Kashmir: Management Is No Solution

Raouf Rasool

As expected, authorities on Wednesday imposed strict curfew in South Kashmir districts and in parts of Srinagar city to thwart a march to Kulgam called by the separatist leadership. Earlier on Monday also, this is what was done to thwart a march to Anantnag, and this is what they did on Friday to stop people from converging at the Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid. They will do it again if and whenever the separatists call for more such marches. The separatist leaders have been/will be arrested or detained inside their residences or nearby police stations, people confined to their homes, and the government will wait for the fatigue and weariness to set in, hoping that this will finally lead it out of the current crisis.

So as these sequences testify, everything here seems overly resistant to change. Notwithstanding that times have changed and there has been a change of guard at the state’s helm, there is not much change in state’s technocratic response to the public unrest – one that has, if any, only some short-term advantages but sure and great many long-term disadvantages. This is a practical conclusion one could draw after looking at recurrent spells of public anger each time it has poured out on the Valley’s roads and streets, lanes and bylanes, its hill and dale.

Irrespective of what government says and how the state’s top executive puts forth intellectually fashionable responses and demands – like the need for confidence building measures from the Centre and revocation of the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) – it goes without saying that the state has not learnt its lessons – of fixing wrongs within before turning towards New Delhi on what it should do. Indeed all of the state’s contradictions alone are enough to boggle the mind in search of rationality. Perhaps therein lays its genius – that it seems, like ever, emerging from the same bureaucratic approach which has traditionally been, and still is the cause and reason for much of the state’s problems with its “subjects”.

Now take the demand for “experimental” rollback of AFSPA from a few districts to begin with. No right-thinking person, and certainly not a single Kashmiri worth her salt, or anyone even from North-East, who have seen what a dreadful law means would support its continuation, in full or part. AFSPA must go, sooner the better. However, for this the government at New Delhi has to be on J&K’s side, which will, in turn have to convince its military, the far right-Hindu ‘nationalist’ groups, right-wing intelligentsia and openly pro-right media for it. Let’s hope that the J&K government prevails and roll-back of AFSPA is conceded – although right now it seems only a wishful thinking at the best, as seems the case with other CBMs state government has in mind as panacea to help itself out of the current crisis.

Take this: What is it that triggered the crises in the first place? Anger and outrage was already palpable everywhere, and was even escalating to the brink with each passing day as people were at the receiving end of an ever-growing and loud tirade on things they have always valued the most – their land and religious identity. Right then, Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was killed, an encounter whose timing and worth has been questioned by the government’s own Member Parliament and senior PDP leader Muzaffar Hussain Beigh forcefully even on the floor of the Parliament. The incident set off a trail of dangerous police-public confrontations, in which, as the number of killed and injured civilians suggests, as also do the kind of their injuries at the hands of police and paramilitary forces, the latter faltered in its crowd-control tactics, and faltered very badly. Not only was more force than was needed (“disproportionate force”) used, but police also violated the laid down standard operating procedures (SOPs), as confessed by the government itself (of course at the beginning; now conveniently forgotten).

So what is it the state government is, and will do, to account for the “police excesses”? Police are not covered under AFSPA, and fall under the state government – no central nod is needed for much-needed corrections in it — so that the summer 2016 is not yet another 2010 or 2008 for that matter even 2009, when civilians killings at the hands of the men in Khaki were taken as a “necessary collateral” and nobody bothered to account for them.

Indeed biggest grudge people have against then Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is that he did nothing to look into, and fix responsibility for the civilians killings in 2009 and 2010, and then went on to pledge revocation of AFSPA “within days”, which he couldn’t do even in his entire tenure. Calling for AFSPA rollback is intellectually fashionable, but creating proper template for better human rights record by also reining in the police by fixing responsibility for its wrongs is a fundamental requirement. Unfortunately this appreciation seems missing. When leadership reduces itself to management, problems are not solved; they are only managed. Kashmir’s problems have been managed for long; now they need solutions.

Why The Yemen Peace Talks Collapsed?

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Riyadh-based Yemen government in exile Thursday pulled out of the peace talks underway in Kuwait after Houthi militants and their allies formed a 10-member “supreme council” to run the war-torn nation.

“The negotiations have completely ended,” said Abdallah al-Olaimi, a member of the exile government team to the talks.

UN special envoy Ismail Ahmad Ould Cheikh Ahmed, who has been brokering the talks aimed at a peaceful settlement, condemned the move without formally announcing the collapse of negotiations.

The Houthi militants and the General People’s Congress of former president Ali Abdallah Saleh earlier Thursday announced the formation of “a supreme political council of 10 members”. They did not name the council’s members.

“The aim is to unify efforts to confront the aggression by Saudi Arabia and its allies,” they said, in reference to the Riyadh-led Arab coalition, backed by the US and UK, that launched air strikes against the militants in March 2015 to restore Hadi’s government.

More than 6,400 people have been killed in Yemen since Saudi Arabia launched brutal airstrikes against the targets in Yemen. Another 2.8 million people have been displaced and more than 80 percent of the population urgently needs humanitarian aid, according to UN figures.

UN Security Council Resolution 2216

UN special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmad said the rebels’ move to form a ruling council “represents a grave violation” of UN Security Council Resolution 2216.

