CAR’s Report on Islamic State’s Arms is Misleading

Nauman Sadiq

During the last week, a report by the Conflict Armament Research (CAR) on the Islamic State’s weapons found in Iraq and Syria has been doing the rounds on the media. Before the story was picked up by the mainstream media, it was first published in the Wired on December 12, which has a history of spreading dubious stories and working in close collaboration with the Pentagon and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) under its erstwhile reporters Noah Shachtman and Spencer Akerman, both of whom are now the national security correspondents for the Daily Beast, though this particular report has been written by Brian Castner, “a former US Air Force explosive ordnance disposal officer and a veteran of the Iraq War.”

The Britain-based Conflict Armament Research (CAR) is a small company of less than 20 employees. It’s Iraq and Syria division is headed by a 31-year-old Belgian researcher, Damien Spleeters. The main theme of Spleeters’ investigation was to discover the Islamic State’s homegrown armaments industry and how the jihadist group’s technicians have adapted the East European munitions to be used in the weapons available to the Islamic State. He has listed 1,832 weapons and 40,984 pieces of ammunition recovered in Iraq and Syria in the CAR’s database.

But Spleeters has only tangentially touched upon the subject of the Islamic State’s weapons supply chain, documenting only a single PG-9 rocket found at Tal Afar in Iraq bearing a lot number of 9,252 rocket-propelled grenades which were supplied by Romania to the US military, and mentioning only a single shipment of 12 tons of munitions which was diverted from Saudi Arabia to Jordan in his supposedly ‘comprehensive report.’ In fact, the CAR’s report is so misleading that of thousands of pieces of munitions investigated by Spleeters, less than 10% were found to be compatible with NATO’s weapons and more than 90% were found to have originated from Russia, China and the East European countries, Romania and Bulgaria in particular.

By comparison, a joint investigation by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has uncovered the Pentagon’s $2.2 billion arms pipeline to the Syrian militants. It bears mentioning, however, that $2.2 billion were earmarked only by Washington for training and arming the Syrian rebels, and tens of billions of dollars that Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Gulf states have pumped into the Syrian proxy war have not been documented by anybody so far.

Moreover, a Bulgarian investigative reporter, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, authored a report for Bulgaria’s national newspaper, Trud, which found that an Azerbaijan state airline company, Silk Way Airlines, was regularly transporting weapons to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Turkey under diplomatic cover as part of the CIA covert program to supply militant groups in Syria. Gaytandzhieva documented 350 such ‘diplomatic flights’ and was subsequently fired from her job for uncovering the story. Unsurprisingly, however, both these well-researched and groundbreaking reports didn’t even get a passing mention in any mainstream news outlet.

It’s worth noting, moreover, that the Syrian militant groups are no ordinary bands of ragtag jihadist outfits. They have been trained and armed to the teeth by their patrons in the security agencies of Washington, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan in the training camps located at Syria’s border regions with Turkey and Jordan. Along with Saddam’s and Egypt’s armies, the Syrian Baathist armed forces are one of the most capable fighting forces in the Arab world. But the onslaught of militant groups during the first three years of the proxy war was such that had it not been for the Russian intervention in September 2015, the Syrian defenses would have collapsed. And the only feature that distinguishes the Syrian militants from the rest of regional jihadist groups is not their ideology but their weapons arsenals that were bankrolled by the Gulf’s petro-dollars and provided by the CIA in collaboration with regional security agencies of Washington’s client states.

While we are on the subject of Islamic State’s weaponry, it is generally claimed by the mainstream media that Islamic State came into possession of state-of-the-art weapons when it overran Mosul in June 2014 and seized huge caches of weapons that were provided to the Iraqi armed forces by Washington. Is this argument not a bit paradoxical, however, that Islamic State conquered large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq before it overran Mosul when it supposedly did not have those sophisticated weapons, and after allegedly coming into possession of those weapons, it lost ground? The only conclusion that can be drawn from this fact is that Islamic State had those weapons, or equally deadly weapons, before it overran Mosul and that those weapons were provided to all the militant groups operating in Syria, including the Islamic State, by the intelligence agencies of none other than the Western powers, Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf states.

In fact, Washington exercises such an absolute control over the Syrian theater of proxy war that although it openly provided the US-made antitank (TOW) weapons to the Syrian militants but it strictly forbade its regional allies from providing anti-aircraft weapons (MANPADS) to the militants, because Israel frequently flies surveillance aircrafts and drones and occasionally carries out airstrikes in Syria, and had such weapons fallen into wrong hands, they could have become a long-term threat to Israel’s air force. Lately, some anti-aircraft weapons from Gaddafi’s looted arsenal in Libya have made their way into the hands of Syrian militants, but for the initial years of the proxy war, there was an absolute prohibition on providing MANPADS to the insurgents.

US fire death toll in 2017 reaches 2,152

Steve Filips

As the holidays approach there has been a heart wrenching increase in fire deaths of children, highlighting the deplorable housing conditions and systemic poverty within the US. The US Fire Administration (USFA) collects information on civilian casualties due to fire and reports that as of this writing, 2152 people have lost their lives in fires. The prior year's total was 2,290.

The three states most impacted in November were Texas, with 21 lives lost, Illinois with 16, and California losing 14. Texas had the most fatalities for all of 2016 - 132. The state’s toll stands at 126 thus far in 2017.

The house fire crisis disproportionately impacts the working class, which faces substandard housing conditions, as well as declining living standards.

The beginning of this winter season has seen unusually cool temperatures in the southern US, which has led to increases in fatalities. Inevitably the onset of the winter heating season sees an increase in the loss of life and debilitating injuries because of the use of less safe, alternative heating methods such as space heaters. The poor condition of many older houses and apartments is generally characterized by inadequate insulation or improperly maintained or non-functioning central heating systems, often the result of strained budgets.

An equally serious problem is the high cost of utilities, which have outstripped any gains to workers’ stagnant wages, forcing unthinkable choices between necessities such medicines, food, education and medical care. As a consequence tens of thousands are impacted by the social crime of utility shutoffs, forced to live without light and heat in the winter months.

The USFA designated category for young people includes only children up through the age of 13. Those 14 years of age and older are not included, likely to blunt the true scope of the crisis. As a result, the total for November is 25 compared to the same period last year when 24 died. November’s total fatalities were 227, far exceeding last year’s 191 lives lost.

