Ethiopian government kills students in protests over latest land grab

Joe Williams

Weeks of protests in Addis Ababa and surrounding towns have culminated in clashes that left 75 civilians dead and an as-yet-unknown number arrested. The protests are led by students belonging to the Oromo population, who are angry over the federal government’s most recent land grab. A similar move by the government in 2014 instigated protests in which dozens were killed and thousands arrested. Many of the students arrested then are languishing in jail to this day.

The land grab is part of the Addis Ababa and the Surrounding Oromia Special Zone Integrated Development Plan, known colloquially as “the Master Plan.” It involves seizing land from its historic Oromo owners for little or no compensation, and turning it over to foreign companies for infrastructure and agricultural development. The government plans to seize enough land to expand the area of the city about 20-fold, in violation of Ethiopia’s constitution, which grants the city’s government sole responsibility for economic planning.

After two weeks of protest, local residents responded to news that implementation of the master plan was set to resume by razing several farms owned by Dutch conglomerates Solagrow and Grazeland Farm Agro Industry on December 11.

The government seized on these actions to paint the protesters as violent. Abiy Berhane, a counselor in Ethiopia’s London embassy, told International Business Times, “The protesters are members and sympathizers of violent opposition groups who are determined to overthrow the constitutional order in Ethiopia by force.” Government spokesperson Getachew Reda joined in slandering the students, telling a press conference, “Elements trying to take advantage of the misunderstanding now have reached the point where they are organizing armed gangs and routinely burning down buildings belonging to private citizens, along with government installations.”

In reality, just as in 2014, the students and farmers have been met with violent resistance since their protests began in late November in the town of Ginci. As college, high school, and even elementary school students staged massive walkouts from classes, the protests soon spread to Haramaya, Jarso, Walliso, and Robe and eventually engulfed much of the country in a movement “far, far bigger” than any the government has had to deal with since coming to power in 1991, according to Merera Gudina, chairman of the Oromo Federalist Congress, an opposition party. He explained the ferocity of the protests, saying, “People are frustrated to live under this government, frustrated with the election, frustrated with their local governments, frustrated with their whole lives.”

Oromo expatriates held solidarity rallies in London, Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and several other cities around the world. In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, protesters marched to the office of Republican US senator Mike Rounds to deliver a letter demanding that the US government stop funding and arming the regime. His office hasn’t responded.

Milkessa Midega of Addis Ababa University concurred with Gudina’s assessment that the protests pose a serious challenge to the regime, telling Bloomberg News, “The party looks to have neither developed the society—we are begging food aid now—nor democratized the state-society relationships in Ethiopia…. The Oromo protest movement burns out of the general socio-economic and political marginalization and exclusionary features of the current regime.”

The government responded by ordering soldiers to fire on protesters, and insists that fewer than 10 civilians have been killed. A college in the capital was cordoned off, and soldiers removed dozens of students. Many have not been heard from since, and their fellow students have expressed fears that they are being tortured. All schools in Oromia have been shut down, the citizens are under curfew, and the military has set up command posts in Oromo towns.

In the midst of the protests, ethnic clashes between the Oromo and Amhara peoples added to the bloodshed in nearby Ameya Woreda. Estimated at 40 percent of the population, the Oromo are by far the largest ethnic group in the country, but have historically faced persecution under a series of governments drawn from non-Oromo groups. The Ethiopian Human Rights Council has accused the government, which is dominated by members of the Tigray ethnic group, of stoking tensions between the two groups to distract from the land grab. The Council’s director, Bestate Terefe, described a horrifying situation in which order has completely broken down and people are evacuating the town. “Everybody is full of fear, no one has security. Those who have armaments are protecting their house from any attack. Others are moving in the forest, others are taking their property to other places…. Things are not stable, we are totally in danger.”

The protests come as the government is facing international criticism for its mishandling of a drought plaguing the eastern part of the country. The number of people requiring food assistance has nearly doubled from 4.55 million to 8.2 million, and the UN expects it to double again to 15 million in the coming year. Despite this, Finance Minister Abdulaziz Mohammed said, “Regarding the impact on economic growth, the drought affected areas are peripheral and pastoral communities in the southern and eastern parts of the country…normally, those parts of the country contribute not more than 5 percent to our GDP. On the other hand, we expect harvest to be more this year.”

Instead of helping its citizens, the government has chosen to confront NGOs and journalists trying to cover the crisis. Cognizant that the last two Ethiopian regimes collapsed amid similar droughts, it has sought to intimidate those reporting on the current one. According to Allafrica.com, “NGOs are being warned not to use the words ‘famine, starvation or death’ in their food appeals. Neither are they to say that ‘children are dying on a daily basis,’ or refer to ‘widespread famine’ or say that ‘the policies of the government in Ethiopia are partially to blame.’ Neither are they allowed to ‘compare the current crisis to the famine of the eighties.’ Instead, the latest drought in Ethiopia is to be described as ‘food insecurity caused by a drought related to El Nino.’ ”

A drought in 2011 killed 200,000 people in neighboring Somalia and nearly brought down its government. Kenyan-led African Union troops were sent in to stabilize the US-backed regime, and today Ethiopian troops are primarily responsible for keeping it in power. The US has grown increasingly concerned that economic overtures from China, which include badly needed infrastructure investments, may undermine the Ethiopian regime’s willingness to do its part in Washington’s pivot to Asia.

One million people fled to Europe in 2015

Andre Damon

The wars stoked up by American and European imperialism in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq have contributed to what could possibly be the largest refugee crisis in human history, with the number of people forced to flee their homes “exceeding 60 million for the first time,” the United Nations said last week.

Over a million of those refugees sought asylum in Europe, the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported Monday.

“2015 will be remembered as a year of human suffering and migrant tragedies,” William Lacy Swing, the director general of the IOM, said in a statement.

Swing noted that more than 5,000 refugees had died while fleeing, including 3,692 who drowned in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas, while “millions have been made into scapegoats and become the targets of xenophobic policies and alarmist rhetoric.”

Eleven more refugees, including three children, died Tuesday after their wooden boat capsized in the Aegean Sea. The route from Turkey to Greece across the Mediterranean Sea has become “the deadliest route for migrants on our planet,” according to the UN.

More than a third of refugees entering Europe are children. The Save the Children charity issued a sharply worded response to the latest figures, declaring that “Europe is doing too little to protect and help vulnerable refugee children and stop families drowning on our shores.” It declared, “When children are dying on our doorstep we need to take bolder action. There can be no bigger priority.”

Commenting on the figures, António Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said, “It’s clear humanitarian actors are no longer able to provide the minimum support both in relation to core protection and lifesaving activities.”

“If you become a refugee today your chances of going home are lower than at any time in more than 30 years,” declared Guterres. Only 124,000 international refugees returned in 2014, down from a million 10 years ago.

