Deciphering the Iranian Elections

Akbar E. Torbat

Iranians voted in the presidential as well as the city and village councils elections on May 19, 2017. The two elections were arranged to be on the same day to boost participations and show support for the clerical regime in Tehran. The Guardian Council had handpicked six candidates and rejected the rest of more than 1600 applicants who had registered to be presidential candidates. The candidates selected by the Council were Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Mostafa Hashemitaba, Eshagh Jahangiri, Mostafa Mirsalim, Ebrahim Raisi, and Hassan Rouhani.

In three presidential debates which began on April 28, the candidates discussed their plans for solving the country’s problems. In the first and second debates, Hassan Rouhani and his deputy Eshagh Jahangiri came under attacks for corruptions in the executive branch and their failure to solve the country’s problems. The third debate on May 12, was focused on economic issues such as high rate of unemployment, smuggling foreign products imports, banking system insolvencies, bankruptcy of many factories, the country’s dependence on crude oil exports, increase in food prices, and tax collection plan. Other issues discussed were lack of success in promoting self-sufficiency in industrial and agricultural sectors, and rent-seeking in the public sector, a form of corruption common within the regime which involves selling public properties below market value to government officials or their relatives and cronies. Ghalibaf accused Rouhani and Jahangiri of buying public properties for minimal prices. He mentioned that Rouhani’s close relative (his brother Hossein Fereydoon) had engaged in financial corruptions and criticized Rouhani for increase in unemployment rate, high food prices, and his failure to collect taxes. Mirsalim accused Rouhani for increasing export of raw materials and failing to promote manufacturing industries. Raisi accused Rouhani of increasing the payments to retired employees and welfare recipients just before the elections to promote his campaign.

Few days after the debates, Jahangiri dropped out of the elections in favor of Rouhani and Ghalibaf left in favor of Raisi, the protégé of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Mirsalim did not get enough public support from a conservative camp he was representing. Also, Hashemi Taba did not gain support from his reformist camp and later he said he voted for Rouhani himself. That meant the election was mainly about choosing the president between two clerics: the incumbent Rouhani from the so-called reformist wing of the regime and Raisi from the conservative wing.

The Questionable Results

The government announcement of huge turnout on the Election Day was highly questionable. The results of presidential elections were announced by the Interior Ministry on May 21. From the 56 million eligible Iranian voters, 41.22 million or 73% voted in the election. Rouhani received 23.55 million (57.1%) votes, his closest rival, Raisi 15.79 million (38.3%) votes, Mirsalim 0.478 (1.2%), and Hashemitaba (0.52%). Critics called to question the figures announced by the Ministry. They claimed the voters’ population announced was far beyond the capacity of the polling places.  The 73% voters’ participation in the election was too high to be true. Since the voters had to write the candidates’ names whom they were voting for on the ballots and the limited number of available polling places throughout the country, it was highly unlikely that so many people could have voted in one day. Especially, since the city and village councils elections were simultaneously conducted, and checking and stamping of the voters’ birth certificates, and filling out the ballots by so many voters required much more time than one day. As compared to the past elections, this time in the Capital Tehran the poor who mostly reside in south of the city did not crowd the polls at all, while the rich in the north parts had crowded some polls as were shown on the state television. That meant the conservatives have lost support among their traditional constituencies who are the poor.

After the elections, there were some complaints from the conservative camps concerning miscounting the votes and manipulating the results. The conservatives accused Rouhani of engineering the election in favor of himself. Raisi complained to the Guardian council for violations (takhalof) in conducting the election. He said in some polling places there were not enough ballots and his name had not been printed correctly on some of the ballots.

Assessment of the Election Outcome

A number of factors affected the outcome of the elections. First, despite failure of Rouhani in economic and other matters, since the media was organized to promote him, he gained more votes. Also, the Western powers had planned to promote Rouhani’s re-election. Europeans wanted Rouhani to win the second term because he had signed some lucrative contracts with their firms after the nuclear agreement was finalized in January 2016. Europeans have opposed President Donald Trump’s plan to confront the clerical regime. Second, Khamenei’s pushing of Raisi as his favorite candidate backfired. Raisi’s record of being involved in mass executions of the political prisoners in 1988 and frustration of Iranians with the conservative clerics led to more votes for Rouhani who had promised to promote political reforms. Third, some supporters of the former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad either did not vote or did not vote for Raisi, despite Raisi’s efforts to absorb some of Ahmadinejad’s supporters into his campaign. Fourth, some secular political groups thought boycotting the elections would lead to worst outcome if Raisi was elected. Fifth, some celebrities were shown on state TV and social media, saying they planned to vote for Rouhani. Also, the former president Mohammad Khatami endorsed Rouhani.

Overall, regardless of the highly questionable turnout reported by the Iranian government, it was a surprise election outcome. Despite Rouhani’s disastrous economic policies, his re-election against Khamenei’s favorite candidate Raisi shows how Iranians are frustrated with the theocratic dictatorship of the Supreme Leader.

The Perils of Sectarianism

Louis Proyect

Throughout the Middle East, sectarianism is a problem that has existed for decades but more recently has reached catastrophic dimensions with ISIS declaring just about ever religious rival as a takfiri. This has led to stoning, beheadings, the rape of Yazidi women and an iron enforcement of sharia law that makes every person living under its sway worried about becoming the next victim of its religious enforcers.

While ISIS was a virulent strain of sectarianism from its outset, you also see a level of brutal and relentless warfare between the majoritarian Sunni sect and its rivals in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere unknown in the past, no matter how sharp the differences over who inherited Mohammad’s mantle of authority. For people who have more than the usual interest in Syrian politics, the problem of sectarianism is particularly acute since the early days of the revolution were largely devoid of such conflicts.

Addressing the need for serious scholarship on the origins of these seemingly intractable fissures, Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel have put together a collection of articles by experts in the field that is must reading for both those within the academy and those working for the cause of peace in the Middle East. Hashemi is the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and Islamic Politics at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. His co-editor Danny Postel is the Assistant Director of the Middle East and North African Studies Program at Northwestern University. I have been in contact with the two authors over the past six years and have had a high regard for their scholarly integrity and even more so after reading their Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East.

