkbank shares on the Istanbul stock exchange have already taken a hit in anticipation of a possible plea bargain by Mr. Zarrab.

Mr. Sukur, following in the footsteps of Mr. Gulen, has moved to the United States. Concerned that he may not get a fair hearing by a judiciary that has been politicized and legislation that is designed to grant Mr. Erdogan immunity from criticism, Mr. Sukur has said he would be willing to testify via videoconference. Mr. Sukur, Turkey’s most prolific striker and the player who scored the world’s fastest goal, could be sentenced to up to four years in prison.

Mr. Erdogan initially dismissed Mr. Zarrab’s arrest as being irrelevant to Turkish interests. That could prove to be a premature assessment. The potential fallout of Mr. Zarrab’s case would cast the defamation charges against Mr. Sukur in a very different light. Combined the two cases could create a situation in which Mr. Erdogan’s squashing of attempts at transparency and accountability backfire and come to haunt his grip on power.

By Teja Palko*

In the light of one of the most important sport spectacles – European football cup the major concerns expressed by the organizers and countries were contemporary threats of terrorism. In the event of recent terrorist attacks and threats towards the western world the media as well as politics were focused on the preventing measures and safeguarding from potential terrorist attacks. Every casualty caused by the act of terrorism is one casualty too many, but when comparing other threats to the terrorism it is obviously that the most reported threat is not the biggest concern and should not be reported as such.

The number of terrorism causalities as well as number of accidents shows that other threats happen more frequently and also cause more casualties and deaths. The terrorism is unjustified regarded as one of the most pressing issues. The reasons can be found in dramatic mass media reporting and political focus on terrorism rather on the issues that can have on a longer period of time the same effects as terrorist attacks.

Based on the European Commission and Eurobarometer , which measures the public opinion of the citizens, shows that terrorism was perceived as one of the greatest challenges in the European Union security area. The public opinion is showing the increasing terrorism threat perception in the light of Paris and other European terrorist attacks in the recent times. The perception may possible increase in the light of Brussel’s attacks. In the 2015 almost half of the European Union citizens believed terrorism was more concerning as economic and financial crisis, which caused and resulted in vast numbers of unemployed people all over the world. The terrorism was perceived more pressing issue as poverty, organized crime, corruption, religious extremism, illegal immigration, cybercrime, and other environmental related security issues. Further on, around 20% of the citizens perceived religious extremism as one of the most important security challenges, which is also shown in the Figure 1. What is more, around 68% of the European Union citizens believed that the terrorism will likely to increase.

Figure 1 European Union public opinion on terrorism
Source: European Commission

The situation across the Atlantic and the American public opinion about terrorism is shown below in Figure 2. The recent trend of public opinion measured by Gallup shows that the perceived terrorist threat has increased in the United States in the light of Paris as well as San Bernardino attacks, which perception will even increase in the recent shooting regarded as a potential internal terrorist attack. 16% of Americans believed that the terrorism is the most important United States problem and was perceived more important than the national economy, government or issue of guns.

Figure 2 United States public opinion on terrorism
Source: Gallup.

No opportunity, no job or underpaid jobs, hunger, poverty, obesity and other diseases which could be prevented and further on climate change consequences, pollution, food and water scarcity correlated with the unsustainable patterns of living and consumption are far greater threats to the humanity than terrorism.

Terrorism is not a new phenomenon, nor in Europe nor in the world. It needs to be pointed out that in spite of the public perception terrorism and even more the religious or Islam terrorism which is the most feared and written about is not the most frequent driven terrorist act which appears in the western part of the world. Based on the Global Terrorism Index from 2015 the majority of the terrorist attacks were driven by right wing extremism, anti-government sentiment, nationalism and political extremism and not by the Islamic fundamentalism.

Figure 3 Number of terrorist incidents in Western Europe
Source: Global Terrorism Database

Based on the Global Terrorism Database the number of injuries and number of fatalities caused by terrorist attacks were in the Western part of the world, in Europe as well as in the United States, far greater in the past as in the recent years. The mass media seems to be reporting about the number of the terrorist incidents on the global scale, which did increase in comparisons to the past. The number of attacks in Western Europe is shown from the Figure 3 below, but does not include the recent terrorist attacks in the last three years. The number of terrorist incidents is on the decline in the North America as well as in Europe.

Figure 4 Number of terrorist incidents in North America
Source: Global Terrorism Database

The terrorist activity did increase worldwide as well as the casualties, but terrorism is highly concentrated in five countries and hence in Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria where 78% of all deaths occurred. The majority of the global countries – 60% did not report of a single death caused by the terrorist activity, but the majority of them did experience some kind of terrorist incidents. The fact is that 13 times more people are killed by homicides as by terrorist activity, but the homicide is not one of the most reported topics in mass media, even though it occurs more frequently and causes more deaths on the global scale. The majority of deaths caused by terrorism does not occur in the West, where the sole perpetrators are the main actors in terrorist incidents.

The terrorism is not an existential threat, but the politicians, media and international organizations are focused on the topic. Evaluation of security and the media constant reporting impacts the public perception about the terrorism. The media has definitely an exponential effect on the perceived threat and my personal opinion is that dramatic titles and sole partly reporting about the increased number of causalities and increased prevented cases should be incorporated into the broader picture in order to get the people well informed about the threat which impacts the politics, policies and restricts various human rights with imposing laws. After the 9/11 and in recent European terrorist attacks the topic has been on the major news media in the Western part of the world with getting a lot more attention as other prevailing security threats. With closer look one needs to ask themselves does the current terrorism in West really represents a pressing threat to our way of life, social, democratic and cultural values and can justify the wiretapping, state sponsor surveillance, or even suspension of human rights in any form or it is just a political tactic to achieve desired goals?

