Social attacks continue in Greece despite end of enhanced EU financial surveillance

Katerina Selin

On August 20, the so-called enhanced financial surveillance of Greece by European Union (EU) lenders ended. After 12 years of austerity dictates and strict control of the Greek budget, the finance ministers of the eurozone countries and EU Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni voted in favour of this step.

Greek and European politicians alike exceeded each other with their excessive flattery and promises. An “historic day for Greece and all Greeks,” proclaimed Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of the right-wing conservative Nea Dimokratia (ND), predicting a new beginning “full of growth, unity and prosperity.”

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the Thessaloniki International Fair on Sept. 10 [AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos]

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted that Greece could now close this chapter “thanks to the determination and resilience” of its people and “look to the future with confidence.”

To decipher the phrases, replace “prosperity” with poverty, “confidence in the future” with fear of job loss, “resilience” with suffering and hardship. What is being celebrated here as a chapter closed and an historic new beginning means the Greek population faces the continuation of austerity and aggravation of the social crisis over further decades.

The cost of the loans of almost €289 billion that Greece received from the EU in three “memorandum” programs in recent years was paid by the working class with income losses of 25 percent, mass unemployment and pension cuts. With public debt at 189.3 percent of GDP in the first quarter of 2022, the country remains at the top of the EU debt table. According to Eurostat, Greece recorded the highest youth unemployment rate (28.6 percent) and the second highest unemployment rate (11.4 percent) after Spain in the month of July.

Since the financial crisis of 2008, the EU, under German leadership, has used Greece as the spearhead of its austerity policies. Within a few years, with the help of the trade unions and pseudo-left parties, led by the Syriza government (2015-2019), it broke the strong resistance of the working class and lowered living standards to the level of a developing country. In response to the pandemic and NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine, European governments are building on the Greek experience and intensifying social attacks across Europe.

What does the end of “enhanced surveillance” mean? The mechanism had been adopted in 2018 for a period of four years following Greece’s formal exit from the so-called “bailout” programs of the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB)—the “Troika” for short. Greece had to continue to pass regular quarterly budget audits by creditors in order to obtain debt relief and access to the capital market. Now, far from ending this scrutiny, there will only be a transition to “simple surveillance,” with semi-annual rather than quarterly reviews.

Like other European countries, including Ireland, Spain, Cyprus and Portugal, Greece will remain under EU control until 75 percent of its loans are paid off. According to the Greek newspaper Ethnos that would be in 2059, following current calculations, and as late as 2070 according to other sources. That means that for up to 50 more years, the EU’s dictates will continue, inevitably involving austerity measures and privatization.

The latest move gives Greece greater budgetary freedom, but it will not be to the benefit of the working class. Above all, the Greek elite—as well as Europe’s corporations and banks—have in mind incentives for investments and lucrative business deals. Greek Finance Minister Christos Staikouras stressed that the new regulation would strengthen the country’s position on the world market and make it more attractive to investors.

The EU had ordered a rigorous privatization policy and the systematic erosion of the welfare state, labour laws and the right to strike in order to turn Greece into a low-wage country. Having bled the country dry economically and socially, transnational corporations are falling over the spoils like vultures. Governments of all political stripes, especially the previous government under Syriza, privatized state-owned assets on a massive scale, selling them off to international companies and shareholders on favourable terms.

This month, the privatization process for the ports of Igoumenitsa and Alexandroupoli is entering the next round. While the former is an important link to Italy, the latter is currently of great geopolitical significance. The northern Greek port of Alexandroupoli serves as a hub for NATO arms deliveries to Ukraine in the war against Russia. The sale of state-owned natural gas company DEPA Infrastructure, which owns stakes in 7,500 kilometres of gas networks, to Italy’s Italgas was also completed in early September.

Mitsotakis also hopes to attract large investments via closer ties with reactionary regimes such as the al-Sisi dictatorship in Egypt and the Gulf monarchy of the United Arab Emirates, with which he negotiated a Strategic Partnership in 2020 and signed 12 agreements and the establishment of an investment fund this year.

German corporations are also benefiting. Frankfurt-based flight operator Fraport bought the rights to 14 Greek regional airports. IT companies are taking advantage of access to cheap skilled labour, including Göppingen-based software company Teamviewer, which in 2020 opened a site in the city of Ioannina in northern Epirus, one of Greece’s poorest regions. Companies such as Essen-based utility RWE, Bremen-based solar and wind farm developer wpd and Germany’s largest wind turbine manufacturer Enercon are also getting involved in the wind energy and solar markets.

While rents and housing expenses for Greek workers rose rapidly in 2022, especially in metropolitan areas such as Athens, the luxury real estate market in Greece is celebrating a record year, according to real estate agency Sotheby’s International Realty, with wealthy buyers coming mainly from the United Kingdom, United States and France.

The Greek government boasts of economic growth of 8 percent of GDP last year and an expected 4 percent in 2022. It is using this as window dressing, which has little to do with the real situation, to distract attention in the run-up to next year’s elections from the deep political crisis that has gripped it and the entire ruling class. ND is not only shaken by a far-reaching wiretapping scandal that is exposing the authoritarian tendencies of its rule. It also fears an escalation of social tensions in the face of skyrocketing prices for food, electricity, and heating gas.

In his opening speech at the Thessaloniki International Trade Fair, which ran this week, Mitsotakis promised a package of €5.5 billion for 2022 and 2023. This includes minimal special payments for low-income earners, families, pensioners, farmers and students, as well as relief for businesses, funding for the tourism industry and higher salaries for the armed forces, according to Euronews.

The official inflation rate was 11.4 percent in August. According to the latest figures from the Greek Statistical Office, bread and cereal products cost 18.5 percent more, dairy products 18 percent, and oils 25.5 percent. Travel costs also rose rapidly: airline tickets were 71 percent more expensive, ship tickets 25.4 percent and taxis around 33 percent—and that in a country with countless islands, where many people rely on ship and air transport. Even before the Ukraine war, prices for most foodstuffs were at the same level as in Germany, while the official minimum monthly wage is only about a third at €663 euros.

