US-backed Saudi forces dropped cluster bombs on Yemeni villages

Thomas Gaist

War planes with the US-backed, Saudi-led Arab war coalition dropped illegal cluster munitions amongst several groups of villages in northern Yemen, a report released this week by Human Rights Watch found.

Human Rights Watch found remnants of BLU 108 canisters, fired from a CBU 105 Sensor Fuzed Weapon, in the al-Safraa area of Yemen's Sadaa province. Evidence of extensive cluster bomb use was found on a plateau less than 1 kilometer away from "four to six village clusters," inhabited by thousands of people each, HRW found. The alleged use of illegal weapons was corroborated by video footage, photographs, and analysis of satellite imagery.

“These weapons should never be used under any circumstances. Saudi Arabia and other coalition members – and the supplier, the US – are flouting the global standard that rejects cluster munitions because of their long-term threat to civilians,” according to Human Rights Watch arms director Steve Goose.

“Saudi-led cluster munition airstrikes have been hitting areas near villages, putting local people in danger."

The Sensor Fuzed cluster weapon systems works by spreading four submunitions across a target area, each of which then automatically identifies and locks onto a potential target such as a vehicle or structure. The bomblets themselves are geared to explode above ground for maximum effect, and are tailored to generate a downward explosive force that cover the target and surrounding area in hot shrapnel and flames. The US government has transferred the CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapons to Saudi Arabia and UAE in recent years, and the weapons were manufactured by an American firm, Textron Systems Corporation.

Cluster munitions have been banned by an international treaty signed in 2008 treaty called the Convention on Cluster Munitions, signed in Dublin by over 100 governments. Saudi Arabia, US, and the recently deposed US and Saudi-backed Yemen government were among the small number of ultra-militarist governments that refused to sign a 2008 agreement between 118 countries seeking to ban cluster bombs.

In comments to AFP Sunday, Pentagon official defended sale of cluster bombs on grounds that all states purchasing cluster weapons are required to sign agreements not to use the weapons in areas "where civilians are known to be present."

Sensor Fuzed model used against villagers in northern Yemen was first deployed by the US military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Incendiary and chemical weapons such as white phosophorous, which was dropped on civilians areas indiscriminately during the 2004 US punitive assault against the population of the Baghdad suburb of Falljuah, and napalm, widely used in US imperialism's war against Vietnam, are typically deployed using cluster systems.

Thousands of tons worth of cluster munitions were dropped on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos by the US Air Force and Navy during the 1960s and 1970s. The US dropped some 260 million bomblets on Laos between 1964 and 1973, some 80 million are estimated to have not exploded, remaining dispersed across the land. Civilians and especially children are regularly killed by explosives leftover from the US war, including cluster bombs and mines, themselves frequently deployed via cluster systems.

US forces also dropped thousands of cluster bombs, including a total of more than 200,000 submunitions, during 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. During an after the 2003 "Operation Iraqi Freedom," the US led assault deployed more than 2 million submunitions against targets inside Iraq. The NATO powers also used the illegal weapons during the bombing of Yugoslavia by the Clinton administration at the end of the 1990s.

Many cluster munitions carry a cache of hundreds and even thousands of smaller submunitions, which in many cases do not explode immediately and become effective land minds.

Cluster weapons often combine both "anti-personnel” bomblets (designed to kill and maim individual human targets) with “anti-armor” ones (designed to destroy tanks and armored vehicles). The widespread pattern of small explosions that the submunitions produce has earned the weapons the military nickname of "popcorn" and "fire crackers." Chemical and incendiary weapons including white phosphorus and napalm are often deployed via cluster systems.

Cluster munitions were first deployed on a large scale during the Second World War, by both the Nazi regime and the "democratic" imperialist powers. Nazi forces used the so-called "butterfly bomb," named for the shape of the container after it had released its submunitions, against both civilian and military targets. Cluster-type systems were used by the US and allied imperialist governments to blanket urban areas in Germany and Japan with flammable explosions, a tactic geared to produce massive firestorms.

Israel and US are top producers of cluster bombs worldwide. As many as 30 countries may have received cluster munitions from the US totaling hundreds of thousands. According to some estimates, Israel used as many as 4 million submunitions against Lebanon during the 1978 invasion and the protracted occupation that followed.

There are signs that the Saudis and the Gulf monarchies are further escalating their savage military actions against Yemen.

Saudi had vowed a ceasefire and political deal to end the war on April 21, but strikes by the coalition began again the very next day, and has since greatly intensified its bombing runs against cities and towns across the country. New contingents of ground troops trained by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are reported to be in Yemen, where they are engaging in combat with the Houthis. The deployments may be the opening phase of a Saudi ground invasion.

Large areas of the country have already been laid waste by the fighting on the ground between militant groups and weeks of heavy bombing by the Saudi-led alliance. At least 1,200 killed and 5,000 wounded by bombing campaign, according to World Health Organization statistics. Aid groups state that the real death toll may be much higher, but conditions on the ground make it impossible to get an accurate count at present.

Saudi planes have carried out 70 percent of strikes against Yemen, according to a spokesman for the Saudi coalition. In this, the Saudis have received extensive and growing support from the US military, which has surveilled targets and providing logistical support in coordination with the Saudi-led coalition, in addition to providing billions of dollars worth of up to date US made military hardware.

The Obama administration is working closely with sections of the Saudi, Gulf and Iranian elites in an effort to forge a comprehensive political settlement that will re-stabilize US imperialism's hegemonic position in the Middle East. Yemen's population is being treated as a bargaining chip in the process, with all parties seeking to utilize the growing bloodbath to strengthen their positions against rivals in the regional and global arenas.

King Salman: The Boldest Ever Saudi Monarch?

Ranjit Gupta

At 87 years, Salman is the oldest of the Saudi monarchs to ascend throne; it was widely believed that his health was in poor shape. He had been the Saudi minister of defence for six months and Crown Prince for two-and-a-half years – the shortest period amongst his predecessors. King Abdullah and Prince Salman did not have a close relationship. He was overshadowed by his three high profile elder brothers – King Fahd, Crown Prince Sultan, the longtime stalwart and defence minister, and the longtime equally stalwart Crown Prince Nayef, who was interior minister for most of his working life. The latter two had sons who held high profile jobs and were regarded as influential in their own right. Salman was the governor of the strategically key Riyadh Province for 53 years. Though he has been a part of the core decision-making coterie for the past few decades, from the background perspective, he was less ‘prepared’ to be King than all his predecessors barring King Khalid. No King has ascended the throne in Saudi Arabia in circumstances more challenging for the country than Salman. (See ‘Saudi Arabia and Evolving Regional Strategic Dynamics’, IPCS Commentary #4843, 2 March 2015). For all these reasons, there was a consensus that he would do no more than maintain continuity and stability; rocking the boat would have been completely out of character and totally unexpected.

