The Forever Wars

Saad Hafiz

Politicians and pundits in the West and jihadists have something in common. Both see the conflict between the West and Muslim worlds through the grand thesis of a “clash of civilizations”. Some see it as a forever war. I think this approach is a grave mistake. It oversimplifies a complex problem that warrants closer analysis.

Since 9/11, radical Islamic terrorism has made inflammatory headlines. Terrorist atrocities have heightened hostility towards Islam and Muslims. But we wrongly see Islam as a monolith. What is lost in the noise is that most Muslims are grappling with poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment. They can merely hope for the Western ‘way of life’ let alone want to destroy it. Like others, Muslims aspire to be part of a just society that offers opportunities and good governance.

In the wake of vicious terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe, one can understand the harsh reactions of political and military leaders. There is short-lived joy in knowing that Baghdadi has joined Binladin on the list of jihadi ‘heroes’ in the afterlife. But just shooting guns and dropping bombs will not resolve a brutal conflict. Besides, the problem is less to do with cultural and religious differences and more about socio-economic and political disparities.

We know that the West has historically paid lip service to constitutionalism, democracy, and human rights in the Muslim world. It has helped to overturn electoral verdicts in favor of forces considered anti-Western. While hypocritically propagating democracy and freedom, the West has preferred to deal only with autocrats (the Shah, General Zia-ul-Haq, General el-Sisi over Mossadegh, Bhutto, Morsi). Ironically, when compared to ISIS, there is even nostalgia in the West for the dictatorships of Saddam, Gaddafi, and Assad after gleefully destroying nearly all of them!

The Western support for autocrats has hindered political development in many parts of the Muslim world. It is hard to justify the argument that “democracy is incompatible with Islam” if conditions do not allow it to succeed. A consequence of this self-serving policy is that terrorist organizations have found space to spread their murderous ideologies.

 The conflict between religions and cultures equally benefits vested interests in the West and the Muslim world. They include powerful elements within the Military-Industrial Complex and populist politicians. I consider this group the principal winners coming out of 9/11 and the war on terror. For the western power elites and favored autocracies in the Arab world, “radical Islamic terrorism” is a sideshow.

The main focus of vested interests is on the lucrative business of selling arms and buying oil. It helps that the concentration of political and economic decision-making power in key oil-producing states remains in the hands of a few. The few are 23,000 members of the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE who are worth a whopping $ 2.4 trillion. The West intends the arms sales for Arab autocrats to protect themselves from internal and external threats. In return, the autocrats ensure that the West has secure access to oil.

The Muslim world is not blameless. By avoiding self-criticism, Muslims hide the deep malaise in the world of Islam. Since losing the battle to anti-rationalists after the first four centuries in its eventful history, Islam has been in intellectual decline. Muslims have lagged because Islamic societies discourage free inquiry. Today, a civilized debate on this sensitive subject invites a confrontational reaction from Muslims. Regrettably, Muslims feel more comfortable sticking to the line that Islam is a peaceful religion. Muslims feel that a few extremists have given Islam a bad name, unjustly giving way to widespread Islamophobia in the West. Thus, anti-Western feeling in the Muslim world has grown exponentially.

At a deeper political level, there is intolerance of discordant ideas and dissent. Secular democracy is an anathema to most Muslims who cannot see beyond the concept that Islam is a complete way of life. Many consider an alien concept the idea that religion is a private matter between an individual and whatever God, they may worship. Islam, too, has no tradition of separating politics and religion.

The rest of the world has seen the merit in embracing the principles of separation of church and state, democracy, human rights, religious pluralism, and civil society. In sharp contrast, barring a few exceptions, political control in the Muslim world remains with autocrats, theocracies, or the military. In modern political terms, this is a serious problem and a cause of friction with Western civilization.

As we look to an uncertain future in the West and Muslim relations, we can expect continued chaos and destruction unless there is a course correction by all sides. A firm rejection of authoritarianism and absolute support of democracy are essential. It is difficult to change the negative perception of Muslims as long as terrorism takes center stage. There is also no easy solution to rooting out extremism so deeply entrenched in Muslim societies. Still, honest dialogue and debate instead of fear-mongering can reduce the threat of a forever war.

The Never-Ending Curse of Coal

George Ochenski

Last week Murray Energy, one of the largest coal mining corporations in the nation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That makes it the fifth coal company to do so in the last year. While the owners made millions, they are bailing into bankruptcy and leaving behind massive environmental disasters, crushed communities and unfunded pension debts — all of which are now looking for taxpayer dollars to somehow remedy.

It’s hard to miss the irony of Murray’s demise since its founder, Robert Murray, spent more than a million dollars on groups to support Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016 and kicked in another $1.7 million last year. Having led the effort to repeal Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan and gut the Environmental Protection Agency’s pollution and safety regulations, Murray was counting on Trump’s failed promise to bring back coal-fired energy and went deeply in debt with additional acquisitions.

As reported by the Washington Post: “The spending spree helped saddle the company with about $2.7 billion in funded debt, as well about $8 billion in actual or potential obligations to fund pension and benefit plans, according to court filings.” As stated by the United Mine Workers of America is: “Now comes the part where workers and their families pay the price for corporate decision-making and governmental actions.” Unfortunately, it’s likely taxpayers will also “pay the price.”

Montanans with good memories will recall that in the mid-’70s Colstrip and its mines were touted as “the boiler room for the nation.” Yet, only 10 years after the construction of Colstrip, Democrat Gov. Ted Schwinden led the charge to cut Montana’s coal severance tax in half to supposedly make Montana coal “more competitive with Wyoming’s.”

While Schwinden succeeded in forcing his tax cut through the legislature, the very real fact is that Wyoming’s mines were closer to market — and hence had lower shipping costs. So while Schwinden’s foolish move did absolutely nothing to make Montana coal more competitive, it did cost the state and its citizens hundreds of millions of dollars that should have gone into our Permanent Coal Tax Trust Fund. That impact continues to this day with reduced interest earnings from the hundreds of millions that Schwinden generously gave to coal corporations.

Like the Copper Collar before it, the Coal Collar came with its own deference from federal and state regulatory agencies because, after all, it was jobs, jobs, jobs — at any cost. And indeed, the costs have been enormous and will not end in the foreseeable future. Just as they have with numerous hard rock mines, Montana’s regulatory agencies utterly failed the future.

