Who is on the University of Michigan Board of Regents?

Matthew Brennan

The University of Michigan graduate student worker strike is now in its second week. The nearly 1,200 Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) workers have since been joined by Residential Assistance Staff student workers across campus. They are courageously opposing the dangerous back-to-school conditions amid the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

Among the demands of the striking student workers are calls for unconditional right to work remotely, financial support and flexibility for housing and childcare, increased and transparent COVID-19 testing plans based on public health models, and a demilitarization of the campus.

The strike has received overwhelming support across the campus and from students and workers around the country. As one of the most significant strikes against the back-to-work “re-opening” policy of the ruling elites and both major political parties in the US, it embodies the growing opposition of workers, students and youth around the world.

University of Michigan Regents (Image Credit: University of Michigan)

In the university administration, however, striking student workers face a hostile force, which has rejected their demands and is now threatening the strikers with a legal injunction and potential criminal penalties.

This is not a surprise since the governing body of the University of Michigan is a nexus of powerful political, military and corporate interests. Collectively the Board of Regents and Provost have worked in and for the last three US presidential administrations and Michigan governors. They constitute a small army of Wall Street, Pentagon, financial, real estate and health insurance interests. Six of the eight Board of Regents are also members of the Democratic Party.

The following is a brief profile of the leading board members and Provost Susan Collins.

Regent Chair, Denise Ilitch

Ilitch is a Democrat from the second richest family in Michigan, and President of Ilitch Enterprises, LLC. The Ilitch family owns Little Caesar Pizza Enterprises, the Detroit Red Wings, the Detroit Tigers and Olympia Entertainment, and is collectively worth at least $6 billion.

In the lead-up to the 2013 forced bankruptcy of the city of Detroit, the Ilitch family helped draw up plans to cut city jobs and pensions, and privatize city services. Both the Ilitch family and billionaire Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert used the forced bankruptcy to buy up huge swaths of land in the impoverished city at cut-rate prices.

The whole scenario was made possible through the anti-democratic emergency financial manager law. The Ilitch family received $260 million in state subsidies in the process in order to finance their $450 million dollar hockey stadium in Midtown—more than the $198 million cash deficit faced by the city of Detroit prior to the bankruptcy.

Regent Vice-Chairman , Jordan B. Acker

Acker, a lawyer, is a long-serving operative of the Democratic Party. In Michigan, he was the state’s Deputy Communications Director, before moving on to Washington DC, to work for the Obama Administration. In March 2011, he was appointed as an attorney-advisor to Secretary Janet Napolitano at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Under Napolitano and Acker, the DHS created or expanded countless anti-democratic and deeply repressive initiatives and programs. These include a massive escalation of anti-immigration policies: the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, the militarization of the US-Mexico border, which has led to thousands of immigrant deaths in the Sonoran Desert, the right-wing police-immigration “Secure Communities” partnership program, the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (SAR), and oversaw an escalation of the murderous “war on drugs” military initiatives in Mexico and Central America.

Napolitano’s Homeland Security Department also participated in the Obama administration’s militarization of the police, funneling high-grade military weaponry from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the streets of American cities.

Napolitano was rewarded for her efforts by being appointed President of University of California (UC) Board of Regents in 2013, while Acker headed back to Michigan. In April of 2020, Napolitano spearheaded an effort to break the four-month-long UC graduate student worker strike for better living conditions, threatening to fire striking students and deport immigrant students.

Regent Ron Weiser

Weiser is a two-time chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, and one of the richest individuals in the state of Michigan. He is currently making headlines because he is the owner of McKinley Properties, which manages over $1.9 billion in assets, including more than 17,371 apartments, mainly in Michigan and Florida.

Through McKinley, Weiser has at least 18 large apartment complexes near the University of Michigan and nearby Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. These properties are overwhelmingly populated by undergraduates, graduate students, staff, faculty and service workers at the university. Were students not to return to campus for in-person classes, it would undoubtedly result in a major reduction in McKinley’s annual $500 million revenue.

Weiser was Ambassador to Slovakia under the George W Bush administration and was selected in 2016 to lead the Republican National Committee’s fundraising efforts for Donald Trump. He is one of the most prominent benefactors in the school’s history, having donated over $100 million to the University of Michigan. He has also established several research centers on campus including the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies (WECD), which is heavily oriented to and anti-communist scholars in and around the US State Department.

Regent Katherine E. White

White is a Republican and law professor, who got her master’s degree in strategic studies from the US Army War College. She served in the Departments of Commerce and Agriculture in the Bush administration and is currently on the Old National Bancorp Corporate Board of Directors.

Most tellingly, she is a Brigadier General in the US Army National Guard currently serving as the Deputy Commander of the 46th Military Police Command in Lansing. This means that should the National Guard be called out at some point by Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer to suppress popular protest against police violence or the murderous back-to-school policy, it is very possible that White will be physically directing the suppression.

Regent Shauna Ryder Diggs

Diggs is a Democrat and physician. She also has ties to the health insurance industry as chair of the board on the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation.

Regent s Paul Brown , Michael Behm, and Mark J. Bernstein

Brown is a Democrat with a career largely in venture capital, currently a managing partner of eLab Ventures. He served as Vice President of Capital Markets at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), under Democratic Governor Granholm and Republican Governor Snyder. The latter, who has since endorsed Joseph Biden, oversaw the poisoning of Flint and the criminal looting of Detroit during the 2013-14 bankruptcy.