However, Salman’s actions and decisions as King have been swift and breathtakingly audacious. It can be safely asserted that nobody in Saudi Arabia, let alone abroad, could visualise when Salman took over that in just over three months, the composition of the Saudi government could be so utterly and dramatically different from the previous one; and that Saudi Arabia would be involved in the biggest war in its history. 

It is not only the decisions themselves but the manner and timing of their being taken and announced that is unprecedented. On the morning of 23 January, the Saudis woke up to discover that they had a new King – Salman; a new Crown Prince – Muqrin was promoted; a new Deputy Crown Prince –Nayef, settling a longtime speculation about when the transition to the next generation will be and who it will be; and, the most surprising, a new Defence Minister, Mohamed bin Salman, under 30 years old, whose major qualification for the job is that he is his father’s favourite son. He was also made Head of the Royal Court and the chairman of one of two new committees that would define and implement policies. 

This combination made him the second-most powerful person after the King. All this happened in the first few hours of Salman becoming the king – former king Abdullah hadn’t even been buried yet.  Never before in Saudi history had such sensitive and important appointments been made so extraordinarily swiftly. No King before Salman had so blatantly favoured his own progeny.

On 25 March, Saudi Arabia launched Operation Desert Storm, a series of airstrikes across Yemen – Saudi Arabia’s first major war at its own initiative since its invasion of Yemen in 1934.  Riyadh has been the world’s largest arms importer in the past decade; no comparable country has such huge amounts of state-of-the-art military hardware as Saudi Arabia but its decent-sized armed forces are not battle-tested in a real conflict. Riyadh has thus entered completely uncharted waters.  

The war has been personally monitored by the Saudi defence minister. Despite claims of success in daily briefings, the reality is that the war is far from achieving its objectives. Yet, on the morning of 29 April, Saudis awoke to discover that they had a new Crown Prince and a new Deputy Crown Prince. Crown Prince Muqrin had been removed; the first time such a thing has happened in Saudi history; the defence minister was promoted and made the new Deputy Crown Prince; Prince Saud Al Faisal, the iconic foreign minister for 50 years, the world’s longest serving foreign minister, was replaced and the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, Adel Al Jubeir, replaced him. This is the second time in the Kingdom’s history that a non-royal will hold this post. This will inevitably increase the say the young defence minister will have vis-à-vis foreign policy. The first non-royal Foreign Minister was Ibrahim bin Abdullah Al Suwaiyel (1960-62); but those were relatively calm and staid times for Saudi Arabia and the region.

As the governor of Riyadh, he was also responsible for maintaining discipline amongst the Princes – nobody knows the ins and outs of the extended royal family better than him. He was considered more genial and less assertive in family interactions than his elder and more powerful siblings, both Sudairies and non-Sudairies. Therefore, he may be able to override dissensions in the family. 

However, the implications of Salman’s decisions are a high risk gamble for him personally, for the stability of the country and even the future of the royal family. If he can pull it off, he would certainly be regarded as the most visionary Saudi monarch after the kingdom’s founder. But, if he fails, there will be little consolation for the country that he was the boldest amongst Saudi monarchs!

The Scottish National Party and the British Elections

Binoy Kampmark

“I’m just facing up to reality. A minority government can’t govern without support from other parties. Either Ed Miliband will accept that or he won’t.”

-Nicola Sturgeon, SNP Leader, The Guardian, May 3, 2015

Nicola Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party has proven to be unimpeachable and powerful. Despite losing the referendum on Scottish independence by 10 points, the SNP has been rumbling along in its efforts to unsettle the Labour status quo and, more broadly speaking, that of British politics.

And rumbling with force and measure it is. Not since 1885 has a nationalist party – the then Irish Parliamentary Party – have such force. Membership is soaring, having reached levels around 110,000. In seven months, this has made the SNP the third largest political party in Britain. The Tories, as expressed by the likes of Thatcher’s old hand Norman Tebbit, fear that it will constitute a “puppet government” comprising Labour and the SNP. The she-demon Sturgeon is set to be the puppeteer, holding the strings of an ever malleable Ed Miliband.

The idea that elected government has to work hard for its decisions, seeking alliances, forging deals, is something that leaves a poor taste for British establishment politicians. It is the fearful refrain of comfortable majoritarian tyranny. “Such an arrangement could be unstable in the extreme, even without taking into account that securing votes in the House of Lords would make the proverbial task of herding cats look like child’s play” (The Telegraph, May 4).

Home Secretary Theresa May prefers the catastrophic scenario: any arrangement with the vibrant Scottish nationalists would trigger a constitutional crisis, the worst, in fact, since the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936.

Showing how proportion expands as paranoia breathes down its neck,May suggested that the measure of such seriousness could be gauged by how the ruling classes were positively paralysed in wake of the monarch’s affair with American divorcee Wallis Simpson. “It would mean Scottish MPs who have no responsibility for issues like health, education and policing in their own constituencies [as they are devolved to the Scottish Parliament] making decisions on those issues for England and Wales.”

Rupert Murdoch’s swill churning centre The Sun, in its own merrily misogynist way, has taken to portraying Sturgeon in Tartan bikini straddling a wrecking ball. Channelling Miley Cyrus, the image of Sturgeon spells doom for the United Kingdom.

Foolishly, Labour’s Miliband has been rattled enough to suggest that any prospect of entering a coalition with the Sturgeon factor would be unthinkable. This, despite the prospects of an ignominious annihilation of Labour’s traditional grounds in the north which made a sitting Labour MP claim that he was “set to Defcon fucked”.

Undeterred by the prospects of this electoral liquidation, Miliband wanted to remind listeners about a certain clarity of thinking. “I want to be clear about this. No coalitions, no tie-ins… I’ve said no deals. I am not doing deals with the Scottish National Party.” Sturgeon has her Labour counterparts in the South worried about the succubi tendencies she has been accused of, feeding off Labour even as it seeks to win office. Vote for Labour, urged Miliband, because the alternative will allow a stampede of instability.

The policy platforms of the SNP show that it is no midget force in the scheme of British politics.

The foreign policy tendrils of the party are worth noting. It maintains a strong policy against the utility of Trident, the long in tooth nuclear submarine fleet that David Cameron has promised to overall should he win office. A sore, and a sucker, it bleeds resources from the sceptred isle, with an expected bill of £20bn issuing from the coffers to replace four Vanguard-class submarines. The total cost, however, is likely to come to £100bn.

Sturgeon has gone so far as to make the ditching of the nuclear submarine fleet essential to any coalition deal with Labour. “The SNP have made it clear that Trident is a fundamental issue for the SNP so we would never be in any formal deal with a Labour government that is going to renew Trident and we would never vote for the renewal of Trident or for anything that facilitated the renewal of Trident.”

Miliband’s own list of grievances against the SNP have been noted. “I disagree with them on independence. It would be a disaster for our country. There are other big disagreements: on national defence, on the deficit and a bigger philosophy question.” By means of contortion, Miliband suggests that the Tories and the SNP share a common thread of destructive ambition. “They want to set one part of the country against another.”

