Imperial Blind Spots and US Interventions in Africa

Fran Shor

Upon being informed of the death of four US Green Berets in Niger, Senator Lindsey Graham exclaimed: “I didn’t know there were 1000 troops in Niger.” Although the number was slightly inflated, Graham’s willful ignorance as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee is not only a sad commentary on the lack of oversight but also a reflection of the continual imperial blind spots that inform US interventions in Africa.

Coming from South Carolina, it is not surprising that Senator Graham’s perspective on Africa is rather blinkered. While South Carolina may have recently removed the Confederate flag flying atop its state Capitol building, a more radical reckoning with the state’s slave past remains elusive, especially to its white politicians, population, and tourist industry.  One can still take a tour of Charleston and its waterfront mansions without being informed that what made Charleston the richest city in North America during the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries was the slave trade.

As an offshoot of the British Empire, colonial Americans, both North and South, embraced the ravaging of Africa to fuel the economic expansion and empire-building on the North American continent – an expansion that would also result in genocidal policies against the indigenous inhabitants of the continent. In declaring its independence from the Great Britain, the United States of America incorporated a thoroughgoing institutional and political oppression and exploitation of people of African descent from the notorious 3/5 clause in the US Constitution to a wide variety of other compromises with the slave states of the South.

As a consequence of the Barbary wars of the early 19^th century, the United States established naval and marine forces whose intervention from the “shores of Tripoli” became the hallowed harbingers of a later global empire.  While those interventions were more evident elsewhere, Africa would once again become a battlefield, albeit more covert, during the Cold War.  Especially in the former Belgian Congo, a site where millions perished from the brutal colonial predations around the harvesting of rubber, US imperial intercessions increased after Patrice Lumumba led the Congo to its independence.  As described by Barbara Kingsolver in her brilliant novel, The Poisonwood Bible, President Eisenhower and the National Security Council fomented plans for an assassination of Lumumba: “In their locked room, these men had put their heads together and proclaimed Patrice Lumumba a danger to the safety of the world…Imagine if he could have heard those words – dangerous to the safety of the world! – from a roomful of white men who held in their manicured hands the disposition of armies and atomic bombs, the power to extinguish every life of earth.”

In the aftermath of Lumumba’s assassination, the Congo would become the playground of the notorious dictator Mobutu from 1965-1997. Even in the face of large-scale human rights abuses and massive corruption, the US became his prime financial backer.  During the civil wars that followed in the Congo, the US was more interested in exploiting the resources of the country instead of its people.  According to Devyn Springer: “Arguably one of the world’s more mineral-rich countries with billion dollar mining contracts that benefit mostly US, Swedish, and Canadian-based countries and include the use of private militias and child slave labor for mining, the Congolese people have had their land and humanity trampled by Western forces for decades through capitalist exploitation and violence” (Truthout, 10/16/17).

Other US corporations, especially among pharmaceuticals, have been the beneficiaries of US governmental trade and patent-enforcement regulations.  Defending their trade prerogatives and profits, US pharmaceuticals played a pernicious role in suppressing the production and distribution of generic drugs in Africa for AIDS patients.

Another example of egregious imperial attitudes towards Africa can be seen in the 1991 memo written by Lawrence Summers during his time as chief economist at the World Bank. (Summers went on to become Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton and a chief economic advisor to President Obama.) The memo endorsed dumping of more hazardous waste material in Africa.  As part of that memo, Summers pontificated that “I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted.”

Of course, the irony embedded in such imperial arrogance is underscored when one compares the consumption habits of the US with those in various African nations.  It is estimated by some that the average inhabitant of the US uses 250 times the resources of the average Nigerian. The average US citizen will in a 75 year lifetime have generated fifty-two tons of garbage while utilizing close to 4000 barrels of oil.  The amounts of energy consumed by that average US resident would be equivalent to 531 Ethiopians.

It is not surprising that oil continues to be an African resource that requires special consideration when determining where US Special Forces will be stationed.  The Chad River Basin, spanning Niger, Chad, and parts of Nigeria and the Central African Republic, the latter two awash in oil, are the site for 1000 US Special Forces.  Ostensibly there to combat radical Jihadis, the rapid expansion of US military intervention has grown like topsy since the establishment of US Africa Command during the Obama years.

When NATO forces, especially French and US, combined to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, they unleashed not just a struggle over Libya’s oil but a plethora of previously controlled Islamic insurgencies that engulfed Mali and Niger.  Given Niger’s uranium resources, considered to be the 4^th largest in the world, French and US intervention is as much about propping up its favored government, irrespective of internal repression by that same government.

Considering the dire political and climate circumstances facing Africans in the Sahel, the US military obsession with the “war of terror” further obfuscates the reasons for the ongoing instability in the region. Instead, expanding military operations from drone warfare to special forces intervening in scores of African nations is just a tragic reminder of how US imperial blind spots especially imperils people of color there and, indeed, everywhere.

Brexit and a Brave New World

Conn Hallinan

As the clock ticks down on Britain’s exit from the European Union, one could not go far wrong casting British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn as the hopeful Miranda in Shakespeare’s Tempest: ”How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in’t.” And Conservative Party Prime Minister Theresa May as Lady Macbeth: “Out damned spot, out, I say!”

With the French sharpening their knives, the Tories in disarray, the Irish demanding answers, and a scant 17 months to go before Brexit kicks in, the whole matter is making for some pretty good theater. The difficulty is distinguishing between tragedy and farce.

The Conservative’s Party’s Oct. 1-4 conference in Manchester was certainly low comedy. The meeting hall was half empty, and May’s signature address was torpedoed by a coughing fit and a prankster who handed her a layoff notice. Then the Tories’ vapid slogan “Building a country that works for everyone” fell on to the stage. And several of May’s cabinet members were openly jockeying to replace her.

In contrast, the Labour Party’s conference at Brighton a week earlier was jam packed with young activists busily writing position papers, and Corbyn gave a rousing speech that called for rolling back austerity measures, raising taxes on the wealthy and investing in education, health care and technology.

Looming over all of this is March 2019, the date by which the complex issues involving Britain’s divorce from the EU need to be resolved. The actual timeline is even shorter, since it will take at least six months for the European parliament and the EU’s 28 members to ratify any agreement.

Keeping all those ducks in a row is going to take considerable skill, something May and the Conservatives have shown not a whit of.

The key questions to be resolved revolve around people and money, of which the first is the stickiest.

Members of the EU have the right to travel and work anywhere within the countries that make up the trade alliance. They also have access to health and welfare benefits, although there are some restrictions on these. Millions of non-British, EU citizens currently reside in the United Kingdom. What happens to those people when Brexit kicks in? And what about the two million British that live in other EU countries?