As in other European countries, the price explosions in the energy sector are particularly glaring: the price of natural gas rose by 261.3 percent in one year, heating oil by 65 percent and electricity by 38.5 percent.

In early September, speaking on Mega TV, Adonis Georgiadis, Minister of Development and Investment, warned of the “worst winter since 1942” and blamed the situation on “Putin’s energy war against Europe.” Georgiadis—a well-known right-winger who began his career as a historian and publisher and was a deputy for the ultra-right Laos Party before joining ND—knows exactly what he is talking about.

Under the yoke of Nazi occupation in Greece during World War II, tens of thousands died in the 1941-1942 Winter of Hunger. The Nazis had plundered the economy for their military campaigns and starved the population. During the unusually cold winter, many people also froze to death because fuel was confiscated. The gruesome images of emaciated starving people and piles of corpses in the capital Athens still make one shudder today.

With his comparison to the winter famine of 1941/1942, Georgiadis is directing an open threat to the Greek population. Not Putin, but the sanctions and rearmament mania of the NATO powers has led to the collapse of gas supplies from Russia and the price speculation of powerful corporate monopolies.

Greece is one of the closest allies of the US and Germany in the war, spending 3.59 percent of GDP on its military apparatus even before the outbreak of war in 2021, according to NATO figures—more than all other NATO countries, including the US. On Friday, the Greek Defence Ministry confirmed the start of a so-called back-fill operation with Germany. Athens will supply Ukraine with 40 Soviet-designed BMP-1 tanks. In return, Greece will receive 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles from Berlin.

The burden of the war policy is to be shouldered by working people. That is why they are already being prepared for a new “winter of hunger.”

The fascistic attitude contained in the government’s reaction to the human emergency could be seen on Tuesday when Deputy Minister of the Interior Stelios Petsas addressed the media. On the morning program on the ANT television channel, he referred to the gigantic increase in the price of natural gas and urged households with a natural gas supply to make an expensive switch to heating oil (whose price is also increasing sharply). When asked by a journalist if there will be solutions provided for affected households, he said, “In these cases, the main thing is to show adaptation. Those who don’t want to adapt will unfortunately die.”

This is the Social Darwinist logic of survival of the fittest in the “struggle for existence” pursued by the Greek ruling class in the last three years of the pandemic, with its herd immunity policy of allowing infections to run wild, and in the preceding years of austerity policies under the dictates of the Troika.

Petsas’ statements triggered an outcry on social media and an exchange of blows with the opposition Syriza party in parliament. In fact, however, he was merely stating bluntly what has been the mindset of the Greek elite and international capital for years. In order for stock market profits to continue to soar, workers are supposed to starve, freeze and die. Or as Marx once wrote, “To the outcry as to the physical and mental degradation, the premature death, the torture of overwork, it [capital] answers: Ought these to trouble us since they increase our profits?”

Protests erupt across Haiti against hike in fuel prices

Alex Johnson

Haiti’s capital city Port-au-Prince and other major cities reached a new level of turmoil this week as a result of mass protests against Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s pledge to end fuel subsidies and raise gas prices. The crippling price hike comes after weeks of growing political opposition among Haiti’s working class to the US puppet regime headed by Henry, the warring gangs representing rival sections of Haiti’s kleptocracy and the nation’s business elite.

A man waves a red flag during a protest against fuel price hikes and to demand that Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry step down, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022. [AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph]

Amid spiraling inflation and rising costs, the government announced Sunday that the price of a gallon of gasoline would rise from 250 gourdes ($2) to 570 gourdes ($4.78), while diesel prices would go up from 353 gourdes per gallon ($3) to 670 gourdes ($5.60). The price of a gallon of kerosene would rise from 352 gourdes ($3) to 665 gourdes ($5.57). 

Thousands of demonstrators have blocked traffic throughout the capital with rocks and burnt tires, metal gates and other items. Video footage showed protesters targeting several banking institutions and others were filmed seizing hundreds of pounds of rice from a warehouse run by one of Haiti’s biggest import companies. US media outlets have sought to slander the protesters as “looters” and championed police repression to quell the rebellion. 

Anti-government protests had been building since last month when hundreds of workers descended on the capital demanding the resignation of Henry, a longtime asset of the US ruling class who was placed in power by the so-called Core Group, led by the ambassadors from the US, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, the EU and Brazil, amid a reshuffle of the government after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021. 

This week’s protests came on top of weeks of unrest caused by a slew of problems that have deepened the nation’s economic crisis and the social devastation felt by millions of its toiling masses, including the devaluation of the local currency coupled with higher food prices, a lack of US dollars and the increasing shortages of gas and propane. Another central demand of the protesters is the ousting of Henry, whose regime has been mired in political criminality and scandals, the most notable being the widespread belief that he and other figures helped orchestrate Moise’s assassination with the assistance of American intelligence. 

The administration has claimed that its widely opposed austerity measure is needed to clamp down on inflation, which hit a 30.7 percent rate increase in July compared to 2021, and because the government could no longer afford to subsidized fuel, on which the government spends $400 million annually. 

It is far more likely that Henry’s effort to deepen mass impoverishment is not aimed at combating inflationary pressures but to broker future parasitic deals with lending agencies and financial institutions. In June, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a Staff-Monitored Program (SMP) for Haiti to track its financial records and serve as a prerequisite for loan authorizations. 

The IMF’s report lamented the substantial sums the government was pouring into fuel subsidies and that this sector was absorbing at least one-third of Haiti’s domestic revenues. The statement blames central bank financing as the reason behind spiraling inflation, noting, “Satisfactory performance under the SMP could lead to an IMF-supported program under a multi-year arrangement that would require approval of the IMF’s Executive Board.” What lies behind the SMP and Henry’s clampdown on fiscal deficits is a desire to line the nation up for yet another round of debt and plunder by imperialist finance capital. 