All of these are worth noting, because they make the Scottish upstarts seem light years ahead of their opponents. There is clarity about Europe and the role with the EU. (Britons may have a referendum on the issue of Europe and the EU, but Scots may think differently, triggering another visit on the independence issue.) There is a firm stance about the issue of recognising a Palestinian state.

Domestically, there is an insistence that austerity measures should be eased, if not scrapped altogether. Instead, an increase in the minimum wage is advocated. A 50 percent top tax rate is endorsed, with an extra tax on homes worth over £2 million while banking bonuses will endure new levies.

Five years ago, the SNP won a fifth of the Scottish vote, and only six of Scotland’s 59 parliamentary seats. The arithmetic odds have narrowed dramatically. Far from being a wrecking ball of history and the sacred union, Sturgeon may well prove to be a great reminder about forcing a complacent, tired establishment into the necessary discomforts of engaged democratic practice.

The Sea Party Rebellion

Ralph Nader & David Helvarg

Gas is cheap. America is pumping more domestic oil than at any time in the last 30 years. But two newly released science reports have reached disturbing conclusions. One in the journal Science states human activities threaten mass-extinction of marine life in the ocean, the other in the journal Nature tells us that to avoid the most catastrophic effects of fossil fuel fired climate disruption we need to leave a third of the world’s known petroleum reserves in the ground and under the seabed.

How then can it be, during the 5th anniversary of the catastrophic BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, that the Obama administration has filed a 5-year drilling plan that could open up much of the populous Atlantic seaboard, along with the remote U.S. Arctic Ocean, to offshore drilling beginning in 2017? Especially when so much energy is wasted daily.

Along with the climate and pollution threats, environmentalists and animal rights activists are also concerned about the high-volume sonic cannons used to survey for oil. Typically these “air guns” emit ocean bottom penetrating sonic waves louder than dynamite explosions every 10 seconds for days or sometimes weeks at a time depending on the scope of the area being investigated. With much of the Atlantic’s offshore waters being opened for potential oil exploration, including marine mammal migration routes, these surveys ― that would take place between now and the proposed lease sales in 2017 ― threaten the death or impairment of the nation’s 450 remaining endangered species of right whales, also orcas, dolphins and other wildlife. The government itself estimates the surveys could result in the “take” (meaning anything from disturbance to deafening to death) of 138,000 marine mammals. Fish including edible commercial species, can also be impacted by this type of oceanic noise pollution, which is why commercial and recreational fishermen are some of the most outspoken opponents of the proposed new drilling. But they’re not the only citizen voices being ignored as reflected by thousands of coastal citizens who have already turned out in opposition.

Has the United States government become so beholden and dependent on big oil and its green slick of campaign money that it’s now coming to resemble petroleum dependent states like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia? If so, a rebellion to restore the blue in our red, white and blue is in order.

A Sea Party of activists, businesses and coastal communities committed to promoting the health and economic well-being of our public seas ― while also championing clean energy, including offshore wind ― could prove a strong unifying force between now and the 2016 presidential elections.

A Sea Party Coalition made up of marine conservation groups, fishermen, surfers, homeowners and others has already been launched. Among its first actions was to raise the alarm (two if by sea) exposing a closed-door meeting on offshore drilling between North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, federal regulators from the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and oil industry representatives late last year, a meeting from which citizens and the press were excluded. At the next public hearing drilling opponents chanted, ‘Just say No!’ Ocean advocates have rallied in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and elsewhere and on May 13, as part of a national Blue Vision Summit citizens from more than 22 states will hold a Healthy Ocean Capitol Hill Day to meet with their elected representatives in Washington and insist on guarantees that our coastal economies and communities remain free of the threat of another BP type oil disaster and climate disruption. New Jersey’s congressional delegation has already taken a strong bipartisan stand against any offshore drilling that could impact their shoreline.

It’s unfortunate that President Obama has adopted the ‘all of the above’ energy policy of his Republican opponents. That doesn’t mean new rigs off the Outer Banks, Charleston and Miami are inevitable. The last time an offshore oil boom on this scale was attempted (under the Reagan administration back in the 1980s) broad based public opposition not only stopped it, but led to the creation of some of the nation’s largest and most popular National Marine Sanctuaries (within whose borders drilling and dumping is forbidden).

You can now visit these national treasures and economic engines of tourism, recreation and real estate off California, Massachusetts and Florida.

New marine sanctuaries are now being proposed off the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, the north coast of Florida and other regions presently slated for surveying, drilling and likely spilling.

The upcoming presidential election season will provide another great opportunity for Sea Party organizing. Activists are already sharpening their tridents. Expect to see costumed fish, oysters, polar bears with picket signs, militant mermaids, and oiled surfers (don’t worry, it’s really chocolate syrup) on the news and in your town. They will be raising questions at town hall meetings and campaign rallies for the candidates not only in coastal primary states such as New Hampshire, California, North Carolina and Florida, but also in inland states like Iowa and Colorado – where the Colorado Ocean Coalition is already actively engaged in educating its elected officials.

As they said after the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 that helped launch the modern environmental movement, it’s time to ‘Get Oil Out!’ from sea to shining sea.

Is ISIS Really on the Run?

Patrick Cockburn

A graphic illustration of Western wishful thinking about the decline of Islamic State (IS) is a well-publicised map issued by the Pentagon to prove that the self-declared caliphate has lost 25 per cent of its territory since its big advances last year.

Unfortunately for the Pentagon, sharp-eyed American journalists soon noticed something strange about its map identifying areas of IS strength. While it shows towns and villages where IS fighters have lost control around Baghdad, it simply omits western Syria where they have been advancing in and around Damascus.

The Pentagon displayed some embarrassment about its dodgy map, but it largely succeeded in its purpose of convincing people that IS is in retreat. Many news outlets across the world republished the map as evidence of the success of air strikes by the United States and its allies in support of the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria. The capture of Tikrit after a month-long siege is cited as a further sign that a re-energised Iraqi state is winning and one day in the not too distant future will be able to recapture Mosul in the north and Anbar province in the west.

How much of this comforting news is true? Recall that the loss or retention of territory is not a good measure of a force such as IS using quasi-guerrilla tactics. Good news from the point of view of Baghdad is that its forces finally retook the small city of Tikrit, though its recapture was primarily the work of 20,000 Shia militia and not the Iraqi army, which only had some 3,000 soldiers involved in the battle. It was not a fight to the finish and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said IS only committed a few hundred fighters to holding the city.

Success at Tikrit was trumpeted at home and abroad and was to be followed by an Iraqi army offensive in Anbar province and possibly an assault on Mosul later in the year. But, just as this was supposed to begin, IS fighters attacked Baiji oil refinery, the largest in Iraq, and Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, showing that they retain their offensive capability. As of last Thursday, IS fighters had seized most of the 36-square-kilometre refinery compound with only a few pockets of Iraqi federal police and soldiers still holding out. “We have very little food and ammunition, and we can’t withstand the suicide bombers, snipers and rockets,” said a federal police officer reached by phone by the Iraq Oil Report. “All of us are thinking of committing suicide.”