The UN Security Council resolution was approved on April 14, 2015 where Russia abstained. Explaining the abstention, the Russian delegate said it had abstained because the resolution was not fully in line with what was required by the crisis in Yemen. “The text failed to take into account proposals his country had made and to call on all sides to halt fire, did not provide for due reflection on consequences and lacked clarity on a humanitarian pause. There were also inappropriate references to sanctions, he added, stating that the resolution must not result in an escalation of the crisis. He stressed that there was no alternative to a political solution and action by the Council must be engendered from already-existing documents.”

Not surprising, the resolution, co-sponsored by France, the United Kingdom and the United States, was silent on the Saudi air strikes but mentioned the Houthis and Houthi 18 times.

The resolution demanded that the Houthis, withdraw from all areas seized during the latest conflict, relinquish arms seized from military and security institutions, cease all actions falling exclusively within the authority of the ‘legitimate Government of Yemen’ and fully implement previous Council resolutions.

The resolution also called upon the Houthis to refrain from any provocations or threats to neighboring States, release the Minister for Defence, all political prisoners and individuals under house arrest or arbitrarily detained, and end the recruitment of children.

Imposing sanctions, including a general assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo, on Abdulmalik al-Houthi, who it called the Houthi leader, and Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, son of the president who stepped down in 2011.

Ironically, the United States, Britain, and others, meanwhile, have continued to supply a steady stream of weaponry and logistical support to Saudi Arabia and its coalition. Britain, the United States, and France continue to authorize lucrative arms deals with the Saudi-led coalition — apparently without batting an eyelash.

Since November 2013, the U.S. Defense Department has authorized more than $35.7 billion in major arms deals to Saudi Arabia.

Since November 2013, the U.S. Defense Department has authorized more than $35.7 billion in major arms deals to Saudi Arabia. This includes the announcement of a $1.29 billion U.S. arms sale to Saudi Arabia in November 2015 that will supply Riyadh with 18,440 bombs and 1,500 warheads. Meanwhile, during his time in office, British Prime Minister David Cameron has overseen the sale of more than $9 billion worth of weaponry to Saudi Arabia, including nearly $4 billion since airstrikes on Yemen began, according to the Campaign Against Arms Trade, a London-based NGO.

Who are the Houthis?

The rise of the Houthi militants began to pick up momentum in August, 2014, when thousands of supporters of the movement protested in the streets of the Yemeni capital Sanaa, urging the government to step down.

As reported by Al-Jazeera, among other demands, Houthi leader Abdulmalek al-Houthi requested that fuel subsidies, which had been cut significantly in late July, be reinstated. If the government failed to meet an ultimatum, he said, “other steps” would be taken. The Houthis were also demanding a more representative form of government that would reflect the seats allocated to political groups and independent activists during Yemen’s 10-month National Dialogue Conference, which mapped out the political future of Yemen after its 2011 uprising.

“This government is a puppet in the hands of influential forces, which are indifferent to the rightful and sincere demands of these people,” al-Houthi said in his speech, referring to the United States. The rebels subsequently raided key government institutions in the capital.

Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi had called for dialogue with the Houthis, inviting the group to join a “unity government”, and the two sides ultimately signed a peace deal brokered by the UN envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar. It demanded that the Houthis withdraw from Sanaa and cease hostilities in other provinces in exchange for their demands being met. But the rebels did not comply, as their fighters pushed into other provinces, taking over the strategic port city of Hodeida on the Red Sea.

In October, Hadi named the country’s envoy to the US, Khaled Bahah, as the new prime minister. The rebels initially welcomed the appointment, but tensions flared in January when a constitution-drafting panel presented the first draft of the constitution. The Houthis rejected terms about dividing the country into six regions.

When Hadi refused to concede, the rebels stormed his palace, galvanizing his resignation. Hadi accused the rebels of pressuring him to install affiliate figures in key positions in the government bodies. The Houthis put Hadi, the prime minister and two other ministers under house arrest and in February, declared that Hadi was being replaced with a temporary five-member presidential council.

Hadi fled to Aden on February 21, declaring himself the legitimate president of Yemen. Just over a month later the Saudi-led coalition began bombing the country, giving sanctuary to Hadi in Riyadh.

It may be pointed out that the Houthis fought six wars with former military strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was forced out of the presidency in 2012. Hadi, his vice president, took over and largely ignored the Houthis.

Yemeni civilians are losing the most.

As reported by the Foreign Policy magazine, more than one year on, it still remains unclear who is winning the war. Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners claim to have regained control of more than 80 percent of the country, but the Houthis remain in control of the key strongholds of Sanaa, Ibb, and Taiz. One thing is clear: Yemeni civilians are losing the most.

The Houthis and their allies —groups loyal to Saleh — are the declared targets of the coalition’s air campaign. In reality, however, it is the civilians who are predominantly the victims of this protracted war. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in airstrikes while asleep in their homes, when going about their daily activities, or in the very places where they had sought refuge from the conflict.

The Saudi-led coalition’s response to reports of civilians unlawfully killed — and homes, schools, and infrastructure destroyed — has been to constantly repeat the mantra that “only military targets are hit by airstrikes.” The situation on the ground tells a very different story. With each unlawful coalition airstrike, it becomes more evident that Saudi Arabia and other coalition members either do not care about respecting international humanitarian law or are incapable of adhering to its fundamental rules, the Foreign Policy Magazine said.