Behm and Bernstein are both lawyers who are also in the Democratic Party.

Provost Susan Collins

Collins was previously Dean of the influential Ford School of Public Policy, before becoming Provost of the University of Michigan in January of 2020. She has a background as an Economics professor with the Brookings Institution and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). She currently sits as a member on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Collins sent out a patronizing campus-wide letter to the graduate student workers at the end of last week, which made clear the university has no intention of ensuring the safety of the students. Two days later UM President Mark Schlissel announced the university would pursue an injunction against the striking student workers.

These individuals represent the combined interests of Wall Street, finance capital, the Pentagon, the CIA, real estate interests, the health care industry and other profit-mad elements that are the real driving force in the murderous back to school policy.

This policy is being carried out by both major political parties in the US but has a particularly pronounced role with the Democrats on campuses like University of Michigan.

These layers are terrified that the GEO strike will continue to galvanize other students and workers, not just in Ann Arbor but around the country to oppose the reckless back-to-school policy of the Trump administration, backed by the Democratic Party. University officials are hoping the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the parent union of GEO, will be able to isolate and strangle the strike, and if that fails, they plan to use state repression.

To continue and expand the strike, workers and students throughout the university should establish a campus-wide strike committee to fight for the closure of campus for in-person learning, opposing reprisals and victimization by the university. But this cannot be resolved on the campus alone. The forces on the board of regents make it clear that the fight by the grad student instructors is a political struggle against the American ruling class, which can only be won by mobilizing the entire working class against the corporate and financial elite and both capitalist parties.

Acting US Homeland Security secretary refuses to appear before congressional committee

Jacob Crosse

In a further assertion by the Trump administration of quasi-dictatorial executive powers, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, notified the House Committee on Homeland Security on September 8 that he would not appear for testimony at a September 17 hearing on “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland.”

Wolf, along with the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Wray, and the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Chris Miller, were scheduled to testify at the annual hearing, which is meant to exemplify congressional oversight of the intelligence agencies. As of this writing, Wray and Miller are still set to testify.

On September 11, Representative Bennie Thompson (Democrat of Mississippi), the chairman of the committee, issued a subpoena for Wolf to testify at the September 17 hearing. In issuing the subpoena, Thompson included a statement that read: “From the coronavirus pandemic to the rise of right-wing extremism to ongoing election interference, there are urgent threats requiring our attention. Mr. Wolf’s refusal to testify—thereby evading congressional oversight at this critical time—is especially troubling given the serious matters facing the Department and the Nation.”

President Donald J. Trump listens as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad F. Wolf delivers remarks at the White House Coronavirus Task Force coronavirus (COVID-19) update briefing Friday, March 20, 2020, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Later that day, Wolf appeared as a guest on “Fox News with Brett Baier” and said he would not honor the subpoena.

Wolf has been serving as acting secretary of DHS since November 13, 2019. However, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from August found that Wolf and his deputy secretary, Ken Cuccinelli, were both part of an “invalid order of succession” and therefore not legally appointed to their positions.

Last Friday, a federal judge in Maryland, Paula Xinis, temporarily barred the enforcement of asylum restrictions Wolf put in place in August on the grounds that he was likely unlawfully serving as head of the DHS, the parent agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Wolf has played a central role not only in the Trump administration’s vicious persecution of immigrants, but also in its fascistic attacks on demonstrators protesting against police violence, particularly in Portland, Oregon and Kenosha, Wisconsin.

In July, Wolf dispatched a militarized special operations unit of CBP known as BORTAC, or Border Patrol Tactical Unit, as part of a collection of federal police agencies under the DHS that essentially invaded Portland, in defiance of publicly stated opposition from the mayor and the governor.

Trump’s federal police and paramilitary forces occupied a federal courthouse that had become a focal point of protests and brutally attacked peaceful protester with CS tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper bombs, flash bang grenades and sonic weapons.

They carried out arbitrary beatings and arrests and deliberately sought to provoke a violent response from the demonstrators. This was the prelude to the Republican National Convention in August, during which Trump and other speakers portrayed the protests against police violence as mobs of rampaging anarchists and socialists looting, burning and terrorizing cities and wealthy suburbs.

Wolf oversaw the use of his uniformed thugs to kidnap people off the street, in the manner of Latin American police states, throw them into unmarked cars and secrete them in locations for hours of interrogation, all without charges or due process.

Similar tactics were employed in Kenosha last month following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. There, local police, backed by the National Guard and federal agents, coordinated with far-right vigilantes, leading to the fascist murder of two unarmed protesters.

The police-state operations culminated earlier this month in the targeted assassination of anti-fascist protester Michael Reinoehl in Portland by a task force led by US Marshals, one of the agencies under Wolf’s DHS.

In previous congressional testimony, Wolf has defended the kidnapping of protesters as a “common de-escalation tactic,” necessary to put down “mobs of lawless and violent anarchists,” who, in his telling, have been enabled by “local political leaders [who] refuse to restore order to protect their city.”

On September 9, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (Democrat of California) announced that the committee would be looking into a complaint filed by whistleblower Brian Murphy, until recently the head of intelligence analysis at DHS, who accused Wolf, Cuccinelli and other Trump officials of pressuring him to alter intelligence reports to bolster Trump’s domestic and foreign policies.