The legacy of those industry-friendly regulations has left Montana with “perpetual pollution” across the state. Colstrip’s unlined coal-ash ponds have been leaking half a million gallons of toxic water per day for 40 years and the groundwater is so polluted residents use water piped in from the Yellowstone River because their wells are poisoned. The cost to remediate this environmental disaster is estimated to be $400 million to $700 million and will take decades.

Unfortunately, there are thousands of mines and shuttered coal plants across the nation that will have to be addressed at enormous cost. In response, Trump’s EPA is “relaxing” regulations on coal ash and toxics across the board and eliminating them entirely for some plants. Meanwhile, Congress is facing requests for a taxpayer-funded bailout.

Coal has wracked the planet’s climate, land, water and air. And now, in its twilight, present and future generations will be asked to pick up the tab for yet another “free market” failure in the never-ending Curse of Coal.

The Missing Pieces of Al-Baghdadi’s Execution Puzzle

Nauman Sadiq

Casting aspersions over the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Russia’s seasoned Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed while speaking to Rossiya 24 broadcaster that the Islamic State and its slain “caliph” were the spawns of the United States. Being a skilled diplomat having intimate knowledge of happenings on the ground in Syria, his statement merits serious consideration.

It’s important to note in the news coverage about the killing of al-Baghdadi that although the mainstream media had been trumpeting for the last several years that the Islamic State’s fugitive chief had been hiding somewhere on the Iraq-Syria border in the east, he was found hiding in the northwestern Idlib governorate, under the control of Turkey’s militant proxies and al-Nusra Front, and was killed while trying to flee to Turkey in Barisha village five kilometers from the border.

The reason why the mainstream media scrupulously avoided mentioning Idlib as al-Baghdadi’s most likely hideout in Syria was to cover up the collusion between the militant proxies of Turkey and the jihadists of al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State.

In fact, the corporate media takes the issue of Islamic jihadists “commingling” with Turkey-backed “moderate rebels” in Idlib so seriously – which could give the Syrian government the pretext to mount an offensive in northwest Syria – that the New York Times cooked up an exclusive report a couple of days after the Special Ops night raid, on October 30, that the Islamic State paid money to al-Nusra Front for hosting al-Baghdadi in Idlib.

The morning after the night raid, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Sunday, October 27, that a squadron of eight helicopters accompanied by warplanes belonging to the international coalition had attacked positions of Hurras al-Din, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, in Idlib province where the Islamic State chief was believed to be hiding.

Despite detailing the operational minutiae of the Special Ops raid, the mainstream news coverage of the raid deliberately elided over the crucial piece of information that the compound in Barisha village five kilometers from Turkish border where al-Baghdadi was killed belonged to Hurras al-Din, an elusive terrorist outfit which had previously been targeted several times in the US airstrikes.

Although Hurras al-Din is generally assumed to be an al-Qaeda affiliate, it is in fact the regrouping of the Islamic State’s jihadists under a different name in northwestern Idlib governorate after the latter terrorist organization was routed from Mosul and Anbar in Iraq and Raqqa and Deir al-Zor in Syria and was hard pressed by the US-led coalition’s airstrikes in eastern Syria.

Here, let me try to dispel a myth peddled by the corporate media and foreign policy think tanks that the Islamic State originated from al-Qaeda in Iraq. Many biased political commentators of the mainstream media deliberately try to muddle the reality in order to link the emergence of the Islamic State to the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the Republican Bush administration.

Their motive behind this chicanery is to absolve the Obama administration’s policy of nurturing the Syrian opposition against the Syrian government since the beginning of Syria’s proxy war in 2011 until June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul in Iraq and the Obama administration made a volte-face on its previous “regime change” policy of providing indiscriminate support to Syrian militants and declared a war against a faction of Syrian rebel groups, the Islamic State.

After linking the creation of the Islamic State to the Iraq invasion in 2003, interventionist hawks deviously draw the risible conclusion that the Obama administration’s premature evacuation of American troops from Iraq in December 2011 gave birth to the Islamic State.

Moreover, such duplicitous spin-doctors misleadingly try to find the roots of the Islamic State in al-Qaeda in Iraq; however, the Anbar insurgency in Iraq was fully subdued after “The Iraq Surge” in 2007. Al-Qaeda in Iraq became a defunct organization after the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi in June 2006 and the subsequent surge of troops in Iraq.

The re-eruption of insurgency in Iraq was the spillover effect of nurturing militants in Syria since 2011-onward, when the Islamic State overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in January 2014 and subsequently reached the zenith of its power after capturing Mosul in June 2014.

The borders between Syria and Iraq are highly porous and it’s impossible to contain the flow of militants and arms between the two countries. The Obama administration’s policy of providing funds, weapons and training to Syrian militants in training camps located at the border regions of Turkey and Jordan bordering Syria was bound to backfire sooner or later.

Notwithstanding, during the eight-year proxy war in Syria, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the chief of al-Nusra Front which currently goes by the name of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), emerged as one of the most influential militant leaders, second only to the Islamic State’s slain “caliph” al-Baghdadi. In fact, since the beginning of Syria’s proxy war in early 2011 to April 2013, the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front used to be a single organization that followed Saudi Arabia’s Salafi ideology and chose the banner al-Nusra Front.

Although the current al-Nusra Front has been led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, he was appointed as the emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, in January 2012. Thus, al-Jolani’s Nusra Front is only a splinter group of the Islamic State, which split from its parent organization in April 2013 over a leadership dispute between the two organizations.

In early 2011, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was based in Iraq, began sending Syrian and Iraqi jihadists experienced in guerrilla warfare across the border into Syria to establish an organization inside the country. Led by a Syrian known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the group began to recruit fighters and establish cells throughout the country. On 23 January 2012, the group announced its formation as al-Nusra Front.

In April 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released an audio statement in which he announced that al-Nusra Front had been established, financed and supported by the Islamic State. Al-Baghdadi declared that the two groups were merging under the name the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The leader of al-Nusra Front, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, issued a statement denying the merger and complaining that neither he nor anyone else in al-Nusra’s Syria-based leadership had been consulted.