The ending of state subsidies will prove disastrous for millions that suffer from chronically low wages. The decades since the fall of the US-backed “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc” Duvalier dictatorships have seen American administrations, both Democrat and Republican, reconstruct Haiti into a vassal state protecting the investments and profits of US companies lured by starvation wages. In the face of large-scale demonstrations for higher pay in February, the government increased the minimum wage by 54 percent to less than $7.50 per day, which is far less than the still meager $15 per day that some workers had demanded.

The massive earthquake in 2010 plunged the nation deeper into poverty and the only response since on the part of Haiti’s venal political elite has been to act in the interest of US multinational corporations and Haiti’s oligarchy. Gilbert Bigio, Haiti’s sole billionaire and head of the industrial conglomerate GB Group, presides over a virtual monopoly of the Haitian steel market while the average Haitian steel worker is paid around 34,000 gourde ($300) a month. Dozens of American garment and textile companies generate mountains of profit from the unlivable wages workers receive in Haiti’s sweatshops. 

The social upheaval has intersected with immense political instability wracking the country, as Henry heads a de facto dictatorship since the government failed to organize presidential elections after his term ended on February 7. The political crisis and protest movement has evoked concerns among the imperialist powers, above all the United States and Canada, that the demonstrations could lead in a revolutionary direction while foreign policymakers are questioning Henry’s ability to suppress opposition. 

Susan D. Page, a former special representative of the UN secretary general in Haiti and former head of the deadly United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH) operation, floated the notion earlier this month that Henry’s ruling coalition of the Musseau Accord be replaced by another layer of equally privileged and corrupt bankers’ politicians and journalists that comprise Musseau’s arch rival, the Montana Accord. 

In an article published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Page referred to the Montana Accord as “a broad group of Haitian citizens [which] has coalesced to form a roadmap to the restoration of democratic norms without the interference of foreign powers. For the United States, working in greater partnership with such organizations … could help restore Haitian confidence.” 

Page’s comments echo a piece written by former National Endowment for Democracy (NED) vice president George Fauriol, which was published by the pro-Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies in February. 

Highlighting the “near collapse of Haitian public authority,” the article is a road map for regime change. Fauriol lauded the Montana accord for generating “a plausible transition formula out of the crisis” and establishing ties with a political coalition made up the Protocole d’Entente Nationale (PEN), a coalition of some 70 political organizations and groups. 

The protest movement has also triggered renewed calls from Caribbean political officials that Washington and the other imperialist powers intervene in Haiti through another colonial style military intervention paralleling the United Nations “peacekeeping” forces that were deployed under the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) after the 2010 earthquake. In a meeting this week with Vice President Kamala Harris, US lawmakers and leaders of the Organization of American States, Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader warned that Haiti’s crisis was approaching “a low-intensity civil war.” 

Another component of the crisis is the acceleration of gang violence organized by the notorious G9 Family and Allies gang, which is run by former policeman Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier. Cherizier has longstanding ties to a section of Haiti’s bourgeoisie represented by the Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK), which includes the Clinton-backed puppet regime of former president of Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly and Moise, the latter being notorious for unleashing such forces in violent crackdowns against popular opposition to his presidency.

Over the past several months G9 has routed Haiti’s frail security forces and police, seizing control of significant chunks of territory including much of the shantytown of Cité Soleil. The gang wrested control of the city after significant gun fighting against G-Pep, the next largest gang federation in the country. 

Although posturing as opponents to Henry and claiming to lead a popular “revolution” in response to the Moise’s assassination, G9 has been utilized to crush opposition and consolidate power for Haiti’s business elite. Earlier this month, Cherizier’s G9 led a violent assault in Cité Soleil, where resistance has broken out in the face of extreme repression and where several local activist groups have organized mass protests.

Christella Delva, a 17-year-old student protester, was killed by the gang with a bullet to the head, while two young Haitian journalists, Tayson Lartigue and Frantzsen Charles, were also killed by G9 while returning from an interview with the parents of Delva. 

The ubiquitous gang violence and kidnappings along with the entrenched corruption of Haiti’s ruling class serve as components for maintaining capitalist rule in Haiti, whose chief headmasters, US and European imperialism, have for decades utilized such forces to enforce a climate of brutal social inequality, political oppression and squalor. The demands of Abinader for a “peacekeeping” intervention is part and parcel of US imperialism’s continued domination of Haiti, which can be traced back to the 1915-34 US occupation and the series of bloody invasions and violent dictatorships directed against Haiti’s insurgent working class. 

After a massive nationwide rebellion deposed “Baby Doc” Duvialer’s dictatorship in 1986, the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of theologian priest Jean Bertrand-Aristide in the early 1990s, while Washington used Haiti’s army and remnants of the Duvalier’s Tonton Macoutes paramilitary as its principal instrument for terrorizing the population. Upon returning to power, Aristide’s pledge to carry out piecemeal reforms while accommodating imperialism did nothing to prevent the US, Canada and France from kidnapping the former president and transporting him on a plane destined for the remote Central African Republic in 2004. 

In the face of demands for new elections, a warning must be made that in countries of belated capitalist development such as Haiti there is no section of the national bourgeoisie that is capable of or willing to wage a revolutionary struggle against imperialism that is needed to secure the elementary democratic and social aspirations of the workers and toilers. 

No illusions should be held in Aristide and other nationalist parties such as Lavalas, which itself carried out IMF and World Bank demands for “structural adjustment” policies and inundated Haiti with US goods and privatized profitable government-owned companies. Aristide headed a regime that for the masses of Haitian workers meant further destitution and the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs. 

Aristide has continued this role since the coup, as he met with Henry at the former’s Tabarre home as part of the prime minister's efforts to form an alliance with several middle-class groups and enlist their efforts to derail social opposition. Two weeks prior, Aristide hosted Helen La Lime, the former US ambassador to Angola and current special representative of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), at his home, revealing the deep ties the Lavalas leader maintains with imperialism.

Social Democrats concede defeat in Swedish election as far-right Sweden Democrats become second-largest party

Bran Karlsson

The last ballots were counted for the 2022 Swedish elections Thursday, confirming the lead of the right-wing parliamentary block by 176 seats to 173 in the 349-seat parliament (Riksdag). The traditional conservative party—the Moderates—has entered talks with the other right-wing parties to form a government based around their leader Ulf Kristersson as prime minister.

