State of emergency declared in eastern Ukraine, as US vows more sanctions against Russia

Niles Williamson

Presaging a further escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, Prime Minster Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Monday declared an official state of emergency in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. He also announced that the rest of the country would be placed on high alert. The eastern Donbass strongholds of separatists opposed to the regime in Kiev that came to power last year after a US- and EU-supported coup have seen renewed hostilities in recent weeks.
Speaking to reporters in New Delhi, India on Sunday, US President Barack Obama blamed Russia for the renewed fighting in eastern Ukraine and vowed to use all options short of war to escalate political and economic pressure on Moscow.
Obama glibly told reporters that the United States has no interest in weakening Russia or devastating its economy. “We have a profound interest, as I believe every country does, in promoting a core principle, which is, large countries don’t bully smaller countries. They don’t encroach on their territorial integrity. They don’t encroach on their sovereignty. And that’s what’s at stake in Ukraine,” he said.
Obama expressed concern over the collapse of a ceasefire agreement signed in Minsk in September, accusing the pro-Russia separatists of fighting “with Russian backing, Russian equipment, Russian financing, Russian training and Russian troops.” To date neither the US government nor the regime in Kiev has provided any solid evidence backing up their repeated claims of direct Russian involvement in eastern Ukraine.
President Obama vowed to “ratchet up” the pressure on Russia and ominously promised that the US government would consider all options “available to us short of a military confrontation” to resolve the ongoing conflict.
At the same time that Obama denounced supposed Russian interference in Ukraine, he reiterated that Washington would continue to give economic support to the Kiev regime, as well as provide equipment and training for its armed forces.
It was announced last week that the United States Army would be sending a contingent of advisers to western Ukraine in the spring to train four companies of the National Guard of Ukraine. At the end of last year, Obama signed the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, which authorizes the president to deliver a large cache of lethal military equipment to the Ukrainian government and implement a new raft of sanctions against Russia at his discretion. (See: US announces plans to deploy military advisers to Ukraine).
Obama’s remarks were part of a coordinated response to a deadly artillery attack in the city of Mariupol on Saturday that struck a residential area, killing 30 civilians and injuring approximately 100 others. An investigation by members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) concluded that Grad and Uragan rockets were fired into the city from rebel-held territory.
After an emergency meeting of NATO and Ukrainian ambassadors on Monday, NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg blamed Russia for the escalating violence in eastern Ukraine. “We condemn the sharp escalation of violence along the cease-fire line in eastern Ukraine by Russia-backed separatists. This comes at great human cost to civilians,” he told reporters.
After the shelling in Mariupol, the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, called for new sanctions against Russia after an “urgent” phone call with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The former Polish prime minister bellicosely tweeted, “Once again, appeasement encourages the aggressor to greater acts of violence. Time to step up our policy based on cold facts, not illusions.”
Responding to the new allegations of support for the anti-Kiev forces in eastern Ukraine and threats of escalating sanctions by European and American leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the Ukrainian army of operating as a foreign legion for NATO. Speaking to students in Moscow on Monday, he stated that the operations of the Ukrainian army were tied to the “geopolitical containment of Russia” rather than the “national interests of the Ukrainian people.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the EU and US of using the attack on Mariupol to “whip up anti-Russian hysteria.” He defended the actions of the separatists, saying they were fighting to defend themselves from the Kiev regime’s new offensive. “They started to act...with the goal of destroying Ukrainian army positions being used to shell populated areas,” he told reporters in Moscow.
Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minster of the rebel Donetsk People’s Republic, denied that the separatists were responsible for the attack on Mariupol. “Kiev decided to shift the blame on us for its erroneous fire from Grad multiple rocket launchers at residential areas,” he told reporters.
The effort by the US and EU to maintain economic sanctions against Russia has been showing signs of strain in recent weeks, with some countries, such as France and Italy, pressing for the improvement of diplomatic and economic relations with Russia. Last week, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini published a paper that outlined possible ways to begin improving diplomatic relations with Moscow.
In the wake of the Mariupol attack, Mogherini has called for an extraordinary session of the EU Foreign Affairs Council. The foreign ministers of the 28 EU member countries will convene in Brussels on Thursday to discuss possible new sanctions against Russia.
Fighting has flared up in the east in the last two weeks in the wake of an assault launched by the Kiev regime on separatist-held areas. The pretext for the new attack was the shelling of a commuter bus that killed 13 people in Volnovakha, a small town on the main highway between Donetsk and Mariupol.
Speaking at a rally in Kiev on January 19, President Petro Poroshenko denounced the attack, which he blamed on the separatists, and vowed that his government would “not give away one scrap of Ukrainian land.” That same day the Ukrainian military was authorized by Poroshenko to launch a “massive assault” on separatist-held positions in the east.
The Kiev regime launched an offensive in an attempt to solidify its control over the Donetsk International Airport. In an embarrassing turn of events, pro-Russian separatists succeeded at the end of last week in repelling the attack and dislodging Ukrainian troops and right-wing militia fighters from the airport’s main terminal. The symbolically and strategically important airport, the site of intense fighting between both sides for the last several months, has been nearly completely destroyed by relentless artillery bombardment.
Shelling in Donetsk on Monday damaged a power station at the Zasyadko mine, temporarily trapping 496 miners underground. Temporary power generators were used to bring the mine’s elevators back online and the miners were gradually evacuated.
Pro-Russian separatists have moved to surround the government-controlled town of Debaltseve, where hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers taking part in the renewed offensive have encamped. The town is located on the main highway and rail line connecting the separatist strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk. At least seven Ukrainian soldiers have been reported killed and 24 wounded in the last day of fighting in the Luhansk region.

US resumes drone strikes in Yemen

Thomas Gaist

Just days after Houthi rebels in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa toppled the US-backed government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, Washington has resumed its drone war against the impoverished country, killing a 12-year-old boy and two alleged Al Qaeda militants in a missile strike against a car traveling in the eastern Marib province.
The strike was carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, US officials told the Wall Street Journal. The CIA administers one of two US targeted killing programs directed against Yemen, with the other managed by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
New waves of drone strikes against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) are currently in preparation, President Barack Obama and US military officials said Sunday. The US has launched hundreds of drone strikes against alleged terrorist targets in Yemen in recent years.
Monday’s strike comes amid indications of preparations for expanded US and NATO military action in Yemen and a growing list of other countries. US Secretary of State John Kerry pointed to Nigeria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and the Central African Republic as candidates for new US military operations in remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.
President Obama announced Monday that he would cut short his visit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to travel to Riyadh for discussions with Saudi leaders focused on the situation in Yemen and the US-led war in Iraq and Syria.
Obama administration national security official Ben Rhodes told Reuters that the meetings would focus on “the leading issues where we cooperate very closely with Saudi Arabia,” so as to insure “good alignment” with regard to US-Saudi “overlapping interests.”
US efforts to train Syrian opposition fighters are being closely coordinated with the Saudi monarchy, Rhodes said.
In statements on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” program last Sunday, Senators John McCain, a Republican, and Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, highlighted the bipartisan support enjoyed by the Obama administration as it plans to unleash yet another surge of military violence across broad areas of the Middle East and Africa.
Warning that Iran is “on the move in Bahrain” and is “winning,” McCain called for new training missions, Special Forces deployments, and air and drone campaigns against Iran’s regional allies, including the Syrian government and Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). He also urged an escalation of the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“Iran is on the march throughout the region,” McCain said, adding, “The Iranians are now either dominant or extremely influential in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen. AQAP and the ISIS in both Iraq and Syria are doing quite well. There is no strategy to defeat them.”
“We need more boots on the ground,” McCain said. “Thousands of young people all over the world” are flocking to the banners of ISIS and similar groups, he warned.
Acknowledging that this was “a tough thing for Americans to swallow,” McCain called for deployment of “Special Forces” and “air controllers,” as well as “intelligence” and “other capabilities” to Yemen and areas along the Syrian and Iraqi borders.
“We can’t train young people in Syria and send them back into Syria to be barrel-bombed by Bashar Assad,” McCain said, making the case for a campaign to “neutralize” Assad’s air forces with the imposition of a “no-fly zone.”
Feinstein repeatedly noted her agreement with McCain during the talk show, warning of the threat posed by growing Iranian power and saying it was necessary to take “a good look at our policy with respect to Yemen.”
She said, “My concern is, where is Iran going? Is Iran trying to begin the development of an Iranian crescent?”
Feinstein claimed Monday that AQAP had already attempted to smuggle four bombs—specially designed to evade metal detectors—into the US mainland. She called for new deployments of Special Forces units to “take out” the group’s leadership and demanded further military aid to US-allied governments in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
Asked whether she favored new ground troop deployments, Feinstein avoided a direct answer while clearly implying her support. The US must “relook” at its policy in relation to Syria, she said, expressing agreement with McCain that the US must not “tolerate Assad.”
Speaking on behalf of the Obama administration, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough told “Face the Nation” that the Obama administration is preparing to expand military operations aimed at “destroying… manifestations of Al Qaeda” in South Asia, East Africa and North Africa.
McDonough said that the White House has sought to negotiate a “political agreement” with the Houthi militants who have taken control of the Yemeni capital that would allow the US military and CIA to “keep on the offensive against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.”
The US embassy in Yemen is being closed to the public and is suspending all consular services for an indefinite period of time, US officials announced Monday. The US embassy is closing because it is now surrounded by “chaos,” an anonymous State Department official told Reuters. The US already carried out a partial evacuation of embassy staff last week.