Al-Qaeda Central’s leader, Ayman al Zawahiri, tried to mediate the dispute between al-Baghdadi and al-Jolani but eventually, in October 2013, he endorsed al-Nusra Front as the official franchise of al-Qaeda Central in Syria. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, however, defied the nominal authority of al-Qaeda Central and declared himself the caliph of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Keeping this background in mind, it becomes abundantly clear that a single militant organization operated in Syria and Iraq under the leadership of al-Baghdadi until April 2013, which chose the banner of al-Nusra Front, and that the current emir of the subsequent breakaway faction of al-Nusra Front, al-Jolani, was actually al-Baghdadi’s deputy in Syria.

Thus, the Islamic State operated in Syria since early 2011 under the designation of al-Nusra Front and it subsequently changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in April 2013, after which it overran Raqqa and parts of Deir al-Zor in the summer of 2013. And in January 2014, it overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in Iraq and reached the zenith of its power when it captured Mosul in June 2014.

In conclusion, it would be misleading to fall for the ruse of finding the roots of the Islamic State in al-Qaeda in Iraq. Although the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq might have joined the ranks of Syria-bound militants in Iraq in 2011, the principal cause of the creation of the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front and myriads of other militant outfits in Syria and Iraq was the “regime change” policy pursued by the Obama administration from 2011 to 2014 to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

During the course of Syria’s proxy war, billions of dollars worth weapons and ammunition, including American-made antitank missiles, were provided to militants in training camps located in border regions of Turkey and Jordan, and possibly in Iraq too, by the Western powers and the Gulf states. It also bears mentioning that for the initial several months of Syria’s proxy war, American troops were still deployed next door in Iraq, as the war in Syria began in early 2011 whereas the US forces evacuated from Iraq in December 2011.

Global protests: Russia and China risk ending up on the wrong side of history

James M. Dorsey

Widespread perceptions see Russia together with China as the rising powers in the Middle East as a result of America’s flip flops in Syria and US president Donald J. Trump’s transactional approach towards foreign policy as well as Russian and Chinese support for regimes irrespective of how non-performing and/or repressive they may be.

Russia has sought to capitalize in other parts of the world, particularly Africa, on its newly found credibility in the Middle East as part of its projection of itself as a world power on par with the United States and China.

African leaders gathered in late October in the Black Sea resort of Sochi for the first ever Russian African summit chaired by president Vladimir Putin. China has hosted similar regional summits.

Mr. Putin has proven adept at playing a weak hand well and for now, Russia alongside China, that has the financial and trading muscle that Moscow lacks, are basking in their glory.

Yet, Russia and China could find themselves in tricky situations with protests across the globe from Latin America to Hong Kong threatening to put the two powers on the wrong side of history.

Iran, Russia’s partner in supporting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and a strategic node in China’s Belt and Road initiative, is already struggling to come to grips with being in the bull’s eye of protesters.

Protesters in Iraq have denounced Iranian influence in the country while Iran’s Lebanese Shiite ally, Hezbollah, is part of the elite that protesters hold responsible for their country’s economic malaise.

Russia and China are well aware of the risk. Not only because of the resilience of protest in Hong Kong but also because of past popular revolts in former Soviet republics that constitute Russia’s soft underbelly and in some cases border on the strategically important but troubled Chinese north-western province of Xinjiang.

Recent protests in Kazakhstan were as much about domestic governance issues as they were about Chinese influence in the country and the crackdown on Turkic Muslims, including ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang.

Central Asia, moreover, is potentially for China a black swan. It is together with Southeast Asian nations Laos and Cambodia, home to countries most indebted to China.

A recent study by scholars at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, the University of Munich and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy concluded that about half of Chinese overseas lending remained unrecorded leaving Central Asian and other nations with no precise oversight of their debt.

“These hidden overseas debts pose serious challenges for country risk analysis and bond pricing,” the study warned.

The risk of ending up on the wrong side of history looms even larger with Russia seeing prevention and/or countering of popular revolts as one of its goals in attempting to stabilize the Middle East, a region wracked by conflict and wars.

Russia, as part of its stabilization effort in the wake of its intervention in Syria, has proposed replacing the US defense umbrella in the Gulf with a multilateral security arrangement.

“Russia is seeking stability which includes preventing colour revolutions,” said Maxim Grigoryev, director of the Moscow-based Foundation for the Study of Democracy, using the term employed to describe popular revolts in countries that once were part of the Soviet Union.

Echoing Kremlin policy, Mr. Grigoryev said Syria was “a model of stabilizing a regime and countering terrorism.”

Russian military intervention in Syria has helped president Bashar al-Assad gain the upper hand in a more than eight-year long brutal war in which the Syrian government has been accused of committing crimes against humanity.

Russia has denied allegations that its air force has repeatedly targeted hospitals and other civil institutions.

Russia’s definition of stability with Syria as its model is unlikely to go down well with youth-driven protests that have already affected twelve of the Arab League’s 22 members.

In some of the most dramatic incidents, this year’s popular revolts forced the leaders of Algeria, Sudan and Lebanon to resign. Iraqi prime minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi is next in line.

Latin America and Africa, like the Middle East and Central Asia, home to often poorly governed, resource-rich countries with youthful populations, are in many ways not that different.

Some Latin American leaders, including Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie and Luis Almagro, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States, have denounced what they see as interference in protests in Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia and Haiti by two Russia and China-backed countries, Venezuela and Cuba.

Ecuador’s interior minister, María Paula Romo, said last month that authorities had arrested 17 people at an airport,  “most of them Venezuelans . . . carrying information about the protests.”

Policy analysts Moisés Naím and Brian Winter argued that irrespective of whether Venezuela and Cuba have sought to exploit continental discontent, “Latin America was already primed to combust.”

Messrs. Naim and Winter attribute popular anger to disappointing economic growth, stagnating wages, rising costs of living, mounting inequality, and corruption on the back of a commodity boom that significantly raised expectations.

Russian and Chinese support for embattled regimes at the risk of alienating protesters, who have proven in among others Chile, Iraq and Hong Kong undeterred by repressive efforts to squash their protests, will have paid off if it helps engineer the kind of stability Mr. Grigoryev is advocating.