The Saudi-led Arab coalition accused of war crimes in Yemen

In October 2015, Amnesty International accused the (Saudi-led) Arab coalition fighting in Yemen of carrying out unlawful air strikes, some of which amount to war crimes. Amnesty said in a report that it had examined 13 deadly air strikes by the coalition, assembled by Saudi Arabia, that had killed about 100 civilians, including 59 children. “This report uncovers yet more evidence of unlawful air strikes carried out by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, some of which amount to war crimes. It demonstrates in harrowing detail how crucial it is to stop arms being used to commit serious violations of this kind,” said Amnesty’s Donatella Rovera, who headed the group’s fact-finding mission to Yemen.

Amnesty said its researchers had found remnants of two types of internationally banned cluster bombs as it investigated attacks on Saada, a Houthi stronghold in northeastern Yemen. Another rights watchdog, Human Rights Watch, in August accused Saudi forces of using cluster bombs in Yemen.

The Deployment Of The US THAAD Missile In South Korea Signals Start Of New Cold War

Vivek Kumar Srivastava

South East Asia is in the grip of new cold war. There are two clear signals, after the Hague International Tribunals ‘verdict which clearly rejected the Chinese claim on the sea; the first  is that China- Russia have come together on the issue of South China Sea, this is visible as Russia and China have decided to organize  a joint drill in the disputed sea, second US has decided to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea which Seoul has accepted.

USA feels that deployment is necessary to protect it from North Korea  but this logic has been rejected by China. According to the Xinhua News Agency the ‘THAAD, which has a 200 km-range for intercepting missiles, is to be set up some 300 km southeast of Seoul in Seongju county, far from the border with the DPRK. That means the capital and the surrounding areas, the country’s most populated region, will not be protected. While Washington’ s reasoning for the THAAD deployment is untenable, its self-serving motivation sticks out a mile. THAAD’ s X-band radar is believed to have a detection range as far as 2,000 km in forward-based mode. Thus once placed in South Korea, the United States would be able to peer conveniently deep into China and imposing a grave threat to the security interests of the two countries and to regional peace.’

Russia has also come out in open to support China on the deployment. Russian stand is that such deployment will jeopardize the stability in the region and its impact will be quite serious which Russia has termed as the ‘irreparable consequences.’ Russian statement has wider meaning as Russia and China have come closer on several issues in the recent time; from Iran nuclear deal to fate of Assad in Syria they share almost similar sentiments. They have also exhibited the close cooperation in the form of the naval exercises which are symbolic show that ‘We are together’. They had such exercise in 2014 when they went for naval exercises in East China Sea and the last year was the turn of China to show its closeness to Russia when they did the same in the Black sea and the Mediterranean sea. The Russian President Putin has frequented his visits to China; China on the other hand has decided to bolster its economic conditions. Russia has allowed China to play a big role in Central Asia particularly in infrastructure and economic development. The indications are clear that two groups in world have emerged and a kind of balance of power  exist.

The world is changing very fast as the allies are turning the foes as Turkey -US relations have declined in the recent time due to Turkish thinking that in the attempted coup US had some interests. In the meantime Turkey and Russia have attempted to sort out their differences. US is itself attempting to forge a close alliance in the region in which it wants Japan, South Korea and Australia to play an important role, the India is also on invitation list but still its role is unclear. US has its traditional allies in the region since the start of cold war. The Russia and China used to be close but the decade of 1960s saw the sharp decline of their relationship but they have now decided to mend the fences and this sea change is basically an initiative of Putin. He wants to resurrect the bipolar world and to redeem the lost prestige of Russia. China knows that for its economic development Russia is useful as well for balancing the US might its utility is unparallel.

The deployment of the THAAD missile is therefore quite important development for the region though it may take more than one year to make it operational but the serious criticism from China and Russia show that new cold war is on visit. The nature of this war has several new elements which differ from the previous age. The new cold war is not ideological in nature but it is aimed to control the resources and power system, for China the resource considerations are more prominent than any other thing. The control on South China Sea is mainly for the resource control. The closeness with Russia is propelled due to resource hunt which the Russia can offer. Russia in near future will be major exploring country  of the oil- gas resource in the Arctic region and being so close China cannot disown Russia, same way Russia also does not want to lose Syria because it offers a sea avenue for resources  in MENA. For US the power maintenance and resource mobilization are the major objective; hence the control of the South China Sea and to lead its allies is natural policy. It never wants a bipolar or multi polar world. It wants to remain a unilateral power in the world.

New allies are being scouted upon, India is such an ally. US is well aware that India has divorced itself from the nonalignment policy and in the name of the pragmatic foreign policy New Delhi can be brought within its orbit of influence. The new cold war has important role for Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria which may emerge influential players.

The deployment of THAAD if is supported by more intervention by US in the region then the Chinese-Russian reaction will be more stringent. The Chinese policy is clear that it will not allow any state to have any stake in the South China Sea. US for the time being has collaborated with its allies Japan, Australia to play the issue down but what  is the threshold of it is very difficult to know, when this new cold war will change into hot war is also difficult  to predict; but world has moved into a new phase that is now well established after the deployment of THAAD.

KU Leuven Travel Grants for Researchers from Developing Countries 2016

Brief description: KU Leuven is offering travel grants to researchers from OECD countries. The grants are meant to help the researchers pay for a research visit to Belgium.

Application Deadline: 30th September 2016

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing countries (See list below)

To be taken at (country): Belgium

Eligible Fields of Study: Funding is available for research stays at KU Leuven:

• with the aim of specializing in a certain research field, preparing a publication or participating in a training programme
• in the context of university development cooperation.

About the Award: With this programme, KU Leuven wishes to stimulate South-North exchanges. The programme intends to offer new opportunities to researchers to stimulate capacity-building in the South.