Having made “human rights” the watchword for bombing and plundering helpless countries, the Western powers stand exposed by the refugee crisis as completely indifferent to these same “human rights” when it comes to their own borders. Instead of providing aid and assistance to the thousands of people drowning on their shores, they are using the refugee crisis as a pretense to further escalate the drive to war and attack on democratic rights at home.

The German government, which has sought to posture as a supporter of refugees, has vastly expanded deportations while slashing social assistance to refugees. The country deported 18,363 people in 2015, nearly double the number deported in the previous year and up from 7,651 in 2012. A further 190,000 people currently reside in Germany whose applications for asylum have been denied, and live in constant fear of deportation. Behind the scenes, the German government is making plans to use the military to carry out mass deportations next year.

German authorities have spearheaded the drive by the EU to work out an agreement to pay Turkey some $3 billion to stop refugees from the Middle East from entering Europe via a land route. Some 2.2 million people have fled to Turkey, where they have been prevented from entering Europe and kept in abhorrent conditions in refugee camps.

With most land routes into Europe closed off, refugees seeking to flee to Europe have been forced to make the perilous journey by sea onto the Greek islands over the tempestuous Aegean. Some 816,752 people have arrived by this route, compared to only about 30,000 who traveled by land, a testament to the brutal effectiveness of the EU’s attempts to seal its external borders.

Greece’s Syriza-led government, which in its election campaign this year sought to pander to the altruistic pro-refugee sentiments of Greek workers, has, together with its total capitulation to the austerity demands of European officials, acquiesced to its role as a border guard for the larger European powers.

To this end, the Greek Island of Lesbos, the birthplace of the lyric poet Sappho, has been turned into a giant internment camp. Some 450,000 refugees arrived in Lesbos this year, more than five times the number of island’s permanent inhabitants. Over 4,000 arrived on Monday alone.

The island is the site of the EU’s first refugee “hot spot,” a sanitized term used to describe what is little more than a concentration camp. Under police guard and surrounded by barbed wire, refugees are kept in squalid conditions.

Reuters, which was allowed to visit the “hot spot” but denied permission to take photographs, described the deplorable conditions facing refugees. “As night falls and temperatures drop to about 6 degrees Celsius (43 Fahrenheit) or lower, groups of people huddle among piles of suitcases, burning pieces of cardboard to keep warm. The dusty plot of land turns to mud each time it rains.” Greece has promised the EU it would set up four more such miserable camps.

The one million refugees who have managed to enter Europe are among the five million people who have been newly displaced this year, according to figures released by the United Nations last week. This was on top of the 59.5 million who were displaced by the end of 2014.

But the UN figures cover only the first half of the year, before the enormous spike in people fleeing the Syrian Civil war as a result of intensified intervention by the Western powers. This means that the number of people displaced worldwide could hit over 70 million in 2015 once the figures are updated.

Fully half of those crossing the Mediterranean this year were refugees from Syria. Those fleeing the war in Afghanistan accounted for 20 percent, while those fleeing Iraq accounted for 7 percent. Thus, more than three quarters of those seeking refuge in Europe are seeking to escape wars directly stoked up by US and European imperialism in the Middle East.

The European powers have pledged to intensify their crackdown in the New Year. This month, The European Commission announced plans to double the funding and personnel of Frontex, the EU border patrol agency. It vowed to further militarize the organization, creating a force of “rapid intervention troops” provided with their own ships and helicopters to intercept and turn back refugees.

UK: Employment practises of Sports Direct retail giant exposed

Harvey Thompson & Robert Stevens

Two undercover reporters for the Guardian were recently hired at a distribution warehouse in Shirebrook, England run by Sports Direct. From their time employed there they produced several articles detailing the exploitative working conditions the retail giant imposes.

Sports Direct was founded in 1982 by Mike Ashley and is the UK’s largest sporting retailer. It operates over 500 stores worldwide, employing 24,000 people. In 2014, it recorded revenues of £2.7 billion and a profit of £180 million.

When Ashley floated Sports Direct on the Stock Exchange in 2007, selling 43 percent of the business, he raked in £929 million. His remaining 57 percent was valued at more than £1 billion. In the 2014 Sunday Times Rich List, Ashley’s wealth was estimated at £3.75 billion.

Ashley is also the owner of Premier League soccer team, Newcastle United Football Club, for which he paid £55 million.

The Shirebrook distribution warehouse measures 2,100 feet by 410 feet, equivalent to 13 Olympic swimming pools placed end-to-end. Up to 5,000 staff clock in each day, around 2,000 on the busiest shifts.

A second warehouse of a similar size is being constructed next door. Sports Direct operates its warehouses 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

New starters, reports the Guardian, are handed a letter by employment agency, The Best Connection, reading, “Your performance onsite will be monitored and if you do not meet the expectations of Sports Direct then your assignment will be terminated.”

The letter from a second agency, Transline, is blunter, stating, “Transline reserves the right to end an assignment at any time without reason, notice or liability.”

The undercover reporters said Sports Direct operates as “a retail machine whose cogs almost entirely consist of people: cheap people, typically from eastern Europe, who understand little, if any, English. To accommodate them, all signs and announcements inside the building are made in Polish as well as English.”

Staff are under constant camera surveillance, after entering the warehouse using a fingerprint scanner. Once on shift, they have to walk almost 20 miles a day picking orders from a maze of 50-feet-high shelves.

The firm operates a “six strikes” in six months and out policy. A “strike” is characterised as a “crime” against the company and includes “errors”, “excessive/long toilet breaks”, “time wasting”, “excessive chatting”, “horseplay”, “wearing branded goods” and “using a mobile phone in the warehouse.”

Workers are supposed to receive the minimum wage of £6.70 an hour, but a raft of disciplinary measures and deductions means they can earn less. “Workers are warned that if they clock in one minute late—or clock off one minute early—they will be docked 15 minutes’ pay.”

The Guardian reporters add, “In addition the body search at the end of each shift—which can take up to 15 minutes—is also not paid.”

Daily body searches are carried out in line with a “zero tolerance” of theft policy. Workers are lined up, “before being ordered to strip to the final layer above the waist and empty their pockets. They are then asked to roll up their trouser legs to reveal the brands of their socks and expose the band of their underwear. Occasionally workers are hauled into a side room for a more detailed search.”

Sports Direct has gained notoriety for its employment conditions, with the Shirebrook warehouse known locally as the “Gulag”.

The Guardian exposé follows a BBC documentary detailing similar practises, which aired in October. It revealed that staff, afraid they would be sacked for taking time off sick, phoned ambulances on more than 80 occasions from work over a two-year period.