While I was familiar with the British Empire’s policy of divide and conquer, it never quite dawned on me how postcolonial elites both adopted and adapted this method of rule to their own purposes. Given the infinitesimally small number of people who belong to a ruling class, there will always be a need to set those who belong to the lower classes against each other. In the USA, there have been sharp debates about identity politics in which “old school” socialists urge gays, women, Blacks and Latinos to subordinate their struggles to united class actions in pursuit of economic demands such as universal health care, etc. In the Middle East, identity politics takes on an order of magnitude far weightier since it involves “confessional” dimensions that in of themselves are based on faith rather than reason.

In the early 2000s, there was one Marxist tendency that had a rather simple solution to the problem of sectarianism. Instead of worrying about rivalries between different groups of Muslims, the Workers Communist Party of Iran and the group it spawned in Iraq, they carved out a niche for themselves as enemies of Islam tout court—sounding like a mixture of Bill Maher and Bill Haywood. In a 1999 interview titled Islam and De-Islamisation, the leader of the Iranian wing Mansoor Hekmat took an approach that probably accounts for the group’s failure to gather more than a few hundred members: “In Islam, freethinking is a sin deserving of punishment. Music is corrupt. Sex without permission and religious certification, is the greatest of sins. This is the religion of death. In reality, all religions are such but most religions have been restrained by freethinking and freedom-loving humanity over hundreds of years. This one was never restrained or controlled. With every move, it brings abominations and misery.”

We reminded their activists that despite Karl Marx referring to religion as an “opium”, he also said in the same paragraph that it was “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.” This reminder fell on deaf ears, obviously reflecting their inability to understand that as long as there were “soulless conditions”, faith would serve as an anodyne.

If you are going to assess the role of Islam in the Middle East, you have begin with an understanding of how it functions as an instrument of state policy, something that Hashemi and Postel interpret in their introduction as crucial to resolving a crisis of legitimacy. There tends to be a relationship between “weak states” and sectarianization since normal means of hegemonic control such as parliamentary democracy are inadequate. Indeed, since pre-statal institutions based on ethnic or religious ties often extend back for centuries, there will always been a tendency to rely upon them for support rather than constitutional systems based on the vote, a free press, etc. In the case of the Baathist states in both Iraq and Syria, such pre-statal networks have served both Sunni and Alawite elites respectively.

When confronted by leftist political parties, even those as feckless as the Worker Communists, secularist-minded bourgeois nationalists are not above mobilizing religious sects. Despite the Assad dynasty’s reputation for secularism, Hafez al-Assad promoted a pan-Islamism that even mollified the Muslim Brotherhood whose members were drowned in blood in the Hama massacre of 1982. Taking the senior Assad at his word that he was for Islamic rule, the Brotherhood announced in 1997 that it as ready to “Restore Syrian national unity on behalf of the interests of the [Syrian] homeland and the [Islamic] nation, in view of threats facing it and in order to withstand the Zionist attack.” Such sectarian benediction was key to the Assads cementing the support of Sunni elites who are as critical to their survival as the Alawites.

The articles in the Hashemi/Postel collection are grouped into two sections, one dealing with historical, geopolitical and theoretical perspectives; the second dealing with case studies ranging across the entire region.

Usama Makdisi, a history professor at Rice University, has an article titled “The Problem of Sectarianism in the Middle East in an Age of Western Hegemony” that makes some persuasive points about the role of the Ottoman Empire, the hegemon that preceded Great Britain and lesser European imperial powers. Unlike the Europeans, the Ottomans preferred to rule with a light footprint that gave various religious groups the freedom to worship as they pleased, as long as they supplied tribute to the Sultan and his minions.

However, within the Ottoman Empire, the Muslims were always considered a privileged group even if this did not translate into oppressive social policies. As Europe penetrated into the Ottoman realm in the 1800s, it used its superior military and economic power to extract concessions from the Sultan to cease what it considered anti-Christian discrimination. Despite the “enlightened” character of the reforms, Muslims interpreted them as an attack on established norms just as they would react to the Zionist project in the 1900s. In the 1850s, tensions built until Muslims launched a virtual war against Christians in both Syria and Lebanon. To resolve these conflicts, the Europeans and the Ottomans agreed to sectarian power-sharing arrangements epitomized in the Lebanese constitution that perpetuated a division of the political spoils between Christians, Sunnis and Shias—a formula for disaster that in the name of de-sectarianism created permanent sectarian rifts.

As someone who has often had the lonely task of trying to get the rest of the left to look at Syrian politics without bias, I was particularly interested to see what Paulo Gabriel Hilu Pinto, an Anthropology professor and director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Brazil, had to say in a case study titled “The Shattered Nation: the Sectarianization of the Syrian Conflict”.

As mentioned earlier, the Assads deployed Islamic language and symbols to their own advantage so it is not that surprising that the protests beginning in March 2011 would share the regime’s Islamist stance, especially since the poor farmers from the countryside who ended up in places like Daraa tended to be genuinely pious as opposed to Bashar al-Assad who was seen in photographs kissing a Quran and who appeared on billboards alongside a map of Syria with words “Allah yahmiki ya Suriya” (God protects you, O Syria) all over the country.

In 2012, even when protesters would perform a Sufi dhikr, a form of devotion, Christians marched side by side with them in al-Qusayr, a town near Homs. Given the tendency to use mosques as gathering places, which often were the only spaces available, Assad exploited their use to disparage the movement as Salafist extremism. In reality, the Salafists in Syria were like most of their co-religionists for hundreds of years—quietist observers of a faith that emphasized strict adherence to the written word of the Quran. Like the Hasidic Jews or hard-core Lutherans, their main goal was to be left alone, not engage in revolutionary struggle. Growing weary of the regime’s smear of them as Salafi jihadists, the protesters began to use mockery:

The accusations of Sunni sectarianism and radicalism coming from the regime were refuted with irony by the protesters, who stressed the participation of non-Sunnis and non-Muslims in the demonstrations. A poster in a protest in the coastal city of Baniyas in 2011 read: “Hal a-shahid Hatim Hanna massihi salafi?” (Was the martyr Hatem Salafi Christian?), a reference to a Christian protester killed by the security forces. In the same year, a banner in a demonstration in Zabadani, near Damascus, stated: “La salafi wa la ikhwani…ana ta’ifati al-huriyya” (Neither Salafi, nor [Muslim] Brother … My Sect is Freedom). Similarly, in ethnically or religiously mixed areas such as the regions of northern Syria or the Sunni/Christian/‘Alawi cities of the coast, the chanting of “Wahid, Wahid, Wahid, al-Sh’ab al-Suri Wahid” (One, One, One, the Syrian People are One) became a common practice in the protests in 2011 and 2012.