These figures also don't account for the life changing injuries, both physical and emotional, inflicted on the victims. Many often don't have any form of insurance, exacerbating the suffering.

Some of the more recent house fires in the United States include:

* A fire in Baltimore, Maryland which broke out sometime before 1 a.m. on December 13 in an older two-story row house. The blaze took three lives: Alicia Evan and her two young daughters Layla and Amani, four and five years old.

Fire officials have not reported a cause for the fire, but stated that there was at least one working smoke detector.

According to the US Census Bureau the poverty rate in Baltimore for those 18 and younger is 33.3 percent, and undoubtedly higher in some sections of that city.

Baltimore has recently seen a horrific rise in the death toll from fires. In the last year alone there have been 28 people who have perished in fire disasters that could have likely been prevented if more resources were available.

* In another tragic fire, on December 14 in Vicksburg, Mississippi a house fire took the lives two young children; Mariah Dearman and Glen Williams, 16 and 27 months old.

Firefighters arrived at the home within minutes of the initial call to find two adjacent homes fully engulfed. Before their arrival, the children's uncle Thomas Dearman 24, attempted their rescue and suffered severe burns to his face and arms. The modest homes were old style wood frame construction and had a fireplace, which was probably the cause of the fire.

The state of Mississippi is one the poorest in the US. The Census Bureau poverty rate figures for ages 18 and under statewide last year was 31.5 percent, while for Vicksburg it was a staggering 55.8 percent.

* On November 27, Brian Perez Jr., 10, and his great grandfather Tony Perez 85, lost their lives from in house fire on Tradewinds Road in Wichita Falls, Texas. The city of Wichita Falls lies near the Oklahoma border. The Census Bureau reports a 29.2 percent poverty rate for young people.

Virgin Care: A case study in how private corporations loot the UK’s National Health Service

Ajanta Silva

The Health Service Journal (HSJ) recently exposed a scandalous handout given to private healthcare company Virgin Care by a Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) in the county of Surrey, England.

This brings to light how private companies are plundering the National Health Service (NHS) with impunity like never before, with the blessing of central governments.

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 replaced the secretary of state for health’s “duty to provide health care” with a “duty to arrange,” and provided the basis to create 211 Clinical Commissioning Groups, which are allowed to purchase care from any “qualified provider.”

The Surrey Downs Clinical Commissioning Group accidentally disclosed in its October public finance papers a backdoor payment of £328,000 to Virgin Care, owned by billionaire business mogul Richard Branson. This would not have come to public knowledge were it not for the mistake on CCG’s part.

The removal of the report from the Surrey Downs CCG website—after the HSJ made enquiries about the settlement—testifies to the ongoing conspiracy to keep the population in the dark about the scope of the influence of private companies. Surrey Downs CCG later stated that this “level of detail should not have been included in the report.”

In 2016, Virgin Care lost its bid to provide children’s health services across Surrey—a contract worth £82 million. It then sued NHS England, Surrey County Council and six CCGs in Surrey, arguing that there were “serious flaws in the procurement process.” Surrey Downs CCG handed over the payment as a part of their liability in an out of court settlement with the private company. The amount paid by the other parties to Virgin Care remains undisclosed, but some reports suggest that the private company could have received more than £2.5 million from the NHS.

This spring, it was reported that Virgin Care was in dispute with East Staffordshire CCG over arrangements in the seven-year prime provider contract for frail, elderly patients, people with long-term conditions and intermediate care. In October, the HSJ reported that Virgin Care was demanding an extra £5 million from East Staffordshire CCG.

The anger felt by people nationwide against this daylight robbery is such that a petition, demanding Branson hand back the ill-gotten money to the struggling NHS, reached well over 100,000 signatures within few weeks.

Virgin Care, Virgin Care Services Ltd, Virgin Care Ltd, VH Community Services Ltd and Virgin Care Corporate Services Ltd are some of the subsidiaries of Virgin Healthcare Holdings Ltd based in the UK. Virgin Healthcare Holdings Ltd is a subsidiary of Virgin Group Holdings Ltd, belonging to Branson and his family.

To “legally” avoid taxes, Virgin Group Holdings Ltd is based in the British Virgin Islands tax haven. It “loans” Virgin Care the money to invest in the care industry in the UK. In return, Virgin Care transfers money to a mother company as loan repayments.

The NHS Support Federation pointed out “this type of corporate set-up has potential for reducing or eliminating the tax liabilities of operating companies; a company in the UK could always report a loss due to loan repayments to sister companies thereby never having to pay tax.”

Branson’s care companies have been reporting losses since 2012—the year that Virgin Care came to prominence for winning a lucrative £450 million NHS contract in Surrey.

This begs the question of why Virgin Care places ever more bids on NHS contracts if it supposedly loses money on them. Despite its reported losses and paying no tax, the company has been aggressively competing to win NHS contacts and exploiting opportunities opened up with the introduction of the Health and Social Care Act.

The Act laid the foundation for the acceleration of the privatisation of the NHS, which began through the backdoor during 13 years of Labour rule from 1997 to 2010. Under the Act, it is mandatory for CCGs to put services out to competitive tender if they can potentially be provided by organisations other than the NHS.

Surrey is a small county in England with a population of just 1.1 million. With the population of the UK at around 60 million, the scale of the rich pickings available to the NHS nationally is vast.

According to the NHS Support Federation, over the period of April 2013 to January 2016, £16 billion in NHS clinical contracts were awarded through the market and the private sector has won nearly £5.5 billion worth. The Federation point out that “in total around £30 billion worth of NHS contracts have gone before the market, although just over half this value has been awarded.”

Published accounts by the Department of Health demonstrate that NHS commissioners spent 7.7 percent of their budget on private sector providers in 2016/17.

Over the last five years, Virgin Care alone has won over £2 billion worth of NHS contracts to run NHS and local authority services ranging from primary care services—including GP services, walk-in centres and community-based NHS services—to adult social services. Virgin Care boasts of having 400 services across the country and treating more than one million people a year.

Last year, it won a £700 million contract to run health and social care services in Bath and North Somerset. This was the first NHS contract under which adult social care was privatised.

The latest is the £104 million contract that Lancashire County Council gave to Virgin Care to run the county’s 0-19 Healthy Child Programme for the next five years. Virgin Care was chosen as the preferred provider over the Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust, which currently provides these services before its contract expires in March next year.