In this photo taken May 24, 2010, Sweden Democrats party leader Jimmie Akesson speaks during an interview in a basement in Stockholm, Sweden. [AP Photo/Niklas Larsson]

Current Prime Minister and Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson announced her resignation Wednesday evening. After a meeting Monday with Riksdag speaker Andreas Norlén, Kristersson stated that talks to form the new government could take several weeks.

The true winner of the elections, however, was not Kristersson’s Moderates, but the Sweden Democrats. The party, founded by neo-Nazis in the 1980s, is now the second-largest political party in Sweden. Though the other three right-wing parties (Moderates, Christian Democrats, and the Liberals) have asserted, in the face of widespread popular hostility towards the far-right, that they do not wish to place the Sweden Democrats in government, they all bear political responsibility for integrating the far-right party into official politics over the past decade.

Whether or not the Sweden Democrats are formally included in the next government, it is already clear that they will play a decisive role in determining its policies. Kristersson is reportedly aiming for a coalition with the Christian Democrats or a three-party coalition that also includes the Liberals, with the Sweden Democrats backing the government on crucial votes from the outside.

The Moderates lost almost 1 percentage point of the vote compared to the last election in 2018, whereas the Sweden Democrats’ vote rose by 3.1 percentage points—the largest of any party. The Sweden Democrats finished with 20.6 percent of the vote compared to the Moderates’ 19.1 percent.

Around the world, fascistic leaders and news outlets celebrated the Sweden Democrats’ victory. Steve Bannon, the ex-strategist of Donald Trump, described it as “a political earthquake,” while the European Conservatives and Reformist Party, a coalition bloc of far-right parties in the EU, led by Giorgia Meloni, leader of the fascist Brothers of Italy, tweeted, “Let this be an omen and model for the rest of Europe.” Italy will hold an election on September 25, with the Brothers of Italy poised for victory.

Referencing Donald Trump, Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson vowed at the party’s election night celebration to “Make Sweden Great Again.” His party has proposed a series of vicious anti-immigrant, law-and-order policies. They include ending permanent residency for migrants, raids on welfare beneficiaries’ homes “to find malpractices,” and the ending of residency rights through romantic partnership.

The only foreign press allowed into the Sweden Democrats’ “raucous [election] party” was the Financial Times. Multiple foreign press requests were denied by the party leadership. The FT reported that there was “one word on the lips of many Sweden Democrats MPs … revenge.” The party’s chief of staff, Linus Bylund, stated that he was looking forward to “journalist rugby.” Asked to explain, he said this was where you “pushed journalists about.”

Later, at the same party, Rebecka Fallenkvist—a Sweden Democrat candidate for Stockholm—blurted out the Swedish version of the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute as she drunkenly spoke to the far-right news site Samnytt.

One reflection of the ruling elite’s embrace of this far-right filth was the forcing out of Annie Lööf as leader of the relatively small Centre Party. Lööf has been one of the more vocal critics of the right-wing, racist politics of the Sweden Democrats within the political establishment, and focused a considerable portion of her party’s election campaign on a commitment not to cooperate with the Sweden Democrats in government. Under her leadership, Centre shifted from its traditional membership in the right-wing parliamentary bloc to support the minority Social Democrat government. However, the party helped secure a majority in parliament last year for the national budget drafted by the Moderates and Sweden Democrats, which Andersson’s minority Social Democrat government agreed to implement.

In July, Lööf was the target of an attempted assassination by a member of the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement, many of whose members have run on the Sweden Democrat ticket. Instead of killing Lööf, the attacker murdered Ing-Marie Wieselgren, a well-known psychiatrist.

After Centre performed poorly at the polls, a concerted push developed from media outlets and political figures for Lööf to resign so as to force a reexamination of the Centre Party’s stance on the Sweden Democrats.

This development carries on the general rush of Swedish politics to the right, as all the major political parties have adopted the anti-immigrant, law and order positions of the Sweden Democrats.

The rightward lurch of official Swedish politics is being driven by powerful objective forces. The Swedish ruling elite has abandoned its long-standing pose of neutrality and flung itself behind the US-NATO war with Russia. Sweden’s application to join NATO and a sustained military build-up since 2014 have helped transform Scandinavia into the northern front of the imperialist powers’ war to plunder Russia’s natural resources and subjugate the country to the status of a semi-colony.

At home, the Swedish ruling class intends to intensify its assault on what remains of the country’s social programmes and continue its homicidal pandemic policy. This deeply unpopular programme of war abroad and austerity at home cannot be enforced democratically, which is why the far right are being cultivated and brought into the political establishment.

The financial press reacted to the Sweden Democrats’ unprecedented political strength with offerings of reassurance that the party does not threaten the imperialist powers’ interests. The FT’s Tony Barber wrote, “What will not change are the fundamentals of Swedish foreign and defense policy. The Sweden Democrats support the nation’s application to join NATO. … The Sweden Democrats have also dropped their old hostility to the country’s EU membership. Beyond that, Sweden’s democratic processes and upholding of the rule of law remain strong.”

Barber explained that the “Sweden Democrats differ from insurgent rightwing parties,” claiming they “have expelled their most extremist members.” In fact, a recent report by Acta Publica found that nearly 300 right-wing extremists were running in this years’ elections, most of them associated with the Nordic Resistance Movement and running on the Sweden Democrat ticket.

It must be stressed, however, that while the Sweden Democrats received 1.3 million votes—in a country of 10.5 million people—there are not 1.3 million fascists in Sweden.

The Sweden Democrats, to the extent that they have been able to gain a hearing among sections of the working class, have done so because of the bankruptcy of what is presented as “left-wing” politics in Sweden. Since the 1990s, the Social Democrats have spearheaded the charge to dismantle Sweden’s much-vaunted welfare state and enforce privatizations. In power for 20 of the last 28 years, the Social Democrats have relied throughout this period on loyal support from the Left Party in parliament and the trade unions outside parliament to enforce its anti-worker agenda.