This now seems like ancient history as Assad has successfully made it possible for jihadists to flourish in Syria by militarizing the conflict in the early stages and making peaceful protests impossible. When arms and financial support are only available from Islamist states like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, it will be Islamist militias that get favored.

Even when the FSA took pains to distinguish itself from sectarian militias, it could not help but being perceived as Sunni since most of the defecting soldiers who joined its ranks had become alienated from the Alawite domination of the state and the officer corps. Pinto, who was sympathetic to the revolution, is honest enough of a scholar to recount one incident. When an Ismaili (a subsect of Shiism) defector went to join the FSA, he was told: “But you are not Sunni…So, why are you defecting?” And even more negatively, when Alawite militias began to slaughter civilians in Sunni villages, the FSA would often take revenge on Alawite civilians even though this would alienate possible allies. All of this, needless to say, was exactly what Assad planned.

Without the discipline found in armed revolutionary movements bound together by an ideology such as exhibited by Mao’s Red Army or the Cuban July 26^th Movement, militia members began to operate like gangs. Pinto describes how this inevitably led to the ascent of the jihadi groups who were bound together by an ideology, even if it was in conflict with the early goals of the revolution:

Besides military strength and greater resources, the rise of the Islamic groups was also due to their strong internal discipline and capacity of establishing some kind of institutional order in the territories they had conquered. Criminal activities became so widespread under the disorder created by the civil war that the inhabitants of Aleppo, which was partially occupied by the opposition in 2012, humorously fashioned a verb, wala (to take away/lift/sting), to designate the systematic racket and pillage practiced by different militias. A friend from Aleppo said that when his father passed away in 2012, he only managed to bury body after paying the “fees” (bribe) asked by the militia fighter who controlled the cemetery.

As I pointed out in a review of Gilbert Achcar’s Morbid Symptoms, the author’s hope for peace in Syria resonated with my own. If it is understandable why rebels took up arms six years ago as purely a defensive measure, it has been obvious since 2013 that the continuance of war only serves Assad’s aims. Unlike China or Cuba, Syria was never able to develop a revolutionary movement. A pro-Moscow Communist Party did come into existence but as might be expected, it was a solid pillar of support for the Baathists who were aligned with Moscow during the Cold War.

Peace will make it possible for civil society to reemerge, out of which anarchists following in the footsteps of the late Omar Aziz or Marxists like Yassin Al-Haj Saleh can gain a hearing. While mindful of the religious traditions of the Syrian poor, men and women like Aziz and Saleh were far more capable of building a powerful movement because they prioritized class.

In an article on Aziz for Tahrir-ICN, Burning Country co-author Leila al-Sham paid tribute to his legacy:

Through his writing and activity he promoted local self-governance, horizontal organization, cooperation, solidarity and mutual aid as the means by which people could emancipate themselves from the tyranny of the state. Together with comrades, Aziz founded the first local committee in Barzeh, Damascus. The example spread across Syria and with it some of the most promising and lasting examples of non-hierarchical self organization to have emerged from the countries of the Arab Spring.

With all due respect to the revolutionary Kurds who are trying to build a new society in Rojava, there were Syrians like Omar Aziz who aspired to the same goals. There is little doubt that Assad considered people like Aziz to be a much greater threat than any jihadist.

Yassin Al-Haj Saleh was forced into exile in 2013. A heterodox communist who left the official CP over its support for the Baathists, Saleh spent 16 years in Syrian prisons for writing articles calling for democratic rights. In an October 26, 2016 interview with The Intercept, he explained how Salafists got the upper hand:

For 30 years, the Baath Party has made a project of crushing all political life in Syria. So when the uprising came, we had no real political organizations, only individuals here and there. Islam, in our society, is the limit of political poverty. When you don’t have any political life, people will mobilize according to the lowest stratum of an imaginary community. This deeper identity is religion. When you have political and cultural life, you can have trade unions, leftist groups, and people are able to organize along any number of identities. But when you crush politics, when there is no political life, religious identity will prosper.

For both Syria and the other case studies in Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East, you always find men and women like Aziz and Saleh who despite their small numbers speak for the broader interests of society. As the futility of sectarianism grows ever more obvious, the people of the Middle East will be open to alternative political strategies that place an emphasis on their common class interests. For the emerging vanguard of a new Middle East, Hashemi and Postel’s book should be required reading since it puts a spotlight on the damage that has been done by a “divide and conquer” strategy used by their native ruling classes. One hopes that the book will be the opening salvo in a new struggle to put the region on new and much more humane basis.

Global Need for Mental Health Are Still Unmet

Cesar Chelala

On a global scale, the magnitude of unaddressed mental health problems continues to be high. It is estimated that 120 million people globally suffer from depression, 50 million from epilepsy, 37 million from Alzheimer’s disease and 24 million from schizophrenia. About one million people worldwide commit suicide every year, and approximately 20 million unsuccessfully attempt suicide. In the United States, suicide is the eighth leading cause of death — every 17 minutes another person ends their life.

According to a World Bank study, mental health problems are a major cause of lost years of quality life. In spite of that, allocations to treat mental health problems in national health budgets are disproportionately small in relation to other diseases and the serious health consequences they pose.

Despite these efforts, the lack of effective mechanisms to deal with mental health issues remains pervasive and has been found in all countries surveyed in a World Health Organization (WHO) study. The most pressing need, however, is found in several developing countries. Out of the 191 surveyed, almost 25 percent do not have a national policy or legislation on mental health issues.