Sports Direct issued a statement saying the Guardian report contained “unfounded criticisms” of its employment practices. It promised, “Mike Ashley shall personally oversee a review of all agency worker terms and conditions to ensure the company does not just meet its legal obligations, but also provides a good environment for the entire workforce.”

Figures in the political establishment and parts of the media have feigned shock at the exposure and rushed to present Sports Direct and Ashley as corporate bad apples.

The Guardian editorialised that Sports Direct was a “bad business”, with a “a pile-’em-high, pay-’em-low approach to the workforce” that “can never be a route to prosperity for the economy as a whole.”

It states further that this “conscious strategy would seem to be to rely on cheap labour rather than costly investment in robots or other technology.”

Is any of this a surprise?

Sports Direct is part of a globally integrated network of retail chains that sell products manufactured by cheap labour in China and Southeast Asia and use cheap labour warehouse and retail staff in countries like the UK. It is well known that this is standard practice.

Sports Direct employs the vast majority of its workforce on exploitative zero-hours contracts, but so do many other large firms, including McDonald’s, Britain’s biggest food chain with 83,000 workers, JD Wetherspoon, the UK’s largest pub chain, and the Boots chemist chain.

According to a report published this month by the StepChange charity, almost 750,000 people work zero-hours contracts. Some 1.26 million are in part-time jobs and 586,000 are in temporary roles. Of those on zero-hours contracts, 67 percent experienced a loss of income in the past year.

The encouragement of such practises is official government policy. Extolling the virtues of the British economy, Prime Minister David Cameron said in 2013 that Europe’s crisis stemmed from its lack of competitiveness and flexibility in the “new global race of nations” and the challenge posed by the “surging economies in the east and south.” He condemned “complex rules restricting our labour markets” and “excessive regulation” on business as “self-inflicted” wounds.

The government initially tried to block a debate on the Guardian ’s Sports Direct report by writing to the Speaker of the House to say the matter was “not urgent and should not be aired.”

Ian Lavery, the Labour Party’s shadow minister for trade unions and civil society, merely offered to meet Ashley and “help him tackle concerns” about the way staff are treated. “We can have a discussion about a way forward on this issue which would help both the employees, and indeed Sports Direct,” he said.

Lavery warned, “The last thing we want is more resentment on the workplace. We want the likes of Sports Direct to have decent relationships with the people who are making the profits for them.”

Labour’s solution, in Lavery’s words, is for “trade union recognition and a trade union deal at Sports Direct.”

Workers should treat the appeal by the former president of the National Union of Mineworkers to turn to the trade unions with contempt. The Shirebrook distribution warehouse stands on ground occupied by the former Shirebrook Colliery, which was closed in May 1993 after 96 years.

During the national miner’s strike of 1984-85, Shirebrook village, wedged between South Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, was the location of fierce battles as striking miners fought to defend their jobs and livelihoods. The miners were defeated due to the connivance of the trade union bureaucracy and the Labour Party. Since then the areas surrounding many former pits, mainly in regions of chronic unemployment such as Yorkshire, South Wales and the North East of England, have witnessed the growth of “industrial parks” and warehouses based on the super-exploitation of workers.

The trade unions have not lifted a finger to oppose any of this, and have collaborated to the hilt in allowing the practices at companies like Sports Direct to become the norm for millions of workers.

US-backed Nigerian military massacres hundreds in Shia minority

Thomas Gaist

Nigerian government forces massacred civilian members of the Shia religious community in Nigeria’s Kaduna State last week, killing more than 1,000 and injuring thousands more in a protracted slaughter that lasted from December 12 to December 14.

Soldiers systematically shot civilians at as many as three different sites, attacking the sect’s burial ground, the home of its leader in Gyellesu, and the sect’s Hussainniya Baqiyyatullah religious center, according to witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch

“The Nigerian military’s version of events does not stack up. It is almost impossible to see how a roadblock by angry young men could justify the killings of hundreds of people. At best it was a brutal overreaction and at worst it was a planned attack on the minority Shia group,” Human Rights Watch’s Africa chief Daniel Bekele said.

Dozens of the wounded continued to die in military detention centers without any medical care, Ibrahim Musa, a spokesperson for the Shia sect, said Monday. Nigerian forces buried hundreds of the bodies in mass graves, according to the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC).

The victims were members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, led by a prominent Nigerian cleric named Sheikh El-Zakzaky. Zakzaky was shot four times by Nigerian forces during the December 14 raid. At least one of Zakzaky’s sons was also killed during the raid, the fourth of his children to be killed by Nigerian state forces. Three of Zakzaky’s sons were killed during a previous raid in July 2014 by the Nigerian military, along with dozens of other members of the IMN.

The Nigerian troops bulldozed buildings used by the IMN, including at least one mosque, according to evidence cited by the Nigerian Human Rights Commission. During a previous crackdown on the IMN in 2007, state forces demolished a large compound run by the group, including a health facility and a school.

The government claims that the raid was carried out after members of the Shia sect blocked a convoy that included the head of the Nigerian army. Western media have promoted a pro-government account of the incident, focusing on the supposed threat that the IMN may emerge as a violent Islamist insurgency in response to the killings.

Analysts cited in African media have rejected these claims, noting that IMN is essentially a dissident faction of the Nigerian elite. “Nigeria’s small Shiite minority is generally well integrated within Nigerian society” and have “little affinity with Boko Haram’s ultraconservative Sunni fighters” strategy analyst Roddy Barclay told Africa Practice.

The raid comes just months after the election of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who has taken power with the backing of the Obama administration and the US military. Buhari had previously been head of state in Nigeria after leading one of the series of military takeovers of the Nigerian government that occurred during the 1980s and 1990s. Buhari has come to power promising aggressive measures to “stabilize the system” amid an intensifying social crisis, including growing mass unemployment and shortages of fuel and other basic commodities.

Buhari hailed “strong support from friends abroad” in his inaugural address, in a barely veiled reference to the support extended to his All Progressives Congress party by the consulting firm AKPD, a firm which is owned by President Obama’s close advisor David Axelrod. Buhari’s first act in office has been to establish a massive new military facility in the northern city of Maiduguri, as part of broader plans to militarize the northern region in the name of fighting Boko Haram.

The US-backed Buhari administration has thus far maintained virtual silence in relation to the military massacre, even as the body count has risen far beyond the government’s original claims that only dozens were killed during the raid.

Buhari’s return to power has taken place against the backdrop of a growing US military intervention throughout West Africa in particular. The past year has seen an increased buildup of US and NATO forces in the countries surrounding the Lake Chad basin, including the invasion of northern Nigeria earlier this year by a Western-backed multinational army led by Chadian and Cameroonian forces, all justified under the fraudulent banner of the “fight against Boko Haram.”