About the author:
*Teja Palko is a Slovenian writer. She finished studies on Master’s Degree programme in Defense Science at the Faculty of Social Science at University in Ljubljana.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy.

As part of my daily chores I read a lot of content pertaining to commodities, currencies and stock markets. I often wonder if this flood of information makes decision making by Pakistani investors easier or force them to make investment decisions that ultimately become loss yielding for most of them.

At present a lot of being talked about Britain’s exit from European Union (Brexit). Whatever may be the outcome of referendum scheduled for 23rd June, it will be of little consequence for Pakistan. This may sound a sweeping statement but if one keeps various factors in mind affecting trade between the two countries, understanding the likely implications will become much easier.

Britain may be a major buyer of ‘Made in Pakistan’ products but most of the trade is USD denominated. Therefore, involvement of three currencies i.e. GBP, EUR and USD often nullify the benefit emerging from the movement of one or more than one currencies.

Most of the investors prefer to convert their saving into USD, which they consider more trust worthy, simply because PKR value depreciates regularly. Many of the exporters try to without their payments outside Pakistan in anticipation of erosion in PKR value.

Movement of international gold price is also of little consequence. Pakistan consumes around 250 tons of precious metal per annum. Out of this 50 percent demand is met through ‘recycling’ and remaining quantity is ‘smuggled’ into the country. Official import is around half a ton for 10 months of current financial year. On top of this price in the local bullion market is driven by domestic demand rather than international price.

There are two global benchmarks of oil, Brent and WTI, these carry hardly any relevance for Pakistan because the country buys ‘Middle East Crude’ where price is driven by ‘geopolitical’ considerations rather than prevailing international prices of Brent and WTI.

There is also a lot of hype about Pakistan’s inclusion in MSCI Emerging Markets and the overall perception is that up to USD1.5 trillion can make inroads into Pakistan. The statement sounds highly exaggerated keeping in view the inflow/outflow of foreign funds.

Overseas investors already hold 30 percent shares of the blue-chip companies. According to some estimates often monthly outflow comprising of dividend/capital gains exceeds inflow. Therefore, one of the possible fall outs could be outflow surpassing inflow.
Last but not least the hype about the US Fed increasing interest rate sounds like ‘exchange rate maneuvering’. On one or the other pretext the Fed has been deferring interest rate hike for more than a decade and hoping any hike in near future is hoping against hopes.

Pakistani’s should pay more attention to factors affecting its economy and ruling junta should try to remove the impediments affect GDP growth and exports rather than introducing news tax measures. It has been reported in media that the incumbent government has already exceeded its expenditures by more than PKR250 billion against the target, exports have nosedived and there is visible deceleration in remittances. Many experts warn that debt servicing has become unsustainable and the government is borrowing more and more to pay off the debts.

The Orlando shooting on June 12 has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with US policies, both domestic and foreign.

By domestic, I’m referring to “soft power”* cultural destablization, intended for export around the world to keep the natives distracted and happy. Think Disney on steriods. By foreign, I’m referring to “hard power” US imperialist policies, neoliberalism (in former days, anti-communism).

Omar Mateen was part of the jetsam washed up on US shores as a result of the US-sponsored ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan in the 1980s. He was born in New York and grew up as a product of the latest warp in American culture. His anger is homegrown, American through and through, shared by millions of Christian (less so Jewish) Americans. It cannot be airbrushed out of the glossy infomercial of American freedom we are fed in the mass media.

Which conspiracy?

9/11 truthers shout COINTPRO. Maybe Omar Mateen was set up to do his deed by some nefarous deep state FBI/CIA monsters. That’s possible. But it appears the guy was ‘gay’,  an angry lumpen (prison guard), driven to carry out his monstrous crime based on the American worship of guns and violence, and fueled by his own simmering disgust with dissolute Amercan culture, which conflicted with his traditional upbringing.

Omar was born in 1986 in New York, to one of the ‘lucky’ Afghan families who snagged a visa to the land of freedom. This was at the height of the US-sponsored ‘jihad’ against the Soviet Union, when the US-backed insurgency forced millions of Afghans to flee ther homes and live in refugee camps in Pakistan.

It was cool then to like Osama Bin Laden, and to go to Afghanistan to massacre Afghan socialists supported by the Soviet Union, desperately trying to hold together the fragile Afghan state. Omar’s father was welcomed to the US as a committed anti-communist freedom fighter, a devout Muslim, a supporter of the Taliban. Omar–and Orlando–was a direct result of this.

It is Ronald Reagan (actually bungler Jimmy Carter) we have to thank for smashing the Afghan state and sending its smithereens around the world. His Hollywood ‘jihad’ was, in fact, the largest military build-up in US history, providing the latest in Stinger missiles to what were clearly world-class terrorists.

Western-style homosexuality → western-style homophobia

But the Disney mass culture being exported as part of Bush senior’s “New World Order” from the 1990s on has not been as successful as earlier versions, and “gay liberation” is at the heart of the problem.

The civil rights won by gays in the late 60s marched on into uncharted territories. The cultural wires got crossed, causing short circuits like Orlando. It is a symptom of something much deeper. There are many other less spectacular cases of what is now dubbed “homophobia”, a term coined only in the 60s, along with “gay liberation”.