Syriza forms coalition government with right-wing Independent Greeks

Robert Stevens

It took just hours for the leftist pretensions of Syriza, (the Coalition of the Radical Left) to be exposed following its victory in Sunday’s Greek general election.
Syriza won 36.3 percent of the vote, obtaining 2,246,064 votes, but its final tally of 149 seats fell just short of the 151 needed for an absolute majority in the 300-strong parliament.
On Monday morning, Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras held talks lasting barely an hour with Panos Kammenos, leader of the right-wing, anti-immigrant Independent Greeks (ANEL). Following the talks, Kammenos announced that the Greek government would be a Syriza-Independent Greeks coalition.
Tsipras, seeking to widen support for the coalition, held talks with To Potami leader Stavros Theodorakis on Monday evening. While Theodorakis previously ruled out sitting in a Syriza-led cabinet, he stressed Monday the need for a “patriotic action plan.”
The alliance with ANEL underscores Syriza’s character as a bourgeois party, based on privileged layers of the petty bourgeoisie, which articulates the interests of sections of the Greek capitalist class and international capital.
The Syriza-ANEL government is the fulfilment of the “new patriotic alliance” that Tsipras pledged at his final election rally last week. It is just as committed to the defence of capitalism and its international institutions, including the European Union and NATO, as the discredited conservative New Democracy-led government it has replaced. ANEL arose from a right-wing split-off from New Democracy (ND) in February 2012. It polled just 4.68 percent (13 seats) in the election.
Commenting on Syriza’s programme just days before the election, the Financial Times said the party in government would initially carry out “cost-free, or relatively inexpensive, gesture politics” such as reinstating 595 cleaners fired by the last government. Behind such token gestures, however, the real task of the Syriza government will be to prepare the political and social basis for an even greater onslaught against the working class.
Syriza’s coalition with ANEL was prepared well in advance. In March 2013, Syriza entered into a “front” with ANEL based on efforts to save the Cypriot banks with aid from the European Union (EU).
Following Monday’s talks, the Protothema newspaper reported that “Syriza and ANEL have already reached an agreement on the issue of the Greek president and ANEL’s red lines on national issues will be respected by its leftist coalition partner.”
ANEL’s “red lines” are of a thoroughly reactionary character. Like the National Front in France and similar ultra-right formations, its complaint over EU-dictated austerity is that it has undermined Greek capitalism. Its nationalist and racist policies include demands for the persecution and deportation of undocumented immigrants, under the guise of “national security.”
Syriza’s victory is by no means the popular endorsement claimed by the media and its various pseudo-left apologists. Nearly 40 percent of the electorate did not vote, with turnout at just 63 percent (6.3 million out of an electorate of 9.9 million).
This is extraordinarily low, given the blanket media coverage of the election and its presentation as the most important in Greece’s modern history. The turnout was lower than in the May 2012 election (65.1 percent), when Syriza made its first electoral breakthrough.
Tspiras’s party is the undeserving beneficiary of widespread hostility to New Democracy and especially the social democratic PASOK, which have ruled Greece since the fall of the 1967-1974 military junta.
PASOK was virtually wiped out, managing to win just 13 seats, with 4.7 percent of the vote, only just passing the 3 percent needed for parliamentary representation. Most of Syriza’s support came from layers previously supporting PASOK.
ND finished second with 76 seats, having obtained 27.8 percent of the vote. It will form the parliamentary opposition. The fascist Golden Dawn won 6.3 percent of the vote, securing 17 seats and finishing third. The newly formed populist To Potami (The River) come in fourth, with 6.1 percent of the vote and 17 seats. The Stalinist Communist Party of Greece gained 15 seats, winning 5.5 percent of the vote.
Syriza’s programme has been developed in close collaboration with sections of the ruling elite who disagree with economic policies based solely on austerity, as advocated by Germany under Chancellor Angela Merkel. In the Thessaloniki Programme that Syriza put forward for the election, the party stressed that, as opposed to the ND government’s perspective of building an alliance only “with the German government,” Syriza was “ready to negotiate, and we are working towards building the broadest possible alliances in Europe.”
German government officials have ruled out any easing of the terms of the debt repayment program imposed on Greece by the so-called “troika” (the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank). Following the announcement of the election result, Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said, “We believe Greece has accepted terms that are not off the table after the election day.” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said, “There are rules, there are agreements. Whoever understands these things knows the numbers, knows the situation.”
A European Central Bank (ECB) official cited in the Wall Street Journal said, “Mr. Tsipras must pay. Those are the rules of the game. There is no room for unilateral behavior in Europe. That doesn’t rule out a rescheduling of the debt.”
Those comments were backed up by ECB executive board member Benoît Coeuré, who told a French radio station, “If he [Tsipras] doesn’t pay, it’s a default and it’s a violation of the European rules.”
But Syriza’s support for the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing policy and its demands for selective debt restructuring have been endorsed by the Financial Times and other representatives of capital.
The White House issued a press release stating that “we look forward to working closely” with the new government. After first dropping on news of the Greek election result, the euro climbed for the first time in three days against the dollar following the announcement of the Syriza-ANEL government. The FTSE 100 stock index finished up 19.57 points, or 0.29 percent.

Russia and US end collaboration on nuclear disarmament

Clara Weiss

Russia and the United States ended their collaboration in the disposal of nuclear waste in mid-December, according to a report in the Boston Globe on Monday. After the US, Russia is the second largest nuclear power in the world. Together Washington and Moscow own 90 percent of global nuclear weapons.
Within the framework of nuclear disarmament treaties, which came into force in the early 1990s, the US and Russia had agreed that American specialists would assist with the securing and destruction of nuclear weapons and materials so that they were not sold or passed on to terrorists.
According to the Globe report, the US has spent $2 billion to date on the so-called cooperative threat reduction programme, and had planned a further $100 million for this year. “Since the cooperative agreement began, US experts have helped destroy hundreds of weapons and nuclear-powered submarines, pay workers’ salaries, install security measures at myriad facilities containing weapons material across Russia and the former Soviet Union, and conduct training programmes for their personnel,” the newspaper wrote.
At a three-day meeting in Moscow in mid-December, the Russians declared that they rejected all further cooperation with the US in the securing and destruction of nuclear weapons. Prior to the Globe report, there had been no official statement about this ending of cooperation.
The newspaper reported that several dozen leading figures had participated on both sides, including officials from the US Energy Department, the Pentagon and the State Department, as well as several Russian military experts and government representatives.
From 1 January, the expansion of security equipment was halted at some of Russia’s seven closed nuclear sites, where large quantities of highly enriched uranium and plutonium are located. The joint securing of 18 civilian nuclear depots, as well as two sites that transform highly enriched uranium into a harmless substance, has been stopped. The construction of hi-tech surveillance systems at 13 nuclear depots and the installation of radiation detectors at Russian ports, airports and border crossings are also at risk.
The ending of cooperation did not come as a surprise. In November, the chairman of the Russian federal agency for nuclear energy, Sergei Kiriyenko, told US government representatives that Russia was not planning any new joint contracts in 2015 for nuclear disarmament.
US government officials expressed their disappointment to the Boston Globe about the ending of cooperation. In reality, the Russian move was predictable and effectively provoked by last year’s aggressive policies on the part of the US and European Union (EU).
The ending of cooperation is above all the result of the provocative actions of US and German imperialism in Ukraine. Washington and Berlin supported a putsch last February that brought a regime to power that not only intends to join NATO, but also has raised the prospect of Ukraine’s nuclear rearmament.
Until the Budapest Agreement of 1994, the world’s third largest nuclear stockpile was in Ukraine. In the Budapest memorandum, the Ukraine government promised to relinquish all nuclear weapons. In exchange, the US, Russia, Britain, France, China and Germany guaranteed the borders of Ukraine at the time.
The announcement of the ending of cooperation in nuclear disarmament reflects extreme military tensions. In the face of a civil war in Ukraine and NATO’s rearming against Russia, the Kremlin is signalling that it no longer trusts American specialists with the checking and destruction of nuclear weapons.
The nuclear disarmament New START treaty, which came into force at the beginning of 2011, will still apply. According to the Stockholm-based peace research institute SIPRI, however, the US and Russia disarmed much more slowly between 2013 and 2014 than they had done between 2012 and 2013.
According to the report, the US had reduced its total number of warheads by 400 to 7,300. Of these, 1,900 are ready to be deployed. In Russia, the total fell by 500 to 8,000, of which 1,600 are ready for deployment. According to New START, each country is expected to reduce its strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550. SIPRI expert Phillip Schell told German news channel NTV, “It is relatively clear that this has nothing to do with a genuine process of disarmament.”
Shortly before the final ratification of the treaty in 2011, cables released by WikiLeaks exposed plans for war by NATO against Russia.
Both Russia and the US are once again rearming their nuclear arsenals, although the US invests by far the largest sums of money in its nuclear weapons programme. As the New York Times reported in November 2014, the Obama administration plans to begin the investment of what will eventually amount to $1.1 trillion in nuclear weapons over the coming three decades. $350 billion is to be used up in the coming 10 years alone.
In addition, the US published a military blueprint at the end of 2014, outlining US preparations for military interventions around the globe, as well as for a third world war.
In contrast to the United States, Russia is not an imperialist country. It functions chiefly as a supplier of energy to the world market and as a sales market for global concerns. The total value of all Russian shares was put at $531 billion in November, above all due to western sanctions. This is less than one US company alone, Apple, with a share value of $620 billion.
But precisely because of Russia’s economic and political weakness, the Kremlin sees nuclear weapons as the only possibility of strengthening its position in negotiations with the imperialist powers and preparing for a potential war with NATO member states.
In this context, the cancelling of the agreement on disarming Russian nuclear weapons is a further sign of the growing danger of a war between the two nuclear powers, the US and Russia.