Trusting their political paymasters in government to create endless opportunities to make inroads into the public provision of health care, this year Virgin Care started their own independent clinics that function entirely separately from NHS or Local Authority services. Patients have to pay for appointments to see health care professionals in these clinics.

Virgin Care is not alone in this plunder. Capita, HCA, Circle, Serco, Care UK, Interserve, The Practice, Inhealth and Alliance Boots are among the private operators providing NHS services ranging from direct patient care, elective surgeries, laboratory services, pharmaceuticals, cleaning and maintenance, logistical services and supplies to primary care.

The NHS, which has seen the lowest ever funding increase in its entire history and billions of funding cuts imposed as “efficiency savings” over the last seven years, is not placed on a level playing field when it is compelled to bid against the private sector for the contracts.

NHS trusts are saddled with massive deficits and are burdened by the crippling impact of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Under PFI—massively expanded under the 1997-2010 Labour governments of Blair and Brown—private companies were able to build and maintain hospitals and reap enormous profits, payable to them for decades hence.

The combined deficit of NHS trusts stood at £770 million in the last financial year. Over the last six years, private firms have made a record £831 million pre-tax profit from PFI contracts, which otherwise would have been spent on patient care.

When NHS trusts win contracts and deliver care they are forced to make savings and reinvest in patient care, while private companies winning contracts are allowed to make profits and transfer them to tax havens without difficulty, as revealed in the case of Virgin Care.

Numerous reports have exposed how private health companies, including Virgin Care, jeopardise patient care and safety in order to make profits. Some of the practices include replacing trained staff with untrained staff, stopping care packages on which vulnerable patients depend, persuading staff to take home sexual health testing kits to use on friends and family to help make the numbers up, and forcing patients to attend extra appointments to boost profits.

Trump authorizes $41.5 million sale of lethal US weaponry to Ukraine

Niles Niemuth

The Trump administration approved the sale of $41.5 million worth of US-made “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine this month. It is the largest deal since Congress authorized such sales in 2014 after the government that was brought to power in a US-backed, fascist-led coup met stiff resistance from pro-Russian separatists in the country’s eastern provinces. This latest weapons deal portends an escalation in the nearly four-year-old war in Ukraine, which continues to claim victims and remains a flashpoint between the US and Russia.

First reported by the Washington Post, the latest deal, which was signed off on by President Donald Trump, allows for the sale of M107A1 sniper rifles, .50 caliber Browning machine gun rounds and associated parts and materiel for maintenance of the weapons. Utilizing the large rounds, the M107A1 is particularly effective against light armored vehicles and fortifications.

The report of Trump’s decision to begin selling lethal weapons to Kiev was denounced as a “dead-end technique, which would unleash bloodshed again,” by Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, according to TASS.

While the Trump administration reportedly informed the leaders of a handful of Congressional committees of the decision on December 13, no public announcement was made of the measure, which will only further heighten tensions and increase the possibility of war between the US and Russia, the world’s largest nuclear armed powers.

The Obama administration backed the rabidly nationalist movement to oust pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovych, which erupted in February of 2014 after he backed out of signing an association agreement with the European Union. The Kremlin responded to Yanukovych’s ouster by supporting pro-Russian separatists in the east and annexing Crimea after a popular referendum in the majority Russian-speaking peninsula registered popular support for joining the Russian Federation.

With the support of Washington, Kiev deployed its military and openly fascist militias against the separatists in the east in an effort to crush any opposition to the newly installed pro-Western regime of billionaire oligarch Petro Poroshenko.

Since April of 2014, more than 10,000 soldiers and civilians have been killed and nearly 25,000 wounded in the fighting; more than 2 million Ukrainians have been displaced from their homes.

Alleged Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine has been used, initially under Obama and now under Trump, to justify a provocative buildup of US and NATO military forces throughout Eastern Europe and in the Baltic States.

Approximately 4,000 US soldiers are currently stationed on Russia’s western flank on a permanent rotating basis as part of a buildup initiated by the Obama administration to check “Russian aggression.” Additionally, several hundred soldiers from the US Army National Guard have been deployed to western Ukraine to participate in training exercises with the Ukrainian military.

Prominent Republican critics of Trump in Congress praised the president’s decision to deliver arms to Kiev and pressed him to go further.

“I welcome reports the administration has taken the long-overdue step of approving the sale of lethal defensive weapons to help the Ukrainian people defend themselves from Russian aggression,” Arizona Senator John McCain, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a tweet. However, he went on to declare that it “must only be a first step. I urge the President to authorize additional sales of defensive lethal weapons, including anti-tank munitions.”

Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a statement in which he said the decision to provide the Ukrainian regime with American weaponry “reflects our country’s longstanding commitment to Ukraine in the face of ongoing Russian aggression.”

While the weapons deal is scaled back from a plan which had been drawn up by US Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis and officials at the State Department earlier this year, including the sale of Javelin anti-tank missiles and antiaircraft weapons, the decision opens the floodgates for the much larger and lethal weapons deals that have been demanded by Kiev and pushed for in Congress.

“We have crossed the Rubicon, this is lethal weapons and I predict more will be coming,” a senior Congressional official told the Washington Post. The 2018 defense budget signed by Trump on December 12 authorizes the US government to provide as much as $500 million worth of “defensive lethal assistance” to the Ukrainian government.

The Obama administration had publicly contemplated delivering the same range of lethal weapons but held back, supplying only “nonlethal” military equipment, in part to assuage concerns raised by Germany, France and other EU countries which opposed the move. The European powers, which receive a significant portion of their natural gas from Russia, in particular Germany and France, have sought to cement a ceasefire deal in the Ukrainian conflict while maintaining a pro-EU regime in Kiev.

The Trump administration’s decision on weapons sales follows the public announcement earlier this month that the cabinet of Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau had approved the commercial sale of lethal weaponry by Canadian arms dealers to Kiev. Conservative MP James Bezan told reporters that the decision will allow for the sale of Javelin anti-tank missiles.

Next to Washington, the government in Ottawa has been the leading backer of the Poroshenko regime, first under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and now Trudeau. As part of Operation UNIFIER 200 Canadian soldiers have been deployed to western Ukraine to participate in military training exercises. The Liberal government recently announced that the military mission will continue until at least March 2019.

Japan’s cabinet approves draft budget that boosts the military

Ben McGrath 

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet yesterday approved a record-high draft budget for the 2018 fiscal year. The plan includes increased spending on the military as Tokyo continues to rearm. The money allocated to the armed forces has steadily risen under Abe throughout his five years in office.