Controlling immigration was a major argument for those supporting an exit from the EU, though its role has been over-estimated. Many Brexit voters simply wanted to register their outrage with the mainstream parties—Labour and Tories alike—that had, to one extent or another, backed policies which favored the wealthy and increased economic inequality.  In part, the EU was designed to lower labor costs in order to increase exports.

Indeed, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl (1982 to 1998) pressed the EU to admit Central and Eastern Europe countries precisely because they would provide a pool of cheap labor that could be used to weaken unions throughout the trade bloc. In this he was strongly supported by the British. Union membership in Britain has declined from over 13 million in 1979 to just over six million today.

The Conservatives want to impede immigration, and also have full access to the trade bloc, what has been termed the “have your cake and eat it too” strategy. So far that approach has been a non-starter with the rest of the EU. Polls show that only 30 percent of EU members think that that Britain should be offered a favorable deal. This drops to 19 percent in France

The Conservatives themselves are split on what they want.  One faction is pressing for a “hard Brexit” that rigidly controls immigration, abandons the single market and customs union, and rejects any role for the European Court of Justice.

Another “soft Brexit” faction would accept EU regulations and the Court of Justice, because they are afraid that bailing out of the single market will damage the British economy. Given that countries like Japan, China and the U.S. seem reluctant to cut independent trade deals with Britain, that is probably an accurate assessment.

While the Tories are beating up on one another, the Labour Party has distanced itself from the issue, quietly supporting a “soft” exit, but mainly talking about the issues that motivated many of the Brexit voters in the first place: the housing crisis, health care, the rising cost of education, and growing inequality. That platform worked in the June 2017 snap election that saw the Conservatives lose their parliamentary majority and Labour pick up 32 seats.

Divorces are not only messy, they’re expensive.

This past September, May offered to pay the EU 20 billion Euros to disentangle Britain from the bloc, but EU members are demanding at least 60 billion Euros—some want up to 100 billion—and refuse to talk about Britain’s access to the trade bloc until that issue is resolved. All talk of “cake” has vanished.

And then there is Ireland.

The island is hardly a major player in the EU. The Republic’s GDP is 15^th in the big bloc, but it shares a border with Northern Ireland. Even though the North voted to remain in the EU, it will have to leave when Britain does. What happens with its border is no small matter, in part because it is not a natural one.

Those counties that were a majority Protestant in 1921 became part of Ulster, while Catholic majority counties remained in the southern Republic. During the “Troubles” from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, the border was heavily militarized and guarded by thousands of British troops. No one—north or south—wants walls and watch towers again.

But trade between the Republic and Ulster will have to be monitored to insure that taxes are paid, environmental laws are followed, and all of the myriad of EU rules are adhered to.

Other than trade there is the matter of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended the fighting between Catholics and Protestants. While laying out a way to settle the differences between the two communities through power sharing, it also re-defined the nature of sovereignty. Essentially the Irish Republic and Britain agreed that neither country had a claim on Ulster, and that Northern Irish residents be accepted as “Irish, or British or both, as they may so choose”

Such fluid definition of sovereignty is threatened by the Brexit, and most of all by the fact that May and the Conservatives—at the price of a two billion Euro bribe— have aligned themselves with the extremely right wing and sectarian Protestant party, the Democratic Unionist Party, in order to pass legislation. While the pact between the two is not a formal alliance, it nonetheless undermines the notion that the British government is a “neutral and honest broker” in Northern Ireland.

May did not even mention the Irish border issue in her September talk, although the EU has made it clear that the subject must be resolved.

Talks between Britain and the EU are barely inching along, partly because the Conservatives are deeply divided, partly because the EU is not sure May can deliver or that the current government will last to the next general elections in 2022. With Labour on the ascendency, May reliant on an extremist party to stay in power, and countries like France licking their chops at poaching the financial institutions that currently work out of London, EU members are in no rush to settle things. May is playing a weak hand and Brussels knows it.

Eventually, the Labour Party will have to engage with Brexit more than it has, but Corbyn is probably correct in his estimate that the major specter haunting Europe today is not Britain’s exit but anger at growing inequality, increasing job insecurity, a housing crisis, and EU strictures that have turned economic strategy over to unelected bureaucrats and banks.

“The neoliberal agenda of the last four decades may have been good for the 1 percent,” says Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, “but not for the rest.” Those policies were bound to have “political consequences,” he says, and “that day is finally upon us.”

Arab World: Rescuing People From Insanity Of Wars To Future-Building

Mahboob A. Khawaja

Arab Masses Victims of the Modern Warfare

Truth is One, not many.  The Western leaders propelled by the ambiguous animosity of ‘the clash of civilizations’ are using sectarian violence as the engine of sophisticated warfare to destroy the Arab Middle East. Syria is destroyed, Iraq dismantled, Libya gone, Yemen ruptured and according to Robert Fisk, House of Saud comes next. The well-orchestrated plan corresponds to the psychological momentum evolved after the fake WMD aggression against Iraq. The whole of the Arab world is victim of its own fallacious thinking. To the US-West European-led war on terror embodies violence against the Arab masses as means to achieving the end of imperial supremacy over all of the Arab heartland. Consequently, the Arab world is fast becoming a landscape of extended graveyards – Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, North Africa and the spill-over impacts of planned destabilization of Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf States.  Lacking a solid institutionalized-based of critical thinking and intellectual foresight, the Arab leaders live in darkness, not knowing the strategic direction to find rational solutions of an impending catastrophic future in waiting. The whole Arab political landscape portrays a missing sense of reality and futuristic impulse for change and direction to move.  Some call it shuttle diplomacy visiting Moscow and Washington to counterbalance the inherent frustration outpouring of ignorance and indecisive mindset. Nobody thinks of a remedy,  the crux of the problem – Western supported authoritarianism and to replace it with a people-oriented new vision for change of the governance across the Arabian Peninsula. Do the oil producing leaders of transitory economic prosperity really care for the catastrophic present and what future will unleash on to them? Subsequent to the 9/11, the Arab world in particular has been the focus of Western atrocities. Many misfortunes more horrifying than the outbursts of the US-led bogus War on Terrorism continued to inflict pains, bloodbaths and destruction across the Arab world. Like the 1258 Halqu Khan’s Mongol ferocity of Baghdad and beyond, Arab leaders are not ashamed of their missing courage and leadership vision for political emancipation, but are uncertain and overwhelming authoritarianism making no sense to a rational critical mind for political change. They were never decolonized but remained faithful to the imperial loyalty in Western Europe. Have the Arab rulers solved any of the important problems confronting the Arab masses over more than half of a century?