Russian and Chinese leaders may be banking on a development akin to what Messrs. Moses and Winter describe as the emergence of repressive Latin American regimes in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of leaders’ failure to tackle slowing economic growth. The failure fuelled a decline of faith in democracy and the rise of populists.

“The same gears may churn toward mayhem and division, sown from within Latin American countries and without. Venezuela and Cuba may not be the main reason for the current protests. But if the region continues down its current path, it will be vulnerable to the next conspiracy, whether from Havana, Caracas, or somewhere else,” Messrs. Moses and Winter warned.

Events elsewhere in the world may well unfold differently. Yet, Russia and China could ultimately find themselves on the wrong side of history in an era of global breakdown of popular confidence in political systems and incumbent leadership and increasingly uncompromising, determined and resourceful protests.

Said Timothy Kaldas, a senior fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, commenting on the protests in the Middle East: “This isn’t a revolution against a prime minister or a president. It’s an uprising demanding the departure of the entire ruling class,” the very people Russia and China would like to see remain in place.

Islamic State Exacts Revenge on Turkey for Selling Al-Baghdadi Out

Nauman Sadiq

A car bomb exploded in northern Syria killing 13 and wounding 20. The blast on Saturday ripped through a crowded market in Tal Abyad, a town recently occupied by Turkish-backed militant proxies. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the blast targeted pro-Turkey fighters and civilians were also among the dead.

Even though the Turkish Defense Ministry promptly laid the finger of blame on Turkey’s arch-foe, the Kurdish YPG militia, without conducting an investigation, car bombing as a tactic for causing widespread fear is generally employed by jihadist groups and not by the Kurds.

It’s important to note in the news coverage about the killing of al-Baghdadi that although the mainstream media had been trumpeting for the last several years that the Islamic State’s fugitive chief had been hiding somewhere on the Iraq-Syria border in the east, he was found hiding in the northwestern Idlib governorate, under the control of Turkey’s militant proxies and al-Nusra Front, and was killed while trying to flee to Turkey in Barisha village five kilometers from the border.

The morning after the night raid, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Sunday, October 27, that a squadron of eight helicopters accompanied by warplanes belonging to the international coalition had attacked positions of Hurras al-Din, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, in Idlib province where the Islamic State chief was believed to be hiding.

According to “official version” of Washington’s story regarding the killing of al-Baghdadi, the choppers took off from an American airbase in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, flew hundreds of miles over the enemy territory in the airspace controlled by the Syrian and Russian air forces, killed the self-proclaimed “caliph” of the Islamic State in a Hollywood-style special-ops raid, and took the same route back to Erbil along with the dead body of the “caliph” and his belongings.

Although Washington has conducted several airstrikes in Syria’s Idlib in the past, those were carried out by fixed-wing aircraft that fly at high altitudes, and the aircraft took off from American airbases in Turkey, which is just across the border from Syria’s northwestern Idlib province. Why would Washington take the risk of flying its troops at low altitudes in helicopters over the hostile territory controlled by myriads of Syria’s heavily armed militant outfits?

In fact, several Turkish journalists, including Rajip Soylu, the Turkey correspondent for the Middle East Eye, tweeted on the night of the special-ops raid that the choppers took off from the American airbase in Turkey’s Incirlik. As for al-Baghdadi, who was “hiding” with the blessing of Turkey, it now appears that he was the bargaining chip in the negotiations between Trump and Erdogan, and the quid for the US president’s agreeing to pull out of Syria was the pro quo that Erdogan would hand Baghdadi to him on a silver platter.

After the betrayal of its erstwhile allies, the Islamic jihadists, by the Erdogan administration, a tidal wave of terrorism in Turkey was expected, and its first installment has apparently been released in the form of a car bombing in Tal Abyad in northern Syria occupied by Turkish-backed militant proxies.

The reason why the Trump administration is bending over backwards to appease Ankara is that Turkish President Erdogan has been drifting away from Washington’s orbit into Russia’s sphere of influence. Even though the Kurds too served the imperialist masters loyally for the last five years of Syria’s proxy war, the choice boiled down to choosing between the Kurds and Turkey, and Washington understandably chose its NATO ally.

Turkey, which has the second largest army in NATO, has been cooperating with Russia in Syria against Washington’s interests for the last several years and has also placed an order for the Russian-made S-400 missile system, whose first installment has already been delivered.

In order to understand the significance of relationship between Washington and Ankara, it’s worth noting that the United States has been conducting airstrikes against targets in Syria from the Incirlik airbase and around fifty American B-61 hydrogen bombs have also been deployed there, whose safety became a matter of real concern during the foiled July 2016 coup plot against the Erdogan administration; when the commander of the Incirlik airbase, General Bekir Ercan Van, along with nine other officers were arrested for supporting the coup; movement in and out of the base was denied, power supply was cut off and the security threat level was raised to the highest state of alert, according to a report by Eric Schlosser for the New Yorker.

Perceptive readers who have been keenly watching Erdogan’s behavior since the foiled July 2016 coup plot against the Erdogan administration must have noticed that Erdogan has committed quite a few reckless and impulsive acts during the last few years.

Firstly, the Turkish air force shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jet on the border between Syria and Turkey on 24 November 2015 that brought the Turkish and Russian armed forces to the brink of a full-scale confrontation in Syria.

Secondly, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was assassinated at an art exhibition in Ankara on the evening of 19 December 2016 by an off-duty Turkish police officer, Mevlut Mert Altintas, who was suspected of being an Islamic fundamentalist.

Thirdly, the Turkish military mounted the seven-month Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Syria, immediately after the attempted coup plot, from August 2016 to March 2017 that brought the Turkish military and its Syrian militant proxies head-to-head with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and their American backers.

Fourthly, Ankara invaded Idlib in northwestern Syria in October 2017 on the pretext of enforcing a de-escalation zone between the Syrian militants and the Syrian government, despite official protest from Damascus that the Turkish armed forces were in violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Fifthly, Turkey mounted Operation Olive Branch in the Kurdish-held enclave Afrin in northwestern Syria from January to March 2018.

And lastly, the Turkish armed forces and their Syrian jihadist proxies invaded and occupied 120 kilometers stretch of Syrian territory between the northern towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn on October 9, even before the American forces had a chance to fully withdraw from their military bases in northern Syria, as soon as an understanding between Trump and Erdogan was reached in a telephonic conversation on October 6.