Total government spending in 2018 will reach 97.7 trillion yen ($US862.3 billion), setting a record for the sixth straight year. The cabinet also approved an additional 2.9 trillion yen ($25.6 billion) as part of a supplementary budget for 2017. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga claimed these funds would allow the government to address “economic recovery and fiscal soundness.”

However, the spending is being driven by a 2.5 percent increase over the current military budget, setting a record-high in its own right at 5.2 trillion yen ($45.9 billion). Abe is exploiting the supposed threat posed by North Korea to justify buying new weaponry, including offensive technology. In the past, Tokyo has been cautious of acquiring offensive weapons that breach the country’s constitution and could provoke public opposition.

With Abe fully backing the Trump administration’s threat to “totally destroy” North Korea, this arms buildup includes cruise missiles that would allow the military, formally known as the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), to strike targets abroad. Tokyo claimed earlier this year that it could even launch a preemptive attack on North Korea as a supposed defensive measure, an act that would, in reality, violate the constitution and international law.

The Abe administration has requested 2.2 billion yen ($19.4 million) to purchase the Joint Strike Missile (JSM) from Norway’s Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace, and is examining buying additional missiles from Lockheed Martin. The missiles from Norway and the United States would be mounted on the Air SDF’s F-35 and F-15 fighter jets respectively.

Members of Abe’s cabinet, including Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, have claimed that acquiring cruise missiles would not alter the supposedly defensive nature of Japan’s military. Yet, Onodera, before becoming defense minister, headed a commission of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) earlier this year that examined the possibility of obtaining cruise missiles that could strike North Korean targets.

Hiroshi Imazu, head of the LDP’s security committee, similarly stated in March: “Japan can’t just wait until it’s destroyed. It’s legally possible for Japan to strike an enemy base that’s launching a missile at us, but we don’t have the equipment or the capability.” Imazu claimed Tokyo could launch an attack also if an ally were targeted, under the spurious notion of “collective self-defense.”

Last Tuesday, Abe’s cabinet approved the purchase of two land-based Aegis shore missile batteries from the US, adding to its Patriot missile systems and Aegis-equipped destroyers. A cabinet statement asserted: “North Korea’s nuclear and missile development has become a greater and more imminent threat for Japan’s national security, and we need to drastically improve our ballistic missile defense capability to protect Japan continuously and sustainably.”

The government intends to have the batteries, which each cost approximately $900 million (2.1 billion yen), operational by 2023. Possible deployment sites include Akita Prefecture in the north and Yamaguchi Prefecture in the southwest. Japan will become the third country to host the system after Romania and Poland, as the US seeks to encircle Russia and China.

Tokyo plans to join the US Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) program, aimed specifically at China. A senior SDF official told the Asahi Shimbunrecently: “[The move] is partly intended to bolster Japan’s defenses against North Korea’s ballistic missiles, but the real aim of introducing the IAMD is to counter China, which has been upgrading a number of its missiles.”

The US announced the IAMD in 2013 under the Obama administration and intends to have it operational by 2020. Tokyo’s budget includes 2.1 billion yen ($18.6 million) to purchase SM-6 interceptor missiles, a core component of the IAMD.

Abe is continuing to push for the revision of Article 9 of the constitution, commonly known as the pacifist clause, by 2020. In a December 19 speech, Abe claimed this “would serve as a catalyst for creating a reborn Japan”—in other words, a Japan capable of projecting military power abroad at a greater intensity than at any time since World War II.

The claim that remilitarization is necessary for defense recalls the rationale advanced by the Japanese militarist regime in the 1930s and 1940s when it insisted that the aggressive annexation of surrounding countries was a defensive measure. In recent years, the history of Japanese expansionism and its war crimes has been officially whitewashed to further an image of Japanese imperialism as a victim and obfuscate the causes leading to war today.

Abe has emphasized “maximum pressure” on North Korea, an impoverished country with limited and unproven nuclear and ballistic weapon programs. Over the past two decades, Pyongyang has repeatedly attempted to reach accommodations with the US and Japan, only to be targeted again as a supposed threat that can only be dealt with militarily.

Any war on the Korean Peninsula could drag in China and Russia, both nuclear-armed countries. Ultimately, China is Tokyo’s true target as it attempts to offset Japan’s relative economic decline. Japan’s Defense Ministry stated in its 2017 White Paper that China “continues to display what may be described as a heavy-handed attitude, including its attempts to alter the status quo by force.” In the East China Sea, the territorial dispute with Beijing over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has been utilized to whip up public fears and justify the deepening military alliance with Washington.

Funds are being allocated in the 2018 budget to send more troops and weaponry to Japanese islands near Taiwan, part of an agenda announced at the end of 2015. The Defense Ministry has requested 26 billion yen ($229.5 million) to deploy and maintain some 700 troops on Miyakojima Island. Troops and surface-to-ship missile systems are also expected to be deployed to the Amami and Ishigaki islands.

There is widespread opposition to this remilitarization and the alteration of Article 9. A recent poll by Jiji Press found that 68.4 percent of people opposed the current proposals by Abe and the LDP for revisions to the constitution in 2018.

UN imposes harsh new sanctions on North Korea

Peter Symonds

The UN Security Council yesterday voted 15-0 for a US-drafted resolution to inflict draconian new sanctions on North Korea following its testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) last month. Washington has been pushing for a complete economic blockade to starve the Pyongyang regime into submission.

The latest UN measures come on top of existing bans on the export of major North Korean exports such as coal, minerals and seafood, restrictions on the sale of oil to North Korea and the blacklisting of a number of North Korean officials and entities. The US has also imposed its own unilateral sanctions, aimed not just at North Korea but individuals and companies doing business with it.

The new sanctions include:

• Tougher restrictions on the import of energy products. A cap of 500,000 barrels will effectively cut the supply of North Korea’s imports of refined petroleum products by roughly 90 percent. Crude oil supplies to North Korea will be capped at 4 million barrels a year, with further reductions to come into force if Pyongyang tests another ICBM or conducts a nuclear test.
• The repatriation of all North Koreans working abroad. The draft resolution initially imposed a 12-month deadline, but that was extended to 24 months after Russia and China objected. The US estimates there are about 100,000 North Korean guest workers, including 50,000 based in China and 30,000 in Russia, a vital source of foreign exchange for North Korea.
• A ban on North Korean exports of food products, machinery, electrical equipment, earth and stone, including magnesite and magnesia, wood and vessels. Combined with existing bans, this will choke off virtually all export trade.
• A ban on the sale of industrial equipment, machinery, transportation vehicles and industrial metals to North Korea.
• Another 15 North Koreans, along with the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces, have been added to the UN blacklist, which freezes their assets globally and bans them from international travel.
• UN member states will be able to seize, inspect and impound any vessel in their ports or territorial waters that they believe to be carrying banned cargo or involved in prohibited activities.