As indicated by the WHO, the situation is worse among the poorest sectors of the population whose “lack of access to affordable treatment makes the course of the illness more severe and debilitating, leading to a vicious circle of poverty and mental health disorders.”

Although treatments are available for many mental health problems, almost two-thirds of sufferers never seek help from a health professional. In many cases this is the result of a lack of economic means, and in others it is a reflection of the stigma frequently associated with mental illness. According to WHO, stigma, discrimination, and neglect prevent care and treatment from reaching people affected with mental disorders.

Mental health disorders are among the main causes of disease and disability in the world. Depressive disorders are now the fourth leading cause of the global disease burden, and it is estimated that they will rank second by 2020, lagging behind only ischemic heart diseases.

In spite of this, on a global scale, approximately 70 percent of people have access to less than one psychiatrist per 100,000 people, 55 percent of people have access to less than one neurologist per million people, and 44 percent of people have access to less than one psychiatric nurse per 100,000 people. These are general figures that do not take into consideration significant regional, national and local variations.

All in all, the services and resources available are one-tenth to one-hundredth of what is needed. Despite wide differences between mental health care in industrialized and in developing countries, both share a common problem: Many people who could benefit from them do not use available psychiatric services. Even in countries that have adequate services less than half of the people needing care make use of them.

The need to implement proper policies is urgent. Unless we do so, significant gains made over the last 40 years in reducing child and maternal mortality, increasing life expectancy, and lowering the burden of infectious diseases will be offset by the growth of mental and behavioral problems. Both international agencies and national governments must now invest in mental health services as a significant part of their development strategies.

Policy makers are often constrained by competing demands for financial assistance in dealing with mental health issues. They must take into account that some mental health disorders can be prevented; that most mental and behavioral disorders can be successfully treated; that not treating them will lead to high economic and social costs; and that much of this prevention, treatment and cure is affordable. And, most importantly, it should be stressed that through appropriate treatment many of those who suffer from mental illness can resume normal, fulfilling, and productive lives.

Blood on the Tracks of the New Silk Roads

Pepe Escobar

China’s cardinal foreign policy imperative is to refrain from interfering abroad while advancing the proverbial good relations with key political actors – even when they may be at each other’s throats.

Still, it’s nothing but gut-wrenching for Beijing to watch the current, unpredictable, Saudi-Qatari standoff. There’s no endgame in sight, as plausible scenarios include even regime change and a seismic geopolitical shift in Southwest Asia – what a Western-centric view calls the Middle East.

And blood on the tracks in Southwest Asia cannot but translate into major trouble ahead for the New Silk Roads, now rebranded Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

When he said, on the record, “I decided … the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding [of terrorism]”, President Trump essentially took credit for the Saudi/UAE-orchestrated excommunication of Doha, the aftermath of his now notorious sword dance in Riyadh.

Trump’s senior staff though maintains that Qatar never came up in discussions with the Saudis. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former Exxon-Mobil CEO and a certified old Middle East hand, has done his best to defuse the drama – conscious there would be no reason for Qatar to continue hosting Al Udeid Air Base and Centcom to a hostile superpower.

Meanwhile, Russia – the Beltway’s favorite evil entity – is getting closer and closer to Qatar, ever since the game-changing acquisition in early December by the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) of 19.5% of the crown energy giant Rosneft.

That translates into an economic/political alliance of the world’s top two gas exporters; and that explains why Doha – still holding a permanent office at NATO’s HQ – has abruptly thrown its “moderate rebels” in Syria under the (economic) bus.

Russia and China are bound by a complex, multi-vector strategic partnership. Beijing, privileging economic interests, takes a pragmatic view and is never inclined to play a political role. As the world’s biggest manufacturer and exporter, Beijing’s motto is crystal clear: Make Trade, Not War.

But what if Southwest Asia is mired in the foreseeable future in a permanent pre-war footing?

China and BRI’s best pal Iran

China is Qatar’s top trading partner. Beijing was actively negotiating a free trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) before the current standoff. Moving forward, a possible scenario is Qatar even pulling out of the GCC.

Qatar is also China’s second-largest source of liquefied natural gas (LNG), while Saudi Arabia is China’s third-largest source of oil. Since 2010 China is ahead of the US as the biggest exporter to Southwest Asia while solidifying its position as the top importer of Southwest Asia energy.

When King Salman recently visited Beijing, the House of Saud ecstatically spun a “Sino-Saudi strategic partnership” based on the signing of deals worth $65 billion. The partnership, in fact, hinges on a five-year Saudi Arabia-China security cooperation agreement that includes counter-terrorism and joint military drills. Much will have to do with keeping the profitable Red Sea-Gulf of Aden corridor free of political turmoil.

Of course, eyebrows may be raised over the fact that Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism is the ideological matrix of Salafi-jihadism threatening not only Southwest Asia and the West but also China itself.

The New Silk Roads/BRI imply a key role for the GCC – in a mutual investment, trademark Chinese “win-win” way. In an ideal world, the Saudi “Vision 2030” modernizing plan breathlessly being sold by Warrior Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) could, in theory, even reign in the appeal of Salafi-jihadism of the Daesh variety all across Southwest Asia.

What the Iranophobic MBS seems not to understand is that Beijing actually privileges its BRI-based economic relationship with Tehran.

Early last year, when President Xi Jinping visited Tehran, he and President Rouhani pledged to raise Chinese-Iranian bilateral trade to a whopping $600 billion in 10 years, most of it related to BRI expansion.

China and Iran have been doing serious business. For over a year now, direct China-Iran cargo trains have been crossing Central Asia in only 12 days. That’s just the appetizer for high-speed rail connectivity spanning the arc from China to Turkey via Iran in the early 2020s.

And in a (distant?) future, a pacified Syria will also be configured as a BRI node; before the war, Syrian merchants were a top fixture in the trading-in-small-goods Silk Road running from the Levant to Yiwu in eastern China.

BRI does Turkey, Egypt and Israel

China’s Maritime Silk Road is not about a threatening “string of pearls” – but mostly about port infrastructure, built by Chinese companies, configuring key BRI stops from the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea and Suez all the way to Piraeus port in the Greek Mediterranean. Piraeus is owned and operated by China’s COSCO since August 2016; this upgraded, modern container hub for trade between East Asia and the West is already the fastest-growing port in Europe.