Wars Affect theConscientious Global Community

The raging fallacious foreign military interventions and sectarian bloodbaths in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Yemen are not secluded developments but planned scheme of things to degenerate the Arab world.  The embedded scheme is aimed at besieging and dehumanizing the futuristic young Arab generations and depriving them of time and opportunities to think intelligently and live peacefully as believers, proactive and rational people. In a warfare culture, people become a dead-ended statistic. The US-Russia combined wars have devastated the ancient civic and human infrastructures and pushed the Arab masses to the edge of a dark future beyond reasoning. The Earth is not a planet, but a living entity providing continuous nourishment to human life and existence and to all other living beings. Its governing laws are defined by its Creator. Dead things do not sustain life in this context but livings do make the difference. When individuals and nations start acting like wild beasts in complete disregard to the accepted norms of human values and ethical principles, surely, it impacts all and everything whether we acknowledge it or not. No humans can become God or act like God – a plain fact of life. American politics is increasingly showing perpetuated ignorance and willful arrogance in its global policies and practices. America as it appears is not heeding to warnings from God. When people and nations challenge the sanctity and limits of the Laws of God and violate all known norms and principles of human behavior, they could well become an object of unthinkable natural calamities – hurricane, earthquakes and other disasters. The Talmud – Thorah, Bible and Al-Qur’an are full of such revelations and warnings as reminders to those people who are open to listening and learning and care for accountability and human future. These are staunch warnings to change the thinking and behaviors or else we could face the ultimate consequences of demise as it happened to all self-claiming adventurous and powerful nations of the past. If history is relevant and is seen as a source of learning and warning, undeniably all those superpowers well equipped with weapons and animosity to destroy others or all have met the same fate of self-annihilation. It is beyond doubts that when they challenged the sanctity of the Laws of God governing the earth and the living Universe, and invaded small and poor nations in farfetched lands, they ultimately met their own end in-waiting by the natural forces such earthquakes, flooding, tornados, exploding lava, sound blasts, lightning and lot more. None were able to record their own end in their own words and expressions. Professor John Esposito, (Unholy War and What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam, 2nd ed. 2011), a reputable scholar of Western-Islamic culture and history at the GeorgetownUniversity, offers a lesson in a rational context:

“An important lesson of history is that rulers and nations do rise and fall. Unforeseen circumstances can bring up unanticipated change. Few expected the breakup of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe to occur when they did ……now is the time for those in all walks of life (political, economic, military, media and academic) who wish to see a new order not to be silenced but to speak out, organize, vote and be willing when necessary to make sacrifices in promoting a new global order.”

Could The Arab World Disappear under the Current Strategic Challenges?

Long time ago, it was the Arab culture and flourishing civilization that spoke the language of the people and enlightened the Dark Ages of Europe with new ideas, knowledge, inventions, science and visions for change and human emancipation. Not any more as Arab societies are caught in the delusional oil-generated economic prosperity and overburdened by modern ignorance and stupidity of the uneducated ruling elite; they are unable to see the light out of the box. Arab authoritarianism needs a strong jolt – a powerful political, intellectual and military challenge to avert the on-going military assaults against the very people on whose lifeline the nation state was created. There are no Arab armies and no Arab leaders to challenge anybody on any fronts. Islamic history unfolds that the Arabs used to claim and enjoin moral and intellectual superiority in dealing with enemies and in situations of wars and conflicts.  Now the oil pumped prosperity conspiracy (fitna) has transformed the Arab rulers into mindless entities entrapped in many conflicting time zones away from the masses.

The oil export enhanced economic prosperity has not changed the inner psychological and physical functionality of the common man across the Arab world. People live in fear of being annihilated by the ruthless forces of the Western ordained police states. Given the moral, intellectual and political will of the global community, the question is how can rationality of words and lips alone will stop the daily massacres of the innocent people across Syria, Iraq and Yemen unless there is a concerted plan and a tangible force to dismantle the institutionalized insanity and foreign military interventions to safeguard the people from the “scourge of war.”

The Compelling Urgency of New Thinking and New Vision for the Future

The compelling realities across the beleaguered Arab world demand new thinking, new proactive visionary leadership, men of new ideas and plans to deal with unwarranted bombing of the civilian population, wholesale deaths and deliberate destruction of the Arab people and culture and millions of displaced refugees-nowhere to go. These are highly urgent and sensitive issues of the 21stcentury politics, individual absolutism, human freedom and justice involved in cross-cultural conflicts. There are countless issues to be addressed across the socially, economically and political broken, dysfunctional and sometimes badly ruptured Arab societal landscape.

The emerging crises clearly indicate the Western policies and practices aim to incapacitate the Arab intellectual hubsto think of a sustainable future. There seems to be no escape from the current volatile political crises, when Arab leaders act as if they had no knowledge of what massive deaths and destruction meant to contemporary rational thinkers. Temptation and compulsion of evil embedded in psychological factors of sectarian rivalries operate in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Egypt to perpetuate in-house fear, death and destruction. Balfour Declaration instigated historic injustice to the 90% indigenous Palestinian people when Israel was created. Shame to the perceptions and attitudes of the contemporary Arab rulers who lost the touch of historic reality and make secretive deals for their own survival.Palestine witnessed massive displacement of civilian population. After the unsettling Palestinian refugee situation, why are there several millions more Arab refugees across the Middle East? Who will deal with the pressing problems of life and death facing the Arab masses? Who will deal with restoration of peace, normalcy and conflict management? Do these leaders have any moral and intellectual capacity to extend security and sense of protection to the helpless millions of displaced refugees? Rationality is replaced by a perpetuated insanity. As it stands now, Arab leaders have no other thought and priority except to check the depleted oil prices, and count the dead bodies – soon they could be part of abstract statistic debated and defined by the American and Europeans warriors as to how the Arabs lost their national freedom, human dignity and oil pumping economic happiness. To reverse the naïve blunders for accidental change and to clarify a rational perspective for the future, this author (“Arab Leaders: Waiting to Count the Dead Bodies.” 2/05/2013), offered the following insight and reminder to all concerned in the Arab world:

Once the Arabs were leaders in knowledge, creativity, science and human manifestation, progress and future-making – the Islamic civilization lasting for eight hundred years in Al-Andulsia- Spain. But when they replaced Islam – the power and core value of their advancements with petro-dollars transitory economic prosperity, they failed to think intelligently and fell in disgrace and lost what was gained over the centuries. They relied on Western mythologies of change and materialistic development which resulted in their self- geared anarchy, corruption, military defeats and disconnected authoritarianism. The Western strategists ran planned scams of economic prosperity to destroy the Arab culture with their own oil and their own money turning them redundant for the 21st century world. Today, the authoritarian Arab leaders are so irrational and cruel that they reject all voices of reason for political change and emancipation of people-oriented system of governance only to bring more deaths and destruction to their societies.

Is Israel Winning “The War Between The wars” With Iran/Hezbollah?