The complaint alleged that Wolf and Cuccinelli instructed Murphy to modify domestic terrorism threat assessments to downplay the threat from white supremacists and exaggerate the supposed threat from left-wing groups like Antifa. It also alleged that Trump officials ordered him to “cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran.”

The Democrats and the bulk of the media have played up the allegations of pro-Russian interference and downplayed the claims of shielding far-right forces and demonizing left-wing opponents of the administration.

Wolf’s defiance of Congress is only the latest in a string of actions by the Trump White House asserting unlimited presidential powers and rejecting congressional oversight. In February 2019, Trump declared a “national emergency” at the US-Mexico border in order to override Congress and allocate $8 billion to build his border wall, in violation of the Constitution, which reserves to Congress the “power of the purse.” The Democrats not only offered no serious opposition, they eventually voted to provide funding for Trump’s war on immigrants.

In October of 2019, the White House declared that it would not cooperate in any way with the House impeachment inquiry, asserting essentially unchecked presidential powers. Once again, the Democrats capitulated. The eventual articles of impeachment made no mention of Trump’s unconstitutional power grabs and instead focused solely on his alleged cave-in to Russia in relation to Ukraine.

Nurse alleges forced sterilizations, medical malpractice at Georgia immigrant detention center

Niles Niemuth

A whistleblower complaint filed on behalf of a nurse who worked at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in southern Georgia until July alleges that a number of immigrant women detained there were subjected to sterilization through hysterectomies without their consent.

In the complaint, filed by the legal advocacy group Project South, the former nurse describes conditions at the center as akin to an “experimental concentration camp.”

The complaint also details the refusal of the center’s administrators to carry out COVID-19 testing or implement protective measures, putting detainees and employees throughout the country’s network of detention centers at risk of infection. It alleges that detainees who have spoken out about conditions at the facility have been placed in solitary confinement.

Detention facility in McAllen, Texas, Sunday, June 17, 2018 (Photo US Customs and Border Protection).

The chilling report provides further evidence of the sadistic abuse meted out by the Trump administration in its fascistic war on immigrants. At least 17 people have died so far this year in ICE custody from various causes, including COVID-19. Two guards at a facility in Louisiana died from coronavirus in April.

The target of the of the complaint, the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC), which is operated by the private prison company LaSalle Corrections, was previously the subject of complaints raised by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2012. The ACLU urged that the facility be closed due to widespread abuse as well as its remote location. A 2017 Project South investigation found that ICDC was guilty of human rights abuses, violations of due process rights and unsanitary living conditions.

The nurse who lodged the latest complaint, Dawn Wooten, explained that detained women were sent to a doctor known as the “uterus collector” and that many did not have a full understanding of what was happening to them or why they were having the procedure. “When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp,” Wooten said. “It was like they’re experimenting with our bodies.”

While the extent of the sterilizations is unknown, a detained immigrant told Project South that she knew of five women who had hysterectomies while held at ICDC between October and December 2019.

“Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy—just about everybody,” Wooten said of the doctor who carried out the procedures at ICDC.

“He’s even taken out the wrong ovary on a young lady,” Wooten said. “She was supposed to get her left ovary removed because it had a cyst on the left ovary; he took out the right one. She was upset. She had to go back to take out the left and she wound up with a total hysterectomy. She still wanted children, so she has to go back home now and tell her husband that she can’t bear kids... she said she was not all the way out under anesthesia and heard him [the doctor] tell the nurse that he took the wrong ovary.”

Wooten also noted there is often an issue with obtaining consent, as medical staff rely on googling Spanish phrases or getting other detainees to interpret information about the medical procedure. “These immigrant women, I don’t think they really, totally, all the way understand this is what’s going to happen, depending on who explains it to them,” Wooten said.

One detainee who spoke to Project South reviewed her harrowing experience with a sterilization procedure that was stopped at the hospital only when an antibody test for COVID-19 came back positive and she was sent back to the detention center.

A doctor initially told her that she had to go to the hospital to have an ovarian cyst removed in a non-invasive procedure. However, on the day of the procedure, the officer who was transporting her told her that, in fact, she was about to have her womb removed in a hysterectomy. The procedure was scuttled by her positive coronavirus test.

After she had been sent back to ICDC, a nurse told her that she would need to have the procedure done because of heavy bleeding. The nurse then told her it was to correct a thick womb.

The woman explained that she had never been diagnosed with either, and the doctors had spoken of a totally different procedure. The nurse reportedly became angry and began shouting after the woman explained that she did not want a hysterectomy. Reflecting on her experience, the detainee said that it “felt like they were trying to mess with my body.”

The Project South report and Wooten’s testimony reviewed various forms of medical malpractice at the facility, including the withholding of medication for cancer and HIV. Even if inmates were severely ill, the medical unit would only supply them with ibuprofen and send them back to their cells.

Wooten reports that ICDC repeatedly ignored Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines on handling COVID-19 positive patients so as to prevent the spread of the virus.

A video of ICDC inmates pleading for protection which was posted online in April forced the administration to provide them with a single cloth or paper mask, but nothing since. The New York Times reported that detainees resorted to fashioning makeshift masks out of scraps of cloth or broken meal containers in an effort to protect themselves.

ICE reported in August that 41 detainees at the facility had tested positive for the coronavirus, but Wooten said the actual number was certainly higher, since ICDC was not actively testing inmates, denied tests to those who requested them, and was not reporting all its positive cases to ICE or the State Department. She also noted that detainees who were COVID-19 positive were still being transferred to other facilities or deported, and new arrivals were not being properly quarantined, ensuring that the virus would continue to spread. Employees who self-reported coronavirus symptoms were still made to work, and at least 13 officers at the facility have tested positive.