The movies exported to show the wonders of the West became more and more laden with graphic sex-and-violence, and even sado-masochism, where master and slave act out the old imperial agenda in a slick fetishtic way, that include male-male sex, and portray a new metrosexual lifestyle. The Orlando Pulse disco would have featured lots of chains and other bizarre get-ups, where mostly men were acting out their fantasies.

This ‘culture’ is seen in the third world as part of the western imperial agenda to weaken moral fiber and keep them (literally) in chains. Westerners are blind to nonwestern precapitalist sexual mores in the (now ex-)colonial world, where there was some acceptance of homosexuality, but which didn’t fit western style gaylib, now exported to them with State Department funding as part of the soft power conquest of the third world.

Whatever their intent, international gay activists have ended up replicating and even strengthening in other cultures the very situation of repression they set out to challenge in their own countries. Joseph Massad writes, “The categories gay and lesbian are not universal at all and can only be universalized by the epistemic, ethical, and political violence unleashed on the rest of the world by the very international human rights advocates whose aim is to defend the very people their intervention is creating.”

The advocates of this paradigm advocate what looks like a scientific, essentialist program that the entire world should adopt. What it is, however, is a kind of western secular nativism seeking to replace what it sees as backward nativisms everywhere, forcing one and all to choose their slot. Practitioners of msm (men having sexual relations with men) who reject the gay slot created for them by western activists are catalogued as “self-hating” and guilty of “homosexual homophobia”.

The same process replicated itself in the US among blacks, who did not pay much attention to whatever msm there was among blacks until the black civil rights movement took off in the 1950s and homosexuality was seen as a white affectation that was part of their own slavery and should be stamped out.

Put the hard power imperial wars and the soft power invasion together, you get a world culture that is out of imperial control. You get Orlando.

Trans’gender’ tipping point

As the gaylib agenda chugged on, it spawned a slew of increasingly confusing neologisms, culminating in such crazed terms as LGBTQQIP and LGBTQIA**, advocating legal rights not just for gay sex but for variations such as “questioning” and the now celebrated “transgender”. Not just for people, but for their feelings.

Transgender is a misleading term. It’s mostly about men who think their women but don’t want to have the sex change operation. That would make them eunuchs, a venerable ‘gay’ tradition, though ‘gay’ is an anachronism, a term coined in the 20th century and now liberally applied to Socrates and Alexander the Great by gay activists. It is what may be called “pinkwash“. The latest campaign is all about trans women, gay guys who want their cake and eat it, to make society accept them as bona fide women without the pain of castration, to the extent that they are free to use the women’s can.

If you can articulate this argument, almost everyone agrees it is going too far. But most people for good reason find discussing such matters distasteful. So they hold their nose and say, ‘What’s the problem? Let everyone use whatever washroom/ changeroom they want to.’

We cower before the god of political correctness, though it’s really just a kind of prudishness (‘Don’t talk about such things!’). The trans men (i.e., mostly lesbians) are not doing the screaming, but they are conned into accepting the strident trans women’s (biological males) campaign, ‘in solidarity’.

Feminists nail the culprit

Only a few brave feminist, including Camille Paglia and Germaine Greer, have dared speak out, and they are pilloried. Germaine Greer was denied an honorary doctorate at her alma mater Newnham College, Cambridge, after trans women protested because she argues that trans women are “not women”.

Last October, long before Orlando, Paglia said, “Nothing better defines the decadence of the West to the jihadists than our toleration of open homosexuality and this transgender mania now.” Of course, Mateen’s act is contrary to any religion, including Islam, but Paglia saw and said what should be obvious to all, especially Obama.

In his last moments, Mateen paid a kind of poisoned tribute to Ronald Reagan, who was a militant anti-communist and a supporter of McCarthy’s witch hunts of both communists and gays in the 1950s. Gays got off relatively lightly then, in that none were electrocuted for their way of life. Only communists (the Rosenbergs) got the electric chair.

At 2:22am, he made a 911 call in which he pledged allegiance to ISIL and saluted Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombers, further offspring of Reagan’s anti-communism. At 5:00am police finally killed him, but only after he had killed 49 people and injured 53 more, the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in US, the deadliest incident of violence against gays in US history. The deadliest terrorist attack in the US since–guess what?–9/11.

More gaylib or less?

The gaylibbers are jumping up and down, saying, ‘Yes, a self-hating gay. If only he’d ‘come out’, embraced gaydom. Then we’ll all be happy.’ According to Vanity Fair, Mateen had even been befriended by a drag queen. Quite possibly he was okay with gay men who cross-dressed. Traditionally, cross-dressing is acceptable in many cultures.

If you like men and feel like a women, then you’re really just a man who likes to cross-dress and sleep with men. The native Americans long had this tradition (berdash). Afghan boys played the role of women both in the arts and with mujahideen soldiers. In the West, there have always be the Quentin Crisps.

If you like women and like to cross-dress, that’s okay too, but people will find it amusing. Best stay ‘in the closet’ with your wife or be a drag queen in public. Again, a venerable tradition.

So maybe the gaylibbers have it backwards. Maybe–to avoid further Orlandos–the gaylibbers should stop ‘questioning’ the social limits of whatever it is they intend for society, and learn from the wisdom of traditon. Discretion is the better part of valor. Oh, and refuse to join the military–now welcoming gays with open arms–to go and kill imperial flotsam like Omar.