What emerges from the latest round of fighting is not only that IS retains the ability to launch offensives over a wide area, but that the Iraqi army very much depends on rushing a small number of elite combat units like so many fire brigades to cope with successive crises. One source in Baghdad told me that the number of troops useable for these purposes was about five brigades or some 15,000 soldiers. Other published reports suggest the number may be even smaller at 5,000 men drawn from the so-called Golden Brigade, an Interior Ministry Swat team and a unit known as the Scorpions. When these small but effective forces succeed in repelling an IS attack there is nobody in the regular army to hold the positions they have defended.

A key question since IS captured much of northern and western Iraq last year concerns the ability of the Iraqi army to reconstitute itself after such a defeat. Going by recent fighting this is simply not happening, and failure here has important political consequences for Iraq and the region as a whole. It means that IS is not being beaten back by the regular army in its most important strongholds in Iraq. As a result the Baghdad government is this weekend poised to send Shia militias into overwhelmingly Sunni Anbar province to reinforce the army. “We are under tremendous pressure,” an army officer fighting in Anbar was quoted as saying. “We are in the midst of a war of attrition, which I am afraid will play into the hands of Islamic State.” He described their fighters as being “everywhere”.

The move of Shia militiamen, organised and in part directed by Iranian officers, into western Sunni Iraq creates a dilemma for the US. The Americans have been insisting that the militias be under the military control of Baghdad, though how you prove this is another matter. Washington had been hoping to repeat, if only in miniature, its success in using anti-al-Qaeda tribes and communities against the jihadis in 2006-08. Today this is almost impossible because there are no longer 150,000 US troops in Iraq, IS has shown it will kill anybody opposing it, and Sunni-Shia sectarian fear and hatred is deeper than ever. The 90,000 Sunni refugees who fled Ramadi for Baghdad when the fighting started found it difficult or impossible to enter the capital because they were suspected of being IS infiltrators. Their fate is a grim illustration of the degree to which Iraq no longer exists as a unified country.

At the heart of the failure of the US and its allies to defeat IS over the last 10 months is the problem that what makes military sense is politically toxic and vice versa. The strongest military force opposing IS in Iraq is the Iranian-backed Shia militias, but the US imperative to limit Iranian influence in Iraq means that it does not want to support the militias with air strikes. In Syria, there is a somewhat similar situation since the Syrian army is the most powerful military force in the country, but it does not receive US tactical air support when fighting IS or Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate, because a US priority remains to displace President Bashar al-Assad. As a result IS is not under serious military pressure in Syria and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has recently issued orders for fighters to transfer from Aleppo to Iraq.

Wishful thinking about the strength of IS and other al-Qaeda-type movements is not confined to foreign powers. Baghdad governments are always inclined to believe their own propaganda or see themselves as victims of conspiracies. Last summer the Shia leaders in Baghdad had convinced themselves that they were the victims of a conspiracy in which the Kurds were in league with IS. It came as a shock to them when the Kurds were the next victims of an IS offensive last August. In Baghdad last week the Interior Minister, Mohammed Salem al-Ghabban, summoned dozens of journalists to meet him so he could blame them for creating the conditions for IS successes.

The Pentagon’s misleading map shows the degree to which false optimism dominates the thoughts and actions of the outside powers in Iraq, Syria and rest of the Middle East. It reminds me of the situation early last year when President Obama, in receipt of the best information US intelligence could give him, dismissed IS as being the equivalent of a small-time basketball team whose actions were of no importance.

Nepal’s Earthquake Politics

Amanda Snellinger

Oxford, England.

It finally hit. Nepal’s overdue earthquake. According to its seismic history the fault lines under the Himalayas belch to relieve pressure every seventy years or so. The last big one was in 1934. The next earthquake had been on the radar of the government, international donors and embassies, and cautious citizens who have the means to prioritize disaster preparedness. Some, including government agencies, were better prepared than others, but nothing can really prepare a nation for a disaster of this magnitude.

The earthquake gives a whole new meaning to what state restructuring will entail. Nepal has been trying to rewrite its constitution and restructure the nation to be a federal, democratic republic since 2008. It has been in political stalemate that forced the first constituent assembly to dissolve in 2012, and the second constituent assembly has been hashing out committees since it was elected in 2013. In many ways, the country is far away from the 2006 People’s movement that ousted the king and ended a decade of civil war. Lives have progressed: people have married, babies have been born, kids have become educated, and family members have passed. People are striving to better their prospects, for example multitudes of laborers have gone to other countries as guest workers and young people’s creative entrepreneurial endeavors–opening up museums, cafes and restaurants, and creating street art–are making Nepal’s cities more cosmopolitan. Nevertheless, Nepal has been struggling with what Heather Hindman has termed “long-term provisionality” due to the lack of national political progress and regular turn-over of governments. There have not been local elections since 1997, leaving villages and towns at the mercy of the whims of appointed bureaucrats and, for a time between 2008 and 2012, their local political leaders through “All Party Mechanisms.” Development and resource allocation from the center to the local level has been inconsistent and citizens have few means of accountability.

The Nepali people are a self-reliant bunch. They have to be. They have not had a state that consistently delivers basic goods and services in the lifetime of the young generation. The government plays a minimal role in many people’s lives. Consistent shortages of electricity, water, and fuel have forced communities and families to be creative in building their private infrastructure just to get on with daily life. Many of the Kathmandu valley’s new wells come from communities boring for much needed water and a number of villages have learned if they want a road, they must build it. As I was updating friends in the US on the earthquake and mentioned that the electricity was out, one responded, “Well that’s nothing new,” recalling brownouts of up to sixteen hours a day when she visited me in 2013. According to the Twitter-sphere, solar grids are still working. This is just a small example of how people’s tactics for enduring despite the state are now helping in the earthquake aftermath.

Of course, not all people have the resources to build their own infrastructure and pay for basic necessities that in much of the world are free. It is the poor and those living in rural areas who will suffer the most from the earthquake.  Nepalis will unite to help one another as much as they can. They have done so from around the world since the tremors began. Nepali citizens have proven their unity and commitment to each other over and over again when they are pushed to the limits. Now it is time for the government to do so, too. The largest oversight in the government’s disaster preparedness is the lack of robust, empowered local governance.

