Indonesia accuses China of encroaching on its territory

John Roberts & Peter Symonds

The Indonesian government has adopted a confrontational approach to China after an incident last weekend involving a Chinese fishing vessel near Indonesia’s Natuna Islands in the South China Sea. The more aggressive response from Jakarta takes place as the US is intensifying its campaign against Chinese land reclamation and alleged militarisation of its islets in the disputed waters.

The incident occurred after an Indonesian Maritime and Fisheries Monitoring Task Force vessel seized a Chinese fishing boat, the Kway Fey, and arrested its captain and eight-member crew. Jakarta claims they were trawling inside the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) surrounding the Natuna Islands. The Indonesian press reported that a Chinese coast guard ship chased the Indonesian vessel and apparently freed Kway Fey. Its crew, however, remains in Indonesian custody.

Indonesian Maritime and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti claimed that the Chinese coast guard ship came within 4.3 kilometres of one of the Natuna islands and thus within Indonesia’s territorial waters. Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi also issued a strong protest to the Chinese Embassy but stressed that the latest incident did not relate to wider disputes in the South China Sea.

After a meeting with Chinese embassy officials on Monday, Pudjiastuti declared that Indonesia has worked hard to maintain peace in the South China Sea, a reference to Jakarta’s attempts to act as a mediator between China and the other claimants—the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. She declared the weekend incident “interrupts and sabotages our efforts” and threatened to take China to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Security Minister Luhut Pandjaitan issued a similar warning last November.

The Philippines, encouraged and assisted by the Obama administration, already has a case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague challenging China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. Beijing is reluctant to make any formal concession to Indonesia because its claims rest on historical territorial sovereignty and it maintains that the Hague court has no jurisdiction.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that China and Indonesia have no rival claims in the South China Sea but insisted that the Chinese fishing vessel was operating in “traditional Chinese fishing grounds.” She denied that the Chinese coast guard vessel had entered Indonesian territorial waters. The ministry has demanded the return of the Kway Fey’s crew.

Beijing formally acknowledged Indonesia’s sovereignty over the Natunas last November but Jakarta has become increasingly frustrated over Beijing’s refusal to state that China’s “Nine Dash Line,” which maps out its South China Sea territorial claims, does not intrude on the EEZ around the Natunas. Jakarta has been seeking clarification of the issue since the 1990s.

As the most populous nation with the largest economy in South East Asia, Indonesia has had significant weight within the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) forums. It has not taken sides in the territorial disputes in the South China Sea and has resisted US efforts for ASEAN to take a collective stand against China. When the ASEAN summit broke up in 2012 without issuing a joint communiqué, Indonesia played a mediating role in the rift between China-aligned Cambodia and the Philippines which was pushing for an anti-Chinese statement on the South China Sea.

Jakarta’s more strident stand recently has been encouraged by Washington, which has directly challenged Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea by sending US navy warships inside the 12-nautical-mile territorial limit of Chinese-administered islets on two occasions—last November and again in January. The US intervention in the South China Sea is just one aspect of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” which is aimed at subordinating China to US interests by all means, including military.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who came to power in 2014, has taken a more assertive stance on the Natuna Islands in line with his strategy of making Indonesia a “Global Maritime Fulcrum”—reflecting its strategic location astride the main trade routes from the Middle East and Africa to East Asia. Jakarta has begun aggressive patrolling its maritime boundaries—resulting in the seizure and destruction of scores of “illegal” foreign fishing vessels. In one day last month, Indonesian authorities blew up 27 impounded boats.

At the same time, the Widodo administration is courting large-scale infrastructure investment from China, which is also Indonesia’s principal trading partner. China is already engaged in a major rail project. Like other countries in the region, Indonesia is attempting to balance its economic ties with China against strategic connections to the United States.

Widodo is undoubtedly under the pressure from Washington to more openly join in its anti-China “pivot.” The Indonesian military has longstanding ties with the Pentagon going back to the Suharto dictatorship and wants to strengthen them. A tough stance against China over the Natuna Islands is a signal to the US that Indonesia is also prepared to join the campaign against so-called Chinese expansionism.

Under the guise of preventing illegal fishing, Defence Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu last year outlined Indonesian plans to boost its military capacities in the South China Sea, including the deployment of jet fighters and three naval corvettes to the Natuna Islands. He said that the military would upgrade naval and air force bases and increase the size of its ground forces in the Natunas from 800 to 2,000 personnel.

The US has responded by expanding military cooperation. On March 11, the US Defence Department approved an Indonesian request to buy advanced AIM 120C-7 air-to-air missiles to arm its F-16 fighter jets. The decision significantly augments the strength of the Indonesian air force which is discussing basing F-16s on the Natunas.

West Virginia budget gap widens, economy worsens

Naomi Spencer

The West Virginia legislature concluded last week without agreement on a budget bill, as the state’s revenues continue to plummet. The office of Democratic governor Earl Ray Tomblin released figures March 15 showing the budget gap has widened to $239 million, including a loss of $92.4 million more than previously projected due to “downward pressure on energy prices, and less economic growth than originally forecast for both the national and state economy.”

The West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy (WVCBP) reports that if the projection is realized, the state will collect only $137.5 million from corporations and businesses in fiscal year 2017—an all-time low for the historically distressed state.

The state’s finances are bound up with the coal and natural gas industries, which have been buffeted by the fall-off in global commodity prices and the slowdown in industrial output in China, as well as declining demand in the United States.

According to the governor’s office, personal income tax collections are expected to decline by $20.5 million below earlier estimates. Revenue from the so-called severance tax on coal and natural gas companies is projected to fall $17.6 million below previous estimates. Corporate income taxes are projected to decline by 17 percent, resulting in a loss of $28.6 million more than anticipated.

It is likely that Tomblin will call a special session in April to continue deliberations on the budget. The new bill would take effect beginning in the new fiscal year, July 1.

The WVCBP notes that the projected plunge in revenue is “largely due to the elimination of the business franchise tax and the reduction of the corporate net income tax rate from 9 percent to 6.5 percent in 2015.”

Before 2008, when these tax cuts took effect, corporate and business franchise taxes accounted for $388 million in state revenue. In 1990, these taxes made up 12 percent of the state’s general revenue fund, compared to less than 4 percent today.

During its regular session, the legislature was preoccupied with numerous reactionary measures on abortion, right-to-work, voter ID, and drug testing for welfare recipients. At no point in budget deliberations was raising the corporate tax rate a topic of discussion.

The governor proposed closing the $239 million shortfall largely through higher tobacco taxes and the repeal of a sales tax exemption on telecommunications. Republican senate finance chair Mike Hall has suggested combining budget cuts with tapping into the state’s Rainy Day reserve fund. “We could sit here and slash and burn, but we want to vet them out,” Hall said of the budgets of various state agencies.

West Virginia’s bond rating is based in part on the existence of the $784 million Rainy Day fund, and ratings agencies are watching the budget deliberations closely. Tomblin opposes using reserves, making the “slash and burn” approach more likely. Higher education, highway funding, and social services are all in the crosshairs.