** LGBTQQIP means Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Pansexual; LGBTQIA means Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex and Allies. There are many other acronyms vying for popularity

American Herald Tribune

Conspiracy thinking has never been absent from the Russian Orthodox Church, but one of its current central themes – that the Anti-Christ will soon appear – has an interesting origin. According to a Russian scholar, this idea comes from Fundamentalist Protestantism in the US and was introduced into Orthodoxy by an émigré professor.

The idea that the formation of the EU, the IMF and humanitarian organizations are all signs of the Anti-Christ’s imminent arrival and that all of them are being directed by a super-secret computer in Brussels was developed by American Baptists in the late 1970s and then transmitted to the Moscow Patriarchate, according to Aleksandr Panchenko.

The researcher at the Moscow Institute of Russian Culture makes this argument in an article entitled “A Computer with the Name of the Beast,”(in Russian; Antropologichesky forum, 27 (2015): 122-141; on line at anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/027/panchenko2.pdf and summarized at ttolk.ru/?p=27036).

As the Tolkovatel portal notes, “belief in conspiracies has a first-order importance for millenarianism of the end of the 20^th and beginning of the 21^st centuries,” something that “isn’t surprising” given that “millenarian ideas always predispose their followers to a belief in conspiracies” that others can’t or won’t see.

In the 1970s, what is known as the New Christian Right in the US came up with a number of these based on its reading of the Bible and its conclusion that recent developments in the world point to the end times, with the arrival of the Anti-Christ and then his overthrow by God.

Russian Orthodox writers devote far less attention to the interpretation of the Bible than do these Protestant fundamentalists, Panchenko says; and consequently, the appearance of the conspiracy theories that have been widespread among the New Christian Right within Orthodoxy requires an explanation.

The story is complicated, and Panchenko traces each of its stages. But the basic outline is as follows: In 1981, a US Protestant fundamentalist named Mary Stewart Ralph published in Alabama a book entitled, “When Your Money Loses Value, the 666 System in Action” which linked signs of the approaching end times to a computer named “the Beast” in Brussels.

Ralph’s book attracted a great deal of attention in the US but it would not have affected Russian Orthodoxy had it not been for a Russian studies professor at the University of South Alabama named Paul Vaulin (1918-2007) who translated portions of it for broadcast to Russian audiences.

Paulin escaped the Soviet Union at the time of the Soviet-Finnish war and after many adventures landed in the US where he attached himself to the radical religious-nationalist wing of the Russian emigration and attracted some attention for books like “The Regiment of Kitezh” (1977) about a plot to overthrow the communist dictatorship.

He also gained a certain notoriety among leaders of the Russian emigration in the West for claiming he had written a Russian poem more important than anything Pushkin had produced and for building a bomb shelter in his summer place in Maine because of his expectation of an imminent nuclear war.

Vaulin’s translation of Ralph’s book fell into the hands of the Mount Athos religious figure Paisiy Eznepidis (1924-1994) who played up the idea of a super-secret computer and the ways in which price codes and the number 666 were a threat to all true Christians. He told visiting Russian Orthodox clergy about this and they took these ideas back to Russia.

“In this way,” the portal says, “American Baptist eschatology conquered the heart of Russian Orthodox.”

China’s leaders moved ahead with economic reforms soon after the Tiananmen crackdown, but silenced politics and memories.

By Nick Frisch*

Each spring, a ripple of recollection passes through Beijing, and anyone over the age of 35 remembers how hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens went into the streets to join striking students. The crowds, demanding reforms, used their bodies as barricades against advancing columns of troops. No one believed the People’s Army would fire on its namesake.

When the gunfire started, the crowds melted away in shock and disbelief. Most individuals became anonymous to history and one another and, like other urbanites across China, walled off memories of the massacre and accepted the Communist Party’s gospel of prosperity: make money, avoid politics, get on with your lives.

As the years accumulate, the anniversary of the tragedy offers an occasion to wonder if the pursuit of money has erased memories of that blood-soaked night. In Hong Kong at least, the post-Tiananmen generation wants to leave the past and claim a new identity separate from the Chinese on the Mainland. With each passing year, even those who remember Tiananmen must ask: Is it worth looking back? Or, as the Mandarin pun has it – xiang qian kan, look to get rich. It’s a question that global media, multinational business and foreign governments must confront as well.

This June 4, a sunny Saturday 27 years later, thousands walked the streets of Beijing. At Chang’an Avenue near the gleaming shopping district of Wangfujing and Tiananmen Square, a few may have felt a fleeting tug of memory of a lone white-shirted man confronting a column of tanks as cameras rolled before moving on in silence.

For the up to 20,000 Beijingers who were injured or lost a loved one, and countless others who lost faith in the People’s Republic, the anniversary of June 4 is endured in silence. For the few hundred brave or foolish enough to attempt public grief or press demands for pingfan, official redress – springtime is an anxious wave of waiting for detentions or house arrest, visits to graves, attempts to elude state security long enough for a furtive interview with foreign media, and unfurling banners in the square for the few seconds it takes plainclothes officers to pounce.

Ding Zilin, an organizer of the Tiananmen Mothers memorial group, has spent more years living with state security agents than with her son Jielian, a teenager when he died near the square. In late May, police posted a notice on Ding’s door that advised phone service was suspended from June 1, and the state provided a cellphone capable of reaching limited numbers including emergency services, a surviving son and a direct line to state security. Agents kept their own vigil outside her building, and each year a police bus transports Ding and relatives of other victims to a Beijing cemetery where some protestors are buried. A security detail escorts the dozen or so relatives – an elaborate strategy that defuses public anger by allowing private grief, but corralling and silencing those who resist letting the ripples fade.