What lessons should be taken away from this expected but nonetheless heartbreaking tragedy? Nepal’s constituent assembly government needs to stand true to the promises of the 2006 People’s Movement. The underpinning logic for federalism was to devolve power from the center, Kathmandu, and relegate it to the provinces in order to create more regional autonomy. The ongoing debates over the federal state structure and nomenclature have focused on ethnicity and identity-based rights. These issues are central to addressing the many histories of marginalization and healing the wounds of a decade of civil war. However, these disputes obscure the fact that there is little political will among Nepal’s politicians to decentralize power. All of the parties are stuck in the centralized, top-down mode of governing. But this model is faulty because of its cascading effects. With the top level at an impasse, the middle and local levels are languishing. Imagine if robust local and regional governance had existed when this earthquake hit? Then the relief efforts would not be mimicking the ad hoc approach the central government has taken to governing and state restructuring over the last seven years.

The Rise of South African Xenophobia

Patrick Bond

Political symbols in South Africa are here today, gone tomorrow, but oppressive political economy endures. At surface level, an explosion of anti-racist activism amongst the most enlightened South Africans – up-and-coming black scholars trying to break various ceilings of residual apartheid power – is occurring at the same time a xenophobic implosion is wreaking havoc on the bottom socio-economic ranks.

In mid-March at the University of Cape Town (UCT), undergraduate politics student Chimani Maxwele threw a bucket of excrement onto the statue of colonial mastermind Cecil John Rhodes, catalysing a revolt against white-dominated power structures there and beyond. Less than three weeks later, a revolt by the poorest urban South Africans in the country’s two other major cities – Durban and Johannesburg – was aimed at a layer just as poor and oppressed: immigrants, mostly from elsewhere in Africa.

At least ten thousand people were displaced within days. With South Africa hosting an estimated five million foreign nationals living within its 53 million residents, terror has struck those with darker skins and the misfortune to live in the lowest-income areas: urban-peripheral shack settlements or near inner-city migrant labour hostels.

Rhodes falls but his borders keep rising

The #RhodesMustFall campaign caught fire at UCT, the main site of South Africa’s bourgeois class reproduction, with protesters demanding curriculum changes, racial equity in the professoriat and the resignation of university leadership. They were quickly victorious against at least one telling symbol: a huge statue of Africa’s most notorious English looter. The bronze Rhodes was removed from a central campus base within a month, carted off by university authorities to what will eventually be a lower-profile setting.

The campaign set the emergent 1% elites of UCT against the old 1% power structure. Historical recollections of Rhodes’ diamond monopoly-making fortune surfaced, leaving bourgeois commentators and news organs like Business Day rattled.

Rhodes, after all, helped establish many early systems of exploitation – including migrant labour (and women’s role in cheap labour provision), illogical African borders, dependency upon minerals extraction, land grabs, environmental destruction and the ultra-underdeveloped rural Bantustans – that persist today. Indeed they are now often found in even more profitable and amplified forms (casualised labour, mining house prerogatives), fully endorsed by South Africa’s current political and economic rulers no matter their skin hue.

However, the 99% versus the 99% in the shack settlements also frightened South Africa’s top 1%, mainly because of the hard-hitting impact on the national ‘brand’, a source of repeat elite panic. World public opinion is frowning on Pretoria, and, encouragingly, the rest of the continent has taken this long-overdue opportunity to channel myriad grievances against the regional hegemon.

Across Africa, broadcast and print media remind audiences of how the Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini had set off the pogroms when on March 20 at a ‘moral regeneration’ rally, he referred to immigrants as ‘lice’ and ‘ants’: “you find their unsightly goods hanging all over our shops, they dirty our streets. We cannot even recognise which shop is which, there are foreigners everywhere… We ask foreign nationals to pack their belongings and go back to their countries.”

Within ten days, that call had been taken up by Zulu loyalists in Durban, including the president’s son, Edward Zuma (born in Swaziland), who claimed immigrants “are the reason why there are so many drugs in the country” (he was prosecuted for illegal tobacco importation and tax fraud last year). Backed by most politicians, Zwelithini went into denial, first, complaining of media misinterpretation, and claimed he meant no harm against legal immigrants.

Yet the mass meeting of 10,000 mainly male Zulu traditionalists he assembled at the main Durban stadium on April 20 reverberated with xenophobic chants and booing of ambassadors from Africa. Zwelithini told the gathering he wanted an end to violence. But to achieve that required much more: Zuma finally deployed the army in Durban and Johannesburg hotspots the next night, as the police were proving incompetent.

Backlash

The fakery behind the image of a ‘Rainbow Nation’ was unveiled, as happened in 2008 and 2010 when xenophobia also reached critical mass. But for many years prior, the rest of the continent already knew South African predators. Grievances include exploitation by Johannesburg mining houses, retail chains, cellphone businesses and breweries, and the difficulty of getting a visa to even visit South Africa, especially from Kenya and Nigeria, the two main Anglophone competing powers on the continent. (Diplomatic-level tit-for-tat is one reason.)

Popular disgust across Africa at how little the South African state was doing to protect immigrants reverberated especially strongly where the refugees mainly hailed from: Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In many capital cities across Africa, the 99% lined up in marches, protests and boycotts against Africa’s sub-imperialist 1%.

On more than a dozen occasions, the targets were South African High Commissions and the branch plants and shops which transfer profits back to Johannesburg corporations. In some cases, like the South African shops that Walmart uses to penetrate Africa, the profits go further away still. In Mozambique’s natural gas fields, more than 300 South African workers employed by the oil company Sasol had to flee home as local residents complained the firm didn’t give jobs to locals.

Back in Durban and Johannesburg, immigrant resistance to lumpen-proletariat proto-fascism is uneven. In Durban, the city centre’s Congolese, Nigerian and Zimbabwe immigrants attempted a non-violent march against xenophobia, which was viciously broken up by municipal police on April 8.

As a result, hundreds of immigrants armed themselves and briefly skirmished with police and xenophobic mobs in Durban’s Point zone a few days later, just a few blocks from the city’s world-class aquarium and water park. Some even threatened urban guerrilla war. In Johannesburg’s Hillbrow inner-city zone, the immigrants’ geographic density was too intimidating for mobs from nearby (Zulu-dominated) migrant labour hostels to penetrate.

But in less concentrated sites in shack settlements, mainly in the Durban residential periphery, xenophobic attacks occurred repeatedly. Even now, nearly a month later, it appears unsafe for most immigrants to return to homes and businesses. As a result of ongoing danger, more than 1000 have been voluntarily repatriated to neighbouring countries. There is nothing more tragic than witnessing the long-distance buses load up from refugee camps, choc-full of traumatised people who have lost everything.

South Africa’s 1% don’t get it

Yet South Africa’s state leaders repeatedly demonstrated they hadn’t really internalised the crisis. On April 24, President Jacob Zuma claimed to immigrant groups, South Africa’s moral high ground still remains intact.” The same day, the secretary-general of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Gwede Mantashe, repeated a controversial suggestion: “Refugee reception camps must be used to make sure that everyone who comes to South Africa is registered, they should be screened and get vetted,” though he admitted, “I know that the idea has been attacked viciously.”

Also that day, Deputy Police Minister Maggie Sotyu revealed how stressed South Africa’s elites had become, when she pleaded, “There are worse things happening in other countries but you will never see them in the media. The media is part of the community, so please, it must be biased when it comes to South Africa.”