In the past three years, Tomblin has cut 20 percent of the state’s general revenue budget.

Before concluding its session, the House requested state agencies to consider how to cut a further 6.5 percent from their budgets. Among the consequences would be the elimination of an estimated 350 jobs in the college and university system, the closure of at least four community college campuses; and the layoff of 166 workers at state hospitals.

Social infrastructure is being sacrificed to the benefit of big business, and particularly the coal industry. Although Tomblin signed legislation last month dropping a 56-cent-per-ton coal tax at a cost of $51.5 million to the state, the coal industry is lobbying for further cuts to the general severance tax rate, from 5 percent to a mere 2 percent.

Severance taxes are a charge on the extraction of coal or natural gas, usually a few cents per ton, to compensate the communities from which the resources are “severed.” Local and county governments are heavily dependent on the tax.

The West Virginia Coal Association has said cutting the tax would save 1,864 jobs and increase the state’s gross domestic product by $299 million a year. The influential lobby group’s vice president, Chris Hamilton, claimed “if our legislature fails to enact the 3 percent rate cut immediately, these savings would not occur and the consequences would be disastrous.”

The “job savings” projected by the industry are a drop in the bucket compared to the losses that have impacted the state. In the last year alone, West Virginia lost 12,700 jobs, bringing the total workforce to under 760,000.

The economic crisis is deepening across the state. Unemployment for February stood at 6.5 percent, and after the holiday temporary hiring, the jobless rate rose in every one of the state’s 55 counties. The state’s labor force participation rate, hovering below 50 percent, is the lowest in the country.

WorkForce West Virginia data indicate that in the past month:

• Alpha Natural Resources laid off 1,109 coal miners in Boone, McDowell and Raleigh counties.

• Blackhawk Mining laid off 226 miners in Kanawha, Logan and Mingo counties.

• Arch Coal issued pink slips to 140 in Webster County.

• Walter Energy cut 120 mining jobs in Fayette and Nicholas counties.

• Carter Roag Coal Company laid off 173 Randolph County miners.

• Rail company CSX announced the closure of its Huntington Division, affecting 121 employees.

• Southwestern Energy Company laid off 97 in Lewis County.

• Chemical and fuel firm Thomas Logistics axed 58 positions in Morgantown.

• Oil industry company Baker Hughes laid off 90 employees in Harrison County.

• Wal-Mart closed its McDowell County location, leaving 140 without jobs.

Several counties register official unemployment rates in the double digits. According to WorkForce West Virginia, Calhoun County reported a jobless rate of 16.9 percent. McDowell and Mingo counties have unemployment rates of more than 14 percent.

Property values in the southern coalfield counties are spiraling downward. Boone County lost 17 percent of its total property value in the past two years, according to the state auditor’s office. Mingo County has lost 15 percent.

Public school district budgets have suffered drastic declines in funding. In Boone County, the closure of coal mines has resulted in the loss of $4.3 million in school funding in the last year and the loss of students whose parents must leave in search of work. The county district has announced the closure of schools and the elimination of 80 positions at the end of the school year.

In McDowell County, enrollment has declined 17.4 percent over the past decade. The county school district has shed 10 to 20 positions each year. This year, it is cutting 19 teachers and 16 service staff.

Cuts in school staffing are a statewide phenomenon, even in non-coal-producing areas. In Huntington’s Cabell County, enrollment has increased over the past decade. Nevertheless, the county board of education approved cutting 61 positions and transferring 97 others. The district is expecting to lose $2.6 million in state funding.

Hundreds of refugees in Australia face return to offshore camps

Max Newman

Despite protests around the country, asylum seekers who were brought to Australia for medical treatment after being detained in the Australian-run “offshore processing” facilities on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island face being sent back to these oppressive camps.

The Liberal-National Coalition government remains determined to remove the 267 refugees, including 91 children—37 of whom are babies—in order to enforce the bipartisan policy of blocking entry to Australia of all refugees who arrive by boat.

In order to deter people from trying to reach Australia, the prison camps on Nauru and Manus are deliberately punitive. A recent medical study concluded that the conditions of indefinite detention—itself a denial of fundamental legal and democratic rights—are so severe that they amount to torture.

Moreover, the detention centres have no facilities to treat a wide range of medical conditions, including childbirth and the endemic mental health problems caused by the prolonged incarceration.

The camps were initially established as part of the Howard Coalition government’s post-2001 “Pacific Solution,” designed to consign all asylum seekers to remote islands. They were reopened by the last Labor government in 2012, which vowed to “stop the boats” again by detaining refugees in the camps for as long as they would have waited for official permission to enter Australia—which could mean 20 years.

A recent High Court decision to legally rubberstamp indefinite detention on these islands cleared the way for the removal of the 267 refugees. They include a 5-year-old child who was allegedly sexually assaulted, a baby who has type 1 diabetes and at least 15 women who claim to have been assaulted or harassed in the camps.

Among them is a one-year-old infant, known publicly as Baby Asha, and her family. She was born in Australia after her parents were flown from Nauru for her birth last June, only for the family to be transported back to Nauru after she was born.

On January 26, Baby Asha was returned to the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital in Brisbane, Queensland after receiving a scalding injury to her chest. She had pulled recently boiled water onto herself from a table. On Nauru, with no access to clean water, Baby Asha’s mother had to boil water to ensure it was safe to drink.

After the High Court decision, staff at the hospital refused to discharge Baby Asha. They said a return to Nauru would be detrimental to her health and wellbeing. Their stand attracted widespread support, resulting in a 10-day protest outside the hospital demanding that Baby Asha and her family not to be returned to Nauru and that other refugees be allowed to remain in Australia.

On February 22, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said he had come to an “agreement” with the hospital for Baby Asha and her family to be released into “community detention.” In the early hours of the morning, security guards removed the baby to an undisclosed location. Her parents were not informed of her whereabouts until the afternoon.

“Community detention” is an alternative form of confinement developed by the previous Labor government to subject thousands of refugees, while permitted to remain temporarily within Australia, to drastic restrictions on their movement and basic legal, welfare and work rights.

Dutton denied that his decision not to immediately send Baby Asha and her parents back to Nauru was affected by the protests. This was what the government had “proposed all along,” he insisted, and the baby and the other refugees ultimately would be returned to the camps. “[A]t some point, if people have matters finalised in Australia, they will be returning to Nauru,” Dutton stated.

Yet the temporary reprieve was heralded as a victory by various online protest groups, the Greens and the pseudo-left organisations, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Alliance and Solidarity, that had channeled the outrage over Baby Asha’s plight into a social media “Let Them Stay” campaign. An article in Socialist Alliance’s Green Left Weekly declared that Dutton’s decision “shows the power of the people.”

The article referred to a “bipartisan policy of mandatory detention”—but ignored the role of the Greens, who provided the 2010-2013 minority Labor government with the parliamentary support to remain in office as it reinstated the “Pacific Solution.” While the Greens criticise aspects of the anti-refugee regime, they support the entire underlying system of “national border protection.” They advocate dumping refugees in “assessment” centres in impoverished South East Asian countries.