The shadow vigil – a mass exercise in synchronized amnesia – contrasts with the triumph of the official party line immediately after the 1989 crackdown. Chinese state television aired the video of the unknown man with the tanks as proof of a magnanimous victory against “reactionaries.” The announcer proclaims: “The American propaganda machine… slings mud about our Chinese troops, and gives frenzied flattery to this tank-blocking outlaw, calling him a fearless hero!… The camera image shows that… our troops scrupulously exercised the utmost restraint!”

The party was unapologetic. Veterans of the Square operation were rewarded with medals, commemorative engraved wristwatches and a performance by Peng Liyuan, now China’s first lady. Selected instigators were publicly tried and shot. The Chinese press smeared student leaders who escaped into exile as traitors and saboteurs paid by foreign intelligence agencies.

Once Beijing decided to pursue a path to economic growth, silence became the easiest choice for the party and people alike. The tank man’s image was not broadcast in China again, and June 4, 1989, was buried under censorship, detentions and intimidation.

Mass suppression brings its own risks. Today, the Tiananmen protest has become the Party’s Voldemort, an existential threat that could return at any time – always feared, rarely seen, yet at the center of the Beijing’s politics of memory, it demands constant vigilance and perpetual denial.

One place in the People’s Republic, 1900 kilometers south of Beijing, allows mass remembrance. The former British colony of Hong Kong retains free speech, free association and free markets under the 1997 handover deal negotiated with London. The city, now a semi-autonomous Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic, is indispensable for keepers of Tiananmen memories: a platform where their grief and hopes for Chinese democracy can be aired. Each year since 1989, mass vigils and media reports have marked the event and probed its meaning.

Hong Kong journalist Yau Lap-poon called June 4 “a North Star in the darkness, a reference point for China’s destiny,” and asked, “Without June 4, would China have traveled its 27-year path of development?… Perhaps the blood of Tiananmen was a kind of fertilizer, helping China bloom prosperously on the soil of market economics.”  Deng Xiaoping, the same leader who sent in the tanks, also opened China to market reforms, allowing the country to escape poverty. By touring China’s south in 1992, visiting Special Economic Zones across the border from Hong Kong, Deng signaled that China was open for business. Hong Kong tycoons crossed the border with capital and manufacturing expertise, paving the path to “Made in China.” Even as Hong Kong’s free speech has helped China remember, its capital investments have helped China forget.

By Phil Janowski*

On May 13, groundbreaking news was released about interim president of Brazil Michel Temer. WikiLeaks, the website both praised and infamous for its disclosing of secretive government documents worldwide, announced that interim president Temer was a former embassy informant for U.S. intelligence.[1] Although Wikileaks technically revealed this information four years ago in the form of documents, the intel had remained widely ignored due to interim president Temer’s relative lack of public attention as vice-president.[2] Now that Mr. Temer has ascended to an interim position in the Brazilian presidency following the soft coup of Ms. Dilma Rousseff, the situation has changed.

On May 12, elected President Dilma Rousseff was removed from office to stand in a lengthy and controversial impeachment trial.[3] The general reason for the trial has been a dishonest attempt to link President Rousseff to the massive Petrobras scandal, a political incident spanning across all of Brazilian government and affecting some of the most important people in the political process.[4] Ms. Rousseff was charged with alleged administrative misconduct, disregarding the federal budget, and accounting certain public bank assets in the federal budget— something that was not illegal, and that the government practiced regularly.[5] Whether or not these accusations are valid, it is shocking to see vice-president Michel Temer and his party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (a former parliamentary ally of Rousseff’s Workers’ Party), take over after Ms. Rousseff’s impeachment, even though Mr. Temer and many members of his cabinet were accused of charges in the scandal.[6] Furthermore, of the 65 members of the impeachment commission, 37 faced charges of corruption or other crimes, according to the Los Angeles Times.[7] Later on, phone conversation recordings proved the fact that elected President Rousseff has been impeached in order to control the corruption investigations.[8] Despite his involvement in the corruption scandal, to which he is—unlike Ms. Rousseff—directly linked, Mr. Temer is still being allowed to act as interim president of Brazil.[9] Thus, such allegations have suggested that Mr. Temer was involved in the plot to oust Ms. Rousseff. President Rousseff’s comments that Mr. Temer is a “traitor” to her administration have also increased the tension surrounding his case.[10][11]

The information provided by WikiLeaks makes this pull of the curtains even more shocking, and highlights the potential involvement of the U.S. government in President Rousseff’s impeachment. Mr. Temer’s connections to the United States strongly imply U.S. involvement in Ms. Rousseff’s overthrow— a tactic similar to past U.S. action in Central and South American countries to impeach left-wing parties. Examples include the coup orchestrated by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to oust the elected President of Honduras Mr. Manuel Zelaya, the tentative removal of elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002, the removal of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti a decade ago, or the actions associated with Operation Condor in the twentieth century— we are not lacking in examples.[12] The United States has a strong interest in helping enact this coup. Elected President Rousseff is a member of the left-leaning Worker’s Party, which has carried out many progressive policies like the nationalization of oil suppliers.[13] The United States government, even when its President claims to be a progressive, has unmistakably pursued an imperialist international policy.[14] The pink-tide countries in Latin America have not been viewed kindly, and attempted coups and so-called “constitutional coups” have often been initiated to rupture governments conflictive to U.S. imperialism in a more “delicate” fashion than those promoted during the Cold War.