Franklin P. Lamb

Israeli commanders, stationed along Syria’s southern border and the Golan Heights and Quneitra Valley, with some of their forces now operating daily more than 14 km inside Syrian territory, reportedly are expressing plenty of confidence these days. One reason is because they believe that Iranian-Hezbollah forces are losing the high stakes struggle to win the hearts and minds of Syria’s and Lebanon’s civilian population. A conflict referred to by Israel and others in the region as the “war between the wars.”  A contest which has undergone some dramatic changes in recent months. The idea of the war between the wars involves Tel Aviv’s calculation that Israel needs to operate, far beyond Israel’s borders if necessary, to contain Iran and Hezbollah.  And as tensions escalate across the border, the IDF is trying to win over some of its Syrian civilian population enemies.

One key positive element in the proposition was reiterated last week by members of the US Congressional Israeli lobby explaining that Israel is now able to stop virtually all of Iran’s arms shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon. And additionally that Israel’s military knows the location of hundreds of small sized Hezbollah military/weapon bases across Lebanon and monitor them hourly.At least 122 attacks on Iran-Hezbollah convoys or weapon depots over the past few years being mainly small signature, late-night-early morning bombings are claimed to be major successes. Lobby spokespersons claim that Israel will continue this measure with likely impunity because serious retaliation from Hezbollah or its allies would mean major escalation which Tehran cannot risk.

In addition to claiming that Iran and Hezbollah are now largely contained in Syria, Israeli officials apparently now believe that time is on Israel’s side during a cold war but not during a hot one.  This, as the war in Syria continues to kill evermore Iranian and Hezbollah fighters creating political problems for both among their population bases.

Israel, as part of the cold war is also expanding its recruitment of additional intelligence sources. The alleged intensive recruitment is focusing on Hezbollah neighborhoods across Lebanon as many in the formerly supportive population continue losing faith in the “Resistance”and succumbed to large sums of cash-no questions asked- being offered by Washington and Tel Aviv. Israel is also recruiting among Syrians, particularly in South and North Syria and recentlyhas  taken to revealing ID’s and personal information of Hezbollah and Iranian commanders that earlier would not be disclosed. One example is last week the IDF “outed” Munir Ali NaimShati, (known in this observers Dahiyeh neighborhood of HaretHreik as Hajj Hashem) the head of Hezbollah’s southern command in Syria. Mr. Shati is in charge of Hezbollah’s 3000-plus fighters in southern Syria and of the “Resistance” project to establish a military base near the Israeli border in the Golan Heights. Several Iranians IRCG officers as well as Hezbollah’s Jihad Mughniyeh (son of Imad, Hezbollah’s military commander killed in Damascus in 2008 by a joint CIA-Mossad operation) and Samir Kuntar were killed in 2015 allegedly by Israeli air strikes. Some claim both were killed by friendly forces for political reasons. Some hold Iran’s Al Quds force of responsibility for the killings in order to send a message to Hezbollah’s leadership about towing the Tehran line more assiduously. Another claimed victim of the same Tehran-Dahiyeh tension was MustafaBadreddine, whose role was being in charge of Hezbollah forces since the beginning of the rebellion on 2011 when Hezbollah quickly entered Syria. He was allegedly killed in May of 2016 on orders of Iran’s IRGC commander QassimSoleimani. Badreddine reportedly complainedthat  Al Quds commander QassimSoleimani, a political rival of Nasrallah’s, was sending Hezbollah fighters needlessly to their death in Aleppo’s front to spare risks to Tehran’s IRGC fighters.

Some of Hezbollah’s recent actions involving its erstwhile unquestioning Shia supporters in Lebanon have also encouraged Tel Aviv in ‘the war between the wars.’ One example was documented on 10/23/2017  when Lebanese police, green lighted by Hezbollah, raided unlicensed street vendors  near the main headquarters of Hezbollah, resulting in vitriolic expressions of discontent targeting the Party of God. Lebanon’s  politicized Internal Security Forces (ISF) supportive of Hezbollah, was insturcted to use bulldozers to demolish stores in the Hay al-Sollom neighborhood, where the residents for years have sold coffee and mobile phones. In reaction to the destruction of their livelihoods, scores of mainly Shia residents poured into the streets and began burning tires and blocking roads. Several of the protesters were shown on Lebanese media cursing not the Lebanese government, but rather condemning Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah, who they blamed for the loss of their livelihoods and involvement in Syria’s civil war. One woman addressed Nasrallah directly after she discovered her shop — her family’s only source of income – a pile of rubble: “We all provided martyrs for you in Syria. I have three injured sons. And this is how you’re treating us?” Another man yelled at the camera, “Syria can go to hell, along with Hassan Nasrallah!”

One veteran Lebanese journalist, HaninGhabber explained recently: “It is no coincidence that this exceptional act of revolt occurred in one of Dahiya’s poorest neighborhoods. As much as the Syria war has changed Hezbollah militarily and expanded its regional role, it has also changed the Lebanese Shia community and its perceptions of the group. Class divisions in Dahiya are more drastic than ever — the poor neighborhoods are providing fighters while the upper middle class and rich neighborhoods are benefiting from the war. “

Several Lebanese analysts argue that Hezbollah is paying the price for getting involved in Syria on orders from Tehran. And part of that price is its lost image as a “Resistance” organization as well as costing the lives of thousands of young Shia men. And since Hezbollah became focused on fighting in Syria, it could no longer offer law and order given the growing number of the drug cartels, petty criminals, and illegal construction and growing lawlessness. Shia street clashes are increasing in Dahiya and criticisms of Hezbollah are escalating. Lebanese Shia seek a reasonable livelihood and basic services and have little interest in Hezbollah’s battle against so-called  “Takfires” in Syria.

Israel’s accelerating “Hearts and Minds” initiatives in South Syria are also undermining support for Hezbollah and Iran. In early 2013, seven injured Syrians appeared at the border fence separating Syria from Israel, pleading for help. Israeli forces, after deliberations that reportedly reached some top military and government officials decided to treat the Syrians who reportedly would have died without immediate emergency medical care.

Four years later, the IDF claims it is providing medical and food assistance and various types of humanitarian aid to thousands of Syrians both inside Syria and within Israel as part of what it calls its “Good Neighbor” policy. An Israeli official defines this initiative as intended to assist desperate Syrians ravaged by years of civil war, and in the process stabilize the border region by showing Syria’s heretofore enemy population that Israel is not, in fact, the devil. Reportedly, no ID’s are asked for by Syrian’s arriving at the border and medical teams are advised not to inquire about patients political affiliations.

The destitute population in South Syria, some rebels and some supporters of the government, as well as increasing numbers who claim to be apolitical, plus countless thousands of internally displaced Syrians, are learning of Israel’s “Good Neighbor” policy. Consequently, the number seeking and receiving aid is growing.  One reason is the failure over the past seven years of the International Community to deliver humanitarian aid including food, water, clothing, and medical aid to Syria’s besieged civilian population.