The resolution does not, however, permit the boarding and seizure of ships on the high seas as proposed by the Trump administration earlier this year—a provocative measure that could trigger a naval clash.

After the vote, Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, declared: “It sends the unambiguous message to Pyongyang that further defiance will invite further punishments and isolation.” But North Korea is already the most isolated country in the world.

White House Homeland Security adviser Thomas Bossert said earlier this week there were few things left to sanction. “President Trump has used just about every lever you can use, short of starving the people of North Korea to death, to change their behaviour,” he said. “And so we don’t have a lot of room left here to apply pressure to change their behaviour.”

In reality, North Korea is already facing an economic and humanitarian crisis. UN human rights official Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein recently told the UN Security Council an estimated 18 million North Koreans, or 70 percent of the population, suffer from acute food shortages and aid agencies provide “literally a lifeline” for some 13 million.

While the Trump administration refers to “diplomacy” and the possibility of talks, it will accept nothing short of North Korea’s complete capitulation to US demands for the dismantling of the country’s nuclear and missile programs, and highly intrusive inspections. By ramping up the confrontation with North Korea, the US is also seeking to undermine China, which it regards as the chief threat to global American dominance.

Wu Haitao, China’s deputy UN ambassador, said tensions on the Korean Peninsula risked “spiralling out of control” and again called for talks. “Only by meeting each other halfway and through dialogue and consultations can a peaceful settlement be found,” he said.

China and Russia have proposed a so-called freeze-for-freeze plan—a halt to US and South Korean military exercises in exchange for a pause in North Korean nuclear and missile testing—to facilitate negotiations. The US has repeatedly rejected the proposal.

China and Russia voted for the latest UN resolution in a bid to forestall a war on their borders by the US and its allies against North Korea. The Trump administration, however, has insisted that it will not tolerate a North Korea armed with a nuclear ICBM that can reach the United States and will use “all options” to prevent it.

The London-based Telegraph this week reported, based on three sources, that the White House had drawn up advanced plans for a pre-emptive attack on North Korea. Options included bombing a missile launch site before the next test and destroying a weapons stockpile.

“The Pentagon is trying to find options that would allow them to punch the North Koreans in the nose, get their attention and show that we’re serious,” an unnamed former US security official told the newspaper.

In the current tense situation, any incident or accident, let alone a deliberate US military attack, no matter how limited, threatens to trigger a war that would quickly engulf the Korean Peninsula and draw in other powers. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, would be killed.

Speaking at Guantanamo Bay on Thursday, US Defence Secretary James Mattis told US troops they had to be “ready to go” should “diplomacy” fail. He declared that North Korea was a “not yet imminent but a direct threat to the United States.”

“If we have to do it [militarily], we expect to make it the worst day in North Korea’s life,” he said. If war comes, “every submarine he’s [North Korean leader Kim Jong-un] got is to be sunk, and every ship he’s got is to be sunk.”

In an ominous indication of what the US is preparing, Mattis said the US had been able to trust that other nuclear powers, such as Russia and China, did not want nuclear war. When it came to North Korea, Mattis said, “that may be an assumption we cannot make.”

In other words, the US is preparing to wage a nuclear war, if necessary, to destroy North Korea and its small and technically-limited nuclear arsenal.

Political turmoil in Spain following Catalan election

Paul Mitchell 

Thursday’s election in Catalonia threatens to entrench still further the division between separatist and pro-Spanish unity sentiment in the region, destabilising Spain and the European Union.

The Catalan nationalist parties—Together for Catalonia (JxCat), the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and the Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP)—won a narrow majority of 70 seats in the 135-seat Catalan parliament, two fewer than in the previous election in 2015.

Their ability to form a coalition government by January 23 and hold an investiture vote by February 8 is placed in question by the inability of eight of the elected deputies to attend the parliament.

Five have fled abroad to avoid arrest following the invocation of Article 155 of Spain’s Constitution by the right-wing Popular Party government of Mariano Rajoy in Madrid. They include deposed Catalan Premier Carles Puigdemont of JxCat, which is the largest separatist party after the election. Three others are political prisoners, languishing in jail, including deposed regional Vice-Premier Oriol Junqueras. This could leave the separatists six votes short of the necessary 68-vote majority.

For the first time, a pro-Spanish unity party, Ciutadans (Citizens), known as Ciudadanos in the rest of Spain, won the greatest number of votes, but fell short of the numbers needed to form a government. It and the other anti-separatist parties—the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC) and the Popular Party (PPC)—won a combined total of 57 seats.

Catalonia en Comú (CeC)—the Catalan branch of the Podemos party, which claimed to be neutral between Spanish and Catalan nationalism, but which opposed the separatists’ call for unilateral independence—won eight seats.

Article 155 was invoked by Rajoy, with the full backing of Citizens and the Socialist Party of Spain (PSOE), to suspend the Catalan government, arrest its leaders and impose Thursday’s election in the hope of obtaining a pro-Spanish unity majority. This plan has backfired.

Speaking in Brussels, Puigdemont declared, “The Rajoy recipe has failed… The 155 has clearly lost the plebiscite.” He ended by calling on Rajoy to take part in negotiations “without preconditions,” while making yet another futile appeal to the European Union to intervene—despite it having supported Rajoy’s crackdown through its insistence that the issue was an internal matter for Spain.

“We are proud that this is an issue that arouses the interest of the European institutions,” Puigdemont declared. “I do not ask the European Commission to change its position, only to listen to the whole world, to listen to us in the same way that it listens to the Spanish government.”

ERC General Secretary Marta Rovira also made an appeal for a negotiated resolution, tying calls for a government “in favour of the Republic as soon as possible” to the statement, “If Rajoy is a democrat, he has to assume this democratic mandate—one that accepts the electoral results. It is time for politics, dialogue and negotiation.”