Ultimately, it may be possible that elected President Rousseff’s impeachment was not planned by the United States, and that the U.S. has decided to take advantage of it by maneuvering Mr. Temer forward. In any case, eyes must be kept open as we continue to see where Mr. Temer’s policies bring Brazil, and whether they fall in line with U.S. rhetoric.

*Phil Janowski, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

[1] WikiLeaks. “Brasil’s New President #Temer Was an Embassy Informant for US Intelligence, Military Https://t.co/3l2eUdiqvy Pic.twitter.com/IUuUgHYd1e.” Twitter. Twitter, 13 May 2016. Web. 13 June 2016

[2] “Brazil: “Wikileaks Proves That Temer Is Even Closer to the US”, Says Green.” The Dawn. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 June 2016.

[3] B, Alexandre, Juan Sebastian Chavarro, Raiesa Frazer, Rachael Hilderbrand, and Emma Tyrou. “Soft Coup in Brazil: A Blow to Brazilian Democracy.” Council On Hemispheric Affairs. N.p., 12 May 2016. Web. 13 June 2016.

[4] Fuentes, Esther. “Understanding the Petrobras Scandal.” Council On Hemispheric Affairs. N.p., 07 Apr. 2016. Web. 14 June 2016.

[5] “EXCELENTÍSSIMO SENHOR PRESIDENTE DA CÂMARA DOS DEPUTADOS FEDERAIS, DEPUTADO EDUARDO CUNHA.” (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 13 June 2016.

[6] PeÇanha, Sergio, and Simon Romero. “Corruption Scandals in Brazil Reach All the Way to the Top.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 5 May 2016. Web. 13 June 2016.

[7] Bevins, Vincent. “The Politicians Voting to Impeach Brazil’s President Are Accused of More Corruption than She Is.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 28 Mar. 2016. Web. 16 June 2016.

[8] Miranda, David. “The Real Reason Dilma Rousseff’s Enemies Want Her Impeached | David Miranda.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 21 Apr. 2016. Web. 16 June 2016.

[9] Savarese, Mauricio. “Brazil’s Temer Linked to Corruption Probe by Plea Deal.” The Big Story. Associated Press, 15 June 2016. Web. 16 June 2016.

[10] Watkinson, William. “Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff Accuses Vice-president Michel Temer of ‘plotting Coup’” International Business Times RSS. N.p., 12 Apr. 2016. Web. 13 June 2016.

[11] Romero, Simon. “Brazil’s Vice President, Unpopular and Under Scrutiny, Prepares to Lead.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 21 Apr. 2016. Web. 13 June 2016.

[12] McSherry, J. Patrice. Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. Print.

[13] Llana, Sara Miller, and Whitney Eulich. “Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico: Three Ways to Nationalize Oil.” The Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor, 12 May 2012. Web. 16 June 2016.

[14] Nichols, Tom. “America’s Permanent Conservative Foreign Policy.” The War Room. N.p., 15 Oct. 2012. Web. 13 June 2016.

Large swaths of the US electorate are voting for rational choices against a system controlled by an economic and political oligarchy.

Rational choice is based on experience with political leaders who pursue policies which lead to a trillion dollar financial crises and bailouts which impoverish millions of mortgage holders and working family tax payers.

Rational rejection of the established leadership of the major parties is based on an understanding of the futility of relying on their campaign promises.

Rational commitments to ending inequality and overseas wars which weaken America, has led to greater emphasis on making America strong and transforming the domestic American economy and security system.

A vast array of electoral analysts have ignored the rational socio-economic and political choices of the American electorate and repeatedly rely on psycho-babble, claiming that contemporary voters are reacting out of ‘anger’ and ‘irrational emotionalism’.

Sanders and Trump: Appeals to the New Rationality?

The woeful blindness of political experts is in large part a product of their own hostility to the rise of two Presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, who challenge the established party and economic leadership.

The Sanders campaign proceeded along the lines of a political polarization between big business and the working class; demanding higher taxes for the wealthy and greater social spending for public health and education foe the working class.

Sander’s sought to unify racial and ethnic minorities and majoritarian workers with progressive gender, religious and environmental movements.

The Trump campaign sought to mobilize white American majorities among workers, small businesspeople and professionals, who are downwardly mobile and have been marginalized by globalization.

Sanders emphasized a refurbished class identity. Trump promoted a new nationalist symbolism. Yet in many ways the establishment opposition, the parties, mass media and the economic elite, are far more hostile to Trump’s ‘nationalist politics’ than Sanders’ democratic socialist program and class appeal.

It appears that Sanders willingness to come to terms with the Democratic elite and back Clinton’s candidacy when he lost the nomination, is far more acceptable to the establishment than Trump. According to all known precedents, the Democratic Party allows progressive candidates to post advanced socio-economic campaign platforms to secure working class voters, all the better to tank them in favor of business-warmonger policies once in office.

Trump’s initial nationalist-anti-globalist rhetoric aroused greater animosity from business, liberal and militarist elites than Sanders’ occasional critical comment.

Trump’s nationalism was rooted in popular and reactionary appeals. On the one hand he spoke of relocating multi-nationals from abroad to the US. On the other hand, he demands the expulsion of over ten million Mexicans from the US labor market.

His anti-globalization-business relocation strategy lacked several essential ingredients: he did not specify which multi-nationals would be affected; nor what policies he would apply to implement the trillion-dollar return.

In contrast, Trump was precise in naming the immigrants to be expelled; the police methods to expel the target population; and the border security system to blockade their entry.