For his part, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already made it clear that Turkey’s national interests involve “the Suez Canal, the adjacent seas, and from there extending to the Indian Ocean.” As much as Ankara has set up a base in Qatar – with soldiers now flowing in – it has also established a Turkish-Saudi Strategic Cooperation Council.

Ankara may have been slowly and surely engaged in a strategic pivoting to Russia – as in the go-ahead for Turkish Stream. Yet that also qualifies as a pivot to China – expected to develop, bumps included, in all key areas, from membership of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Both Turkey and Iran – a possible full member of the SCO as early as next year – are actively supporting Qatar in the current standoff, including via regular food shipments. That shows once again how Beijing simply cannot allow itself to be dragged politically into what is essentially the vicious, intractable Iran-Saudi regional power war. Once again; BRI trumps everything.

Egypt poses an extra problem. It aligns with Riyadh in the current standoff; after all Field Marshall President Al-Sisi depends on the House of Saud “largesse”.

In Egypt, the new Singapore-sized capital east of Cairo is essentially being financed by Chinese investment; $35 billion by the end of last year, and counting. Extra bonuses include Beijing facilitating currency swap deals – providing a much-needed boost to the Egyptian economy. Ahmed Darwish, chairman of the Suez Canal Economic Zone, has nothing but praise to the top investor in the Suez Canal Corridor, which happens to be Beijing.

And then there’s the budding Israeli-Chinese connection. Israel backs the Saudi-UAE anti-Qatar blitzkrieg essentially as yet another proxy war front against Iran.

China is bidding to build the Red-Med high-speed rail connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. If the proverbial sea of containers can be accommodated near Eilat, the Chinese will be able to transship cargo via the Red-Med railway directly to Piraeus – an alternative route adding to the already Chinese-involved Suez Canal Corridor.

Connectivity is frantic on all fronts. Shanghai International Port Group is running Haifa port. China Harbor Engineering will build a new $876 million port in Ashdod. Israel is already China’s top supplier of advanced agricultural technology – as in water desalination, aquaculture and cattle farming, for instance. Beijing wants more biomedical, clean energy and telecom technology Israeli imports. And the clincher is Israel’s imminent membership of the AIIB.

It’s fair to argue that from now on everything that happens across Southwest Asia will be conditioned by, and interlocked with, BRI’s land-sea superhighway emporium from East Asia and Southeast Asia to southeastern Europe.

Focused on BRI’s comprehensive drive for multipolarization, “inclusive” globalization 2.0, and the rapid spread of information technology, the last thing Beijing needs is a throwback to the past; a foolish, manufactured standoff as the new front in an existential proxy war between the House of Saud and Iran, and with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Israel pitted against Qatar, Turkey, Iran – and Russia.

Talk about sleepless nights in the Zhongnanhai these days.

Probability of Nuclear War

David Krieger

Most people go about their lives giving minimal thought to the consequences or probability of nuclear war.  The consequences are generally understood to be catastrophic and, as a result, the probability of nuclear war is thought to be extremely low.  But is this actually the case?  Should people feel safe from nuclear war on the basis of a perceived low probability of occurrence?

Since the consequences of nuclear war could be as high as human extinction, the probability of such an outcome would preferably be zero, but this is clearly not the case.  Nuclear weapons have been used twice in the past 72 years, at a time when only one country possessed these weapons.  Today, nine countries possess nuclear weapons, and there are nearly 15,000 of them in the world.

Nuclear deterrence, based upon the threat of nuclear retaliation, is the justification for possession of these weapons. It is, however, a poor justification, being unethical, illegal, and subject to catastrophic failure.  Over the 72 years of the nuclear era, nuclear deterrence has come close to failing on many occasions, demonstrating weaknesses in the hypothesis that threat of retaliation will protect indefinitely against nuclear war.

I asked several individuals working for nuclear disarmament, all Associates of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, about their views on the probability of nuclear war.

Martin Hellman, a professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford, had this to say: “Even if nuclear deterrence could be expected to work for 500 years before it failed and destroyed civilization – a time period that sounds highly optimistic to most people – that would be like playing Russian roulette with the life of a child born today. That’s because that child’s expected lifetime is roughly one-sixth of 500 years. And, if that ‘nuclear time horizon’ is more like 100 years, that child would have worse than even odds of living out his or her natural life. Not knowing the level of risk is a gaping hole in our national security strategy. So why does society behave as if nuclear deterrence were essentially risk free?”

I next asked John Avery, an associate professor of quantum chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, for his view of the probability of nuclear war by end of the 21^st century.  He responded:

“There are 83 remaining years in this century. One can calculate the probability that we will reach the end of the century without a nuclear war under various assumptions of yearly risk. Here is a table:

Yearly risk           Chance of survival
1%                             43.4%
2%                             18.7%
3%                              7.9%
4%                              3.4%
5%                              1.4%

“One has to conclude that in the long run, the survival of human civilization and much of the biosphere requires the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.”

Finally, I asked Steven Starr, a scientist at the University of Missouri, who responded in this way:

“I’m not sure if I can provide any sort of numerical value or calculation to estimate the risk of nuclear war in a given time period. However, I certainly would say that unless humans manage to eliminate nuclear arsenals, and probably the institution of war itself, then I think it is very likely that nuclear weapons will be used well before the end of the century.

“But I certainly would say that unless humans manage to eliminate nuclear arsenals, and probably the institution of war itself, then I think it is inevitable that nuclear weapons will be used well before the end of the century.  There are just too many weapons in too many places/countries . . . something close to 15,000 nuclear weapons, right? . . .  and there are too many conflicts and injustices and power-hungry people who have access to and control over these weapons. There are just too many possibilities for miscalculation, failures of technology, and simply irrational behavior, to imagine that we can continue to indefinitely avoid the use of nuclear weapons in conflict.

“Thus I am very happy to see that a treaty to ban nuclear weapons is now being negotiated at the UN. This proves to me that there are a great many people and nations that are fully aware of the nuclear danger and are taking action to stop it.”