Rajoy will no doubt be under pressure to consider negotiations from some quarters, given the setback he has suffered. Rajoy’s Catalan PPC is now a rump in the Catalan Congress, after an unprecedented collapse in support from 11 to 3 seats. Just 184,108 people, or 4.2 percent of the electorate, voted for a party hated by workers, whether supportive of separatism or not, especially for the brutal police crackdown during the October 1 Catalan independence referendum.

However, there is no indication of a climbdown on his part. The line taken has been to cite the fact that the separatists’ overall share of the vote declined and that its reduced majority depends on rural seats with a smaller electorate than urban areas won by their political opponents.

Asked about Puigdemont’s offer, Rajoy replied that the only person he [Rajoy] should sit down with is Inés Arrimadas, leader of Ciutadans, “who is the one who has won the elections.”

“Catalonia is not monolithic, it is plural,” he added. Only after insisting that the separatists did not speak for Catalonia did he suggest a new era “based on dialogue, not on confrontation…always within the framework of the law.”

This was reinforced by references to the “judicial position” of some of the candidates elected, who, he insisted, must also be subject to the law. Rajoy has made repeated threats to invoke Article 155 and suspend the Catalan government if it dares to raise the independence issue again. More nationalists face being rounded up and thrown into jail for their activities leading up to the declaration of independence, including Rovira, former PDeCat (now JxCat) leader Artur Mas, Anna Gabriel (CUP) and Mireia Boyá (CUP).

The dramatic headway made by Citizens, a right-wing party that won 37 seats compared with just three in 2006, including in Spanish-speaking working-class areas, is a devastating indictment of the PSC and Podemos/CeC-Podem, which could make no significant appeal to any section of the working class, let alone advance a perspective for class unity.

The Socialist Party is as associated with Article 155 as the PP.

The fate of CeC, whose vote share fell by 2.5 percent, is primarily a response to its failure to organize any opposition to the PP’s dictatorial policies either in Catalonia or the rest of Spain. Prior to the election, its spokesman, Xavier Domènech, made a show of advocating unity, not of the working class, but of different bourgeois forces in the form of a three-way coalition made up of the pro-independence ERC, the CeC and the Socialists.

“We are the key, so that people don’t have to choose between one bloc or another,” he boasted. “We are not going to play Russian roulette with our country…”

No one believes such a manoeuvre offers a genuine alternative.

Following the election, Domènech complained, “From these results I do not take any joy. They show a detriment of the progressive forces in favour of the right, which must lead to a deep reflection within the forces of the left.” The reflections of such political bankrupts will produce nothing of value.

CUP leader Carles Riera had seen his party’s vote almost halved, as voters rejected the most bellicose advocates of separatism. He combined expressions of disappointment with declarations that nothing had fundamentally changed: “Our pressure [on the larger separatist parties] has decreased with the loss of seats, but we will continue to exercise force in the negotiation. It is not a question of returning to autonomy, but of returning to the republic.”

Riera said the CUP “will enforce” its goal of “building the republic unilaterally” since CUP “continues to have the key.”

Elsa Artadi (JxCAT) replied that with “more than 2 million independentist votes, we have never had so many independence votes.” He added, “We have to talk to the CUP, but we have a clear mandate.”

The Catalan elections have not resolved the crisis engulfing Spain because only a fresh turn by the working class offers a way forward. An effective struggle against the PP government and its agenda of austerity, militarism and state repression requires a unified struggle by workers in Catalonia and throughout Spain on the basis of a revolutionary, socialist and internationalist perspective.

As the World Socialist Web Site insisted on the day of the elections, “Against all attempts to pit Spanish and Catalan-speaking workers against each other, it is necessary to advance the struggle for power by the working class, the expropriation of the financial aristocracy, and the building of a workers’ state in Spain as part of the United Socialist States of Europe.”

Pentagon admits presence of US troops in Yemen as cholera cases top one million

Bill Van Auken

The Pentagon admitted for the first time this week that it has “conducted multiple ground operations” in Yemen, the impoverished and war-ravaged country on the Arabian Peninsula, while conducting more than 120 air strikes there this year, triple the number in 2016.

This revelation of an escalation on yet another front in the expanding US military intervention in the Middle East came as Yemen marked the 1,000th day of the war being waged by Saudi Arabia and its fellow Gulf oil sheikdoms against the poorest nation in the Middle East.

Multiple aid agencies issued statements warning that the deaths of millions are threatened as the war claims more victims and plunges vast portions of the population into conditions of famine and disease.

The depth of the country’s humanitarian crisis was underscored this week with the announcement by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that the number of cholera cases in Yemen had reached one million, making the ongoing epidemic by far the worst in recorded human history.

The rapid spread of the disease, which has claimed the lives of over 2,200 people since April, a third of them children, is an unmistakable manifestation of the destruction of Yemen’s social infrastructure by the nearly three-year-long, unrelenting US-backed Saudi bombing and blockade of the country.

Cholera is easily preventable and treatable so long as there is access to clean water. US-supplied Saudi bombs and missiles, however, have destroyed much of the Yemen’s water and sanitation infrastructure, while the air, sea and land blockade has deprived the country of fuel needed to run whatever systems have survived the onslaught. Meanwhile, at least 50 percent of Yemen’s health care facilities have been destroyed.

According to the ICRC, fully 80 percent of Yemeni population now lacks access to food, fuel, clean water and health care, creating the conditions for the spread not only of disease, but also famine.

In a report released Thursday in Cairo, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said that fully one-quarter of the Yemeni population, nearly 8 million people, was suffering from severe food insecurity, placing their lives at imminent risk. Another 36 percent of the population faced what the agency referred to as “moderated food insecurity.”

Prices of what food is available reportedly shot up 28 percent in the month of November alone, placing basic necessities out of reach for the majority of the population.

While 12,000 civilians have been reported killed since the beginning of the war in 2014, this number is vastly eclipsed by deaths from the hunger and disease caused by the war. Last month, the aid agency Save the Children warned that 50,000 children would die before the year’s end, while the United Nations has reported that one Yemeni child is dying every ten minutes from preventable causes.

Oxfam, which described conditions in Yemen as “apocalyptic,” said in a statement: “For 1,000 days, huge amounts of sophisticated modern weapons have pounded Yemen, and on top of that we are now witnessing a Medieval siege where mass starvation is being used as a weapon of war.”

To put it bluntly, Saudi Arabia and its allies and arms suppliers, principally the United States and Britain, are guilty of a world historic war crime that has employed methods against the people of Yemen comparable to those used by Hitler’s Third Reich.