The horrors exposed by Wooten come amidst an escalating assault on the rights of immigrants in the lead-up to the Nov. 3 election, as Trumps works to build up his far-right base. On Monday, a federal appeals court panel approved the Trump administration’s termination of protected status for immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan, removing legal status for nearly 400,000 people, many of whom have lived in the US for decades and have children who are citizens. The 2–1 ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit opens the immigrants up to deportation if they do not leave the country voluntarily.

Bangladesh: Foreign Policy and Public Opinion on the Delhi-Dhaka Relationship

Shahab Enam Khan

Indian media analysis of Bangladesh-India relations tends to be hyperbolic, reductive, and misleading. Such coverage usually dilutes its complexity and sets an unrealistic bar for the relationship. What the Indian public remains deprived of as a result is a nuanced understanding of Bangladeshi policy and public opinion on key bilateral issues.

Political Factors

Bangladesh will never forget India’s contribution in its Liberation War of 1971. At the same time, we should remember that it was geostrategic compulsion that primarily motivated New Delhi’s participation. This history, which underlines the bulk of bilateral relations even today, has been overmined by India.

Ties soared significantly after the Awami League (AL) came to power in 2009, and Delhi continued supporting the Sheikh Hasina-led government through the 2013 and 2018 elections. As with every relationship, there have been successes and failures. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi government’s expediency in ratifying the long-pending Land Boundary Agreement in 2015 is certainly praiseworthy.

However, some political issues have emerged as serious irritants. India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) have questioned the ‘eternal’ aspect of the bilateral relationship. Dhaka publicly acknowledged the CAA and NRC as India’s internal matters (although the prime minister’s office still expressed reservations). But critics have questioned whether the CAA is actually ‘internal’ to India when it calls out Bangladesh for minority persecution, tying the country with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The then BJP president, now Home Minister, Mr Amit Shah’s 2018 comment comparing Bangladeshi migrants to “termites” did much perception damage in Bangladesh in this regard. Indian silence on the Rakhine issue and Bangladesh-Myanmar tensions, are included in this basket of political irritants.

SAARC remains hostage to the whims of India and Pakistan and New Delhi’s political inconsistency on regional cooperation. India has been an active party to SAARC, showed fluctuating responses to the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), pushed rather flawed initiatives such as the Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN) grouping, and excluded itself from the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) initiative. However, Prime Minister Modi’s attempt to revive SAARC during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that multilateralism is still relevant. 

Economy, Trade, and Connectivity

Bangladesh and India are natural markets for each other. Bilateral trade has grown steadily, making Bangladesh India’s largest trading partner in South Asia. Despite the potential, India’s exports to Bangladesh in 2018-19 was USD 9.21 billion, and imports clocked USD 1.04 billion. While lack of diversification in goods from Bangladesh is a significant reason for the trade imbalance, India’s non-tariff barriers and anti-dumping tariffs are also major impediments. The trade deficit is a key concern for Dhaka. In fact, Indian migrant workers remit USD 4 billion from Bangladesh.

Bangladesh has agreed to offer India transit and transshipment access to its ports. This was not met entirely positively by Bangladesh’s business community. In fact, Dhaka has gone to great lengths to facilitate New Delhi’s regional economic agenda. For instance, the government acquired 1,106 acres of land to set up three special economic zones (SEZs) exclusively for Indian investors. The Indian private sector however has been slow on investments.

Bangladesh’s interest in gaining access to the Nepalese energy market or facilitating investment in Bhutanese energy production have been stuck for a long time. India is the third country for transit in all these trade mechanisms. Efforts to set up a multimodal transport corridor linking Nepal and Bhutan have become complicated. Even joint attempts to build smoother connectivity between India and Bangladesh remain constrained.

In March 2020, for example, Bangladeshi railway officials claimed that the construction of the Khulna-Mongla Port Rail Line Project was being delayed due to slow approvals, and the sluggishness of the Indian Railway Construction Company (IRCON). The project’s financial progress is about 63 per cent, and physical development is approximately 61.90 per cent. The rail link project was sanctioned by a 2010 MoU, under which India extended a Line of Credit (LoC) worth USD 862 million to Bangladesh. However, in ten years, India has disbursed only USD 565.76 million, whereas Bangladesh’s infrastructure development requirement has grown to USD 320 billion. The slow disbursement has compelled Dhaka to find alternative sources for funding—not only from China, but also the US, UK, EU, World Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC), etc.

Strategic Issues

While India and Bangladesh have had a fairly good mutual understanding on strategic issues, the boat has begun to rock.

Dhaka is concerned about India’s security collaboration with Myanmar, which poses a national security threat to Bangladesh. Delhi’s supply of an old Russian built Kilo-class submarine and other hardware to the Myanmar Navy in 2019, military assistance and training to the Tatmadaw, coupled with South Block’s abstentions and silence at UN platforms in condemning Rohingya persecution have raised eyebrows. The fact that China suggested a bilateral repatriation deal—albeit a fragile one—between Dhaka and Napyidaw perhaps made India’s passivity look even more glaring.