“Let Them Stay” is designed to funnel the public opposition to the inhuman treatment of refugees back behind the same parliamentary parties that have inflicted it. The campaign promotes illusions in putting pressure on the current Turnbull Coalition government, and the opposition Labor Party, to modify their policies. It also seeks to promote the return of a Greens-backed Labor government.

For their own electoral reasons, several state Labor Party leaders, including Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, seized upon the “Let Them Stay” campaign to feign sympathy for the plight of refugees, and offered to accept some of the 267 as residents in their states. While appealing to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to show mercy, they made no criticism of the Labor Party’s continuing support for the Nauru and Manus camps. Labor’s federal shadow immigration minister Richard Marles reiterated that a Labor government would retain the policy of refusing entry to all asylum seekers arriving by boat.

The most politically conscious purveyors of the “Let Them Stay” campaign are the pseudo-left groups and the Refugee Action Coalition (RAC), whose spokesman is Ian Rintoul, a leader of Solidarity. In a March 8 article on the Solidarity group’s web site, Rintoul hailed a letter sent by Andrews to Turnbull offering to take refugees as a “political turning point.”

According to Rintoul, “Andrews’ offer has turned up the heat on Turnbull.” He urged state premiers “to go one step further and declare they will not cooperate with any removal.” Rintoul declared: “[W]e need to step up the pressure to make the returns [of the refugees] politically impossible for Turnbull.”

Above all, Rintoul promoted the illusion that Labor could be compelled to adopt a more humane policy. “It was the mass movement under Howard last time that shifted public opinion, and pushed Labor to promise permanent protection and to close Nauru and Manus when it came to power in 2007,” he wrote.

This is a complete rewriting of history. Labor came to office in 2007 vowing to maintain the Howard government’s policy of “stopping the boats” and only shut down the camps once the number of boats dropped. In 2012, as refugees again began fleeing the violence and destruction unleashed by the US and its allies—including Australia—in Syria and Iraq, the Labor government reopened the facilities.

At the same time, Labor and the trade unions were at the forefront of demonising refugees and making them scapegoats for rising unemployment and worsening social conditions, just as they did in 1992, when the Keating Labor government first introduced the mandatory detention of all refugee arrivals.

Attacks on Marine firebase reveal secret US escalation in Iraq

Patrick Martin

Two attacks on a US firebase in northern Iraq, which killed one US Marine and wounded several more, have led to revelations about a substantial escalation of the US military intervention in the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the Pentagon has deployed more than 5,000 soldiers in Iraq, some 20 percent more than the current “cap” of 3,870 troops publicly announced by the Obama White House. The Daily Beast web site gave the total as 5,325.

The revelations of additional US forces came after ISIS attacked a Marine Corps position in Makhmour, about 70 miles south of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the largest urban area controlled by ISIS in either Syria or Iraq.

ISIS mortars slammed into the base, dubbed Firebase Bell, killing Staff Sergeant Louis Cardin and wounding several more Marines. Some of the wounded had to be evacuated out of the country in order to receive proper treatment.

Cardin, 27, from Temecula, California, was on his fifth deployment in a war zone. He had served three tours of duty in Afghanistan and one previous tour in Iraq before he was airlifted into Makhmour last month as part of the deployment of the US Marines 26th Expeditionary Unit from the USS Kearsarge, a troop carrier stationed in the Persian Gulf.

On Monday, a small ISIS unit attacked the base, home to 200 Marines, with small arms fire. They were driven off without casualties. At that point, Pentagon spokesmen acknowledged the existence of Firebase Bell, the first US-only facility to be set up in Iraq since the formal end of the US military occupation of the country in December 2011.

The Marine base sits adjacent to Iraqi Army and Kurdish Peshmerga positions in the area where the Iraqi government is assembling forces for a planned offensive against Mosul, expected later this year. The 200 soldiers at Firebase Bell operate 155mm artillery to provide long-range support for Iraqi Army and Kurdish troops and US Special Forces.

The Obama administration has classified the deployment of the Marines and many other soldiers as “temporary” in order to claim that the number of troops in Iraq is below the current ceiling of 3,870 that it reports to Congress.

Colonel Steve Warren, the top US military spokesman in Baghdad, told the press Monday, “People come through on a temporary basis and go above and below the force cap all the time, but we remain under our force cap.”

Nancy Youssef, a Daily Beast reporter, noted that Cardin’s death had revealed “a familiar, disturbing pattern in this war—one where the US military does not reveal what it is asking of troops until it has to, usually when a service member is killed. Up until Cardin’s death, the US military said its troops were only on heavily fortified bases; that its forces were not part of any offensive operations; that they were properly secured; and that frontline troops are counted in publicly released tallies of those deployed in Iraq. But Saturday’s attack revealed that none of that was accurate.”

The purpose of the official secrecy and lying is not military security. ISIS was well aware of the existence of the firebase, which it targeted with mortar shells. In any case, as one official admitted, it is hard to hide 200 heavily armed Marines stationed only 10 miles from enemy lines.

The purpose was to conceal from the Iraqi and American people what the US government and Pentagon are doing in Iraq. President Obama has repeatedly declared that he brought an end to combat in Iraq and that he would not send US combat forces back to that country. But this is what, in fact, is happening.

Iraq’s Joint Operations Command denied Monday that US Marines were involved in combat in Iraq, declaring, “There is no credibility for the rumors talking about the deployment of American fighting troops in certain sites and camps in Baghdad or elsewhere.”

Colonel Warren also denied that the deployment in Makhmour constituted a combat mission. “They won’t kind of go off and conduct any type of mission on their own,” he told reporters. “They don’t really have that capability anyways. They’re just providing coverage, right? They’re providing fire support coverage for the several thousand Iraqi soldiers and the several hundred advisers.”

Nonetheless, he admitted that the Marines had been deliberately attacked by ISIS. “I think they were targeted specifically,” he said. “We’re in a dangerous place and there’s a war going on. So we have to expect there will be attacks.”

Sergeant Cardin was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. As the Wall Street Journal wrote in its report on Cardin’s death, “The transfer of a regular Marine unit into a combat zone marks stepped-up efforts by the US to combat the extremist group.”

Other press reports noted that the US government had previously claimed that ISIS used mustard gas against Kurdish troops stationed in Makhmour last year. Establishing a base for the US Marines on the same site makes nonsense of the pretense that US forces are not playing a ground combat role in the war against ISIS.

The Associated Press reported, “Makhmour is expected to become a major focus of any future offensive to gain control of Mosul, and Iraqi army reinforcements have begun arriving there in recent weeks in preparation for the operation.”

The top State Department official in the region, Brett McGurk, said the offensive had already begun, in the sense that US-backed Iraqi forces were edging toward Mosul. “It’s already started,” he told a forum at the American University of Iraq at Sulaymaniyah, in the Kurdish-ruled zone of northern Iraq. “It’s a slow, steady squeeze,” he said, adding, “It’s going to be a long campaign.”