The programme is funded from the KU Leuven development cooperation budget, which is managed by the Interfaculty Council for Development Cooperation (IRO). IRO will also select the candidates.

Type: Research Grants

Eligibility: 

• Candidates should have obtained their PhD at least three years prior to applying.
• Candidates should originate from one of the Least Developed Countries, Low Income Countries or Low Middle Income Countries, as indicated on the DAC list of OECD.
• Candidates should be employed by an institution located in one of the countries mentioned above.
• Candidates should be invited and supported by a KU Leuven supervisor who is a senior staff member (ZAP).
• Priority will be given to applicants under the age of fifty.

Selection Criteria: Candidates will be selected on the basis of the following criteria:

• the formal application requirements
• the applicant’s quality
• the development relevance of the proposal
• a well-balanced distribution of the available grants across all nationalities and KU Leuven faculties involved

Number of Awardees: Not stated

List of Countries: Afghanistan, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Armenia, Angola, Kenya, Bolivia, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Cabo Verde, Benin,  Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Bhutan, Congo, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Burundi, Egypt, Cambodia, El Salvador, Central African Republic, Georgia, Chad, Ghana, Comoros, Guatemala, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guyana, Djibouti, Honduras, Equatorial Guinea, India, Eritrea, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Kosovo, Gambia, Kyrgyzstan, Guinea, Micronesia, Guinea-Bissau, Moldova, Haiti, Mongolia, Kiribati, Morocco, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Nicaragua, Lesotho, Nigeria, Liberia, Pakistan, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Malawi, Paraguay, Mali, Philippines, Mauritania, Samoa, Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Swaziland, Nepal, Syrian, Arab Republic, Niger, Tokelau, Rwanda, Ukraine, Sao Tome and Principe, Uzbekistan, Senegal, Vietnam, Sierra Leone, West Bank and Gaza Strip, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu,  Yemen and Zambia

Value of Fellowship: Grants will include:

• a monthly allowance of € 1,500
• a plane ticket (with a maximum of € 1,200)
• insurance coverage during the stay in Leuven.

Duration of Fellowship: Minimum duration of 90 days

How to Apply: Candidates:

1. should send their application to Stefania Schepers before the deadline and use this form to do so
2. additionally will have to send the following documents:

• a copy of their doctoral degree certificate
• an invitation letter from their KU Leuven supervisor
• their CV
• a copy of their passport.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: KU  Leuven

Important Notes: Please be aware that, in accordance with the visa procedure, selected candidates can only travel to Belgium seven weeks after the selection date.

Slavery, War and Presidential Politics

Robert Koehler

As I watched “unity” take hold of the Democratic Party this week, the believer in me wanted to be imbibe it — bottoms up.

Michelle Obama ignited the crowd. “That is the story of this country,” she said. “The story that has brought me to the stage tonight. The story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, who kept on striving, and hoping, and doing what needed to be done.”

And the Big Party opened its arms.

“So that today, I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.”

Slaves?

Wow. I can remember when we didn’t talk like this in public, especially not on a national stage. Acknowledging slavery — at a profound level, in all its immorality — is so much deeper than simply acknowledging racism, which can be reduced to the behavior of ignorant people. But the ownership of human bodies and human souls, total control over people’s lives and the lives of their children, was inscribed in law. And such ownership was a core principle of the “greatest country on earth,” embedded in the economy, embraced by the Founding Fathers with no questions asked.

This isn’t just “history.” It’s wrong. Indeed, the United States of America came into being with a damaged soul. That was the implication packed into Michelle Obama’s words.

But no more, no more. The wild cheers she received when her speech ended seemed to acknowledge a long-, long-delayed public desire for atonement. We’ve become a country that can acknowledge its wrongs and right them.

And electing Hillary Clinton as president — the message continued — would be a further step along this journey toward full equality of all human beings. The Democratic Party has found its unity and stands for what matters.

If only . . .

I can take the infomercial aspect of all this — the pumped fists, the roar of victory, the clichés of American greatness emanating from one speech after another, even the endless media reduction of democracy to horse-race stats — but I am a long way from being aboard the Hillary bandwagon. And despite the lurking specter of Trumpenstein, I remain unconvinced that this year — come on, man, this year — the candidate of the lesser evil is the one I have to vote for.

And I’m not even speaking as a rebellious Berniecrat.

While I remain in awe of what the Bernie Sanders campaign has accomplished in the past year, even Bernie has not articulated, and fails to embody, the fullness of the revolution that has propelled his candidacy beyond all expectation.

“It’s no secret that Hillary and I disagree on a number of issues. That’s what democracy is all about!” Bernie said on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, standing solidly for real political even change as he called for party unity and endorsed Hillary.

He also said: “This election is about ending gross levels of income inequality” and called for serious Wall Street reform, containment of the billionaire class, free state college tuition and the expansion of various social programs.

What he failed to call for is, at the very least, a discussion of the disastrous consequences and hemorrhaging costs of the American war machine, which is the primary cause of the nation’s social impoverishment.

What I’m certain of is that the revolution Sanders has fomented is grounded, in the hearts of his supporters, in the transcendence of war as much as it is grounded in the hellish wrongs of racism and slavery. This wrong is not only part of the deep past, beginning with the conquest of and genocide against the continent’s original inhabitants, but it is alive, economically entrenched and wreaking planetary havoc today. And we can’t even talk about it.

Over the past quarter century, neocons and military-industrialists have vanquished Vietnam Syndrome and the public opposition to war, achieving the solidification of endless war.