Whether this is a significant advantage for Israel in its still cold war against Iran and Hezbollah remains to be seen but it is unlikely to be a game changer given the deepening involvement in Syria of regional and global powers.  As well as the fact that all sides continue to largely ignore the Syrian civilian population unless a clear political advantage is likely to result.

Rising death toll from health sector cuts in New Zealand

Sam Price 

New Zealand’s desperately underfunded healthcare system has resulted in shortened life expectancies, dying babies and increased suicides, according to recent media reports.

Recently seven babies died within seven weeks at Waikato Hospital. On September 19, One News told the horrific story of Kate, a pregnant mother rushed to hospital when she started suffering severe pain. Due to staff shortages it took 12 hours for her to be seen by an obstetrician and a further 5 hours before she received a scan. She started vomiting black fluid and went into cardiac arrest, caused by an aneurysm that ruptured her uterus and leaked eight litres of blood into her abdomen.

Her baby was delivered with suspected brain damage. After three weeks, unable to breathe by herself, the baby developed pneumonia and died.

Auckland Hospital has a shortage of midwives, with up to 25 percent of roles unfilled earlier in the year. A woman who spoke to Radio New Zealand on October 18 had to have her baby’s birth delayed and wait 8 hours for pain relief.

In the Dunedin area, at least six prostate cancer patients have had their life expectancies shortened because of massive delays in the Southern District Health Board’s urology department. A 62-year-old patient waited ten months for treatment he should have received within three weeks, after being diagnosed last year. The cancer has now spread and he is expected to survive only five years.

Across the country, patients seeking emergency care have been turned away from overflowing hospitals. South Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital frequently displays a sign at its entrance telling patients to seek care elsewhere or wait at least eight hours. An internal email reported by the New Zealand Herald on September 5 revealed the hospital was at 104 percent capacity, with the medicine and surgical area at 116 percent.

Waikato Hospital has gone over its maximum capacity several times this winter and, on September 12, cancelled surgeries unless they were emergencies or for cancer. Beds had to be set up in corridors because the wards were all occupied. At Palmerston North Hospital there have been reports of patients waiting up to 15 hours to be seen.

Poverty and inequality are exacerbating the crisis. Pharmacy Guild president Graeme Blanchard told Fairfax Media on September 26 that he saw a 25 percent decrease in filled prescriptions after the government increased the cost of subsidised medicines to $5 from $3 in 2013.

A Ministry of Health survey found that between 2015 and 2016, 15 percent of prescriptions went unfilled in the most deprived parts of the country due to cost, and up to 19.3 percent among Pacific Island adults. Patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure require up to ten different medicines that can total $30-$50 per script.

Mental health services are also under severe strain, with suicides at record levels: 606 people took their own lives last financial year, up from 579 the previous year and 564 the year before that. District Health Boards (DHBs) throughout the country report severe shortages of mental health staff.

Successive Labour and National Party governments bear responsibility for the healthcare crisis. The defeated National government increased the health budget by just $888 million in the past year to $16.8 billion, far below what is needed to keep pace with population growth, the ageing population and inflation.

During the election campaign, Labour promised to reverse the cuts to health services by the National government over the past 8 years. While basic services are being starved of funds, however, all the parties in parliament support a $20 billion military upgrade over the next 15 years to strengthen integration with US and Australian allied forces and prepare for war.

Despite gross underfunding, DHBs face constant government pressure to reduce costs by millions of dollars. Jonathan Coleman, health minister in the outgoing National Party government said there is a minimum $117 million deficit total across all DHBs.

Canterbury DHB has been ordered to cut its deficit from $54 million to $17 million. Waikato hospital faces a $32.5 million deficit. Counties Manukau DHB told Radio New Zealand its projected deficit is $50 million and an extensive cost-cutting program would only reduce it to $20 million.

The country was divided into DHBs in 2001 by the then Labour government to absolve the government of direct responsibility for health spending and reduce administration costs, with elected bodies giving the veneer of democratic control.

The health crisis was a major concern for the working class during the 2017 election campaign. However, the incoming Labour-led coalition government will continue to starve the health system of funds.

In a televised debate between Coleman and Labour’s health spokesperson David Clark on September 3, Clark admitted that Labour planned to keep spending at roughly 6 percent of GDP. He said that to return health spending to what it was in 2009 would require an extra $2.3 billion, and promised Labour would back-fill the spending gap. However, just $800 million will be added in Labour’s first budget, a measly 4.76 percent increase on 2017.

A return to 2009 per-capita funding levels still would be woefully inadequate. Health care suffered significantly under Helen Clark’s Labour government between 1999 and 2008. In 2003, four Auckland hospitals were amalgamated as one Auckland City Hospital, reducing the number of beds by 7 percent.

A 2008 review by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine found that a shortage of hospital beds was killing as many people as road accidents every year, which was 400 at the time. The review called for a 15 percent increase in beds.

Suicide rates peaked in 1998 but remained high throughout the last Labour government. In 2005, the suicide rate for 15-24 year olds was the second highest in the OECD. The suicide rate for Maori men in 2004 was 29 deaths per 100,000 population.

The Labour Party said it wants an inquiry into the mental health system aimed at reducing suicides. However, the health crisis and suicides are the outcome of decades of pro-market economic reforms, begun by the 1984-1990 Labour government. It oversaw mass redundancies in public services, the impoverishment of thousands of people and the introduction of user-pays health services. According to researcher Andrew Dean, from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s the youth suicide rate almost tripled, from 10 to 30 per 100,000.

Jane Kelsey’s book The New Zealand Experiment, reported that waiting lists for surgery increased 61 percent from 1981 to 1991, and the proportion of health funding from public sources fell from 88 percent to 81.7 percent.

Under Clark’s Labour government, the figure fell even further to 77 percent, while private hospital providers such as Southern Cross and Wakefield Health Group expanded rapidly. According to a New Zealand Herald report from January 2007, the government pushed 35,000 people off public hospital surgery waiting lists in the space of just 12 months, declaring there was not enough money to fund all types of surgery.

Global Hunger Index highlights South Asia’s social misery

Saman Gunadasa

The 2017 Global Hunger Index (GHI), released last month by the International Food Policy Research Institute, reported that “millions of people” worldwide are “experiencing chronic hunger” and “many places are suffering acute food crises and even famine.”

The report singled out South Asia and African countries south of the Sahara as the regions worst affected. Their overall GHI scores, which measure total undernourishment and stunting, wasting and mortality among children under five years of age, were 30.9 and 29.4 respectively.

A score of 100 indicates complete food insecurity across a population, while zero would show food security. GHI figures above 20 point to “serious” food shortages. Scores of more than 35 indicate an “alarming” food situation, and readings over 50 demonstrate an “extremely alarming” crisis.

The Central African Republic was in the extremely alarming range. Other African countries, including Chad, Liberia, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and Zambia, were in the alarming range.