The exposure of previously secret US military facilities in northern Iraq follows reports earlier this month that the Pentagon was operating two secret airstrips in northern Syria, inside the region along the Syrian-Turkish border controlled by the Syrian Kurdish PYG.

One airstrip, at Rmeilan, in the far northeastern corner of Syria near the Iraq border, was doubled in length in order to accommodate US cargo planes bringing supplies for the PYG and US Special Forces troops working with them. The other airstrip, near Kobani, was reported March 6 to be under construction.

The terror bombings in Brussels

Alex Lantier

The World Socialist Web Site condemns the bombings that took place Tuesday morning in Brussels, killing 30 people and wounding 230 at Zaventem Airport and the Maelbeek metro station. While Belgian authorities imposed a gag order on their investigation of the attacks, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility in a statement posted by its Amaq news agency.

This horrific attack targeted innocent people in no way responsible for the imperialist wars that have devastated the Middle East. Fifteen years of wars, terror attacks, and escalating police state measures since the September 11, 2001 bombings in the United States have conclusively demonstrated that such bloodshed invariably plays into the hands of the most reactionary forces.

As the WSWS stated the day after the September 11 attacks, “However it seeks to justify itself, the terrorist method is fundamentally reactionary. Far from dealing a powerful blow against imperialist militarism, terrorism plays into the hands of those elements within the US establishment who seize on such events to justify and legitimize the resort to war in pursuit of the geopolitical and economic interests of the ruling elite. The murder of innocent civilians enrages, disorients and confuses the public. It undermines the struggle for the international unity of the working class, and counteracts all efforts to educate the American people on the history and politics that form the background to contemporary events in the Middle East.”

This statement is again being confirmed, this time in Europe, as governments across the continent place their security forces on high alert. Last night, as Belgium closed its borders and army and police forces put Brussels on lock-down, Prime Minister Charles Michel declared, “For us, there will be a ‘before and after.’” He said the council of top ministers would meet this morning to “organize the period after the bombings.”

In France, where the Socialist Party (PS) has imposed an unpopular and anti-democratic state of emergency since the November 13 attacks in Paris, PS officials cited the attacks in Brussels to press the Senate to approve a PS amendment enshrining the state of emergency in the French Constitution.

US presidential candidates sought to stir up the anti-Muslim and pro-war moods seizing the political establishment on both sides of the Atlantic. Republican Donald Trump, who has advocated barring Muslims from entering the US, said Brussels was “a total disaster.” He added, “We have to be very careful in the United States, we have to be very vigilant as to who we allow in this country.”

Trump called for torturing Salah Abdeslam, who was captured in Brussels on Friday after four months on the run and charged with participating in the November 13 Paris attacks. “The waterboarding would be fine, and if they could expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding,” the Republican frontrunner said.

The leading contender for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, declared, “Today's attacks will only strengthen our resolve to stand together as allies against terrorism and radical jihadism around the world.” She called for more pervasive mass spying by US and international intelligence agencies, saying “We have to toughen our surveillance, our interception of communication.”

Despite the horrifying character of the Brussels attacks, it is essential that people not allow themselves to be stampeded into new wars and police state measures by the propaganda of the media and a thoroughly degraded political establishment.

All of the statements of bourgeois politicians condemning terrorist violence are as hypocritical as they are dishonest. The wave of ISIS attacks in Europe, from the Charlie Hebdo and November 13 bombings in Paris last year to yesterday's Brussels bombings, are inextricably bound up with decades of wars and military interventions that have destroyed large parts of the Middle East and destabilized the rest.

ISIS itself is the product of three imperialist wars: first, the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the United States, aided by European countries including Britain, Spain and Italy, on the basis of lying claims that the Iraqi government would give weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda; second, the war for regime-change in Libya waged by the US and NATO, utilizing Al Qaeda-linked militia as proxy ground forces; and, third, the proxy war stoked up by the US and the European powers in Syria, where they have backed various Islamist militias including ISIS in an effort to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Particularly in the initial stages of the Syrian war, as the Islamist militias sought to sow terror and destabilize the government, they resorted to repeated terror bombings. Just in the capital, Damascus, there were 44 killed and 166 injured in a December 2011 attack, 55 killed and 400 injured in a May 2012 attack, and 80 killed and 250 injured in a February 2013 attack.

Washington and its European allies have supported the Islamist opposition throughout this bloody rampage, turning against ISIS only gradually after it attacked the US puppet regime in Baghdad in the summer of 2014. Even then, as France's PS government bombed ISIS targets in Iraq, it stated it would not bomb ISIS targets in Syria. Paris refused to deny media reports that it was refraining from attacking ISIS in Syria in order to avoid weakening the anti-Assad forces. France began bombing ISIS in Syria only after the January 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo.

These wars have created a Frankenstein monster in Europe, a network of Islamist fighters closely tied to European foreign policy and police circles. Those carrying out ISIS attacks in Europe, like the Kouachi brothers in the Charlie Hebdo attack and Abdelhamid Abaaoud in the November 13 Paris shootings, inevitably proved to be linked to operations to recruit Islamists from Europe for the war in Syria. Inexplicably, though they were well known to intelligence agencies throughout Europe and closely monitored, they were allowed to travel across the continent and prepare bloody attacks.

A significant factor in the accelerating pace of attacks in Europe is the fact that broad sections of the European ruling class welcome the pretext provided by such crimes to fan anti-Muslim hatred so as to divide the working class, while expanding their police state measures. As they seek to justify a ruthless and illegal policy of denying the right of asylum to millions of refugees fleeing Middle East wars, and impose ever more brutal austerity measures on the working class, the ruling elites view such terror attacks as a political godsend.

With the bloodletting of the imperialist wars in the Middle East coming home to Europe, political lessons must urgently be drawn. The increased buildup of security forces and police state powers after each terror attack has only set the stage for more draconian attacks on democratic rights, new military escalations and further terror attacks.

The only way this reactionary spiral of violence can be stopped is by addressing its root cause—the war drive through which the major imperialist powers seek to dominate the Middle East. This requires the development of a broad movement of the working class against war and for socialism.

Ansar ul-Tawhid: Evolution and Operational Dynamics

Husanjot Chahal


In the run up to India’s Republic Day celebrations in January 2016, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) detained 20 men across the country for planning to carry out attacks in the country on behalf of the Islamic State (IS). On 29 January 2016, the NIA arrested three youths deported from Dubai for working as recruiters for the IS. That Shafi Armar, head of the Ansar-ut Tawhid fi Bilad al-Hind (AuT), was the handler of all these arrested men, underlines the threat the organisation could pose to India in the future. Therefore, the importance of tracing the evolution of the AuT is necessary for a better understanding of the organisation and the dangers it could pose.