“There was significant opposition to the First Gulf War — 22 senators and 183 reps voted against it, including Sanders — but not enough to stop the march to war,” Nicolas J.S. Davies wrote last October on Huffington Post. “The war became a model for future U.S.-led wars and served as a marketing display for a new generation of U.S. weapons. After treating the public to endless bombsight videos of ‘smart bombs’ making ‘surgical strikes,’ U.S. officials eventually admitted that such ‘precision’ weapons were only 7 percent of the bombs and missiles raining down on Iraq. The rest were good old-fashioned carpet-bombing, but the mass slaughter of Iraqis was not part of the marketing campaign. When the bombing stopped, U.S. pilots were ordered to fly straight from Kuwait to the Paris Air Show, and the next three years set new records for U.S. weapons exports. . . .

“Meanwhile, U.S. officials crafted new rationalizations for the use of U.S. military force to lay the ideological groundwork for future wars.”

And Barack Obama’s military budget is the largest ever. When you factor in all military-related spending, Davies points out, the annual cost of U.S. militarism is over a trillion dollars.

Before the value of this spending is addressed, the fact of it has to be acknowledged. And no presidential candidate without the courage to do at least this — open a discussion about the costs and consequences of war — deserves my vote, or yours.

Africa/America

Tom H. Hastings

Recently I have had the great privilege to work with some of the 1,000 Mandela Washington Fellows, a select group of young sub-Saharan African leaders ages 25-35 placed for six weeks at about 40 universities around the US. The young leaders are electrifying.

The opening ceremony, some weeks ago, featured some of the world’s best drummers—Ghanaian—and the usual welcomes from university officials. Then came the opening address by one of the cohort at Portland State University, a young man—not even 30 yet—from Sierra Leone, Ansumana Bangura. He was a 12-year-old boy when the rebels came for his father during the horrific war of the 1990s. His father was at work so they hacked off the boy’s right arm.

Imagine being brutalized, living in wartime, driven from the country to live as an amputee refugee for four years, and repatriated only because the host country’s citizens were suddenly told that “all Sierra Leoneans are terrorists,” and all the refugees had to flee again.

Ansu, who works with slum children in Freetown (capital of Sierra Leone) is a brilliant public speaker, forceful, charismatic, with rhetorical power that connects instantly, stressing equal access and equal opportunity for every child. He is the very definition of resiliency, which is the hallmark of the best of Africa right now.

The Mandela Washington Fellowship (MWF) has forged many new deep connections at Portland State University and, I’ll wager, at all the other host universities around the US. Beyond that, I’ve observed the Fellows developing profound relationships with my fellow Portlanders and I’ll similarly bet that all host communities are also now benefitting from these new relationships with young African leaders from all sectors of all sub-Sarharan African countries. I watch as a young Nigerian pursues knowledge of best practices for floating homes, an innovation that both promises housing relief in his homeland but also a threat if poorly regulated (“That’s how it is now,” he told me). And a young environmental official from Ethiopia engages with public officials and public policy professors and practitioners to seek out the newest US methods of dialing up commuter efficiency while dialing down carbon footprint. She has both science and development degrees and is drawn to Portland’s model in several areas, just as other MW Fellows are learning from other communities across the US.

The MWF grew out of President Obama’s surprise visit to the late Nelson Mandela and began with 500 fellows in 2014, the same in 2015, and expanded to 1000 this year. We are confident that this initiative will weave vital, enduring mutually beneficial relationships, individually and organizationally, in direct links, Africa to America.

While this is a State Department-funded-and-conducted Obama initiative, there is an excellent chance that it will continue, depending on the 2016 election. In our enlightened self-interest, I hope Americans make the choice that will indeed result in this ongoing exchange that ties emerging African leaders from politics to architecture to agriculture to banking to education to energy development and much more to America. Our assumptions about Africa often flip when we meet young women and men who work on peace, human rights, gay and transgender rights, sustainable agriculture, alternative energy, and mix in traditional Africa wisdom and ancient sustainable technologies hybridized with the latest high tech advances.

Continuing the MWF will be good for Africans and good for Americans. Africa is an incredibly rich continent with Russia, China, and America all vying for the most favored status with many of the 54 countries on the continent—this initiative goes a long ways toward strengthening the healthy, positive, peaceful connections that will advantage more Americans and more Africans. Anything else would be a pity.

Gang Violence Rages Across Central America

Cesar Chelala

Gang violence, fueled by the drug traffic in Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean, is having a serious effect on people’s lives and threatens to alter the social fabric of the countries in the region. Central American gangs, also called maras, named after the voracious ants known as marabuntas, are involved in a wide range of criminal activities such as arms and drug trafficking, kidnapping, human trafficking, people smuggling and illegal immigration.

One of the best known Central American gangs, Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13, has an estimated 70,000 members that are active in urban and suburban areas. It originated in Los Angeles in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the United States, Canada, Mexico and Central America. The gang’s activities have called the attention of the FBI and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which have conducted raids and arrested hundreds of gang members. The FBI called MS-13 “America’s most violent gang.”

MS-13 has been particularly active in Los Angeles County, the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, D.C., Long Island, New York, and the Boston area. Their code of conduct includes fierce revenge and cruel retributions. Members of this gang were originally recruited by the Sinaloa in their battle against the Los Zetas Mexican cartels in their ongoing drug war south of the U.S. border.