In July 2015, Obama and Buhari met personally to discuss “US-Nigeria cooperation to advance a holistic, regional approach to combating Boko Haram” during an official visit by Buhari to Washington, DC. At the time, Obama praised the ex-military dictator Buhari for his “reputation for integrity” and for his “very clear agenda to bring safety and security and peace to his country.”

Buhari subsequently met with Vice President Biden to discuss joint policies to “unlock the full potential of the Nigerian economy.”

US Ambassador Entwistle said on Monday that the US government would offer incentives for US firms to invest in Nigeria, according to the Vanguard. Entwistle made his remarks during a visit to Nigeria, where he met with GM executives who recently announced hundreds of millions in new investments in Africa’s largest economy.

The US presence in West Africa has increasingly focused on Nigeria, which is the continent’s most populous country, largest economy, and largest oil producer. The US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) held naval drills off the coast of Nigeria’s largest city of Lagos in the spring of 2014, drills that were joined by naval units from some 20 NATO and West African governments, including a large contingent of German forces.

In May 2014, Obama administration sent teams of military advisors and covert operatives to Nigeria in the name of retrieving victims of a mass kidnapping by Boko Haram.

Senior Obama administration officials told the New York Times that the White House was preparing to launch new military interventions in Nigeria in May of this year. The plans were leaked by the White House staffers to coincide with the inauguration of Buhari as president.

Earlier this month, Pentagon officials told the Times that the US plans to build a new large military base designed to support operations throughout the West African region, which will function as a central hub for a web of smaller bases manned by US Special Forces and intelligence operatives. In October, a contingent of some 300 US troops began deploying to reinforce the US presence in Cameroon.

The European powers are piggybacking on the US military drive, seeking to reassert their interests in their former colonies.

The British government is moving forward with plans to double the number of UK military trainers in Nigeria, increasing the total number of British forces to 300, UK Defense Minister Michael Fallon said on Monday, after meeting Nigerian officials for discussions about the fight against Boko Haram and security policy, according to Nigeria’s Vanguard .

“Britain and Nigeria are both democracies; we are free peoples, free to choose our governments. These terrorists—ISIS, Boko Haram—they are opposed to us, our ways of life and they need to be defeated. So, we have been discussing today what more Britain can do,” Fallon said.

Over 130 British troops are already inside Nigeria providing training in “infantry skills, civil-military affairs, media operations, command and leadership, and support to Nigerian military training schools,” according to a statement by Nigeria’s Ministry of Defense. London will also deploy Royal Air Force units to train the Nigerian air force in counterinsurgency methods, Fallon said.

Before last week’s raid, Shia minorities in the north have themselves been subject to attacks by Boko Haram, even as the government has militarized large areas of the country in the name of protecting the population from the militants. These attacks have convinced many Shia that Boko Haram functions largely as a tool of the government.

The killings have already stirred up tensions across a much wider area stretching to the Middle East. An Iranian military blog post vowed revenge against Nigeria’s “puppet government” in response to the massacre, and mass demonstrations were held in Tehran this week protesting the raid.

The supposed struggle against extremism is being employed to legitimize a massive expansion of imperialist military operations throughout the continent. The Western powers are seeking to reimpose direct colonial rule across all of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. These efforts are enabled by close the collaboration of the national bourgeois elites, their national militaries, and other local proxy forces such as the Islamist militias mobilized by Washington to spearhead the overthrow of the Libya government during the 2011 war.

The total number of operations by AFRICOM grew from 170 in 2008 to 550 by 2013, according to statistics presented by its commander, General David Rodriguez. By 2013, US forces were operating in 49 African countries.

In addition to the massive base at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, US forces operate out of a constantly growing web of bases in Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Tunisia, Namibia, Senegal, Uganda and Ethiopia. The US opened new counterterror training program in Tunisia in early 2014. In support of French operations during the 2013 Mali war, US Special Forces were dispatched to Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Senegal.

No “peace on Earth” in 2015

Andre Damon

This holiday season, people all over the world will celebrate Christmas by expressing sentiments of tolerance and brotherhood. They will exchange gifts and cards, and try to smile a little more, in the distant hope that their individual benevolence might somehow extricate the world, at least somewhat, from the mire it is lodged in.

These genuine sentiments are, of course, goaded on by a good deal of official promotion. Anyone visiting a shopping mall or airport in much of the world over the holiday period will hear Christmas carols piped through loudspeakers extolling “peace on Earth, goodwill to men,” and exhorting them to have a “Merry Christmas.”

The holiday season is always a time where hypocrisy is pressed into service by the political establishment, a “Christmas spirit” created from the collision between religion and frantic merchandising. But there have been few holiday seasons so unhappy for so many people, and in which the spirit of tolerance and benevolence supposedly epitomized in the “Christmas spirit” clashes so obviously with reality.

Not since the end of the Second World War seventy years ago has the absence of “peace on Earth” been so stark, or “goodwill to men” so absent. Numerous public figures, from the Pope to the Prince of Jordan to The New York Times opinion page, have declared that the Third World War has already begun.

American warplanes and drones swarm the Middle East and North Africa, bombing, killing and maiming indiscriminately and driving millions from their homes. President Obama, according to press reports, will spend his holiday mulling over plans to further expand bombing in populated areas in Syria, which will radically expand civilian casualties.

Every major combatant in the first two world wars is again on the warpath. Germany and Japan, are feverishly remilitarizing to assert their influence on the European continent and in East Asia, respectively.

The millions of human beings displaced by war and poverty are greeted by states everywhere with barbed wire and guns. At least five million people were forced to flee from their homes this year, with one million seeking refuge in Europe, as a result of the wars in the Middle East stoked up by the Western powers.

These same powers, the self-styled bastions of tolerance and human rights, have responded to the flood of people desperately in need of aid by closing off their external borders and forcing hundreds of thousands to make their way over the Aegean Sea. Over 3,000 people have died this year seeking to cross into Europe by this route, while over 1,000 of these are children.

For an enormous section of mankind, this Christmas will not be “merry.” In fact, it is hard to imagine any Christmas in recent decades that will be so miserable for so many people.

For millions in the United States and around the world, it will be another year that they are denied by poverty the happiness of being able to afford holiday presents for their friends and loved ones.

Nowhere is this more true than in the center of world finance, the United States, where one in five US live in food-insecure households and millions of people will struggle to scrape together enough money for a holiday meal. For all the promotion of philanthropic “charity” by the media, one can scarcely imagine a more un-charitable society than contemporary America, dominated by a Dickensian level of cruelty to the poor.

In a suitable symbol of “Christmas in America,” a cafeteria worker in an Idaho middle school was fired last week for “theft” after she gave a hungry child a free meal. “My heart hurts,” she told a local news station. “I truly loved my job, and I can’t say that I wouldn’t do it again.”