OriginsThe origin of the AuT, allegedly the first Indian jihadist group based abroad (in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area), is often linked to a split in the Pakistan-based cadres of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) that took place in 2012 after an internal rift. Senior IM leaders Mirza Shadab Beig and Muhammad “Bada” Sajid had rebelled against Riyaz Bhatkal and Iqbal Bhatkal, preferring to fight in Afghanistan in close alliance with terror organisations such as al Qaeda (AQ) and the Taliban. Among others, Sultan Armar toyed between the idea of fighting in Afghanistan or going to Nepal. He wanted to tie up with international terror organisations in Afghanistan and travel to Syria to join the religious war. Shafi Armar, younger brother of Sultan Armar, was part of the Usaba (congregation), formed in Bhatkal, Karnataka, India, to collect likeminded individuals to wage jihad in India. Like Sultan, Shafi too desired that India also become unstable and violence prone like Iraq and Syria. It is in these thoughts of an expanded war, that the AuT found its early origin.

Emergence of the AuTIn October 2013, the AuT, via its media wing, the al-Isabah media, released a video, titled ‘In the Land of Hind: Usood ul Hind (Lions of India)’, calling Indian Muslims to participate in global jihad. It was the first time the AuT had made its presence felt. A subsequent video, titled ‘From Kandahar to Delhi’ attempted to incite Indian Muslims to take revenge for anti-Muslim incidents in different parts of the country. Another video, released in 2014, called prominent jihadi leaders of the world to come forward and attack Indian targets worldwide. Apparently, all these videos, in which Sultan featured as a masked man, were produced by Shafi.

Allegiances and ActivitiesIt is important to bear in mind that till mid-2014, the AuT seemingly had not developed affiliations with any major terrorist organisation; and the Armars appeared to be 'opportunists’. The AuT’s propaganda material (as on its Twitter activity) was directed to encourage Indian Muslims to fly to Syria or Afghanistan, primarily to get trained for an eventual insurgency in India; and there were no references of particular terror groups.

It is only by August 2014 that the material carried several texts and videos on the IS’s ideology and military campaign, translated into several Indian languages. Their campaign was probably riding on the military successes of the IS. In October 2014, they officially pledged allegiance to the IS and have since been prominently involved in radicalisation and recruitment of Indians for the IS.

Between October 2013 and March 2015, the AuT released nearly a dozen propaganda videos, posted several messages, promoted books on Jihadi literature on social media, and prominently, released eulogies of ‘jihadi martyrs’. The last such eulogy was for Sultan in March 2015 after he reportedly died in Kobane, Syria, while fighting for the IS. Shafi is understood to have assumed leadership of the AuT after Sultan's death.

Subsequently, activities under the AuT banner reduced. However, activities to promote the IS, associated with its members, appear to have picked up under Shafi's leadership, who is believed to be adept at recruiting and radicalising willing youth.

After the AuT initiated its pro-IS campaign, Indian security agencies encountered several instances of youth getting radicalised online and attempting to go to Syria. In the first instance, in September 2014, four youths from Hyderabad, India, were arrested in Kolkata, India, for trying to join the IS by flying to Syria. They were reportedly contacted by Adnan Damudi and Sameer Khan alias Shafi Armar. In April 2015, five youths from Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh, India, were arrested for the same. Investigations revealed that Yusuf alias Shafi Armar had played a role in their radicalisations. Behind all these activities was the AuT's constant endeavour to emerge as the sole point of contact for the IS in India.

India, the AuT, and the ISIndeed, the relationship between the IS and the AuT is symbiotic. For the AuT, the IS is an umbrella organisation that can give form and rigour to the Indian jihadist movement, and prepare a pool of trained battle-ready jihadists. South Asia is key to the IS' expansion strategy, and the AuT can fulfil the IS’s objective by providing a platform to reach a part of the world that houses a large Muslim population. That many of the AuT members possess experience in terrorist acts (through their IM and the banned Students Islamic Movement of India pasts) adds the necessary lethality component for such activities.

India as a result, remains vulnerable to the IS brand of transnational terrorism for which the AuT remains a critical lynchpin.

Brazil’s Summer of Discontent

Vijay Prashad

Brazil’s modernist plazas have been filled with protesters over the course of the past week. They have come to ask for the resignation of the President — Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (PT). Crowds on Avenue Paulista in São Paulo held aloft a massive sign that read, “Impeachment já!” It is the slogan of this protest — if President Rousseff does not resign, then she should be impeached.

Why do these thousands of people want Ms. Rousseff to leave office? An eruption of corruption scandals that implicate the entire political elite comes at a time of Brazil’s economic stagnation. Brazil currently suffers its worst recession in half a century, with economic growth shrinking. Low commodity prices and slack demand from China are the main authors of this downturn. No relief is on the horizon, since China is not likely to expand its purchases. Nor, therefore, will commodity prices rise higher. Reliant upon both, an exit for Brazil’s crisis in that direction is closed. The PT, in power from 2002, had not been able to diversify the economy and so was vulnerable to commodity prices. Economist Alfredo Saad-Filho calls this a “confluence of dissatisfactions,” drawing in those with immediate worries — rising bus fares— and those with much greater anxieties — the loss of power of the dominant classes.

Angering the elite

What is striking about the protests against the Rousseff government is that these are not coming mainly from the slums — the favelas — of Brazil or from the industrial working class. In March last year, Brazil’s college educated, upper middle class went out onto the streets for a series of marches against the government. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, a former Finance Minister from the 1980s, characterised these protests as “collective hatred on the part of the elites, of the rich, against a party and a president.” What motivated the demonstrators, he said, was not worry, but “hatred.” What do the Brazilian elite hate about the government of the PT?

The PT has pushed a broad agenda to give capitalism a human face. Wretched poverty in parts of Brazil had to be ameliorated by a social welfare programme known as Bolsa Família. The World Bank said that this programme has “changed the lives of millions in Brazil.” For cash payments, Brazil’s impoverished families pledge to keep their children in school and take them for regular medical check-ups. The government argued that Bolsa Família would enhance the immediate lives of the poor — with the cash payments — and would break the cycle of intergenerational poverty — through education and health care.

Almost 50 million Brazilians — a quarter of the population — have benefited from Bolsa Família. Last year, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics announced that extreme poverty has been eradicated in the country. But, at that announcement, the institute pointed out that the budgetary cuts to the programme would reverse the trend. A third of the funds allocated to Bolsa Família had been removed from the 2016 budget. This is an indicator of the financial trials of the government.

What the elite hated was the rise in minimum wages, the expansion of rights to workers and the privileges now given to the working class for entry into public universities. Benefits to the working class in Brazil open up the social question of racial inequality. Brazil, a former slave state, has never really come to terms with the legacies of slavery and racism. Under the PT, issues of racial discrimination and the costs of racism on the workers became part of the national conversation. This was anathema to the elite.

Habits of coups

Over the course of the past century, at regular intervals, populist political movements have come to the fore in Brazil to challenge the iron grip of the elite. Each time, the people rally behind these leaders, the elite — with the assistance of the military and the United States — has undermined the revolt of the favelas and the countryside. Presidents Getúlio Vargas and João Goulart became standard-bearers of this popular frustration, but both had to be removed — Vargas by suicide in 1954 and Goulart by military coup in 1964. In both cases, the combination of the established dominant classes, the military and the U.S. created a crisis that overwhelmed the country and dispatched the populist leaders. Fear that this is part of the equation in Brazil today is not unfounded. It is etched into Brazil’s history.