Conclusions

The odds of averting a nuclear catastrophe are not comforting.

We are playing Nuclear Roulette with the futures of our children and grandchildren.

The only way to assure that the probability of nuclear war goes to zero is to eliminate all nuclear weapons.

One way to support the goal of nuclear zero is to support the Nuclear Ban Treaty currently being negotiated at the United Nations.

Why ISIS, Saudi Arabia and the USA are Dangers to East Asia

THOMAS HON WING POLIN

Since the end of WW2, the culturally and religiously diverse nations of East and Southeast Asia have managed their internal conflicts well. Sustained, debilitating violence was largely absent, with only low-level insurgencies in Muslim Mindanao in the southern Philippines, the borderlands of Myanmar and southernmost Thailand. Also, Asian Islam has long been the most moderate form of the religion worldwide. The resulting stability is one key reason the region has become the world’s primary engine of economic growth the past decade-plus.

Now, in its intensifying drive to contain China, the US-centered Empire has apparently begun serious efforts to destabilize the more vulnerable areas of eastern Asia. Until very recently, ISIS, widely thought to be enabled and funded by the US and its ally Saudi Arabia, was not a noticeable element in the region. Now it is active in the Philippines, wreaking mayhem in Mindanao and posing a big headache for President Rodrigo Duterte, who is friendly to both Moscow and Beijing. Explaining his decision to declare martial law in Mindanao, the Philippine leader said no less than ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had ordered the attacks on his country.

ISIS is also stirring in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest country with an 80%-Muslim population. The terror group claimed responsibility for a recent bombing and has been linked with a revival of the dark Islamist fundamentalism that brought down Ahok, the popular, ethnic-Chinese governor of Jakarta.

The Saudis are successfully exporting their extremist worldview into the bedrock nation of Southeast Asia. Reports the Boston Globe:

“Many students come from the more than 100 boarding schools Saudi Arabia supports in Indonesia, or have attended one of the 150 mosques that Saudis have built there. The most promising are given scholarships to study in Saudi Arabia, from which they return fully prepared to wreak social, political, and religious havoc in their homeland.”

The Empire and its allies may also be targeting the simmering insurgencies on Myanmar’s borders with China, possibly a reason Aung San Suu Kyi has once again aligned her country closer to Beijing. The restive Muslims of Xinjiang and the Tibetans have long received assistance from the US-led imperium, though China is well prepared to cope with those cases.

Asian nations and peoples need to be highly vigilant, ready to repulse such nefarious intrusions. If the Empire succeeds in creating chaos in eastern Asia, like it has in western and southern Asia, the economic and geopolitical consequences will not only hit the region hard. They will also blow back on the rest of the world.

FARC Still Under Attack Despite Colombia Peace Accords

Nick MacWilliam

Luis Alberto Ortíz was preparing for a new life.

As a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), he had spent his entire adulthood engaged in armed conflict against the Colombian state. Following the 2016 peace agreement between the FARC and the government of Juan Manuel Santos, Ortíz, like thousands of other rank-and-file FARC guerrillas, was to disarm and reintegrate into civil society under the terms of the deal.

Except Luis Alberto Ortíz will not make that journey.

On April 16, the 29-year-old father was shot dead in the southern department of Narino, the first FARC guerrilla to be murdered in the post-conflict era. In a statement, the FARC said that ‘this homicide appears to have been perpetrated by the criminal known in the zone as Renol, [a] narco-paramilitary who acts throughout Tumaco [capital of Narino] and who is responsible for threats and homicides against social and popular movements.’ Renol was arrested soon after.

Ortiz’s murder is one in a series of cases which have thrown the spotlight on the issue of post-conflict security for former FARC members and those close to them. While Colombia’s conflict may be over – officially, at least – the recent killings have stoked fears of a dirty war being waged against sectors of civil society. Since the peace agreement was signed last November, over fifty social leaders have been murdered. This continues conflict patterns of violence against those perceived to oppose dominant interests in the country.

While the victims have been mostly civilians, FARC members now also appear to be at risk. Nine days after Ortiz’s murder, another FARC guerrilla, José Yatacue, was killed in Toribio, Cauca. The alleged culprit, known as El Zarco, had apparently targeted Yatacue while the guerrilla was visiting family. In late May, a FARC guerrilla was murdered in Caquetá.

The families of FARC members have also been attacked. The day before Yatacue’s murder, three family members of a FARC guerrilla called Carlos were killed in Tarazá, Antioquia. Among the dead was a 14-year-old girl. In another case, two brothers, Dalmiro and Anselmo Cárdenas Victoria, were abducted, tortured and killed in the department of Chocó. Their brother Robinson was a FARC political prisoner at the Chiquinquirá prison near Bogota. He has since been released.

Certain characteristics are shared by the killings. First, the victims appear to have been deliberately targeted for their association with the FARC. Second, the murders all occurred in regions heavily affected by the conflict and where the state is traditionally weak. The resulting power vacuums have been filled either by guerrilla organizations such as the FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN) or by neo-paramilitary gangs. It is these latter groups which many people suspect are behind the recent murders, as opponents of Colombia’s peace process employ violent methods aimed at disrupting its implementation.

In an interview with Telesur, FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño, alias Timochenko, spoke out against the killings and reaffirmed the FARC’s commitment to the peace process. ‘What does one’s family have to do with anything? As an element of pressure and an attempt to affect our moral, it’s something they are not going to achieve,’ he said.

With the FARC due to enter electoral politics later this year, the killings have evoked memories of past atrocities. Following the 1984 peace agreement, a new left-wing political party, the Patriotic Union (UP), was formed by the FARC, the Communist Party and other sectors on the Colombian left. It wasn’t long before the UP’s modest electoral advances elicited a brutal response from its enemies.

In what is often described in Colombia as a ‘political genocide’, thousands of UP members, including two presidential candidates, were murdered by right-wing paramilitaries and state security forces in the late 1980s and 1990s. This repression convinced the FARC of the unviability of electoral politics as a means of achieving change and contributed majorly to a sharp escalation in conflict during subsequent years.