Trump’s Electoral Victory and Neoliberal Right Turn

Trump’s successful nomination led to an appeal to big donors for campaign funding and endorsements by Republican neo-liberal Congressional leaders like Paul Ryan. This has led Trump to downgrade his anti- globalization, economic nationalist politics, in favor of his chauvinist ethno-racist appeals.

Trump’s current electoral strategy seeks to unify the hard neo-liberal elite with the ‘patriotic’ white working class.

Trump’s ideological vehicle to the Presidency no longer attacks globalization. Instead he relies on arousing public support by stigmatizing ‘anti-American’ minorities and targeting Clinton’s reactionary and corrupt policies.

Trumps’ “Make America Strong” propaganda follows closely in line with Obama’s headline attack on China’s steel exports to the US markets.

Trump’s “Make America Strong” policy follows Obama’s systematic assault on the World Trade Organization’s for rejecting US agricultural trade subsidies.More recently,in tune with Trumps rhetoric, Obama unilaterally dictated the membership of the WTO’s trade settlement process.

Obama blocked the reappointment of an independent South Korean lawyer who opposed Washington’s violation of WTO rules.Rather then look upon Trump as an anti-establishment “populist” his policy would follow Obama’s promotion of business lobbies against the WTO.

Trump follows Obama’s policy of favoring globalization only insofar as Washington controls the international institutions that run it. Trump follows Washington’s imperial policy of packing global institutions with its vassals.

Trump in the Footstep of Sanders

Trump’s embrace of the neo-liberal business elite follows Sanders submission to the Democratic Party bosses. Trump hopes his mass base can be deluded from his right-turn embrace of the economic elite by increasing slanders and provocations,turning them against working class Mexicans by accusing them of stealing jobs, crimes and drugs.

Trump’s mass meetings of almost exclusively white working and middle class voters in Mexican-American regions of California are designed to provoke violent protests.

Trump gains nation-wide nationalist support by circulating videos of NBC, CNN and ABC reports depicting peaceful white Trump supporters being “terrorized and beaten up by mobs of (Mexican-American) protestors”.

Trump appeals to his “Americans” to denounce and ‘stand strong” against demonstraters waving Mexican flags and burning the Stars and Stripes alongside Trumps’ “Make America Great” hats.

Trump’s turn to the neo-liberal Republican elite means he will heighten his repressive and anti-immigrant policies. Trump will be aided by mindless violent protestors and provocations “overcoming the police” at anti-Trump rallies. Trump effectively engages in the “propaganda of the deed”; linking “disloyal foreign immigrants” waving the Mexican , not the US flag.

The realignment of the Republican Party brings Trump into the arms of the hardline neo-liberal Congressional-Wall Street elite. This shift means Trump’s ideological and mass base needs to be redirected toward greater hostility to domestic enemies – Mexicans, Muslims, women and ecologists.

Trump is especially counting on the incorporation of Sanders’ electoral machine into the Clinton campaign. White workers face to face with Wall Street warmonger Clinton will be less likely to reject Trump’s embrace of the rightwing Congressional business alliance.

Trump will deflect working class opposition from his turn to the neo- liberal Congressional Republicans by targeting Clinton’s big business and covert, illicit government operations. Clinton’ gross violations of federal laws, her felonious communications and liasons with foreign officials could hand the Presidency to Trump.

Trump has gained working class voters in West Virginia, Ohio ,and many other rust-belt states because of Clinton’s free trade and anti-working class history.

Trump’s electoral victory will hinge on his capacity to cover-up his neo-liberal turn and to focus voters’ attention on Clinton’s militarist, Wall Street, conspiratorial and anti-working class politics.

By Ankita Dutta*

The past year witnessed new trends emerging in the conflict in Afghanistan. The spring offensive brought along with it a renewed onslaught by Taliban with an increased number of attacks, suicide bombings, and assassination attempts. As per the data compiled by the United Nations, the Taliban insurgency had spread through more of Afghanistan than at any point since 2001. The United Nations security officials had rated the threat level in about half of the country’s administrative districts as either “high” or “extreme”. The primary reason for this new excess offensive was attributed to the fact that Pakistan military had been organising its counter-offensive in the North Waziristan region. This led to militants fleeing towards Badakhshan region in Afghanistan and bolstering the ranks of the Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Following is an analysis of the changing trends in the Afghan Taliban insurgency.

Firstly, the pattern that emerges regarding the offensive by the Taliban was that they focused on the northern parts of the country. First, it was the Badakhshan region which faced the onslaught of the Taliban and then the fighting increased in the province of Kunduz. Badakhshan region was considered to be one of the safest and most peaceful parts of Afghanistan, but it is now considered as an unexpected locus of war.

The Taliban advanced across the country’s north capturing Kunduz which was a great propaganda victory for the Taliban, which had been suffering from internal strife related to succession within the structure. In fact, this was the first time in nearly 14 years that the Taliban had seized a provincial capital. Although Afghan troops mounted a counterattack against the Taliban fighters to reclaim the provincial capital, but only after the seat of the province remained under the control of the Afghan Taliban for three days.

US forces also conducted airstrikes in Kunduz to eliminate threats to the Afghan forces operating in the vicinity of Kunduz, in which however, they ended up targeting the only equipped, operational medical facility operated by Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF) to the effect that the organization no longer runs the center.

The Afghan Taliban finally called to an end of offensive in October 2015, citing reasons such as preserving the lives of their fighters and to halt the unnecessary waste of ammunition. This attack which was led by only several hundred Taliban overwhelmed the equipped Afghanistan National Defense and Security forces, delivering a shock to those who had believed that the provincial capitals in Afghanistan were safer and more secured spots.