Many gang members living in the U.S. have been deported back to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, adding to the already serious social problems in those countries. They brought with them crack cocaine and predictably, drug-related crimes were soon on a steep increase. Those gang members deported from the U.S. enlarged the local groups and found easy recruits among the local disenfranchised youth. Today, most of the members are in their twenties, while their leaders are in the late 30s and 40s.

The gangs’ battles with the police for control of working-class neighborhoods were met in each case with strong-hand tactics by the police. They also proved unproductive, since they unleashed more random violence and terror. As a result of each government’s efforts to eliminate them, many gang members returned to the U.S., where they continued their involvement in criminal activities. Today, the gangs have expanded into southern Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, calling for a more organized effort to combat them.

Because of the great loss of the lives they cause, the Pan American Health Organization and also the World Assembly of the World Health Organization have defined violence as a “public health problem.” They proposed an epidemiological approach to address it that consists of a) definition of the problem and gathering of information, b) identifying causes and risk factors, c) development and trial of specific interventions, and d) evaluation of policies’ effectiveness.

In the past, this approach was used successfully in Colombia where, in the 1990s. An agreement was signed between government officials and the leaders of gangs which had been operating in the city of Cali. As a result, the gangs’ leaders stopped their criminal activities and the government officials made a commitment to provide loans and technical training to gang members.

A similar approach is now being used in El Salvador where the government is trying to curb gang activity through an ambitious jobs program complemented by other social measures such as training and provision of jobs that could be followed by the other countries in the region.

Successful approaches suggest that controlling gang violence demands long-term action, even when it might not show immediate results. In addition, prevention activities must be targeted at the youngest sectors of the population, particularly those suffering from abusive conditions at home and that because of poverty and no formal education lack the conditions for fulfilling their basic needs and finding jobs.

An adequate set of actions involves providing job training and psychological assistance, as well as job opportunities and loans to those youngsters. The use of a multifaceted approach may be the best guarantor against the social scourge of gang violence in the Central American region.

It’s Not the Economy, Stupid

David Swanson

The last time a Clinton tried to get into the White House, his campaign motto was “It’s the economy, stupid!”

If you engage with peace organizations, you will very quickly be told repeatedly that nobody gives a damn about distant mass murder, and that consequently a smart organizer will talk to them about something local, such as the local impact of the financial burden of war, or perhaps the militarization of the police, or local recruitment, or local environmental damage from military bases, etc., but mostly the financial cost.

The reasoning behind all such thinking is that people are often busy, overworked, overstressed, concerned with their day-to-day struggles, etc., and so, while some of them might occasionally also take a mild interest in the affairs of others in distant corners of the globe, virtually everyone can be appealed to using local community concerns and, in particular, economic concerns related to their own needs and greed.

The evidence that this line of thinking misses something includes the following:

People often back political candidates who work against their economic interests, but who win their support for other reasons, including race, religion, militarism, nationalism, scapegoating, etc. Blaming China for U.S. poverty, or opposing the TPP and the WTO, or promising fewer wars or the abolition of NATO — these are economic positions, but they are something else as well.

Other people back political candidates who work against their economic interests, but who appeal to other needs. The Democrats are framing themselves as the inclusive, loving, multicultural, corporate militarist party, in contrast to the angry, white, bigot, corporate militarist party. Talking about equal (low) pay for equal work, and paid family leave, support for people with disabilities, equal rights for LGBTQ people, etc. — these are economic positions, and the Democrats defend them as supposed engines of economic growth, but they are something else as well.

People take incredible interest in elections, while taking very, very little interest in activist campaigns for better economic policies. People who try to maintain living wage standards or even stop banker bailouts make up a tiny fraction of the number of people who obsess over candidates’ personalities and related pomp and fluff.

Millions of people take part in some way in religion, which for the majority of them is not a tool for economic advancement, but something else entirely, often — for better or worse — a means of advancing a moral vision.

Activism around protecting the earth’s climate is far more widespread than activism around ending the earth’s wars and preventing nuclear holocaust. Neither disaster is local or economic in a simple immediate and selfish sense. Both activist campaigns are up against that same supposed hurdle. I would suggest that what actually holds back peace activism in comparison to other types of non-local activism is primarily pro-war patriotism and propaganda.

Pro-war propaganda does not focus primarily on any supposed economic benefit of wars. Sure, there are false claims made about militarism serving as a jobs program. But what turns people out in the streets to cheer for wars usually has nothing to do with their busy economic struggles. Rather, it’s a moral vision related to the supposed good work of policing the globe (whether the globe wants it or not), punishing evil monsters, slaughtering inferior populations, rescuing less fortunate peoples, etc.

When people all across the United States suddenly declare “We are all France,” this is not because France is in their neighborhood any more than Syria or Congo or Afghanistan is in their neighborhood. The magic of television and the internet has long made distance irrelevant. When people hold local drives to collect supplies for victims of a hurricane in Central America, it’s not because that helps their budgets or increases their job security. It’s because they have been encouraged to care about others suffering in a country not currently being targeted for war. The same applies to helping victims of natural disasters within the United States — often they are thousands of miles from those helping them. A candle light vigil for victims of 9/11, a marathon against cancer, and a campaign to save rainforests — these and millions of other activities have nothing to do with local economic well-being.

The peace movement of the 1920s was driven by as altruistic a distaste for any human suffering as was the movement to abolish the slave trade in Britain. And it succeeded in so far as it did by advancing a moral argument against war, not a claim that war would hurt your next paycheck.