Begun in March of 2014, the war has been waged for the purpose of returning the Saudi puppet, Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to the presidency and to prevent the emergence of a government with friendly ties to Iran.

The US ground intervention and air strikes acknowledged by the Pentagon’s Central Command on Wednesday is ostensibly directed against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State in Yemen, Sunni Islamist militias that are virulent enemies of the Houthis, whose base is among the Zaidis, a sect that emerged historically from Shia Islam.

Many of the victims of the US operations are civilians killed in both air strikes and search and destroy missions carried out by special operations troops on the ground. In an unusually publicized raid last January in central Yemen’s Al Baydah Province, special operations troops backed by drones and attack helicopters killed 57 people, at least 16 of them civilians, while one American soldier was killed.

Washington has been waging a covert drone war against Yemen since 2002. Before this year, the number of Yemenis killed in this campaign is estimated at nearly 1,500, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

In the same statement acknowledging its ground operations and the dramatic escalation of its bombing campaign, the Pentagon reported that the number of ISIS fighters in Yemen had doubled since the beginning of the year, an estimate that suggests the US campaign is having little impact outside of killing civilians, and is a sideshow compared to the war being waged by the Saudis with Washington’s backing.

The Saudi monarchy would be unable to wage this criminal war without the support of the US government and military. Massive US arms contracts have supplied the Saudi Air Force with missiles, cluster bombs and other munitions that have been used to reduce Yemeni schools, hospitals, residential areas, farms, factories and basic infrastructure to rubble. US Air Force planes are flying refueling missions to allow the Saudis to carry out round-the-clock bombing, while intelligence officers are supplying them with targets. The US Navy is deployed off Yemen’s coast backing up the Saudi blockade.

While the Trump administration, with the collaboration of the US corporate media, has remained virtually silent on the deepening of the worst humanitarian crisis on the face of the planet, it has repeatedly signaled its support for Saudi Arabia’s near-genocidal aggression. It views the war entirely through the prism of its bid to build up a military alliance with Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms, along with Israel, to reverse the growth of Iran as a regional obstacle to the imposition of American hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East.

Washington’s support for Saudi Arabia and its determination to provoke a military confrontation with Iran found particularly noxious expression last week when the US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, staged a televised presentation at a military base in Washington, DC in front of the wreckage of what was proclaimed an Iranian missile fired from Yemen at Riyadh’s international airport last month. The missile caused no casualties.

Haley insisted that the debris placed on display constituted “undeniable” evidence that Iran is arming the Houthi rebels, violating the 2015 nuclear accord negotiated with the major powers and acting as a “threat to the peace and security of the entire world.”

The presentation called to mind nothing so much as the “undeniable” evidence presented by then US-Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 of Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” in preparation for the US invasion little more than a month later.

In this case, the US evidence is every bit as concocted. According to Foreign Policy, which viewed a UN report prepared following an examination of the same debris used in Haley’s television appearance, UN investigators found not just Iranian, but also American parts in what was left of the missile, suggesting that the device was cobbled together by the Yemenis themselves.

Unexplained by Haley’s presentation is how Iran could have smuggled missiles into Yemen through a naval blockade maintained by the Saudis and the US Navy that has turned away ships carrying food, medicines and fuel. Moreover, the Yemeni military, whose stockpiles were taken over by the Houthi-led government, had scores of its own missiles.

Responding to Haley’s performance, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday described the US allegations as “provocative” and “dangerous.” “They try to hide their support for the bombardment of the innocent Yemenis through such accusations,” Zarif said.

On December 19, the Houthi leadership claimed responsibility for another missile fired at Riyadh, declaring that it had been aimed at the Saudi royal palace. Like the earlier missile, it was brought down without causing any casualties.

The White House condemned the abortive missile attack, again claiming without any substantiation that Iran was responsible. US imperialism is supporting and exploiting the slaughter of the Yemeni people to create the conditions for a new region-wide war against Iran with incalculable global consequences.

Power outage at Atlanta airport causes chaos

Kranti Kumara

A massive power outage last Sunday lasting 11 hours affecting the entire Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport resulted in unprecedented chaos with the authorities abandoning passengers, visitors, employees and others to their own devices at the airport. The outage occurred around 1 p.m. and power was only restored shortly before midnight.

As a result of the blackout at the world’s busiest airport, over 1,200 flights were cancelled on Sunday and another 300 flights cancelled on Monday. As of this writing the situation was still not back to normal with many passengers still waiting to get on departing flights. Travel distress is expected to continue for several days.

What is particularly striking about this latest catastrophe was the absence of any sort of help from the authorities to stranded, tired and hungry passengers. Flights which were in mid-air were diverted to multiple airports throughout the country with passengers having to make their own arrangements for hotels without any reimbursement.

This is a second major disaster to occur at Hartsfield-Jackson recently, following the August 2016 outage of the computer system of the Atlanta-based Delta Airlines. That outage also led thousands of flight cancellations and worldwide travel chaos.

Sunday’s electrical outage was the result of a fire erupting from a connect/disconnect switchgear, similar to an automatic circuit breaker, located in the underground tunnel carrying thick electrical cables supplying electrical energy to the airport. The cause of the fire has not been made public, the power company, Georgia Power, told local media that they are still investigating.

The restoration of power had to be delayed for several hours because of the toxic fumes filling up the tunnel. These fumes had to be completely vented out before the repair crew could commence restoration work.

The CEO of Georgia Power, Paul Bowers, blamed the outage on a failed switchgear without elaborating on why it could have failed. It cannot be ruled out that the company, which has been making annual cuts to the maintenance budget, deliberately postponed requisite maintenance leading to the switchgear’s deterioration.

However, the design of the power supply itself is preposterous since both the primary and backup cables, despite being sourced from different substations, were housed in the same underground tunnel with the cables in close proximity to one another. As a result of this set-up the primary and backup feed were both vulnerable to fire and flooding at the same time and in this instance they did get knocked-out simultaneously. In addition, even the substations which were the source of electrical power were “impacted,” perhaps referring to automatic isolation due to faults.

The existing design—no doubt chosen by the city authorities perhaps with the connivance of Georgia Power management as a cheap option—if not corrected quickly makes this major national and international transport hub extremely vulnerable to similar failures in the future.

Other major airports in the US are sure to possess similar vulnerabilities and the Atlanta debacle reveals the utter irresponsibility of the authorities who, in order to save money, are willing to risk the well-being of thousands of travellers.