One of the most grotesque expressions of this political alliance is the criminal role the Social Democrats and Left Party played in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as they aggressively promoted the anti-scientific conception of “herd immunity.” International finance capital latched onto the homicidal policies of Sweden’s “left” government as a key means to justify the abandoning of all COVID-19 mitigation measures and allowing the virus to perpetually rip through the population.

Tajik-Kyrgyz border conflict erupts in violence

Andrea Peters

After several days of fighting, an uneasy truce appears to be holding along the Kyrgyz-Tajik border. Nearly 100 people died and hundreds more suffered injuries when a long-standing conflict between the two Central Asian countries erupted in violence late last week.

A military helicopter flies over the Kyrgyz-Tajik border near Batken, southwestern Kyrgyzstan, Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022. [AP Photo/Danil Usmanov]

The governments in Bishkek and Dushanbe each accuse the other of provoking this latest episode. Kyrgyzstan insists that Tajikistan sent troops and paramilitary forces into villages in its Bakten region. Its soldiers, allegedly confronting an “invasion” with tanks and armored personnel carriers, engaged enemy border guards in a firefight when they refused to leave. The Tajik military maintains, however, that its towns were first shelled from across the border and then repeatedly hit by heavy weaponry over the course of several days.

Videos on social media appear to show a civilian bloodbath on both sides, with children and medics among the fatalities. Kyrgyz officials evacuated 136,000 residents from the area over the weekend, and one regional airport was reportedly packed with people trying to leave on Saturday. Some are now returning home.

The immediate cessation of hostilities does not indicate any lasting end to the violence. While indicating on Sunday that his government is ready for negotiations and a “peaceful” resolution, in a statement just released on YouTube, Kyrgyzstan President Sadyr Zhaparov emphasized his country’s readiness for military conflict, insisting that it is fully capable of “defending its borders.” Authorities in Bishkek continue to accuse Dushanbe of engaging in a “disinformation” campaign regarding who is responsible for last weekend’s deadly events. Since 2014 alone, there have been 11 major conflicts along a portion of their 600-mile-long shared border. In May of last year at least 54 people died in fighting.

Both mountainous countries with large tracts of arid land and not enough agricultural resources to support their populations, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan each lay claim to the fertile Fergana Valley. According to the UN, Tajikistan’s population is expected to more than double by the end of this century, putting immense pressure on the already food-insecure country. Of the 7 percent of its land that is arable, the World Food Programme says 97 percent is vulnerable to soil degradation, which is expected to worsen as the effects of climate change intensify. According to the Ecological Threat Register, out of 157 countries studied, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are among the top most 19 endangered. They face the imminent threat of desertification.

During the Soviet period, the two states were joined together in the Soviet Union, and questions related to access to water, grazing grounds, and farm land were resolved administratively. The region’s extremely diverse and intermixed population moved back and forth across what are now government borders patrolled by armed forces.

When the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the USSR in 1991, the newly-emerging ruling class in the two Central Asian countries each laid claim to different maps—one drawn in the 1920s and the other in the 1950s—demarcating Tajik and Kyrgyz territory. The death and suffering in the area are a direct consequence of the Communist Party’s final betrayal of the struggle, initiated by the 1917 Russian Revolution, to unite the long-oppressed peoples of the former Tsarist Empire on egalitarian foundations.

Current tensions are being exacerbated by the combined effects of the war in Ukraine, the US’ efforts to destabilize and break-up Russia, the rapidly escalating conflict with China, and the fight for Central Asia’s resources.

Skyrocketing global grain prices are making it evermore difficult for poor and already food insecure countries to feed their populations. The COVID-19 pandemic and Western sanctions against Russia have seen masses of migrant workers from Central Asia, whose families rely on their remittances to survive, lose jobs. In addition to making the scramble for the Fergana Valley more important, these factors drive the corrupt and super-rich who rule Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to seek an outlet for mass social discontent in nationalist, military hoopla.

Facing a debacle in Ukraine, Moscow’s ability to manage the conflict between its two, frequently unsteady, allies is increasingly in question. This weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin appealed to both sides to “de-escalate” and find “peaceful, political and diplomatic means” to resolve their differences.

Behind this muted response, however, the Kremlin is trying to hold onto its influence in these areas, which are of major geostrategic and economic importance. A few weeks prior to the present crisis, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin met with Chairman of Cabinet of Ministers of Kyrgyzstan Akylbek Japarov in an effort “to speed up the signing of a new economic cooperation program for 2022-2026, which will further expand ties, increase trade turnover, the volume of mutual investments.” The Russian statesmen described the Kremlin as “keen to enhance cooperation with Kyrgyzstan in all current directions,” adding, “It is necessary.”

While short on arable land, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are both home to significant gold and iron ore deposits, as well as many other metals essential to industry. Because of their locations, they both offer potential transit routes for the shipment of oil and gas to areas otherwise highly dependent on sea lanes.

During a recent meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Kyrgyzstan, China and Uzbekistan agreed to move forward with a long-stalled plan to create a rail link that will connect China to the Middle East, bypassing Russia in the process. Bishkek’s deepening relationship with Beijing is also a dependency, with the majority of its $5.1 billion in foreign debt owed to Chinese banks.

Meanwhile, the imperialist powers, which have a long involvement in both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, are pressing forward with their own agendas. UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres just appointed former leader of Kyrgyzstan’s US-backed Tulip Revolution, Rosa Otunbayeva, as special envoy to Afghanistan.

The crisis in that country, brought on by 20 years of the US bloody occupation and the recent return of the Taliban to power in Kabul, is destabilizing all of Central Asia. It poses a particularly significant threat to Russia, which has a large Muslim population. The Kremlin, fully aware of Washington’s long history of using Islamic fundamentalism to destabilize Russia, has well-grounded fears that the surging power and influence of this movement will be used to foment separatist movements in its south and southwest. Russia’s Supreme Court just labeled Tajikistan’s main opposition party a “terrorist” movement. On Monday, Kyrgyzstan declared that Islamist militants were among the troops sent into its territory by Tajikistan’s military this past weekend.