All over the world, governments and the media are seeking to counter the sentiments of compassion by whipping up nationalism, xenophobia, communal hatred and paranoia. In the US, the leading Republican presidential candidate is an open bigot, declaring that Mexicans are rapists and calling for banning Muslims from entering the country. Donald Trump’s demagogy was expressed in action when a British Muslim family was prevented this month from boarding a plane to Disney World by the State Department, without any explanation.

In Germany, Angela Merkel, the supposed promoter of the “welcoming culture,” declares that “multiculturalism is a sham.” In France, the ruling Socialist Party, seeking to enshrine a permanent state of emergency into the constitution, is bent on obtaining the power to strip dual citizens of their nationality, a measure last used in France during the mass deportation of Jews under the Vichy Regime during the holocaust.

Anyone who has observed the world in 2015 must expect that 2016 will be a year of unprecedented violence and social misery. But the same processes driving the world to the brink of world war are those that must give rise to social struggle by the working class.

Unlike the professional liars and opinion-makers of the financial elite and its political representatives, the working masses of humanity take the ideals of universal peace and brotherhood seriously. They genuinely hope and strive for a better world, and will fight for it. In the coming period, millions will conclude that an independent political struggle by the working class, armed with a socialist perspective of overthrowing capitalism and reorganizing society on an internationalist basis, is the only means to achieve “peace on earth.”

Anti-Maoist Operations in Chhattisgarh: Successes and Claims of Successes

Bibhu Prasad Routray

Conforming to the speculations that New Delhi under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government would adopt a hardline approach against left-wing extremism, a two month-long operation is underway in worst affected Chhattisgarh to dislodge the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres from their strongholds in south Bastar's Bijapur and Sukma districts. A critical objective of the operations is to neutralise senior Maoist functionaries with the belief that if successful, the leaderless movement would collapse in quick time. This formula has been adopted in the past with questionable success.    

There are two notable features of the present operations. Firstly, there are enough indications that the current operation is driven by a strategy inked in Delhi. A visit by the National Security Adviser AK Doval and the Special Security advisor (internal security) K Vijay Kumar in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to Chhattisgarh in October 2015 started the initiative. Secondly, to an extent, the current operations are somewhat comparable to Operation Green Hunt in 2010, which had amassed a huge number of forces with the intention of bulldozing the extremist movement to nothingness. This time, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has deployed 11 battalions of its forces in Sukma and another eight battalions in Bijapur. As a result, nearly 25000 security force personnel including the state police forces are currently operating in the two districts.

According to the Chhattisgarh police, three new developments make the current operation different from the past. Firstly, there is an increase in the level of coordination between the central forces and the state police. Secondly, the coordination and exchange of intelligence with neighbouring states have improved. And lastly, the state police establishment has been able to effect an optimum utilisation of the District Reserve Guard (DRG) consisting predominantly of the Koya tribals. In June and July around 500 Chhattisgarh police mostly from Sukma and Dantewada districts underwent a 45-day counter-insurgency training course in Assam with an eye on the operations. This has allowed the police to carry out operations even during the lean monsoon season.

Among the major 'successes' claimed by the police is the killing of 10 Maoists, including five "commanders" in Sukma and Bijapur districts in November. In the first week of December, the police further claimed that 26 Maoists including seven hardcore cadres have surrendered in Sukma district. The CPI-Maoist, on the other hand, questioned the claims. With particular reference to the surrender of 26 Maoists, the outfit claimed that villagers unconnected to the outfit have been shown as surrendered by the police. Independent media investigations have supported the Maoist claim. At least three persons termed as Maoists by the police have been found to be petty criminals who had declared themselves as Maoists under police pressure. On most occasions, the intense conflict situation makes verifying such claims and counter-claims difficult. However, fake surrenders have precedence in the state.

Along with the 'successes', excesses and human rights violations by the security forces have also been reported. Large scale violence by a section among the two companies of security forces who carried out operations in five villages of Bijapur district between 19 and 24 October, included rape of a pregnant women and a teen; looting of money, livestock, and food items; ransacking of houses; and intimidation of the villagers. An investigation being conducted by the police department has not led to any arrest so far. The state's reputation of failing to prosecute similar culprits in the past has indeed reinforced a culture of impunity among the security forces in these remote regions.  

For analysts, the level of motivation among the Maoist cadres and future strategies of the outfit have mostly remained subjects of speculation. While the state for known reasons underlines a deep state of desperation among the Maoists leading to frequent desertions, a rare media interview of Papa Rao, a senior Maoist leader and one of the planners of the 2010 Chintalnar attack on the CRPF that had claimed the lives of 76 personnel, revealed a different picture. Papa Rao, while acknowledging the temporary state of weakness in the outfit, dismissed the possibility of a peace process with the government and underlined the commitment of the outfit to a protracted war against the state. "Violence will the forbearer of peace," he claimed.

In spite of the tall claims by the Chhattisgarh police, the prospect of a resoundingly successful operation remains doubtful. Structural and operational deficiencies within the police force persist. Little progress has been achieved in ground-level intelligence collection. The state's efforts to strike a chord with the tribals remain an unfinished project. The bureaucracy remains as aloof as it used to be and is still not an active player in the development projects. This probably compels the police establishment to fabricate its success stories. That, however, is not so much of a surprise. The real surprise is the persistent belief of New Delhi that security forces with low morale and under leaders of questionable ability will be able to root out a problem that needs a much more nuanced approach.

What Does Today’s “Rate Hike” Mean?

Paul Craig Roberts

The Federal Reserve raised the interbank borrowing rate today by one quarter of one percent or 25 basis points. Readers are asking, “what does that mean?”

It means that the Fed has had time to figure out that the effect of the small “rate hike” would essentially be zero. In other words, the small increase in the target rate from a range of 0 to 0.25% to 0.25 to 0.50% is insufficient to set off problems in the interest-rate derivatives market or to send stock and bond prices into decline.

Prior to today’s Fed announcement, the interbank borrowing rate was averaging 0.13% over the period since the beginning of Quantitative Easing. In other words, there has not been enough demand from banks for the available liquidity to push the rate up to the 0.25% limit. Similarly, after today’s announced “rate hike,” the rate might settle at 0.25%, the max of the previous rate and the bottom range of the new rate.

However, the fact of the matter is that the available liquidity exceeded demand in the old rate range. The purpose of raising interest rates is to choke off credit demand, but there was no need to choke off credit demand when the demand for credit was only sufficient to keep the average rate in the midpoint of the old range. This “rate hike” is a fraud. It is only for the idiots in the financial media who have been going on about a rate hike forever and the need for the Fed to protect its credibility by raising interest rates.