US announces plans to deploy military advisers to Ukraine

Niles Williamson

The head of the United States Army Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, announced on Wednesday that a contingent of US soldiers will be dispatched to Ukraine in the spring to undertake the training of four companies of the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU). The exact number of American soldiers who will be stationed at the Yavoriv Training Area outside the western city of Lvov has yet to be determined.
The highly provocative move, which follows the positioning of US and NATO forces in Poland and the Baltic states and escalating threats of a military confrontation with Russia, came as the Kiev government steps up its war against pro-Russian separatists in the Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region.
Lt. Gen. Hodges made his announcement on his first visit to Kiev where he met with the commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Lt. Gen. Anatoliy Pushnyakov and the acting commander of the NGU Lt. Gen. Oleksandr Kryvyenko. Hodges told reporters after the meeting he was “impressed by the readiness of both military and civil leadership to change and reform.”
Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Vanessa Hillman told Defense News the training mission was part of a State Department effort “to assist Ukraine in strengthening its law enforcement capabilities, conduct internal defense, and maintain rule of law.” The Obama administration has so far committed $19 million from the Global Security Contingency Fund to help build up and train the NGU.
Disbanded in 2000, the National Guard was reestablished in March of last year in the aftermath of the US and EU-supported and fascist-backed coup that ousted democratically elected President Victor Yanukovych. The new National Guard is being developed as a light infantry, rapid response force aimed at assisting the suppression of the anti-Kiev, Pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region.
In addition to the deployment of advisers, the US has also been supplying Ukraine with heavy military equipment necessary to fight the separatists. On Monday, the US Embassy in Kiev announced the delivery of an armored Kozak mine-resistant personnel carrier to the State Border Guard Service (SBGS).
The US also recently delivered 35 smaller armored trucks as well as personal protective gear for use by the SBGS along the eastern border with Russia and against separatist held areas. SBGS spokesman Andriy Demchenko told the Southeast European Times the armored vehicles will "depart to the eastern border area for patrolling between checkpoints. Armored vehicles are not required for peaceful areas, we need it [in the east] to increase the efficiency of border monitoring and to protect the State Border Guard Service staff."
In a confrontational move at the end of last year, US President Barack Obama signed into law the Ukraine Freedom Support Act. The bill, which passed unanimously in both houses of Congress, authorizes the president to deliver a cache of over $350 million in military equipment to the Kiev regime over the next three years. This potential aid includes anti-tank and anti-armor weaponry, grenade launchers, mortars, machine guns and surveillance drones.
The intensification of US support for the Kiev regime and its operation against pro-Russia separatists comes as intense fighting and shelling has erupted in the east, particularly in and around the city of Donetsk.
While fighting continued over the strategically and symbolically important Donetsk International Airport, Ukrainian officials acknowledged control over the main terminal had been ceded to the separatists. Despite admitting this loss Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko insisted that Ukrainian armed forces remained in control of the airport runway and control tower.
At least nine civilians were reported killed and another 20 injured Thursday morning when mortar shells struck a public transit stop, destroying a trolley bus and a nearby car. Both sides blamed the other for the deadly attack. Representative of the Donetsk People’s Republic accused a covert unit backed by the regime in Kiev, which, they said, had set up inside the city and fired the mortar from the back of a pickup truck.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov released a statement denouncing the attack as a “crime against humanity… aimed at disruption of efforts to regulate the Ukrainian crisis peacefully.”
Meanwhile at Unity Day Rally in Kiev, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk blamed Russia for the bus attack, stating, “Today Russian terrorists again committed a terrible act against humanity. Russia bears responsibility for this.”
Speaking to reporters on Thursday Ukrainian military spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov stated that six soldiers had been killed and another 16 taken captive before they decided to pull back. Other social media reports indicate that at least 37 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the fighting.
Social media posts by George Tuka, head of the nationalist volunteer aid group People’s Home Front, stated that a number of soldiers were killed when a portion of the terminal’s second floor ceiling collapsed in on them. After months of fighting, the main airport terminal has been laid waste by bombardment from mortar shells and Grad rockets.
On Wednesday, Dymtro Yarosh, head of the fascist Right Sector organization and a member of the Ukrainian parliament, was wounded by shrapnel from a grad rocket in the course of fighting near the airport. Yarosh was leading a volunteer battalion formed by Right Sector, which has been at the forefront of military operations against pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region.
Fighting also flared up this week near the eastern city of Luhansk. The Ukrainian military claimed that Check Point 31 on the border with Russia came under attack on Wednesday by highly trained Russian soldiers who routed the troops and subsequently took over the post.
In a speech given Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko made the unsubstantiated claim that 9,000 Russian soldiers were currently fighting with the separatists in the east and appealed for more military aid from Europe and the United States. Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of NATO, refused to confirm the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine insisting instead that there had been “an increase in Russian equipment inside eastern Ukraine.” As it has in the past, Russia denied the accusations that its soldiers are fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Crisis talks in London over Islamic State

Paul Mitchell

US Secretary of State John Kerry joined 20 of the 60 or so “coalition” states in London on Thursday in crisis talks over the offensive by the Sunni militants of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
ISIS controls most of eastern Syria and western Iraq.
It was the first time the US-led coalition had met since the Paris attacks by gunmen affiliated with al Qaeda on the magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket.
Participating in the UK/US-hosted talks were Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Press releases said they were there to discuss how to support Iraqi and Kurdish armed forces, cut ISIS financing, counter its propaganda and provide humanitarian assistance.
Kerry said, “The purpose of coming here is to bring everybody’s best advice, everybody’s thoughts about where there may be weaknesses, everybody’s thoughts about things we can do better, put that together, improve our own performance and operations, and lay down the strategy for the days ahead.”
He made clear what he meant when boasting that some 2,000 coalition air strikes had halted or reversed the momentum of the jihadist group, reclaimed some 700 square kilometres and killed half its leadership since August, adding that Iraqi forces would be getting lots of M16 rifles “very, very shortly.”
“We need to move ahead on every single front, militarily, but also through law enforcement, through intelligence sharing, by attacking the root causes so that terrorist appeals fall flat and foreign recruits are no longer enticed to go to a place and wreak havoc on it,” Kerry added.
Kerry’s remarks followed the State of the Union address January 20 by President Barack Obama, who insisted air strikes were effective. “In Iraq and Syria, American leadership—including our military power—is stopping ISIL’s (IS) advance,” Obama said. “Instead of getting dragged into another ground war in the Middle East, we are leading a broad coalition, including Arab nations, to degrade and ultimately destroy this terrorist group.”
UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said progress against ISIS was slow, but the coalition was determined to defeat it. “This isn’t going to be done in three months or six months. It’s going to take a year, two years to push ISIL back out of Iraq but we are doing the things that need to be done in order to turn the tide,” Hammond asserted.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi warned that his country’s military capability was suffering from low oil prices and pleaded with the conference to provide more weapons and training. Baghdad has criticised Washington for not doing “enough” to destroy ISIS.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron told Abadi that he was ready to help rebuild the Iraqi military so they could carry out a sustained ground offensive against ISIS, but stopped short of making any new commitments.
“The threat from extremist terror you face in Iraq is also a threat we face here in the United Kingdom,” he said. “We will do everything we can to help stop foreign fighters coming to your country and creating the mayhem we see today.”
European police agency Europol estimates up to 5,000 European Union citizens have joined ISIS.
On January 16, Cameron met with Obama to discuss the escalation of military operations by the two countries in the Middle East, further NATO provocations against Russia and, in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack in France, greater domestic repression in the name of the “war on terror.” Cameron wanted Obama’s cooperation in putting “pressure” on US Internet companies such as Facebook and Twitter to work more closely with UK intelligence agencies. He has pledged to implement a “snoopers’ charter” Communications Bill, giving the British intelligence agencies greater powers to access encrypted communications.
The London meeting took place a day after Kurdish forces in northern Iraq said they had cleared ISIS from nearly 500 square kilometres of territory and broken a key supply line to Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul, which ISIS seized in June 2104. Reports earlier this month in the American press suggested that the US troops sent to Iraq by Obama are on the verge of entering direct combat with ISIS.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that an Iraqi counteroffensive to retake Mosul “will be the centrepiece” of the US-led military efforts for early 2015. WSJ also revealed that the total of US and allied “trainers and advisers” deployed in Iraq has reached 5,000, considerably higher than the figures usually cited for this effort.
Over the last period, ISIS has scored a number of propaganda successes, which many analysts see as a big factor in its recruitment of thousands of international volunteers. One shows captured Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasaesbeh—ISIS claimed it had downed his plane using a heat-seeking missile—describing the way the US lays down operations against ISIS. “There are American bases in Qatar where the missions are planned, targets are decided, and assignments are distributed,” Kasaesbeh tells the interviewer, adding, “They draw out the missions for every participating country a day before. The participating parties are informed of their assignments by 4 o’clock the next day. The Americans use aerial snipers, satellites, spies, and drones taking off from Gulf countries to determine and study targets. We are given aerial maps and pictures of the targets.”
Captured British journalist John Cantlie has appeared in several IS propaganda videos apparently railing against the growth of “dollar-linked fiat currencies” and promoting ISIS plans to bring in a new currency based on a return to some sort of gold standard.
German journalist Jurgen Todenhofer, the first western journalist granted access to ISIS after spending time in Mosul, declared, “ISIS is much stronger than we think here.”
He described how it is supported by “an almost ecstatic enthusiasm that I have never encountered in any war zone” and is implementing “social welfare” and a “school system.” Todenhofer concludes that ISIS cannot be overcome by Western intervention or air strikes.
On January 19, the US Central Command was forced to take down its Twitter feed after a group declaring its sympathy with ISIS hacked the Command’s social media accounts, just as Obama was delivering a speech on cyber security, and replaced its logos with an image of a hooded fighter and the words “CyberCaliphate” and “I love you ISIS”.
ISIS’s growth is the responsibility of the US, which has consciously promoted fratricidal sectarian warfare in order to overthrow the Baathist party of former president Saddam Hussein and prepare new efforts to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria. These conditions enabled Al Qaeda and ISIS—neither of which existed in Iraq before the US-led invasion—to gain a foothold in the country.
Like the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the latest war in Iraq and Syria is a predatory intervention aimed at securing imperialist domination over the resource-rich and geo-strategic Middle East. Its purpose is to stabilise the deeply unpopular US-backed regime in Iraq and effect regime change in Syria. That is the real agenda behind the London talks.