Terms of the 2016 agreement relating to political participation are designed to prevent any similar reoccurrence afflicting new political actors in Colombia. In contrast to the 1980s, there is broader support for the peace process across the political spectrum, including – critically – within a military which was central to instigating the violence of previous decades. However, with the agreement implicit that the state is responsible for post-conflict security, the government must implement mechanisms to ensure the safety of demobilized FARC members once they reintegrate into civil society.

The Santos administration, meanwhile, denies the FARC is being targeted, with government officials blaming the murders of political activists on criminal gangs. This situates such killings outside the realm of political, or conflict, violence. Vice-President Oscar Naranjo said that the government ‘will not permit that these acts return as a constant feature. We are fully committed to establishing the individuals responsible.’

The government’s ability to provide post-conflict security will go a long way towards determining whether peace becomes the reality for all Colombians. If it fails to do so, violence will continue to plague large parts of the country and its citizens.

Valuing Human Life In The UK

Arshad M Khan

Arnold Turling is a very angry and unhappy man — vindicated but at what cost. Three years ago, he advised the All Party Parliamentary Rescue Group that cheap flammable insulation filler inside the new waterproof cladding and lack of a sprinkler system made buildings like Grenfell Tower a disaster waiting to happen. Mr. Turling is a Chartered Surveyor as well as a fire expert and member of the Association of Specialist Fire Protection. He adds the building would not have burned down in its original concrete form.

The reason is straight forward: The gap between the cladding and concrete serves as a chimney which becomes more efficient as the insulation catches fire. For this reason that particular type of plastic core called PE is banned in the U.S., “because of the fire and smoke spread,” for buildings higher than 40 feet. So said a spokesman for the U.S. manufacturer Reynobond. The PE version he added is used for small commercial buildings and gas stations. In the UK, the fire resistant panels cost 24 pounds ($31) per square meter, the cheaper ones are two pounds ($2.56) less. The regulations allowing the latter were introduced in 1986 during the Margaret Thatcher era, when they relaxed the prior more strict code.

If the previous iron lady is still wreaking havoc from the grave, the new one did not endear herself to the bereaved by avoiding them when she visited the area — she met only with emergency services. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, on the other hand, hugged and was hugged as he called for requisitioning the empty housing belonging to the rich to accommodate the people who had lost everything in the fire.

The borough of Kensington and Chelsea is enormously rich. Council estates, as public housing is called in London, occupy a fringe of it and offer affordable places to live in a city where real estate has experienced an astronomical rise.

Theresa May has promised an independent public inquiry. Not much use now to the dead and their relatives though could help others in the future perhaps through a reversion to the tighter codes. The residents complained about the lack of fire safety for many years, including faulty wiring, to no avail. Is there a lesson in all this for our own deregulator-in-chief, or will he too become an eventual grim reaper?

Prime Minister May has other problems more serious for her government as they threaten to cut short its existence. Her alliance with the Northern Ireland DUP is at risk. Gerry Adams the Catholic Sinn Fein leader has protested it violates the power sharing Good Friday agreement where London was to be the neutral arbiter. Thus most people assumed the deal with the DUP was informal. Now it seems someone is holding out for a formal alliance. Strong voices can be heard calling it a sordid deal that could destroy 20 years of work in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, Gerry Adams says his party will refuse to take their seats in the new parliament if it goes through. Ms. May gives the impression of being busily ahead of a Rube Goldberg contraption tumbling down behind her.

The question one is left with after the fire is simple if uncomfortable: What is a human life worth in the 21st century? And the answer now is apparent. It depends on where, how wealthy, and to whom you were born. Not much has changed in that regard.

Puppet of History: Panama’s Manuel Noriega

Binoy Kampmark

“Bush appeared on television to praise the invading troops and to say his cowardly vision – all that a wimp with an inferiority complex could be capable of.”

Manuel Noriega on George H. W. Bush

The late General Manuel Antonio Noriega has done more to demonstrate the bipolar nature of US foreign policy in the Americas than any single, historically anointed individual. In its tendency to veer between outraged morality and cynical cold steel Realpolitik, US foreign policy found in Noriega a thermometer of sorts, though the temperature readings were often confused.

When it suited Washington, Noriega was the CIA’s man in Panama, a glorified errand boy who got above his station.  Then, the winds turned, leaving Noriega high and dry. It was not that he wasn’t a serial human rights abuser, though this was used against him in due course. (The role of the US School of the Americas, located in Panama till 1984, remains a memorably disturbing stain behind various Latin American death squads.)

What mattered was his cultivation, in time, of a network of power interests and influences across Latin America, including Havana. His lukewarm response to assisting Washington in that dirty conflict against Nicaragua with the aid of the Contra army sounded another nail into coffin. Then came the drugs and the dance with the Colombian cartels.

Noriega would subsequently claim in his memoirs that Colonel Oliver L. North had requested he mine Nicaraguan harbours as a willing servant of Washington’s interests.  The General preferred to ignore him.  He was no longer in favour in the morally weary halls of Washington.  He had to be gotten rid off.

The US invasion of Panama in December 1989 was typically imperial: brute force masquerading as moral mission. The ground had been softened by a massive campaign singling out Noriega’s human rights abuses, and the threat to American lives. Provocations by US soldiers were initiated.  Few media outlets in the United States bothered to question the accounts, humming to the sound of government press releases.

Noriega, and Panama, had become symbols of convenient outrage and props for the projection of US power in the closing chapters of the Cold War.  (The previous month, the Berlin Wall had fallen, the Iron Curtain rapidly parting.)

In purely power terms, the General had stepped out of turn, having helped himself to the largesse of US interests and Latin American favour.  He would simultaneously supply secrets about Cuba to US authorities while happily selling Fidel Castro thousands of Panamanian passports to be used by Cuban agents.

Murray Kempton captured this predicament well: “To feed off the United States is to subject yourself to all sorts of inconveniences from a Senate where Jesse Helms arraigns your friendship with Fidel Castro one day and Christopher Dodd your human records the next.”  These subtleties evaporate before the decision to transact with the Medellín and Cali cartels, liberating the subject “from even the lightest chains of ideology.”