These remarks reflected the widespread public shaming of Zuma’s government and its defensiveness. Indeed Zuma initially did very little to resolve or even properly band-aid the situation. State-supported anti-xenophobia media adverts, marches, speeches and campaigning generally missed the point: the impoverished young men doing the attacking had little patience for sanctimonious preaching.

On the one hand, a few middle-class NGOs and religious faith leaders provided vital emergency charity aid to refugee camps; in combination with some labour leaders, their anti-xenophobia marches during April briefly reclaimed central city spaces. On the other hand, the petit-bourgeois moralistic politicians and public commentators had no obvious way to get messages through to the lumpen-proletariat. One reason: an inability to analyse, much less address, the underlying conditions.

Jobs, housing and retail competition

Immigrants from the rest of Africa and from Asia (especially Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and China) in search of work are typically young males with networks that give them entry to residential areas, sometimes to informal employment, and sometimes even to shop-keeping opportunities. Because wives and children typically stay behind, the male migrants can at least temporarily accept much lower wages than local residents who usually must support larger families.

They also can save money by quadrupling up in small inner-city apartments or township shacks – often sleeping in shifts – which puts upward pressure on rental rates. Unscrupulous employers or landlords increase their own power by threatening to tell authorities about the illegal immigrants, as a weapon of super-exploitation often used especially on farms to avoid wage payments.

Another structural cause of xenophobia is excessive township retail competition: “overtrading.” This results from immigrants – especially from Somalia, Ethiopia, Pakistan and Bangladesh – using home-country syndicates to gain collective credit and bulk purchasing power from wholesalers. They then easily undercut the spaza shops run by local residents, and their operations have efficiently spread to nearly every corner of South Africa.

Internecine battles between petty capitalists soon move from price wars to physical intimidation, mostly against the immigrant shops. Scores of “service delivery protests” by communities against their municipal governments have turned into xenophobic looting sprees against immigrants.

These root causes can be solved only by redirecting state resources towards meeting needs (like housing) and creating jobs. Corporate taxes could be raised and vast budgets shifted away from white elephant infrastructure projects: a $30 billion coal export railroad, a new (unneeded) $25 billion Durban port, $100 billion for nuclear reactors and the like. Without a massive attack on inequality, the daily degradation of life for the 54% of South Africans who are below the poverty line will continue.

Zuma’s ANC government is at fault not only for neoliberal, pro-corporate, job-killing policies, but for tightening immigration regulations the last few years, which compels refugees to live under illegal informality. Zuma has continued his predecessors’ sub-imperial policies in the region in order to secure contracts for favoured corporations, including his nephew’s $10 billion oil deal in the eastern DRC, not far from where 1600 SA army troops are deployed against rebel competitors.

Zuma also gives continual fraternal support to repressive regimes in the region such as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, the Swazi tyrant monarch Mswati and the corrupt Congolese regime of Joseph Kabila. More refugees result.

What pressure can reverse the root causes?

Mere ‘be-nice’ appeals and marches are not making any dent in the root causes of xenophobia or in state policies. What would be needed to change the Zuma government’s approach? What power can activists leverage?

The most obvious factor in recent weeks was the reputational damage (including to tourism) that the government and big business are feeling. Apparently only such damage can compel Zuma to act.

As Bandile Mdlalose from the Community Justice Movement wrote inPambazuka, the continent’s main ezine, “We in Durban civil society should consider a boycott campaign.” With Durban the only candidate for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, she argued that one target should be a “Commonwealth decision, expected on September 2, to give the 2022 Games to our undeserving city.” Durban authorities say they will also bid for the 2024 Olympic Games.

Protesters in many other countries are tackling South Africa at this level, so as to force the Pretoria regime to adopt more humane policies. The question is whether, pitted against ANC politicans, local corporations and fast-rising Zulu ethnicism, a still-stunned layer of South African progressives can join the debate how best to shift from mere moralising towards standing up alongside African protesters.

Finance houses warn of loss of Australia’s AAA credit rating

Mike Head

In the lead-up to next week’s Australian federal budget, representatives of the global financial markets have warned of a sharp worsening of the country’s economic position, and ratcheted up their demands for the Abbott government to slash social spending.

A series of statements, highlighted on front pages of the Australian Financial Review last week, declared that the nation’s triple A credit rating was at risk because of ongoing budget deficits. Any downgrade could, in turn, threaten the ratings of Australia’s four major banks.

The Australian economy avoided recession in the 2008–09 financial crisis largely as a result of China’s massive stimulus packages and its continuing high demand for minerals. However, it has been hit hard by slowing growth in China, Australia’s largest export market. Prices for iron ore have halved over the past year and for coal over the past five years.

Deutsche Bank issued a report, described by the Australian Financial Reviewas “scathing” and “bleak,” which predicted that the country was headed for 15 years of consecutive budget deficits, through to 2023–24. It warned that debt would rise to levels where the AAA credit rating would be cut.

Adam Boyton, Deutsche Bank Australian chief economist, made a thinly veiled condemnation of hints from Prime Minister Tony Abbott that next week’s budget might not contain major spending cuts. Boyton said that despite the precipitous fall in export commodity prices, which has slashed an estimated $238 billion from government revenues over the past 30 months, Australia had a “spending problem” not a “revenue problem.”

Wall Street-based investment bank Goldman Sachs warned that the government was running out of time to contain another $50 billion blowout in the federal budget this year. In a note to clients, Goldman Sachs chief economist Tim Toohey said that, within months, global ratings agency Standard & Poor’s could place on a “negative outlook” the AAA rating that Australia has held since 2003, during the mining boom.

“A mix of sharply lower commodity prices, weak growth and political impasse have resulted in an unprecedented degree of fiscal slippage over recent years,” he stated. Toohey said the plunge in iron ore prices in recent months alone would slash another $55 billion off government revenues over the next four years.

Toohey’s “political impasse” is a reference to the government’s eventual abandonment, because of intense public opposition, of a number of key provisions in last year’s budget—such as charges to see doctors, welfare cutoffs, deregulation of higher education fees and the erosion of pension levels.

Former Commonwealth of Australia Bank CEO David Murray amplified the message. He said the budget deterioration, combined with already record low interest rates, made the AAA rating “increasingly vulnerable, with little room to move.” He said any downgrade would also hit the large banks, whose borrowings are effectively underwritten by the federal government, increasing the urgency for them to set aside extra capital to protect themselves against a funding crisis.

Murray, who headed the Abbott government’s financial system inquiry, released a report last December insisting that the banks were under-capitalised, and over-dependent on foreign borrowings. The government has yet to respond to his call for banks to be required to hold higher capital reserves, a recommendation that the banks have trenchantly opposed.