Strikes and protests for wages grow as inflation surges in Turkey

Hasan Yıldırım

Millions in Turkey are struggling to make ends meet in deep poverty as food and energy prices continue to surge and the attack on the living conditions of the working class grows.

As of August, Turkey’s official annual inflation rate rose to 80 percent. ENAG, an independent research organization, calculated inflation at 181 percent. According to Trading Economics web site, Turkey’s official inflation ranks fourth in the world after Zimbabwe, Sudan and Syria.

Turkey’s high inflation is part of surging prices globally, triggered by the massive printing of money by central banks around the world to transfer wealth to the super-rich amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and escalated by the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine. But this has been exacerbated by the fiscal policy of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government, which defends corporate profits at the expense of basic social needs.

The ruling class has imposed the main burden of the crisis on the working class. While the Turkish lira continues to depreciate and the prices of all goods, especially basic necessities, rise constantly, workers’ purchasing power is constantly eroded by wage increases far below inflation. Even the “hunger limit”—the monthly food expenditure of a family of four in Turkey—is above the minimum wage, which rose less than 30 percent in July to 5,500 Turkish liras (TL).

The pro-government Türk-İş union confederation announced that the poverty limit at the end of August became 22,440 TL and the hunger limit (monthly food expenditure for a family of four) was 6,890 TL.

The minimum wage has become an average wage for millions in Turkey. According to a December 2021 report by the pro-opposition DİSK union confederation, 64 percent of all workers in Turkey (12.5 million workers) earn minimum wage or slightly above. Seventy percent of private sector workers earn just the minimum wage.

Moreover, 3.4 million workers (18 percent of all workers) earn less than the minimum wage. The vast majority of them are refugees and migrant workers subjected to brutal exploitation. According to a survey conducted by the Consumer Rights Association in March, 90 percent of Turkey’s population lives below the poverty line.

Millions of working people are increasingly unable to meet their most basic needs. In the first six months of this year, the number of households that can only pay their electricity bills with social assistance rose to 2.3 million.

Among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member states, Turkey has seen the highest increase in energy prices in the last year. According to Euronews, the Turkish state-owned petroleum pipeline corporation’s (BOTAŞ) natural gas wholesale price rose 1,330 percent for electricity generation, 997 percent for industrial use and 216 percent for residential use.

As of September 1, there has been a 20.4 percent price increase in gas and a 20 percent increase in electricity for households. While millions are asking how they will be able to heat their homes this winter, there has been another 50.8 percent increase in gas and 50 percent increase in electricity in industrial facilities. This shows that new energy price hikes inflate the prices of virtually all goods, including basic necessities.

Amid high inflation, wage increases very rapidly lose their effect. “They raised the minimum wage by 1,250 TL [in July]. We said ‘Okay!’ and then everything else went up,” a Has Çelik metalworker told the daily Evrensel.

On the other hand, Treasury and Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati, the spokesman of the profiteers in the Turkish banks, boasted: “Despite these developments, which started with Russia’s intervention in Ukraine on February 24th and have continued to have a strong impact until today and have captured the whole world, Turkey has achieved significant successes.” According to the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK), the Turkish banking sector’s profit in the first six months rose 400 percent compared to last year, to 169 billion TL.

As the ruling class escalates its social counterrevolution with the pandemic and the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine, the class struggle is also sharpening.

The wave of wildcat strikes in the first months of this year began to revive as of last August. Amid growing working class militancy, TPI Composite and Standart Profil workers managed to force the companies and unions to accept their demands by walking out.

September is also witnessing a wave of new strikes and protests. Physician assistants in university hospitals went on strike across the country on September 15–16, after they were excluded from the new “supplementary payment regulation” of the Health Ministry and did not receive an additional wage increase. This year, physicians and other health workers in Turkey have repeatedly gone on nationwide strikes.

Meanwhile, 562,000 subcontracted municipal workers across Turkey are demanding official job security. At the call of the Association of Subcontracted Municipal Workers (TABİB), workers organized a demonstration in Ankara on Sunday. They are demanding job security, abolition of compulsory retirement, a raise based on real inflation and to receive the 52-day bonus given to all public sector workers.

Private school teachers, who work for around minimum wage and without job security, are also mobilizing to demand job security and base pay equal to that in the public schools. Public school teachers are also opposing the “Teaching Profession Law,” which forces them to take exams and be subject to “career ladders.”

Bourgeois opposition parties led by the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which criticizes the Erdoğan government over the cost of living, are revealing themselves to be as hostile to the working class as the government in the municipalities they control. Recently, Yılmaz Büyükerşen, the CHP Mayor of Eskişehir, denounced workers demanding a raise, calling them “provocateurs” and threatening to fire them.

Workers at the CHP-run Kadıköy municipality in Istanbul will strike due to the failure to reach an agreement in contract negotiations covering 2,300 workers. Unless the DİSK-affiliated Genel-İş union agrees to a last-minute sellout, the strike will begin in two months.

In 2021, a strike at the Kadıköy municipality ended in a sellout not approved by the workers. During the short-lived strike, the CHP-run Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB), whose mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu’s election was backed by various pseudo-left parties, tried to break the strike by collecting garbage.

After being targeted by Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, 43 workers dismissed from İBB on the grounds of “security investigations” are continuing their protest in front of the municipality, demanding their reinstatement.

In a statement on contract talks in district municipalities in the city of Izmir, the Genel-İş union has warned that there might be strikes in several municipalities. Talks are underway covering 294 workers in Dikili, 1,400 in Buca, 1,580 in Bornova and 1,250 in Bayraklı.

The DİSK and Genel-İş unions’ statements emphasize the need for an agreement without going on strike. Genel-İş has betrayed recent strike votes in many CHP-run municipalities; in many places, it helped impose raises well below even the official inflation rate.

Turkish-Greek tensions escalate amid NATO-Russia war

Ozan Özgür

After Greek coast guard boats fired warning shots at the Comoros-flagged merchant ship Anatolian on September 10 in international waters of the Aegean Sea, tensions between Athens and Ankara continue to escalate.

Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou visited the Aegean islands, including Kastellorizo, Rhodes and Carpathos, two kilometers from Turkey last week. “Greece seeks constructive relations with its neighbors according to international law,” she said at an event marking the 79th anniversary of Kastellorizo’s liberation during World War II. “However, if necessary, it will effectively defend its integrity and its sovereign rights,” she added.

Speaking at a symposium in Rhodes, Sakellaropoulou denounced Ankara’s claims, saying: “As Turkish provocations intensify in Rhodes and the Dodecanese Islands, making false and unsupported claims and questioning our country’s sovereign rights, scientific debate becomes even more important on the 40th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.”

The islands of Rhodes, Carpathos and Kastellorizo are supposed to be demilitarized according to the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty. However, there are armored and infantry units, land and air bases on these islands, in addition to the law enforcement forces stipulated by the treaty.

“Greece’s rhetoric and provocative actions that have escalated tensions in the Sea of Islands and the Eastern Mediterranean have turned into a security threat for our country,” said Turkish Speaker of Parliament Mustafa Şentop.

In June, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu threatened to invade the islands, saying that “the sovereignty of these islands will be discussed” if Greece does not stop arming them. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also recently declared, “Your occupation of the islands does not bind us. We will do what is necessary when the time comes. As we say, we could come all of a sudden one night.”

The historical conflicts between the Turkish and Greek bourgeoisies, inherited from the 20th century, have intensified in recent months amid NATO’s war with Russia in Ukraine.

Fearing the potential consequences for the Turkish bourgeoisie of NATO’s war aims in Ukraine (regime change in Moscow, the dismemberment of Russia and its subordination to the imperialist powers), Ankara is not participating in the sanctions against Russia. It has tried to mediate an end to the war. On the other hand, Ankara sees as a threat Greece’s role as an important military base for NATO against Russia, having developed strategic military ties with the United States and France.

NATO views Turkey’s growing commercial, energy and military ties with Russia as unacceptable for NATO. Turkey’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense system has led Washington to impose sanctions on Turkey. Moreover, in response to a possible US refusal to sell Turkey F-16 fighters, President Erdoğan recently said: “It is not only America that sells fighter jets in the world. England, France and Russia sell them. So it is possible to get them from everywhere.”

The possibility that Russia may be using Turkey to evade Western sanctions is increasingly alarming US and European powers. “The US and EU are stepping up pressure on Turkey to crack down on Russian sanctions evasion amid concerns that the country’s banking sector is a potential backdoor for illicit finance,” the Financial Times wrote on Thursday.

On the other hand, Greece received its first two F-16 military jets from the United States last week as part of a $1.5 billion program to modernize its fighter fleet. The AP wrote: “The two F-16s presented at the Tanagra airbase northwest of Athens are the first of 83 to be refitted with advanced electronics, radar and weapons capabilities by late 2027.”

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris earlier last week, said: “We respond to challenges with readiness, and to those who threaten us—and who say that they will descend upon our islands suddenly one night—we say that we are waiting for them in the light of day, where it will be visible who has International Law on their side.”

Emphasizing France’s full support for Greece, Macron said, “I would like to reiterate this despite the repeated provocations and the questioning of Greece’s sovereignty: Our support and determination here is full.”

Tensions have risen further since Mitsotakis’ speech to the US Congress last May. There, Mitsotakis said: “Greece extends the hand of friendship to its neighbors. But we will not tolerate violations of our sovereignty, violations of our sovereign rights and flights over Greek islands, which must stop immediately. I ask you, members of Congress, to take into account the danger of a new instability on NATO’s southeastern flank when making decisions on arms sales in the region.”

He added, “I ask you, members of Congress, not to forget a wound that Hellenism has suffered for 48 years and which is still not healed. I refer to the aggression in Cyprus and the violent division of the island. No one will ever accept two separate states in Cyprus.” Mitsotakis received a standing ovation at the US Congress.

Replying to Mitsotakis’ speech in Washington, Erdoğan said: “For me, there is no such person as Mitsotakis anymore. We go with politicians with personality and honor. Let Mitsotakis think from now on. The US will probably not make a decision based on his mouth.”

However, the US State Department announced the lifting of the arms embargo on Cyprus for the fiscal year 2023 on Friday. US military bases in Greece have grown in line with NATO’s military deployment against Russia, even as Ankara faced US sanctions over its military ties with Moscow.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry denounced the US sanctions decision, stating: “We strongly condemn the expansion of the scope of the decision taken by the US in September 2020 to lift the arms embargo towards the Greek Cypriot Administration. We fully support the reaction of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) authorities regarding the said decision.”

It continued: “This decision, which is in contradiction to the principle of equality of the two sides on the Island, and which will further strengthen the Greek Cypriot side’s intransigence, will negatively affect the efforts to resettle the Cyprus issue; and it will lead to an arms race on the Island, harming peace and stability in the Eastern Mediterranean. We call on the US to reconsider this decision and to pursue a balanced policy towards the two sides on the Island.”

The bourgeois press in both Greece and Turkey use nationalist rhetoric to promote the reactionary geopolitical interests of their own governments and to divide the working class. The possibility of this chauvinist demagogy escalating into a military confrontation between these two NATO member states is very real. NATO’s war on Russia in Ukraine and the surge of military tensions throughout the Balkans and Central Asia is pouring fuel on the fire.

African countries face double whammy of debt crisis and food crisis

Jean Shaoul

Earlier this year, the World Bank warned that “60 percent of the poorest countries were already in debt distress or at high risk of it”—mainly in Africa—and that up to a dozen risked default over the next 12 months.

The largest spate of debt crises in developing economies in a generation threatens a social and humanitarian catastrophe for a continent already reeling from plummeting prices for its export-based commodities, the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and the criminal response of the ruling classes, taking their lead from the “let it rip” policies of the imperialist powers.