During his September 2017 visit to Myanmar, Prime Minister Modi termed the Rakhine crisis as “extremist violence,” and made no reference to Tatmadaw’s persecution of the Rohingya. Delhi’s silence and Beijing’s lack of proactiveness have compelled Dhaka to see both countries through the same realist prism. In this case, whoever offers better economic and political incentives will dictate the rules of business and bilateralism. 

There were some negative Indian media reactions to Bangladesh acquiring two submarines from China. In fact, according to sources, India had also been invited to supply a (trainer) submarine, but there was no positive response. Bangladesh’s Ming class submarines are designed for defensive postures to ensure strategic autonomy in the Bay of Bengal. Dhaka has had to go to international tribunals to delimit its maritime boundaries with India and Myanmar. It is logical therefore for Bangladesh’s armed forces to fortify its defences.

Bangladeshi public opinion is also concerned about recent incidents of communal violence in India, including the February riots in Delhi, and the arbitrary killing of Muslim individuals on suspicions of carrying or eating beef. These incidents have cross-border ramifications. Since Bangladesh is already hosting nearly a million Rohingya refugees on its soil, there is general anxiety about developments in India triggering another influx of persecuted individuals into its territory. With this comes the continued killing of Bangladeshi citizens along the border, despite India’s repeated claim of bringing the numbers down to zero.

Looking Ahead

These sticking points notwithstanding, there is much to look forward to in the India-Bangladesh relationship. For example, tourism alone is significant. In fact, Kolkata’s major shopping malls and high-end stores are reportedly deserted in the post-lockdown period in the absence of Bangladeshi buyers. A prosperous Bangladesh and benefits accrued from regional trade would not only be mutually beneficial, but also help stabilise post-COVID-19 growth. 

Bangladesh believes in multilateralism, and prioritises development. It requires cost-effective assistance to revive its health sector, urban governance and planning, and infrastructure development. To achieve these goals, support from friends and partners is crucial. India can facilitate change in these sectors, but there must be a clearer understanding of how the bilateral relationship is viewed in Bangladesh. The economic and social realities are not as same as in 1971 or 2009. Both countries must reach common ground on what their expectations of each other are.

Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla's Visit and India-Bangladesh Relations

Smruti S Pattanaik

India and Bangladesh share a very close relationship. India played an important role in Bangladesh's liberation, and hosted 10 million refugees who escaped Pakistani brutality and took refuge in India. The relationship is based on strong people-to-people links and a close socio-cultural bond. This is reflected in India’s issuance of the largest number of visas to Bangladesh. Further, India remains the number one tourist destination for Bangladesh. Over the past 10 years or more, the two countries have witnessed visits by heads of state, chiefs of armed forces, and senior ministers. The bilateral relationship has thus largely been institutionalised.

It is in this context that Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla’s visit to Bangladesh assumes significance. The FS was the first foreign visitor received by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina since the lockdown began in Bangladesh. They discussed a two-year road map for cooperation, which includes bilateral security issues, repatriation of Rohingyas, creating 'air bubbles' for transport, and other issues of mutual concern.

India also assured Bangladesh that the vaccine it is developing, currently under trial, would be available for its close friends in the neighbourhood. Beximco Pharma of Bangladesh has already agreed to invest with the Serum Institute of India (SII) to develop a vaccine so that it can be supplied at a cheaper rate to Bangladesh. In spite of this progress, India's relationship with Bangladesh has been subjected to constant media scrutiny in recent times.

An Analysis of Media Coverage

The visit received unprecedented media attention. Several questions were raised regarding the reason for this 'sudden' visit, the number of hours the FS was kept waiting to meet the prime minister, and what was discussed in the meeting.

In any case, such speculations about India’s relations with Bangladesh and vice versa are not new. The health of the bilateral relationship was a subject of media speculation over a month prior to Shringla’s visit. A spate of speculation began especially after an opinion editorial piece written by Shyamol Dutta appeared in Bhorer Kagoj, of which he is the editor, saying that Indian high commissioner was refused a meeting with Hasina. This news was picked up by The Hindu and was subsequently quoted in Dawn, Asia Times, etc. Several op-eds published in both India and Bangladesh only fueled further speculation, forcing the Indian High Commission to issue a clarification that the high commissioner had not sought an appointment for a meeting.

Some of  these op-eds argued that India is losing its ground to China, and China's influence on Pakistan led to Prime Minister Imran Khan's phone call to Hasina. Giving credence to China’s increasing role in Bangladesh, a news report said that Bangladesh has sought US$ 1 billion from China for the Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration project. Many attributed Shringla's visit to Dhaka on short notice, which was reported a few days later, to this news.

However, perception is shaped not by reality alone, and but is based also on imagination, apparent grievances, and regional geopolitics. The India-China border conflict in Ladakh in fact has fueled speculation of a zero-sum game in terms of their influence in the neighbourhood. Many have read Dhaka's lack of a statement in support of India as an automatic China win. The question is: why should Dhaka take sides when it has good relations with both countries? Moreover, the news of China’s massive investments in Bangladesh is not a new development. It was announced in 2016, when the two countries upgraded their relationship to a strategic partnership. Still, some newspapers highlighted these investment to buttress their points, giving it more immediacy than is the case.

Bilateral Sticking Points

Delhi-Dhaka ties have been in some trouble since India announced the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and named Bangladesh as one of the countries witnessing minority persecution, alongside Pakistan and Afghanistan. This was perhaps a kind of jolt for the Hasina government, which had earlier put on a brave face when India carried out the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) exercise at the direction of the Supreme Court. Though Dhaka termed the NRC an internal exercise, the  political narrative surrounding it was not to Dhaka’s liking. The CAA took away the veneer of pretension that everything was fine bilaterally.