To avoid confrontation between myriads of local militant groups and their regional and international backers, Russia once again displayed the stroke of a genius by playing the role of a peace-maker in Syria, and concluded an agreement with Turkey in a Putin-Erdogan meeting in Sochi, Russia, on October 22 to enforce a “safe zone” in northern Syria.

According to the terms of the agreement, Turkish forces would have exclusive control over 120 kilometers stretch between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn to the depth of 32 kilometers in northern Syria. To the west and east of the aforementioned area of the Turkish Operation Peace Spring, Turkish troops and Russian military police would conduct joint patrols to the depth of 10 kilometers in the Syrian territory, and the remaining 20 kilometers “safe zone” would be under the control of Syrian government which would ensure that the Kurdish forces and weapons are evacuated from Manbij, Kobani and Tal Rifat to the west and the Kurdish areas to the east, excluding the city of Qamishli.

Former Australian PM asked to register under “foreign agent” laws

Mike Head

Seemingly surprising developments have placed a new spotlight on the draconian and anti-democratic character of the “foreign interference” legislation that was imposed last year by the Liberal-National Coalition government, with the Labor Party’s backing.

On the weekend, the Australian reported that since August, both former Coalition Prime Minister Tony Abbott and a far-right conference organiser received threatening correspondence from the Attorney-General’s Department under the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme (FITS).

This initial targeting of alt-right elements appears to be a political manoeuvre. It sets a precedent for the use of the laws against their intended victims—left-wing and progressive groups that oppose militarism, capitalism and the alignment of the Australian ruling class behind Washington’s confrontation with China.

As well as establishing an unprecedented “foreign agents” register, the legislation creates or extends a range of criminal offences. People can be imprisoned for years for allegedly assisting “foreign interference” or “espionage” or for leaking or publishing information deemed to endanger Australia’s “economic relations” or “national security.”

Significantly, while Attorney-General Christian Porter this week tried to distance himself from the move against Abbott and Andrew Cooper, an organiser of August’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Sydney, the Labor Party backed it.

Porter told the Australian he had asked his department to “demonstrate a focus on the most serious instances of noncompliance”—in other words, use the laws against the originally intended targets. However, Labor’s home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally defended the department’s actions. She tweeted: “The FITS law must be applied equally. It can’t exempt groups just because you like them. It applies to all potential foreign interference, full stop.” The tweet underscored Labor’s backing for wider prosecutions using the legislation.

The “interference” laws were pushed through parliament during 2018 amid a mounting anti-China witch-hunt, fuelled by unsubstantiated intelligence agency-based accusations of “meddling” and “cyber warfare” by Beijing. This “interference” was supposedly assisted by thousands of people of Chinese descent, as well as business figures and students living in Australia. But as the Socialist Equality Party and the WSWS warned, the legislation, while initially targeting China-linked entities, went further. It was the most sweeping attack on basic democratic rights since World War II.

Those warnings have been vindicated by the measures invoked against Abbott and Cooper. A day before Abbott was due to address the CPAC, he received a formal letter dated August 8 asking him to register with the FITS as an “agent of foreign influence.” The letter came from the deputy secretary of the Integrity and International Group of the Attorney-General’s Department, Sarah Chidgey.

Abbott was informed that, as a former cabinet minister, he had “a lifetime obligation to register any activity you undertake on behalf of a foreign principal.” In a follow-up email, sent by the department last month, Abbott’s CPAC address and a September speech to a far-right summit in Budapest, Hungary, were identified as potentially problematic.

On October 21, the threats mounted. Cooper received a legal notice from Chidgey demanding the production of a wide range of documents relating to his organisation, LibertyWorks, which co-sponsored the CPAC event with two far-right lobby groups, the Australian Institute of Public Affairs and the American Conservative Union (ACU).

The notice instructed Cooper to provide all documents including, but not limited to, any agreement, contract or other document detailing any understanding between LibertyWorks and the ACU, and any invitations, letters or other correspondence from LibertyWorks or the ACU sent to individuals invited to speak or attend CPAC.

Also demanded were copies, transcripts or video or audio recordings of speeches made by the speakers at CPAC, including of speeches by members of LibertyWorks or the ACU to introduce or conclude the conference, or on specific days or events at the conference.

Further demanded were summaries of topics covered by speakers at the conference, and material produced or distributed by LibertyWorks promoting CPAC or the ACU. The notice said failure to comply with the order within 14 days carried a maximum penalty of six months’ jail.

Under section 45 of the FITS Act, the Attorney-General’s Department has far-reaching powers to issues notices requiring anyone to produce an almost unlimited range of information, where officials “reasonably suspect” that a person might be liable to register under the scheme.

The laws enable the government to collect extensive political and private information on the mere suspicion of “foreign influence” without even a warrant or court order. The Act explicitly excludes the basic right to procedural fairness, or a fair hearing, making it almost impossible to legally challenge the arbitrary issuing of such a notice.

The CPAC event was the first such high-profile alt-right conference held in Australia, mirroring similar gatherings in the US. Besides Abbott, speakers included British Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, US Republican congressman Mark Meadows, Liberal Party senator Amanda Stoker, Liberal member of parliament Craig Kelly and former Labor Party federal leader Mark Latham.

The event was thoroughly reactionary and a part of the efforts to develop a Trump-style fascistic movement in Australia under conditions of collapsing support for the longstanding parties of capitalist rule, Labor and the Coalition. But by seemingly singling out this event for the first potential enforcement of the “foreign interference” laws, the authorities are clearing the way for their use against left-wing and oppositional organisations.

History provides many examples of such duplicity. In one crucial Australian instance, last year the government barred entry to Chelsea Manning, the courageous US military whistleblower who had been jailed for seven years on charges of giving WikiLeaks documents that exposed US and allied war crimes, regime-change operations and mass surveillance around the world.

Amid growing public concern about the persecution of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, Manning had been due to speak to large audiences in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, but was denied a visa under the Migration Act’s “character test.” In doing so, the government exploited the precedent set by the Keating Labor government’s similar 1992 ban on British far-right Holocaust denier David Irving.