Would this caricatured, cartoon villain be able to withstand the US?  Initial suggestions were made that Noriega might manage to bring about another quagmire for US forces.  The “Dignity Battalions” were taken as representatives of genuine patriotic worth.  But there was little getting away from the fact that an Uncle was providing some stern discipline for a pygmy relation.  The invasion resulted in a good deal of slaughter.

The Medellín temptation was powerful, assuming a galloping temptation that supplied Noriega with cash and power broking prestige.  The Senate subcommittee on narcotics and terrorism fielded material about Noriega’s conversion to the narcotics market in the late 1980s.  The tainted Ramon Lillian Rodriguez was a source of ratting inspiration, explaining to the Committee chaired by Senator John Kerry that Noriega had assumed money laundering responsibilities while also supplying Panamanian security forces to the cartels. The golem had gotten out hand.

The more astute operatives would have worked out that he was never controllable in the least.  Furtive sexual encounters do not necessarily suggest understanding, let alone influence.  Links forged in 1976 with George H. W. Bush, who was then the director of Central Intelligence, were not blood insured covenants, but understandings of interest.  But no US leadership can keep unctuousness out for long.  There is always an understanding about who sets the terms.

After the invasion commenced, Noriega fled to the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See.  A reluctant Monsignor Jose Sebastian Laboa relented to the imposition, having had next to no time to consult the higher-ups in the Vatican. US special forces, in the meantime, were charged with the task of capturing the diminished figure.

What followed was an ignominious effort to force Laboa’s hand.  The State Department hectored him; military operatives rained psychological warfare upon the compound. Laboa, in time, decided that the church’s promise of sanctuary needed to be reneged – by dissimulation if necessary. Surrender was a foregone, bitter conclusion.

Noriega would subsequently face a farcical and poorly conducted trial.  (Resorting to 40 convicted drug traffickers as witnesses for the prosecution is treacherous ground indeed.)  In 1992, he was sentenced to 40 years in Florida as prisoner No. 41586, convicted on cocaine trafficking charges, racketeering and money laundering.

Subsequent in absentia trials took place in Panama (the execution of soldiers in the 1989 coup attempt) and France (money-laundering). His release in the US lead to extradition battles that landed him first in France, then back in Panama.

Was he being punished for being too American, the showman who went just a touch too far?  Ultimately, the puppet can never be permitted to be the puppet master.

Saudi-Qatari Diplomatic Crisis Explained

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The British newspaper Times reported Saturday (June 17) that in a dramatic move Saudi Arabia and Israel are in talks to establish economic ties that perhaps explains why Saudi Arabia and its allies have imposed a sweeping blockade on Qatar, in an effort to force the Gulf state to drop its support for Hamas, who control Gaza.

The Times quoted Arab and American sources as saying that the links would start small: allowing Israeli businesses to operate in the Gulf, for example, and letting El Al, the Israeli airline, fly over Saudi airspace.

Sources close to Saudi Arabia, however, dismissed the idea of improved relations as wishful thinking on behalf of a White House keen to demonstrate immediate results from President Trump’s recent visits to Saudi Arabia and Israel, the paper said and added:

“The prospect has become a source of controversy in the White House. Jason Greenblatt, the president’s top envoy to the region, has taken a conventional approach to the peace process, trying to lure the Israelis and Palestinians back to talks, but he has clashed with Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, who has become close to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi deputy crown prince. They have discussed an “outside-in” approach, by which Gulf States would improve ties with Israel as a prelude to a peace agreement — and full recognition of Israel by Gulf and Arab states.”

The British daily pointed out that Israel and the Gulf States have been quietly building security ties, motivated by a mutual fear of Iran. “A Saudi delegation led by a retired general made a trip to Israel last year and senior Israeli officials are keen to expand the alliance. “I think it’s much better to co-operate on economic issues than the fight against terror,” said Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli defense minister. He praised efforts to isolate Qatar.”

Riyadh has demanded that Qatar cease support for Hamas and it expel several of the group’s leaders, including Salah al-Arouri.

Michael Binyon of The Times wrote there are huge risks in reviving the idea of an Israeli liaison in Saudi Arabia:

“Any concession to Israel without a move by the Jewish state would be seen by Muslims as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. It would further embolden Isis and other Islamist groups to denounce the House of Saud as illegitimate. And it would reinforce the perception on Arab streets that America was intent on dividing Arab governments.

“Small steps — allowing over flights or participating with Israel in regional economic gatherings — are easier. The diplomatic coup of the boycott of Israel being ended by a country claiming leadership of Sunni Muslims could easily backfire, and Saudi Arabia already feels challenged on almost all its frontiers.”

Turkish mediation efforts

Meanwhile, against the background of continued tensions between Qatar and the Saudi-led group of countries, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, held talks in Saudi Arabia with the king, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, on Friday. ”

The meeting was positive,” AFP news agency reported, quoting diplomatic sources, but there were no specifics.

Cavusoglu travelled to Mecca, where Salman is based for the last days of Ramadan, after meeting his Kuwaiti counterpart on Thursday. Cavusoglu was in Doha on Wednesday where he called for dialogue after meeting Qatar’s emir and foreign minister.

“Although the kingdom is a party in this crisis, we know that King Salman is a party in resolving it,” Cavusoglu said earlier. “We want to hear the views of Saudi Arabia regarding possible solutions and will share with them our views in a transparent way … We pay a great attention to our relations with them.”

Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al Sabah, the emir of Kuwait, which has not cut ties with Qatar, has also been trying to mediate.

According to Al Jazeera, Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, has cancelled his scheduled trip to an Organization of American States (OAS) meeting in Mexico next week to stay in the United States and work on resolving the Qatar crisis.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Tamara Kharroub, a senior analyst and assistant executive director at the Arab Center in Washington, DC, said Tillerson’s latest move is “a clear sign this is a priority and in the next week, we will see some serious efforts to mediate and resolve the conflict”.

“Now we hear from Saudi Arabia of a list of grievances, rather than demands,” she said. “That, I believe, is a signal that Saudi Arabia is not intending to escalate this crisis any further … trying to lessen the issue from demands to grievances.”