India, which accounts for three quarters of the South Asian population, ranked 100 out of 119 countries for food security. Pakistan was 106, while Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka ranked 107, 88 and 84 respectively.

Child undernutrition in South Asia, measured by child stunting and child wasting, was higher than in the worst-hit areas of Africa.

India’s GHI score was 31.4, at the high end of the serious category. Some 38 percent of Indian children suffered from stunting, where height growth is limited by insufficient caloric intake.

The report cited recent survey findings showing that only 9.6 percent of Indian infants aged 6-23 months receive an adequate diet. Just 42.7 percent of babies are introduced to the complementary food they require after breast feeding. Only 48.4 percent of all households have access to sufficient sanitation facilities.

The figures underscore the poverty-stricken living conditions of the vast majority of the population, comprised of sweatshop workers, low-paid contract employees and the oppressed rural masses. Some 800 million people subsist on less than $2 a day.

Their plight contrasts with the unprecedented riches gorged by the top end of Indian society.

According to Forbes’ 2017 global wealth rankings, there are 100 Indian billionaires. Only the United States, China and Russia are home to a greater number. India’s richest 1 percent own a staggering 58.4 percent of the country’s wealth, according to 2016 figures from the Credit Suisse Research Institute.

That data also indicated that 80 percent of adults in India and Africa are in the bottom half of global wealth distribution. The poorest half of the world’s population owns less than 1 percent of total wealth, compared to the top 10 percent, which controls 89 percent.

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) fiscal affairs director, Victor Gaspar, told reporters last month: “If we look at inequality country by country, we realise that most people around the world live in countries where inequality has increased. It is important to emphasise that inequality has increased in the largest countries in the world: China, India and the United States.”

The Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is imposing a deeply-unpopular program that is exacerbating the wealth divide. Its demonetisation scheme, introduced at the end of last year, has driven down the incomes of workers and the poor. A new Goods and Services Tax is further eroding the wages of the most exploited workers.

Sri Lanka’s score in the global hunger index increased from 24.2 in 2008 to 25.5 this year. Undernourishment, child stunting and child mortality registered minimal declines. Child wasting, however, where physical weight is limited by insufficient food intake, soared from 13.3 percent in 2006-2010, to 21.4 percent in 2012-2016.

According to the latest 2016 statistics, poverty has increased sharply in the war-ravaged northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka. The percentage of the population living in poverty in Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Mullaithivu and Kilinochchi districts was 10, 11.3, 12.7 and 18.2 percent respectively.

The Sri Lankan government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is imposing IMF demands for the privatisation of state-owned enterprises, a dramatic reduction in government spending and stepped-up attacks on the working class.

Pakistan registered the second-highest GHI figure in South Asia, at 32.6, while the figure for Afghanistan, devastated by a 16-year US military occupation, was 33.3. Figures for child stunting in Pakistan have risen by 5 percent since 2010, to 45 percent in total. One-fifth of the entire population is undernourished.

Elsewhere in the region, the food situation in Bangladesh is “serious,” with a GHI reading of 26.4.

In Nepal, 8.1 percent of the population is undernourished. Some 37.4 percent of children under five are stunted. The mortality rate for children in that age group is 3.6 percent.

While the vast majority of South Asia’s people are suffering malnutrition or food insecurity, governments throughout the region are allocating billions of dollars to their armed forces. This is in preparation to suppress social opposition and participate in mounting geo-political conflicts.

India, which is playing a central role in the US-led plans for war against China, increased its military spending by 10 percent this year, to an annual total of 2.74 trillion Indian rupees ($US42 billion). Pakistan’s 2017-18 military budget is 7 percent higher than the previous year, at 920.2 billion Pakistan rupees ($US8.7 billion).

According to the World Bank, India spends 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product on the military, Pakistan 3.6 percent and Sri Lanka 2.4 percent. In other words, the region’s governments can find money for war, but have no solution to the social misery afflicting the masses.

Germany: Coalition talks centre on increase in defence spending

Johannes Stern

The reactionary and anti-working class character of the next German government is becoming ever clearer. Last week, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), Greens and Free Democratic Party (FDP) discussed preserving the debt ceiling, further tax cuts for the rich and new privatisations. Now they are talking about massively increasing military expenditure and the powers of the state at home.

There are “many commonalities among the negotiators” concerning stronger European security and defence policy, FDP leader Christian Lindner told the Rheinische Post. “We should find a European solution for the armed forces.” He called the election of Emmanuel Macron as French president an opportunity that must be used exactly for this purpose. Brexit also had a positive side effect, as it would eliminate those putting a brake on increased security cooperation within the European Union (EU).

A week before the talks on a possible “Jamaica coalition” (after the party colours of the CDU/CSU, Greens and FDP), the CDU Economic Council increased its pressure on the party’s main negotiator and acting defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen, to push through a massive increase in defence spending. The Bundeswehr (armed forces) not only needed more materiel but also modern equipment, the working group on European Defence and Security Policy demanded in a position paper quoted by business daily Handelsblatt on Thursday.

“Defence industrial research programmes need to be developed and improved,” it says. The incoming government must ensure that technological military know-how is maintained in Germany. Two years ago, the grand coalition (Christian Democrats-Social Democrats) had decided to commit the areas of cryptology and sensor technology, as well as battle tanks and submarines, as “particularly important and valuable” technologies for a modern Bundeswehr. The Economic Council is now promising closer European cooperation, acquisitions in larger numbers, which can lead to “national means being used more efficiently.”

The far-reaching “acquisitions” they have in mind are well known. At the last Franco-German Council of Ministers in July, Berlin and Paris decided to “develop a future fighter aircraft to replace their current fighter fleets in the long term.” In an official paper, it was also agreed “to create a framework for cooperation on the next generation of Tiger helicopters and a joint tactical air-to-ground missile programme.”

The European armaments initiatives being forced through by the ruling class in Germany are part of the return of German militarism. They go hand in hand with a comprehensive national armaments programme, whose scale recalls the massive rearmament of the Wehrmacht (German Army) in the 1930s, and which should again enable Germany to conduct large-scale wars.

The defence ministry is presently working on an upgrade plan, which is based on the so-called “provisional conceptual guidelines for the future capability profile of the Bundeswehr,” according to the responsible department head at the ministry, Lieutenant General Erhard Bühler.

Accordingly, Germany’s military should “grow strongly in the areas of the army, air force and navy...in order to meet the new requirements,” as reported by the German Bundeswehr Association (DBwV) on its web site. This concerns ensuring a “full defence capability on land, sea, air, outer space and cyberspace.” In order to achieve this, hundreds of tanks, new warships and fighter aircraft would have to be purchased.

To finance the massive rearmament programme, under no circumstances should there be any cuts in the defence budget, political weekly Die Zeit warns in a recent commentary. “On the contrary. The exploratory coalition talks offer a great opportunity to develop a broader and more flexible understanding of defence in Germany.”