Financial markets celebrate European Central Bank launch of €1 trillion quantitative easing program

Nick Beams

The European Central Bank (ECB) committed itself to a quantitative easing (QE) program of at least €1.1 trillion after announcing Thursday that it would buy sovereign debt and other financial assets to the tune of €60 billion a month to September 2016, and possibly beyond.
The decision was announced by ECB President Mario Draghi after a series of negotiations and manoeuvres in recent months aimed at circumventing German opposition to the plan. Bowing to that opposition, Draghi announced that the region’s 19 central banks would make 80 percent of the purchases and be responsible for any risks.
The official rationale for the decision is that the QE program is needed to combat deflationary pressures in the euro zone—inflation turned negative last month—and boost the region’s economy, which has still not reached the levels of output attained in 2007.
But the measures will have little or no impact on the real economy. Rather, they are aimed at making available further supplies of ultra-cheap cash for financial speculation, while governments across the region press ahead with so-called “structural reforms” to worsen the social position of the working class.
Draghi said the decision had been taken with the aim of lifting inflation rates close to but below 2 percent. But with no evidence QE will have any such impact, the statement amounted to a commitment to open-ended monetary expansion.
The markets celebrated because both the extended time frame and the monthly volume of bond purchases exceeded expectations. Economists had predicted the monthly injection would be €50 billion.
European stocks continued their rise of the last few days, reaching new seven-year highs. In the US, all three major stock indexes rose substantially, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average shooting up 259 points.
The value of the euro fell further, fueling hopes on the continent that the plunging European currency will boost exports.
The mood of the financial speculators, who will benefit to the tune of tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars as a result of the decision, was summed up by Laurence Fink, the chief executive officer of the massive hedge fund BlackRock. Speaking at the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of the world’s billionaires in Davos, Switzerland, where this year’s theme is inequality, he said: “We’ve seen over the last few years you have to trust in Mario. The market should never, as we have seen now, the market should not doubt Mario.”
The decision to begin the QE program was not unanimous. German Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann and Germany’s representative on the ECB’s executive board, Sabine Lautenschläger, voiced their opposition to the move, with Austrian, Dutch and Estonian central bank governors also reportedly expressing reservations.
Weidmann has called QE “sweet poison,” as it lets European governments off the hook when it comes to carrying out debt-reduction programs.
Draghi said the bank’s governing council had taken these issues “into account, and that’s why this decision will mitigate those concerns.” The chief concession to Germany and other critics is that 80 percent of purchases will be carried out by national central banks, which will bear the risks.
The depth of opposition was indicated in a Financial Times report which said that, while paying lip service to ECB independence, “German officials were privately seething… that the bank had decided to embark on QE.”
The effect of ECB’s concession is to increase national divisions over policy and undermine the principle that the ECB acts in the interests of the euro zone as a whole. In the longer term, it adds to concerns that the entire project of monetary union is inherently unviable and the euro currency itself may collapse.
The Financial Times cited one unnamed euro zone finance minister who said “the problem with purchases by national banks is that it sends a signal that the euro zone is not moving in the direction of greater mutualisation of debt, something that will be necessary in the longer term for a successful single currency.”
Earlier this month, as it was becoming apparent that concessions would be made to the German position, the governor of the Bank of Italy, Ignazio Visco, opposed the abandonment of risk-sharing. “We would be well advised to maintain the procedures that [are used] in all our monetary policy interventions: risk should be shared across the euro system as a whole,” he said.
While making concessions to Germany, Draghi also attempted to assuage concerns that national divisions were being introduced. He said the governing council would retain control “over all the design features of the program and the ECB will coordinate the purchase, thereby safeguarding the singleness of the Eurosystem’s monetary policy.” However, his remarks could not cover over the divisions that exist and are becoming more open.
Speaking at the Davos meeting, German Chancellor Angela Merkel avoided any direct criticism of Draghi and the ECB, claiming Germany had a tradition of supporting independent central bank decisions. But she made clear that the austerity drive, which her government has promoted across the euro zone, should be deepened. Responding to critics that Germany was promoting austerity for its own sake, rather than growth, Merkel said healthy finances were necessary and debt had to be kept down.
According to a Financial Times report, Merkel’s message, conveyed both in her speech and in her responses to questions that followed, was that with additional monetary loosening, governments might be tempted to “buy time and avoid doing structural reforms.” Merkel said she was not surprised that the ECB decision was regarded as controversial because it allowed uncompetitive companies to survive, at least in the short term.
The national divisions and conflicts reflected in the structure of the European QE program are not confined to that region, but are expressed more broadly. One of the consequences of the decision will be to further depress the value of the euro, already at an 11-year low, sending it closer to parity with the US dollar and consequently worsening the American trade position.
In the past week, central banks in Denmark, Turkey, India, Peru and Canada have announced cuts in interest rates, which will lower the value of their currencies.
The Canadian central bank, which made a surprise decision to cut its rate on overnight loans by 0.25 percentage points on Wednesday—the first such reduction in almost five years—said the sharp fall in oil prices had increased downside risks on inflation and financial stability. An interest rate cut was needed to return the economy to full output, it said.
Since Australia, like Canada, is a commodity-exporting country, the Canadian decision has increased pressure on the Australian central bank to reduce rates.
Together with the QE programs in Europe and Japan, the effect of these measures is to lower the value of the various currencies and apply upward pressure on the US dollar. In effect, this week’s decision represents an escalating currency war in which each of the participants tries to offload the effects of deflation onto its rivals.
Yesterday’s European QE decision will not bring economic recovery. Instead, it will intensify the deepening global conflict between rival economies.

Measles outbreak in California spreads to six other states

Kelvin Martinez

A measles outbreak in California has now spread to six other states and Mexico, infecting at least 70 people, according to public health officials.
Measles is an extremely contagious respiratory disease and can be easily transmitted through public spaces like hospitals and schools. Measles can be dangerous especially to the elderly and small children, and can lead to blindness. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), for every 1,000 cases of measles, one or two children die.
The most recent outbreak in California has been linked to tourists visiting the Disneyland theme parks in Southern California last December, who most likely brought the disease from abroad. The majority of infections are in California, while Colorado, Utah, Washington and Oregon have also reported cases. Most patients reported feeling ill after visiting the park in December, while some people were exposed to others who traveled to the parks.
The incubation period (the time in which the measles is most transmittable) for people exposed at the Disney parks has ended, but many secondary infections can still occur, especially for people who have not been vaccinated. The symptoms include fever, runny nose, cough, and a rash all over the body. It is recommended that those who are contagious avoid public spaces and that unvaccinated people in contact with an infected patient be quarantined for 21 days.
The CDC recommends that children receive two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. The disease, declared to be eliminated in 2000, has made a comeback in the US, which saw 644 measles infections in 27 states last year. Most of the infections were brought from the Philippines, which experienced a measles epidemic. The disease can quickly spread among those who have not been vaccinated due to personal beliefs or those too young to be vaccinated.
In California, two patients at the Oakland Medical Center’s outpatient clinic exposed “less than 100 patients” to infection said Stephen Parodi, director of hospital operations for Kaiser Permanente, Northern California. To avoid spreading the virus, hospital staff had to close the rooms where the infected patients had been treated, and contact any patients who might have been exposed.
School officials in several California school districts told unvaccinated students to stay home after infected students showed up at school, including 24 students at Hunting Beach High School. Some parents have opted out of vaccinations because of a discredited study linking the vaccine to autism.
According to William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, one dose of the MMR vaccine is about 92 percent effective, while a second dose is 98 percent effective. The measles vaccine’s effectiveness can fade over several decades, however, and and even countries in Western Europe have had large outbreaks of the disease, largely because of low vaccination rates.
This week, Disneyland and the California Department of Public Health told reporters that it was safe for tourists to visit the park unless they are unvaccinated. Officials also warned parents not to bring babies under 1 year old to Disneyland and other crowded venues that attract international travelers, such as airports. Disneyland has said that five employees have been infected and everyone who has been in contact with them have been put on paid leave.
Some parents have opted out of the mandatory vaccine shot for young children, citing personal beliefs. According to the LA Times, 9.5 percent of kindergartners at Capistrano Unified in south Orange County (south of Los Angeles) in 2013 were exempted from measles shots citing personal beliefs, while the rate was 14.8 percent in Santa-Monica-Malibu Unified. The statewide rate for that year was 3.1 percent. Public health officials are worried that low vaccination rates can spread an already highly contagious disease.
Orange County Public Health Officer Dr. Eric Handler told the L.A. Times, “There's the tug here between a very effective vaccine and a very infectious virus. And so when you have a scenario where hundreds of people get exposed, then even if the vaccine is 99% good after two doses, you're going to have a handful of people who are going to get sick.”
The last major outbreak of measles in California occurred in 1989 which caused 75 deaths in the state, out of 120 deaths nationwide. Since then, federal guidelines have recommended two doses of the vaccine. Prior to widespread use of the vaccine, the United States saw 4 million cases of measles every year, with 400 to 500 deaths. The vaccination of children entering public school, especially in making vaccines more available, led to the elimination of endemic measles infection in the US by 2000.
Despite this, measles, along with a host of other preventable diseases such as whooping cough, has returned to the United States. The reemergence of these preventable diseases has corresponded with intensification of the social crisis in the US, particularly since the onset of the 2008 economic downturn.