Coups need not come from the barracks any longer. The media is sufficient. In Brazil, the Globo network — 50 years old — now controls more than half of the media — television networks and influential newspapers — including O Globo. “There is no other means of communication with similar influence in the country,” Professor Beatriz Bissio of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro tells me. The owner of the network, Dr. Roberto Marinho, has a very close alliance with the military regime. His channels have been fulminating against the Rousseff government, urging on the protests in the service not of anti-corruption but against the PT.

Issue of corruption

In Brazil, a familiar refrain is “the system is not corrupt; corruption is the system.” Systematic corruption has eaten into wide swathes of Brazil’s politicians, not only from among the prominent leaders of the PT but also of its opposition, including Aécio Neves who ran for president against Ms. Rousseff in 2014. Vast profits in the major government utilities, Eletrobras and Petrobras, provided opportunities to politicians for bribes. Politicians from PT did not resist the temptation. But they are not alone.

The media went after the PT as if it was the only one which was complicit in the corruption scandals. They ignored the corruption scandals of the right-wing opposition. Datafolha has done regular surveys of dissatisfaction in Brazil. Over a third of the population finds that corruption is their major grouse, although the rest of those surveyed complained about a lack of access to health care and education as well as jobs. The media is not interested in these complaints. They come to the heart of the PT programme. Much easier to poke a finger at “corruption,” an idea with an emotional appeal to people whose livelihood weakens as they see the elite becoming immune from the crisis.

The Lula factor

Ms. Rousseff, unlike Mr. Lula, did not cultivate a close link with the people. Compelled to make budgetary changes, she did not reach out to the public to explain the problems. Attacked by the media, Ms. Rousseff isolated herself from her supporters. Confusion led to disillusionment. Mr. Lula, from the factory, and Ms. Rousseff, from the prison, developed a party — the PT — that grew from Brazil’s powerful social movements, such as the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST). Ms. Rousseff reached out to Mr. Lula to revive connections to the social movements. He is temperamentally of the trade unions, a salty man with popularity among the working class and peasantry.

But Mr. Lula had been under investigation as part of the Petrolão (Car Wash) scandal — money laundering around Petrobras. His role here is small scale compared to the other outrages. The detention of Mr. Lula and the release of taped phone conversations between him and Ms. Rousseff suggest a wider conspiracy at work here. It is in the habit of Brazil’s elite to foment such discord to prevent any threat to its stability. Mr. Lula’s return in a time of economic crisis might have signalled a sharp left turn from the PT. It had no other choice but to move in that direction. It would be suicidal for the PT to become the party of austerity. Mr. Lula’s brief was to help Ms. Rousseff change course. This is what the elite found abominable. Ms. Rousseff’s offer of a cabinet post to Mr. Lula would have immunised him from prosecution. A judge has now blocked the appointment.

On Friday, a million people joined the Popular Front of Brazil to repeat Mr. Lula’s call — não vai ter golpe, there’ll be no coup. The people, as the MST put it, went to the streets to defend democracy. This protest stands against the coup. Whether the emergence of these popular protests will change the ugly dynamic in Brazil is to be seen. Much is at stake in this important South American country.

Think of a Country Ruled by Death, Fear and Lies

Meltem Arikan

Think of a country where the citizens have become the three monkeys that see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil; where numerous teenagers, women and children die everyday, but the rest of the citizens don’t even notice or feel grief about this; where life is veiled with so much darkness that the abnormal is normal, where death is inured. A country where consciences are muted, where otherin’ is the norm, and screams can no longer be heard. It is so difficult to explain these dark days, the absurdities have become so ordinary… starting each day hearing about deaths, getting through each day with lies and trying to end each day adapting to new limitations and mentally dealing with this. Of course, our minds would fail to register.

Think of a country where the guiding religious body makes the statement that “fathers desiring their own daughters would not damage the marriage,” and those who spread or discuss this are the ones accused of blasphemy, and not the ones who stated it; where people die from bomb explosions but the media has no freedom to report it in the news; where journalists are detained before appearing in court just because of the news they reported; where a TV show presenter is summoned to court for supporting terrorism because during his TV show he asked his live audience to applaud the woman who called the show and said, “no children should die.”

Think of a country being ruled by fear, hatred, and anger; where pains blow instead of winds, bullets fall instead of rain; where children grow with fear instead of laughter; where people are hopeless, without any expectations and are filled with worry; where deaths are ignored and lies are widely accepted; where nobody likes to hear the facts. A country where speaking the truth is seen as a reason to be accused of treason and manipulation; where people are seeing one another with suspicion, becoming more and more withdrawn; where tension is constantly hanging in the air; where the children have to hold white flags in order to go out on the streets to buy bread. Think of a country where women are humiliated, accused and facing growing pressures every single day; where something innocent  like young people holding hands in public is sinful and reported as such in the news; where inquiring, asking questions or criticizing is a crime punishable by law;  where unconditional obedience is applauded. Think of a country rapidly tumbling down a dark cliff while its future is getting darker with each passing day.

While you are reading these sentences, citizens of that country are continuing to try to live their lives… getting used to the deaths, lies, infidelities, cruelty, accusations and, most painfully, seeing the dead bodies of children. To live is as difficult as it is to think in that country. While you think of all this and feel sad, nothing is ever going to change in that country or in any other similar one.

While you feel sad,  humanity continues to become more dehumanized in that country. Influential men around the world continue to sit on their expensive leather chairs, wearing their $10,000 suits, and  holding their thousand-Euro pens, signing ostentatious agreements for more oil, weaponry and power in order to earn even more money and to become even more heartless. The easier it is to think and produce ideas from far away from these countries, the harder it is to change the living conditions there determined by violence and hatred. And while you think, the true meaning of freedom, fellowship, peace and sharing is slowly but surely disappearing from our world and being replaced by the rule of brutality, submission and injustice. And while I write and you think, without acting, about all the lifeless bodies throughout that country, the darkness of despair continues to spread everywhere.

Nuclear Security Summit Process: Progress and Prognosis

Manpreet Sethi

In less than two weeks from now, the Heads of Governments of over 50 countries will once again gather to discuss the knotty issues of nuclear security. Having met three times earlier in the last six years, this congregation in Washington will bring the Nuclear Security Summit process to a close. President Obama had started this initiative from the US capital in 2010. It had been his aspiration then to use the forum to get nations to secure all nuclear material on their territories over the next four years. That was an underestimation of the task and even six years hence, the Security Summit will sign off without being able to claim that all has been well-secured. However, what has certainly been achieved is the accordance of a highest level of attention across the world to the issue of nuclear security in order to minimise, if not obviate, chances of nuclear terrorism. Of course, there can be no guarantees in this business. And yet, the coming together of national heads has ensured that actions leading up to the cause of nuclear security have received due attention amongst national priorities.