Of course there is an economic argument against war, but there is also a civil liberties argument, an environmental argument, an argument for safety against the counterproductive impact of war, and — critically — a moral argument against mass murder. And there is powerful potential in making the case for a coherent worldview that outgrows war and manages foreign relations by other means.

My point is not that peace activism is more important than economic activism. And of course economic activism must focus on the economy, stupidly or otherwise. But the need to do so with a passionate vision of a better world remains. At the Democratic Convention now underway, a victim of Trump University began her remarks by saying that Donald Trump had been born into extreme wealth. “And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that,” she said, before denouncing the scams by which he maintained and enlarged his wealth.

The main problem with this is not the nasty schemes by which Trump’s racist slumlord father piled up his money, but that once you’ve claimed that hoarding obscene piles of wealth is just fine you’re never going to rid the world of ripoffs far worse than Trump University — and people know it. People want the billionaires, bankers, and corporations taxed. People want the war profiteering ended. People want widespread prosperity and peace and massive investment in environmental and human needs including free college. They don’t want acceptance of plutocracy except for one plutocrat who’s running for president against another one. They don’t want equal lousy pay, taxes for weapons, but paid family leave for a week or two. That doesn’t excite them.

The Democrats have no idea why Bernie Sanders almost won, even against their organized rigging of the primary. I think this failure to grasp the obvious is in part a reflection of how lesser-evilist thinking is modeled on economic game theory in which human beings are reduced to robots with very limited interests programmed in to them. Only a privileged white person would go off and vote for a decent candidate like Jill Stein, the Democrats say, privileged as they are to not live in any of the countries their own candidate would bomb, and privileged as they are to have forgotten all the damage that she and her husband have done for decades, packing prisons, merging media, outsourcing jobs through NAFTA, destroying welfare, etc. They forget all this by focusing on fear of Donald Trump.

Sure, appealing to fear of Trump is an emotional appeal. But hardcore lesser evilists who recognize how bad Clinton herself is, argue for a vote against Trump and for Clinton, based on the idea that humans won’t act like humans. The theoretical lesser evil humanoid will protest Clinton’s wrongs while campaigning for her and after electing her, threatening her with voting for her again while feeling even more flustered about it than last time — and such a theoretical creature will do so only in swing states, while voting for Jill Stein in non-swing states.

The real world doesn’t work that way. People who join a team join its delusions and distortions. Campaigning for and resisting candidates don’t mix. And people don’t build momentum around mediocre muddling. They will, however, pour energy into a powerful vision of a better world, if allowed to imagine it’s possible.

Provoking Russia

Serge Halimi

Are the leaders of European member states of NATO planning to follow the example of José Manuel Barroso, who became a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs after his term as president of the European Commission? Were they using the NATO summit to prepare for a career switch as consultants to General Dynamics or some other US arms manufacturer? The suggestion is of course absurd — but hardly less so than their announcement at the July summit in Warsaw that NATO will deploy a new mobile unit of 4,000 troops in Poland or one of the Baltic states — within artillery range of the home base of the Russian fleet in the Baltic, and of St Petersburg.

Russian leaders already felt resentful towards NATO — a cold war organisation that ought to have disappeared with the Soviet Union (1) — for meeting in the city where the Warsaw Pact was signed in 1955 under the aegis of the USSR. The views of US army general Curtis Scaparrotti, NATO’s new commander in Europe, won’t have helped: ‘The command structure has to be agile enough that from peacetime to provocation to conflict … is a natural transition’ (2). NATO also invited Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine — not a member of NATO and in a state of simmering conflict with Russia. Beat that for provocation.

Poroshenko heard President Obama restate his ‘strong support for Ukraine’s efforts to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression.’ So western sanctions against Russia will remain in place ‘until Russia fully meets its obligations under the Minsk agreements’ (3). The US and its allies persist, therefore, in obscuring the role of Ukrainian initiatives in Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, as well as in the lack of progress regarding the Minsk agreements.

Why maintain tension between European states and Russia? One reason could be that it enables the US to prevent any rapprochement between them, and ensures, after Brexit, that its most biddable ally, the UK, remains closely bound to Europe’s military destiny. Germany has also increased its military budget and believes that ‘without a fundamental change in policy, Russia will constitute a challenge to the security of our continent in the foreseeable future’ (4). It’s tempting to say the same of NATO.

The sound of drums on the Russian border has been drowned out by other noises. President Obama had to cut short his European trip after the police shootings in Dallas. François Hollande, in his address on 14 July a few hours before the slaughter in Nice, mentioned his hairdresser’s salary — but not the Warsaw summit, where France agreed to contribute to the troop deployment in Baltic states, bordering Russia.

Is War Inevitable in the South China Sea?

Pepe Escobar

Since the recent ruling by The Hague in favor of the Philippines and against China over the South China Sea, Southeast Asia has been engulfed on how to respond. They dithered. They haggled. They were plunged into despair.

It was a graphic demonstration of how “win-win” business is done in Asia. At least in theory.

In the end, at a summit in Vientiane, Laos, the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China finally settled for that household mantra – “defusing tensions”.

They agreed to stop sending people to currently uninhabited “islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features” after ASEAN declared itself worried about land reclamation and “escalations of activities in the area”.

And all this without even naming China – or referring to the ruling in The Hague.

China and ASEAN also pledged to respect freedom of navigation in the South China Sea (which Washington insists is in danger); solve territorial disputes peacefully, through negotiations (that happens to be the official Chinese position), also taking into consideration the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); and work hard to come up with a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (that’s been going on for years; optimistically, a binding text will be ready by the first half of 2017).