Look at it this way. The banking system as a whole does not need to borrow as it is sitting on $2.42 trillion in excess reserves. The negative impact of the “rate hike” affects only smaller banks that are lending to businesses and consumers. If these banks find themselves fully loaned up and in need of overnight reserves to meet their reserve requirements, they will need to borrow from a bank with excess reserves. Thus, the rate hike has the effect of making smaller banks pay higher interest expense to the mega-banks favored by the Federal Reserve.

A different way of putting it is that the “rate hike” favors banks sitting on excess reserves over banks who are lending to businesses and consumers in their community.

In other words, the rate hike just facilitates more looting by the One Percent.

Why The West Can Never Defeat or “Forgive” Russia

Andre Vltchek

Historically and intuitively, Russia has fought for the survival of humanity. Of course, things are not always pronounced or defined in such terms. However, already on several occasions, this enormous country has stood up against the most mighty and evil forces that have threatened the very survival of our Planet.

During the Second World War, the Soviet people, mainly Russians, sacrificed at least 25 million men, women and children, in the end defeating Nazism. No other country in modern history has undergone more.

Right after that victory, Russia, alongside China and later Cuba, embarked on the most awesome and noble project of all times: the systematic dismantling of Western colonialism. All over the world oppressed masses stood up against European and North American imperialist barbarity, and it was the Soviet Union that was ready to give them a beacon of hope, as well as substantial financial, ideological and military support.

As one oppressed and ruined nation after another was gaining independence, hatred against the Soviet Union and the Russian people was growing in virtually all the capitals of the Western world. After all, the looting of non-white continents was considered a natural right of the “civilized world”.

In the USA and Europe, such words as “colonialism” and “imperialism” were rapidly gaining extremely negative connotations, or at least on the surface. It would have been counter-productive to attack, to demonize the Soviet Union for supporting liberation struggles in all those continents. Instead, elaborate theories about the “Evil Empire” were erected.

Russia has always been “ in the way”; a colossal country spoiling the brutal plans of Washington, Berlin, London and Paris – plans to control and plunder the entire planet.

But the nobler were its deeds; the more insulting the attacks against it.

Russia always possessed tremendous capacity to mobilize itself, to throw all its resources at achieving one single, humanistic, and deeply moral goal. There has been something sacred in its struggles, something “higher”, and totally essential.

“Stand up, enormous country, stand up to a deadly fight!” This is how one of the greatest patriotic songs of the Second World War begins. When Russia fights, then all that matters is victory. No price is too high.

Fate selected Russia to struggle for the entire world. If you don’t believe in “fate”, you will never understand the “Russian soul”. It is not about religion – Russia is mainly anarchic and “atheist”. But it believes in and accepts fate.

Moreover, most of the time Russia has really no choice. It has been faced either with the victory or the end of humanity. And when the world and its survival have been threatened, Russia has always stood up: outraged, frightening but also extremely beautiful in its wrath and determination. It has fought with each pore, each speck of its land, and each heart of its people. It has almost always won, but at a horrific price, burying millions of its sons and daughters, stricken afterwards by indescribable sorrow and pain.

And there was never anyone standing by, to console it. As the fires were still raging, as tears were still covering the faces of mothers and wives who lost their loved ones, the country was spat at, ridiculed and humiliated by the Western Machiavellian regimes and their propaganda.

Its heroism was belittled, its sacrifice mocked. It was repeated that its millions who died for humankind, actually died in vain.

In return for its heroic struggles, Russia never asked for anything, except for two essential things: recognition and respect. It never received either!

*

Now once again, Russia stands up, launching its epic fight against ISIS; that horrendous parody in the Muslim religion – created and armed by the West and its vicious regional lackeys.

Russia had to act. Because if it didn’t, who would? After centuries of Western crusades and the most appalling colonialist practices, there is hardly anything left of the Middle East, this marvelous part of the world, which can only be described as one of the cradles of our civilization. Plundered and humiliated, the Middle East has been reduced to a pathetic mosaic of client states, serving the West. Tens of millions have been murdered. Everything has been plundered. Socialist and secular governments have been cornered and overthrown.

I have worked intensively in this part of the world, and I can testify that save Africa, there is no other area of the world that is so scarred and brutalized by Western greed and barbarism.

Hopeless, mortally injured and desperate, two ancient countries that have been lately suffering the most –Syria and Iraq – approached Russia, asking for its help.

And Russia agreed to help them.

Yes, of course, I can already hear that cacophony of noises coming from Europe and North America about: “Russian interests” and its “sphere of influence”. Because in the West, nothing is, and nothing can be, sacred. Because everything has to be tinted with dark sarcasm and nihilism… If the West is acting like a thug, then the rest of the world has to be portrayed in the same colors and shades. After all, the West does not have allies, it doesn’t have feelings; only interests. I did not invent this; I was told this, again and again, when I lived and worked in destroyed parts of Africa.

But I don’t give a damn what they say in Paris or Washington. What matters is what is said in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. And I will tell you how it is there: if you go to a barber shop there, and you say that you are Russian, people get up, and they embrace you, and some cry!

*

Russia will never attack other countries, but if attacked, its wrath can be horrendous, especially when it is in the middle of fighting a war. “Whoever will come to us with a sword, from a sward they will perish,” proclaimed Alexander Nevsky, the 13th Century Prince of Novgorod.

The recent downing of a Russian bomber over Syria by Turkish Air Forces has increased the danger of a much wider regional war.

Turkey, a NATO member nation, is spreading terror all over the region: from Libya and Somalia, to Iraq, Syria and its own Kurdish territory. It is torturing people, murdering many including journalists, robbing millions of their natural resources, and spreading the most extremist, mainly Qatari-backed, jihadi teachings.

I met Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, many years ago in the early 1990s in Istanbul, when he was the then mayor of the city, and when I was “licking my wounds” in between my writing on how the West was systematically destroying Yugoslavia.

“Do you speak Turkish?” he asked me during one of our meetings.

“Not well”, I replied. “Just a little.”

“But you know perfectly well how to pronounce the name of our party! That shows how important we are.”

From our first meeting, I knew that he was a megalomaniac, a man full of inferiority complexes, and an aggressive scum. I had no idea he would ‘go so far’. He did. Because of him, millions are suffering, all over the region.

Now he has shot down a Russian bomber and invaded Iraq.

Turkey has fought Russia on several occasions, and almost always lost. Then, in between two world wars, it managed to survive only because of the help provided to it by the Soviet Union. Turkey should think twice about its next steps.

Russia does not just ‘fight wars’. Its fights for the survival of mankind are nothing short of an enormous work of art, of poetry or a symphony. It is hard to explain but it is so. Everything is intertwined.

To shoot the Russian SU-24 from behind is like shaking those 25 million who died during the Second World War. It is horrendous, as it is unwise. In Russia, this is not how things are done. You want to fight, then come out and fight, face to face.