The unraveling of the two-decade mining boom has exposed the underlying susceptibility of the Australian economy to the impact of the ongoing global breakdown that began seven years ago. New private capital expenditure—a measure of business investment in production—has dropped more than 7 percent since 2011 and is predicted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to fall by another 8.6 percent in 2014–15.

In another note to clients last week, Andy Scaman, a London-based portfolio manager at Stratton Street, said it was time to question if Australia’s luck had run out. He placed Australia below his firm’s cutoff for a “wealthy nation” because net foreign liabilities, in 2011, stood at 81.5 percent of gross domestic product, above the 50 percent threshold that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) regards as marking vulnerability to external crises.

Over the past 15 months, the Reserve Bank of Australia has cut official interest rates to a record low of 2.25 percent in an unsuccessful bid to boost business and consumer spending. It is also trying to lift flagging exports by driving down the value of the Australian dollar. However, this has instead produced a precarious housing price bubble, particularly in the main financial centres, Sydney and Melbourne, with investors pouring funds into real estate speculation rather than productive activity. Median house prices in Sydney have risen 30 percent during the past three years.

The IMF announced that it is sending a team to Australia next month to examine the risks posed by the property speculation and levels of household debt, which now stand at a record 177 percent of household income, one of the highest ratios in the world.

IMF mission chief James Daniels called for a “sensible strategy” to eliminate the budget deficit, combined with “tax reform” and a new drive, like that unleashed by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments in the 1980s and 1990s, to lift productivity. This means further cutbacks to public spending to reduce corporate and high income taxes and a deeper assault on wages and working conditions.

Over the past several weeks, the Abbott government, aided by the media and the Labor Party opposition, has used the barrage of nationalist propaganda surrounding the centenary “celebrations” of Anzac Day, in part to distract attention from the economic and political crisis surrounding the budget.

In February, the deep public hostility to the government triggered a leadership challenge to Abbott within his Liberal Party, which he narrowly survived. The handing down of the May 12 budget will once again point to the government’s fragility. Despite slashing spending in last year’s budget, particularly by cutting health and education funding to the states by $80 billion over the next decade, the deficit is still forecast to remain at near-record levels for the foreseeable future.

Treasurer Joe Hockey last week acknowledged the risk to the triple-A credit ranking, saying that failure to restore a surplus would imperil the rating. But the government is under mounting pressure from the corporate elite to impose the full burden of the economic reversal on the working class, or face punishment by the financial markets.

York, Pennsylvania: Mass unemployment and temporary jobs

Douglas Lyons & Samuel Davidson

Six years into the supposed economic recovery, double-digit unemployment, record poverty, layoffs and temporary jobs are the norm in York, Pennsylvania.

Located in Central Pennsylvania, about 30 miles from the State Capital of Harrisburg, York has a population of 44,000. Like many cities its size in Pennsylvania, York is mired in unemployment, low-paying jobs and poverty.

In 2013, the official unemployment rate was 13 percent, more than twice the state average of 5.6 percent. Thirty-nine percent of the adult population is not counted in the labor force and less than half of all adults are employed, compared to 58 percent for the state as a whole.

Over 37 percent of all residents, more than one in three, live in poverty, and the childhood poverty rate is 51 percent, with two out of every three children, five and under, living in poverty. Median household income is slightly more than $30,000, and per capita income is about $15,000.

Patricia Perry

Unlike many industrial centers in Pennsylvania that used to house massive steel mills and other industry, York’s economy has been dominated by smaller manufacturers, many of which have closed or laid off workers. Those that remain have used the high level of unemployment to push down wages.

Patricia Perry worked at the Sylvania plant for 15 years until it shut down this past September. The plant, until recently, had employed over 600 people. She, along with 118 other workers, lost their jobs when the plant was closed.

“I am going to relocate because there are no jobs here,” Perry said. “I have been out of work for nearly six months. My unemployment is running out. The pay is low around here.”

The now closed Sylvania plant in York, Pennsylvania once employed 600 people

Osram Sylvania, the North American business of OSRAM AG located and headquartered in Munich, Germany, produces lighting commodities for consumers, businesses, the automobile industry, and for tech industries such as computer developers and aerospace. According to its web page, Osram Sylvania is “one of the world’s largest manufacturers”.

The company employs over 35,000 workers in 53 production plants located in 18 countries. In the last decade, it has expanded its international footprint, tripled its sales and doubled its world market share. In York, however, it cited sales decline and lower consumer demand as the rationale for closing the plant and two others in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Central Falls, Rhode Island.

“I was a press operator. I ran 10 machines at once,” Perry continued. “If someone didn’t come in, I would also have to cover their machines. I would make sure everything was running, deliver the parts, checking that the parts were coming out right.

“The company said that they were closing our plant because it was not profitable enough. They have other plants around the country, and they were going to move the production to a plant in Kentucky and another one in Pennsylvania.

“I was making $19.85 an hour. So far, all the manufacturing jobs around here only pay at most $14 an hour if you’re lucky. All my experience is in production manufacturing, I don’t have any experience in office work. I am even trying to find volunteer work so that I can get office experience, but I can’t even find volunteer work.

“The politicians say that unemployment is at an all-time low. If this is low, what were things like when it was high? They cut the unemployment down to only six months. People used to get an extension, but that was all cut.”

110 people lost their job when Clarks Shoes closed this distribution plant near York

In nearby Hanover, shoe manufacturer Clarks closed one of its distribution centers after it moved to a brand new facility across the road that is much more automated. One hundred ten workers lost their jobs.

Also in Hanover, 120 workers at a clothing distribution center lost their jobs earlier this year when Delia Retail filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

As in the rest of the country, many businesses are taking advantage of high unemployment to hire workers as temporary, paying low wages and holding out the prospect of a permanent job as an incentive to work hard.

Nationally, the use of temporary workers has grown to over three million, a more than 50 percent increase since 2009, with the number expected to rise to over four million by the end of the decade.

Leah Walker

Leah Walker is a temporary worker for a company that packages products and ships them to stores for sale. “You can’t make a living off of $8 or $9 an hour. You just can’t live,” she said. “There is a lot of unemployment, and that is bad, and it is also keeping raises low. It used to be if you were working for a company making $10 an hour, soon another company would open up, and they would be paying $11 an hour.

“I have been working here for six months; it took me a year to find this job. I have been through all the temporary agencies and online sites. Monster’s, Career Link, you name it, I been there.

“I am temp to hire, I go for an interview this week or next, but I am being realistic about it. They have three positions and there are umpteen temporaries working there. So no, it is not set in stone that I will get the job.”

“Living is a struggle,” Walker continued. “My pay is not much more than minimum wage. Right now the company doesn’t have much work. Our hours have been cut back, and I am only working 20 or 25 hours a week. Sometimes I only work two days a week.

“We are just skinning by. The situation is very stressful. You have food and bills to pay, and you have to put gas in your car so you can get to work.”

Another major problem facing temporary workers is the lack of health care. Many companies have cut hours for temporary workers so that they don’t have to provide them health insurance, while others offer plans with the worst benefits.