The “Jamaica” parties apparently take the warmongers in the media at their word. In their election programmes, the CDU/CSU and FDP had already openly declared their support for the NATO target of raising defence expenditure from its current 1.2 percent to 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2024. Now, sections of the CDU/CSU are pushing for even more defence spending. “It is clear that Germany must make a higher contribution than before. The increase in the defence budget to the NATO target of 2 percent of GDP should only be a first step here,” it says in a motion by the CDU’s youth section Junge Union at the beginning of October.

German-European war policy is supported by all the parties in the Bundestag (parliament), but above all by the Greens. Shortly before the general election, at an event at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) titled “Foreign and European Policy Challenges for Germany,” its lead candidate Cem Özdemir promised, “The Greens also believe the Bundeswehr must be decently equipped. And we owe it to ensure the security of the soldiers that we send on international missions, and we have to make sure that they can do their jobs properly there. That’s not for free, it has to be financed.”

The Socialist Equality Party (SGP) was the only party that put the fight against war and militarism at the centre of its election campaign, and warned what the ruling class is preparing for with its insane plans for increasing military spending. “Germany’s ruling elite is responding to this global crisis in the same way it did in the last century. It is returning to the militarist traditions that culminated in the most horrific crimes in history. It is responding to mounting tensions with the United States by seeking to rise to a predominant position within Europe so as to be able to act as a global power,” the SGP statement of September 21 said.

While there was barely any talk about these aims in the election campaign, Handelsblatt is now openly demanding “the emancipation of Europe from its big brother America.” The reason: “Trump’s entire foreign, security and trade policy resembles a frontal attack on the German business model.” The American president was conducting an “economic war” and above all was hitting “Germany, which like no other country has an international network and therefore relies on open markets and borders.”

The ruling class knows that the return to an independent German great power policy has revolutionary implications. It is conscious that it can only impose its programme of militarism, rearmament and social cuts against the growing resistance of the population with an authoritarian regime, and is setting its course in this direction.

“New jobs for police officers and security officials are needed—the CDU dreams of implementing its campaign demands of 15,000 new jobs,” wrote Die Zeit about the exploratory coalition talks. “According to the state of play on Monday,” the CDU/CSU, FDP and Greens could “also imagine introducing video surveillance in future at crime hot-spots and strengthen and centralise the secret services.”

Britain’s Defence Secretary Fallon resigns in anti-democratic “sex pest” scandal

Julie Hyland

Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon is the first high-profile scalp in a sex scandal sweeping British politics, which has taken on ever more contrived dimensions.

Fallon resigned after being made to apologise for placing his hand on the knee of a female journalist 15 years ago. This is despite the fact that the woman involved, Julia Hartley-Brewer, had not complained and has publicly disassociated herself from what she described as a “political witch-hunt.”

Fallon is among 40 Tory MPs in a so-called “dirty dossier” leaked to Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper. While most names are redacted, it reportedly includes six serving cabinet ministers. Some 15 names relate to consensual relationships, while one Tory MP is accused of “sexting” a young female who had applied for work, and another is under investigation for getting his personal assistant to buy a sex-toy for his wife.

The sex-scandal, if such a designation can be applied, sprang to life following that surrounding American film producer Harvey Weinstein, which has now engulfed Kevin Spacey and Dustin Hoffman. It is asserted that Westminster is the UK’s equivalent of Hollywood—a place where sexual harassment and misogyny are so rife and engrained that they can only be dealt with by “outing” those involved, without the wearisome encumbrance of due process.

No evidence has been provided to back up many of the claims and, as yet, no one has been charged with any offence.

To make this observation is not to imply that Westminster is a bastion of morality, or that the allegations are entirely without foundation. This is an institution that has systematically stripped workers of any rights, leaving them prey to all manner of abuses, under the mantra of survival of the fittest and there is “no such thing as society.”

Fallon himself is a leading warmonger, whose bellicose threats of military aggression against Russia and North Korea include his statement last month that Britain should be prepared to use nuclear weapons against Pyongyang. Yet he has left office over an action so inconsequential that the woman involved thought nothing of it, and even with a degree of public sympathy behind him. Meanwhile, the war preparations continue regardless.

Secretary of State Damien Green also stands accused of inappropriate behaviour. Tory political activist, journalist and feminist, Kate Maltby, has detailed how she sought out Green—a close friend of her mother—when starting her career. At a meeting in 2015 where he promised to help her advance, she “felt a fleeting hand against my knee—so brief it was almost deniable.”

This was apparently the cause of such distress for Maltby—“You probably have no idea of how awkward, embarrassed and professionally compromised you made me feel,” she wrote of Green in the Times—that they had no contact until after she had posed in a corset for a national newspaper and Green sent an appreciative text suggesting they meet up.

Maltby only decided to respond when Green was suddenly promoted to Deputy Prime Minister earlier this year, on the occasion of which she sent him a message stating, “I look forward to seeing what you achieve in government.”

For this, Green is fighting for his political survival.

Writing in the Guardian, Polly Toynbee opined: “What an irony it would be if another good old British parliamentary sex scandal brought down this government—and not the Brexit abomination or the extreme suffering caused by austerity or any of the myriad acts of atrocious governance they have been guilty of since 2010.”

More than irony is involved. Can it be mere coincidence that Green and Fallon are Prime Minister Theresa May’s key political allies—charged with managing the bitter infighting between the pro and anti-Brexit wings of the Conservative Party, which has become even more charged since June’s general election?

May has already been threatened with a leadership challenge. The British government has just six weeks left to convince its European Union partners to begin negotiations on the terms of its exit from the single market, but there is no sign of movement. Meanwhile, bogus allegations of Russian interference in last year’s Brexit referendum have taken a qualitative turn with the UK Electoral Commission investigating Arron Banks, the entrepreneur who funded anti-Brexit campaigns.

At any rate, the scatter-gun nature of what has been described as Britain’s “cultural revolution,” or the “new Puritanism”—conflating sexual interaction with criminal actions—lends itself to the settling of scores for political ends.

Sheffield Labour MP Jared O’Mara is suspended from the party for online comments he wrote more than a decade ago about women and homosexuals. The offending remarks were brought to light by right-wing blogger, Guido Fawkes (O’Mara is a supporter of party leader Jeremy Corbyn).

This week, Bex Bailey said she was raped at a Labour Party event six years ago by a senior member, but was discouraged from reporting it by a “fellow activist.”

Bailey is a former aide to Liz Kendall, the Blairite challenger to Corbyn in 2015, and was the youth representative on Labour’s National Executive Committee until last year. Although she had not taken the alleged attack to the police, Bailey did report it to BBC Politics Editor Laura Kuenssberg, whose anti-Corbyn bias is a matter of record.