For now, both Abbott and Cooper have publicly refused to comply with the FITS demands. Noticeably, Cooper criticised the Attorney-General’s Department for not focusing on more pressing “stories of Chinese Communist Party agents influencing university campuses.”

Reportedly, the notice to Cooper was the only one issued thus far under section 45. But the department has sent about 500 letters to individuals and organisations asking them to consider registering. At present, there are 194 entries on the FITS register, including the US Studies Centre, which is funded by Washington to counter deepening public opposition to the US military alliance.

Under the vague wording of the FITS Act, any political party, business or individual that allegedly cooperates with a so-called “foreign” group or government, including international organisations, must register with the department, which can then hand extensive information over to the intelligence and prosecution agencies.

Anyone who supposedly fails to register also can be charged with an offence under the parallel Espionage and Foreign Interference Act, punishable by up to 20 years’ jail, for “covertly” collaborating with an overseas group or individual to seek political change.

As the WSWS warned, this legislation has vast implications. It is aimed, above all, at criminalising opposition to Australia’s role in the US-led preparations for war with China. It can be used to illegalise the activities of publishers and whistleblowers exposing war crimes and government wrongdoing, as part of the efforts to suppress the emerging struggles of the Australian and global working class.

UK: 1,000 Asda supermarket workers threatened with sack for rejecting new contract

Margot Miller

UK supermarket giant Asda has extended its November 2 deadline for workers to sign a new contract by another week. Despite the threat of sign or be sacked, the company admitted that around 1,000 employees were holding out. The GMB union, in contrast, says that 12,000 could be fired.

The new contract 6, rolled out first on a voluntary basis with the support of the GMB in 2017, imposes flexible working that means the workforce is at the beck and call of the company. Workers can be called into work with little notice between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. at night and ordered to switch departments. Long-service benefits will end, as well as paid tea breaks and time off during bank holidays. The number of hours defined as part of the better paid night shift will also be reduced. The pay cuts are not compensated for by Asda’s offer to increase hourly pay, while working conditions will suffer a regression to before unionisation.

On Wednesday, the company upped its offer of a wage increase to push through acceptance of these punishing work conditions—to a meagre £9.18 an hour (in London £10.31) from April 1 on top of an increase to £9 from November 3. The current basic hourly rate is the minimum wage of £8.21 to £8.84.

Cath Sutton, an employee at the Runcorn store who has not yet signed the contract, told the “BBC Today” programme she was worried because “they can move me into any department … onto the shop floor, carrying heavy boxes, filling the shelves.”

Cath, who has been an Asda employee for 45 years, spoke of the tremendous stress workers are under because of the restructuring. Her colleagues “are having to sign out of desperation because they are terrified of losing their jobs.”

GMB regional officer for Yorkshire and North Derbyshire Neil Derrick said, “Many staff cannot sign because of the upheaval to their domestic life. Others have signed just to get them through Christmas or until they can find new jobs.”

Asda is a subsidiary of the US-based retail chain Walmart, owned by the Walton family—with a staggering personal fortune of $191 billion. One of the big four supermarket chains in the UK, Asda along with Tesco, Sainsbury and Morrisons are facing increasing competition, not only between each other but from German-based retailers Aldi and Lidl. Customers are increasingly looking for cheaper brands at the discount stores as recession looms and wages for the lower earnings quartile remain stagnant.

Former Sainsbury chief executive Justin King, who used to work for Asda, called conditions at Asda “almost Victorian” with “legacy arrangements with their workforce which simply don’t reflect the modern workforce that we’re in.”

King’s disparaging comments confirm that all retail bosses are attempting to return the working class to Dickensian conditions, to intensify exploitation and maximise profits as the supermarket giants engage in a cut-throat price war.

Asda is following in the footsteps of Tesco in introducing flexible working as all the supermarket chains engage in restructuring. In April, Tesco in Northern Ireland introduced a flexible contract like Asda’s contract 6. The agreement was pushed through with the cooperation and approval of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, a union with 160,000 members. This gave the green light to impose restructuring throughout the industry.

At Asda, the GMB, the only union recognised by the company, has worked to suppress the near unanimous opposition of the 120,000-strong workforce to the contract.

While the unions have been in negotiations with Asda bosses since the spring, workers were only informed that the company intended to impose the contract on pain of dismissal during intimidating one-on-one meetings with managers. The GMB merely wrote to the company asking for a delay in implementation to help the chain “adapt to the demands of the highly competitive retail industry.”

Despite 93 percent of the workforce voting in opposition to the contract in a consultative ballot, the union has refused to mobilise its members for all-out strike action or reach out to workers facing the same attacks in the other supermarket chains.

To dissipate the militant mood of its members, the GMB organised a rally in Leeds in August, which included a march to Asda headquarters. Hundreds attended from across the UK.

At the rally, Labour MP for East Leeds Richard Burgon, a supporter Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, indicated his acceptance of flexibility in principle, saying, “Flexibility has got to be a two-way street.” Commenting on the dispute during election campaigning, Corbyn has said he “stands in solidarity” with Asda workers—words of cold comfort that were accompanied by an appeal for Asda to get round the negotiating table.

Past years have seen the retail sector haemorrhaging jobs, with 85,000 going this year alone. Major high street chains such as Coast, Mothercare, House of Frazer and Marks and Spencer have closed stores, hit by flagging consumer confidence due to low wages and creeping unemployment, and ferocious competition from online retailers.

Since the beginning of the year Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket, has implemented its plans to close 90 fresh-food counters and delicatessens as part of a three-year restructuring plan initiated in 2016 in a bid to save £1.5 billion. Hundreds more jobs will disappear as 200 staff canteens are shut, and the numbers of head-office employees are trimmed.

In 2017, around 9.5 percent of the UK workforce or 2.8 million workers were employed in retail. Retailers predict that a third of these jobs will be lost by 2025. This may yet prove to be an underestimation, as technological innovations replace workers.

The US-based international online behemoth Amazon, which sells everything from books to clothing to electronics, represents a formidable challenger as it begins its move to the high street. Beginning in London in 2017, Amazon purchased seven stores of the high-end supermarket chain Whole Foods Market.