“As a temporary you have no health benefits,” Walker said. “When you go for the job, they just throw something at you like Aflac. That is not insurance, Aflac just pays you a lump sum each day and it is very expensive.”

York is a prime example of deindustrialization in the US, where plant after plant has been closed down to invest production in other countries where the owners can exploit more sources of cheap labor.

The Harley-Davidson plant in York, for instance, still employs hundreds of workers but has experienced the same restructuring as elsewhere. The restructuring of Harley-Davidson in 2009 and 2012 resulted in over $300 million in yearly savings for the company, trimming the workforce from around 2,000 to 1,000 workers.

Catherine Smith

Catherine Smith, who works at a McDonald’s, has two friends who recently lost their jobs, including one who worked for Harley-Davidson. She said: “There are jobs, but they all pay the minimum wage. My friend worked at New York Wire and they closed down. He had worked there for 20 years and now he can’t find a job anywhere. He is having a really hard time paying his bills and keeping his house. Seventy or 80 people worked in the plant. It may be relocating, and some of the people may get jobs if they follow the plant, but it is hard to relocate.”

“Another friend worked at Harley-Davidson,” Smith said. “He was forced to retire when they closed one side of the plant down. He is barely making it on his retirement. He has a house to keep up and bills to pay, and the retirement is not very much. Property taxes keep going up, and he just struggles to live.

“I shouldn’t be working. I have post-traumatic stress disorder from things that happened to me when I was young. But I can’t live on the little I get from Social Security. My PTSD is just the same as people who were in the military. I can’t make my payments, so I have to come here. I only work part-time, and it is not very much money.”

US sends hundreds of troops to quake-stricken Nepal

W.A Sunil

The United States has significantly increased its military presence in Nepal as part of the relief operations underway following the devastating earthquake that struck the country on April 25. As it has done in previous disasters in other countries, the Pentagon is exploiting the tragedy to forge closer ties and collaboration with its Nepalese counterparts.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday that up to 500 troops will arrive in Nepal in the coming days along with four vertical-takeoff Osprey aircraft, Army Chinook helicopters and C-130 cargo planes. According to Reuters, teams of soldiers with portable radars and including airstrip repair experts, will be sent to two provincial airports to facilitate the landing of heavy transports.

The dispatch of US troops takes place amid complaints from the UN and other agencies about the hold-up of supplies arriving at the Tribhuvan International Airport near Kathmandu and their distribution to quake-affected areas. Brigadier General Paul Kennedy, who is in charge of the US operations, told the media: “Nepal serves as the worst case scenario for military planners… It is land-locked and there are only a small number of useable airfields that will handle military-sized aircraft.”

Kennedy claimed that the US was not going to be involved in air-traffic control operations at the Kathmandu airport because that would raise issues of national sovereignty. “The last thing you really want to cede is the air tower, because they control who is coming and who is bringing what,” he said. In fact, as the Los Angeles Times reported, US officials have already extracted permission for specialist Air Force personnel to work closely with local air traffic staff.

For all the expressions of concern about the victims of the Nepalese earthquake, Washington is using the disaster as a public relations exercise for the US military, to establish closer military-to-military relations and as a dry run for intervening in such difficult conditions, including in Nepal, in the future.

The “aid” exercise underscores the scope of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” aimed against China. Every country in the region, including impoverished Nepal, is being caught up in this intensifying geo-political rivalry. Washington’s indifference to the plight of the quake victims is underscored by the fact that the US has provided just $22.5 million in relief aid to date. Its main interest in Nepal is that it borders China, in particular the politically volatile region of Tibet.

The US developed close relations with the Nepalese monarchy and the military over decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA helped finance, arm and train right-wing Tibetan exiles based in camps in Nepal to carry out sabotage and attacks across the border inside China. While those militias were abandoned following the US-China rapprochement in the 1970s, the relations continued.

From 1996, Washington provided support the Nepalese army in its ruthless operations against guerrilla fighters of the Nepal Communist Party of Maoist (NCP-M), which was placed on the US State Department’s list of terrorist organisations in 2003. The US was caught off-guard by the political crisis in Nepal in 2006, which led to the abolition of the monarchy, the entry of the Maoists into the political establishment and elections that were held in 2008.

The Pentagon is engaged in training and joint exercises with the Nepalese army. At the time of the earthquake, two US Special Forces teams were inside Nepal engaged in little-publicised high altitude training exercises. Their presence only became widely known after the 26 elite soldiers were tasked with finding survivors and providing medical assistance.

In comments reported in the Los Angeles Times, Nepalese Army Colonel Anand Adhikari praised the arrival of US military forces to provide disaster relief. He declared that the US and Nepalese militaries have “good interoperability.” Adhikari has served in a yearlong military planning group with US Central Command at MacDill Air Force base and is shortly leaving for the US National War College for a study year.

The Nepalese earthquake has become the focus, not of international cooperation, but of international rivalry. China, which is concerned with Nepal being drawn into the US orbit, has sent a 62-member search-and-rescue team and four planes with 170 soldiers as well as promising $3 million as aid.

India, which is collaborating with Washington, has traditionally regarded Nepal as part of its sphere of influence. The Indian government dispatched 13 military transport aircraft carrying 300 Disaster Response personnel, along with military helicopters, to Nepal within hours of the quake.

Both India and China deny that they are engaged in a competition for influence in Kathmandu. However, over the past three years, India has trebled its aid to Nepal to $US1.5 billion in a bid to match China. Over the past year, Indian Minister Narendra Modi has twice visited the country.

The tragedy in Nepal is continuing to worsen. Yesterday the country’s National Emergency Operation Centre announced the death toll had risen to 7,040 and the number of injured to more than 14,000. Nepal’s Army Chief General Gaurav Rana warned that final figure on the number of dead would be between 10,000 and 15,000.

According to the United Nations, 8.1 million people out of a population of 28 million have been affected by the quake. Thousands of people, including a number of foreigners, are still missing. Some 600,000 houses have been damaged.

Many people lack food, drinking water, shelters and health care and there is a growing fear of disease epidemics. Three million people require food assistance. According to Information Minister Minedra Risal, Nepal immediately needs 400,000 tents and had only been able to provide 29,000 so far.

Frustration and discontent is growing over the government’s failure to provide adequate relief. A shop keeper exclaimed to the media: “What kind of government do we have here? I have not seen a drop of water or food in four days.” Hundreds of people protested outside the parliament last Wednesday demanding the government increase the number of buses to affected areas and improve aid distribution.

The government and the army fear the prospect of social unrest. Army Chief Rana said: “There is unrest, and we are watching it. Yes, there is the threat of an epidemic, and we are watching it.” He added that many people “would be angry” about the government’s response and stressed that the army and the police are working to “identify local hot spots and control things.”

No doubt the US military will be collaborating with its Nepalese counterparts, not just on issues of aid, but to prevent social and political instability.