The internal investigations set up by Labour into such charges are now being used to tar anyone supporting Corbyn—and more specifically, left-wing or socialist politics—as rape apologists.

Suzanne Moore in the Guardian declared that “many Jeremy Corbyn loyalists are nasty misogynists,” while at the Telegraph, Zoe Strimpel asserted that “Corbyn’s rise has given those on the Left with thuggish instincts an open field. And a party that embraces thuggish impulses will behave thuggishly.”

Whatever the exact fallout from these events, nothing good will result. There is a profoundly sinister undercurrent, as befits a campaign predicated on jettisoning the presumption of innocence.

Andrea Leadsom, Leader of the House of Commons, has been put in charge of acting on allegations of sexual misconduct. Leadsom, who boasts of her admiration for Margaret Thatcher and the centrality of her Christian faith (she prays “all the time”) has announced she will be “setting the bar significantly below criminal activity” in dealing with “inappropriate behaviour.”

Right-wing journalist Melanie Phillips writes that the parliamentary sex scandal has got “seriously out of hand.” But she blames it on the “sexual revolution and lifestyle free-for-all, which turned sex from a private, sacramental activity within marriage into little more than a recreational sport.”

As women “threw themselves into lifestyles of immodesty, promiscuity and casual sex,” this led to “an exponential increase in male sexual misbehaviour” as men sought to assert their masculinity, she states.

The answer presumably is that women should get back in the kitchen. Phillips is notorious for her anti-Muslim screeds, usually disguised as a defence of women’s rights. Yet her comments would be perfectly acceptable to the Taliban.

This speaks to more fundamental impulses. So wide is the designation of abuse that names on the “sex-pest” list are said to include Home Secretary Amber Rudd for having a relationship with a fellow MP following her divorce, and Tory MP Jake Berry for having a son with his partner, a party aide. A striking number involve homosexual relations, including one male MP accused of liking “intercourse with men who are wearing women’s perfume.” One can only surmise that it is not the perfume but the act that is considered morally reprehensible.

A warning must be made. The campaign launched in the name of protecting women and gays, with the support of the identity-politics crowd, will invariably be used to overturn democratic and social rights and legitimise the most backward and reactionary ideologies.

Short Sea Shipping in Bay of Bengal Takes Baby Steps

Vijay Sakhuja

Last week, a consignment of motor vehicles was shipped from Chennai Port in India to Mongla port in Bangladesh onboard a roll-on roll-off (RoRo) cum general cargo vessel. Ashok Leyland Limited chose to use the sea route which takes five days instead of the land route that involves a distance of about 1500 km, thereby saving nearly 2-3 weeks of travel time. There are plans to use the same sea route for the next shipment of nearly 500 truck chassis to Bangladesh. This is a significant development from at least three perspectives.

First, the shipment is representative of the Coastal Shipping Agreement between India and Bangladesh signed in June 2015 during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Bangladesh. It also reinforces the fact that Bangladesh is an important gateway  through the Mongla-Ashuganj section to India’s landlocked Northeast.

Second, it gives boost to India’s Sagarmala project that encourages coastal shipping. In 2016, 800 Hyundai cars were shipped on RoRo vessels from Chennai (one of the three major automobile industrial clusters of India) to Pipavav for local distribution.

Third, it signifies India’s desire to enhance short sea shipping in the Bay of Bengal which is also embedded in India’s Act East Policy (AEP), thus deepening economic linkages through maritime connectivity with ASEAN countries. At the policy level, the Indian government has endorsed and promoted India-ASEAN connectivity initiatives, and the Indian Foreign Affairs minister has noted that “Future focus areas of cooperation between ASEAN member states and India can be described in term of 3Cs- Commerce, Connectivity and Culture.”

For robust and dynamic trade in any region, three important physical factors are at play: ships, ports, and cargo. The availability of ships in the international market is not a very big problem other than during crises; it is the number of ships that are available for coastal and domestic trade that presents numerous constraints. The ability of a port to handle various types of cargo (bulk, liquid, container) is another critical determinant of the dynamism of sub-regional trade. Further, the types of commodities also add to the versatility of maritime connectivity.

Bay of Bengal shipping primarily features liquid bulk (crude oil and petroleum products) and dry bulk (coal, iron ore, grains, bauxite, fertiliser). Container trade (merchandised goods) is quite low due to lack of infrastructure as also the manufacturing capacity of the trading countries. The RoRo and general cargo constitutes less than 5 per cent the total seaborne trade in the Bay region.

Among the many container terminuses in the Bay of Bengal, Chennai port can handle fifth generation (5000-8000 TEUs) container vessels and a number of shipping lines make direct calls. In early 2017, a direct container shipping service from Chennai to the US east coast was launched, which would result in voyage savings of 10 days.

However, the other three major container terminuses - Kolkata, Chittagong and Yangon - can handle limited container cargo due to a number of limitations. These are river ports and the ships must travel up the river, which adds to travel time, and are not highly profitable due to long turnaround time, which adds to costs. Vishakhapatnam, Mongla and Kattupalli can handle only small volumes of container traffic.

In the absence of any major container port, regional trade is intimately connected to Singapore, Port Kelang, Tanjung Pelepas and Colombo, which have been labelled as global standard transshipment hubs and handle ships carrying 6500 TEU to 12,000 TEU. In essence, every container entering or leaving the Bay of Bengal must be loaded/unloaded at least once before it reaches any destination outside the Bay. For instance, nearly 70 per cent of containers from Chennai are shipped onboard feeder ships to transshipment hubs, and Colombo is a popular destination for Chennai. Besides, there are geographic realties that the region must contend with, given that major shipping route from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific through the Straits of Malacca is nearly 1500 nautical miles.

What emerges is the fact that intra-regional trade in the Bay of Bengal is low, which presents major challenges for regional connectivity. At the heart of this weakness is the fact that the maritime infrastructure in the Bay of Bengal is weak. For instance, the ports of Chennai and Chittagong are larger than the port of Penang in Malaysia, but the volume of cargo handled by this port is much larger given the quality of services and also its geographic location.

If the ports in the Bay of Bengal are to remain competitive, India, Bangladesh and Myanmar would have to invest in new deep draft port projects, explore new commodities to be traded, and modernise the existing ports to enhance efficiency through modern handling services as also develop hinterland links such as inland waterways, road, and rail from container terminals. New deep-water ports at Haldia, Chittagong, Dawei, Kyaukpyu and Hambantota can potentially augment maritime connectivity in the region.

It is true that port projects are cost-intensive and have long gestation periods, and the Bay of Bengal will have to rely on other non-regional ports for international commerce. In the interim, it will be useful to explore if short sea shipping agreements and arrangements can be discussed among India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Further, the Cabotage laws among the regional countries would have to be harmonised, notwithstanding the fact that Sri Lanka has very little coastal trade.