Secondly, Afghanistan forces have reportedly been straining to keep the Taliban militants at bay. As per a Kabul-based political and military analyst, the year 2015 was the worst fighting season in a decade. According to Col. Brian Tribus, Director of public affairs for the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, Afghan soldiers experienced 70% more casualties than ever. Civilian casualties were reported to have increased 10%. The policy adopted by the Afghan government in controlling the Taliban insurgency witnessed revival of an old strategy of forming local armed militias to battle the enemy. The idea was to replace the militias around the country with a unified, better-trained body that was more accountable to the government. There were voices of support towards the government sponsorship of militias, whereas voices of discontent also stated that militias might increase rivalries between armed groups on a large scale.

Thirdly, as the fight against the Taliban continued, there was a growing consensus that combat operations will not be able to end this war instead there must be a political solution to the crisis. Western political analysts and diplomats showed little optimism in maintaining of troops to reverse the deteriorating situation when there was lack of progress on the peace process. The ‘Heart of Asia’ conference and Quadrilateral Conferences resulted in a breakthrough as the Afghan government agreed to restart dialogue with ‘reconcilable’ Taliban with the help of Pakistan, the United States and China.

A declaration was issued at the conclusion of the Heart of Asia meeting, which urged all Afghan Taliban groups and other armed opposition groups to enter into peace talks with the Afghan government and agreed to put in place specific measures to deny terrorists access to financial and material resources, dismantle their sanctuaries and curtail their ability to recruit and train new terrorists. However, the Afghan Taliban rejected to join the peace talks with Afghan government. The factors cited by the group for not returning to the negotiation table include intensification of operations by Afghan forces, deployment of US troops to the battlefield and their participation in air strikes and continuing night raids, and the unmet preconditions that the insurgent group has set to join the negotiations.

Fourthly, the death of Mullah Omar did provide the biggest challenge for the Afghan Taliban to retain its cohesiveness, although many of the speculations related to its potential disintegration did not materialize.

With the wars of succession that splintered what was till then a united militant band, the Taliban did face an increasing threat of disintegration, especially since the Islamic State was reportedly making forays into this volatile country and was chipping at its base. The news of Mullah Omar’s death being unknown since 2013, highlighted that those closest to the centre of power were perhaps using the name of the Amir to keep their vested interests serviced.

The nomination of Muhammad Mansour, who was later killed in a drone attack by US, as the new leader raised many questions within the setup especially as he had maintained silence on the death of Mullah Omar, and had even put out false statements on his behalf endorsing the Islamabad sponsored peace talks and misleading the fighters. On the question of pursuing the peace process, clear divisions cropped up within the Taliban and between the two major factions that had emerged since the disintegration of this group; one led by Mansour and the other by Mohammed Rasool.

Fifthly, Taliban had been reportedly facing the heat in the form of the Islamic State. As the Afghan Taliban witnessed internal fissures, some of the disgruntled insurgents were reported to have shifted their loyalty to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State and self-declared Caliph of the Muslim world. According to reports, the IS were increasing their recruitments in Afghanistan; but the number so far was low, still it passed as a worry concerning that defections from the Taliban were at best sporadic in their nature, and often to sides that were not similar to it in their constitution and motives.

Despite the set-backs and changing geopolitical realities, Taliban is still a force to be reckoned with. The killing of the rehbar (leader) of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone attack did not so much result in the disintegration of this militant group as much as the speculations would have wanted (or perhaps, hoped) it to be like. In fact, the fairly quick and easy succession of Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada to the post of the new leader of the group indicated that the movement is far from running out of its steam. An even quicker renunciation of the peace talks by the new leader, who faces opposition from the Rasool faction, if not so much in intensity, though, continues to hint at how the Afghan Taliban is still working as a heady roost.

The Taliban has recast its mission from one resisting foreign occupation to one that is confronting a government it considers a western pawn. So far the counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan implies two theories of an eventual endgame: The first is to hang on until the Taliban implode through internal strife, perhaps encouraged by the targeted killings of their leaders; the second is to hang on until the Taliban are willing to negotiate some tolerable power-sharing arrangement. However, there is no immediate prospect of the first outcome, while the second one has been brought no closer by the killing of Mullah Mansour.

*Ankita Dutta is a Research Scholar at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi She can be reached at: ankita_dutta87@yahoo.co.in

The U.S. military conducted three counterterrorism strikes June 8-12 against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in central Yemen, killing six al-Qaida operatives and injuring one, U.S. Central Command officials announced today.

A strike June 8 in Badya governorate resulted in the deaths of two al-Qaida operatives along with the destruction of their vehicle loaded with weapons, officials said. Another strike conducted June 10 in Marib governorate killed two al-Qaida operatives. A June 12 strike in Shabwah governorate killed two more al-Qaida operatives, injured another, and destroyed the vehicle they were traveling in.
Seal of U.S. Central Command

Significant Regional Threat

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula remains a significant threat to the region, the United States and beyond, Centcom officials said in a statement announcing the strikes. Al-Qaida’s presence has a destabilizing effect on Yemen, they said, and the organization is using the unrest in Yemen to provide a haven from which to plan future attacks against U.S. allies, as well as against the United States and its interests.

“The U.S. will not relent in its mission to degrade, disrupt and destroy al-Qaida and its remnants,” the statement said. “We remain committed to defeating [al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula] and denying it safe haven regardless of its location.
U.S. strikes in Yemen continue to diminish the organization’s presence in the region, officials added.