But if you kill like a coward, and if you invade neighboring and already devastated countries, you may, one day, find yourself facing not just some SU-24’s, but a bunch of heavy strategic bombers.

*

Russia cannot be defeated. There are many reasons for it. One is pragmatic: it is a nuclear superpower. Another is, because it usually fights for just causes. And it does so with all its might and with its whole heart.

If it were not for Russia, there would be no Planet Earth, at least as we know it. The West and its fascist Christian states would be fully in control of the world. The “un-people”, the “non-whites” would be treated like animals (even worse than they are treated now): there would be no control left, and no boundaries to the theft and destruction.

The so-called “civilized world” (the one that builds its theatres and schools from the rivers of blood and corpses of others) would be marching, unopposed, towards absolute control over the Planet.

Fortunately, Russia exists. And it cannot be defeated. And it will never be defeated. However, it can also never be forgiven by the West, for standing on the side of the wretched of the earth.

Turkey escalates war drive against Kurds at home and across the region

Halil Celik

Some 10,000 Turkish military and police forces, supported by tanks and helicopters, are stepping up operations in the Kurdish provinces of Diyarbakir, Mardin and Sırnak, under the pretext of a “fight against terrorism” targeting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast has become the renewed conflict area between security forces and the PKK. The two-year “peace process” with the Kurds collapsed in late July under the impact of the escalating war in Syria. Since then, hundreds of people, including civilians, have been killed, as the prolonged armed conflict between the PKK and Turkish security forces turned into urban warfare.

Kurdish workers in the region are living under a repeatedly prolonged curfew and intensifying armed conflict. Due to renewed fighting between Turkish security forces and the PKK, some 200,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in recent few months, while some 1.3 million people are living under curfew in 17 districts. This is the largest Kurdish internal migration since the 1990s, when the Turkish army destroyed some 2,000 villages, supposedly for security reasons.

However, the government’s renewed military operations against the PKK have not been limited to Turkey. After the PKK killed two police officers on July 22, apparently in retaliation for the July 20 suicide bombing in Suruc, Turkish fighters have launched airstrikes against PKK forces both in Turkey and Iraq. Meanwhile, Ankara’s warmongering policy in Syria has acquired an ever more aggressive character since Russia actively intervened in the civil war in Syria.

Ankara’s renewed war against its own Kurdish population can only be understood as part of the bloodbath unleashed by the imperialist intervention to oust President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, and US and European imperialism’s drive to redivide the entire Middle East. This conflict, in which the Turkish government sought to secure its interests by serving as an accomplice of the major imperialist powers, has now exploded within Turkey itself.

Tensions escalated further when Turkish fighters shot down a Russian bomber along the Turkish-Syrian border on November 24 and Turkey deployed troops to the Bashiqa area of Iraq earlier this month without informing—let along getting approval from—Baghdad.

The deployment of additional Turkish troops to the base has further strained relations between Turkey and Iraq. Regarding the Turkish military presence on its soil as a violation of its sovereignty, Baghdad protested to the UN Security Council. As a result of the Iraqi government’s strong reaction, Ankara was forced to withdraw some of its heavily-armed troops, illegally stationed in the Bashiqa area, to another base inside Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

On Wednesday, however, the Islamic State fired rockets at a base in the Bashiqa area, where Turkish troops are stationed. Turkish authorities seized the opportunity to argue that the attack has justified its decision to send additional troops “to protect its personnel there”.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu did not hesitate to assert Ankara’s expansionist aims in the region. “The developments we are facing in Iraq and Syria are such that the security of our borders starts from beyond the borders,” he said.

Following successive diplomatic manoeuvres and defeats, the Turkish ruling class and the government in Ankara are now making aggressive new moves to get some crumbs from the ongoing imperialist carve-up of the Middle East. It dreams itself of partially reconstituting the Ottoman empire, dominating the northern parts of Iraq and Syria, where Kurdish and Turcoman people live.

The main accomplice of Ankara’s reactionary expansionist policies is the Iraqi Kurdish nationalist leadership of Massoud Barzani, who, for years, has received Turkish financial, military and political support. In return for close cooperation with Ankara in its fight against the PKK in Turkey, Iraq and Syria, his corrupt regime in northern Iraq enjoys Turkish support against both growing opposition in the Kurdistan Regional Government, and from the Iraqi central government in Baghdad.

Moreover, in Turkey, the Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP), known to be close to the PKK, though it is a legal party, has repeatedly offered olive branches to the government, even as the latter further intensifies its military campaign and destroys Kurdish towns.

Speaking on CNN-Türk TV channel on Wednesday, Altan Tan, a leading HDP member and deputy from Diyarbakir, said that it is vital for Ankara to embrace the Kurdish people not only in Turkey but also in Iraq and Syria. He insisted that the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, which defined current borders of the Middle East, has already been junked. Tacitly endorsing Ankara’s territorial ambitions, he called for a federal Turkish-Kurdish state, expanded into Syria and Iraq.

There are few prospects that Ankara would endorse a federal Turkish-Kurdish state amid the collapse of the “peace process”, but it is manifestly asserting its ever broader regional ambitions.

On Wednesday, Turkish Ambassador to Qatar Ahmet Demirok declared that Turkey would establish a military base in Qatar and station some 3,000 ground troops there. He told Reuters that it would be Turkey’s first overseas military installation in the Middle East. Qatar is also home to the largest US air base in the region, with around 10,000 military personnel.

Both Turkey and Qatar have provided support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and given financial, military and political support to the proxy forces fighting to overthrow the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. They have also strongly condemned Russia’s intervention in Syria in support of the Assad regime.

Meanwhile, at an unexpected midnight press conference on Wednesday, Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s defence minister and deputy crown prince, announced the formation of an “Islamic military coalition”, supposedly to fight “any terrorist organisation, not just ISIS”. The Saudi-led organisation consists of 34 nations, including Turkey, which is a member of the NATO alliance.

The exclusion of Iran and its regional allies Syria and Iraq from the alliance underscores, however, that it has been established on a Sunni Islamic sectarian basis, as part of a broader imperialist strategy to push back and encircle Russia.

En route to Incirlik air base in Turkey on December 15, US Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter hailed the coalition as a greater involvement of Sunni Arab countries in the war against the Islamic State.

Stopping War, Terrorism, Global Warming Is So Much Bullshit

Jerome Irwin

Everyone in the world knows – from the richest man or woman down to the poorest – that the lip service currently being paid to try to: stop war; terrorism; global warming; end world hunger and poverty; resolve the refugee crisis; distribute the wealth between the developed and developing countries, or; equalize the disparity between the 1% Have’s & 99% Haven-Not’s; is so much unmitigated bullshit.