So, problem solved? Not really. At first, it was Deadlock City. Things only started moving when the Philippines desisted to mention The Hague in the final statement; Cambodia – allied with China – had prevented it from the start.

And that’s the heart of the matter when it comes to ASEAN negotiating with China. It’s a Sisyphean task to reach consensus among the 10 members – even as ASEAN spins its role as the perfect negotiation conduit. China for its part prefers bilaterals – and has applied Divide and Rule to get what it wants, seducing mostly Laos and Cambodia as allies.

That threat by a peer competitor

The strategic geopolitical centrality of the South China Sea is well known: A naval crossroads of roughly $5 trillion in annual trade; transit sea lanes to roughly half of global daily merchant shipping, a third of global oil trade and two-thirds of all liquid natural gas (LNG) trade.

It’s also the key hub of China’s global supply chain. The South China Sea protects China’s access to the India Ocean, which happens to be Beijing’s crucial energy lifeline. Woody Island in the Paracels, southeast of Hainan island, also happens to be a key bridgehead in One Belt, One Road (OBOR) – the New Silk Roads. The South China Sea is strictly linked to the Maritime Silk Road.

he arbitration panel in The Hague (composed of four Europeans, one American of Ghanaian descent and, significantly, no Asians) issued a ruling that is non-binding; moreover, it was not exactly neutral, as China, one the conflicting parties, simply refused to take part.

Beyond these expressions of mutual ASEAN-China understanding, hardcore action will keep everyone’s juices flowing. The Pentagon, predictably, won’t refrain from its FON (Freedom of Navigation) program, which has recently featured several B-52 overflights in the South China Sea along with the usual US Navy patrols.

But now Beijing is counter punching in style – showing off one of its H-6K long-range nuclear-capable bombers overflying Scarborough Shoal, near the Philippines. That only increased Pentagon paranoia, because the real game in the South China Sea revolves to a large extent over China’s aerial and underwater military strategy.

To understand the progression, we need to go back to the early 1980s, when the Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping set up China’s first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Shenzhen. From the start, the whole Chinese miracle always depended upon China’s eastern seaboard’s fabulous capacity to engage in global trade. More than half of China’s GDP depends on global trade.

But, strategically, China has no direct access to the open seas. Geophysics is implacable: there are islands all around. And geopolitics followed; many of these are and can become a problem.

Wu Shicun, the president of China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies, has been constant over the years; all of Beijing’s actions boil down to securing strategic access to the opens seas. This may be construed in the West as aiming for a “Chinese lake”. But it’s in fact about securing its own naval backyard. And that implies, predictably, deep suspicion about what the US Navy may come up with. The Defense Ministry loses sleep about it 24/7.

For Beijing, it’s crystal clear; the eastern seaboard must be protected at all costs – because they are the entry and exit point of China’s global supply chains. Yet as Beijing improves its military sophistication, the hegemon – or exceptionalist – machine gets itchier and itchier. Because the whole ingrained exceptionalist worldview can only conceive it as a “threat” by a peer competitor.

The larger-than-life “access” drama

From Exceptionalistan’s point of view, it’s all about the myth of“access”. The US must have full, unrestricted “access” to the seven seas, the base of its Empire of Bases, post-Rule Britannia system: the“indispensable nation” ruling the waves.

But now Beijing has reached a new threshold. It’s already in the position to successfully defend the strategic southern island of Hainan. The Yulin naval base in Hainan is the site of China’s expanded submarine fleet, which not only features stalwarts such as the 094A Jin-class submarine, but the capability to deliver China’s new generation ICBM, the JL-3, with an estimated range of 12,000km.

Translation: China now can not only protect, but also project power, aiming ultimately at unrestricted access to the Pacific.

The US counter punch to all this is “Anti-Access”, or A2, plus Area Denial, which in Pentagonese turns out as A2/AD. Yet China has evolved very sophisticated A2/AD tactics, which include cyber warfare; submarines equipped with cruise missiles; and most of all anti-ship ballistic missiles such as the Dongfeng 21-D, an absolute nightmare for those sitting duck billion-dollar US aircraft carriers.

A program called Pacific Vision, funded by the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessments, eventually came up with the Air-Sea Battle concept. Virtually everything about Air-Sea Battle is classified. As the concept was being elaborated, China has mastered the art of very long range ballistic missiles – a lethal threat to the Empire of Bases, fixed and/or floating.

What is known is that the core Air-Sea Battle concept, known in Orwellian Pentagonese as “NIA/D3”,“networked, integrated forces capable of attack-in-depth to disrupt, destroy and defeat adversary forces”. To break through the fog, this is how the Pentagon would trample over Chinese A2/AD. The Pentagon wants to be able to attack all sorts of Chinese command and control centers in a swarm of“surgical operations”. And all this without ever mentioning the word“China”.

So these are the stakes. The indispensable nation’s military hegemony over the whole South China Sea must always be undisputed. Always. But already it is not. China is positioning itself as a cunning, asymmetrical aspirant to “peer competitor”. For the moment Beijing ranks second in the Pentagon’s list of “existential threats” to the US. Were not for Russia’s formidable nuclear power, China would already be number one.

At the same time China does not need to launch any military offensive against an ASEAN member; it’s bad for business. The environment after The Hague’s ruling – as the Laos summit proved – points toward long-term diplomatic solutions. But make no mistake; at some point in the future, there will be a serious confrontation between the US and China over“access” to the South China Sea.