New Senate Intelligence Committee chair moves to suppress CIA torture report

Patrick Martin

The new Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, sent a letter last week to the White House demanding the Obama administration return all copies of the full report on CIA torture whose executive summary was made public last month.
The letter to Obama asked that “all copies of the full and final report in the possession of the executive branch be returned immediately,” according to several press reports. The request is unprecedented in relations between the legislative and executive branch, where historically it is usually the legislature seeking more information and the executive branch declining to provide it.
In this case, the legislative branch is seeking to recall (and likely suppress) copies of a report which the new majority in the Senate regards as too critical of the CIA and too revealing of the methods employed by the intelligence agency in its brutal interrogations of prisoners at secret “black site” facilities in Europe and Asia, as well as at Guantanamo Bay.
The Senate Intelligence Committee produced a 6,900-page report on the CIA torture program, which still remains completely secret. The 512-page executive summary was released last month, albeit with extensive redactions, along with dissenting opinions by the Republican minority on the panel and by the CIA itself.
While official Washington and the corporate-controlled media have largely shelved the report, after an initial flurry of publicity, the executive summary has become a best seller with the American public. When a small publisher brought out the executive summary as a paperback book December 31, the entire 50,000-copy press run was sold out the first day, making a second press run necessary to meet the demand.
Senator Burr did not give any public explanation for seeking the return of copies of the full report, but press accounts suggested that he was seeking to put the document out of reach of requests under the Freedom of Information Act, which applies to the executive branch but not to Congress.
The White House, the CIA, the FBI and other executive branch agencies have occasionally been forced to divulge documents under court order following FOIA lawsuits filed by news organizations or civil liberties groups.
Restricting the number of copies circulating in Washington would also make it less likely that the document would be leaked to the press.
Burr has defended the brutal practices employed by CIA interrogators, including waterboarding, sadistic beatings, sodomizing prisoners through “rectal rehydration”, and lengthy sleep deprivation. He has also denounced the Intelligence Committee report’s conclusion that CIA officials lied to both Congress and the White House about the torture program and its results.
The Republican senator has adamantly opposed any investigation into CIA crimes since he joined the Intelligence Committee. He was once quoted saying that he opposed any public hearings of any kind on the activities of the US intelligence apparatus, on grounds of “national security.”
In his letter to Obama, Burr said that he considered the report “to be highly classified and a committee sensitive document,” and insisted that it “should not be entered into any executive branch system of records.”
Burr also indicated he would return to the CIA an internal CIA document, dubbed the “Panetta review.” This document was a 1,000-page internal review of the torture program prepared for Leon Panetta, then the director of the CIA, in 2010. According to those who have read it, the Panetta review contradicts the public posture of the CIA that the torture program was consistent with international law and effective in gaining intelligence on future terrorist attacks.
Senate committee staff came across the Panetta review in the course of the examination of more than 6 million pages of CIA material on the torture program. The agency had intended to withhold this document from the committee, even though the panel is supposed to exercise legislative oversight over the operations of the intelligence agencies, and the Panetta review was clearly relevant to the committee investigation.
The Panetta review became the occasion for further CIA crimes, as the agency assigned a group of five agents to find out how the Senate committee staff had gained access to the document. These agents conducted surveillance of the Senate panel’s computer system, including email exchanges. Senator Dianne Feinstein, then the committee’s chairman, denounced this surveillance as illegal and unconstitutional in a speech last March on the floor of the Senate.
CIA Director John Brennan initially denied the spying on the Senate committee had taken place but was later forced to admit it and issue an apology to the committee. The whole matter was then swept under the rug, with a CIA review panel deciding earlier this month that no charges would be brought against any of the five agents.
Now the new Republican chairman of the committee plans to return the Panetta review to the CIA, burying the issue for good.
Several Democratic members of the Intelligence Committee publicly opposed Burr’s actions. Feinstein issued a statement January 20 saying, “I strongly disagree that the administration should relinquish copies of the full committee study, which contains far more detailed records than the public executive summary.”
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said returning the document would “aid defenders of torture who are seeking to cover up the facts and rewrite the historical record.”
However, these Democrats all accepted the countless redactions demanded by the CIA in the executive summary, with the support of the White House, and have rubber-stamped Obama’s decision that neither the CIA torturers nor the White House and Justice Department officials who approved the torture program would be prosecuted.
Feinstein, Wyden & Co. agreed from the very beginning to focus the investigation solely on the CIA itself, and leave out President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other top officials who ordered and sanctioned torture and created the spurious legal rationales for it.

Saudi king’s death threatens to deepen US crisis in Middle East

Bill Auken

The death of Saudi Arabia’s 90-year-old King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, the head of one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies, has been met with profuse tributes and open mourning by Washington and its allies, along with the Western media.
Abdullah, who has effectively ruled Saudi Arabia since his predecessor and half-brother, Fahd, suffered a debilitating stroke in 1995—becoming king upon his death in 2005—has maintained the country’s theocratic dictatorship as a lynchpin of regional counterrevolution and US oil interests for the past two decades.
His death introduces another layer of uncertainty and potential crisis into a Middle East already reeling from political eruptions that are directly tied to the role of the US-Saudi axis in the region, from the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to the collapse of the regime that they both backed in Yemen.
World leaders have rushed to the Saudi capital of Riyadh to participate in the three days of official mourning proclaimed by the monarchical regime, among them US Vice President Joe Biden, French President François Hollande, Britain’s Prince Charles, Turkish President Recep Tayyep Erdogan and many others. All of them are anxious to see their interests in the kingdom—which sits atop the second largest proven petroleum reserves in the world and is the number one producer of crude oil—preserved.
The tributes paid by Western government officials and the corporate media were nothing short of obscene.
Barack Obama praised Abdullah as a leader who “had the courage of his convictions.” The US president added, “One of those convictions was his steadfast and passionate belief in the importance of the US-Saudi relationship as a force for stability and security in the Middle East and beyond.”
The courage of Abdullah’s convictions—always essential for an absolute monarch—found its expression in his regime’s beheadings last year of at least 87 people, in some cases with their headless corpses publicly crucified after death. Among the crimes punished by beheading were “sorcery,” adultery, drug possession and political opposition to the ruling monarchy.
The Washington Post described Abdullah as “a master politician” who “gained a reputation as a reformer without changing his country’s power structure,” adding, with no substantiation, that he was “popular with his subjects.” The New York Times described him as a ruler who had “earned a reputation as a cautious reformer” and was, “in some ways, a force of moderation.”
It was this “moderation” that was on display, no doubt, in the postponing last week—for medical reasons—of the second round of 50 of the 1,000 lashes to which the Saudi blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced. He also received a 10-year jail term for the crimes of “adopting liberal thought” and “insulting Islam.”
The intimate US-Saudi relationship, which Obama praised Thursday as “a force for stability and security in the Middle East and beyond,” stands as an unanswerable indictment of the hypocrisy of US imperialism’s attempt to justify its predatory policies in the Middle East and internationally in the name of “democracy” and “human rights.”
The heart of this relationship has been US military protection of Saudi Arabia in return for tying its domination of the world oil markets to American interests. This was solidified in 1973 in a deal brokered by then US President Richard Nixon in which he pledged to ensure US defense of and arms sales to the Saudi monarchy in return for all of the kingdom’s oil sales being denominated in US dollars, giving rise to the recirculation of “petrodollars” into US financial markets and arms purchases.
With a population of 28 million—fully one third of it made up of migrant workers who do virtually all of the labor—Saudi Arabia has the fourth largest arms budget in the world.
US imperialism has likewise long relied on Saudi Arabia’s propagation of Wahhabi Islamic religious ideology as a counter to secular nationalist and socialist movements in the region. King Abdullah provided unstinting support to Hosni Mubarak against the Egyptian revolution of 2011 and then to the coup of Egyptian General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in 2013. He sent troops and tanks across the causeway into Bahrain to crush mass protests in that Gulf kingdom in 2011.
Significantly, among those praising Abdullah Thursday was Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, who said he had “contributed greatly to Middle East stability.”
The Saudi succession has only underscored the sclerotic character of the ruling monarchy. The new king, Salman bin Abdulaziz, is 79 and reportedly in ill health, suggesting that real power will be wielded by others. His successor, the new crown prince Mugrin bin Abdul Aziz, at 69 is described as “relatively young” for a Saudi ruler.
The successor king and those behind him confront a series of deepening crises for the regime. Next door in Yemen, the unpopular regime that both Riyadh and Washington backed has collapsed in the face of a revolt by the Houthis, a population that Saudi Arabia had repeatedly attacked and which it sees as an ally of its regional rival, Iran.
In Syria, the monarchy’s bankrolling and arming of Islamist “rebels,” again in alliance with the US, has produced ISIS, which has overrun much of that country and Iraq, bringing its forces to Saudi Arabia’s own borders. The implications of this were driven home earlier this month in an ISIS suicide attack that claimed the lives of General Oudah al-Belawi, the commander of all Saudi forces in the northern part of the country, along with two border guards. Nurtured on Saudi money and Wahhabi ideology, ISIS is now turning its sights on its former patrons.
Meanwhile, there is the fall of oil prices, which, by refusing to cut production, the Saudis have promoted in a deal worked out with Washington with the aim of weakening both Russia and Iran. The halving of oil revenues as a result, however, has ominous implications for Saudi Arabia itself, which has used its petroleum export surpluses to pacify the population with public spending on housing, education, salary hikes and other forms of public welfare. Next year, it is projected to run a deficit of $39 billion, amounting to 5.2 percent of GDP—the largest in the kingdom’s history. Resulting cuts in salaries, benefits and public spending in a country where 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line can spell social unrest.
There are also indications of strains in the relations with Washington, which have increased since Obama backed off his threat to bomb Syria in 2013 and moved instead toward a halting rapprochement with Iran. Abdullah, who was eulogized repeatedly Thursday as, in the words of US Secretary of State John Kerry, “a proponent of peace,” had called upon the US administration to “cut the head off the snake” by launching a military intervention against Iran.
Finally, the Saudi regime will undoubtedly face internal tensions as the struggle over succession and division of the spoils develops among the thousands of princes and princesses and their entourage. While Abdullah had based his rise to power on his role as commander of the National Guard, a post inherited by his son, the rival Sudairi faction of the ruling family, to which the new king belongs, will undoubtedly attempt to fill positions with their own supporters. How this faction fight works out will affect not only internal politics, but potentially the disposition of major contracts with the oil conglomerates, arms dealers and other transnational corporations.
The fact that US imperialism counts the Saudi regime as a key pillar of its interests in the Middle East only underscores the reactionary role that it plays throughout the region as well as the fundamental instability of the system of hegemony that it is attempting to impose there.