The shutdown of Hartsfield-Jackson caused a cascading impact upon air travellers not just in Atlanta but also across the country and the world. Stranded passengers at the airport organized themselves in an ad hoc fashion to help others requiring assistance, including carrying numerous passengers in wheelchairs up or down steep and lengthy escalators.

Other passengers were livid with rage after being stuck on planes stranded on the airport’s tarmac for many hours without food or water. One of the passengers who was allowed to leave the plane only after seven long hours told local media that she saw people being forced to sleep on the floor just like the homeless and said that she had never experienced anything like it in her life.

Airport authorities absurdly instructed employees working at the airport and passengers to keep track of updates via Twitter feed even while passengers were walking about with dead cell phones or desperately trying to find cell-phone signal.

These shameful scenes revealed not only the utter incompetence and bewilderment of airport management in the face of a real disaster but also the fact that no genuine emergency plans had been put in place.

Atlanta’s outgoing Democratic mayor, Kasim Reed, in his comments to the press after several hours of absence, displayed his utter ignorance of the situation, insisting that “the airport has a very redundant system, a very robust system.” He has long been lobbying big businesses to move to Atlanta, touting the airport as one of the city’s strengths.

Ultimately the chaos at Atlanta’s airport shines a bright light on the decrepit state of infrastructure in the United States. A report released in March of this year by the Airports Council International- North America found that it will require about $100 billion over the next five years to perform “much-needed” maintenance and upgrades to the United States’ airports.

Maldives and China sign free trade agreement

Rohantha De Silva

Maldives President Abdul Yameen made his first state visit to China early this month to sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), underscoring the growing partnership between the two countries. Yameen praised China, declaring it to be his country’s “closest development and commercial partner.”

The Maldives is strategically located in the Indian Ocean, close to the southwestern tip of India, and astride important sea-lanes from the Middle East and Africa to South East Asia and East Asia. It has become a focal point of geo-political rivalry between the US and India on one side and China on the other.

During Yameen’s visit, the Maldives minister of economic development, Mohamed Saeed, signed a deal to participate in Beijing’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative. The huge OBOR project is to establish ports, roads and rail lines connecting China with Europe and now involves 60 countries and covers 70 percent of the world’s population.

Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that Beijing regarded the Maldives as an “important partner in the construction of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.” The OBOR initiative is to counter Washington’s efforts to encircle China and undermine its economic and strategic interests in Asia and around the world.

The Maldives is the second South Asian country, after Pakistan, to sign an FTA with China. Under the agreement both countries will waive tariffs on each other’s imports, which will benefit fish exporters in the Maldives. Under conditions where fish exports have declined since 2014, this is crucial for the tiny nation’s economy. China is also currently the country’s biggest source of tourist income with around 240,000 visitors arriving in the first nine months of this year.

Yameen also hopes that the FTA will help enhance the country’s finance sector. Speaking at a Business Leaders’ Forum in Beijing, he appealed to Chinese businessmen to invest in the Maldives, saying that the Maldives welcomes foreign direct investments, particularly in its Special Economic Zones.

In 2013, the European Union (EU), used the excuse that Maldives failed to comply with international conventions on freedom of religion to drop the country from its list of Least Developed Countries and scrap its tariff concessions. Maldives Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture Mohamed Shinee said that a 40 percent reduction in fish exports to the EU zone forced the country to look to China.

Citing human rights, the reintroduction of the death penalty and an alleged increase in Maldivians joining Islamic extremist groups, a European Parliament resolution on October 5 also called on its member states to impose sanctions on Maldives. The real reason for these measures is the Yameen government’s close relations with China, which cuts across the EU’s strategic interests and ambitions in the region.

The International Monetary Fund has also defined Maldives as a “fragile state,” putting increased pressure on the Yameen regime. According to the finance ministry, the estimated public debt by the end of 2018 will be around 60 percent of GDP. International financial institutions have predicted that this will climb to 121 percent of GDP by 2020.

India’s ruling elite has voiced its concerns over the Maldives-China free trade agreement. A December 6 editorial in the Hindu declared: “While New Delhi has made no public statement, it has reportedly made its displeasure known, particularly on the speed and stealth with which the negotiations were completed.”

The next day India’s external affairs ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar told his weekly press conference: “It is our expectation that as a close and friendly neighbour, Maldives will be sensitive to our concerns in keeping with its ‘India First’ policy.” In other words, all countries in the region must accept Indian dominance and adhere to its dictates.

Kumar went on to criticise Sri Lanka’s recent agreement with a Chinese company to lease the Hambantota Port. India, he declared, continues “to take up with Sri Lanka issues related to the security concerns in the region.”

On December 8, Japan’s Nikkei Asian Review commented: “China’s latest inroads into the Maldives expand on a foundation it has laid through loans, grants and foreign direct investment—all aimed at gaining a foothold at a strategic point in the Indian Ocean at India’s expense.” Tokyo has close military strategic relationships with the US, and also India to counter China’s rising economic power.

Former president and current opposition leader Maldivian Democratic Party leader Mohamed Nasheed denounced the FTA, claiming that it subjugated the country to China. He told the Times of India on December 3 that the deal would “deepen the debt trap to China” and said Beijing has “huge leverage over us, undermining Maldivian sovereignty and independence.”

Nasheed, who wants to oust Yameen with the help of the US, India and other Western powers, openly supports Washington and New Delhi’s geo-strategic manoeuvres against China.

In fact, almost all political parties in the Maldives, including Nasheed’s Maldives Democratic Party, the Jumhooree Party and a section of the ruling Progressive Party, oppose Yameen’s pro-China tilt, and have formed an alliance. Yameen has responded with police-state methods to suppress the pro-Western opposition.

Twelve opposition members, including Mohamed Waheed Ibrahim, Mohamed Ameeth, and Saud Hussein, are currently facing obstruction charges—for allegedly breaking through police ranks and entering parliament grounds on July 24. If convicted they could be jailed for between four months and one year.

Washington is determined to bring the Maldives under its control. In early November, Atul Keshap, the US ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives, held talks with Indian Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar regarding its concerns over China’s influence on Maldives and Sri Lanka as well.

As US war escalates its war threats against North Korea and intensifies its military preparations against China, Washington and New Delhi will escalate their moves against Yameen’s government and to bring Maldives under their influence.