Not only were several bilateral meetings postponed, but Dhaka also did not make any attempt to hide its displeasure. The two countries could have found ways to mend ties—largely an Indian responsibility—during Prime Minister Modi’s scheduled visit for the Mujib Borsho celebrations. But COVID-19's interruption saved Dhaka from the political dilemma of striking a balance between its anger over the CAA, and hosting the Indian prime minister. Still, credit must be given to Sheikh Hasina for not allowing the relationship to suffer any set back. This visit by the FS was therefore essential to take stock of progress on India’s investments and discuss the necessary steps to address Dhaka’s concerns.

Way Forward

Dhaka has two major concerns. One, the return of Rohingyas to Myanmar, for which it has conveyed India’s help as non-permanent member of the UN Security Council would be required. India perhaps needs to nudge Naypyidaw to resolve the problem at the earliest as it has regional security implications. Two, the firing incidents at the border that have resulted in the death of Bangladeshi nationals. While cattle smuggling is the main reason for firing, which is acknowledged by both India and Bangladesh, the deaths on the border do not measure up to the ‘Shonali Adhayya’ that the two countries are trying to create. Increasing vigilance will require mutual cooperation—the responsibility for zero casualties lies with both. Therefore it is important to dispassionately look at the reasons for these firings and address them together, rather than pretending that only one side is responsible.

Indian projects, especially the High Impact Community Development Projects (HICDP), should stand India in good stead. However, this should be backed by good public relations to project the positive aspects of the relationship while also working on the shortcomings. India needs to work more on the optics while staying the course on the substance of the relationship.

Is Nepal Skirting, Denying or Defying the Covid Pandemic?

B. Nimri Aziz

News from the Himalayas is scant this year. No Everest or K2 summiting; nothing about the railway from China; no new Sherpa biographies.

Demonstrations in Kathmandu protesting India’s territorial claim on Kalapani, a spur of land at Nepal’s furthest northwestern border subsided after a talk between their respective prime ministers. Then military skirmishes between India and China on their shared border raised anxiety in Kathmandu.

As for how the pandemic is affecting Nepal, scant news might lead to a conclusion that the country’s thin air or its pantheon of well-attended deities immunizes residents from Covid’s ravages. Nepal’s low death toll—336 (with 53,100 cases reported to date, although rapidly rising)—for a population of 30 million is remarkable, also inexplicable given the government’s weak public health policy and shoddy management. Some citizens timidly suggest they might share a genetic immunity; others claim that popular herbal bromides protect them. Cynics accuse the government of hiding the real death toll, or worse, that it simply doesn’t know the count.

Lack of information and public distrust heighten tensions around the growing medical threat. Throughout early summer, while Covid-19 wreaked havoc across Europe, U.S.A. and in nearby India, Nepal’s death toll remained below 100. This did not however mean the population was unaffected: migrant workers were stranded; essential imports were threatened and building projects and business in general came to an abrupt halt; tourism ceased too. When India and the U.S. (countries Nepali politicians closely follow) imposed lockdowns, Nepal’s administration followed suit. Except it did so as a knee-jerk reaction; it had no short-term relief plan and no long-term management strategy. When India eases rules, Nepal does too, and when its southern neighbor announces restrictions, officials in Kathmandu adopt a similar policy.

The government made no arrangements to mobilize social and economic services to help citizens cope. All schools and colleges closed (and remain shuttered); inter-city bus transport was halted and international air travel and domestic flights that link remote hill regions to lowland cites and the capital ended. Kathmandu’s streets turned eerily empty. Even travel by motorcycle was prohibited. Next, all these closures were strictly, often pitilessly, enforced by a heightened nationwide police presence.

Exacerbating Nepal’s crisis was an influx of returning migrant workers: — tens of thousands of more than four million, mainly men, employed in Malaysia, the Gulf States and India. Reports of jobless laborers walking long distances to their homes across India included Nepalis who, when they reached the border of their homeland, found entry barred, and were then quarantined in camps inside India. The Nepal government’s unkind response was matched by more obstacles for those who managed to cross the 1,088-mile frontier.

Once inside their homeland these beleaguered souls found themselves unwelcome in border cites and in Kathmandu on their first stopover en route to the interior. City residents feared those new arrivals might be carrying the virus with them. Then, many returnees who reached their home village (usually by foot) were banned fro entering until they passed yet another quarantine period.

Added to medical threats are lost incomes; so families who’d grown dependent on workers’ remittances—anecdotal reports claim that every household in Nepal has at least one member employed abroad– are also negatively impacted. Doubtless, Nepalis are among millions of other laborers caught in limbo in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

Nepal is not without resources of its own to alleviate Covid-related hardships but the government has been stingy, relying largely on lockdown enforcement and on a vigorous public information campaign to instruct citizens about what safety measures they should follow.

Several million dollars donated by the WHO was to provide for testing and for PPE and treatment facilities for stricken Nepalis. This finances limited testing at regional centers and pays for the construction of quarantine shelters. (Testing is reportedly contracted out to private agencies who charge the Nepali equivalent of $11.00 per test, but few people can manage this fee, although free tests are also available.) Beyond Kathmandu Valley and major cities, hospital treatment for serious Covid cases is scarce. (The ‘socialist’ government, led for several years by leftist parties, is hardly socialist in practice, promoting private hospitals over establishing a national health system for example.)