Africa has witnessed soaring prices for food, fuel and fertilisers, depleting foreign exchange reserves, in the wake of the US/NATO-led war against Russia in Ukraine. Twenty-three of Africa’s 54 countries depend on Russia and Ukraine for more than half the imports of one of their staple goods. Some countries are even more reliant: Sudan, Egypt, Tanzania, Eritrea and Benin import 80 percent of their wheat and Algeria, Sudan and Tunisia more than 95 percent of sunflower oil from Russia and Ukraine.

They are also seeing higher prices across the board, exacerbating hunger under conditions where ruling elites across the continent refuse to divert even the most meagre resources towards alleviating poverty and use brute force to impose mass suffering.

Herder Yusuf Abdullahi walks past the carcasses of his forty goats that died of hunger in Dertu, Wajir County, Kenya on Oct. 24, 2021. The aid agency Oxfam International warned Tuesday, March 22, 2022 that widespread hunger across East Africa could become "a catastrophe" without an injection of funds to the region's most vulnerable communities. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga, File)

Global inflation has pushed millions into poverty. The World Bank has warned that the number of Africans living in extreme poverty is set to rise from 424 million before the pandemic in 2019 to 463 million this year, more than one third of the continent’s 1.2 billion population. Millions face starvation as the World Food Programme’s appeal for $24 billion—to reach 153 million people in 2022—is only half funded as the major powers divert resources to the war effort.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has seen prices rise by more than 20 percent while its currency, the naira, has fallen by 25 percent against the dollar since the start of the year, despite an increase of 250 basis points in interest rates since May. In Ethiopia, prices are up 32 percent and the birr’s value has fallen to about 82 against the dollar on the informal market, down from 60 at the beginning of June. In Ghana, prices are up 31 per and the currency is plunging while Accra has raised rates aggressively to stem the collapse.

Following a decade of rising debt, with Eurobond finance as the main element, that saw public borrowing in 65 developing countries rise by 18 percent of GDP and in sub-Saharan Africa by 27 percent of GDP, the pandemic increased total indebtedness of both so-called emerging markets and developing economies to their highest level in 50 years, equal to more than 250 percent of government revenues.

Nearly 60 percent of the poorest countries were already in debt distress or at high risk of it, while debt servicing levels in middle-income countries were at their highest levels in 30 years as charges tripled between 2010 and 2021.

Zambia defaulted on its debts in late 2020 and Mali in early 2022. Now larger African countries are viewed as unlikely to be able to make $21.5 billion in repayments of their Eurobonds, excluding the cost of servicing these loans. This includes Ghana, which owes more than $4 billion to bondholders between June 2022 and May 2027, Kenya, with a bond repayment bill of almost $3 billion for the next five years, and Ethiopia with a $1 billion Eurobond due in 2024, amid ongoing conflicts affecting several parts of the country. The ability to pay of Nigeria, which owes almost $2 billion in Eurobond repayments, is also in doubt.

With most of their loans coming from commercial creditors, as opposed to governments and the multilateral financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), their debts now involve variable interest rates which means their charges are set to rise as interest rates follow the rise in the US, European Central Bank and the United Kingdom. This is likely to precipitate significant capital outflows and force Africa’s central banks to raise interest rates, thereby plunging their economies into recession.

With much of their debt denominated in dollars, which have seen a sharp rise in value, debt servicing charges will rise even higher. This is forcing Sub-Saharan African nations to seek debt relief or restructure simply to repay their creditors, largely European and American.

US-China rivalry in Africa, which has become a key battleground of competing interests, is making it even more difficult for African countries to reschedule their debts. Washington has sought to portray the continent’s rising indebtedness as the result of China’s loans that are aimed at gaining political leverage and seizing African assets when states default as part of its increasingly bellicose stance towards Beijing.

While China’s lending expanded rapidly from the early 2000s to resource-rich African states, particularly to oil producers, after 2015 as commodity prices and growth rates fell, lending fell sharply from a high of $29.5 billion in 2016 to $7.6 billion in 2019 and has continued falling. Its loans were primarily for infrastructure projects to build and upgrade over 10,000 kilometres of railway, around 100,000 kilometres highway, 1,000 bridges and 100 ports, as well as power plants, hospitals and schools. China now accounts for about one-fifth of all lending to Africa.

As Debt Justice pointed out in a report last July drawing on World Bank data, African countries' Chinese loans, mainly from state-owned banks, are a third of their loans from non-Chinese private lenders, while interest rates are just over half (2.7 percent compared to 5 percent). It found that Chinese public and private lenders accounted for just 12 percent of the continent's $696 billion external debts in 2020, compared to the 35 percent owed to other private creditors.

The US government and the World Bank has sought to undermine China’s lending to Africa by categorising the China Development Bank and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China as “official creditors” or state institutions even though they lend at commercial rates. This makes them liable to debt freezes under the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) and the Common Framework, schemes so fraught with restrictions that only Chad, Ethiopia and Zambia have applied, while the mostly Western private lenders are exempt from such restrictions.

The result has been to make it all but impossible for African states to obtain debt relief from the multilateral organisations, while enriching US creditors.

Zambia is a case in point. While earlier this month the IMF approved a $1.3 billion loan to Zambia, which defaulted in 2020 on its $17.3 billion of external debt, much of this will go to BlackRock, the world’s largest investment fund, which holds $220 million of Zambia’s debt bought at half their nominal value. According to Debt Justice, BlackRock stand to make 110 percent profit for itself and its clients if debt interest payments are paid in full.

The combined effect of the debt and cost of living crises in Africa’s impoverished countries, where 60 percent of its 1.2 billion population is under the age of 25 and nearly one billion are under the age of 35, leaves most struggling to eke out a living. The last months have seen mass protests and strikes in Sudan, Tunisia, South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria expressing anger over social conditions and against the ruling elites that have imposed them.

Mine workers sing as they wait for the start of commemoration ceremonies near Marikana in Rustenburg, South Africa, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022. South Africa marks on Tuesday 10 years since the Marikana massacre, where 44 people were killed during a mine strike at a platinum mine near Rustenburg, North West province in August 2012. [AP Photo/Themba Hadebe]