In January, Amazon launched its first check-out free grocery store in the US in Seattle, Washington. It now has 11 Amazon Go stores in the US. All customers need do is download a special app onto their phones which connects to their Amazon account and credit card. Passing through smartphone-controlled gates, ubiquitous cameras monitor what shoppers take from the shelves, or even return. No staff are needed, apart from an assistant overseeing the purchase of alcohol.

The first of Amazon’s “Clicks and Mortar” pop-up stores opened in St. Mary’s Gate in Manchester in June operating on the same check-out free principle, selling everything from food to electrical goods. It has also opened a store in Wales and the latest appeared in Edinburgh in Scotland. Amazon plans to have 10 shops on high streets across the UK, cutting staffing costs to the bone and enabling it to undercut the established chains.

The unions have proved themselves to be nothing less than cheap labour contractors for the bosses as competition intensifies.

The experience of Asda workers is the latest example that underlines the necessity for workers to take the struggle to defend their jobs, terms and conditions out of the hands of the union bureaucracy. This means creating democratic rank-and-file committees independent of the unions, based on the fight for a socialist programme to mobilise retail workers at supermarket chains in Britain and internationally who confront the same attacks.

Bipartisan drive to outlaw protest in Australia

Mike Head

Australian Labor Party leaders immediately backed Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week when he denounced political protests and boycotts and vowed that his government would draft new laws to ban them.

Morrison, who heads the Liberal-National Coalition, adopted the fascistic language of US President Donald Trump, accusing environmental demonstrators of “economic sabotage” and “indulgent and selfish practices” to “disrupt people’s lives and disrespect your fellow Australians.”

While cynically claiming to uphold the right to protest, Morrison said it was “not an unlimited licence.” Essentially, he declared that any activities, including street demonstrations and calls for business boycotts that threatened profits, would not be tolerated.

Morrison’s offensive against the basic democratic right of protest and free speech came in a radio talkback interview and a speech to a mining industry gathering last Friday. Without providing any specifics, he said his government would “identify mechanisms” to “successfully outlaw” conduct that potentially damaged any businesses.

Turning reality on its head, the prime minister charged protesters, not the corporate elite, with seeking to impose their views on society. He claimed that “progressivism”—which he labelled a “newspeak type term,” invoking George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 —intended to “deny the liberties of Australians.”

Branding environmental demonstrators as “anarchist groups,” Morrison told radio station 3AW that their protests were “getting well beyond the pale.” It was “not OK” for them “to be able to disrupt people’s jobs and their livelihoods and to harass in the way that we’ve seen down in Melbourne.”

This was another perversion of the truth. Last week, police mobilised in Melbourne by the Victorian state Labor government violently attacked several hundred climate change protesters who sought to oppose a global mining conference at the city’s convention centre. Many people were arrested and dragged off, and at least one woman was hospitalised after police horse charges.

Last Friday night, Morrison gave a pledge to a mining executives’ function in Queensland. “Let me assure you this is not something my government intends to allow to go unchecked,” he said. Branding consumer boycott campaigns against big banks, mining and other corporations as an “insidious threat” to the Australian economy, he stated: “There is no place for economic sabotage dressed up as activism.”

Seeking to agitate a right-wing base, the prime minster painted a picture of society under threat from people concerned about the devastating impact of climate change. “A new breed of radical activism is the on the march,” he claimed. “Apocalyptic in tone. Brooks no compromise. All or nothing. Alternative views—not permitted.”

Likewise, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton threatened new measures to punish climate protestors, whom he said were “completely against our way of life” and “don’t even believe in democracy.” Dutton, who is in charge of the federal police, intelligence agencies and Border Force, suggested demonstrators should be forced to pay for police deployments used to counter their protests. “The disharmony that they seek to sow within our society is unacceptable,” Dutton said.

Labor Party leaders were quick to join in. Deputy leader Richard Marles said protesters had been “absolutely indulgent” at “the expense of Australians” and the parliamentary opposition would consider any legislation the Morrison government brought forward. At the same time, Marles urged the government to enforce the anti-protest laws already in place.

These laws include a bill that the government pushed through parliament in September, backed by Labor, that could see people jailed for up to five years for using social media, emails or phone calls to promote, or even advertise, protests against agribusinesses.

Victorian state Labor Premier Daniel Andrews also condemned the Melbourne protesters for their “appalling behaviour.” Like Morrison, he claimed to support the right to “peacefully protest,” but there was “a big difference between peaceful protest and what we saw.” Andrews and his ministers enthusiastically endorsed last week’s violence by their government’s police force. Later, evidence emerged that at least two of the police officers involved in the brutality displayed symbols associated with far-right and neo-fascist organisations.

In fact, the Labor Party has taken the lead in a wider drive by Labor and Coalition governments across the country to outlaw many forms of political protest. This is taking place amid growing discontent in Australia and worldwide, particularly over worsening social inequality, deteriorating living conditions and ecological dangers.

Queensland’s state Labor government rushed new anti-protest laws through parliament last month. Demonstrators using proscribed “devices” can be jailed for up to two years and police have expanded powers to conduct personal and vehicle searches without judicial warrants.

Morrison’s Coalition government is also working with state Labor and Coalition governments alike to impose harsher jail terms on demonstrators, adding to barrages of expanded anti-protest laws imposed over the past three years.

Exactly what further laws Morrison has in mind is not yet certain, but they will constitute a further sweeping attack on the fundamental democratic rights of the working class.

So-called “secondary boycotts” and other solidarity industrial action by workers against companies are already outlawed under draconian industrial relations laws imposed during the 1970s. This legislation and other anti-strike measures were entrenched by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments, with the help of the trade unions, in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the Competition and Consumer Act currently still permits boycotts (but not industrial action) for the “dominant purpose” of environmental protection or consumer protection.

The targets of this authoritarian drive are not only the most recent climate change protests but the broader growing opposition to big business. This has been reflected in the huge demonstrations led by school students across Australia and around the world during September, and the mass protests erupting, from Chile to Iraq, against social inequality and attacks on working class conditions.

What is alarming the ruling class and its political servants, Labor and Coalition like, is the deepening anti-capitalist sentiment among young people and throughout the working class, which finds no voice within the political establishment.

The anti-protest laws have nothing to do with protecting the public from “unsafe” protests. Rather, they attack the most basic democratic rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of movement and freedom to organise.