After Yemeni regime’s collapse, calls mount for US military escalation across Middle East and Africa

Thomas Gaist

One day after Yemeni President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi announced his resignation amidst the occupation of his government’s central facilities and his private residence by Houthi militants, a chorus of voices from the US political establishment and punditry are calling for expanded US and NATO military operations across the Middle East and Africa.
The collapse of the Yemeni regime, which was previously sustained by hundreds of millions in military aid flowing from Washington, represents another major debacle for US imperialism in the Middle East. In the face of popular hatred, the US relied on Hadi and his predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to rubber-stamp authorization for drone missile strikes and cover up the civilian death toll.
Yemen was previously upheld as a successful model of the Obama administration’s “intelligence-driven, dynamic targeting,” strategy, in which a relatively "lite" US military presence collaborates with local forces to coordinate air strikes and special forces raids.
Now these methods have succeeded only in completing the implosion of Yemeni society and the creation of a political situation in which the major contending forces consist of a Shia militia aligned with Iran and the local affiliate of Al Qaeda, with the country’s partition a real possibility.
Remarks late this week from Obama administration officials, legislators, and a small army of former military officials and security experts made clear that together with the Charlie Hebdo attacks - now commonly attributed to the Yemen based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - the Houthi takeover is to serve as the pretext for new wars and interventions directed against Iran and its regional allies and proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, as well as against extremist groups including Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Yemen's Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and Nigeria's Boko Haram.
The Houthis, a movement based in Yemen’s Zaidi Shia minority, seized power in part by successfully exploited hostility to the US drone war and military presence in the country.
In the wake of Hadi’s ouster, the US military ordered emergency deployments near Yemen in preparation for a range of contingencies. “We are continuing to closely monitor the situation in Yemen,” a Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday.
“The unrest in Yemen is a concern overall. The [USS] Iwo Jima and [USS] Fort McHenry are on station, and between those two warships, there’s enough combat power to respond to whatever contingency may come up,” the US military spokesman said.
During remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry and French President Francois Hollande issued similar calls for a comprehensive expansion of NATO military and intelligence operations throughout the Middle East and Africa.
Kerry cited numerous countries as prime targets for new Western military incursions. “We must eliminate Daesh [ISIS], strengthen Somalia, intensify our efforts in Nigeria, and strike at the tentacles of al-Qaeda in Yemen, the Maghreb, and wherever else they appear,” Kerry said.
Kerry also pointed to Central African Republic, Libya, and Afghanistan as countries where new “long term” military interventions had become necessary. The NATO powers must focus their operations on “zones of greatest vulnerability,” including “the Horn of Africa, segments of the Swahili coast, the area around Lake Chad, and certain parts of the greater and south central Asian region,” Kerry said.
In high-flown rhetoric evoking an epochal struggle, Kerry compared the fight against Islamic extremist groups to the US military campaign against Nazi Germany, saying that Islamic State, Boko Haram, and similar groups pose an existential threat to the US-dominated political order established after World War II.
“This is a threat to the entire structure that we have worked so hard to put in place since the end of World War II. It’s a threat to nation-states. It is a threat to rule of law,” Kerry said.
The representative of US imperialism attributes to a handful of Islamist militants the crisis of the capitalist nation-state system that has arisen out of the contradictions of the capitalist system itself, giving rise to a new era of militarist aggression and drive toward world war.
Kerry also announced Friday that he will travel to Nigeria to confer with officials there about further US involvement in the Nigerian government’s war with the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
Also speaking in Davos, French President Hollande vowed that France will steadily escalate its already substantial military presence in Africa. “In Africa, France is on the ground and it will continue to be so more than ever before. It will be present to bring help to those countries who are having to deal with the scourge of terrorism,” Hollande said.
"I’m thinking of the Sahel, in particular, but also the situation in Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Chad, who are under attack from Boko Haram,” he said.
Kerry’s and Hollande’s remarks were accompanied by an appearance by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who demanded that the Western military alliance supply more aid to his government’s fight against ISIS.
Numerous other voices from the US political and military elite argued that the collapse of Yemen’s officially recognized government posed the necessity for aggressive new US military action.
“AQAP is fresh off its attack on Paris and has grown since 2009 into the most dangerous al-Qaeda affiliate in the world. It has attacked Detroit and Chicago. It is dedicated to overthrowing the House of Saud,” former CIA and Pentagon official Bruce Riedel wrote in Al Monitor.
US Representative Ed Royce, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that the Houthi coup in Yemen represents “a big step forward for Al Qaeda” and a “win for Iran.” He repeated the mantra that AQAP constitutes the “most toxic, most lethal Al Qaeda affiliate.”
Royce praised the deposed Yemeni president for his collaboration in the US drone war. “Hadi was particularly helpful to the US in assisting us in targeting drone strikes against Al Qaeda” and was a “very close ally and partner,” Royce said.
The “global jihadist threat” is “greater than at any time in our history,” senior Defense Department official Michael Vickers said Wednesday in remarks to the Atlantic Council.
“Attacks on the West in particular are very high on their list and increasing in priority,” said Vickers, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for intelligence.
“Few on the ground see anything but an Islamic State on the move,” the Wall Street Journal warned.
US counterterrorism policy in Yemen is “in tatters,” the Washington Post reported. “If order and a friendly regime are not restored soon in Yemen, the White House may be confronted with a difficult choice: keep flying the drones even if they violate Yemeni sovereignty, or halt the operations and ease up on al-Qaeda,” the Post argued.
Former US Ambassador to Yemen Stephen Seche told the Post that the Houthi coup marked a turning point in US policy.
“I don’t think we’ll just want to continue running operations like we have done the last several years,” Seche said, suggesting that a considerably more aggressive intervention is on the agenda.
Meanwhile, an OxFam report published Friday found that Yemen faces a “humanitarian disaster” that places “millions of lives at risk.” Some 50 percent of Yemenis require some form of humanitarian assistance, with nearly a million children in the country subsisting on the verge of starvation, OxFam found. Saudi Arabia, which provided much of the funding for Yemen’s government, cut off most of its aid after the Houthis seized control of the capital in September.

Forecast: China in 2015

 Teshu Singh

The year 2014 can be considered the new leadership’s first year of functioning’. As predicted in early 2014 (China 2013: New Leadership), the foregoing year saw a more assertive China at the global level. Towards the end of the year, the central conference on work relating to foreign affairs was held in Beijing that gave a bird’s eye view of China’s foreign policy in the coming year.
Domestic Politics
For the first time, a lot of importance was given to Deng Xiaoping and his style of functioning. The national Chinese newspaper People’s Daily carried a special section on the leader. There has been constant comparison between both the leaders. There has also been conjecture on whether Xi would take the legacy of Deng Xiaoping forward (Contemporary Foreign Policy of China: Legacy of Deng Xiaoping). 
Last year saw a very tough stance on the issue of corruption; reforms were pushed ahead and many important reform measures were introduced. Rule of law was the central theme of the fourth plenary session of the eighteenth party congress. According to a report, 1.82 lakh officials at various levels were prosecuted for corruption, 32 leaders who rank at the level of vice minister were arrested and investigations started against them. The issue of corruption will be dealt with more strictly. As Xi Jinping mentioned in his New Year speech, efforts to advance reform and rule of law are “a bird's two wings."

The issue of Uighur terrorism in Xinjiang province will occupy the centre stage at the domestic level and the government will introduce a lot of affirmative action. Already the Chinese government has made some effort to defuse tension by promoting inter ethnic marriages in August 2014.

China and its Global projection
In the quest for the China Dream - national rejuvenation - China aspires to be a global power. According to IMF, in 2014, China surpassed the US in term of GDP based on PPP. Among many bilateral relationships; the most important for China is the Sino-US relationship. The Strategic and Economic Dialogue held (S&ED) has established precedence to the world that two countries with different cultural and social system can cooperate on diverse areas. In the coming year China will engage with the US in a more pragmatic manner to work for mutual benefit and work towards a Bilateral Investment Treaty (US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue: Lessons for India).