The Summit process also inspired nations into action since they came with report cards in hand to showcase the highlights of all they had done at the national and regional levels towards nuclear security. These came to be known as 'house gifts' when brought by individual nations, or 'gift baskets' when they came as part of a regional initiative. The actions have taken many forms, creating national legislation to handle unauthorised access to nuclear and radiological materials, strengthening of the national nuclear security culture, tightening of export controls, outreach to national industry, regional efforts, or the signing/ratifying of nuclear security specific treaties. Indeed, over the last few years adherence to such international treaties has increased. Ten additional countries, for instance, have ratified the International Convention on Suppression of Acts of Terrorism since the last Summit in 2014, leading the total ratifications to about 100. Similarly some of the major nations that have accepted Amendment 2005 of the Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials in the last two years have been the US, South Korea, Turkey, Japan and Singapore. Of course, the DPRK, Iran, Israel and Pakistan remain notable holdouts of both Conventions. But interestingly, there have been murmurs that Pakistan might carry their ratification as a house gift to Washington later this month.

In another task undertaken under the aegis of the NSS, progress has been made in ensuring security of highly enriched uranium through either the conversion of research reactors running on HEU to low enriched uranium (LEU), or its repatriation and elimination. Given that HEU is relatively easier to smuggle out of facilities and also somewhat more amenable to being used by terrorists, the focus over the last couple of Summits has been to get nations to give up its use for civilian purposes such as in research reactors. While the US has led an international effort in this direction called the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors from 1978 onwards, and some 44 reactors outside of the US were converted to using LEU by the 1990s, interest and resources into this initiative dwindled over time. It is only post 9/11 that the realisation of the dangers of nuclear terrorism revived interest and the Summits have brought it into sharper focus. So it is that if 50 countries had an HEU stockpile of more than 1 kg in 1992, it is now down to half the number. Since 2010 when the first Nuclear Security Summit was held, HEU has been removed from 13 countries. Of course, military stockpiles of HEU remain and so does the right of nations to use this for naval propulsion in the case of nuclear-powered submarines. But then the Nuclear Security Summit process has steered clear of bringing any sort of nuclear weapons-related activity within its ambit. Its objective has been to spur national action on securing nuclear and radiological material (including better accounting of orphan sources) with the broad understanding that military-related material is likely to be anyway better secured. While this may or may not be the case in all nuclear-armed nations, there is no doubt that acceptance of best practices in nuclear security in one aspect of national nuclear activities would have spill-over benefits too.  

With curtains coming down on the Summit process in April 2016, what will keep the focus and momentum on nuclear security alive? Several think-tanks across the world have thrown up ideas on this. Some have suggested holding ministerial-level summits every two years with the heads of government convening only every four years. Others have recommended holding periodic nuclear security issue-specific conferences. Some have even offered the NPT Review Conferences which are held every five years as a platform to focus on nuclear security. However, the most popular and likely to be accepted idea is that of the IAEA taking a lead on this.

Traditionally, the IAEA has been an organisation tasked essentially with promotion of peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to prevent clandestine development of nuclear weapons through an elaborate verification regime. Nuclear safety and security have largely been peripheral and not primary responsibilities. But given the large membership of the organisation, its experience in the nuclear domain since 1957 and a deep expertise built over years, IAEA does seem the best equipped to carry the mantle of the Summits into the future. In any case, the IAEA has periodically issued guidelines, albeit of an advisory nature, on aspects of nuclear security. For instance, in 2003 the IAEA brought out a Code of Conduct on Safety and Security of Radiological Material, in 2009 in an initiative to support efforts at nuclear security it issued INFCIRC/225/Rev 5 that provided implementation guidance on Amendment 2005 of the CPPNM with respect to security of domestic transportation of nuclear materials. In July 2013, the IAEA orgnaised an international conference on nuclear security that was attended by 125 states and 21 organisations. By comparison, the NSS have been attended by only about 50 odd countries and 4 organisations. This itself provides a sense of the reach and influence of the IAEA. The Conference has already tasked the IAEA to undertake International Physical Protection Advisory Services (IPPAS) to nations that want to seek help on nuclear security.

For the moment, the IAEA does suffer from the limitation of availability of monetary sources for the tasks of nuclear security. Financing is available only by way of voluntary contributions by nations, such as India's pledge for a US$ 1 million in 2012-13. But there is no regular nuclear security budget that can allow the Agency to do long term activity planning on nuclear security. Another limitation it faces is that of enforcement since it has an advisory role, by way of offering guidance that is non-binding and only for voluntary acceptance. It can levy no penalties for non-compliance and nor does it extend its diktat over the military-related nuclear programmes. However, if nations agree to provide the mandate of nuclear security to the IAEA then some of these limitations can be overcome.

It is imperative that the momentum achieved on nuclear security outlasts the Summit process. In fact, the four exercises can hope to be called a success only if they would have imbibed the 'habit' of constant vigilance and effort at nuclear security. Therefore, it is equally necessary that the right mechanisms and procedures are found to carry the process forward. The Summit process would dissolve into failure if the momentum was to be lost due to souring of inter-state relations. Some of this is already evident in US-Russia relations. Russia has refused to participate in the Summit at Washington and has spurned offers of collaboration over the still pending conversion of about 63 civilian Russian reactors still using HEU. Russia has the largest stockpile of HEU at approximately 700 tonnes and the non-participation of a nation of such capability and stature does deal a blow to the Summit process.

Nuclear security is a global concern. It is the responsibility of each nation to ensure that no terrorist organisation is able to find a weak link within its territory. But securing nuclear materials is also a journey and can never be a destination. Unfortunately, none can ever claim that a state of perfect nuclear security has been attained. Nations will have to persist with their efforts and hope to stay ahead of the non-state actors. While the NSS ensured a high level of national commitment, time bound follow-up, targeted focus areas and inclusion of new countries and constituencies, it is signing off at a note of political discordance between the US and Russia. The future of nuclear security will depend on the new mechanisms found to carry the process forward. But even more important would be the need to hold on to the political consensus on the subject. It is in India’s interest to find ways of keeping interest and actions on the issue active and alive. 

Forecast 2016: Cardinal Transitions

Varun Sahni

In 2016, India is likely to hit a ‘sweet spot’ and come to be seen – despite a host of domestic debilities and external vulnerabilities – as an island of growth and stability. This year, several countries whose internal dynamics are acutely relevant to India will undergo internal transitions of one sort or another. Leading the pack are the three countries that constitute India’s three cardinal external relationships: the US, China, and Pakistan. Three others – Myanmar, Afghanistan and Nepal – in India’s immediate neighbourhood too are experiencing protracted political transitions. Finally, there is an important evolving relationship with Brazil, a country three oceans and two hemispheres away that is experiencing severe internal turbulence and could well be heading towards transition.