Forty-nine Malian soldiers dead in Islamic State attack, as protests grow against French-led war

Alex Lantier

An attack last Friday on a Malian army outpost at Indelimane, near the border with Niger, killed 49 soldiers, as the seventh year of the French-led war in Mali was drawing to a close. This attack, one of the deadliest targeting the Malian army, makes clear that French imperialism has not succeeded in stabilizing the Malian government. Instead, it, along with its allies, has sunk into a bloody quagmire.

At about noon, the squad of 80 Malian troops posted at Indelimane came under mortar fire, followed by repeated attacks by gunmen riding on motorcycles. By the time Malian army reinforcements could arrive at Indelimane, later in the day, most of the soldiers were dead. A few dozen managed to flee, but the Malian army, which initially gave out a death toll of 53, indicated that several of its soldiers as well as weapons and equipment were still missing.

On Saturday, a French soldier of the 1st Spahi regiment based in Valence, Ronan Pointeau, was killed when his vehicle detonated a roadside bomb in the same area.

The attacks came amid an upsurge of protests against the military operations led by France, the former colonial power across the region, which are spreading from Mali to Burkina Faso and Niger.

The Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for both attacks in communiqués posted on the Telegram app. “The soldiers of the caliphate have attacked a military base where elements of the apostate Malian army are posted in the village of Indelimane, in the region of Ménaka,” the IS wrote in the first communiqué, adding later, “The soldiers of the caliphate targeted a convoy of vehicles of French forces… near Indelimane in the Ménaka region by setting off an explosive device.” Both communiqués were signed by the “West Africa Province” of the IS.

The latest attack on the Malian army comes just a month after two deadly attacks on Malian troops, in Boulkessi and Mondoro, in the south of the country near Burkina Faso, which claimed 40 lives.

The French media openly admit that Paris, its European allies in Mali led by Berlin, and the neo-colonial Malian regime are failing to stem a rising tide of armed opposition. Yvan Guichaoua, a lecturer at the University of Kent specializing in the Mali war, told Radio France Internationale (RFI): “We see not only a relatively technologically advanced character in these attacks, but also attacks that are mobilizing ever larger numbers of men, which shows that jihadist movements can recruit and maintain relatively large force sizes.”

Commenting on the Malian army, Le Point wrote: “Without French aerial support, it would usually confront enormous difficulties in the face of the increasingly daring operations of the jihadists. Despite their greater materiel, French units also face problems: the soldiers of Operation Barkhane usually intervene after the fact, in a hunt for terrorists who have melted away into the countryside… The enemy each time seems to have disappeared, regrouping only to undertake military action in order to avoid being located.”

If France and its allies are losing the war in Mali and the broader Sahel, it is above all because they are waging an unpopular, neo-colonial war of plunder, which aims primarily to secure French and European imperialist interests at the expense of their great-power rivals.

Paris launched the Mali war after the bloody 2011 NATO war against Libya, as Tuareg militias employed by the Libyan regime destroyed by NATO fled across the Sahara desert into northern Mali. The war, facilitated by Algeria’s decision to grant French bombers overflight rights from France over Algeria to Mali and back, barely halted a collapse of the Malian regime. By bombing and invading northern Mali, however, French forces only provoked rising opposition.

The region is strategic not only as a supplier of gold and other key raw materials, including uranium for French and European nuclear plants, but as a zone of increasing rivalry between America, China, Russia and the European powers. Berlin, which is aggressively remilitarizing its foreign policy in order to involve its army in deadly conflicts abroad, agreed to send its forces to Mali to back up the French war in 2016.

These deployments aim not only to plunder key strategic raw materials, but also to set up networks of concentration camps, like the ones in Libya and the Nigerien city of Agadez, to detain refugees and prevent them from fleeing to Europe.

Since the NATO war in Libya, there has been a rapid escalation in geostrategic rivalry in sub-Saharan Africa. Russia has signed contracts to train forces in the nearby Central African Republic and sell billions of dollars of weapons to Mali as well as Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Angola and Algeria. China is launching major infrastructure projects across Africa, including a railroad linking the Malian capital of Bamako to the Senegalese port of Dakar. It is also selling arms and cheap consumer goods.

Le Point wrote that these new powers, “pushing their weight around in the old backyards of the former colonial powers like France and Great Britain, also displease the United States, which is on the defensive… across the world and so in Africa as well.”

But amid the growing geostrategic conflicts between the imperialist powers, Russia, China and various regional powers, there is at the same time a growing upsurge of protests by workers and oppressed people across the former French colonial empire. As mass strikes and protests like those of the “yellow vests” erupt in France and across Europe, the preconditions for the building of an international movement in the working class against the imperialist war in Mali and the broader Sahel are emerging.

In February, protests of youth and workers began to demand the overthrow of the regime in Algeria. With its large population and strategically central position in western Africa, the Algerian regime is key to French attempts to dominate the region.

Increasingly, however, mass protests are erupting in countries across the Sahel to demand the withdrawal of French troops. They point to the collusion between France and the NATO powers with Al Qaeda in Syria and beyond to discredit the justifications for the war and raise questions about French complicity in attacks and ethnic massacres across the region.

In May, after a wave of attacks, thousands of youth marched in the Nigerian capital of Niamey to demand the withdrawal of French troops. They shouted slogans including, “Down with foreign military bases,” “Down with the French army,” “Down with the US army,” “Down with the jihadists and Boko Haram” and “Our country is independent since August 3, 1960.”

Last month, a protest took place in the Malian town of Sévaré, near Mopti, which torched the local offices of the UN mission in Mali (Minusma). The protesters submitted a petition to UN officials demanding the withdrawal of French and UN-sponsored troops from the region. They also chanted slogans, including “France leave our country,” “Minusma out, Barkhane out, we’ve understood everything” and “Minusma is a terrorist base that gets money from the UN.”

Protests also erupted in northern Burkina Faso, near the border with Mali, after a jihadist unit killed 16 people in the grand mosque of Salmossi. Afterwards, thousands demonstrated in the capital, Ouagadougou, shouting slogans such as “French army out of Burkina Faso” and “Foreign troops out of Africa” at an event billed as an “anti-imperialist day of action.”