China is playing a very active role in multilateral organisations like the BRICS, SCO and APEC. Chinese foreign policy has become less personalised and more institutionalised, and more specifically, it is indicative of China’s growing interest in ‘multilateral diplomacy’ and ‘peripheral diplomacy’. During the 2014 BRICS Summit, China announced the establishment of the New Development Bank (NBD) with its headquarters in Shanghai and the Contingent Reserve Arrangements (CRA) (BRICS: China End Game).

Taking forward the developments of the BRICS summit, China launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The AIIB is a step towards projecting China as responsible regional player and subsequently a global power. It the Chinese alternative to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) led by the US and Japan and an answer to the US ‘pivot to Asia’. It is an endeavour by China to discourage Asian countries to seek help from the US or US-led institutions, thereby restricting its entry into Asia. The bank will also highlight China’s significant experience in infrastructure financing, and indeed, multilateral development banking in general (China and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: A New Regional Order). The bank will be operational in 2015.

APEC 2014 was the biggest event hosted by Xi Jinping after assuming power with the agenda of trade. China seeks to play a greater role in the region as America has in regard to Europe; a leader that seeks to protect the region from outside without any alliance and pressure. China used the available opportunities at the APEC meeting to project its global leadership by managing its conflicts and deepening its economic reform. One of the major developments of the APEC summit were the bilateral meetings of China President Xi Jinping with the US President Barack Obama and the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Amidst growing confusion over the ADIZ and the East China Sea dispute, both counterparts met for the first time during the summit. Yet another development that took place summit was the new term coined by Xi Jinping of the ‘Asia Pacific Dream’. China also proposed the free trade area of Asia Pacific (FTAAP) to promote Asia Pacific cooperation. Since China is already giving so much emphasis to the region the year in focus is going to unfold new strategies for the fructification of this ‘Asia Pacific Dream’.
Energy Security will also be one of the prime objectives of the government this year. According to the General Administration of Customs (GAC), China’s over sea oil purchase has already increased 9.5 per cent year on year to 308 million tonnes. China is looking forward to jointly build a new platform of China-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) cooperation from a long-term and strategic perspective, and to develop a new comprehensive cooperative partnership. Earlier as soon as Xi Jinping assumed power he toured Latin American and Caribbean countries (China and Latin America: Quest for Energy Security).
China and its Neighbourhood Policy
China has been trying hard to improve relations with all neighbouring countries. It has been quite intrepid in its neighbourhood policy by launching the AIIB and implementing the Silk Road Belt initiative robustly.

Sino-Indian relations did not see much change except for Xi Jinping’s visit to India. During his visit sixteen MOUs were signed and China committed to invest USD 20 billion in the next five years. At the same time as the Premier’s visits a skirmish occurred along the Sino-Indian Border in the Chumur sector in Ladakh. This was rather a negative development in the bilateral relationship. However, new/big developments might follow this year when Narendra Modi will visit China.

Afghanistan is China’s neighbour and any development in the country is bound to affect internal dynamics in China. Given that Afghanistan is a landlocked country and shares a border with China, Beijing will engage with Kabul to secure its western periphery, especially the Xinjiang region. The region assumes more importance for China as it forms an important link in the ‘New Silk Road’ and is interconnected with China’s Western Development Strategy (WDS). China is interested in the economic reconstruction of Afghanistan as much as it caters to Beijing's foreign economic policy (China's Endgame in Afghanistan).

In the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), China is trying make all efforts to make it presence. China will work further to implement its Maritime Silk Road strategy in the region. It is also part of China’s larger strategy to develop extensive transport networks - roads, railway lines, ports and energy corridors. It would further cater to somewhat resolving China’s ‘Malacca Dilemma’ and help augment the ‘String of Pearls’ strategy. With the US’s ‘pivot to Asia’, China is concerned about its aspiration to become a global power. Additionally, it is not a South Asian power but seeks a presence in the region. However, in the coming year with the change in government in Sri Lanka the MSR might see some hiccups.

China installed an oil rig in the disputed South China Sea (SCS). The installation of the rig appears to be a well calibrated move. Evidently, China has adopted a ‘salami slicing’ (step-by-step approach) in the SCS. It took over Mischief Reef from the Philippines in 1995; established Sansha city on the Yongxing Island/Woody Island a few kilometres from its Hainan Province; cut the cables of the Vietnamese vessels; occupied Scarborough Shoal; and is now constructing a runway on Johnson South Reef. The rig appears to be their next move in the region. Later in the month of December, the Chinese foreign ministry released a position paper of the government on the matter of jurisdiction in the South China Sea arbitration initiated by the Republic of the Philippines ( China's'Salami Slicing': What's Next). However, in the near-term, China will be more aggressive in the region with high probability of declaring an ADIZ, and might complete the construction of its second airstrip on the SCS by this year.

China and its Special Administrative Region
The later part of the year saw the pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong. It drew world attention towards China’s Special Administrative Regions (SAR) - Hong Kong and Macau - that were reunified with the mainland in 1997 and 1999 respectively. Both SARs are a part of China under a unique system famously known as ‘one country, two systems’. Today, it is economically prosperous with limited universal suffrage only in district council elections and parts of the legislative council. China’s endgame in Hong Kong is to reap the benefits of its economy with a firm control on its state apparatus (China's End Game in Hong Kong). This development will further effect China’s strategy towards Taiwan as well. China will be extra conscious in its policy towards Taiwan.

China will be even more proactive in pursuing a friendly and good-neighbourly policy toward its neighbouring countries and its Belt and Road initiatives will be also quicken. Chinese compromise on issues of core interest seems bleak and this may in turn antagonise its neighbour especially in its peripheral regions. Further, an editorial in the Xinhuanet, “Not a ‘Chinese Century’, but a less Westernised world” has elucidated that in the coming year, China is going to be more proactive without antagonising any other powers, big or small.

Forecast: Left-wing Extremism in 2015

 Bibhu Prasad Routray

At the onset of 2015, left-wing extremism (LWE) in India under the aegis of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) is confronted with a choice of either coming to terms with the realities of its weakness and revisit the strategy of sustaining a protracted war with the state; or continuing with carrying out periodic attacks on the security forces and other state protagonists with the long-term aim of resurrecting itself yet again in the coming years.

Although the past few years have reinforced the notion that CPI-Maoist has ceased to be the force it used to be, there is little hope that in 2015, the outfit would halt pursuing its strategy of carrying out intermittent raids as well as expanding into newer areas. How the state responds to this challenge via its reformulated strategy would be something to watch out for.

Shrinking Extremist Domination
In 2014, the trend of declining fatalities in LWE-related violence continued. According to provisional data, only 314 fatalities were registered, which is the lowest since the formation of the CPI-Maoist in 2004. While Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand account 67 per cent of these fatalities, Odisha, Maharashtra and Bihar are the other states that reported the remaining fatalities. The CPI-Maoist, which once wielded influence over almost one-third of the country's geographical expanse, now operates with a constrained presence in these five states. A sudden expansion in the CPI-Maoist's area of operation is unlikely in 2015. The outfit would mostly be involved in guarding its remaining influence in these states.

Persisting Weakness
Affected by surrenders, killings and arrests of a large numbers of its cadres, the CPI-Maoist is clearly on a back foot, necessitating a phase of tactical retreat when the outfit rebuilds its strength. Among the many denominators that point at the state's tightening grip over LWE is the former's ability to carry out largely peaceful elections in various states. Jharkhand went for an assembly elections in November and December 2014. Additionally, the CPI-Maoist largely failed to carry out its threats of disrupting the poll; the over 66 per cent voter turnout – a record percentage in the state – demonstrated a growing popular confidence in the State's ability to provide security. A stable government, now a reality in state, has an opportunity of heralding an era of decisive action against the extremists.

Morale-boosting Assaults
The operational weakness of the CPI-Maoist, however, has not curtailed its ability to carry out periodic attacks resulting in high casualty among the security forces. In fact, such attacks would remain part of the CPI-Maoist's continuing attempt of seeking relevance, rebuilding its organisational strength, and inflicting setbacks on the security forces. The fact that the security forces in each of the LWE-affected theatres continue to face issues of coordination, leadership and direction, would aid the extremist efforts. Successful attacks such as the one that resulted in the killing of 14 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district on 1 December 2014, has already led to a defensive mindset among the forces, with the CRPF headquarters insisting that all major operations against the extremists must be cleared by the top brass of the organisation.

Enclaves of Strength
New Delhi has assured the affected states of support in dealing with LWE. However, for the states, emerging from an era of overwhelming dependence on the central forces has proved to be difficult. Progress in enabling its own police forces to take a lead role in countering extremism has remained a non-starter. This is apparent in the significant level of popular compliance to the CPI-Maoist's periodic calls for shutdown in various states. Even as the state makes advance establishing its writ over hitherto extremism-affected areas, several enclaves of extremist domination, especially in states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha would continue to mock the official claims of success.

Missing Bureaucracy
Resurrecting governance over the erstwhile Maoist-dominated areas has proved to be New Delhi's Achilles Heel. As of the beginning of 2015, the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs is pushing the state governments to appoint "officers with zeal" as district magistrates and superintendents of police in the extremism-affected districts. Even as the security forces register some successes in ending extremist domination over select areas, bureaucratic inertia in kick-starting governance has remained one of the primary hindrances in cementing success. Government functionaries are either reluctant to function in such hazardous zones or are indulging in rampant corruption exploiting the lack of accountability a conflict situation provides. The attempt to inculcate "zeal" among functionaries, both in the higher and lower levels of bureaucracy is likely to be a tough one for the state governments.          