The USThe 2016 US presidential election is turning out to be one of the most unusual since the 1948 Truman-Dewey matchup. It is increasingly expected that Hillary Clinton will face Donald Trump after the primaries; but much could yet happen to overturn this expectation. Trump, Clinton, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders all speak to sectional constituencies that feel scared, angry and ignored. As in the late 1970s, many Americans feel humiliated and demoralised about what they see as their country’s decline in world affairs. When a similar mood prevailed in 1980, an unconventional candidate, Ronald Reagan, was elected. The world could once again witness an unexpected electoral outcome in the 2016 US presidential elections. The US has not been as internally divided as today since the Civil War. These divisions are not only causing electoral unpredictability but also policy uncertainty and even paralysis. Predicting the contours of Washington's policies under a Clinton administration is at least a plausible venture; but under a Trump administration, who can tell what will happen?

ChinaThe ongoing rebooting of China is equally important. Change will not be easy for a $12 trillion economy comprising 1.35 billion people. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Chinese Dream is centenarian: making China a moderately well-off society by 2021 and a fully developed nation by 2049, i.e. the 100th anniversaries of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) respectively. Economically, rebooting China is essential: after three decades of 10 per cent annual growth rates, China is now a middle income country that must transform its export-led growth and government-led investment model to a more sustainable lower growth trajectory that relies on internal demand and consumption-led growth.

Transformation has a sharp political edge under Xi. The anti-corruption campaign has severely disrupted tacit understandings across all levels of the CPC, especially in the higher echelons. So far, the only winners appear to be the so-called ‘princelings’, children of first generation CPC revolutionaries. As political power is increasingly being monopolised by a single leader, the orderly decadal transitions of the administrations of former Chinese Presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao may no longer serve as a template for the future. Certainly, the ‘collective leadership’ of the Hu years is already a thing of the past.

PakistanPakistan too will experience a significant transition this year. The country’s Army Chief, Gen Raheel Sharif, is scheduled to retire on 29 November. He has garnered immense popularity in the Pakistani society and across the political spectrum by taking the battle to groups like the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). He has characterised the TTP as an even greater threat to Pakistan than India is. Such characterisation was a clear departure from his predecessors as also from his own biography: his maternal uncle and elder brother were killed in wars against India. Although several voices advocate that he should be given an extension, Sharif has insisted that he will leave in November.

Given the monopoly Pakistan’s military has over the country’s overall policies related to India, the Kashmir issue, and nuclear weapons, from an Indian perspective, the identity of Sharif’s successor is a significant matter. The senior-most lieutenant general, Maqsood Ahmad, is currently a military adviser at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. Most likely, he will retire from the army in January 2017, as will three other lieutenant-generals who follow Ahmed in seniority. Thus, Sharif’s likely successors are lieutenant-generals Ishfaq Nadeem Ahmed or Javed Iqbal Ramday, currently commanders of 2 Corps (Multan) and 31 Corps (Bahawalpur) respectively. However, there is a long tradition of supersession when army chiefs change in Pakistan. Sharif’s successor could be someone lower on the seniority list, such as Lt Gen Rizwan Akhtar, currently director-general, Inter-Services Intelligence. Both the identity and orientation of Sharif’s successor would be important factors in New Delhi-Islamabad relations.

MyanmarOstensibly, the ongoing political transition in Myanmar is the least problematic of the three other transitions in India’s immediate neighbourhood that have the potential to pose challenges for Indian policy. Electoral democracy has certainly triumphed in Myanmar. The next crucial stage will be for a democratic system to provide effective governance. Several factors could yet upset systemic stability. Keeping Myanmar military onside during the transition is critical; and with 25 per cent of the votes in the parliament, the military can block any constitutional amendment. There are huge pent up expectations in Myanmar’s population and, after receiving such a massive electoral majority, the National League for Democracy government will be expected to produce visible results soon. The ethnic minorities' issue, especially of the Rohingyas, could bring significant external pressure on the young democratic government. Finally, Htin Kyaw as president and Aung San Suu Kyi as the power behind the throne could be a feasible arrangement in the immediate future, but in the longer term, this could kindle the problem of dual centres of power.

AfghanistanIn 2016, Afghanistan too may face the problem of dual power centres. The US-brokered arrangement of September 2014 that resulted in Ashraf Ghani as Afghanistan’s president and Abdullah Abdullah as the country’s chief executive officer has worked much better than most had expected. The Taliban’s so-called annual ‘spring offensive’ can be expected from mid-April. However, US President Barack Obama’s October 2015 decision to maintain the current force of 9,800 through most of 2016, then begin drawing down to 5,500 late in early 2017, works to Kabul’s favour. That the Taliban and the Islamic State are now targeting each other adds to Afghanistan’s perturbation and violence but further strengthens the government. India’s core challenge in Afghanistan will remain the same: maintaining its high levels of development assistance while its personnel and citizens continue to be specifically targeted by the Taliban and other insurgents.

NepalThe most prolonged and troubled transition in India’s regional neighbourhood has been in Nepal. New Delhi’s role in this transition also marks one of the biggest failures of Indian foreign policy in the recent years. In part, Kathmandu’s problem has been one that it shares with other relatively small countries: the tendency of having a difficult time acknowledging and designing for ethno-cultural diversity. Sri Lanka is another South Asian example of this tendency. However, Nepal’s protracted transition, particularly its constitution-making travails, also highlight the difficulties of framing a constitution in an era of mass politics and intrusive mass media. The Madhesi problem is likely to remain unresolved through 2016, with continuing negative spill-over effects on India. Given India’s organic ethno-cultural and ecological linkages with Nepal, this is unfortunate but unavoidable.

BrazilBrazil – India’s new partner in the BRICS and other ventures – is experiencing a year of Olympian discontent. The economy is shrinking as the recession cuts deep: a negative growth rate of 3.9 per cent is expected in 2016, albeit it could be as severe as 6 per cent. The world still expects Brazilians to rally around and throw a big party when the Olympic Games begin in Rio de Janeiro in mid-2016. However, these days, the mood in Brazil is particularly grim. Investigations of corruption in Petrobras, the massive state-owned energy company, have led to prosecutions and indictments that have now reached the highest levels of government. The speaker of the Chamber of Deputies in Congress has been indicted for corruption. Shockingly, corruption charges have now tainted former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the patron saint of the Brazilian left and mentor of incumbent President Dilma Rousseff. Calls for Rousseff’s resignation are increasing and there are moves to begin impeachment proceedings in Congress. Rousseff’s impeachment is unlikely as she still has the support of most Workers Party (PT) and Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB) legislators. However, it is sobering to consider the possibility that the Rousseff administration is de facto at an end and will limp on as a lame duck till 2018. Most worryingly, the possibility of massive public unrest on ideological right-left lines cannot be discounted.

Red Herrings

In this analysis of key transitions, situations of stasis have obviously been ignored. However, some cases of supposed stability should also be problematised. For instance, it is unclear as to how long incumbent Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party will be able to marginalise their longstanding traditional rivals, Khaleda Zia and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or continue the process of retributive justice against the perpetrators of the 1971 independence war genocide. Likewise, although he still seems to be firmly in the driving seat in Russia, in 2016, some searching questions will be asked about President Vladimir Putin’s staying power.