Many citizens feel their government must do more and they suspect Covid-targeted aid is yet another source for officials to line their pockets. Growing discontent at Kathmandu’s handling of the pandemic seems to have no effect on policy. The government response to the crisis remains simply an on-off imposition of the lockdown. Probably, like the public, ministers anxiously watch international news for a hint of a successful Covid vaccine.

Businesses in the capital are suffering badly, and with no government relief to tide them over, many will fail. Lines for food handouts from government and private or religious agencies are longer.

As in many Asian societies, Nepal’s elderly are well cared for by their children at home. So this country will not see the nursing home death toll that Americans and British experienced.

During the crisis Nepalis have made good use of IT facilities and their readily chargeable cell phones to weather the Covid storm. Nepal’s media have remained vigorous; and teachers and officials (urban and rural) have adapted to the use of zoom meetings, and online teaching, once limited to elite schools for children of the wealthy, is now widely used.

What citizens most lament is their incompetent, corrupt administration. Many had thought that with the unification in 2018 of squabbling dysfunctional leftist parties, they could build a stronger nation; they are sadly disappointed. As the eminent Canada-based Nepali writer Manjushree Thapa notes: “I think about how high people’s expectations were of Nepal’s governing party (an alliance between Marxist-Leninist and Maoist communist parties) when they voted it into a majority. It’s all just deteriorated into a cabal of “high” caste men.

Trump’s China Diversion

Mel Gurtov

The Trump administration’s orchestrated attack on China is commonly assumed to stem from upset over China’s human rights violations and its aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and along the border with India. Where once Trump was fulsome in praise of Xi Jinping’s leadership, now official statements on China are uniformly critical and alarmist.

With Secretary of State Mike Pompeo taking the lead, the criticism has escalated to the ideological level. Pompeo condemns not “China” but the Chinese Communist Party, using Cold War-era talking points that are reminiscent of the 1950s-1960s, when some US experts on the Soviet Union explained its behavior as due to Marxism-Leninism rather than national interest calculations.

But I suspect that behind the new level of China bashing lurks another motive: to divert Americans’ attention from Russia’s disinformation campaign, which is intensifying as the election nears.

Donald Trump never bought the 2017 National Security Council’s designation of both Russia and China as America’s chief security threats. Nor, as is well known, has he ever accepted the intelligence community’s findings—most recently amplified by a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report and Michael Schmidt’s book, Donald v. the United States—that Russian entities colluded with the Trump presidential campaign in 2016 to promote his election. (“The country’s greatest intelligence failure since 9/11,” Schmidt writes.)

On the other hand, Trump has been after China on trade issues since the late 1980s. So long as the possibility existed of a major trade deal with China that Trump could proclaim a big win, he was willing to treat Xi Jinping the same way he treated Putin—as a dear friend doing his best in difficult circumstances.

With the onset of the coronavirus and the disruption to the trade deal, Trump unleashed the voices around him hostile to China, from Peter Navarro and Pompeo to Senators Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz. Thus began the lengthy list of anti-China measures—restrictions on technology transactions, closure of the US consulate in Wuhan; designation of the US office of the Confucius Institutes as an official Chinese mission; pressure on Chinese students and visiting scholars to return home; harassment of American scientists of Chinese descent as well as Chinese scientists collaborating with Americans; termination of the Peace Corps and public health cooperation with China; limitations on Chinese journalists and news organizations; sanctions on Chinese officials in Hong Kong and involved with military projects in the South China Sea; and (successful) threats to withdraw defense department funds from any US university that hosts a Confucius Institute. Most of these steps have prompted Chinese counteractions, bringing the relationship to its lowest point in more than 50 years.

Nothing of the sort has happened in US relations with Russia. The administration has haphazardly implemented sanctions voted by Congress, thus failing to resolve Russian support of breakaway forces in Ukraine’s east.

Meantime, the Putin regime carries out state terrorism with another brazen Novichok attack, this time on his main political opponent, Aleksei Navalny. Neither Trump nor any of his minions has said a word about the attack, just as they have said nothing about any other Putin assault on regime critics, or about the apparent Russian bounty for US soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Nor has Trump said anything about Russian interference in the US electoral process, interference that is well documented and constant in social media. But of course the interference is for his benefit, for a price we can only guess.

Were Trump’s tax returns ever revealed, they would almost certainly show why Trump goes the extra mile to avoid any criticism of Putin’s authoritarian regime. Trump has long been compromised by his Russia financial entanglements. He has essentially become a Russian tool, a reliable agent of Russian policy—a “traitor,” according to his niece, Mary Trump—yet we hear nothing from the White House nor from supposedly anti-communist Republicans in Congress. With China, these same people can’t impose enough sanctions, can’t cry out with enough moral anguish, can’t warn enough about the strategic menace China poses—all while Russia gets a pass again and again.

US officials should certainly take China, as well as its corporate enablers, to task for its treatment of Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, and internal critics. But those officials should also recognize—as has the intelligence community—that it is the Russians, not the Chinese, who are interfering with elections in the US as well as in Europe, and therefore the Russians who are the most serious threat to US national security. And since those officials won’t do that, they must be replaced with people who will.