The current effort to quell war in the Middle East, stop the World War of Terror, end Global Warming or solve the Refugee Crisis is simply so many X pounds of Blivit in a Y pound bag! The French would call it Merde! The Germans – Sceisse! The Chinese – Shi pijuan! The Spanish – Caca! The Italians Poppa! The Indians – Poonami! The Russians – Bychit! Others might simply use slang words like: stink pickles, arse biscuits, bull babbage or horse pucky to describe all the endless forked-tongued, double-talk, nonsensical, ass-backwards, babble used in the world at every United Nation convention and every session of parliament, congressional hearing or international conference, like the recent COP21 climate negotiations in Paris, to address whatever crises – because they know, in reality, that the world remains up to its eyeballs in deep doo-doo because of the basic human condition and its proclivity for endlessly pursuing the seven deadly sins of pride, greed, wrath, lust, envy, gluttony and sloth. Polluters run all the climate negotiations. Armament Manufacturers run all the wars. Global financiers run all the economies. Everyone knows that!

Everyone knows that the best and perhaps only way to curb international warfare, wars of terror or domestic gun violence is for all countries to stop producing, selling and distributing all the accoutrements of warfare and military weaponry that go with it. But everyone knows, too, that will never happen so long as the entire world’s economy is primarily based upon the production, sale and distribution of such accoutrements of war. It is the very life blood that sustains whole ways of life. No country is immune or absolved no matter how lofty may be their pronouncements and expressed desires for peace. So it’s a continual one step forward three steps back; a matter of simply shifting the furniture in the room or playing musical chairs.

Everyone knows, too, that the simplest way to simultaneously resolve the world’s refugee crisis, mass Diaspora of peoples, terrorism, carbon emissions, global warming, world hunger and poverty is for the simple transfer of capital from the 1% in the Developed Countries to the other 99% in the developing world to help them skip the whole primitive evolutionary process of trying to become a developed country by going through the primitive fossil fuel cycle of development and acquisition of wealth. But, of course, everyone knows this will never happen.

Everyone further knows that to do this today – NOW – in 2016, all fossil fuels must stay in the ground where they are, and the world’s economy must resolutely choose the path of immediately shifting the trillions of dollars of governmental subsidies from the producers of fossil fuels to the research, technological development and production of sustainable, renewable resources. But everyone also knows that the seven deadly sins of the world’s corporations, their CEO’s, boards and investors will never allow this to happen.

So where does that leave us all? Everyone knows that, too!

Kashmir, The “Bleeding” Heart of Asia!

Mohammad Ashraf

Kashmir is truly the heart of Asia which has been “bleeding” for long. Unfortunately, the new process started in Turkey some years back completely ignores the historical fact!

The 5th Heart of Asia - Istanbul Ministerial Process Conference was held for two days in Islamabad, Pakistan from December 9, 2015. The conference was inaugurated jointly by the Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani. It was co-chaired jointly by Mr. Salah Uddin Rabbani, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Mr. Sartaj Aziz, Advisor to the Prime Minister of Pakistan on Foreign Affairs. The event was attended by high-ranking delegations from 14 participating states, 17 supporting countries, and 12 international and regional organizations. The foreign minister Sushma Swaraj led the Indian delegation. She said that she had come with a message to move forward. The focus of the conference was on Counter Terrorism, Counter Narcotics, Disaster Management, Education, Trade and Investment and Regional Infrastructure. As usual, Kashmir, the real Heart of Asia, considered by one and all as the Nuclear Flashpoint of Asia was nowhere in the picture! The maximum one could hear is that India and Pakistan have decided to resume their bi-lateral dialogue. However, there is no mention of Kashmir in the deliberations!

The regional initiative supported by certain western powers including USA owes its origin to Turkey. It was in November, 2011 in Istanbul that the initiative under the title of Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process was started to provide a platform to the countries in the Asian region to discuss regional issues relating to security, political, and economic issues so as to bring co-operation between Afghanistan and its neighbours. It was intended to be an initiative for regional co-operation among the Asian countries. Afghanistan has been a battle ground for proxy wars between the two leading super powers of the world. First the Russians came in and the Americans ensured their ignominious retreat from there which ultimately resulted in the break-up of the erstwhile Soviet Union. Americans had trained and armed the guerrillas which defeated the Russian forces. Later on these American trained warriors including the famous Osama bin Laden turned against the Americans. Americans came in with the multinational forces. However, they failed to totally subdue the Afghanis and had to leave. Their exit is still going on. The tussle about the area is because of its strategic location. It is a neighbour to the Central Asian Countries and Iran. The fires lit by Americans spread into the Middle East which is now in total turmoil.The Indian sub-continent seems to have lost the interest of Americans and they are trying to use it as a lever to control Afghanistan.

Kashmir had a similar situation in forties. Here again the two super powers indulged in proxy wars using India and Pakistan as their pawns. Those days there was direct confrontation between these super powers. The Anglo-Saxons had identified Kashmir as the most important strategic corridor to check the advance of the Russian Empire. It was because of this they had separated Gilgit and converted it into Gilgit Agency. Before partition an important meeting was held in Paris between George Marshal and Ernest Bevin in which the importance of keeping the Gilgit corridor under their control was discussed. They had felt that it would be better to keep Gilgit in Pakistani controlled area. After the breakup of Soviet Union they lost interest. However, now a new factor has come in. China is building a corridor to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean! US interest now is to contain China. Pakistan they are trying to use as a buffer for Afghanistan. India has now only economic value for them. A huge market for American products, both lethal and non-lethal.

Kashmir has been a real heart-ache for entire South Asia for last 68 years while as Afghanistan came into limelight as a trouble spot only in seventies. The real trouble started there after the Soviet intervention of 1979. The whole area was destroyed. There were indiscriminate killings. Millions of refugees came into Pakistan. Along with the refugees came violence and the young Taliban trained in Pakistan and infiltrated into Afghanistan to drive out Russians created people like Osama bin Laden who had volunteered for Jihad from Saudi Arabia and was trained by Americans. Ultimately, he paid them back in kind!
In contrast, Kashmiris as a nation have been suffering for last more than four centuries under external oppression. The last 25 years have been the worst. Almost a hundred thousand Kashmiris have been killed. There are over forty thousand widows, a hundred thousand orphans. Thousands of women have been raped and molested. Thousands of houses and other structures have been destroyed. Over 8,000 persons have disappeared without a trace. There cannot be a worst tragedy than this. Still the guardians of human rights led by the western powers do not consider Kashmir to be the real “bleeding” Heart of Asia! It seems the west is now totally sold to material considerations and has forgotten the finer qualities of life of which they were proud at one time. They need to understand that Kashmir is the real powder keg which can someday blow away entire Asia including the so called Heart of Asia, Afghanistan!