Southern Expansion
One of the less highlighted aspects of the CPI-Maoist's activities in 2014 was its foray into Kerala. With a handful of incidents involving attacks on a forest department office and an outpost, and KFC and McDonald’s outlets, the Maoists have announced their presence in the southern state. While expansion into new areas remains an avowed objective of the CPI-Maoist exploiting fertile grounds, the divided official response has helped the outfit gain strength and sympathisers. Amid the Kerala police's steps to deal with the emerging threat, a senior government functionary has called for a stop to the hunt and has praised the Maoists for "energising the government machinery in tribal areas." The CPI-Maoist would continue its attempts to spread its activities into new areas in 2015. Sans a national consensus on dealing with the threat, some of these areas would lapse into new hunting grounds for the extremists.

Forecast: Islamic State in 2015

 Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy

In 2014, the world, already engaged in the tedious task of controlling and eliminating several religious radical terrorist groups, came face to face with a new and more brutal terrorist group, the Islamic State (IS). This group has proven itself to be more brutal, more radicalised, more efficient, more organised and more consolidated than any group that had previously emerged. Oddly, while the ideology they aim to forcefully implement across the globe is a grossly misinterpreted version of the original - that itself was, comparatively, only applicable in the time it was propounded - and taken as far from its context as possible, the group’s reach and functional capabilities have proven to meet global standards in today’s day and age.
Given how the rise of this group has shaken up the long-rooted complicated nature of geopolitical relationships in West Asia, it is imperative to understand the potential course its existence will follow through 2015, as policies towards addressing the IS problem are in formulation.
Increasing Strengths
So far, the IS’ territorial expansion has been tremendously curtailed, and this trend is likely to continue. The IS banks heavily on the marketing it does for the promotion of the quality of life it provides, to attract recruits. The regularity and frequency with which it has been producing high quality promotional material such as videos, magazines, etc has done it a lot of good. Therefore, it is likely to invest in the quality of propaganda, as well as other important technological fronts such as encryption platforms and mass communication paraphernalia. Its presence on various platforms and the fact that it responds to both supporters and opponents on these platforms- harnessing viewership from all quarters - has been particularly effective. Additionally, it will also up its ante in ‘research’. All the issues of the IS’ magazine, Dabiq, demonstrate the outfit’s strategy to legitimise its rationales by referencing and explaining several concepts by producing reports that read in the same style as research papers and essays. The IS comments on current issues and even counter-argues the questions raised on the creation and the legitimacy of the caliphate by means of theological references and ‘case studies’ presented in an analytical format. This is likely to continue, and as a result, influencing impressionable youth will continue, unless there is a genuine comprehensive effort towards preventing those impressionable youth from being carried away.
Emerging Weaknesses
While cracks began appearing in the IS’ strategies early on, credible signs began appearing since October 2014. If studied carefully, the IS does have the potential to implode, and without escalation of warfare. However, the IS still remains a formidable adversary, but unless it rethinks some of its policies, there are two key areas it will find itself growing weaker in, in 2015:
I. Levels of Consolidation of Power: Although the IS, for all practical purposes, does administer vast swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, it appears that it is unable to cope with the pace at which the idea of the caliphate it aimed to create is moving at. It certainly appears to have not understood the way a state functions - be it a democracy or a theocracy. It meticulously created departments to look into various affairs of administration of a state, but lacks the understanding of the relationship between a state and the people living in it.

The IS aims and has plans only towards replicating the historical depiction and/or narrative of a type of a state. It managed to blitzkrieg its way into creating the said state, but finds itself mired in the challenge of delivering as state machineries are supposed to. It has a long-term vision but appears to lack strategies to realise those visions - making this caliphate an unsustainable exercise. Additionally, it has alienated not only most of the populations in the territories it controls but also those who supported it during the initial period of consolidation of power - such as the other Sunni Islamist groups whose cadres also include Baathists from Saddam Hussein’s era. This will ultimately play an important role when the outfit attempts to expand further. Implosion of the IS will be more effective in the long-term resolution of the problem as compared to military defeat alone.
II. Financial Viability: The IS recently announced in an interview that they have established a central bank that would carry out tasks as any other central bank would. This development is essentially a propaganda exercise that might not be able to deliver all it promises. While a portion of its revenues flows in from the taxes it collects, the spoils of its plunders, and other means, a significant chunk of its revenue comes from oil sales. Now, as a result of the airstrikes, its ability to refine crude oil is almost nil, and therefore depends on selling the unfinished product. As a result, the revenue inflow has reduced considerably. This will affect its administrative and military capabilities considerably, as a substantial portion of its total revenue is spent on paying the fighters. This is precisely where the counter-strategies of the world must focus on, primarily- systematically dismantling those structures that help pump life and blood into this group’s existence. Simply put, no money will lead to fewer weapons and that will eventually result in lower threats of prolonged warfare.
Funding Sources in 2015
Thus far, the IS has depended heavily on energy revenues. With diminished oil-refining capacities, it now sells crude oil on the black market - which means, it makes lower revenues than before as crude oil sells at lower rates than refined oil. The shale revolution has resulted in reduction in oil prices, and therefore that too will impact its energy revenues. While it does control assets worth approximately US$2 trillion, and earn revenue via taxes, donations, extortion, ransom and sales of oil and minerals, it is increasingly finding it difficult to acquire and manage funds. With the noose tightening around its black market oil sales, the IS will find it progressively difficult to rely heavily on oil sales alone. It is already exploring alternative options to diversify its revenue sources. Given how the Kurdish areas are home to several operational oil fields, the outfit will try hard to bring those specific areas under its control, while looking for other options. It has already branched into a thriving drug trade - from Afghanistan via Nineveh in Iraq to heroin markets in Europe - and illicit trafficking of organs harvested from minorities, children etc with the help of foreign doctors, which is already generating significant revenues.

This aside, the outfit will still continue to receive ‘donations’ from wealthy benefactors in Gulf countries, and extortion money (although these two sources bring in comparatively lesser amounts of money) as long as financial transaction processes are not made entirely fool-proof. Furthermore, the IS might try and expand the scope of exchange via diamond trade as diamonds can be used to earn, gain or store value, and are easily moved or smuggled - given the lack of monopoly, diversification of distribution channels, entry of new markets and trade centres, the use of internet to trade and the increasing preference to use online transaction over cash payments, among others, in this sector. 
Nature of Human Capital in 2015
At present, apart from professionally unskilled radicalised people, the IS cadres include a considerable number of well-educated and skilled people such as engineers, doctors, graphic designers etc from various walks of life, from all over the world. This cosmopolitanism also works in the group’s favour in their efforts towards recruiting more cadres, and the IS will continue to recruit a variety of skilled people from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The multi-cultural backgrounds from which several recruits come from helps build the narrative that the Islamic State is truly a fair state for everyone. While promoting its relevance in the modern world, the IS will use this phenomenon to further its case. This is because the IS will need more skilled labour to run the territories under its control - especially the money-making sectors such as oil and gas, metals etc - while simultaneously ensuring that it has a foot in the door in the countries it gets recruits from. The IS’s human capital will therefore continue to be a mix of people from various social, cultural, economic and ethnic backgrounds and nationalities, and mostly young in age, with the only condition being they all come from Sunni Muslim backgrounds.
Efficacy of Counter-Strategies
Thus-far, the counter-strategies employed against the IS have seen decent, measurable results. The strategies currently in effect are primarily towards containing rather than elimination. It is a good start, because it would be preferable that the IS terrorists operating in Syria and Iraq are encircled and surrounded before actual efforts to eliminate the group are ramped up. This way, the region would not make the same mistake Pakistan did when it launched Operation Zarb-e-Azb in 2014 - i.e. flushing out militants from its North-Western frontiers but failing to trap them - thereby making it possible for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan to slip into Afghanistan and escape.
Already, with the US’ air strikes, the IS’ territorial expansion has almost stopped. The IS’s oil refining capabilities have also been tremendously damaged, and the group is on the defensive. There has been a slow but steady reclamation of territories from the outfit as well, with the Kurdish Peshmerga undertaking the bulk of the effort. Village by village, the Peshmerga is slowly reclaiming territories.
While continued support to the Kurdish forces is definitely recommended, it would alleviate many other issues if the pressure of providing for the refugees in the Kurdish areas is shared by regional and international players. Medical and sanitation assistance and food and basic amenities, especially to prevent epidemics, will have to be organised. As long as a substantial chunk of Iraq and Syria’s populations continues to live in the IS-controlled territories, carrying out air strikes will continue to remain a complicated exercise. The chances of counter-strategies aimed at neutralising the administrative capabilities of the IS are likely to have a higher impact.
Additionally, as long as the US continues to refrain from deploying more troops in the region, it would prevent the situation from escalating further. Iran is already engaged - a good sign. What is needed now is for Saudi Arabia and Turkey to make the choice, and act towards it. For reasons of symbolism, Saudi Arabia’s engagement in warfare - even nominal - against the Islamic State would be useful. The US and Turkey must prioritise on which one of its rivals it would prefer to defeat first - the IS or Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Finally, the targeting of IS’s financial channels will have to be continued with more vigour. The black market for oil, drugs and organ sales will have to be made unviable. More importantly, as long as the anti-IS coalition continues to engage with their counterparts on the ground and refrains from treating the IS as just another terrorist group, the successes will be comparatively higher in number. Simultaneously, plans for rebuilding Iraq will have to begin to be made. Otherwise, in an event of the collapse of the IS, any void will result in a Libya-like situation in Iraq.
The IS has to be destroyed from inside more than from outside. Unless the outfit implodes dramatically, a resurgence will always be a possibility.