America’s War on Terror is the True Cause of Europe’s Refugee Crisis

Patrick Cockburn

Desperate refugees crammed into cockle-shell boats landing on the shingle beaches of the south Kent coast are easily portrayed as invaders. Anti-immigrant demonstrators were exploiting such fears last weekend as they blockaded the main highway into Dover Port in order “to protect Britain’s borders”. Meanwhile, the home secretary, Priti Patel, blames the French for not doing enough to stop the flow of refugees across the Channel.

Refugees attract much attention on the last highly visible stages of their journeys between France and Britain. But there is absurdly little interest in why they endure such hardships, risking detention or death.

There is an instinctive assumption in the west that it is perfectly natural for people to flee their own failed states (the failure supposedly brought on by self-inflicted violence and corruption) to seek refuge in the better-run, safer and more prosperous countries.

But what we are really seeing in those pathetic half-swamped rubber boats bobbing up and down in the Channel are the thin end of the wedge of a vast exodus of people brought about by military intervention by the US and its allies. As a result of their “global war on terror”, launched following the al-Qaeda attacks in the US on 11 September 2001, no less than 37 million people have been displaced from their homes, according to a revelatory report published this week by Brown University.

The study, part of a project called “Costs of War”, is the first time that this violence-driven mass population movement has been calculated using the latest data. Its authors conclude that “at least 37 million people have fled their homes in the eight most violent wars the US military has launched or participated in since 2001”. Of these, at least 8 million are refugees who fled abroad, and 29 million are internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have taken flight inside their own countries. The eight wars examined by the report are in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, northwest Pakistan and the Philippines.

The authors of the study say that the displacement of people by these post-9/11 wars is almost without precedent. They compare the figures for the last 19 years with those for the whole of the 20th century, concluding that only the Second World War produced a bigger mass flight. Otherwise, the post-9/11 displacement exceeds that brought about by the Russian Revolution (6 million), the First World War (10 million), India-Pakistan Partition (14 million), East Bengal (10 million), the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (6.3 million) and the Vietnam War (13 million).

Refugees are visible once they cross an international frontier, but IDPs are far more difficult to trace, though three-and-a-half times more numerous. They may move multiple times as the dangers they face ebb and flow. Sometimes they return to their homes, only to find them destroyed or that the means to make a living has gone. Often they must choose between bad and worse as the battlelines shift, forcing them into a nomadic existence within their own country. In Somalia, the Norwegian Refugee Council says that “virtually all Somalis have been displaced by violence at least once in their life”. In Syria, there are 5.6 million refugees but also 6.2 million IDPs with out-of-work malnourished families struggling to survive.

Some of these wars were started as a direct consequence of 9/11, notably in Afghanistan and Iraq (though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with al-Qaeda and the destruction of the World Trade Centre). Others, like the ongoing war in Yemen, were launched by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other allies in 2015. But it could not have happened in the first place, and have gone on for five devastating years, without a tacit green light from Washington. With 80 per cent of the Yemeni population in dire need, the only reason there are not more refugees is that they are trapped inside Yemen by the Saudi blockade.

This willingness to launch wars and to keep them going might be less if American, British and French leaders had to pay a political price for their actions. Unfortunately, voters have never understood that the influx of refugees, to which so many of them object, is the consequence of the vast displacement caused by these post-9/11 foreign wars.

Syria surpassed Afghanistan in 2013 as the country in the world producing the most refugees. As violence and economic collapse continue, the number of Syrians forced to flee their homes is likely to go up rather than down. One feature the eight post-9/11 wars have in common is that none of them have ended, despite years of inconclusive fighting. This is why the numbers displaced is so much higher than in extremely violent but far shorter conflicts in the 20th century. The endless nature of these present-day conflicts has come to seem to be part of the natural order of things, but this is absolutely not the case.

Foreign powers pretend that they are working ceaselessly to end these wars, but they only want peace on their own terms. In Syria, for instance, the president, Bashar al-Assad, strongly backed by Russia and Iran, won the war militarily by 2017/18. It had been a long time, in any case, since the US and the west genuinely wanted to get rid of Assad because they feared his replacement by Isis or al-Qaeda-type movements.

But Washington and its allies also did not want Assad, Russia and Iran to win an outright victory, so they have kept the pot bubbling in a conflict in which Syrians are the miserable cannon fodder. Similarly cynical calculations about denying the other side an outright victory have kept the other wars going, regardless of the human cost.

The US is not alone in bearing responsibility for these conflicts and the mass displacement of people they caused. The Libyan war, launched by Britain and France with US backing in 2011, was advertised as saving the Libyan people from Muammar Gaddafi. In reality, it turned the country over to murderous war lords and gangsters, making Libya the gateway through which immigrants from north Africa try to make their way to Europe.

Even leaders as dim-witted as David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and Hillary Clinton should have foreseen the politically disastrous consequences of these wars. They generated an inevitable refugee and immigrant wave that energised the xenophobic far right across Europe and was a deciding factor in the Brexit referendum of 2016.

In Britain, the landing of refugees and immigrants below the White Cliffs is once again becoming a hot political issue. At the other end of Europe, migrants are sleeping beside the roads in Lesbos after the burning down of the camp where they had been living.

These waves of migration – and the anti-immigrant backlash that has done so much to poison European politics – will not end while there are 37 million people displaced by these eight wars.

This will only happen when the wars themselves are brought to an end, as should have happened long ago, and the victims of the post-9/11 conflicts no longer believe that any country is better to live in than their own.